jdempcy.blogspot.com

2008-04-07T14:45:00.001-07:00

Henri Paul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conspiracy allegations
Involvement with national security services
Allegations have been made about Henri Paul in the years following his death concerning his fitness to drive on the night of the accident and his alleged involvement with Security Services in France, and possibly the UK. The claims were investigated by the Metropolitan Police in Operation Paget headed by Lord Stevens over the course of three years. Chapter four of the investigative report is entirely given to the allegations about Henri Paul.
The conclusions of the 2006 Operation Paget investigation were that Paul's involvement with the Security Services was limited to low level co-operation with the French DST when high profile guests stayed at the Ritz Hotel and he received no payment for this in line with French Government policy. It further noted such involvement with national security services is common among senior security staff at upmarket hotels in major world cities.
Personal finances
It was found after Paul's death he was in possession of a large sum of money on his person and had a large personal fortune that far surpassed his expected income held in fifteen separate bank accounts. It was alleged this could only have been as a result of payment from an illicit source, supposedly a national security service.
According to his best friend, Claude Garrec, the large quantity of cash found in his pockets, FF12,565 (approximately equivalent to £1,250 or US$2,500) could be attributed to a requirement of his job to run errands for wealthy guests at the Ritz Hotel when required. A large quantity of cash would need to be on hand to perform errands at short notice as wealthy people are known to often not carry cash. Paul also received large tips for performing these errands. His mother told of an occasion when Paul received FF5,000 (£500 or US$1,000) as a tip from a relative of an Arab Prince for shopping for some luxury textiles for her. Such four figure tips were not a rare occurrence for him during his eleven years at the Paris Ritz.
Operation Paget concluded this cash and the money in his bank accounts was most unlikely to have come from any national security service as there was no evidence in his bank accounts of attempts to disguise money coming from a clandestine source and there was no opportunity for him to begin to implement any plan instructed to him in return for payment on the night of the accident. Furthermore, he was a 41 year old single man with no dependants who had worked all his adult life and owned property which he let out to tenants and this was the probable explanation for the FF1,700,000 (approximately £170,000 or US$340,000) that made up his personal wealth at the time of his death. The large number of bank accounts he had his money deposited in is a common occurrence in France, where banks will routinely open several accounts for different purposes, all to serve the one customer. ^[7]
Personal circumstances and attitude to alcohol
Friends of Henri Paul testified in statements to the French police that he did not have a remarkably high tolerance for alcohol and was never seen on social occasions to drink for several hours while showing obvious signs of drunkenness.[8] In her statement to French police, his medical doctor Dominique Mélo who was also a friend explained: "Henry drank like everyone else, but not to excess".[ ]"He did not have the clinical stigmata or the behaviour of a chronic alcoholic."
Henri Paul's doctor testified that in the two years leading up to his death he had depressive episodes about the break-up of a long term relationship and had sometimes taken to drinking at home outside a social context. She believed he was not alcohol-dependent but he was worried that he might become so and in about June 1996 she prescribed him the anti-depressant Prozac, which is the trade name for fluoxetine and an anti-alcoholism medication Aotal, also known as Acamprosate which causes a dislike of alcohol. Dr Melo said that sometimes he would not take his anti-alcoholism medication so that he could drink in reasonable quantities. An empty packet of Aotal tablets was found in the waste paper basket of Henri Paul's office at the Ritz Hotel. If the blood samples analysed were his, then the absence in them of Aotal means that he could not have taken any for at least a few days or traces of it would have shown up. No traces of the drug were found in any of the samples said to have come from Henri Paul after his death. Traces of the anti-depressants were found in post-mortem examinations of his blood. The inquest revealed that the autopsy also found Henri Paul's liver to be normal with no signs indicating a problem with alcoholism.^[9]
[edit] Switching of blood sample
Due to the high level of carbon monoxide found in a blood sample attributed to Paul, allegations were made this sample had been switched with one from a suicide victim.
Operation Paget investigated the reliability of the post-mortem examinations using DNA comparison of the disputed blood sample by comparing a DNA profile from it with Henri Paul's mother's DNA profile. The test produced a result that there was maternal relationship between the two profiles to a probability of 99.9997%. The very high level of carbon monoxide (20.7%) in this blood sample was attributed to the area of the body it was taken from and to his living in a built up urban area and smoking of small cigars in the hours leading up to his death.^[10]
[edit] Recent developments
It was disclosed that in November 2006 Lord Stevens had a meeting with Henri Paul's parents and told them that their son was not drunk, and was found to have indisputably had two alcoholic drinks (this was verified by bodyguards Trevor Rees-Jones and Kieran Wingfield, two barmen in the bar, till records from the hotel bar and a drink bill ). Five weeks later the report stated that Henri Paul was twice over the British drink-drive limit and three times over the French limit. An expert cited in the report estimated that Paul had sunk the equivalent of ten small glasses of Ricard, his favourite anise-flavoured French aperitif, before driving. This contradicted Lord Steven's previous comments.^[11]^[12]
An unexplained prescription only drug called albendazole (or Zentel) used to treat worm infestations was also found in hair samples from Henri Paul, this drug is said to be commonly given to homeless people living on the streets. Henri Paul's doctor denies prescribing this drug to Henri Paul.^[13]
Another issue raised in court by Lord Justice Scott Baker was the level of carbon monoxide found in one blood sample, which if true would have shown Henri Paul noticeably unwell. He told the jury: "You may conclude that there are some unsatisfactory features about aspects of the sampling and recording procedures".[ ]"Some of the results are puzzling."^[14]
Fiat Uno
There is also evidence that the Mercedes Henri Paul was driving that night was clipped by another car. The mystery car left paint scratches on the side of the Mercedes along with shards of plastic glass on the road. This was later identified as coming from a Fiat Uno. Despite searches by French police this car was not found. Mohamed Al Fayed alleges that the owner of the Fiat Uno was Jean-Paul 'James' Andanson, a French photojournalist. He had been one of the paparazzi photographing Diana and Dodi earlier in the summer, and Al Fayed claims he was working for the British secret service. Andanson, who had an alibi for the night of the crash, sold the Fiat Uno in November 1997.^[15] He committed suicide in May 2000, his body was found in a black, burnt-out BMW in a forest in the south of France.^[16] An official investigation concluded that he had committed suicide. Lord Baker said there was no evidence linking Andanson with the secret service.^[17]

The Meme Machine

2008-04-03T01:28:00.001-07:00

The Meme Machine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the book, Blackmore tries to create a consistent vocabulary, since memetics has had a wide range of different terminologies and therefore, in Blackmore's opinion, a lot of misleading concepts. Some of the terms that are central in her book include:

Copy-the-product e.g. make a copy of the soup. This is more prone to error since it requires an analytic capability of the soup itself and then a synthetic ability to combine the recognised elements. Any inserted errors will be passed on in the event of this copy of a soup being copied.
Copy-the-instructions e.g. make a copy of the soup recipe. This is less error prone since the important elements of the soup are identified and the synthetic method explained. Any errors in using the recipe will not be passed on to future copiers since they will receive the recipe itself.
Meme Fear The fear that the idea we are vessels for memes unacceptably undermines the popular understanding of free will and autonomy. (Blackmore 8-9).
Memeplex Memes that are replicated together, such as religions and cultures. (Blackmore 19-24).
Memetic Theory of Altruism She proposes that meme theory explains altruism better than genetic. That other things being equal, more people will observe altruistic behavior than selfish behavior, will like the altruistic person better than the selfish one, and will be more likely to adopt the behaviors of the altruistic person than the selfish one. (Blackmore 154-158).

2008-03-26T01:21:00.001-07:00

Riven: Badiou's Ethical Subject and the Event of Art as Trauma

There are, for Badiou, four fundamental procedures of truths: art, science, politics, and love. Or, to put it in terms more typical for Badiou: the poem, the matheme, the politics of emancipation, and the encounter with the disjunction of sexuation (Conditions 79f, Manifeste 141e). Badiou gives a number of images of an event of truth. In the Ethics book, his favored examples of such events in art come from the history of music and, less frequently, from theatrical experience. Elsewhere, he writes of modern poets, including Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Beckett, and Celan. But in the Ethics book, he returns repeatedly to Haydn's invention of the classical musical style and remarks that it is characteristic of any event of truth in that it

is both situated--it is the event of this or that situation--and supplementary, thus absolutely detached from, or unrelated to, all the rules of the situation. Hence the emergence of the classical style, with Haydn . . . concerns the musical situation and no other, a situation then governed by the predominance of the baroque style. It was an event for this situation. But in another sense, what this event was to authorize in terms of musical configurations was not comprehensible from within the plenitude achieved by the baroque style; it really was a matter of something else. You might then ask what it is that makes the connection between the event and that 'for which' it is an event. This connection is the void [le vide] of the earlier situation. What does this mean? It means that at the heart of every situation, as the foundation of its being, there is a 'situated' void, around which is organized the plenitude (or the stable multiples) of the situation in question. Thus at the heart of the baroque style at its virtuoso saturation lay the absence [vide] (as decisive as it was unnoticed) of a genuine conception of musical architecture. The Haydn-event occurs as a kind of musical 'naming' of this absence [vide]. For what constitutes the event is nothing less than a wholly new architectonic and thematic principle, a new way of developing musical writing from the basis of a few transformable units -- which was precisely what, from within the baroque style, could not be perceived (there could be no knowledge of it). (L'éthique 92-93f, 68-69e)

2008-03-19T15:12:00.001-07:00

Project Chanology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Danny McPherson, chief research officer at Arbor Networks, stated that 500 denial-of-service attacks had been observed on the Scientology site in the week prior to February 4 some of which were strong enough to take down the website.^[23] Calling Anonymous a "motley crew of internet troublemakers", Wired blogger Ryan Singel said that, while attempting to bypass the Church of Scientology's Prolexic servers, users of a misconfigured DDoS tool inadvertently and briefly struck Etty Hillesum Lyceum, a Dutch secondary school in Deventer.^[36]^[37] Another hacking group related to the project, the "g00ns", erroneously targeted a 59-year-old man from Stockton, California. They had posted his home phone number, address and his wife's Social Security Number online in order for people to target them. They believed that he was behind the counter-attacks against Project Chanology-related websites by the Regime, a counter-hack group who had hacked one of the planning facilities of the Project Chanology attack. The group was attempting to gain personal information of the people involved in Project Chanology and turn that information over to the Church of Scientology. After discovering that they had falsely targeted the couple, one of the members called and apologized.^[38]^[39]

The 'dangerous cult' Google bomb, January 30, 2008

In addition to the DDoS attacks against Church of Scientology websites, Anonymous also organized a campaign on one of their websites to "begin bumping Digg," referring to an attempt to drive up Scientology-related links on the website Digg.com.^[40] On January 25, 2008, eight of the top ten stories on Digg.com were related to either Scientology related controversies or Anonymous and the attempt to expose Scientology.^[4] Digg CEO Jay Adelson told PC World that Anonymous had in fact not manipulated the site's algorithm system, but instead stated "They must have done a very good job of bringing in a diverse set of interests ... It just happened to hit a nerve that the Digg community was interested in."^[40] Adelson stated that two other instances which similarly dominated the main page of Digg in the past have included the Virginia Tech Massacre during the aftermath of the incident, and the 2005 London bombings. Adelson commented on the popularity of Scientology to the Digg community: "In the history of Digg, there's no question that the topic of Scientology has been of great interest to the community ... I can't explain why."^[40]

On January 29, 2008, Jason Lee Miller of WebProNews reported that a Google bomb technique had been used to make the Scientology.org main website the first result in a Google search for "dangerous cult".^[41] Miller wrote that Anonymous was behind the Google bomb, and that they had also attempted to make Scientology the first result in Google searches for "brainwashing cult", and make the website Xenu.net the first result in a search for "scientology".^[42] Rob Garner of MediaPost Publications wrote that "The Church of Scientology continues to be the target of a group called Anonymous, which is using Google bombs and YouTube as its tools of choice."^[43]

Real-world protests

Planning

Guy Fawkes-masked protesters gather at the Scientology center in Times Square on February 10, 2008.

A new video "Call to Action" appeared on YouTube on January 28, 2008, calling for protests outside Church of Scientology centers on February 10, 2008.^[44]^[45] As with the previous videos, the two-minute video utilizes a computer synthesized voice and stock footage of the sky.^[45] The video is accompanied by a transcribed text version in British English spelling. This video attempts to debunk the idea that the group is composed of "super hackers," stating "Contrary to the assumptions of the media, Anonymous is not 'a group of super hackers.' ... Anonymous is everyone and everywhere. We have no leaders, no single entity directing us."^[45]^[44] The video states that Project Chanology participants include "individuals from all walks of life ... united by an awareness that someone must do the right thing".^[44] Specific controversies involving the Church of Scientology are cited in the video as an explanation for the actions of Anonymous.^[44]

In an email to CNET News, Anonymous stated that activities were planned for February 10, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia; Montreal, Canada; London, England; Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, California, and New York City, New York, United States.^[45] Other cities where protests were planned for February 10, 2008 included Sydney, Australia, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, Paris, France, Berlin, Germany, Edinburgh, Scotland, Stockholm, Sweden, Clearwater, Florida, and other locations in the United States.^[34]^[46]^[24]^[47]^[48] Anonymous hope to use the "real world" protests to spur public opinion to their cause.^[49] According to the Associated Press, the protests are meant to draw attention to what the group refers to as a "vast moneymaking scheme under the guise of 'religion'".^[39] As of January 30, 2008, 170 protests were planned outside Church of Scientology centers worldwide.^[50] A video posted to YouTube called "Code of Conduct" outlined twenty-two rules to follow when protesting, and urged protestors to be peaceful.^[51]

According to NBC11, a woman from Anonymous contacted them and stated that monthly protests were planned against Scientology each month through May 2008; and that a large protest was planned for two days after Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, on March 15, 2008.^[52] Carlos Moncada of The Tampa Tribune reported that an "open letter to the press from Anonymous" was sent out via e-mail, and states that a protest is planned for March 15, 2008.^[53] The e-mail refers to the Ides of March: "We, too, wish to celebrate this event, albeit in our own special way ... Beware the Ides of March, Church of Scientology!"^[53]

Bucky Fuller and the Qabalah

2008-03-01T11:52:00.001-08:00

The Diamond Body: Buckminster Fuller and the Qabala (Qabalah Kabbalah Qabbalah Cabala QBL)

Physicist Ian Barbour writes that, "...in quantum theory, separate particles seem to be temporary and partial manifestations of a shifting pattern of waves that combine at one point, dissolve again, and recombine elsewhere; a particle begins to look like a local outcropping of a continuous substratum of vibrational energy." That vibrational energy is governed by the laws of probability.

Paintings by Yuriko Miyamoto

2008-02-21T23:39:00.001-08:00

A montage of paintings created using animoto.

ISO: Travel destinations

2008-02-10T23:10:00.001-08:00

I'm considering traveling in March and looking for suggestions. For the time being, I'm looking on Wikitravel to see what's interesting. I'm considering someplace tropical and somewhat inexpensive-- please post in comments if you have a recommendation!

Free Worldwide Travel Guides - Wikitravel

Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date, and reliable worldwide travel guide. So far we have 17,644 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe. Check out the Help page to see how you can edit any page right now, or the Project page for more information about Wikitravel and getting involved.

2008-01-27T01:34:00.001-08:00

DNA Molecules Display Telepathy-like Quality | LiveScience

DNA molecules can display what almost seems like telepathy, research now reveals. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules, scientists find. Previously, under the classic understanding of DNA, scientists had no reason to suspect that double helixes of the molecule could sort themselves by type, let alone seek each other out.

2008-01-09T20:29:00.001-08:00

Beto Hoisel: the scientific mystic: Time is not Linear; It's 3-dimensional

How could H.G. Wells, in his book The World Set Free, describe a war that would take place in the 1950s, where football sized atomic bombs were dropped from aircraft with explosive power to destroy an entire city? This was written in 1913, when no one had an idea of what a chain reaction could be, nor that atoms could be disintegrated yielding fantastic energy.

Finally, to stop an endless series of examples, how could the obscure American writer Morgan Robertson, in a 1898 novel named Futility, describe the wreck of a brand-new liner named Titan, sunk in its maiden voyage between England and the United States, after a collision with an iceberg, with hundreds of casualties due to the lack of life-boats? This book describes with such a wealth of details the ship, the travel and what came to happen in 1912, in the sinking of the Titanic, that it should be a serious object of consideration by everyone who intends to study what time really is.

The flood of premonitions that occur – and the press reports – related to happenings that result in collective emotional shock have been studied in many universities and research centers. A sweeping new conception of time certainly will come up from these studies with important effects on science and philosophy.

My answer is that time is not linear and one-dimensional.

2008-01-09T20:09:00.001-08:00

From Causality to “Distributed Causality” « Humane Systems Design (HSD)

“Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.” - Gregory Bateson.

In philosophy the idea of causality has been bounced around for a while. David Hume proposed “…his theory of causality - that our beliefs about cause and effect depend on sentiment, custom and habit, and not upon reason, nor upon abstract, timeless, general Laws of Nature.” ^[1]. Today we have the option of drawing from multiple perspectives of knowledge to continue to re-understand causality. For example, from science we may draw from physics^[2] and we may compare and synthesize ideas to come up with new perspectives on causality^[3].

Degrees of Causality
The idea that A causes B may need to be re-understood. If we take the lens of complex dynamics in networked systems we may understand that there is a phenomenon of “distributed co-causality” happening all around us.

In other words, the idea that A causes B may need to be re-understood as:
B may be caused by A and A-Z to various, relative degrees across time.

This concept may be related to the “butterfly effect” (from physics), a concept, where one small change may lead to large changes (usually over time and over space - in other words, some apects of causality are not necessarily immediate and direct relationships that we can witnessed in real-time). (akin to a domino effect or a chain reaction / chain of causality).

This means that in a system where everything is interconnected causality may be:
- distributed
- relative to various degrees
- undetectable to basic human logic and sense capabilities
- (seemingly) non-linear or beyond basic linear comprehension

History of Time

2008-01-09T20:08:00.001-08:00

Intellectual history of time - Wikipedia

History is not just an ordered set of singular events. It is a subtle underground movement in the minds, materials, and organization of a society. To comprehend history is not merely to know a given set of facts, but to know the factors, the state of the world and the mental state of the people that had inherited it at that moment, and not only statically but dynamically - the ebbs and flows of a social milieu like the moods of a personal friend - to understand that history has existed, not merely as a phantom, but as a complex and subtle reality that was felt intimately by its many voyagers.

Often, as remains the case today, "history" happens for the sole reason that it fails to be comprehended as such. For it is this, our inability to disassociate its affects from our most deeply felt and personal feelings, our failure to separate the convulsions of our minds and emotions from the flow of social information, from the sociology of knowledge and memetics, through which it becomes manifest. True history is something that we are immersed in, and it is by that very fact that it becomes history. Anything that effects us intellectually or emotionally is the progenitor of the collective behavior of our species, which then becomes our knowledge, which we pass down through tradition and culture.

[citation needed] stickers

2008-01-03T02:22:00.001-08:00

I can't tell you how much I love this. From the ever-classic boingboing.net.

Wikiffiti -- stickers that read [citation needed]

Posted by Mark Frauenfelder, January 2, 2008 11:12 AM | permalink

Matt says: "I recently started a culture jamming (Operation Mindfuck for Discordians) campaign that involves recontextualizing ads and signs -- or anything that makes a dubious claim -- using stickers with the [citation needed] tag found in Wikipedia articles. This blog post describes the project and has the first few pictures."

One of my favorite quirks about [Wikipedia] are the little [citation needed] tags that users can place in an article, indicating that a dubious claim needs a reference. One day an idea struck — what statements are more dubious or outright ridiculous than those in advertisements? Thus, an OM project was born. I had 250 8×2 inch stickers printed, which I handed out to friends, who circulated them further. In true wiki fashion, the final placement of the stickers is a collaborative effort, now distributed and anonymous. If anyone sees one somewhere, please make a photo! I’ve been tagging my photoset on Flickr with citationneeded and wikiffiti.

Link

2007-12-25T21:20:00.001-08:00

Desiring-production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of desiring-production is part of Deleuze and Guattari's more general appropriation of Friedrich Nietszche's formulation of the Will to Power. In both concepts, a pleasurable force of appropriation of what is outside oneself, incorporating into onself what is other than oneself, characterizes the essential process of all life. Similarly, a kind of reverse force of "forgetting" in Nietzsche and the body without organs in Deleuze and Guattari disavows the Will to Power and desiring-production, attempting to realize the ideal of an hermetic subject.

Thenceforth, while very interested by Wilhelm Reich's fundamental question — why did the masses desire fascism? — they criticized his dualist theory leading to a rational social reality on one side, and an irrational desire reality on the other side. Anti-Œdipus was thus an attempt to think beyond Freudo-Marxism; and Deleuze and Guattari tried to do for Freud what Marx had done for Adam Smith.

2007-12-25T20:32:00.001-08:00

Empire (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"..and if, according to Hardt and Negri's Empire, the rise of Empire is the end of national conflict, the "enemy" now, whoever he is, can no longer be ideological or national. The enemy now must be understood as a kind of criminal, as someone who represents a threat not to a political system or a nation but to the law. This is the enemy as a terrorist.... Hardt and Negri get this absolutely right when they say that in the "new order that envelops the entire space of... civilization", where conflict between nations has been made irrelevant, the "enemy" is simultaneously "banalized" (reduced to an object of routine police repression) and absolutized (as the Enemy, an absolute threat to the ethical order"^[2])."^[3]

They proceed to elaborate a variety of ideas surrounding constitutions, global war, and class. Hence, the Empire is constituted by a monarchy (the United States and the G8, and international organizations such as NATO, the IMF or the WTO), an oligarchy (the multinational corporations and other nation-states) and a democracy (the various NGOs and the United Nations). Part of their analysis deals with "imagine[ing] "resistance to it", but "the point of Empire is that it, too, is "total" and that resistance to it can only take the form of negation - "the will to be against"^[4]. The Empire is total, but economic inequality persists, and as all identities are wiped out and replaced with a universal one, the identity of the poor persists^[5]

The Man from Earth

2007-12-24T02:12:00.001-08:00

Haven't seen this yet but it gets 8.4/10 on IMDB so I'm thinking of checking it out...

The Man from Earth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Man from Earth is a 2007 independent film written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman. In what may be an unprecedented move, the producer of this movie Eric D. Wilkinson has publicly thanked users of BitTorrent who have distributed the movie without express permission, saying that it has lifted the profile of this product far beyond the financier's expectations.[1]

The Man from Earth theatrical poster.

2007-12-24T01:15:00.001-08:00

Man nails Santa to cross to protest commercialism | KOMO-TV - Seattle, Washington | News

Image: Kitsap Sun

2007-12-23T21:30:00.001-08:00

Project Censored Media Democracy in Action

Top 25 Censored
news stories of 2007

#1 Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media

#2 Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran

#3 Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger

#4 Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the US

#5 High-Tech Genocide in Congo

#6 Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy

# 7 US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq

#8 Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act

#9 The World Bank Funds Israel-Palestine Wall

#10 Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians

#11 Dangers of Genetically Modified Food Confirmed

#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup

#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US

#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner

#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court

#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda

#18 Physicist Challenges Official 9-11 Story

#19 Destruction of Rainforests Worst Ever

#20 Bottled Water: A Global Environmental Problem

#21 Gold Mining Threatens Ancient Andean Glaciers

#22 $Billions in Homeland Security Spending Undisclosed

#23 US Oil Targets Kyoto in Europe

#24 Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year

#25 US Military in Paraguay Threatens Region

FBI collects fingerprint, retinal scan and gait info on Britons

2007-12-23T20:17:00.001-08:00

FBI to collect biometric information on Britons - Telegraph

British visitors to the US will have details of their physical characteristics added to a new billion dollar database under plans drawn up by the FBI.

New technology may allow long-range iris scans
Fingerprints, iris scans and even details of the way people walk, their scars and the size and shape of their ear lobes will be collected.
British intelligence agencies and police will also be able to access the information – giving them potentially more biometric data on British citizens than the Government collects at home.
Under the plans, revealed by the Washington Post, the FBI database will include details on everyone who applies for a visa to enter the US.

"Bigger. Faster. Better."

2007-12-23T20:15:00.001-08:00

"Bigger. Faster. Better. That's the bottom line," said Thomas Bush III, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division (CJIS), which operates the growing database from its headquarters in the Appalachian foothills.
Technology continues growth at an exponential pace. Its benefits and detriments to humanity are ever-growing, and while some may say that increased surveillance is a benefit in keeping people safe, others (myself included) are concerned for the ramifications of abuse of power and corruption in a situation like this. Even saying that we can 100% trust every human being in the government and law enforcement agencies not to abuse this immense power, who's to say that the data won't be hacked?

More from the article:

Politics | FBI aims to amass huge database of people's physical characteristics | Seattle Times Newspaper

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of people's physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad.
Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are flowing into FBI systems in a climate-controlled, secure basement in Clarksburg. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Hiram Abif Star Map

2007-12-01T17:01:00.001-08:00

THE HIRAM ABIF STAR MAP

A number of books have recently published research on the origins of Freemasonry. One specific book that came out in 2005, ‘The Arcana of Freemasonry’ was written by a top Mason, Albert Churchward. This author uses the ‘Hiram Abif star map’ on the cover of his book and refers to it as: “The First Degree Tracing Board of Freemasonry”.

Why does Wayne refer to this symbolic depiction as a ‘star map’?

The fact is that for any representation of stars to qualify as a real map identifying areas of the cosmos, it needs two things:

A recognisable star pattern
North and South orientation references

Source: The Hidden Records website by Wayne Herschel

Trojan War Symbolism

2007-12-01T16:56:00.001-08:00

I highly suggest following this link and reading through some articles by Goro Adachi. Very interesting stuff indeed!

ETEMENANKI

11/30 Gunman in standoff at Clinton '08 New Hampshire office [suspect initially identified as 'Troy Stanley']

'Troy' (=> Trojan/Turkey) and a hostage situation... only hours after the 'Trojan crash' in Turkey... (see previous note below). Update: Hillary Clinton is the senator of New York; NYC = the 'Big Apple'.
It was the abduction of Helen by Paris who gave the golden apple/Apple of Discord to Aphrodite that directly led to the ancient world war called the Trojan War.

...

11/30 Passenger pIane crashes in Turkey

Turkey is today's 'Troy'. And the pIane belonged to 'Atlasjet'. In Greek mythology 'Atlas' is closely associated with the golden apple (= 'orange')! The golden apples were grown in the Garden of the Hesperides near the Atlas Mountains where Hercules went to steal golden apples from Atlas holding up the heavens on his shoulders.

Troy/Trojan and the golden apple are thus brought together by the crash, becoming another 'omen' hinting at the start of the Trojan War originally caused by the golden apple or 'Apple of Discord'.

It was even 'nuclear' in nature... seemingly confirming what I said before associating the Trojan War theme with something nuclear. [See previous notes below for more.]

11/30 NucIear expert among dead

I should note the Orange Revolution happened in Ukraine, famous for its Chernobyle nuclear disaster.
11/28: By the way, 'Orange' (Holloway/Aruba) on Turkey Day (Thanksgiving/Nov. 22) which was also the anniversary of Ukraine's Orange Revolution was a not-so-subtle allusion to the genesis of the 'Trojan War' as it was mythologically the golden apple ('Apple of Discord') of the 'Judgment of Paris' (goddess beauty contest) that led to the great ancient World War involving Troy which is today's Turkey, and in many languages 'orange' means 'golden apple'. Orange + Turkey = genesis of Trojan War. That's the ominous storyline and Pakistan (elections in January) is clearly part of it.

Chinger - Soul Funk Jazz Mix #15

2007-11-23T01:32:00.001-08:00

Here's a DJ mix I found via Blentwell. Great artwork for the mix as well!

soul funk jazz mix #15 by chinger

November 19th, 2007

01. california soul - wilson de neves
02. bobo! do that thing - willie bobo
03. tighten up - al escobar
04. feel like making love - ricardo marrero
05. melo da tagarela (rappers delight) - gang do tagarela
06. dancing in outer space - atmosfear
07. think twice - donald byrd
08. ghana spice (part one) - candido
09. ajo - peter king
10. distant star - the heliocentrics
11. galactic jack (buscemi remix) - briskey
12. one day deep - praful
13. didnt i - darondo

artwork by moiret

Enhanced Podcast: Play in Popup | Download (292)

Entry Filed under: all DJs, chinger

Psychoanalysis of trends in popular Facebook apps

2007-11-23T01:28:00.001-08:00

Facebook and other social networking apps are immensely interesting to me from a cybersociology perspective. Here's another interesting take on the social network phenom:

No Man’s Blog - Facebook Applications Trends Report #1

Thinking of these applications in terms of Goffman’s theory (that self-presentation strategy depends on context and audience) and his dramaturgical metaphor for ‘presentation of self in everyday life’ which includes the idea of “frontstage” (public, to all) and “backstage” (private, to “insiders”), we clearly see the blurring of boundaries between public and private as different context and different audiences intertwine.

IE CSS Support

2007-11-23T01:25:00.001-08:00

SitePoint Blogs » In All Fairness … Internet Explorer Still Stinks

After lengthy discussion with the authors, we decided to treat inherit as a separate unsupported feature, and to list properties that would work perfectly in IE if not for inherit as fully supported. The vote was certainly not unanimous, but I felt like we were doing the right thing by IE—giving the work that Microsoft did in IE7 a chance to shine.

Except … it didn’t

In ignoring inherit when rating property support, our intention was to enable the many newly-supported CSS features in IE7 to show up in our compatibility tables.

After all, IE7 now supports position: fixed across all elements, completing (except for inherit, of course) support for that property. And IE7 introduced plenty of other new features, such as support for the child selector (>). It would be nice for our compatibility tables to reflect this, we thought—naively, as it turns out.

Once the authors had compiled all this compatibility information, what we discovered was that arguing about the difference between ‘partial’ and ‘full’ support in IE had been an academic exercise … because the vast majority of CSS features are too buggy in IE to rate either!

The position property does support fixed in IE7, but setting this property to anything but static causes that browser to mess up the stacking of overlapping elements by incorrectly establishing a new ’stacking context’, so we are forced to rate this property as ‘buggy’.

And Microsoft did implement the child selector as a brand new feature in IE7, but even in this golden age of standards, this new feature came with obvious parsing bugs (e.g. A > /* comment */ B will fail to work).

After racking my brains for a CSS feature that would have newly achieved ‘full’ support in IE7 without being afflicted by bugs, I happened upon the dimension properties. width and height had serious bugs fixed in IE7, and IE7 added support for min-height, max-height, min-width, and max-width. And as of the current draft of our CSS reference, these properties are listed with ‘full’ support in IE7! Hooray!

Sadly, a little research has revealed reports of a bug in IE7 that affects all of these properties. We have yet to confirm this bug, but if it’s the kind of thing that will impact real-world use of these properties, they’ll lose their ‘full’ rating as well.

Sync Google Calendar and Sunbird

2007-11-22T19:40:00.001-08:00

GCalDaemon offers a nifty way to synchronize Google Calendar with Sunbird. This is a two-way synch so any events added/modified/removed in either Google Calendar or Sunbird will affect the other. Good stuff!

From the usage page:

Desktop PC configuration - Permanent Internet connection (always online)

Notebook configuration - Dial-up Internet connection (offline-enabled mode)

Fine adjustment

Compatibility notes

Using Config Editor

Sunbird/Firfox/ThunderBird/Mozilla Calendar all share calendars over HTTP, by uploading their file via an HTTP PUT and getting/refreshing their calendar with an HTTP GET. The GCALDaemon's built-in HTTP server keeps this HTTP messages in sync with a specified Google Calendar.

Anyone know how to schedule emails in Blogger?

2007-11-22T16:15:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm fed up trying to get this to work. I'm using Thunderbird with SendLater (a great extension, albeit with a somewhat shoddy user interface). Thunderbird sends email through Gmail (I recently began using TB as an IMAP client for Gmail). I schedule emails to be sent to a special @blogger.com address which posts directly to my blogs.

The problem: I can't send images. Gmail mangles them -- see previous two posts for an example. In both cases, I posted valid HTML with fully qualified absolute paths to the images. But, the src of the images somehow came out as: cid:part1.07000507.00030308@gmail.com ... It seems Thunderbird has banned including images with absolute paths and instead grabs them and attaches them to the email...? That's all I can think, but why, I have yet to discover. My assumption that Thunderbird is the culprit and not Gmail is because I have successfully sent emails in Gmail with "hotlinked" images and I haven't had this problem.

Comments are much appreciated, thanks!

-Jonah

SMG Screenshots

2007-11-22T16:07:00.001-08:00

Whoops, the screenshots didn't go through in the previous post. Here they are again. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

No higher resolution available.
Supermariogalaxymovespowerup.JPG‎ (300 × 164 pixels, file size: 19 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

No higher resolution available.
Supermariogalaxydemo1.JPG‎ (600 × 329 pixels, file size: 44 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Super Mario Galaxy

2007-11-22T16:04:00.001-08:00

Mario in the Bee Suit, a new power-up for the game.

I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy since last week and I have to say, it's the funnest game I've played in a long time. It makes me feel the same sense of exhilaration I got as a kid playing the SMB3 on NES and Super Mario World on SNES.

I had $60 store credit at the local GameCrazy and couldn't decide what to buy. I was thinking of getting Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, since I played the demo and it was jaw-dropping amazing. But I read online that the game takes 10 hours or less to beat and decided I wanted something I could sink my teeth into. I was also considering Warhawk on PS3 since it has been recommended highly. I played it once and it was pretty fun, too! But I already have some FPS's on the PC and again, wasn't sure how much I would play it. I considered Ratchet & Clank and will probably still pick it up. But I rented it and got halfway through the game, and I'm not sure how repeated playthroughs would be. On the Wii, I considered Metroid Prime 3. I had played it before and it was good, very creative controls. But something told me I'd get more enjoyment out of Super Mario Galaxy, and I'm glad I took the chance.

I'm only on the second observatory (each observatory presents you with a set of galaxies to visit), but I've already played so many cool levels with such inventive camera angles that if there were no more levels, I would still be satisfied. Compared to most games, this one is packed with unique challenges -- no boring repetitive tasks here.

If there is one key selling point of this game over other 3D platformers it is the camera. While in most third-person 3D games, the camera angle serves the utilitarian purpose of presenting a standard viewing angle of your character, in Super Mario Galaxy the camera is center stage. It is one of the best features of the game, as it twists and turns to reframe Mario in unusual and exciting ways. Without spoiling it, suffice to say the game presents numerous innovative camera angles with which you must control Mario. It also presents a unique view of gravity in outer space, as you can jump freely between objects in space, each with their own gravitational pull.

Overall, it's one of the freshest and funnest games I've played in years and I'm very glad to have bought it.

Mario traveling from one planetoid to another.

AT&T Whistleblower on NSA Wiretapping

2007-11-19T22:09:00.000-08:00

In an interview yesterday, he alleged that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T . Contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he believes that the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns as well as for content.

Source: Washington Post

2007-11-05T11:39:00.001-08:00

Plasma Galaxies

Laboratory experiments, together with advanced simulation capabilities, have shown that electric forces can efficiently organize spiral galaxies, without resorting to the wild card of gravity-only cosmology--the Black Hole. Many of astronomy's most fundamental mysteries find their resolution in plasma behavior. Why do cosmic bodies spin, asked the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle, in summarizing the unanswered questions. Plasma experiments show that rotation is a natural function of interacting electric currents in plasma. Currents can pinch matter together to form rotating stars and galaxies. A good example is the ubiquitous spiral galaxy, a predictable configuration of a cosmic-scale discharge. Computer models of two current filaments interacting in a plasma have, in fact, reproduced fine details of spiral galaxies, where the gravitational schools must rely on invisible matter arbitrarily placed wherever it is needed to make their models "work".

"Google is the first psychedelically informed super-power"

2007-10-17T14:30:00.001-07:00

Reality Sandwich | Google and the Myceliation of Consciousness

Google is the first psychedelically informed super-power. Google is part of virtually everybody’s online day. The implications are staggering.
Google is growing the mycelium in at least three interconnected domains. First, and most obvious, the increasingly differentiated and feature-rich extrapolations of search. The mycelial mat of meaning. The hardware and software that maintains and advances the infrastructure of quest and question. Second, the biological, biochemical web of interconnection we experience from Gaia to our own tuned in, turned on mind/brains. Third, the mycelial web of consciousness.

Awesome Bag

2007-10-14T21:04:00.001-07:00

FLIGHT 001: Shop for Your Trip

click for alternate views

BIZ CONCEPT BAG $ 108.00

Biz Concept Bag from Nomadic. Expandable bag easily converts into a backpack and includes a padded 15" laptop pouch. Features 3 main zippered compartments with numerous organization pockets for all your personal items. Adjustable shoulder strap included. Lightweight rip-stop nylon.
12in X 14.5in X 4in

DNA Damage | Wikipedia

2007-10-06T01:36:00.001-07:00

DNA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

DNA damage

Further information: Mutation

DNA can be damaged by many different sorts of mutagens. These include oxidizing agents, alkylating agents and also high-energy electromagnetic radiation such as ultraviolet light and x-rays. The type of DNA damage produced depends on the type of mutagen. For example, UV light mostly damages DNA by producing thymine dimers, which are cross-links between adjacent pyrimidine bases in a DNA strand.^[53] On the other hand, oxidants such as free radicals or hydrogen peroxide produce multiple forms of damage, including base modifications, particularly of guanosine, as well as double-strand breaks.^[54] It has been estimated that in each human cell, about 500 bases suffer oxidative damage per day.^[55]^[56] Of these oxidative lesions, the most dangerous are double-strand breaks, as these lesions are difficult to repair and can produce point mutations, insertions and deletions from the DNA sequence, as well as chromosomal translocations.^[57]

Reuters: Snake-bird gods fascinated both Aztecs and pharaohs

2007-10-03T23:08:00.001-07:00

News | Africa - Reuters.com

MONTERREY, Mexico, Sept 24 (Reuters Life!) - Ancient Mexicans and Egyptians who never met and lived centuries and thousands of miles apart both worshiped feathered-serpent deities, built pyramids and developed a 365-day calendar, a new exhibition shows. Billed as the world's largest temporary archeological showcase, Mexican archeologists have brought treasures from ancient Egypt to display alongside the great indigenous civilizations of Mexico for the first time. The exhibition, which boasts a five-tonne, 3,000-year-old sculpture of Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II and stone carvings from Mexican pyramid Chichen Itza, aims to show many of the similarities of two complex worlds both conquered by Europeans in invasions 1,500 years apart. "There are huge cultural parallels between ancient Egypt and Mexico in religion, astronomy, architecture and the arts. They deserve to be appreciated together," said exhibition organizer Gina Ulloa, who spent almost three years preparing the 35,520 square-feet (3,300 meter-square) display. The exhibition, which opened at the weekend in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, shows how Mexican civilizations worshiped the feathered snake god Quetzalcoatl from about 1,200 BC to 1521, when the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. From 3,000 BC onward Egyptians often portrayed their gods, including the goddess of the pharaohs Isis, in art and sculpture as serpents with wings or feathers. "The feathered serpent and the serpent alongside a deity signifies the duality of human existence, at once in touch with water and earth, the serpent, and the heavens, the feathers of a bird," said Ulloa. Egyptian sculptures at the exhibition -- flown to Mexico from ancient temples along the Nile and from museums in Cairo, Luxor and Alexandria -- show how Isis' son Horus was often represented with winged arms and accompanied by serpents. Cleopatra, the last Egyptian queen before the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, saw herself as Isis and wore a gold serpent in her headpiece, Ulloa added.

Lord British An Astronaut? Who Knew!

2007-10-03T23:01:00.001-07:00

Texas Man Linked to Past and Future of Space Exploration by Sputnik and Soyuz - New York Times

Mr. Garriott plans to follow in his father’s extraterrestrial footsteps: he has bought a $30 million seat on a Soyuz flight to the International Space Station scheduled for next October.

Birds See Magnetic Field

2007-10-03T22:58:00.001-07:00

Birds Can "See" Earth's Magnetic Field

To find north, humans look to a compass. But birds may just need to open their eyes, a new study says. Scientists already suspected birds' eyes contain molecules that are thought to sense Earth's magnetic field. In a new study, German researchers found that these molecules are linked to an area of the brain known to process visual information.

Science vs "Pseudo-science"

2007-10-02T18:39:00.001-07:00

Demarcation problem

Main article: Demarcation problem

After over a century of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in varied fields, and despite broad agreement on the basics of scientific method,^[55] the boundaries between science and non-science continue to be debated.^[56] This is known as the problem of demarcation.

Many commentators and practitioners of science, as well as supporters of fields of inquiry and practices labeled as pseudoscience, question the rigor of the demarcation^{[citation needed]}, as some disciplines now accepted as science previously had features cited as those of pseudoscience, such as lack of reproducibility, or the inability to create falsifiable experiments.^{[citation needed]}

It has been argued by several notable commentators that experimental verification is not in itself decisive in scientific method. Thomas Kuhn states that in neither Popper's nor his own theory "can testing play a quite decisive role."^[57] Daniel Rothbart said that "the defining feature of science does not seem to be experimental success, for most clear cases of genuine science have been experimentally falsified."^[58] The latter proposed that a scientific theory must "account for all the phenomena that its rival background theory explains" and "must clash empirically with its rival by yielding test implications that are inconsistent with the rival theory". A theory is thus scientific or not depending upon its historical situation; if it betters the current explanations of phenomena, it marks scientific progress. "Many domains in ancient Greece, for example, domains that today are called superstition, religion, magic and the occult, were at that time clear cases of legitimate science." This is an explicitly competitive model of scientific work; Rothbart also notes that it is not a completely effective model.^[59]

Kuhn postulated that proponents of competing paradigms may resort to political means (such as invective) to garner support from a public which lacks the ability to judge competing scientific theories on their merits. Philosopher of science Larry Laudan has suggested that pseudoscience has no scientific meaning and mostly describes our emotions: "If we would stand up and be counted on the side of reason, we ought to drop terms like ‘pseudo-science’ and ‘unscientific’ from our vocabulary; they are just hollow phrases which do only emotive work for us".^[60] Richard McNally, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, states: "The term 'pseudoscience' has become little more than an inflammatory buzzword for quickly dismissing one’s opponents in media sound-bites" and "When therapeutic entrepreneurs make claims on behalf of their interventions, we should not waste our time trying to determine whether their interventions qualify as pseudoscientific. Rather, we should ask them: How do you know that your intervention works? What is your evidence?".^[61]

Breatharianism and Hira Ratan Manek

2007-10-02T18:33:00.001-07:00

Shree Hira Ratan Manek will share his experiences of unique experiment. Inspired by ancient scriptures he has gazed at rising sun with progressive five-second increments leading up to 30 minutes gaze. He also walks bare feet on warm/hot sand for an hour, and drinks about 1500 cc boiled water. This protocol has resulted in him winning over hunger. He has fasted for 411 days without any solid food; he has remained free of diseases and otherwise maintained disease free normal health.

China Ramps Up Falun Gong Abductions

2007-09-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

Falun Gong practitioners all over the country were put under surveillance, and are being harassed or abducted. Now, just before the start of the 17th National Congress, the CCP has started a new round of large-scale abductions. According to Minghui.net (www.minghui.net), security agents in some regions went door-to-door to investigate Falun Gong practitioners, and then initiated the mass abductions. At the Kaishantun Police Station in Jilin Province, the police issued an order that every police officer must arrest 3 Falun Gong practitioners. Link

Paprika Vids from Stage6.com

2007-09-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

I love Stage6.com!!!

Paprika trailer:

Excerpt from the film:

Opening credits:

Tekkon Kinkreet Trailer

2007-09-23T15:01:00.000-07:00

Analog TV broadcast switch-off

2007-08-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

From Wikipedia:

Analog TV broadcast switch-off

In early 2006 the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005^[5] became law, which calls for over-the-air television stations to cease their analog broadcasts by February 17th, 2009^[6] (this cut-off date has been moved several times previously). Following that date, TVs and other equipment with legacy NTSC tuners would be unable to receive over-the-air broadcasts. This switch-off would cause tens of thousands of TVs to go dark and would cut off many lower-income viewers from their only source of television. A Congressional bill has authorized subsidizing converter boxes that would allow people to receive the new digital broadcasts on their old TVs. The final plan^[7] is to make two $40 coupons available from January 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009 for all households with the initial $990 million allocated, after which an additional $510 million in coupons will be available for each household that relies exclusively on over-the-air television reception. In Canada, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), has set August 31, 2011 as the date that over-the-air analog TV transmission service will cease in most parts of the country except in parts of the far North.^[8] ^[9] But unlike the United States, there is currently no plan to provide ATSC receivers at a discount to low-income households.

More cool apps ...

2007-08-12T20:11:00.000-07:00

Firefox Extensions I've Known and Loved

2007-08-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

Since I just had to reinstall XP and start over from scratch, I thought I'd write up my list of favorite Firefox extensions:

Fresh Install of XP

2007-08-12T01:35:00.000-07:00

Just re-installed XP and am going through the process of installing all my favorite apps. Here is a short list of some of the programs I like:

2007-07-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

		Five ways of constructing the infinity series...

					• By the projection of intervals • By 'recursion' • By binary numbers • By the expansion of a random segment • By programming

Talking to yourself

2007-06-17T09:00:00.001-07:00

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself. ~ Cecil Taylor

This Week in News: Brain Machine Interfaces, Jesuits, RFID Dust

2007-06-03T02:06:00.000-07:00

Brain Machine Interfaces

Brain Machine Interfaces

by Gregor Wolbring

November 30, 2006

Modifying the human body or enhancing our cognitive abilities using technology has been a long-time dream for many people. Nano-bio-info-cogno-synbio (NBICS) is now reaching a critical stage where it could lead to the fulfillment of that dream.

An increasing amount of research tries to link the human brain with machines allowing humans to control their environment through their thoughts. It is said: "Ultimately the technology will be used for people whose spinal cords are destroyed in accidents or those handicapped by strokes." (1)

Scientists demonstrated in 2002 that human thoughts can be converted into radio waves and used by paralyzed people to create movement. (1) "Scientists in Australia have developed a mind switch that enables people to activate electrical devices (e.g. turn on a radio or open doors) by thinking."

The IDIAP Research Institute (formerly the Institute Dalle Molle d'Intelligence Artificielle Perceptive/Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence) is developing non-invasive brain machine interfaces.
The Institute states in a recent publication: "Brain a

The Seattle Times: Local News: Abuse cases put focus on Jesuits

In the Oregon Province, which has about 250 Jesuits in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, the number of abuse suits has been climbing.

About 25 Jesuits in the province have been credibly accused of abuse going back to the 1930s, Whitney said. Since 2002, the province has spent about $8.5 million to settle some 40 claims, and about 80 claims are pending.

In Washington, Whitney disclosed earlier that former Gonzaga University President John Leary, who died in 1993, had abused boys in the 1960s.

There also have been allegations against two deceased Seattle U. professors: Toulouse and the Rev. Englebert Axer. Last week, a Seattle U. official said the school would look into a written communication it received recently from a former student saying that an interaction decades ago with a now-deceased Jesuit faculty member made him uncomfortable.

Also last week, the Rev. Tony Harris resigned his vice presidency at Seattle U. after allegations resurfaced that he had sent pornographic greeting cards to a 25-year-old Jesuit seminarian years ago. That case had settled in 2000 with no admission of guilt, and Harris' record at Seattle U. has been spotless, school officials said.

In addition, at least a dozen women have said they were sexually abused as girls at a former Jesuit-run Indian boarding school on the Colville Indian Reservation, according to the women's attorney.

Most of the cases in the Oregon Province, though, are in Alaska, where there are at least 100 victims, many of them Native Alaskans.

For years, the Jesuits had sent priests to serve remote Alaskan villages, and some have theorized that Alaska was where Jesuit leaders sent troubled priests — a theory Whitney vehemently denies.

RFID 'Powder' - World's Smallest RFID Tag: Science Fiction in the News

The world's smallest and thinnest RFID tags were introduced yesterday by Hitachi. Tiny miracles of miniaturization, these RFID chips (Radio Frequency IDentification chips) measure just 0.05 x 0.05 millimeters.

The previous record-holder, the Hitachi mu-chip, is just 0.4 x 0.4 millimeters. Take a look at the size of the mu-chip RFID tag on a human fingertip.

(Hitachi mu-chip tiny RFID tag)
Now, compare that with the new RFID tags. The "powder type" tags are some sixty times smaller.

(Powder RFID chips next to a human hair)
The new RFID chips have a 128-bit ROM for storing a unique 38 digit number, like their predecessor. Hitachi used semiconductor miniaturization technology and electron beams to write data on the chip substrates to achieve the new, smaller size.

Swept Away by Music

2007-05-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

The whole thing of being in music is not to control it but to be swept away by it. If you're swept away by it you can't wait to do it again and the same magical moments always come. ~ Bobby Hutcherson

___________________________
Sent by Jonah Dempcy via the free Email Scheduler service.
Register now at http://www.emailschedule.com

Man Stays Awake for 11 Days

2007-05-25T21:33:00.001-07:00

Cornishman sleeps after 11 days (but he's in for a rude awakening) | the Daily Mail

Mr Wright prepared for his insomniac bout by taking part in a sleeplessness trial at Manchester Metropolitan University in 1998, when he stayed awake for five days.

He says the results of that study showed his physical performance, strength, stamina and balance improved or stayed the same.

And before hitting the sack yesterday, he added: "I did this record to show that the accepted theory is wrong and the brain does not become less effective with tiredness.

"I believe there are different sleep requirements for the two different sides of the brain and as the left side becomes fatigued it loses its ability to stay in charge."

Monster Pig Killed by 11-Year-Old Boy

2007-05-25T21:15:00.001-07:00

This is so moronic I don't even know what to say. Boy Bags Wild Hog Bigger Than 'Hogzilla'

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) - Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.
If the claims are accurate, Jamison Stone's trophy boar would be bigger than Hogzilla, the famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions after being killed in south Georgia in 2004.
Hogzilla originally was thought to weigh 1,000 pounds and measure 12 feet in length. National Geographic experts who unearthed its remains believe the animal actually weighed about 800 pounds and was 8 feet long.
Regardless of the comparison, Jamison is reveling in the attention over his pig, which has a Web site put up by his father—http://www.monsterpig.com —that is generating Internet buzz.
"It feels really good," Jamison, of Pickensville, said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "It's a good accomplishment. I probably won't ever kill anything else that big." [emphasis added]

Avishai Cohen "As Is..."

2007-05-19T22:39:00.000-07:00

The new Avishai Cohen album "As Is..." is simply phenomenal! I don't have time to write a full review here, but suffice it to say, there are some new versions of older tracks that are simply astounding. Masterful work by all of the musicians, with especially stunning work on the drums and bass. The rhythms are intricate, melodies and harmonies are colorful, and the solos are rambunctious. Another enjoyable part of the album is the included DVD disc, which contains a video of a live performance by Avishai Cohen at Blue Note. This release is a must-have for any Avishai Cohen fan, or any modern jazz fan for that matter. The compositions are memorable, the band's delivery is tight, A+.

BiggerBoat: Entertainment Search

Available On:

Priced from $8.88 to $16.99

See all 7 sellers

Listen to samples from the album

The Winner - So Sad, So Very Sad

2007-05-12T18:43:00.001-07:00

I had such high hopes for The Winner.I loved Rob Corddry on Daily Show and he has made some hilarious guest appearances on other shows as well. (His appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm comes to mind). But, this show just stinks! It's horrible. It is really sad because this is just one more formulaic, marketing-driven mass-produced sitcom and it could have been so much more. With the changing climate of television comedy, and such excellent and daring comedies as The Sarah Silverman Show becoming popular, they should have ditched the laugh track, "cutesy" kid, annoying parents and other sitcom cliches and made an edgier, more relevant program. Instead, they (meaning the creators of the show, who I assume made many decisions based on marketing statistics and tried-and-true "safe bets"), decided to make one of the lousiest pieces of junk I've seen in years. / / you do happen to watch this show, then watch the 2nd season of Ricky Gervais' excellent series Extras after -- it's a Larry-Sanders-esque sneak peek into what it's like making a piece of crap sitcom. Highly recommended, unlike The Winner.

Wikipedia has this to say on the topic:

The Winner (TV series) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Winner is an American television series that premiered on FOX on March 4, 2007. It is a comedy about a successful man named Glen Abbott (played by Rob Corddry) looking back to the time when he was in his thirties and living with his parents.

Other cast members include Erinn Hayes as Alison, Keir Gilchrist as Alison's son Josh, Lenny Clarke as Glen's father Rob, and Linda Hart as Glen's mother Irene.

All episodes of The Winner are currently available on MySpace, iTunes, and Amazon Unbox^[1], even before they air.

The Winner is produced by Ricky Blitt and Seth MacFarlane who are also producers of Family Guy.

^...

The show has completed airing its first season, and it is not expected to be renewed for a second. ^{[3]

[Thank god! -Jonah]}

SPTD - Necessary for Vista Users with "Phantom Drives"

2007-05-12T15:59:00.001-07:00

DuplexSecure - Downloads

SPTD for Windows XP/2003/Vista (64 bit)

File Name:

Version:

Size:

Date File:
SPTDinst-v143-x64.exe

1.43

1,013,496 bytes

April 03, 2007

Download

Description:

SCSI Pass Through Direct (SPTD) layer (64 bit). Basically SPTD is similar to other access layers used by other programs who provide access to storage devices but it has a lot more features that make this interface unique.

MD5-Checksum:73684276b93f0f3f50dc49b5a7a5c581

GM-Tainted Honey

2007-05-10T09:37:00.001-07:00

GM Crops Contaminate Honey in Bee Hives

The Sunday Times, September 15, 2002

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-416027,00.html [you have to register for Times' sites]

EVIDENCE that genetically modified (GM) crops can contaminate food supplies for miles around has been revealed in independent tests commissioned by The Sunday Times.

The tests found alien GM material in honey from beehives two miles from a site where GM crops were being grown under government supervision. It is believed to have been carried there by bees gathering pollen in the GM test sites.

The disclosure, showing that GM organisms can enter the food chain without consumers — or even farmers — knowing they are present, will undermine assurances by Tony Blair and ministers that such crops can be tested in Britain without contaminating the food chain.

GM Crops May Produce Herbicide Inside Humans

2007-05-10T09:36:00.001-07:00

Network of Concerned Farmers

They fail to reveal, however, that after you eat the GM corn, some inactive herbicide may become reactivated inside your gut and cause a toxic reaction. In addition, a gene that was inserted into the corn might transfer into the DNA of your gut bacteria, producing long-term effects.

ChangeSurfer Radio

2007-05-07T01:08:00.000-07:00

[deoxy.org] Changesurfer Radio Mon May 7 07:45:02 2007 GMT RELOAD » FEED — SITE

Changesurfer Radio: Existential risks, AI, genetic engineering and space

Changesurfer Radio: Disability: Change Bodies or Society?

Changesurfer Radio: Thumbs, Toes and Tears: What Makes Us Human?

Changesurfer Radio: Technogaian approaches to the climate crisis

Changesurfer Radio: News of the Future 2007-03-24

Changesurfer Radio: Buddhism and Trans-Spirituality

Changesurfer Radio: Terraforming Earth and Consensual Differences

Changesurfer Radio: After the Deluge

Changesurfer Radio: Disability and Identity Politics

Changesurfer Radio: Mind Wars

2007-05-04T00:58:00.001-07:00

Decoding the 39 Ingredients in a Twinkie

Even so, it can be unsettling to learn just how closely the basic

ingredients in processed foods resemble industrial materials. Corn

dextrin, a common thickener, is also the glue on postage stamps and

envelopes. Ferrous sulfate, the iron supplement in enriched flour and

vitamin pills, is used as a disinfectant and weedkiller. Is this cause

for concern? Ettlinger says no, though you wouldn't want a diet that

consists solely of Twinkies. Ultimately, all food, natural and

otherwise, is composed of chemical compounds—and normal ingredients

like salt have industrial applications, too. Still, it gives you pause

when he describes calcium sulfate, a dough conditioner, as "food-grade

plaster of Paris."

Content analysis of O'Reilly's rhetoric finds spin to be a 'factor'

Content analysis of O'Reilly's rhetoric finds spin to be a 'factor'

Commentator uses name-calling more than once every seven seconds in 'Talking Points Memo'

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 2, 2007

Editors: Additional data, charts and the full text of the study are available online at http://journalism.indiana.edu/papers/oreilly.html.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Bill O'Reilly may proclaim at the beginning of his program that viewers are entering the "No Spin Zone," but a new study by Indiana University media researchers found that the Fox News personality consistently paints certain people and groups as villains and others as victims to present the world, as he sees it, through political rhetoric.

The IU researchers found that O'Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.

"It's obvious he's very big into calling people names, and he's very big into glittering generalities," said Mike Conway, assistant professor in the IU School of Journalism. "He's not very subtle. He's going to call people names, or he's going to paint something in a positive way, often without any real evidence to support that viewpoint."

Maria Elizabeth Grabe, associate professor of telecommunications, added, "If one digs further into O'Reilly's rhetoric, it becomes clear that he sets up a pretty simplistic battle between good and evil. Our analysis points to very specific groups and people presented as good and evil."

For their article in the spring issue of Journalism Studies, Conway, Grabe and Kevin Grieves, a doctoral student in journalism, studied six months worth, or 115 episodes, of O'Reilly's "Talking Points Memo" editorials using propaganda analysis techniques made popular after World War I.

A 2005 Annenberg Public Policy Center survey found that while 30 percent of Americans viewed Washington Post and Watergate reporter Bob Woodward as a journalist, 40 percent of respondents considered O'Reilly to be a journalist.

"We chose Bill O'Reilly because he has one of the most powerful political voices in the media today," Conway said. "But we wanted to get beyond the left versus the right finger-pointing, which seems to dominate most of the discussion of O'Reilly and other media pundits."

Grabe added, "The promo of his show as a No Spin Zone -- that's where he opened the door for us."

What the IU researchers found in their study, "Villains, Victims and Virtuous in Bill O'Reilly's 'No Spin Zone': Revisiting World War Propaganda Techniques," was that he was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes -- such as "villians" or downright "evil" -- to people and groups.

Using analysis techniques first developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, Conway, Grabe and Grieves found that O'Reilly employed six of the seven propaganda devices nearly 13 times each minute in his editorials. His editorials also are presented on his Web site and in his newspaper columns.

The seven propaganda devices include:

Name calling -- giving something a bad label to make the audience reject it without examining the evidence;
Glittering generalities -- the oppositie of name calling;
Card stacking -- the selective use of facts and half-truths;
Bandwagon -- appeals to the desire, common to most of us, to follow the crowd;
Plain folks -- an attempt to convince an audience that they, and their ideas, are "of the people";
Transfer -- carries over the authority, sanction and prestige of something we respect or dispute to something the speaker would want us to accept; and
Testimonials -- involving a respected (or disrespected) person endorsing or rejecting an idea or person.

The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. In this study, O'Reilly is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than Coughlin.

Among the findings:

Fear was used in more than half (52.4 percent) of the commentaries, and O'Reilly almost never offered a resolution to the threat. For example, in a commentary on "left-wing" media unfairly criticizing Attorney Gen. Alberto Gonzales for his role in the Abu Ghraib scandal, O'Reilly considered this an example of America "slowly losing freedom and core values," and added, "So what can be done? Unfortunately, not much."
The researchers identified 22 groups of people that O'Reilly referenced in his commentaries, and while all 22 were described by O'Reilly as bad at some point, the people and groups most frequently labeled bad were the political left -- Americans as a group and the media (except those media considered by O'Reilly to be on the right).
Left-leaning media (21.6 percent) made up the largest portion of bad people/groups, and media without a clear political leaning was the second largest (12.2 percent). When it came to evil people and groups, illegal aliens (26.8 percent) and terrorists (21.4 percent) were the largest groups.
O'Reilly never presented the political left, politicians/government officials not associated with a political party, left-leaning media, illegal aliens, criminals and terrorists as victims. "Thus, politicians and media, particularly of the left-leaning persuasion, are in the company of illegal aliens, criminals, terrorists -- never vulnerable to villainous forces and undeserving of empathy," the authors concluded.
According to O'Reilly, victims are those who were unfairly judged (40.5 percent), hurt physically (25.3 percent), undermined when they should be supported (20.3 percent) and hurt by moral violations of others (10.1 percent). Americans, the U.S. military and the Bush administration were the top victims in the data set, accounting for 68.3 percent of all victims.
One of O'Reilly's common responses to charges of bias is to come up with one or two examples of "proof" that he is fair to all groups. For example, in October 2005, Dallas Morning News columnist Macarena Hernandez accused O'Reilly of treating the southern border "as the birth of all American ills." O'Reilly responded by showing a video clip in which he had called Mexican workers "good people." He called for a boycott of the newspaper if it did not retract Hernandez' column.

"Our results show a consistent pattern of O'Reilly casting non-Americans in a negative light. Both illegal aliens and foreigners were constructed as physical threats to the public and never featured in the role of victim or hero," the authors concluded.

An earlier version of the study won a top faculty award from the Journalism Studies Division of the International Communication Association.

Brian Blade Quote

2007-04-24T09:00:00.001-07:00

Not to deny that it is a thinking people's music, but when I listen to music if I ever catch myself thinking, I'm in trouble--I know something is wrong. ~ Brian Blade

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Scheduling Posts in Blogger with Thunderbird

2007-04-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

I just discovered a great combo for scheduling posts in Blogger: Thunderbird, the Send Later extension and email-enabled Blogger posting. Previously, I was using the Email Scheduler website, but it would add a promotional message at the end of each email. Using Email Scheduler had the advantage that I don't have to have my computer on in order to send the email. But, I think it is worth it, considering that Thunderbird is much easier to use and has a robust HTML email authoring system. I highly recommend this combo, it makes it a simple matter to schedule posts in Blogger.

Autumn in New York

2007-04-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a solo jazz recording I made and uploaded to OurMedia.org: Autumn in New York MP3 Download | Details page Producer: Jonah Dempcy

Location: Seattle, WA, USA

Home page

Title: Autumn in New York (jazz standard)

File size: 62.6 MB

DESCRIPTION

A modern rendition of the classic jazz standard Autumn in New York, performed on piano.

My other works

Obscure Terrain (ambient mix)

Slap!

Ambient sound effect: C minor synth with lo-pass filter

Luminous Beings

organ solo - Bb Rhythm Changes

Travelling on the Waves of Time

A Mystifying Experience

Live at Contour 4/1/01 (3 minute excerpt)

Shangri-La

Shangri-La (downtempo mix)

UK Becoming Surveillance Society

2007-04-22T01:30:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | UK | England | 'Talking' CCTV scolds offenders

n Middlesbrough, staff in a control centre monitor pictures from 12 talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.
Local councillor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and criminal damage and cut litter levels.
"Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town centre is a safe place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is safe," he said.
But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: "Apart from being absurd, I think it's rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on orders from who? Who sets these cameras up?"
There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain.
A recent study by the government's privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance society".

Becoming a surveillance society? They already are a surveillance society. There is 1 CCTV camera for every 5 Britons. It's outrageous.

2007-04-21T15:04:00.001-07:00

FT.com / Europe - EU aims to criminalise Holocaust denial

Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday.
Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation...

2007-04-21T14:54:00.001-07:00

American Civil Liberties Union : Montana Enacts 'Declaration of Independence' From Real ID

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded the Montana legislature and Governor Brian Schweitzer for enacting the nation's first flat-out statutory rejection of the Real ID Act, which seeks to create a backdoor national identity card system by federalizing state driver's licenses. Montana's action was the latest and strongest step in an ongoing rebellion against the act in states across the nation. "In January, the state of Maine held a 'Boston Tea Party' when they became the first to declare their opposition to Real ID by passing a resolution," said Tim Sparapani, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Today Montana has taken that rebellion to an entirely new level by issuing what amounts to a 'Declaration of Independence' from the act."

2007-04-21T13:15:00.001-07:00

Dysphemism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In language, both dysphemism (from the Greek “dys” δυς = non and “pheme'” φήμη = speech) and cacophemism (in Greek “cacos” κακός = bad) refer to the usage of an intentionally harsh word or expression instead of a polite one; they are rough opposites of euphemism. “Dysphemism” may be either offensive or merely humorously deprecating, while “cacophemism” is usually deliberately offensive. (More recently, the linguist Kate Burridge has coined the term "orthophemism," to refer to a neutral name or expression.)

Examples of dysphemism include “dead tree edition” for the paper version of an online magazine, or the American military personnel’s use of “shit on a shingle” for their common breakfast of creamed chipped beef on toast.

Dysphemism is as common as euphemism in everyday usage. Few sports teams actually slaughter or annihilate one another, and while a losing team may be disappointed or angry, they are unlikely to be shattered; few companies actually crush their competition; no one is actually dumb as a box of rocks. See hyperbole.

Many of the same subjects can be dysphemized as euphemized, such as sex and death—a respected dead person may be said to have passed away, a disrespected one to be worm food or to have kicked the bucket. Oddly, some humorous expressions can be either euphemistic or dysphemic, depending on context, because terms which can be dysphemic can also be affectionate. For example, spanking the monkey might be used as either a softer alternative for “male masturbation,” or a more deliberately provocative one, depending on the audience. Likewise, pushing up daisies can be taken as either softer or harsher than “died.”

2007-04-21T12:29:00.001-07:00

Why is Genarlow Wilson in Prison?

Genarlow Wilson sits in prison despite being a good son, a good athlete and high school student with a 3.2 GPA. He never had any criminal trouble.  On the day he was to sit for the SAT, at seventeen years old, his life changed forever.  He was arrested.  In Douglas County he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a News Year’s Eve party.  A jury acquitted him of the allegation of Rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager.  He was 17, and she was 15.

Along with the label “child molester” which will require him throughout his life to be on a sexual offender registry, Genarlow received a sentence of eleven years — a mandatory 10 years in prison and 1 year on probation.

Surreal Seattle Rat Warnings

2007-04-21T12:09:00.001-07:00

How to get rid of rats

Keep rats out of your sewer pipes!
Rats live in sewers and can follow the food in pipes up to your toilet.

Keep your kitchen sink rinsed clean and use garbage disposals as little as possible.
Rinse out your kitchen sink once or twice a month.
Use 1 cup of bleach (an alternative to using bleach, 1 cup of baking soda followed by 1 cup of vinegar) and rinse with boiling water.

Never throw grease down the drain.
Keep your toilet lid down when not in use.
If you find a rat in your toilet, flush it! (hint: squirt a little dishwashing liquid under the lid into the bowl, wait a couple of minutes then flush

Hipness is not a state of mind...

2007-04-18T09:00:00.001-07:00

Hipness is not a state of mind, It's a fact of life! ~ Cannonball Adderley

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Hipness is not a state of mind...

2007-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

2007-04-15T20:00:00.001-07:00

Unified Modeling Language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UML uses many concepts from many sources. For a definitive list, consult the glossary of Unified Modeling Language terms. Notable concepts are listed here.

For structure

Actor, attribute, class, component, interface, object, package.

For behavior

Activity, event, message, method, operation, state, use case.

For relationships

Aggregation, association, composition, depends, generalization (or inheritance).

Other concepts

Stereotype. It qualifies the symbol it is attached to.
Multiplicity notation which corresponds to Database modeling cardinality, e.g., 1, 0..1, 1..*
Role

Hyperreality - "The secret affinity between gambling and the desert"

2007-04-15T14:05:00.001-07:00

Hyperreality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In semiotics and postmodern philosophy, the term hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, especially in technologically advanced postmodern cultures. Hyperreality is a means of characterising the way consciousness defines what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter the original event or experience being depicted. Some famous theorists of hyperreality include Jean Baudrillard, Albert Borgmann, Daniel Boorstin, and Umberto Eco.

Most aspects of hyperreality can be thought of as "reality by proxy." For example, a viewer watching pornography begins to live in the non-existent world of the pornography, and even though the pornography is not an accurate depiction of sex, for the viewer, the reality of "sex" becomes something non-existent. Some examples are simpler: the McDonald's "M" arches create a world with the promise of endless amounts of identical food, when in "reality" the "M" represents nothing, and the food produced is neither identical nor infinite.

Baudrillard in particular suggests that the world we live in has been replaced by a copy world, where we seek simulated stimuli and nothing more. Baudrillard borrows, from Jorge Luis Borges (which Borges also borrowed from Lewis Carroll), the example of a society whose cartographers create a map so detailed that it covers the very things it was designed to represent. When the empire declines, the map fades into the landscape and there is neither the representation nor the real remaining – just the hyperreal.

Baudrillard's idea of hyperreality was heavily influenced by phenomenology, semiotics, and Marshall McLuhan.

...

Hyperreality is significant as a paradigm to explain current cultural conditions. Consumerism, because of its reliance on sign exchange value (e.g. brand X shows that one is fashionable, car Y indicates one's wealth), could be seen as a contributing factor in the creation of hyperreality or the hyperreal condition. Hyperreality tricks the consciousness into detaching from any real emotional engagement, instead opting for artificial simulation, and endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance. Essentially, (although Baudrillard himself would perhaps balk at the usage of this word) fulfillment or happiness is found through simulation and imitation of a transient simulacrum of reality, rather than any interaction with any "real" reality.

Interacting in a hyperreal place like a casino gives the subject the impression that one is walking through a fantasy world where everyone is playing along. The decor isn't authentic, everything is a copy, and the whole thing feels like a dream. What isn't a dream, of course, is that the casino takes your money, which you are more apt to give them when your consciousness doesn't really understand what's going on. In other words, although you may intellectually understand what happens at a casino, your consciousness thinks that gambling money in the casino is part of the "not real" world. It is in the interest of the decorators to emphasise that everything is fake, to make the entire experience seem fake. The casino succeeds in turning money itself to an object with no inherent value or inherent reality.

"The secret affinity between gambling and the desert: the intensity of gambling reinforced by the presence of the desert all around the town. The air-conditioned freshness of the gaming rooms, as against the radiant heat outside. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun's rays. Night of gambling sunlit on all sides; the glittering darkness of these rooms in the middle of the desert. Gambling itself is a desert form, inhuman, uncultured, initiatory, a challenge to the natural economy of value, a crazed activity on the fringes of exchange. But it too has a strict limit and stops abruptly; its boundaries are exact, its passion knows no confusion. Neither the desert nor gambling are open areas; their spaces are finite and concentric, increasing in intensity toward the interior, toward a central point, be it the spirit of gambling or the heart of the desert - a privileged, immemorial space, where things lose their shadow, where money loses its value, and where the extreme rarity of traces of what signals to us there leads men to seek the instantaneity of wealth." - Baudrillard on Las Vegas

The map is not the territory

2007-04-15T13:50:00.001-07:00

Map/territory relation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The map is not the territory is a remark by Alfred Korzybski, encapsulating his view that that an abstraction derived from something, or a reaction to it, is not the thing itself, e.g., the pain from a stone falling on your foot is not the stone; one's opinion of a politician, favorable or unfavorable, is not that person; a metaphorical representation of a concept is not the concept itself; and so on. A specific abstraction or reaction does not capture all facets of its source—e.g., the pain in your foot does not convey the internal structure of the stone, you don't know everything that is going on in the life of a politician, etc.—and thus may limit an individual's understanding and cognitive abilities unless the two are distinguished. Korzybski held that many people do confuse maps with territories, in this sense.

Korzybski's dictum ("The map is not the territory") is also cited as an underlying principle used in neuro-linguistic programming, where it is used to signify that individual people in fact do not in general have access to absolute knowledge of reality, but in fact only have access to a set of beliefs they have built up over time, about reality. So it is considered important to be aware that people's beliefs about reality and their awareness of things (the "map") are not reality itself or everything they could be aware of ("the territory"). The originators of NLP have been explicit that they owe this insight to General Semantics.

Controversy Over Norm Finkelstein's Tenure at De Paul

2007-04-15T13:46:00.001-07:00

Robert Fisk: Fear and loathing on an American campus - Independent Online Edition > Robert Fisk

Finkelstein, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, has published a number of works highly critical of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and the use Israeli supporters make of the Holocaust of six million Jews to suppress criticism of Israel's policies. He has accused Dershowitz of plagiarising portions of his 2003 book The Case for Israel. Finkelstein's book, The Holocaust Industry, earned Dershowitz's continued fury.
Now, I've known Norm for years and he is a tough, no-holds-barred polemicist, angry against all the traditional supporters of Israel, especially those who turn a blind eye to torture. Personally, I find Norm's arguments sometimes a little overwrought. In radio discussions, his voice will take on a slightly whingeing tone that must infuriate his antagonists.

But Al is clearly trying to destroy Norm's career, adding that the "dossier" he sent to DePaul academics - we remember that word "dossier" rather too well in Britain and, I should add, Al has absolutely no connection to DePaul University - contains details of "Norman Finkelstein's ... outright lies, misquotations and distortion".

It will be a disgrace, says Al, for DePaul to give tenure to Norm. "His scholarship is no more than ad hominem attacks on his ideological enemies." As if this is not enough, Al - who is also Jewish - takes a crack at philosopher and linguistic academic Noam Chomsky who has supported Norm and whom Al refers to as "the high priest of the radical anti-Israeli left".

German Army Training Video "Depicts Blacks as Target Practice"

2007-04-15T13:41:00.001-07:00

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | German army in 'racist video' row

A video aired on German TV has shown an army recruit on firing practice being ordered to pretend he was in New York's Bronx facing hostile African Americans.
In the grainy 90-second video, the instructor tells the soldier to swear as he fires his gun.
US civil rights leader, Al Sharpton, said it was outrageous to depict blacks as "target practice".
...

During the filmed training session, an instructor tells the soldier: "You're in the Bronx, a black van pulls up in front of you and three African-Americans get out and start really insulting your mother... act!".

The Late Great Bill Evans

2007-04-15T09:00:00.001-07:00

...it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling. ~ Bill Evans

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The Use of NLP in Politics

2007-04-13T21:19:00.001-07:00

Good quote in this Wiki article: Anchoring (NLP) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

During the 1988 presidential campaign, Republican partisans began employing an unusually skillful use of language and advertising technique. The Willie Horton ads, for example, used an old NeuroLinguistic Programming (NLP) technique of "Anchoring via Submodalities," linking Dukakis, at an unconscious level in the viewer’s mind, to Willie Horton by the use of color versus black-and-white footage, and background sound. After a few exposures to these psy-ops ads, people would "feel" Willie Horton when they "saw" Dukakis.
It was no accident. Toward the end of that campaign, I was presenting at an NLP conference in New York, and a colleague mentioned to me how the GOP had hired one of our mutual acquaintances to advise them on the tools of persuasion. [1]

Unknown Origins

2007-04-08T22:18:00.001-07:00

This is a cool podcast. Check it out! Unknown Origins #7: Full Moon Edition

Elmyr de Hory

2007-04-08T21:27:00.001-07:00

Elmyr de Hory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Elmyr de Hory (born Elmyr Dory-Boutin) (1906 – December 11, 1976) was a famous Hungarian-born painter and art forger. He claimed to have sold over a thousand forgeries all over the world. His forgeries have become popular in their own right.

Scheduled Posts in Blogger

2007-04-08T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to schedule posts in Blogger using the Email Scheduler website. I have it send emails at scheduled times using Blogger's email posting service. However, they put an annoying ad at the bottom of each post (Email Scheduler, that is). So I'm looking for alternatives that won't put an advertisement. Any ideas?

Mark of Cain and Taken by Force

2007-04-08T14:28:00.001-07:00

Great point in this article about how all-too-often young soldiers are corrupted by their newfound power.

Comment is free: The secret war

News that Channel 4 is to broadcast a controversial film called Mark of Cain, written by Tony Marchant, about British soldiers torturing and humiliating Iraqi prisoners in Basra in 2003, comes hard on the heels of a controversial book by the American sociologist Bob Lilly at long last finding a British publisher - Palgrave Macmillan.

Lilly's book, Taken by Force, was first published in France in 2003, and then in Italy in 2004, but initially failed to find either an American or British publisher. As one American publisher explained to Lilly, professor of sociology at Northern Kentucky University - "I wouldn't touch that book with a 10-foot long pole", given that the subject matter was concerned with the estimated 14,000 rapes committed by American soldiers in England, France and Germany between 1942 and 1945.

In short, at a time when "French fries" and "French toast" were being renamed "Freedom fries" and "Freedom toast" because, unlike us, the French refused to join the Bush administration's war in Iraq, the American public did not want to be told that their fathers, uncles and brothers who had fought in the second world war - that "Band of Brothers" as the historian Stephen Ambrose christened them, and whose status as the "greatest generation" had been cemented by Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan - had, in fact, been involved in some of the worst crimes on mainland Europe, including black-market trading, armed robbery, looting, rape and murder.

Indeed, secret wartime files that were made public in this country only in April 2006 disclosed that GIs committed 26 murders, 31 manslaughters, 22 attempted murders and more than 400 sexual offences, including 126 rapes in England, during 1942-45.

Far from being the "greatest generation", Lilly exposes the ugly underbelly of the US army's behaviour in Europe, and it is that ugly underbelly that links his historical account of the murders and rapes committed by American soldiers between 1942-1945 with Merchant's film.

For the simple reality of both Marchant's film and Lilly's book is this: that young men - soldiers - who are given power over others, and have a structure surrounding them that closes ranks at the first sign of criticism, a structure which is, in turn, enclosed within a popular and political culture where members of the public want to invest in their father's or their brother's or their husband's decision to become a soldier and go to war with nobility and sacrifice are, in fact, the preconditions for abuse, torture and totalitarianism. As such, it is the duty of film-makers and historians and sociologists to expose that abuse - no matter how "noble" the individual soldier's sacrifice might seem.

Yoshihiro Nakamatsu a.k.a. "Dr NakaMats"

2007-04-08T14:18:00.001-07:00

Twilight Zone: Dr. NakaMats’ inventions

How do you ‘trigger’ an invention?

A lack of oxygen is very important.

A lack? Isn’t that dangerous??

It’s very dangerous. I get that Flash just 0.5 sec before death. I remain under the surface until this trigger comes up and I write it down with a special waterproof plexiglas writing pad I invented.

How to come up with a genius invention? Simply dive and remain under the surface until you experience a flash of creativity (about 0.5 seconds before death). Now quickly remember to write it down on a Dr.NakaMats waterproof plexiglas pad.

Do you do that a lot? Putting yourself in that kind of situation to come up with a new invention?

Of course.

This is the Dr. Nakamatsu method. Another possible method is to use a completely calm room - that could even be my toilet which shuts out every noise and every magnetic and electronic field. Such a calm room erases all noise from your brain, you can concentrate and think.

Dr.NakaMats’ golden toilet is one of many calm rooms he has around the house, which completely shut out all disturbing noises and electronic fields to empty your mind allow you to concentrate.

Japanese Gadgets - Dr NakaMats Interview

Dr. NakaMats is one kooky person. Born Yoshihiro Nakamatsu, he is the inventor of the floppy disk, fax machine and magnetic strip tickets and apparently holds the world record for the highest number of inventions. But don’t let just that amaze you. He also won an Ig Nobel prize in 2005 for photographing and analysing every meal he’s eaten for the last 35 years. Yes, while he’s made a number of inventions that have changed the world, he’s also created a few outright weird ones. My personal favourites are the PyonPyon flying shoes - a modern day version of seven league boots - that let you bounce high with minimum effort.

2007-04-05T01:36:00.001-07:00

Rosie on O'Reilly:

"a fattish ... man of paralyzing stupidity, a mass of imbecile enthusiasms."

2007-04-03T02:46:00.001-07:00

Israel tops the world in rate of malicious Internet activity | Jerusalem Post

Web-savvy criminals have turned Israel into the world's highest ranking source of malicious Internet activity per user, security experts have told The Jerusalem Post.
From July through December 2006, 9 percent of all such activity could be traced back to Israel. Taiwan came next with 8%, while Poland and the US tied at 6%, according to a report issued in March by security software giant Symantec, based in Cupertino, California.
For overall numbers, the US still has the most malicious activity at 31 percent. China was second with 10 percent.
"It is hard to say exactly how many people may be involved" in making money over the Internet via activities that increasingly involve the theft of sensitive personal information, said Ricardo Reznik, vice president for Marketing at Rosh Ha'ayin-based TrekIT.
"It [malicious Internet activity] is definitely being carried out mostly by organized crime groups looking for new streams of revenue rather than [by] individuals," said Reznik, whose company represents Internet security firms.
Most of the activity, according to the report, is criminal in nature and is executed by organized groups that sometimes target massive networks of users at the same time.

2007-04-01T20:25:00.001-07:00

AnimeSuki.com is one of the premier Anime sites offering free, legal downloads of many excelent shows. Highly recommended!

BitTorrent @ AnimeSuki.com

Welcome to BitTorrent @ AnimeSuki.com! This site tries to provide a complete and convenient overview of links to all unlicensed English anime fansubs available through the P2P file swarming application BitTorrent.

2007-04-01T18:46:00.003-07:00

Opium for the people: Extraordinary move to legalise poppy crops - Independent Online Edition > Asia

The buds of millions of poppy flowers are swelling across Afghanistan. In the far southern provinces bordering Iran, the harvest will start later this month. By mid- May the fields around British military camps in Helmand will be ringing to the sound of scythes, rather than gunfire.

2007-04-01T18:46:00.001-07:00

US Congress questions Google over maps whitewashing Katrina damage - International Herald Tribune

NEW ORLEANS: A Congressional subcommittee is calling upon Google Inc. to explain why it was "airbrushing history" by replacing post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery on its popular map portal with images of the region as it existed before the storm destroyed neighborhoods, uprooted trees and dashed bridges.

Swapping the post-Katrina images, which showed the damage that remains more than a year after the storm, for others showing an idyllic city has fueled suspicions among many locals.

Citing an Associated Press report on Thursday, the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight asked Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt to elucidate why his company is using the outdated imagery.

Google April Fools 2007: Google Paper

2007-04-01T00:26:00.000-07:00

Pretty funny: Google Paper Soy bean sputum? The environment gets better with each sheet printed? Well, you can't say they don't have a sense of humor.

Genetically Modified Mice to See Like Humans

2007-03-28T00:31:00.001-07:00

LiveScience.com - Genetically Tweaked Mice Get Human-Like Vision

Scientists have some lab mice seeing red. The animals had their vision genetically upgraded and can now see colors normally invisible to rodents.

The finding, detailed in the March 23 issue of the journal Science, has implications for the evolution of full-color, or “trichromatic,” vision in our own ancestors.

“What we are now looking at in these mice is the same evolutionary event that happened in one of the distant ancestors of all primates,” said study team member Jeremy Nathans of Johns Hopkins University.

Dichromats and color-blindness

Most mammals, mice included, have dichromatic vision. They see the world in shades of grey and a few other colors because they only have two types of light-sensitive molecules, called “photopigments,” in their eyes. A genetic mutation in primates 40 million years ago endowed our early ancestors with a third photopigment sensitive to red light, vastly expanding the color palettes of their eyes.

Our brains “see” colors by comparing the responses to light from different photopigments in the eyes. Humans and a few other primates have three photopigments—sensitive to blue, green and red—that together can reproduce all the colors of the rainbow. Having only two photopigments means some colors are off-limits. Some color-blind humans, for example, are dichromats, and to them, the colors red, orange, yellow, and green appear identical.

2007-03-28T00:28:00.001-07:00

Nano Technology Could Lead to Cloaking Devices | Technology News Daily

For the first time, physicists have devised a way to make visible light travel in the opposite direction that it normally bends when passing from one material to another, like from air through water or glass. The phenomenon is known as negative refraction and could in principle be used to construct optical microscopes for imaging things as small as molecules, and even to create cloaking devices for rendering objects invisible.

In the March 22 in the online publication Science Express, California Institute of Technology applied physics researchers Henri Lezec, Jennifer Dionne, and Professor Harry Atwater, will report their success in constructing a nanofabricated photonic material that creates a negative index of refraction in the blue-green region of the visible spectrum. Lezec is a visiting associate in Atwater's Caltech lab, and Dionne is a graduate student in applied physics.

According to Lezec, the key to understanding the technology is first in understanding how light normally bends when it passes from one medium to another. If a pencil is placed in a glass of water at an angle, for example, it appears to bend upward and outward if we look into the water from a vantage point above the surface. This effect is due to the wave nature of light and the normal tendency of different materials to disperse light in different ways-in this case, the materials being the air outside the glass and the water inside it.

However, physicists have thought that, if new optical materials could be constructed at the nanoscale level in a certain way, it might be possible to make the light bend at the same angle, but in the opposite direction. In other words, the pencil angled into the water would appear to bend backward as we looked at it.

The details are complicated, but have to do with the speed of light through the material itself. Researchers in recent years have created materials with negative diffraction for microwave and infrared frequencies. These achievements have exploited the relatively long wavelengths at those frequencies--the wavelength of microwaves being a few centimeters, and that of infrared frequencies about the width of a human hair. Visible light, because its wavelength is at microscopic dimensions--about one-hundredth the width of a hair--has defeated this conventional approach.

2007-03-28T00:11:00.001-07:00

This is a great page on R.A.W. Lots of good resources -- whether you have never heard of R.A.W. or are familiar with his work, check it out! You're bound to find something worthwhile.

Robert Anton Wilson

Bibliography

A succinct diagram representing the fundamental attitudes assumed by most of the animals including us. An important key to understanding human behavior.

The Octave of Energy
Timothy Leary's Eight Circuits of Consciousness
The Eight Basic Winner/Loser Scripts
Dope and Divinity

2007-03-27T23:57:00.001-07:00

USATODAY.com - China makes ultimate punishment mobile

CHONGQING, China — Zhang Shiqiang, known as the Nine-Fingered Devil, first tasted justice at 13. His father caught him stealing and cut off one of Zhang's fingers.

Twenty-five years later, in 2004, Zhang met retribution once more, after his conviction for double murder and rape. He was one of the first people put to death in China's new fleet of mobile execution chambers.

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town. ...

For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.

The "majority are still by gunshot," says Liu Renwen, death penalty researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a think tank in Beijing. "But the use of injections has grown in recent years, and may have reached 40%."

New Zealanders Protest for Right to Hit Children

2007-03-27T23:55:00.001-07:00

Oh my god, there are actually people out there protesting for the right to hit their children! When will the madness end ...

Critics Protest 'Anti-Smacking' Bill | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) - Hundreds of protesters marched on New Zealand's Parliament Wednesday, demanding lawmakers throw out a proposed new law that critics say removes parents' right to smack their children.
About 500 people, some pushing children in strollers, carried banners reading: ``Don't mess with the family'' and ``Kids don't belong to the state'' as they rallied in the largest of several protests against the bill in recent days.

2007-03-27T23:54:00.001-07:00

Marines Pull Reservists for Active Duty | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Marine Corps is recalling 1,800 reservists to active duty, citing a shortage of volunteers to fill some jobs in Iraq.
Members of the branch's Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) will get letters this week notifying them of plans to mobilize them involuntarily for a year, said Lt. Col. Jeff Riehl of Marine manpower and reserve affairs.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week approved the action, under which reservists would report for duty in October and deploy to Iraq early next year, Riehl said.
From the 1,800 called, officials hope to get 1,200 Marines for aviation maintenance, logistics support, combat arms and several other skills needed for the early 2008 rotation into Ira

2007-03-27T23:53:00.001-07:00

Big brother to watch kids at Net cafe-Hyderabad-Cities-NEWS-The Times of India

HYDERABAD: Big Brother may soon be watching what you are watching. If the government has its way, children below 12 years would be barred entry into internet cafes unless accompanied by an adult. Moreover, no surfing for children at cafes during school hours and between 10 pm and 6 am.

These are among the rules likely to be adopted by the government under the Information Technology Act, 2000 (Central Act), once it clears procedural hurdles such as a Cabinet nod and the bill's introduction in the Assembly. Though the IT Act came into force seven years ago to prevent cyber crimes, it's only now that the IT department has finally prepared draft rules with the help of the Cyber Crime Police.

As per the draft rules, surfers would have to show a photo ID at cyber cafes. In the absence of an ID proof, a thumb impression and photograph of the customer would be taken with a web camera by the cafe manager.

2007-03-27T23:52:00.001-07:00

France opens secret UFO files covering 50 years

View larger image

France became the first country to open its files on UFOs Thursday when the national space agency unveiled a website documenting more than 1,600 sightings spanning five decades.

The online archives, which will be updated as new cases are reported,

catalogues in minute detail cases ranging from the easily dismissed to

a handful that continue to perplex even hard-nosed scientists.

"It is a world first," said Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer

who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial

phenomena."
Known as OVNIs in French, UFOs have always

generated intense interest along with countless conspiracy theories

about secretive government cover-ups of findings deemed too sensitive

or alarming for public consumption.

Children to 'face criminal checks' | Metro.co.uk

All children could face compulsory checks to discover if they are at risk of turning into criminals, according to new plans announced by the Prime Minister. The controversial proposal would mean checks at important stages in a child's life, such as the move from primary to secondary school, Tony Blair said. He also announced plans to further expand the DNA database to include 'all suspected offenders who come into contact with the police'.

2007-03-23T23:04:00.001-07:00

SuperGu Attempting to Copyright Pligg Code, Sends C&D - Pligg Forum

In recent weeks Pligg has received two letters from SuperGu (SG) and their law firm. The first letter stated that Pligg’s template yget infringed on SuperGu’s copyright. At first we wondered how could this be since SuperGu has never released any code and the beta code they did release (SuperGu 1.3) was a template that was ported to be used with Meneame as a base. For those not familiar with Meneame, Pligg forked from it over a year ago. Meneame is based on the Affero General Public License (that’s why Pligg uses it, too). The beta that SG released would have fallen under this license, also. Some of the claims SuperGu made was that they held copyrights to the following features: 1) Pagination (the next and previous page buttons) - SG claimed that Pligg’s pagination is too similar to theirs. 2) “Powered by Pligg” - SG claimed that the verbiage is too similar to their “Powered by SuperGu” so we have to remove it. 3) RSS feed icon - Yes, SG claimed they owned the copyright to the orange RSS feed icon. After some research we found that Mozilla actually owns the rights to it. These are just a few of the many claims SG made in their first letter sent to Pligg. Overall, there were almost 15 so called “copyright infringements.”

Julie Amero - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julie Amero is a former Kelly Middle School substitute teacher who was convicted on January 5th, 2007 in Norwich, Connecticut superior court of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, or impairing the morals of a child.

The controversial conviction is for events that occurred on October 19, 2004 while Julie Amero was substituting for a seventh-grade language class. The teacher computer was accessed by pupils while the normal teacher, Matthew Napp, was out of the room. When Julie took charge, the computer started showing pop-up ads containing pornographic images.

Her sentencing has been postponed until March 29 in Norwich Superior Court. The felony charges for which she has been convicted carry a maximum prison sentence of 40 years.

'We want this baby polar bear dead' say animal rights lobby | the Daily Mail

Activists argue that it is inappropriate for a predator, known for its fierceness and ability to fend for itself in the wild, to be snuggled

"The zoo must kill the bear," said spokesman Frank Albrecht. "Feeding by hand is not species-appropriate but a gross violation of animal protection laws."

The arrival of mind-reading machines. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

I know what you're thinking: Why would anyone want a machine to read his mind? But imagine being paralyzed, unable to walk, type, or speak. Imagine a helmet full of electrodes, or a chip implanted in your head, that lets your brain tell your computer which key to press. Those technologies are already here. And why endure the agony of mental hunt-and-peck? Why not design computers that, like a smart secretary, can discern and execute even abstract intentions? That's what Haynes has in mind. You want to open a folder or an e-mail, and your computer does it. Your wish is its command.

But if machines can read your mind when you want them to, they can also read it when you don't. And your will isn't necessarily the one they obey. Already, scans have been used to identify brain signatures of disgust, drug cravings, unconscious racism, and suppressed sexual arousal, not to mention psychopathy and propensity to kill.

Two Mingus Quotes

2007-03-21T14:00:00.001-07:00

Thelonius Monk went over to Bird and Bud Powell and said, 'I told you guys to act crazy, but I didn't tell you to fall in love with the act. You're really crazy now.' ~ Charles Mingus Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity. ~ Charles Mingus

Brief History of Brands Using CamelCase

2007-03-03T18:48:00.001-08:00

CamelCase - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ShopKo (1962)
MisteRogers (1962)[1]
AstroTurf (1967)
ConAgra (1971) (formerly Consolidated Mills)
MicroSoft (now Microsoft) (1975)
MotivAction, LLC (1976)
CompuServe (1977)
MasterCard (1979)
VisiCalc (1979)
EchoStar (1980)
AutoCAD (1982)
WordPerfect (1982)
NetWare (1983)
BellSouth (1984)
LaserJet (1984)
MacWorks (1984)
PageMaker (1985)
EastEnders (1985)
SpaceCamp (1986)
ClarisWorks (1987)
HarperCollins (1990)
QuickTime (1991)
PowerBook (1991)
SuperAmerica (1991)
OutKast hip hop band (1992)
ThinkPad (1992)
AmeriCorps (1993)
ValuJet (now AirTran Airways) (1993)
SolidWorks (1993)
EarthLink (1994)
PlayStation (1994)
easyJet (1995)
FrontPage (1995)
eBay (spelled "ebaY" in their logo) (1995)
RealPlayer (1995)
WorldCom (now MCI) (1995)
InuYasha (1996), although the CamelCase version didn't emerge until the English translation
KaBOOM! (1996)
RadioShack (formerly Radio Shack) (1996)
webMethods (1996)
WestJet (1996)
TiVo (1997)
ColdFusion (space removed circa 1997)
AppleWorks (1997)
VisiBroker (1997)
DaimlerChrysler (1998)
iMac (1998)
PricewaterhouseCoopers (1998) logo
StarCraft (1998)
UnitedHealth (formerly United HealthCare) (1998)
BlackBerry (1999)
CloneCD (1999)
DragonForce, British Power Metal band (1999) (originally DragonHeart)
ExxonMobil (1999)
LiveJournal (1999)
RealJukebox (1999)
SpongeBob SquarePants (1999)
FedEx (formerly Federal Express) (2000)
GlaxoSmithKline (2000)
JetBlue (2000)
PayPal (2000)
iPod (2000)
OpenOffice.org (2000)
AmerisourceBergen (2001)
ChevronTexaco (now Chevron) (2001)
GameCube (2001)
GameNOW (2001)
BitTorrent
RuneScape (2001)
ConocoPhillips (2002)
OpenCola
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
OccMeds (2002)
RedEye (2002)
MediaWiki (2002)
MySpace (2003)
SnoSupport (2004)
YouTube (2005)
eSyndiCat (2005)
PetSmart (formerly PETsMART) (2005)
SickKids (2005)
MacBook (2006)
iPhone (2007)

Eclipse WST

2007-03-03T18:47:00.000-08:00

If you want a great free IDE, check out Eclipse. This particular version (the Web Standard Tools project) is oriented towards web developers. Check it out!

Download Eclipse

Web Standard Tools (WST)

The Web Standard Tools (WST) subproject includes languages and specifications published by open-standard bodies (e.g. W3C, IETF, ECMA, OASIS, WS-I, ANSI) that are commonly used by (non-J2EE) Web-centric applications (e.g. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, XSD, XSLT, SVG, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, SQL, XQuery).
The SDK package includes source code and developer documentation for those using WST as a platform to build more tools, as well as everything that is in the non-SDK version.
The non-SDK package includes the runnable code and end-user documentation for those using the tools to develop web applications.

Status
Platform Download

All wtp-wst-S-2.0M5-200702230758.zip (md5)

Status
Platform Download

All wtp-wst-sdkS-2.0M5-200702230758.zip (md5)

Improvised Jam

2007-02-25T19:10:00.001-08:00

Here's a jam I did last year with percussionist David Levin. Internet Archive: Details: Improv Jam

Improvised jam with David Levin on drums and Jonah Dempcy on keys. The chord progression goes || C-7 | Bb-7 Eb7 | Ab | G7 || (similar to the vamp in Red Clay). See if you can spot the Bill Evans quote! Author: Jonah Dempcy & David Levin Keywords: jam; drums; piano; jazz; improvisation
Stream (help)
VBR M3U (Hi-Fi) (flash) 64Kbps M3U (Lo-Fi) (flash)
Download (help)
64Kbps MP3 ZIP (864 KB) VBR ZIP (2.7 MB)
All files: FTP HTTP

	SPTD for Windows XP/2003/Vista (64 bit)
	File Name: Version: Size: Date File:	SPTDinst-v143-x64.exe 1.43 1,013,496 bytes April 03, 2007	Download
	Description:	SCSI Pass Through Direct (SPTD) layer (64 bit). Basically SPTD is similar to other access layers used by other programs who provide access to storage devices but it has a lot more features that make this interface unique.

MD5-Checksum:73684276b93f0f3f50dc49b5a7a5c581

Status	Platform	Download

	All	wtp-wst-S-2.0M5-200702230758.zip (md5)

jdempcy.blogspot.com

Conspiracy allegations

Involvement with national security services

Personal finances

Personal circumstances and attitude to alcohol

[edit] Switching of blood sample

[edit] Recent developments

Fiat Uno

The Meme Machine

Real-world protests

Planning

Bucky Fuller and the Qabalah

Paintings by Yuriko Miyamoto

ISO: Travel destinations

History of Time

[citation needed] stickers

Wikiffiti -- stickers that read [citation needed]

The Man from Earth

Top 25 Censored news stories of 2007

FBI collects fingerprint, retinal scan and gait info on Britons

"Bigger. Faster. Better."

The Hiram Abif Star Map

Trojan War Symbolism

Chinger - Soul Funk Jazz Mix #15

soul funk jazz mix #15 by chinger

Psychoanalysis of trends in popular Facebook apps

IE CSS Support

Except … it didn’t

Sync Google Calendar and Sunbird

Anyone know how to schedule emails in Blogger?

SMG Screenshots

Super Mario Galaxy

AT&T Whistleblower on NSA Wiretapping

"Google is the first psychedelically informed super-power"

Awesome Bag

DNA Damage | Wikipedia

DNA damage

Reuters: Snake-bird gods fascinated both Aztecs and pharaohs

Lord British An Astronaut? Who Knew!

Birds See Magnetic Field

Science vs "Pseudo-science"

Demarcation problem

Breatharianism and Hira Ratan Manek

China Ramps Up Falun Gong Abductions

Paprika Vids from Stage6.com

Tekkon Kinkreet Trailer

Analog TV broadcast switch-off

From Wikipedia:

Analog TV broadcast switch-off

More cool apps ...

Firefox Extensions I've Known and Loved

Fresh Install of XP

Five ways of constructing the infinity series...

Talking to yourself

This Week in News: Brain Machine Interfaces, Jesuits, RFID Dust

Brain Machine Interfaces

by Gregor Wolbring

November 30, 2006

Swept Away by Music

Man Stays Awake for 11 Days

Monster Pig Killed by 11-Year-Old Boy

Avishai Cohen "As Is..."

The Winner - So Sad, So Very Sad

SPTD - Necessary for Vista Users with "Phantom Drives"

GM-Tainted Honey

GM Crops May Produce Herbicide Inside Humans

ChangeSurfer Radio

Commentator uses name-calling more than once every seven seconds in 'Talking Points Memo'

Brian Blade Quote

Scheduling Posts in Blogger with Thunderbird

Autumn in New York

UK Becoming Surveillance Society

Surreal Seattle Rat Warnings

Hipness is not a state of mind...

Hipness is not a state of mind...

Hyperreality - "The secret affinity between gambling and the desert"

The map is not the territory

Controversy Over Norm Finkelstein's Tenure at De Paul

German Army Training Video "Depicts Blacks as Target Practice"

The Late Great Bill Evans

Top 25 Censored
news stories of 2007