Happily Above The Fireworks. I NEVER wanted to be an airline pilot; it seemed boring. I thought it was too much By Katharine Board. [New York Times: Business]

Ohhhhhh!! I want her job!

In the air, you get to see so many things you would never see from the ground. As the clock struck midnight for the millennium, I was flying over Barcelona. All across the city, as far as you could see, there were fireworks going off. Big ones, little ones - they were everywhere. It looked like the whole city exploded that night. The main display was huge, and I had to make sure I was off to one side for that. Fireworks from the air are so impressive because they're bursting right there next to you. Or at least that's what it looks like.

I love blimps. They're like whales, up in the sky. ::swoon::

11:46:31 PM     leave/read comments []

Scooter rides shotgun on the blog.

11:28:11 PM     leave/read comments []

Lock up your wives! Here I come! (pun totally, totally, totally, oh, oh, oh, oh INTENDED!)

11:25:15 PM     leave/read comments []

Striking Notes of Progress on the World's Tiniest Guitar. Cornell University physicists reported they had used a laser beam to pluck the strings of a tiny silicon guitar just 10 millionths of a meter long. By George Johnson. [New York Times: Science]

Dude!!! The pick is a laser! And that axe- looks like a Randy Rhodes model fer sure.

Cornell University physicists reported last week that they had used a laser beam to pluck the strings of an invisibly tiny silicon guitar just 10 millionths of a meter long. Each string of the instrument is about 50 nanometers (or billionths of a meter) wide [~] 100 atoms thick. Human hearing tops out at tones that vibrate at about 20,000 cycles per second. The high-pitched sound of the nanoguitar twanged forth at 40 million cycles per second, putting it 17 octaves above what human ears take for music.

Yeah, but my dog totally grooves to it. It's like Radiohead for Schnauzers.

Something this small brings up a fascinating conundrum- just how many atoms of something do you need for it to be, well, stuff.

....the nanoguitar, each string of which is thousands of times thinner than a single human hair, so small that it begs the question of what one means by a "thing." Scientists can say with some confidence that a single atom does not qualify, consisting, as it does, mostly of empty space, a vast nothing separating a dense nuclear core and a shimmering periphery of electrons. Even an atom's substance [~] if it can be called that [~] is elusive, the particles hovering in a quantum state where position and momentum can be described only in terms of probability.

Put trillions of atoms together and you get something solid like a real guitar, a chunk of matter you can hold in your hands. The nanoguitar, impossibly tiny as it seems, also exhibits some of the dependable properties associated with thinginess: you can pluck it and it plays. But it hovers near the brink, at a poorly understood threshold where quantum effects begin to dominate.

I'm always amazed at the perfect Zen koan that is matter. Everything is mostly made of nothing. Dude.

11:06:29 PM     leave/read comments []

Another history of women and the U.S. Space program. Looks well worth reading.

Also check out Promised The Moon:The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race

10:28:45 PM     leave/read comments []

Auditioning the Next James Bond. It's time to start looking for the first new James Bond of the 21st century. Will a boy from Oz be given a license to kill? By Elvis Mitchell. [New York Times: Business]

Not considering Clive Owen is just crazy talk, pure and simple. He is James Bond. Just look at him!

10:06:15 PM     leave/read comments []

Users face malicious web attacks. Virus attacks on computers which do damage through HTML in e-mails and websites are set to increase, says a security expert. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Everything you need to know about this story is in this paragraph:

These security threats exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

Gee, what a surprise.

Not.

6:36:44 PM     leave/read comments []

It's in Dutch, which is a lot like English, only funnier. If you're an Anglophone, that is.

Feyenoord - Teplice 0-2

Dat smaakt Piet!. Alex is nog even de herhaling aan het bekijken terwijl wij de sate analyseren. Erg gezellig en de volgende keer tussen het Legioen? Er zit een Ajax man met ons mee te kijken...

[From What happened today Radio Weblog ]

Mummmm......footbjall kjorndoogs, or something.

5:34:58 PM     leave/read comments []

Red Cross cuts Iraq operations. The ICRC says its offices in Baghdad and Basra are being temporarily shut amid continuing dangers in Iraq. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

For the first time in its history the International Committee of the Red Cross has been the target of suicide attacks, and as such, it is pulling out of Iraq for the first time since it arrived in Iraq 23 years ago. Yet another "Mission Accomplished" for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The ICRC spokesman refused to say how much the closures would affect the work of some 30 foreign staff and 600 Iraqis.

"The situation is so tense on the ground that we don't want to get into details," Mr Westphal was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

He said the ICRC had received no direct threat but had taken its decision on the basis of an overall assessment of the situation.

"We are still discussing what to do with our foreign staff. The situation is extremely dangerous and volatile," he said.

" We must painfully acknowledge that the ICRC...has become a target of attacks for a group of people "-Jakob Kellenberger ICRC President

"Thanks for nuttin' ya Yankee maroons," he didn't add, probably because he's Swiss and far more polite than his American "hosts" in Iraq.

5:21:13 PM     leave/read comments []

U.S. Warns of Al Qaeda Cargo Plane Plot. The Homeland Security Department advised law-enforcement officials Friday night of threats that terrorists may fly cargo planes from another country into crucial U.S. targets. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Wait a minute!

I think someone has been reading too much TV Guide or maybe they copied the listing from last week's Threat Matrix. Or, maybe one late night when the gang down at DoHS was busy brainstorming on how to raise more money for their shiny new department, some wag (prolly an intern) put on "The Gift" from The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat album? I guess we'll never know.

Now go do your civic duty and get busy being scared out of your wits. And don't skimp on the unquestioning subservience either, bub!

12:26:20 PM     leave/read comments []

Matrix Imploded: Trouble in Zion. As a special-effects romp, The Matrix Revolutions may keep viewers glued to their seats for a couple of hours. But as a follow-up to the allegorical tour de force of the first Matrix film, it's a dismal failure. By Niall McKay. [Wired News]

I sooooo wanted The Matrix Revolutions to NOT SUCK.

The Matrix Revolutions is no masterpiece. It lacks the depth of the first movie and undoes the logic of the second film. Still, if all that doesn't trouble you, having your senses bombarded by special effects and action sequences isn't a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

Oh, fuck.

11:57:23 PM     leave/read comments []

Woo. Hoo.

11:49:54 PM     leave/read comments []

The Internet at 43 gigabits per second. [ITU Strategy and Policy Unit Newslog]

A Japanese research team claims to have achieved the world record speed in data transmission using internet protocols. The team, comprising scientists from Keio University and divisions of Japan's largest telcoms firm NTT, achieved a speed of 43 gigabits per second over an optical network between two campuses of Keio several kilometers apart. NTT and NTT East provided the optical network between the two labs. The experiment involved the use of the ITU-T G.709 standard, designed for optical networks. According to a statement from NTT, a movie file on a DVD took under one second to transmit.

 

[Nippon Goro Goro]

11:47:43 PM    

The CIA  believes North Korea has produced one or two nuclear weapons and is confident in their performance through high explosive tests, according to an article somewhere on the FAS web site. [Nippon Goro Goro]

Just so long as this isn't the same "CIA" that found the African Yellow Cake, if you know what I mean. Dubya is uppity enough as it is.
Image of the Mike hydrogen bomb explosion that destroyed an uninhabited atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1952. From: U.S. Department of Energy.

11:37:28 PM     leave/read comments []

For months, soldiers at Camp Doha, Kuwait, have been wearing T-shirts that say, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Mission Accomplished." But recently a new T-shirt has appeared suggesting that the mission may be more open-ended.

It reads, "Operation Iraqi Freedom: Established 2003."

8:13:47 PM    

Amazing sculptures by woman with Down Syndrome. "Judith Scott (born 1943), a fifty-five year old woman with Down's Syndrome, has spent the past ten years producing a series of totally non-functional objects which, to us, appear to be works of sculpture, except that the notion of sculpture is far beyond Judith's understanding. As well as being mentally handicapped, Judith cannot hear or speak, and she has little concept of language."

Link (via Geisha Asobi)
[Boing Boing Blog]

7:39:20 PM    

Turkey Won't Send Troops to Iraq. The announcement today is something of a setback for President Bush. By David Stout. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Well, well, yet again, no Turkish Delight for little Georgie.

I hope he doesn't get too mad and do something rash, like invade North Korea. They're so volatile at that age.

The government of Turkey, reversing a recent decision that had sparked anger at home and alarm in Iraq, said today that it would not send troops across the border in support of the American campaign in Iraq.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told Secretary of State Colin L. Powell of the decision in a telephone conversation Thursday night, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement from Ankara.

"After necessary assessments, Foreign Minister Gul told Mr. Powell that our government would reconsider its request to send troops to Iraq," the statement said. In Washington, the State Department said the decision should not hamper the American pacification efforts in Iraq.

And then monkeys flew out of their Foggy Bottom.

7:30:52 PM     leave/read comments []

Pity the poor Bobcat.

Ever since I discovered ringworm on my cat Bob, he's endured a wide-ranging, often annoying (for him and me) series of different treatment attempts.

He's done the anti-fungal cream (licked it off, gave him diarrhea), a dipping at the vet (stunk to high heaven, licked it off, gave him diarrhea), liquid AF medicine (wouldn't swallow it, foamed at the mouth for almost an hour, may have given him diarrhea) and finally, the one that seems to work (without giving him diarrhea); medicated shampoos. He's no fan of the cat shower, but aside from puncturing my forearms the first time, he's been quite good about the entire sloppy, soggy procedure.

Scooter, my little one, has a less serious case and she gets her baths on the days that Bob doesn't. She's been very cooperative, thank goodness.

Though there is nothing quite as pathetic as a little wet cat, shaking and shivering in a damp towel in your lap.

We've been at this for over a month now, and fugi willing, we're just about finished with it all.

4:24:59 PM     leave/read comments []

Ladies and Gentlemen, START YOUR ICONS!

4:01:14 PM     leave/read comments []

Ishihara-Koreans (Kyodo).

Koreans in Japan rally against Tokyo Governor Ishihara.

Makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, he's related to Donald Rumsfeld.

On Oct. 28, Ishihara said at a gathering in Tokyo, "The annexation was made with an agreement of the nations worldwide and (the Korean people) had to choose between Russia, Shina or Japan, and they decided to seek help from (the Japanese), who had the same facial color as their own."

"Shina" is a Japanese word referring to China and was often used as a derogatory term before and during World War II.

3:57:48 PM    

c|net: "Five reasons not to buy an iPod" [The Macintosh News Network]

OK, cutting to the chase, here are the five (and one-half) reasons, sans rationales (you'll just have to click on the link).

1. Six-plus hours of battery life is not always enough.
2. Jogging with a hard drive-based player is not cool.
3. The iPod is expensive.
4. You want to make high-quality digital recordings.
5. You want a choice in online music stores.

5.5: You're Steve Monkey Boy Ballmer.

2:38:52 PM     leave/read comments []

Source: Boing Boing Blog; 11/7/03; 10:49:03 AM.

IRS has a $1MM tax-refund form.
How much is Dubya's tax-break worth to the hyperrich? Enough that the IRS has a new form for the electronic deposit of a tax refund of $1 million or more.

28k PDF Link [Boing Boing Blog]

So, are ya angry yet?

Remember, don't talk about "Class Warfare," that's for your betters. Now, back to work, you peon.

2:28:11 PM     leave/read comments []

Web Zen: Hipster Zen.

handbook
mr. hipster
free williamsburg
trucker hat
feathered hair
bingo
bumplist
terrorists
why hipsters suck
anti-hipster forum
not lost in translation
her
i hate nyc
six months ago

and, of course...
gawker [which we love, shamelessly. --XJ]

web zen home, web zen store, (Thanks, Frank). [Boing Boing Blog]

10:45:31 AM     leave/read comments []

Time to boycott Belkin (no link, I hear their routers do that for you) for their presumption, their invasion of privacy and their out and out lying.

Belkin router "upgrade" tries to sell you censorship. Belkin's new router firmware "upgrade" automatically redirects http sessions to a Belkin sell-page for some bullshit censorware filtering crap. That's some upgrade: from a router that routes packets to a router that pushes the antithesis of free expression.

In response criticism, a Belkin product manager came forward this week to confirm the behaviour was designed into the products as a way to make it easier for consumers to sign up to a free trial of its parental control software. Belkin's Eric Deming is keen to allay concerns about the technique which have produced sharp criticism of the company on the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup.

Link

(Thanks, Rick!) [Boing Boing Blog]

So, you buy a router and it hijacks your network and the computer on it, delivering advertising to your captive eyes. And what does it advertise? Censorware. Maybe this item should be "Dept. of Big Brother Only Wants Your Wallet?"

The router would grab a random HTTP connection every eight hours and redirect it to Belkin[base ']s (push) advertised web page.

"It seems the router now supports a parental control and the market droids at Belkin got the bright idea of equipping the router with intrusive nagware," writes Uh Clem. "Of course, I have this strange notion that routers should pass data unmolested by marketeers!"

10:21:28 AM    

Family.

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

Here, look at some photos, I gotta go read Marvels by Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross

David E. and Keta

This used to be me, before I got all Middlewestern and bitter and shit:

11:39:44 PM     leave/read comments []

Ballmer cheers Apple's iPod with Monkey Boy Dance. Get on your feet! [The Register]

Dance, Monkeyboy, Dance. Pt. II

11:24:06 PM     leave/read comments []

Here on the West coast, the US government this week announced a $46-million plan to buy out as much as half the trawler fleet and permanently retire the boats from fishing. The move is intended to help ailing fishermen who have been hurt over the years by ever-stricter quotas placed on catches.

Simultaneously but separately, a regional advisory board took a major step in trying to curb overfishing in the once-fecund waters off New England. Under pressure from a court order, it adopted a plan that would restrict fishing of depleted species, but allow fishermen to divert their nets toward more plentiful stocks. The two initiatives, though different in intent and approach, will affect the livelihood and traditions of a centuries-old industry rooted in dozens of communities along the both coasts.

11:12:07 PM    

Good.

One day after Howard Dean scrambled to stanch a controversy over his remarks about the Confederate flag, he secured a critical endorsement from the most diverse labor group in the country, the 1.6-million-member Service Employees International Union.

Dr. Dean, the Democratic former governor of Vermont, also learned on Thursday that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, was likely to endorse him next week.

11:03:17 PM    

Read this piece.

Don't mention the dead. Can Bush's efforts to hide body bags quell public disquiet over the death toll in Iraq? Gary Younge reports. [Guardian Unlimited]

For years political orthodoxy had it that America would no longer know days like these. Not because it was shy about going to war, but because after Vietnam it was determined not to incur large numbers of casualties in doing so. The US military would bomb from a great height or use proxies to enforce its will. Public opinion would endorse the country's involvement in most military conflicts, so long as the nation did not have to endure the sight of its young men and women coming home in body bags. As Henry Shelton, the chairman of the joint chiefs-of-staff, said in 1999, a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test" - public reaction to bodies arriving at the country's only military mortuary in Dover, Delaware......

........."We're now encountering deaths at rates we haven't seen since Vietnam," says David Gergen, who worked in the Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton administrations, "and I think it's important for the country to hear from the president at times like these and for the families to know. I think the weight is on the side of clear expression," he told the New York Times......

........ For the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative. Bush has not attended the funeral of a single soldier slain in the war and refers to the casualties only in general terms. Without Dover, there can be no Dover test.

11:00:11 PM    

Again, not news to readers of this here blog.

The nasty hard-drive-eating bug in Panther has been resolved, according to Apple Computer. But some experts say poppycock -- upgrading to the latest version of Mac OS X is like playing Russian roulette with your data.

As previously reported, there's a glitch in the Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) installer that renders some -- but not all -- external FireWire drives inoperable.

Also, Escape Velocity Nova does not run in 10.3, giving me nasty withdrawal symptoms.

12:38:58 PM     leave/read comments []

Once upon a time there was a website (several, actually) and that website was part of a magazine that was going to change the world. Remember? You know- HoTwIrEd! And its snotty sibling, Suck.com? (Which doesn't even have a website up any more- even the Google cache is just a blank page.)

Well, you may not remember them, but I sure do and I came -||- that close to working for them. But, alas, it was not to be, as one of the first ripples of the shockwave that was to become of the dot-collapse smacked Wired Digital across the face. There were layoffs and the shiny new job that might have been mine was eliminated before I even had it. So, bitter but still starry eyed (after all, this was in the middle of one of my golden times) I decided to bite the hand that almost fed me.

So I created fLOG. It got me in a few doors and was a plus at launch parties, but really, it was just me trying to be as cool as the Big Geeks.

And in ironies of ironies, fLOG is still on the web and SuCK is nothing more than an entry on Heather Havrilesky's resume.

Of course, she's writing for Salon and I'm living in my parent's basement in Nebraska, so I'll leave it up to you to decide who has the last laugh while I ponder....

What The Hell Am I Doing Here?

11:45:48 PM     leave/read comments []

Bon voyage, Voyager 1 !

Scientists say the Voyager 1 spacecraft is near the outer limit of the solar system, 26 years after its US launch.

The boundary is a region called "termination shock" where particles from the sun begin to slow down and clash with atomic matter from deep space.

Nasa says Voyager 1 is about 13.5bn kilometres from Earth and will not reach another system for 40,000 years........

.....If, as expected, Voyager I does cross the heliopause and passes into uncharted deep space it may actually outlive its home planet.

Think of it- long after the sun has gone out and the Earth gone cold, Voyager 1 may still be plying the stars, waiting to be found.

EDIT: Here's the story from the New York Times:

26 Years After Launching, Voyager Is at Crucial Border. At more than eight billion miles from Earth, the Voyager 1 spacecraft has journeyed a greater distance than any other human-made object, but no one is quite sure what it has found. By John Noble Wilford. [New York Times: Science]

11:18:35 PM    

Click the photo to make it BiG

9:38:14 PM     leave/read comments []

Woman who fled to North Korea was state mole in Aum [The Japan Times]

9:07:48 PM    

Apple says could move to Intel, but happy with IBM. The latest version of the Mac OS X operating system could easily run on Intel chips, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says, but the company has little interest in changing processors. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

It's a Steve Jobs smackdown on da WinTel Weenies! Selected snippets from inside the Reality Distortion Field:

"It's perfectly technically feasible to port Panther to any processor," Jobs said at a meeting with financial analysts. But Jobs said the company is happy with IBM's PowerPC family of chips and feels the performance is "quite competitive."

"Right now we don't see a compelling need to switch processor families," Jobs said. "We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong."

.......

Jobs also took a few shots at Microsoft, saying that Apple is out-innovating its larger rival, which has years of work ahead of it with Longhorn, the next version of Windows. "They're hoping to be in 2006 where we were with Jaguar," Jobs said, adding, "We're going to have a few more releases by then."

Hit 'em again, Steve!

9:03:20 PM     leave/read comments []

Bring your rotten fruit and tomatoes. This could be fun.

ISSAN MOTOR is planting actors in movie theaters to perform live commercials before the start of showings of "The Matrix Revolutions" in an effort to expose jaded, skeptical consumers to advertising by masking it as something else.

The brief in-person pitches feature actors scattered among the ticket-buying audience who stand and deliver lines that evoke the words spoken by poets at events known as slams or jams. Their performances are timed to accompany a commercial the audience sees on the movie screen, which begins without identifying the sponsor but concludes with the Nissan Altima logo.

8:53:23 PM    

'Spiderman' protester charged. A man who spent six days up a 100 foot crane near Tower Bridge dressed as Spiderman, is charged by police. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

How much you want to bet that J. Jonah Jameson put the Bobbies up to it? Spidey's always bein' hassled by The Man. Just like in the comic books.

"If we can charge David Blaine, we can charge him as well."

-Richard Barnes, deputy chairman of the MPA

I am however, all for harassing David Blaine, early and often.

6:56:02 PM     leave/read comments []

Morons in the News: Another great battle in the War on Drugs. Parent and consumer groups take on Toys R Us for its glamorous portrayal of drug use, in the form of a CGI giraffe accidentally "huffing" helium [Morons Dot Org]

Last time I looked, helium was an inert gas.

There are a few problems here. Firstly, even the reporting this is getting shows a fairly significant factual distortion: this article, for example, suggests that the mascot is seen "sucking helium from a balloon," when in the ad as aired (I can't find a video stream of the ad itself; if anyone else knows where to find one, please post in the comments), our hapless spokesgiraffe simply has a neck so long that his head is next to the helium when he attempts to start speaking to the crowd. Secondly, while helium can be dangerous if on ingests enough of it, sucking in a single mouthful or lungful to speak funny at a party is unlikely to produce the sort of druglike high that causes someone to repeat the experience on a regular basis or to do serious or permanent damage to the person ingesting the helium (not that that makes it a great idea, just not the horror suggested by these people). Thirdly, if a fake giraffe accidentally getting a lungful of helium is a more powerful incentive to do drugs than parental responsibility and teaching is a deterrent, then pulling this ad campaign isn't going to change anything.

5:33:06 PM    

Now here's a damn fine idea, IMO:

Representative Nick Lampson, Democrat of Texas, has introduced a measure that would require NASA to develop reusable spaceships that could sit for long periods balanced between the gravitational pull of Earth and the Sun or the Moon; ships that could reach an asteroid; and, ultimately, ones that could reach Mars. The bill has 24 sponsors but has not yet been taken up in committee.

Mr. Lampson said in a telephone interview that he was glad that Senator Hollings was focused on the problem, but he added, "We don't need a commission, we need a commitment for NASA."

"If the goals get set, we will re-energize the academic community, and the space industrial community," he said, predicting that missions to Mars would "do a great deal to move this country forward."

Yeah! Let's really do something groundbreaking (spacebreaking?), instead of putterng around the backyard in our twenty year old bathrobe.

5:22:43 PM     leave/read comments []

NASA fixes problem with Mars rover instrument. NASA announced Tuesday that engineers have found a workaround to a problem with an instrument... [spacetoday.net]

Despite glitches like the ill-fated polar orbiter, NASA's JPL keeps finding ways to make the big science happen, often against some very steep odds. Way to go, gang!

NASA announced Tuesday that engineers have found a workaround to a problem with an instrument on a Mars-bound rover allowing the instrument to work properly. NASA has announced in August that a problem with the Mossbauer spectrometer on the Spirit rover would prevent the instrument from working as planned. At the time, a drive system designed to vibrate a gamma-ray source within the instrument was not moving properly. However, engineers have found ways to vibrate the source at higher frequencies allowing it to work properly. The instrument is designed to identify iron-bearing minerals in Martian rocks and soil.

Check out the website for The Mars Exploration Rover project.

5:09:41 PM     leave/read comments []

It's like they're deliberately trying to screw us all.

Incredibly, several of the same people responsible for staking out dubious rationales for the war, like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, were also in charge of planning the so-called reconstruction of Iraq. The only question now, with weapons of mass destruction nowhere to be found and GI's getting picked off at an alarming rate, is which of those two tasks did the White House and Pentagon officials fail more miserably at?

Before the war, Wolfowitz said the cost of rebuilding Iraq could range anywhere from "$10 billion to $100 billion." The total to date is already approaching $170 billion. This summer he conceded, "Some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong."

"The administration walked itself right into this problem," says Pena. "Despite all their talk, the trend -- and that's what it is, a trend -- is moving in the wrong direction. Ever since Bush said, 'Bring 'em on,' the hostilities have gotten worse."

4:57:41 PM    

Luskin Is A Stalker!!!

This just in from the Ludic Kid- Noted Atrios stalker, Donald Luskin is, according to the Ludic Kid (whose impeccables are credential, nee even pResidential), targeting yet another victim:

3. DONALD LUSKIN IS, EVEN NOW, STALKING DELIGHTFUL ICELANDIC POP SENSATION BJORK GOTMUNDSDOTTIR. Luskin, having caught Bjork's act on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in 1993, became sexually compulsive about the singer. Frequently interrupting conversations with his National Review co-workers about politics, economics and culture with the comment "Hey, what do you think of Bjork? I would so do her", Luskin would fly into a rage whenever someone did not share his obsession.....

Sharp-eyed readers of What The Hell Am I Doing Here? will notice that the above item is number three in a list. Unfortunately, the rest of the list is TOO EXPLOSIVE to be reprinted at this "focus on your own damn family-friendly" site. You'll just have to click on the link to learn the whole shocked, shocked, shocked I tell you, truth.

1:22:01 PM     leave/read comments []

Yakuza Shootout (Mainichi).

One gangster injured in a yakuza shootout in the streets of Kobe last night.

1:31:12 AM    

My pal Dock Miles and I were writing back and forth about that moment when you realize that your childhood is ending and it got me to thinking about how it's the beginning of the end of that perfect happiness that only children know and that adults chase after for the rest of their lives.

I think the last time I was really, genuinely happy, was the summer between 5th and 6th grades. It was a time when I had just developed a sense of person-hood, a sense of being someone who could be and act in the world and make changes to it and myself, and that this was a world open to exploration and every day brought something to do that I'd never done before and I was in awe at this world and in myself. It was a happiness that didn't know loss; didn't know what it was to miss something or someone. "Missing something" meant anticipation- waiting, not longing.

And then it all went to hell; I discovered loss, impotence and isolation.

But there have been glimpses.

Twice, I've come close to that feeling:

Once, in 1989; the year started with a month-long trip to England in January, followed by a correspondence romance with the woman who became my wife and topped off with my graduation from college and the consummation of my romance. The spectre of how I was to make a living and my transgendered-ness hovered over this time, but not too heavily.

And again in 1997; my first year in San Francisco- I really was a whole new person and every day brought an experience that I'd never had before. The highs were higher than that long ago suburban boy's summer, but the lows and the loneliness were deeper and darker. This was not an unsullied joy, this was the joy of looking at the stars from the dirt. If depression is, as Winston Churchill described it, a "Black Dog," then my happiness was a glimpse of heaven from its back.

It's been one hell of a ride.

12:03:12 AM     leave/read comments []

My mom was a nurse, and believe me, you don't want a tired, cranky nurse on your hands. Especially if things like catheters are involved. Or supper. That would be bad, too.

11:33:59 PM     leave/read comments []

See? Not all Republicans are evil or stupid. There may be hope yet.

8:28:21 PM     leave/read comments []

Biggest solar flare goes off. After 10 days of dramatic activity, the most powerful solar flare ever seen explodes on the Sun's surface. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Worst. Flare. Ever.

Powerful solar flares are given an "X" designation. There was an X8 and an X3 event on Sunday.

On Monday, there was an X3 flare followed by smaller ones.

Last week there were X7 and X10 events that took place back-to-back.

Tuesday's flare went off the scale, researchers say it was "well above X20".

This would make it the most powerful ever recorded, surpassing the X20 flares of 2 April 2001 and 16 August 1989.

8:07:28 PM    

Corporate welfare alert!

FCC screws America, adopts Broadcast Flag, doom, gloom, armageddon. We've lost a round in the Broadcast Flag fight. The FCC today decided that it didn't need to listen to the tens of thousands of Americans that wrote to it, asking to have this terrible proposal set aside, and instead adopted a rule proposed by billionaire movie studios whose biggest problem is figuring out how to spend the riches they made off the VCR after we saved their asses by telling them to get bent when they tried to get the Betamax banned the last time around.

"The FCC today has taken a step that will shape the future of television," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Sadly, this represents a step in the wrong direction, a step that will undermine innovation, fair use, and competition."

"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful recording features from television products you can buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

6:00:05 PM     leave/read comments []

Study Finds New Drug Acts Quickly on Clogged Arteries. A small study of heart disease patients has found that an experimental drug reversed what may be the equivalent of years' worth of plaque in coronary arteries. By Gina Kolata. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

And while you're at it, gimme the pomme frittes wih the garlic butter drizzle.

After five weekly infusions, those who got the experimental drug had a 4.2 percent decrease in the volume of plaque in their coronary arteries, while those who had saline infusions had, if anything, a slight increase in their plaque. By contrast, according to Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist who directed the study, the most powerful statins, which lower levels of low-density lipoproteins, or L.D.L., which deliver cholesterol to coronary arteries, take years to show more modest effects.

``It is astonishing, you have to admit that,'' said Dr. Scott Grundy, a cholesterol expert, who is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine in Dallas. ``A 4 percent reduction in the size of the lesions is remarkable.''

5:52:31 PM    

Oiling up the draft machine?. The Pentagon is quietly moving to fill draft board vacancies nationwide. While officials say there's no cause to worry, some experts aren't so sure. [Salon.com]

It should be noted that the Bushes have girls.

Even among those who think the public might support a draft, like Bandow at the Cato Institute, few believe Bush would dare to propose it before the November 2004 election. "No one would want that fight," he explains. "It would highlight the cost of an imperial foreign policy, add an incendiary issue to the already emotional protests, and further split the limited-government conservatives." But despite the Pentagon's denials, planners there are almost certainly weighing the numbers just as independent military experts are. And that could explain the willingness to tune up the draft machinery.

5:37:30 PM    

Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

From 8-track Heaven:

Arguably the most avant garde of Lou Reed's works, Metal Machine Music is a double album of mechanical screeches and drones. On the LP version, the B side of the second record ends in a locked groove which continues to play until the needle is physically lifted from the turntable. Since the LP consists of four evenly-timed sides, and since an 8-track produces continuous sound without the contrivance of a locked groove, in some ways this recording is a natural for the 8-track format. In other ways, of course, it's perfectly ludicrous. It is remarkable enough that RCA considered this to be commercially viable enough to be released at all, never mind in multiple formats. Metal Machine Music even came out in quad LP and 8-track! The legendary rock-n-roll journalist Lester Bangs immortalized this 8-track in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Few 8-tracks have provoked livelier discussion in the pages of 8-Track Mind, and almost none are as sought after by 8-track's true believers. For these reasons and many more, Metal Machine Music has officially entered The 8-Track Hall of Fame on this 10th of October, 1995.

5:31:55 PM    

Goodwill is fragile in new Iraq. How good US relations unraveled in a Baghdad suburb. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

This piece just breaks my heart- American troops are in an untenable situation, trying to defend themselves, while trying to win "hearts and minds." But, when things go wrong, can you really blame the Iraqis for blaming U.S. troops? After all, it's their tanks and grenades that are killing neighbors and destroying livelihoods.

ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ- As the cinderblock rubble of what was to be Abu Ghraib's new marketplace is carted off by scavengers, a piece of the goodwill that had slowly been built between Iraqis and Americans stationed here is also disappearing.

Just this month the new market had opened, a symbol of reconstruction progress in this poor agricultural town just west of Baghdad - and on the fringes of the violent Sunni Triangle. But by Sunday, what was intended as a community-improvement project, planned and executed by the US military in cooperation with the local town council, lay in ruins. It was crushed by American tanks and a combination of fear, misunderstandings, and outside insurgent interference.

5:15:26 PM    

More Mad Cow (Kyodo). Japan is going to have to face up to the facts that it has a big BSE problem. At first it tried to blame the problem on old cows imported from Britain in the 1980s -- then it was due to crushed bone meal feed from Italy brought into Japan in the 1990s. Well, fresh cases #8 and #9 are cows under two years old. [Nippon Goro Goro]

4:31:37 PM     leave/read comments []

Morons in the News: Radio Frequency Identification Used to Track Children in Buffalo School. A charter school in Buffalo, New York uses Radio Frequency ID chips to track children, causing some concerns about privacy. [Morons Dot Org]

Yes, one more step towards making our schools more like prisons and our children more like prisoners.....or maybe more like that moose that Jim Fowler wrestled to put a radio tracking tag on.

BEEP.....BEEP.....BEEP......

"Mr.Ashcroft would like to see you, Jimmy."

4:23:31 PM     leave/read comments []

OK, I'm a total girlie tool. I want.

Cool laptop bags for chicks.

The "Slim," a new bag/sleeve hybrid designed specifically for G4 Apple PowerBooks and other laptops. Bag can be inserted into another bag or carried with or without the removable shoulder strap. Lots of textiles to choose from. Starts around $79. Swankolicious. Link (thanks, Clayton)
[Boing Boing Blog]

4:03:39 PM     leave/read comments []

Photographic place map.

Following on the heels of this site blogged last week, another online collection of images organized by points on a map. I love how the photographer/webmaster says, "Please make the room dark and look [at] the photographs." I can't recall ever having read those instructions on a photoblog before. Link (via Cup of Chica)
[Boing Boing Blog]

4:00:51 PM     leave/read comments []

Peter Murphy, a Sydney QTVR photographer, has some really cool stuff up on his blog. Check it out!

Source: Peter Murphy's Panoramic VR Weblog; 11/4/03; 1:31:14 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art House Hotel in the old School of Arts Building in downtown Pitt Street has a series of upmarket bars - which are used also for art exhibitions, painting classes etc. Panorama.  The event last night - in the upstairs bar - was the launch of an exhibition of body painting by Emma Hack -- with photographs and some live models.

[Peter Murphy's Panoramic VR Weblog]

3:33:24 PM    

Actually, don't give me a beer- in the two weeks since I quit drinking I've lost 8 pounds, thank yew verra much.

2:09:20 AM     leave/read comments []

Grandma gets no respect.

Interestingly enough, there's no mention of health risks for Grandpa.

Mom says it's all those fish sticks.

9:01:37 PM     leave/read comments []

More solar flares spotted. Astronomers observed three strong flares on the Sun during a 24-hour period on Sunday... [spacetoday.net]

More than one of my friends has noticed that their cell phone's service has gone to hell this last week. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

One space scientist told SPACE.com that the recent spate of strong solar storms is "one of the most dramatic periods of solar activity we have seen in modern time."

6:38:02 PM    

Terror - the fastest growing economy. Comment: The war against groups such as al-Qaida stems from a clash of economic systems, argues Loretta Napoleoni. [Guardian Unlimited]

Much like the Taliban springing from U.S. support of the Mujahideen during the Afghan/Soviet war, it appears that the Pandora's Box of Globalization may have loosed more than cheap consumer goods into the world.

Motivated by the desire for independence from their sponsors and by the rising costs of running armed organisations, terror groups widened their economic horizon. So in the 1990s, when the deregulation of international markets knocked down financial and economic barriers, they were ripe for the last transition: the globalisation of terrorism. Taking advantages of economic liberalisation, terror groups became transnational entities, raising money and carrying out violent cross-border attacks.

The irony is that the new economy of terror is a product of globalisation, particularly of the globalisation that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Globalisation allowed non-state entities to promote a variety of liberal causes, social changes and economic advancement but has also facilitated the networking of terrorist movements such as al-Qaida and the growing sophistication of the "terror economy".

Globalization may be a novel product of the 1990's, but the clash of economies is hardly new; in fact, as Napoleoni argues, we may just be seeing "Crusades II: The Caliphate Strikes Back".

A millennium ago a new class of European bankers, traders and merchants forged a strategic alliance with the church to break the economic hegemony of Islam. Religion was the ideological umbrella under which the third party - the hungry masses of western Europe - was brought into the alliance. Now, in a sort of reversal of the Crusades, the embryo of the Islamic bourgeoisie has teamed up with the radical clerics. Under the umbrella of Wahhabism - an extreme, seventh century interpretation of Islam - the oppressed Muslim masses are encouraged to take up arms against the corrupted, Muslim, oligarchic rulers and their backers, the west. Religion once again is the ideological blanket under which different social groups are able to gather together.

Everything old is new again.

6:00:31 PM     leave/read comments []

Our pal Onager smacks Thomas Friedman up alongside the head:

My jaw sure dropped at Thomas Friedman's non sequitur. He's written enough on the subject to know better, so I guess I have to put it down to the usual "whoring for Bu$h Points."

Terrorists, he wrote in 1998 after terrorists attacked two US embassies in Africa, "have no specific ideological program or demands.

Huh? Off the top of my head, some of the major terrorism hotspots of the last half-century...

Israel (anti-Brit)
Palestine and environs (anti-Israeli)
Malaya
Congo/Rwanda/Burundi/Angola etc.
Vietnam I (the French)
Algeria
Northern Ireland
Vietnam II (the Americans)

I bet you can spot one or two "ideological programs or demands." I bet your Schnauzer could, too. Which makes me, you and your Schnauzer A LOT SMARTER THAN THOMAS FUCKING FRIEDMAN.

My dog has spoken. He didn't even need a second try.

5:38:42 PM     leave/read comments []

New Napster Off to a Solid Start. Napster 2.0 has a sleek design and makes exploring new music a pleasure. The most nagging problem? The confusing licensing issues. A review by Katie Dean. [Wired News]

Not everything is quite working yet, tho':

The oddest moment of my Napster experience was when I clicked into The Lunchbox Indie Rock radio station and the audio played "Skating" from Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas, though the album cover listed was the Posies' "Dream All Day" track. It was a nice piece of early Christmas cheer, but not what was supposed to be playing.

I searched on the Posies and clicked on "Dream All Day," and the same thing happened: It played Vince Guaraldi's "Skating." Odd, and likely an inconvenience for those Posies fans.

Pity the poor Posies fan. Or the Napster user.

5:31:13 PM     leave/read comments []

The conversation with Afghan villagers is neighborly, but the subtext is gently radical: I am woman - now, let's rebuild your country.

"You would hope that seeing women from America doing these jobs would have an effect," says Paine, commander of the US Army's civil-affairs unit at Kandahar air base. "Afghans are not used to seeing females in the military. When we first arrived, we used to ask the village leaders, 'Do you have a problem working with women?' And they said, 'We understand that's your culture and we will work with you.' And for our part, we try to work with them in their culture."

5:04:09 PM    

Inuit battle to shut US air base. Hunters in Greenland go to court in a bid to force the removal of a top-secret base from their ancestral land. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Just when you thought the Bush Administration's hare-brained schemes couldn't possibly alienate anymore of our friends and allies, along comes SDI Vs. The Inuit.

Inuit hunters are to ask Denmark's Supreme Court on Monday to close down one of America's most secretive and strategically important military bases.

The Inuit claim they were illegally evicted from traditional grounds in northern Greenland and they are demanding the right of return.

The US would like to use Thule air base as a site for the controversial Star Wars National Missile Defence System.

Oh for Smilla's sake! Didn't we get over that nonsense? Obviously not.

4:29:12 PM     leave/read comments []

African Anglicans Vent Anger at Gay Bishop. Africa's Anglican leaders expressed fury today at the consecration over the weekend of a gay bishop in New Hampshire. By Marc Lacey. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Yes, all over Africa, and most notably Kenya, the home of female circumcision, Anglican leaders are having homophobic hissy fits.

"The devil has clearly entered our church," said an angry Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya, who has announced that his church will have nothing to do with the Episcopal Church U.S.A. that sanctioned Canon V. Gene Robinson's appointment.

Archbishop Nzimbi then turned to his Hoary Master and had a laugh with the Prince of Darkness, with whom he has been living with at the church for months. "Warm up that clit knife, Luci," he didn't actually say, but c'mon you know he was thinking it, "soon as I'm done here smacking down the homos, lets cut us some girls!"

4:14:51 PM     leave/read comments []

Class, Get in Touch With Your Inner Zappa. Paul Green, the creator of a real life school of rock in Philadelphia, insists that his story is the original and not some well-timed remix. By Lola Ogunnaike. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Vengeance is MINE, sayeth the Prog-Dude!

But all is not well, as a certain movie has not paid mad props to the Zappa fiends in Philly.

Dude," said one reveler with a pink buzz cut. "They're just like the kids from the `School of Rock.' "

Actually, Mr. Green argues, it's the other way around. Yes, like Jack Black's character, Dewey Finn, in the hit film, Mr. Green abandoned playing in amateur bands to teach youngsters how to rock 'n' roll, schooling them on the finer points of genres like prog rock, extolling the virtues of Pink Floyd. But he insists that his story is the original and not some well-timed remix.

"My first thought was to sue the pants off of them because they are doing damage to my business," Mr. Green said a few days before the Williamsburg gig. He wore a snug "School of Rock" T-shirt and jeans in desperate need of patches. "People are going to think I'm riding off of their coattails, which is totally not the case."

More power to 'em, though what the f*@k is up with this?

3:04:15 PM     leave/read comments []

Late at Night, That's NBC Crowing. Ten years into the deeply personal competition for supremacy in late-night television, David Letterman appears to have lost. By Bill Carter. [New York Times: Business]

This just in: crap is wildly popular!

I can hear the sucking sound coming all the way from Satan's bedchamber, along with that chipmunk-like Leno laugh......

2:44:18 PM     leave/read comments []

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting. As doubts about electronic voting systems grow in the United States, the Australians take the lead in offering a system that doesn't freak anyone out. Their solution is to make the whole thing open source. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News]

To paraphrase George W. Bush- "There is no word in Australian for 'Diebold'."

Quinn also believes that voting systems must use open-source software.

"The keystone of democracy is information," he said. "You have a big problem when people don't have enough information to make up their minds or, even worse, they have misleading information and make up their minds in a way that would be contrary to what they would decide if they had the full story.

"Any transparency you can add to that process is going to enhance the democracy and, conversely, any information you remove from that process is going to undermine your democracy."

Hey bucko, maybe in some crazy antipodal wonderland, but here in Asscroft's Amerika, the keystone of Democracy is unquestioning allegiance to Our Supreme Leader and the careful control of dangerous things like information:

In the name of national security. CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh explains why the government's quietly wiping previously posted information off of federal Web sites. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

We don't want to confuse the American Consumer Voter with things like facts, especially if those facts might make Consumers Citizens question the performance or decisions of their government.

About a week ago, the U.S. Army surreptitiously pulled the plug on one of its more popular Web sites, call.army.mil, after The Washington Post wrote about a report that had been posted on it.

The Post's October 25 article said "the U.S. military intelligence gathering operation in Iraq is being undercut by a series of problems in using technology, training intelligence specialists and managing them in the field," citing the report prepared by the Center for Army Lessons Learned at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. The report, which the Post had the foresight to mirror on its own Web site, talked about the "poor quality" of mission planning and "marginally effective" training for certain reserve troops.

The report was not classified. It was merely a sober analysis of the Army's problems in Iraq.

Sadly, this is not an isolated incident. The Bush administration has been busily sweeping its "secrets" (not really secrets, but boy would they like 'em to be.) under the electronic rug since the start of its term.

This is not an isolated example. In the two years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has systematically reduced the amount of information available to the public, which in turn has made government officials less accountable to taxpayers. Attorney General John Ashcroft set the tone in an Oct. 12, 2001 memo that urged agencies to withhold information from requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. Then, in January, Rumsfeld claimed that too much data was popping up on military Web sites. Citing al-Qaida, Rumsfeld warned that "one must conclude our enemies access DOD (Department of Defense) Web sites on a regular basis."

I wonder if Laura would sign the checks to Osama Bin Laden that the Administration should be sending him for being such an all-purpose boogeyman? (Whom, it should be noted, is still "at large.") The Bushies have so mastered Wagging The Dog that their entire administration has become one giant wag-

Welfare for the top 1% of wealthiest Americans? LOOK!!!! AN INSURGENT!!!!!

Remove the curbs to utterly destroying the environment- THE TERRORISTS ARE TRYING TO TAKE OUR OIL!!!! DRILL CHARLIE BROWN DRIL!!!!!!

Let the American people know exactly what our government is up to? NO WAY PAL! YOU MIGHT BE AL-QUEDA!!!!

Declan McCullagh sums it up at the end of his piece from C|Net:

In the last two years, though, the government has extended secrecy far beyond what recent predecessors have dared. There are legitimate reasons for secrecy but using the excuse of terrorist attacks to shield officials from embarrassment and critical scrutiny is unconscionable. The public deserves better.

Indeed, we do.

12:02:39 PM     leave/read comments []

This is the sort of thing that you just don't want to believe happens any more. I'd call it mindless, but it's a very mindful, calculated bit of base brutality; something so horrific, that only a seeming oxymoron can describe it.

Source: Boing Boing Blog; 11/3/03; 10:00:05 AM

Photo: river of blood. Bloggers ask "hoax?", Sea Shepherd responds..

In this photo shot near a Japanese fishing town, fishermen work on a boat full of just-killed dolphins, as a diver prepares to submerge into blood-filled water. Link.

UPDATE #1: Bloggers are debating whether or not this image may have been digitally manipulated to make the water appear redder. See MeFi. AP distributed the photo, but cited Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (an organization protesting dolphin killing in Japan) as the image's source.

UPDATE #2: I contacted Scott Sheckman, Communication Director for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, about the retouching allegations. He responds to BoingBoing readers here:

The color of the pictures are authentic and were not retouched in any way. The Sea Shepherd crew shot digital, film and video which was compared and authenticated by the Associated Press before they accepted the pictures. To support this statement, I refer you to this recent story by the Toronto Star which reports that AP verified the photos before distributing.

A video of the slaugher is available here. The color of the water is the result of at least 60 dolphins being bled to death in the shallow cove close to shore. The Japanese government allows the slaughter of approx. 20,000 dolphins a year in near-shore drives such as the one documented in Taiji.

One of the photographers explains that tools used to stun dolphins included sonar, and says of the images: "They really did represent very well what we'd seen with our own eyes that day.... that color is 100% accurate... It was just as horrifying as it looks. It truly is the same most unnatural colour I have ever seen. It was one of the most deep crimson reds I had ever seen... and to realize that it came from a living organic being was shocking." [Boing Boing Blog]

11:04:12 AM     leave/read comments []

I miss Sydney.

QTVR pano of "Matrix: Revolutions" Australia premiere.

QTVR enthusiast and photographer Peter Murphy says:

Hi Xeni, I shot a panorama for my blog at the premiere of Matrix Revolutions last night -- at Sydney Opera House. Keanu, Hugo Weaving, the producer ... were there. Security was tight -- only ticketed fans could watch the action.

Link
[Boing Boing Blog]

10:59:49 AM     leave/read comments []

It's always nice to fall asleep to rain on the roof and windows.

But a week's worth is a bit much.

Damn you, November!!

1:11:04 AM     leave/read comments []

Copyright law, Holocaust deniers, and Jewish groups all come together over a 1938 fluff piece on Hitler's house that was posted to a blog.

1:07:16 AM     leave/read comments []

Tokyo's loudmouthed governor, instead of offering the Chinese congralutions in putting a man into space (something Japan has never done), calls them 'ignorant.' [Nippon Goro Goro]

Oh thank goodness, I was beginning to think that only the U.S. has politicians this stupid and insensitive.

1:04:47 AM     leave/read comments []

The EFF puts it together:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said that notifying those in advance of suing them is a small step in the right direction, but doesn't do much to solve the larger problem of illegal file sharing.

"Suing your customers one at a time is not a business model," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney with the EFF. "And in the meantime, the RIAA is trampling on privacy and proposing legislation that's dangerous to the Internet generally.

5:50:53 PM    

Japan-Quake (Kyodo).

A quake off the coast of Fukushima.  No injuries or damage. [Nippon Goro Goro]

It's always good to hear that Max and Kenka are OK after news like this.

12:51:05 AM     leave/read comments []

"It's like Jekyll and Hyde out here," said Colonel Sassaman, a 40-year-old battalion commander and former starting quarterback for Army's football team. "By day, we're putting on a happy face. By night, we are hunting down and killing our enemies."

12:45:06 AM