Friday, May 7, 2010

The Latest from Boing Boing

The Latest from Boing Boing

Link to Boing Boing

Reminder: speaking in London tomorrow night

Posted: 07 May 2010 03:15 AM PDT

A reminder for Londoners: I'm giving a talk tomorrow, May 8 at 7PM at the Nettlefold Hall in West Norwood (SE27). The library there has asked me to come in and talk about how I use technology to write and publish my work. It's free, but seats are limited, so they're asking you to RSVP. Hope to see you there!

Vintage LP: Huxley narrates Brave New World

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:47 PM PDT

Photos Uncategorized Brave New World Cover 1
MP3s of a 1979 LP featuring Aldous Huxley reading Brave New World with music by Bernard Herrmann! Can you dig it? I knew that you could. Side 1 and Side 2

Election fraud: Live footage of Albanian hunger striker camp

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:28 PM PDT

Philippe Parreno sez,
On June 28th 2009, Albania held its parliamentary elections. These elections were supposed to mark a watershed moment in the country's democratic transition: a break with the tradition of manipulated and contested elections. Unfortunately the story was to repeat itself.

The Socialist led opposition complained about multiple irregularities in the electoral process and its claims were supported by the OSCE-ODHIR report that observed serious irregularities, the most disturbing of which concerned the fact that ballot counting in a full one third of the counting centers was bad or very bad. However, all the complaints of the opposition were dismissed by the relevant institutions, through decisions taken under extreme political pressure from the government.

Following the scandalous certification of the electoral results through a tainted legal process, the opposition declared that it recognized the results of the June 28th elections, but that nevertheless, it demanded full and thorough transparency of the process through a parliamentary inquiry; an inquiry which would include the opening of the ballot boxes and the examination of the electoral materials contained therein; an inquiry, which would not serve to change the results of the elections, but simply to save future elections from falling prey to the same machinations and manipulations.



However, although the demand of the opposition was constitutional, and although there existed a precedent for such an inquiry from the elections of 2005, the majority of Prime Minister Sali Berisha in an arrogant display of power and in violation of the Constitution continued to deny the opposition its right to transparency. The proposal for the establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry was voted down by the majority. All other attempts to achieve transparency through dialogue and negotiations met the same fate and the government of Sali Berisha turned a blind eye to the massive demonstrations of the opposition which on April 30th gathered 200,000 thousand Albanians in the capital Tirana.


Faced with the obstinate denial of its right to transparency, a right enshrined in Albania's constitution, the opposition decided to escalate its democratic action: since April 30th, 200 opposition MPs and ordinary citizens have been camped in Tirana's Martyrs of the Nation Boulevard, engaged in an open ended hunger strike in the name of free and fair elections.



Open the Boxes

(Thanks, Philippe!)

Previously:


UNESCO's bizarre World Anti-Piracy Observatory

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:26 PM PDT

Claude sez,
UNESCO announced the launch of its World Anti-Piracy Observatory in a YouTube video on April 21, 2010, but according to French Wikipedia - an entry coyly started as "193.242.192.9" - the idea hearkens back to 2005, and reeks of it.

Particularly notable: WAPO's "collection of national copyright laws", where each country's page is linked to a "Disclaimer" in which UNESCO claims copyright on the content of the collection and restricts its use to educational, non commercial purposes - even though in most cases, they simply downloaded the copyright law from the official site, renamed the file and re-uploaded it on the UNESCO server.

There are also some gems of inaccuracy in the countries' PDFs that are linked to in the sections of WAPO that are listed in the left column - but putting copyright laws that are either in the public domain or copyrighted to the country's parliament under UNESCO's own copyright is the next-to-worst one. The worst one being, of course the use of the word "piracy" - which even WIPO has given up long ago.

As messages about these and other issues sent by several people to the address provided in WAPO's "Contact Us" page remain systematically unanswered, it would be nice if BoingBoing could write something about WAPO, because it would be more difficult for them to ignore it.

World Anti-Piracy Observatory (Thanks, Claude!)

Decrepit Japanese university dorm still in use

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:24 PM PDT

Kyoto university has the last old-fashioned wooden dorm, a decrepit structure where Ethernet cable strung on the decrepit supports overhang robotics students working on the shattered floor.

Nearly a century old, and looking every day of it, Yoshida-ryo is very likely the last remaining example of the once common Japanese wooden university dormitory. This building was built in 1913. Organized from the very beginning to be self-administering through a dormitory association (寮自治会), the students themselves have been responsible for selecting new applicants for residency. This autonomy, however, came under full-scale assault in 1971, when the Ministry of Education began a policy of regulating or closing dormitories, which were seen as "hotbeds for various kinds of conflict." University authorities first tried to close Yoshida-ryo completely in 1979, and after failing to overcome opposition over the next 10 years finally closed the Western Yoshida-ryo across the street.

With the death of Japan's violent student activism, the campaign to close the dormitory subsided for a time, but in the aftermath of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake there were new calls to replace the poorly aged building, which had already seen its maintenance neglected for decades by a university that had wanted to demolish it.

At present, the future of the dormitory is unclear. While residents have performed some minor upgrades over the years, such as the haphazard stringing of Ethernet cables through the halls to each room, they have only recently begun discussing the possibility of performing serious repairs themselves. There has even been some discussion of bypassing the university and applying for historical building preservation funds, although the building may be considered too far gone for proper restoration, particularly while still being lived in.

Yoshida-ryo: Dilapidated, decrepit and downright dirty (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Image: Roy Berman/CNNGo)

Naked scanner reveals airport screener's tiny penis, sparks steel baton fight with fellow officers

Posted: 07 May 2010 02:16 AM PDT

Wayne sez, "Miami airport screeners made fun of one of their own after seeing his small penis on their imaging scan. It ended up with small penis beating someone else with a steel baton."
Screener Rolando Negrin's private body parts were observed by his Transportation Security Administration colleagues conducting training on the airport's full-body imaging machines.

A year of joking culminated on Tuesday night, when Negrin attacked the co-worker at an employee parking lot, according to an arrest report.

Negrin ``stated he could not take the jokes any more and lost his mind,'' said the report, made public Thursday. He is charged with aggravated battery.

I declined the naked scanner at Logan in Boston last weekend. The TSA agents were momentarily panicked (and one kept showing me a teeny, tiny printout of a scan and saying, "This is all we see, why you worried, this is all we see"). But after a few moments, they actually got their stories straight and decided what the procedure would be, and I got a fast, cursory pat-down that wasn't any more invasive than the one I usually get when I set off the metal detector.

I'd recommend it to everyone.

Cops: Airport screeners' quarrel about private parts leads to beating (Thanks, Wayne!)

(Image: IMG_5274r, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from glenmaclarty's photostream)

Previously:


UK Conservatives lead early tally

Posted: 06 May 2010 07:58 PM PDT

The Labour Party learned a hard lesson about Britain's weirdly inaccurate election polling in 1992, when its expected victory failed to materialize. Now it seems to be the turn of the Liberal Democrats, whose pre-election buzz appears to be dissolving at the ballot box. With voting close between the other two major parties, however, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg may still end up the election's kingmaker.

Jeff Kisseloff book chapter about Kent State Massacre as PDF

Posted: 06 May 2010 08:34 PM PDT

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Tuesday marked the 40th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, and Jeff Kisselof, author of Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s, An Oral History remembered it on his fantastic blog, The Kisselof Collection.

Forty years ago today, four students at Kent State University -- Allison Krause, Jeff Miller, Sandy Scheuer and William Schroeder -- were murdered by agents of the US government... In 2007, I wrote a book called Generation on Fire in response to Kent State, but primarily as a tribute to the remarkable courage and rebellious spirit that sparked so many of the great changes that came out of the 1960s, The last chapter was devoted to the memory of Allison Krause, as told by her boyfriend, Barry Levine, and her mother Doris while I cried into my tape recorder. Here is a PDF of the chapter. Feel free to pass it around. I posted a few more pictures on the book's Web site here.

It's been forty years but I'm still very pissed off about Kent State and Richard Fucking Nixon and the cowards who fired those deadly bullets but who still get to drink their beers and sun their big bellies in their backyards while four kids who had been looking forward to long, happy lives, are instead in the ground, their families still devastated.

We don't know who you are, but you do. I hope that every moment of contentment you've had since that afternoon has been offset by misery and guilt. I wonder whether some time today you'll pause to think with regret about the lives you destroyed. But I doubt it. After all, they shoot students, don't they?

The Kisselof Collection: 5/4/70

How to REALLY save your favorite sci-fi show from cancelation

Posted: 06 May 2010 02:28 PM PDT

cancelledtv.jpg How can fans of a struggling sci-fi show save it from cancelation? It's a question I get a lot, partly because Syfy has from time to time saved shows from cancelation, and partly because like every TV network we cancel our fair share of shows. The No. 1 method of choice for fans trying to save a show is writing letters/e-mails to the network that airs the show. This worked back in the '60s to keep the original Star Trek on the air for a while, and according to this article it may have had an impact on a few shows since then. fluff.jpg It's not your best bet though, because today EVERY canceled show has a write-in campaign, often accompanied by some clever item...Jericho fans sent peanuts, Lexx fans sent dragonflies, etc. It's so pervasive that it's become background noise. People even start write-in campaigns if we change a show's timeslot, or if an actor leaves a show. Right now there are containers of Fluff in the kitchen of our sibling network USA because fans are protesting the fact that Vincent D'Onofrio is leaving Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I took a picture of the Fluff with my iPhone so you can see. To save a show you need real impact, and you can't get that by doing the same thing everyone else is doing. Also, by sending us e-mails about our shows, you're preaching to the converted. We WANT to keep the show, we're just not able to because there aren't enough viewers. In TV ratings drive the business, and viewers drive ratings. So what we really need are more viewers.


But we know that every show that gets canceled already has hundreds of thousands or millions of viewers each week, so having a thousand of them send us notes means that...well, a thousand members of the existing audience that's not yet big enough to support the show have taken the time to send us nice notes. We appreciate the notes, but they don't make a series any more viable.

So the biggest way you can have a real, meaningful impact - the way that will work every time if you can pull it off -- is to find a way to get NEW viewers to try the show. And a LOT of new viewers. If a show isn't successful with 900,000 viewers, it's not going to start working with 950,000 viewers. It's going to take a few hundred thousand new viewers to make an impact.

The way to do that is to go big. Instead of talking to us, talk to the critics and TV bloggers out there who have the most readers and try to get THEM to talk about the show. Do something so unique that your "save the show" campaign gets covered on the homepage of CNN. Find a way to get Jon Stewart to joke about your campaign on his show. Use tools out there like Twitter and Facebook that let you reach people on a mass scale. If you're sending letters to the network, send them to your friends too. And send them to your friends' friends. You need scale, and you need it quickly because...

By the time a show is officially announced as canceled, the actors and crew are most likely free to find other work and some probably already have. The rest will follow soon, and it's going to be next to impossible to get them back. And once the show's sets have been struck it's going to be a HUGE financial hurdle to start the show up again. On a realistic level, anything you do to try and save the show has to be done before that.

The last piece of advice I can give you is, don't wait till you hear a show is obviously in trouble, or about to be canceled, to start trying to help it. "Save our show" campaigns rarely work in reality, so ideally you don't want to let it get to that point. You want to get in early with "pre-save" campaigns, because once a show is perceived as needing to be saved, viewers become a lot more reluctant to tune in. The best "save the show" campaign I've seen is the one you don't have to use.

Opportunity to ask Facebook about privacy!

Posted: 06 May 2010 01:41 PM PDT

The NYT's Jenna Wortham is interviewing Facebook's vice president for public policy, and he's offered to field questions about privacy and Facebook policy from her readers. Get your question on the list by leaving it in the comment section on Wortham's Bits blog.

Dow plunges 1,000 points, possibly due to PEBCAK

Posted: 06 May 2010 01:27 PM PDT

Stocks in the US were down 1,000 points earlier today. Initial reports blamed the plunge on fears over debt in Greece, but CNBC is now reporting that the dramatic drop may have been caused by user error: "According to multiple sources, a trader entered a b for billion instead of an m for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow." (* Hey, at least he didn't type g for gajillion)

For a good time, follow Hugo Chavez on Twitter

Posted: 06 May 2010 01:16 PM PDT

hugo.jpg

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez recently joined Twitter, and he's loads of fun already. He's only following 5 accounts, one of which is The Thoughts of Fidel Castro. I'm a little butthurt that @boingboing isn't on his list... yet. (via Glinner)

Jack Parow: "Dans, Dans, Dans"

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:46 PM PDT

jackth.jpgSouth Africa is a big country—big enough to be home to more than one group of crazy white people busting out hyperaggressive, postmodern, rap-rave jams. Witness the new video from Jack Parow: "Dans, Dans, Dans." (thanks, Griffin)

History of the fallout shelter symbol

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:28 PM PDT

I've got a flight this afternoon and plan to spend some of my airport time reading this Complete History of the Fallout Shelter Sign. I love Cold War cultural history and, thanks to Kansas' handy recycling of fallout shelters as tornado shelters, this symbol has a major place in my childhood memories despite the fact that I missed most of the Cold War. (Thanks Allison Bland!)

Nerd merit badges made for Girl Scout Troop 202

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:16 PM PDT

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John Young says:

Randy and I at Nerd Merit Badges made special attendance badges for JSconf (a Javascript developers' conference) this year. The conference had a pirate theme, so we used an iconic skull from Noah Scallin's Skull-A-Day font.  We thought it turned out GREAT, and so did Noah.  And so did Girl Scout Troop 202 in California, who asked us to make them an actual troop crest.  As in a REAL troop crest, which means that some sort of Velveteen Rabbit magic has happened, and now we at Nerd Merit Badges have now ended up making real insignia.

The skull is in metallic gold thread, against green twill -- we think these scouts will be the toughest-looking troop out there!

Here's a picture.

Hot human-on-neanderthal action: A scientific update

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:14 PM PDT

neanderthalthinksabtyourmom.jpg

So, remember a few weeks ago when new genetics research challenged the accepted idea that humans and neanderthals had never knocked boots? Back then, I mentioned that we were waiting to hear from Svante Pääbo, a hominid genetics expert who was due to publish his findings from sequencing the neanderthal genome. The Pääbo data would be the key to clearing up this ancient soap-operatic mystery.

This week, Pääbo weighed in and the answer looks pretty clear: If your ancestors are from anyplace other than Africa, you've got a little neanderthal in you. And so did your great-great-etc. grandma.

In fact, researchers can actually narrow down the location where at least some of this hanky panky happened.

all non-Africans - be they from France, China or Papua New Guinea - share the same amount of Neanderthal DNA, suggesting that interbreeding occurred before those populations split. The timing makes the Middle East the likeliest place where humans leaving Africa and resident Neanderthals did the deed.

Interestingly, there's not any one trait or even genetic sequence that seems to come from the neanderthals. Everybody (except Africans) is a little bit neanderthal, but it's not the same little bit.

Got questions? This New Scientist feature has answers.

Image courtesy Flickr user erix, via CC

The Alchemist Keyboard

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:09 PM PDT

alchemist3_800.jpg

A beautiful "Alchemist" keyboard mod found at Datamancer. "The symbols for Earth, Air, Fire and Water are found on the arrow keys and the number pad uses stylized Roman numerals. The Enter and Shift keys are labeled with the symbols for Alchemical processes like mixing, stirring, combining..." (thanks, Pipenta!)

Be a journalist! Work for at least several more years!

Posted: 06 May 2010 11:56 AM PDT

journo65.jpgI guess the Studies in Crap blog did a valuable service in unearthing "Your Career in Journalism," a paperback from the days when you could use the words "career" and "journalism" in the same sentence without doubling over in wheezy, painful laughter. But in the wake of yesterday's news about Newsweek, where I started my career, M.L. Stein's ode to the permanence, security and prestige of the business takes on a distinctly elegiac tone. It seems hard to believe that anybody could ever write with a straight face sentences like these, let alone write them as recently as 1965:
If you are interested in public service and you can measure up to journalism's obligations and standards, there's a job on a newspaper for you.
and
If you are a college graduate in journalism, you may land a job before you even leave the campus.
There are lots of nuggets like this to enjoy in blogger Alan Scherstuhl's post, like Stein's breezy assertion that The story that a reporter worried and sweated over will be read by thousands and perhaps millions of people who will be informed, enlightened or amused. ... He has prestige and influence that most persons can never hope to attain. But please note that when I say "enjoy" I mean "sit in a corner and rock gently back and forth and cry."

Report: Obama was biggest recipient of BP political contributions

Posted: 06 May 2010 11:52 AM PDT

A Center for Responsive politics report shows that BP and its employees gave more than $3.5 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years, with the largest chunk of their money going to president Barack Obama. "Donations come from a mix of employees and the company's political action committees&mfash;$2.89 million flowed to campaigns from BP-related PACs and about $638,000 came from individuals."

Facebook: New "social" features secretly install malware

Posted: 06 May 2010 11:48 AM PDT

Facebook's privacy Chernobyl, part umptybillion. Snip from Macworld: "If you visit certain sites while logged in to Facebook, an app for those sites will be quietly added to your Facebook profile. You don't have to have a Facebook window open, you don't need to be signed in to these sites for the apps to appear, there's no notification, and there doesn't appear to be an option to opt-out anywhere in Facebook's byzantine privacy settings."

Presidential panel report: to avoid cancer, eat organic, filter water, avoid plastic food containers

Posted: 06 May 2010 01:08 PM PDT

The President's Cancer Panel (http://pcp.cancer.gov, LOL!) today issued a report that includes some surprising recommendations for minimizing environmental cancer risk: eat organic, filter your water, and avoid storing food or beverages in plastics that contain Bisphenol A (BPA). The bottom line is to minimize exposure to potentially harmful chemicals. Snip from Nick Kristof's related op-ed/summary in the NYT:
cancer.jpg Traditionally, we reduce cancer risks through regular doctor visits, self-examinations and screenings such as mammograms. The President's Cancer Panel suggests other eye-opening steps as well, such as giving preference to organic food, checking radon levels in the home and microwaving food in glass containers rather than plastic.

In particular, the report warns about exposures to chemicals during pregnancy, when risk of damage seems to be greatest. Noting that 300 contaminants have been detected in umbilical cord blood of newborn babies, the study warns that: "to a disturbing extent, babies are born 'pre-polluted.' "

NYT: New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer, and here's the report (PDF, 240 pages total).

After reading the report, I was inspired to throw out (recycle!) all of the pthalate and BPA-laden cheapo plastic food storage containers from my kitchen, and order replacements made from glass with silicone seals. I already buy mostly organic foods, and drink mostly filtered water. I don't microwave my food at all, but if even storing cold leftovers in certain types of plastic containers might up your risk, this seems an easy and cheap enough change to make. Can't hurt.

People can't accurately tell how much TV they really watch

Posted: 06 May 2010 12:00 PM PDT

The Economist has a fascinating special report about the current and future state of the TV industry, where they highlight the fact that most people can't accurately say how they really watch TV, or how much TV they really watch: tvchart.gif
"This helps explain one of the oddest and most consistent findings of television research: people seem unaware of their own behaviour. In surveys they almost always underestimate how much television they watch, and greatly overstate the extent to which they watch video in any other form (see chart 4). In particular, they underestimate their consumption of live television. One of Ms Pearson's subjects, a 27-year-old man, claimed to watch recorded television 90% of the time. In fact he watched live TV 69% of the time."
The whole special report is worth a read.

Understanding the environmental impact of your toaster

Posted: 06 May 2010 11:16 AM PDT

toaster!.jpg

I did a couple of great interviews yesterday about sustainable buildings with Ed Mazria, the founder of advocacy group Architecture 2030, and Kent Peterson, past president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. One big takeaway: Building energy use isn't just about the building itself: What it took to build, what it takes to light and heat. Plug load—all the gadgets and appliances we stick in our outlets—accounts for a big chunk and, more importantly, a chunk that's currently a lot harder to control. After all, we have building regulations that mandate energy efficiency, but plug load (in the United States, anyway) is all voluntary.

What's more, it's not always easy for the people doing the plugging in get the big picture linking the cost, electricity use and fuel consumption of all their electronic stuff. GE is trying to help clear that up, infographic style. Their new, interactive chart allows you to pick the common electronics you own and see the impacts of each appliance in watts, dollars, gallons of gas or what they can do with 1 kilowatt hour of electricity. You can add up the totals by month, day or year, and some starred appliances have payback calculators, so you can see how fast a new Energy-Star rated replacement would pay for itself.

I love the watt and kilowatt hour views, especially. I find it's a standard unit most people can't connect to anything meaningful, turning discussions of sustainability into a lot of gibberish. Understanding that 1 kWh of electricity will run your dishwasher for 1 hour, or an oven for less than half an hour, makes a big difference there. As does the realization that hair driers and coffee machines use electricity at about the same rate as a space heater .

That said, I wish there was a toggle on this for greenhouse gas emissions, but I suppose that gets complicated, given that most people in the US don't get their electricity from just coal and it would be hard to figure out each, individual mix of power sources.

(Via Treehugger)

Image courtesy Flickr user tnarik, via cc

If you expect to see well, you will?

Posted: 06 May 2010 11:06 AM PDT

Research suggests that if you think you can see well, your eyesight will improve. In one of several fascinating experiments, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer showed a group of normal-sighted subjects a reversed eye chart, with the letters at the bottom increasingly larger. The subjects read the smallest letters better than they did on a regular eye chart. Why? According to Science News, "These results reflect people's expectation, based on experience with standard eye charts, that letters are easy to see at the top and become increasingly difficult to distinguish on lower lines, the researchers suggest." From Science News (Wikimedia Commons image):
Wikipedia Commons Thumb 9 9F Snellen Chart.Svg 481Px-Snellen Chart.Svg Eyesight markedly improved when people were experimentally induced to believe that they could see especially well, Langer and her colleagues report in the April Psychological Science. Such expectations actually enhanced visual clarity, rather than simply making volunteers more alert or motivated to focus on objects, they assert.

Langer's new findings build on long-standing evidence that visual perception depends not just on relaying information from the eyes to the brain but on experience-based assumptions about what can be seen in particular situations. Those expectations lead people to devote limited attention to familiar scenes and, as a result, to ignore unusual objects and events.
"Vision gets better with the right mind-set"

Albert Kahn's early color photographs of the world

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:58 AM PDT

Albert Kahn.jpeg Albert Kahn was a early 20th century banker from France who wanted to capture the world as it is using autochrome, the first known form of color photography. He spent 22 years creating over 72,000 color photos and 100 hours of film footage; his work is the subject of a nine-part BBC documentary series airing now.

Link via constant siege via Kottke

Mark Ryden: "The Gay 90s Old Tyme Art Show"

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:52 AM PDT

Rydenkasminnnn
Mark Ryden has a show of exquisite new paintings and drawings at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City. The exhibition, titled "The Gay 90s Old Tyme Art Show" runs until June 5, and selected works are also viewable online. Above, "The Piano Player" (#94), oil on canvas; below, "Incarnation" (#100), oil on panel. From the gallery:
Incarnaaaaryden In his hauntingly beautiful and masterfully executed oil paintings, Ryden creates his own contemporary mythologies whose archetypes include fairy tale creatures, historical figures, and pop cultural icons. Seamlessly juxtaposing macabre motifs like meat grinders and disembodied presidents with eye-pleasing ingénues and seductive landscapes, the artist produces a vision of society in which menace and comfort are inseparably interwoven. These labor-intensive canvasses deftly rework centuries of art history, combining the grandeur of Spanish and Italian religious painting with the decorative richness of Old Master compositions and the lush textures of French Neo-Classicism.

The central theme of The Gay 90s: Old Tyme Art Show references the idealism of the 1890s while addressing the role of kitsch and nostalgia in our current culture. "In the modern era, sentimentality and beauty have been disdained in the art world," he explains. "This new work is explores the line between attraction and repulsion to kitsch, and between beauty and banality." Through their visual richness and symbolic complexity, Ryden's infinitely suggestive dreamscapes invite us to enter their world and to indulge our sense of wonder.
Mark Ryden: The Gay 90s Old Tyme Art Show

Previously:


Flaming pants push a shopping cart, no one cares

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:42 AM PDT


Burning pants that push shopping carts must be a commonplace event on this campus, as it doesn't merit a glance from students. (Via Bits & Pieces)

Video of SWAT Raid on Missouri Family

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:21 AM PDT


Radly Balko of Reason posted this video of a SWAT raid on a family in Missouri. The officers found a small amount of cannabis, and so they arrested the parents on a charge of child endangerment, naturally.

It's horrifying, but I'd urge you to watch it, and to send it to the drug warriors in your life. This is the blunt-end result of all the war imagery and militaristic rhetoric politicians have been spewing for the last 30 years -- cops dressed like soldiers, barreling through the front door middle of the night, slaughtering the family pets, filling the house with bullets in the presence of children, then having the audacity to charge the parents with endangering their own kid. There are 100-150 of these raids every day in America, the vast, vast majority like this one, to serve a warrant for a consensual crime.
Just pretend it's an outtake from Idiocracy.

Video of SWAT Raid on Missouri Family

BP oil spill conspiracy theories

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:28 AM PDT

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I wasn't surprised when Rush Limbaugh noted the suspicious timing of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, occurring as it did on the eve of Earth Day and the impending Cap and Trade Bill announcement and just after Obama's reluctant OK of new drilling leases. Limbaugh suspects "environmental whackos" (click here) and who can blame him? I mean, it's clearly a small step from spiking trees to blowing up oil rigs. And to radical environmentalists, the destruction of the Gulf is a small price to pay to save the Gulf from destruction. Talk show host Mark Levin (click here), opines that Hugo Chavez-like, Obama dispatched SWAT teams to the Gulf as a "precursor" to the nationalization of the oil industry.

Though I'd heard her tell many official lies when she was G.W. Bush's spokesperson, I confess I was a little taken aback when Dana Perino (click here) joined the conspiratorial chorus ("I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory....but was this deliberate?") -though this is a woman who's also said, for all the world to hear, that America experienced no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.

Michael Brown, late of FEMA, ascribes the Obama administration's allegedly slow response to the catastrophe to naked political calculation. "We're seeing the Rahm Emanuel rule #1 taking effect, and that is to let no crisis go unused. So this is an opportunity for a President who wants to bankrupt the coal industry, and basically get rid of the oil and gas industry, to shut down offshore drilling."

(Click here for more). Obviously, Brown is a man with a chip on his shoulder; I can't really blame him for going off half-cocked.


I would file all of the above under the category of "opportunistic political demagoguery" rather than Conspiracy Theory as such. But then this week, David Emery, About.com's Urban Legends editor, forwarded me a viral e mail that's the real thing. The headline reads "US Orders Blackout Over North Korean Torpedoing Of Gulf Of Mexico Oil Rig"; the article is dated April 30th, and it appears to have originated at the What Does it Mean? website, written by a woman with the Pynchonesque name of Sorcha Faal. Click here to read it for yourself.


The gist of the story is that the oil rig disaster is the work of a North Korean suicide sub, deployed from a "cargo ship" out of Cuba:

The North Korean "cargo vessel" Dai Hong Dan believed to be staffed by 17th Sniper Corps "suicide" troops left Cuba's Empresa Terminales Mambisas de La Habana (Port of Havana) on April 18th whereupon it "severely deviated" from its intended course for Venezuela's Puerto Cabello bringing it to within 209 kilometers (130 miles) of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform which was located 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the coast of the US State of Louisiana where it launched an SSC Sang-o Class Mini Submarine (Yugo class) estimated to have an operational range of 321 kilometers (200 miles).


On the night of April 20th the North Korean Mini Submarine manned by these "suicidal" 17th Sniper Corps soldiers attacked the Deepwater Horizon with what are believed to be 2 incendiary torpedoes causing a massive explosion and resulting in 11 workers on this giant oil rig being killed outright. Barely 48 hours later, on April 22nd , this North Korean Mini Submarine committed its final atrocity by exploding itself directly beneath the Deepwater Horizon causing this $1 Billion oil rig to sink beneath the seas and marking 2010's celebration of Earth Day with one of the largest environmental catastrophes our World has ever seen.


The source of this sensitive intelligence is Russia's Northern Fleet (which I seem to recall was also much cited for the HAARP theory for the Haiti Earthquake). The real motive for the attack, the article concludes, is to put Obama in an "impossible dilemma"-either he allows the leak to continue indefinitely, wreaking untold economic and ecological havoc, or he authorizes the "nuclear option." A drone mini-sub is standing by, which could easily deploy "a B83 (Mk-83) strategic thermonuclear bomb having a variable yield (Low Kiloton Range to 1,200 Kilotons) which with its 12 foot length and 18 inch diameter, and weighing just over 2,400 pounds" could instantly seal the leak, "the only known and proven means" to do so. But that "would leave the UN's nuclear conference in shambles with every Nation in the World having oil rigs off their coasts demanding an equal right to atomic weapons to protect their environment from catastrophes too, including Iran."


This is too silly to respond to in depth; I'll leave that to Randall Amster at the Huffington Post (click here). But more interestingly, who is Sorcha Faal? The What Does it Mean.com site provides answers here, but they're awfully defensive and hard to follow.


But if you follow a different set of links, you'll learn that Faal is "Sister Maria Theresa, the 73rd Sorcha Faal of the Sorcha Faal Order, Elected as Mother Superior 3 February 2007." She is currently based in Israel.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, the 73rd Sorcha Faal joined the Order in March, 1973 and holds various degrees with both European and United States Universities.


Sorcha Faal has traveled and lectured extensively throughout the World, with her primary focus being the systematic structure of languages serving as a link between thought and sound, and as developed by Ferdinand de Saussure.
Sorcha Faal has further expanded her own research on 'Linguistic Ordering' with knowledge gained while a visiting researcher with Russian biophysicist and molecular biologist Pjotr Garjajev on the esoteric structure of DNA and its uses in explaining physic phenomena.


'In accepting this Conclave's nomination as the 73rd Sorcha Faal of our Order, I express the gratitude of all the Sisters in thanking Sister Lyuha for her guidance as our Sorcha Faal these past 7 years, especially her efforts these past 5 years in re-orienting all of us towards the Western World.


Our Order has always striven to provide to this World that Light needed to dispel the myths inherent in Darkness, but which without we could never see the truest balance between the two.'


There's more: The nuns of Sorcha Faal pre-date Christianity; their order was established in 588 BCE in Tara, County Meath, Ireland. They claim as their Founder the oldest daughter of King Zedekiah, Tamar Tephi (Tamar Tephi, the "Maid of Destiny" is a great heroine in British Israelitism; it is in her person that the line of the House of David comes to Great Britain). The name Sorcha Faal, the website says, comes from "the ancient Gaeilge branch of the Goidelic languages of Ireland" and has the meaning of: Sorcha: She Who Brings Light; Faal: the Dark and Barren Place. "The Order of Sorcha Faal comprises 18 Monasteries in Ireland, Russia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the United States."


That's what it says, anyway. If you're interested and have $25.95 to spend, you can order Sorcha Faal's book The True Knowledge of Three Minds, which "From the most ancient of texts, to the latest discoveries in quantum physics, and everything in-between....contains the truest knowledge of human beings available to the Western World today and provides the foundation upon which to live your life more powerfully than you could have ever imagined before."


Literally dozens of equally probable alarmist stories, often of an apocalyptic bent, have been dispatched under Sorcha Faal's name since 2004; they are archived here. For just a few examples, "All Private Guns Will Be Confiscated By September 2009, US Tells Russia" was issued in March of 2009; "Catastrophic Atmospheric Blast in Southern Hemisphere Continues Global Weather Chaos as North American Plate Instability Increases and US President Orders Massive Troop Withdrawal from New Madrid Fault Zone Region" in September 2005.

There has been frantic speculation in the world of conspiratorial websites over the years as to Sorcha Faal's real identity. Most suspect she is the creation of David Booth, a computer programmer, self-proclaimed psychic, and apocalyptic conspiracy theorist who is the author of Code Red: The Coming Destruction of America 2004. You can read the book here here if you like. But be advised that Jeff Rense's far right, anti-Semitic website exposed it as a cut-and-pasted tissue of plagiarisms (click here).


By the way, an update to the original oil spill article is now available: "US Goes To "COCKED PISTOL" Alert Status Over Korean War Fears." We may be on the brink of World War III! You can read it for yourself here.

Where do they come from? (ICP hits /b/ )

Posted: 06 May 2010 10:26 AM PDT
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