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December 31
Stunning photography
of wild things. Whales, Eagles, and more. Flash interface, but it's not too bad to navigate. Every time I think I'm getting good at taking pictures, I see something like this and just drool.
posted by solopsist at 11:36 PM PST - 28 comments
The Last Post, a military bugle call marking the end of the day, was originally
sounded to call off-duty soldiers to barracks; later it was also
incorporated into British and Commonwealth military funeral services (analogous to the playing of
Taps for
US military dead) and "symbolises that the duty of the dead is over and that they can
rest in peace." It's perhaps as fitting as "Auld Lang Syne" at the close of year 2005.
posted by orthogonality at 1:03 PM PST - 16 comments
The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
posted by Postroad at 12:46 PM PST - 33 comments
Many letters to the editor are unfit to print, but that didn't stop one of my local papers from saving them up and
printing the most entertaining today. Among the gems are complaints about ugly feet and phallic WalMart trash cans, as well as the astute observation that the "Frenchies" own a lot of foreign cars.
Registration may be required. I took the liberty of creating a metafilter/metafilter account.
posted by ewagoner at 10:06 AM PST - 20 comments
Did the blue dress ever exist?
Regina Louise had a miserable childhood, shuttled from foster home to foster home, at best ignored at best and at worst abused. There was only one happy memory from her childhood: the time she spent with the sole foster mother to ever show her love. But that woman had vanished from Louise's life years ago, and it seemed unlikely they'd ever meet again... (Warning: this newspaper article may make you cry.)
posted by yankeefog at 7:04 AM PST - 46 comments
December 30
Ads (*.wmv) for the Isuzu Gemini. Shot without special effects.
posted by driveler at 8:28 PM PST - 59 comments
We won the f*ing lottery!
Ingredients: TiVo of last week's lottery run, trusting friend, friends looking to capitalize on the relationship between the two and a lottery ticket for
this week's lottery to seal the deal.
(Um, yes, via) WARNING: Contains video, profanity, Milli Vanilli
posted by Ogre Lawless at 2:06 PM PST - 37 comments
Strange Fruit
Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees...
posted by caddis at 1:31 PM PST - 47 comments
The new Yahoo! Mail service, which features a "new interface more like that of a desktop e-mail application...[plus] e-mail caching; message preview; drag-and-drop filing, an integrated RSS feeder, and the ability to view multiple e-mails at the same time in separate windows and scroll through all message headers in a folder rather than one page at a time," is getting some
pretty good buzz (Leo really raved about it on TWiT last week). It's only out to a select few though -- any MeFites been privy?
posted by JPowers at 12:37 PM PST - 29 comments
Jeremy Hermanns' flight
on Alaska Air #536 was out of the ordinary, to say the least. A baggage handler ran into the plane before takeoff and didn't bother to report it. So when the plane reached altitude, its cabin suddenly depressurized, and was forced back to Sea-Tac Airport. Jeremy, who has experience as a pilot, posted about what happened on his blog. Rather than offer an apology, Alaska Air employees have taken to bashing him from company IP addresses.
This brings up a larger question, though. What
should companies do when their products or services fail, and consumers (almost inevitably) discuss it in a public forum? Jeff Jarvis'
Dell incident comes to mind. In that link, he mentions Dell's no talking to customers on blogs policy.
Would you rather have a company that reached out to disgruntled customers, or pushed them away? I've seen more than one small software company comment on a blog or take direct action as a result of a post -- is that the preferable route today?
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:20 AM PST - 40 comments
"[E]ven though you couldn't predict exactly what animals would look like if you started evolution over on earth, or it happened on another planet -- with a given gravity and density of their tissues,
the same basic patterns of their design would evolve again." A new study models
all forms of locomotion -- swimming, walking, flying by muscle or flying by 747 -- in one physics theory, and stultifies Stephen Jay Gould's conjectures about the "contingency" of evolution. [mi]
posted by orthogonality at 3:36 AM PST - 62 comments
December 29
A Disturbance in the Blogosphere: Publishing the UK/US/Uzbekistan Torture Memo.
Braving arrest,
bloggers have broken the UKs law of silence with the truth about torture.
Bloggers are mass publishing the leaked UK/US/Uzbekistan Torture Memos. The memos are from the correspondences of Craig Murray who was the United Kingdom's ambassador to Uzbekistan.
These memos are evidence and a memorandum of record outlining the rendition and torture of US-arrested prisoners in Uzbekistan.
From Craig Murray's Memo:
12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the [UN] Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful.
posted by Dunvegan at 11:51 PM PST - 246 comments
"Hi, Mom? Hi, I'm just calling to say I'm on my way to Baghdad."
In which a Floridian teen decides he wants to see what's going on in Iraq. So he, you know, goes.
"It was mid-afternoon Tuesday, after his second night in Baghdad, that he sought out editors at The Associated Press and announced he was in Iraq to do research and humanitarian work. AP staffers had never seen an unaccompanied teenage American walk into their war zone office. ("I would have been less surprised if little green men had walked in," said editor Patrick Quinn.)"
posted by LondonYank at 3:04 PM PST - 109 comments
Kirkbride Buildings.
Once state-of-the-art mental healthcare facilities, Kirkbride buildings have long been relics of an obsolete therapeutic method known as Moral Treatment. These massive structures were conceived as ideal sanctuaries for the mentally ill in the latter half of the nineteenth century. AKA:
The Kirkbride Plan. [more stuff inside]
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 10:03 AM PST - 21 comments
Of all the Christmas cards I received this year from political action committees,
this one from the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep & Bear arms best summed up the holiday spirit to me.
posted by jonson at 9:06 AM PST - 75 comments
Checks and No Balance
While previous presidents have at various times claimed the legal right to authorize searches and electronic surveillance without court warrants so as to gather foreign intelligence, those decisions have undergone scrutiny by either courts or congressional hearings.
It's fair to say that Bush had no intention of allowing public scrutiny of his act, since he personally summoned the top executives of The New York Times to a private meeting on December 6 and pressured them not to run the story about the domestic spying
posted by Postroad at 8:14 AM PST - 20 comments
Sacco and Vanzetti are guilty.
(
LA Times link, reg. required/bugmenot) At least according to a letter that recently surfaced in California. The letter saying this was apparently written by none other than famed muckraker
Upton Sinclair, author of
The Jungle.
What's more, after supposedly learning of their guilt from the pair's lawyer, Sinclair went ahead and wrote the novel
Boston, which helped popularize the view that the trial of
Sacco and Vanzetti was a matter of injustice, and the notion the two were innocent.
This is not the first time their guilt has been asserted, either.
In 1961,
Max Eastman, famous leftist-turned-McCarthy supporter, wrote an article which alleged that the shadowy
anarcho-syndicalist,
Carlo Tresca, had told him that Sacco was guilty but Vanzetti was innocent.
posted by Heminator at 7:07 AM PST - 33 comments
December 28
PICTURE THIS:
A folksy, self-consciously plainspoken Southern politician rises to power during a period of profound unrest in America. The nation is facing one of the half-dozen or so of its worst existential crises to date, and the people, once sunny, confident, and striving, are now scared, angry, and disillusioned. Through a combination of factors -his easy bearing chief among them (along with massive cash donations from Big Business; disorganization in the liberal opposition; a stuffy, aloof opponent; and support from religious fanatics who feel they've been unfairly marginalized)-he wins the presidential election.
Ripped from today's headlines? Nope.
Sinclair Lewis,
Circa 1935: "It Can't Happen Here" has been recently
reissued. But
you can read it here (with free registration) at
American Buddha (possibly NSFW).
first link via Arts & Letters Daily
posted by spock at 10:59 PM PST - 44 comments
Imagine what it might feel like to get hit in the head by a rotating helicopter blade.
Johnny Lowe found out two days ago -- and has survived to earn the nickname "Chopper".
posted by soiled cowboy at 8:47 PM PST - 25 comments
The Kids are Alright, Dammit.
Reason's Nick Gillespie weighs-in on the 2005 Modern Language Association annual convention.
"...faced with a choice between a sort of bitter righteousness and increasing irrelevance on the one hand and engaging students with more fair-minded argumentation and open-ended discussion, some academics are choosing the latter. That's certainly good news for kids stuck in freshman composition classes, those dreary required classes which are often little more than clumsy attempts at political indoctrination."
posted by ZenMasterThis at 3:01 PM PST - 42 comments
Miracle on 57th Street.
Thomas Wolfe said that America is not only the place where miracles happen, but where they happen all the time. This is the story of a miracle, a true-life fairy tale, and appropriately enough it begins with the intervention of the Almighty.
Artur Rodzinski, music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947, was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted. Rodzinski said that God told him to hire 24 year old
Leonard Bernstein, to be his assistant conductor. In the fall of 1943 Rodzinski decided to take a vacation, spend a little time with his goats, and called in
Bruno Walter to conduct seven concerts in ten days. Only hours before one of those concerts (in the program, works by Schumann, Rosza, Strauss and Wagner)
Walter fell ill. Rodzinski was only four hours away, in his farm. But he declined to come back to Carnegie Hall: "Call Bernstein. That's why we hired him." The concert was broadcast over radio and
a review appeared on page 1 of The New York Times the next day: "Young Aide Leads Philharmonic; Steps in When Bruno Walter is Ill". In the same size type as another that read, "Japanese Plane Transport Sunk." More inside.
posted by matteo at 10:41 AM PST - 48 comments
The Hard Road
A very engrossing and well written series by three reporters of the St Petersburg Times who spent a year reporting on a hit-and-run case that shocked Tampa. This long, tragic narrative broken into five installments, explores what happened after Jennifer Porter, a quiet, unassuming 28-year-old schoolteacher, ran down four of Lisa Wilkins' children one evening in March 2004. [
via]
posted by StarForce5 at 8:50 AM PST - 91 comments
December 27
LibriVox
is out to share public domain literature via podcast and soundfiles. Free. Volunteers do the reading. The
catalog has only a short list of completed works, but there are many "in progress." I was pleased to see
Psmith in the City is complete.
posted by mmahaffie at 6:48 PM PST - 14 comments
Enchanted Ceiling
is a menagerie of skies collected by you and your internet neighbors. It consists in a gallery of photos capturing the sky all over the world. The site was inspired by the enchanted ceiling of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which, by means of a spell, simulated the weather taking place outside. These pictures will nicely complement
the pictures of the earth made from the sky.
posted by Masi at 5:48 PM PST - 4 comments
Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced labor
"A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records." ...this is "zero tolerance" ?
posted by specialk420 at 4:09 PM PST - 42 comments
Collapse of civilization: Not necessarily a bad thing
Many will no doubt find the foregoing discussion of collapse depressing or pessimistic. In How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse, John Michael Greer hints at why this is, writing, Even within the social sciences, the process by which complex societies give way to smaller and simpler ones has often been presented in language drawn from literary tragedy, as though the loss of sociocultural complexity necessarily warranted a negative value judgment. This is understandable, since the collapse of civilizations often involves catastrophic human mortality and the loss of priceless cultural treasures, but like any value judgment it can obscure important features of the matter at hand. Greer goes on to characterize collapse in terms of ecological succession.
Collapse happens precisely because it improves our livesand it happens when the alternative is no longer tolerable.
posted by halekon at 11:33 AM PST - 45 comments
Matt Damitio's shamelessly egotistical Buddhist-Anarchist blog
offers three books for free download:
Slackville Road, a novel about homelessness in the US;
Rough Living: An Urban Survival Manual about how to survive, er, homelessness in the US, and, last but not least, the
Anarchist Manifesto Project, which offers an easy introduction to such rare philosophical delicacies as Anarcho-Taoism, primitivism, syndicalism, and green anarchism... a healthy antidote to the sense of defeated self-loathing that the corporations have generously given us all for Christmas. "Money is what the system tells us people obviously need", opines Damitio. "However, if one takes a deeper look, it becomes clear that what we really need is time. Time to enjoy a spontaneous discussion. Time to express our views and hear them critiqued. Time to hear the views of others and allow our thoughts and ideas to evolve."
posted by cleardawn at 7:19 AM PST - 66 comments
In Middle Class, Signs of Anxiety on School Efforts.
The New York City Department of Education has made a number of changes to gifted and talented and special admission programs, and has increased the emphasis on test preparation. These changes (it is suggested) may start pushing middle-class parents out of the (relatively few) public schools regarded as good. Parents who can afford the $20k tuition and who can manage the admissions process will go to private school ... one supposes those who fall short on either front will go to the suburbs.
posted by MattD at 6:24 AM PST - 20 comments
December 26
Having trouble
with that new videogame you got for Christmas?
Text-only walkthroughs don't do it for you? Then try Stuck Gamer. Video walkthroughs for a pretty good number of games. Including, thanks the Lords of Kobol,
Ninja Gaiden.
posted by WolfDaddy at 10:04 PM PST - 16 comments
RIP Vincent Schiavelli
, a character actor who appeared in
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,
Buckaroo Banzai,
Amadeus,
Death to Smoochie and a ton of other films. A cult favorite, he was one of those actors you looked at and thought, "who
is that guy?".
posted by dbiedny at 2:06 PM PST - 81 comments
The Agency That Could Be Big Brother
[when this guy talks about NSA, he is authoritative] "DEEP in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country's largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a "radio quiet" zone, the station's large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour"...
posted by Postroad at 11:17 AM PST - 100 comments
MAN - Mothers Against Noise.
"Noise is music that uses unpleasant or painful or extremely loud or discordant sound. Noise is also a very dangerous musical trend that is hell bent on destroying civilized culture, this anti-cultural movement is quickly sweeping the globe, and is very dangerous to our youth."
via MonkeyFilter and our own panoptican.
posted by loquacious at 11:14 AM PST - 70 comments
There have been a number of urban exploration or modern ruins photography posts here over the years, but I couldn't find any that linked to my new favorite modern ruin site,
opacity.us. With 85 galleries of subjects as gorgeous as
Bannerman's Arsenal and as haunting as the
Verden Psychiatric Hospital, it's a treasure trove of entropy on film.
posted by jonson at 10:27 AM PST - 18 comments
December 25
There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you're not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but
how to procrastinate well. (via
slashdot)
posted by Chuckles at 11:04 PM PST - 24 comments
December 24
America seems a little less evil today. The outrage and indignation expressed in a
previous MeFi story was unjustified. The Department of Homeland Security did not visit a student after he made an interlibrary request for Mao Tse-Tung's Little Red Book. The student
made it all up.
posted by Meridian at 4:34 PM PST - 53 comments
Off in the Christmas Cosmos.
Concert promoter Andy Cirzan spends a lot of his free time scouring record stores, thrift shops and flea markets for odd and obscure Christmas music. You used to have to be an industry insider to get a copy of his annual compilation, but now there's a download courtesy of
Sound Opinions (the world's only rock 'n roll talk show). If the barrage of Christmas standards has left you with the holiday blahs, let the Free Design, Lord Beginner, and the polka of Don Cornell get you back in the mood. If that's not enough, get more (including Mr. Cirzan explaining what the heck you're listening too) on the SoundOpinions
podcast.
posted by hydrophonic at 1:24 PM PST - 10 comments
Merry Christmas
Gesëende Kersfees, Milad Majid, Bon Nadal i un Bon Any Nou!, Sretan Bozic, Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan, Gajan Kristnaskon, Joyeux Noel......
posted by zouhair at 4:52 AM PST - 36 comments
It Isnt Easy Being the Sexy Bin Laden
: the face is alluring (big dark eyes, long lashes, plump lips, caramel skin). Satin sheets, a feather boa and not much else.
And who could resist alluring bin Laden quotes like this?
At the end of the day, I believe that the American people understand things and they have compassion and they see whats fair, [bin Laden] says. "Theyre very fair, and thats why I love America, and thats why my mom loves America.
Or
this quote:
Come on, wheres the American spirit? Accept me. I want to be embraced, because my values are like yours. And Im here. Im not hiding.
posted by Davenhill at 1:17 AM PST - 58 comments
At last, someone is going to take the legal route.
Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 22 CIA Agents suspected of involvement in the US kidnap/torture policy.
"The new warrants allow for the suspects' detention anywhere in the 25-nation EU, a prosecutor said." That's more lost clients for the European tourist industry.
posted by cassbrown1 at 12:14 AM PST - 45 comments
CryptoKids
Hey Kids! Want to learn about how to spy on your friends? Do you like to snitch on your siblings? Here's a fun
site for you where the U.S. Government can start to let you know about the fun world of cryptography and violating the Fourth Amendment rights of your fellow citizens.
For you parents, check out the NSA's
Responsible Citizen page! Note the funny ellipses after the references to the Fourth Amendment and Government Oversight. Your tax dollars at work.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:06 AM PST - 11 comments
December 23
How do you say, "I have a gub" in Hungarian?
(registration or video viewing required) Attila Ambrus, the handsome, courtly Whiskey Robber of Budapest, shares his tale with Salon, and what a yarn it is! After fleeing his native Romania beneath a train, Ambrus was variously a pelt-smuggler, Zamboni-wrangler, world-class hockey failure, gravedigger, and dog-walker, until he found his true calling in 1993: relieving banks of their cash.
Then the story gets interesting, involving bad disguises, flowers for the bank tellers, a nervous stomach, a prison break via knotted bedclothes, and pursuit by his own Lieut. Columbo. It all added up to folk heroism for "Chicky Panther," until they put him away in Hungary's maximum security slammer, where he languishes today. Now he's talking, and Hollywood's listening.
posted by rob511 at 11:51 PM PST - 8 comments
The New York Times (reg required) is reporting
that the
National Security Agency has eavesdropped on far more domestic telecommunications at the directive of President Bush than has been previously admitted. "The N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications... N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation."
posted by chakalakasp at 10:09 PM PST - 243 comments
A Yule Log for your iPod.
If you don't live in the New York area, and you have one of those fancy video iPods, you can now download some holiday cheer from Channel 11. (Their Yule Log phenomenon was previously discussed
here.) For more information about Yule Log traditions, wikipedia features in depth articles on both
the traditional and
the modern. [Inspired by logging out of gmail.]
posted by jann at 7:38 PM PST - 11 comments
In 1993, a series of
racist incidents plagued Billings, Montana. When a brick was thrown through 5 year old Issac Schnitzer's menorah-decorated window, the predominantly non-Jewish city responded in a remarkable way: the local paper printed thousands of
menorahs, and people displayed them in their windows as a gesture of solidarity. Since then, the story has inspired
a book,
a play, a song and a
movement.
posted by Biblio at 12:49 PM PST - 29 comments
Federal surveillance
of over a hundred homes, businesses, mosques, warehouses and other sites has been conducted without warrants, according to a new USNews report. Indications are that the persons so targeted were US citizens. "In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the program. Some participants were threatened with loss of their jobs when they questioned the legality of the operation, according to these accounts."
posted by darkstar at 12:40 PM PST - 131 comments
The War on Christmas.
A very brief overview of the war Christians have waged against other religious holidays since roughly 400AD. Just a reminder of the reason for the season.
posted by tcobretti at 12:18 PM PST - 33 comments
BT Technology Timeline 2006-2051
It's interesting to see a major company such as BT set a timeline such as this, especially as they say thier 1990 timeline has had around 80% accuracy. They predict a supercomputer as powerful as the human mind in 2006, self aware computers that pass the turing test by 2020, and the rise of a global computer dictator by and artificial brain around 2040. After that its hard to predict, you know with the singularity coming and all...
Some of the interesting things they predict: genetically engineered teddy bears; androids form 10% of the population around 2015; the Matrix is created, 2030; thought recognition as input device by 2014; the list goes on and on.
Discuss. [
via]
posted by daHIFI at 9:33 AM PST - 43 comments
Governor Taft of Ohio is about to sign
Senate Bill 9, the Ohio Patriot Act. Among its provisions:
- Police can deny entry to "transportation infrastructure" to anyone not showing an ID;
- Police can demand the name, address, and date of birth of anyone suspected of having committed a crime or being about to commit a crime, or having witnessed a crime or a plan to commit a crime. Failure to provide this information is an arrestable offense -- so basically all demonstrators could be required to give their names, addresses and dates of birth or face arrest;
- Reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's famous question, many state licenses will begin with the question "Are you a member of an organization on the U.S. Department of State Terrorist Exclusion List?". Failure to answer means no license; answering affirmatively is self-incrimination.
- Perhaps worst of all, the original version of the bill simply prohibited state or local governemnts or government employees from objecting to the USA PATRIOT act. The current version allows criticism, but threatens local government with the loss of funds if they in any way "materially hinder" Federal anti-terrorism efforts.
"Welcome to Ohio! Ihre Papiere, bitte!"
posted by orthogonality at 8:59 AM PST - 128 comments
King William's College Quiz.
Mefites, your mission: Collectively solve the hardest 100 year old annual quiz around. (Be warned, I think they're getting wiser to the appliance of google-fu science.)
posted by biffa at 2:43 AM PST - 75 comments
December 22
A Natural History of Peace.
Humans like to think that they are unique, but the study of other primates has called into question the exceptionalism of our species. So what does primatology have to say about war and peace? Contrary to what was believed just a few decades ago, humans are not "killer apes" destined for violent conflict, but can make their own history.
posted by semmi at 9:06 PM PST - 13 comments
"Do you know your Downfall from your Descent, your Crash from your Wedding Crashers? Discover how oblong-eyed you were in 2005 with our bumper end-of-year
quiz". And be sure to post your score.
posted by JPowers at 3:27 PM PST - 39 comments
NSFW MMOrgy: No more logging on and feeling sheepish 'cause you wanna know where the bordello is first. No more endless search through horrible shops finding implements for you and your fiancee who's 3000 miles away to have fun with.
NSFW
posted by signal at 1:13 PM PST - 25 comments
A
time attack of Megaman X and Megaman X2, played simultaneously on one controller by one person. (Torrent download link provided on page)
posted by jimmy at 12:32 PM PST - 21 comments
poketo.com's limited vinyl wallets
might be the perfect last-minute gifts.. sweet designs by lots of fancy design and art people (links and infos to everyone of them too), e.g. derek kirk kim had 3 designs (take a look at the sold out designs by clicking on "archive" and "sale")
posted by suni at 8:43 AM PST - 63 comments
Narrow Casting:
This article describes the trend of narrowcasting, a media consumption pattern in which users increasingly turn to specialized, often web-produced media content and away from professionally mass-marketed content shown on TV and sold in record and video stores. [Via Aldaily.com]
posted by gregb1007 at 2:41 AM PST - 12 comments
December 21
Shadowmechanics
- Appropriately apocalyptic scenes for these end times. Artwork/Illustration by Harry Halme. A definite preponderance of nightmarish creatures and reapers to suit the mood of the last few day's political landscape. I found this at
SpartanDog.
posted by spicynuts at 7:21 PM PST - 17 comments
Our Domestic Intelligence Crisis
Federal Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner imagines a world in which US citizens are constantly under electronic surveillance.... and is totally okay with it.
Once you accept Posner's premise that "machine collection and processing of data cannot, as such, invade privacy," how far are we from cameras and microphones in private homes. After all, there is no privacy invasion so long as it is only a computer flagging "
suspicious" activity, right?
posted by GregW at 1:25 PM PST - 164 comments
Abramoff
is negotiating a possible deal with the Justice Department, in which he would agree to plead guilty and cooperate in the wide-ranging political corruption investigation focused on his dealings with members of Congress and executive branch officials, people familiar with the talks said last night.
Abramoff's
entry in the Wikipedia. WaPo's
chart outlining Abramoff's dealings. A dKos
diary pointing out some omissions in the chart. [Newsfilter]
posted by darkstar at 12:14 PM PST - 49 comments
Take a trip with me to 1913.
To
Calumet, Michigan, in the
Copper Country.
I'll take you to a place called
Italian Hall,
Where the
miners are having their big
Christmas Ball.
This time of year,
Woody Guthrie's haunting ballad "
1913 Massacre" brings to mind one of the most tragic incidents in American labor history. At the midpoint of the bitter and violent
miners' strike of 1913-14, miners and their families gathered for a Christmas party given by their union. An unidentified "
stupid person" gave the shout of "
fire", causing a panicked rush to escape. Unable to get out the door,
more than 70 people, mostly children, were smothered to death. A forthcoming documentary (main link) explores the legacy of the event, using Guthrie's song as its starting point.
posted by Miko at 9:38 AM PST - 19 comments
Absolve Big Box shopping guilt!
So apparently this bookstore in Boston decided if you can't beat them join them. You can basically buy permission to shop at a big box store...or absolve your guilt depending on how you look at it. Suppose they had to license the concept from the Catholic Church?
posted by UMDirector at 8:45 AM PST - 23 comments
Listening In and Naming Names
"...The press tends to shy away from covering America's largest and most secretive intelligence agency, fearing precisely the kind of scolding President Bush delivered to the New York Times. But the truth is that the NSAwhich has an estimated $6 billion annual budget bigger than those of the CIA and the FBI combinedhas a decidedly checkered history when it comes to playing by the rules." And yet, NSA abuse seems not limited to Bush. Now, possib ly,
Carter and Clinton also used NSA for spying on civilians.
That said, NSA seems also to have been used for non-miltary spying,
to help selected American firms compete against rival companies elsewhere.
What is curious about this agency is that it is the single biggest intelligence organization in our country and yet so few people know what they do, where they are, what they had been legally allowed to do. If, as we are told, tapping phones is necessary in our fight against terror, why then doesn't the FBI do this? If any mobster worth his blackjack knows not to use phones because they are potentially tapped, why are we told that NSA doesn't want terrorists alerted to our tapping their phones and therefore there ought not to be any discussion of this
