December 3
8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight. "Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers."
posted by chunking express at 8:17 AM - 20 comments
Box 5-1438: Report of a structure fire at 266 Franklin St. 10 years ago this evening in Worcester, MA, the
Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Fire started when two people living in the abandoned building,
Julie Barnes and Thomas Levesque, knocked over a candle during an argument and then fled. Upon arrival at the
quickly growing fire, reports were received about two people living in the building, and firefighters
entered the building to rescue them. During the
primary search, Rescue 1 firefighters
Paul Brotherton and
Jeremiah Lucey were the first to report trouble. They were lost on the 4th floor and running out of air. Soon after, a four man rescue crew of
Lt. Thomas Spencer (Ladder 2), firefighter
Timothy Jackson (Ladder 2),
Lt. James Lyons (Engine 3), and firefighter
Joseph McGuirk (Engine 3) reports that they have also become disoriented while searching the 5th floor. All six men died
that night, they are known as the
Worcester Six or
W6.
[more inside]
posted by rollbiz at 6:37 AM - 19 comments
"In just a few days, a verdict is expected in the trial of Amanda Knox, the 22-year-old Seattle exchange student on trial in Italy for the throat-slashing murder of her British roommate two years ago. ... The trial in the Umbrian college town of Perugia has dragged on just short of a year. As this week’s closing arguments showed once again, the case has very little to do with actual evidence and much to do with the ancient Italian code of saving face. ... What century is this? Didn’t Joan of Arc, the Inquisition and our own American Salem witch trials teach civilized nations a thing or two about contrived sexual hysteria with a devil twist?" -
Timothy Egan, New York Times. [previously] [more inside]
posted by billysumday at 6:31 AM - 40 comments December 2
The Smithsonian Libraries hark back to the ideas of Mr. James Smithson, the benefactor after
whom the Smithsonian is named. Mr. Smithson, an English scientist, never set foot in this
country, but was enamored of our nation’s independence and the way science and discovery
were becoming part of our national ethic, particularly through the work of Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin. During his lifetime, Mr. Smithson built up a large collection of books and
documents and obviously appreciated the value of libraries. He left his fortune and his book and
document collection to our nation to create an institution for the “diffusion and increase of
learning” in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian was authorized by Congress in 1846 and from
its outset it made provisions for a library to hold its growing collection of documents and books.
- From the Keynote Remarks:
An Age of Discovery: Distinctive Collections in the Digital Age
G. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
recently the ARL (Association of Research Libraries) and the CNI (Coalition for Networked Information) had their fall forum. [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation at 9:32 PM - 6 comments
Digitalfilms, a blog by video/film editor
Oliver Peters, serves primarily as a repository for his product reviews pertaining to nonlinear editing systems - including, but not limited to, Avid Media Composer and Apple Final Cut Pro...
[more inside]
posted by Neilopolis at 1:46 PM - 25 comments
HM was the subject of many landmark studies in neuroscience. After his hippocampus was removed to control epileptic seizures, he was unable to form long-term memories.
University of California - San Diego's
Brain Observatory is shaving his brain now, sliver after sliver, and posting the
live camera feed on the web.
[more inside]
posted by Vhanudux at 12:19 PM - 85 comments
December 1
The Pink Lady of Malibu "One Saturday morning, on October 29, 1966, a massive 60-foot-tall painting of a nude pink lady holding flowers suddenly appeared as you headed into the tunnel on Malibu Canyon Road."
Yep, that could be a
bit distracting..
[more inside]
posted by HuronBob at 7:47 PM - 16 comments
No mere transcription can give the true flavor of the original printing of The Eye of Argon. It was mimeographed with stencils cut on an elite manual typewriter. Many letters were so faint as to be barely readable, others were overstruck, and some that were to be removed never got painted out with correction fluid. Usually, only one space separated sentences, while paragraphs were separated by a blank line and were indented ten spaces. Many words were grotesquely hyphenated. And there were illustrations - I cannot do them justice in mere words, but they were a match for the text.
The Eye of Argon (
prev.), long hailed as the worst sci-fi story ever written, is at last available online in all its
original glory.
posted by Paragon at 12:15 PM - 64 comments « Older posts
