Saturday, January 24, 2004

........
london gig/broadcast: another resonance fundraiser

The Spitz, 109 Commercial Street, London E1.
Sunday 25 January 2004 at 8pm. £5 (LMC members free).
"Chris Cutler and Thomas Dimuzio + Ben Drew, Alastair Leslie & Ivan Seal + John Edwards + DJs Ben Green and Paul Davis. It's going to be noisy..."
.........

good list [ie. new things to play tomorrow. simultaneously. with other old things.] ::

joe colley: desperate attempts at beauty [auscultare]
seth nehil: umbra [edition...]
jason lescalleet: mattresslessness [cut]
junko: sleeping beauty [elevage de poussiere]
surface tension: ed. b.labelle/k.ehrlich [errant bodies press] [book/cd]
toshiya tsunoda/civyiu kkliu [bremssstrahlung]

also:
hoping resonance will be able to broadcast here john duncan's upcoming weekly 3 hour italian radio show: 'close radio'
but mainly:
being a student again.
posted by Ben , 11:20 PM Þ 


Alison... for your vinyl collection.


Love that cover art.
posted by Alun , 8:14 PM Þ 


Dead.
posted by Alun , 11:18 AM Þ 

Whoa. I just hit on the concept of a turntable made with aerogel. Wouldn't that stuff be acoustically neutral? INZANE!
posted by Barrie , 8:56 AM Þ 

hot or not.

hot:
LFO / Nitzer Ebb rmx
Four Tet - Rounds
Si Begg - Buss
Soulseek/Nicotine
iTunes Remote Sharing
Feeling Creative
Getting work done
Books I got for Christmas

not:
Not having any money to records. Or food.
Bills bills bills
Prospect of having my phone and mobile cut off at a really inconvenient time (and hence, therefore, thusly my ADSL)
LFO / Dizzee Rascal bootleg (actually can't make my mind up on this)
Missing my friend's Fabric debut

Also, could I be the first person on Blogdial to have their name return a valid Google news item? Very odd. I'll explain in a few weeks.

PS: Does anyone here live in LA?
posted by alex_tea , 3:30 AM Þ 

YOU SEE!!!!!!!

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040118-114335-2930r.htm

Study used census information for terror profile
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published January 19, 2004

U.S. census information provided by millions
of Americans was used in a government study to
profile airline passengers as terrorist risks.
The National Aeronautics and Space
Administration also obtained for its study the
private information of hundreds of thousands of
passengers flying Northwest Airlines, an action
NASA denied to The Washington Times in September.
[...]
posted by Irdial , 2:12 AM Þ 

I'm still at work, I am not looking at that link now.

There are only 33 pages out of billions that have that sequence in them.

Now there are 34.
posted by Irdial , 12:04 AM Þ 
Friday, January 23, 2004

I'm still at work, I am not looking at that link now.
posted by mary13 , 11:07 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 11:05 PM Þ 

Mario
You are Mario. You're pretty good-all-around.
You're most of the time the hero, and you don't
get too hung up in it...just try and let others
get a little spot-light too, k? (plz rate)


What Nintendo Charater are You? (pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by Claus Eggers , 10:28 PM Þ 

Cool things:
Brie and apples on walnut bread
Swan pose
Seventh Heaven on a sunny day
The manicure salon around the corner
Long socks and A-line skirts
Caribou Rain, Roy Finch

I can't think of any uncool things right now. It's Friday!
posted by mary13 , 10:03 PM Þ 

10,000 Songs on Your Website.
iTunes Catalog creates beautiful online catalogs of your music collection, displays the cover artwork for each album, and can even look up song lyrics. In addition, it can copy all your album artwork into iTunes, so you don't have to spend hours doing it yourself! [...]

http://homepage.mac.com/azc/iTunesCatalog/
posted by Irdial , 9:27 PM Þ 

Daily Mail-o-Matic

I use BlogThis! Simple, effective, and not quite as obvious at work.
posted by alex_tea , 8:16 PM Þ 

More on RIPA. By using the word "snoop" the debate is recast using words that aer not as inflamatory as they need to be. The word snoop should be replaced, in every instance when we talk about RIPA with the word "Violate". So a "snooper" is more correctly named as a VIOLATOR and snooping becomes what it really is, VIOLATING, and when they have done it it is VIOLATION.
posted by Irdial , 7:53 PM Þ 

Koopa
You are Koopa. Unlike Wario, you ARE bad. You don't
just put on. (plz rate)


What Nintendo Charater are You? (pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by Irdial , 7:19 PM Þ 

I had a meeting today, and went to it in a Black Cab. I told the driver about the 600 bodies that are now able to "snoop" on him.

He went ballistic.

He said, "I listen to Radio 4 every day, and I have not heard anything about this; how could they do something like this? Are you sure?"

He then explained that people like him are going to be targeted more than others, simply because of his job. He then said, "What are we going to do about it?"

And I told him, "Make sure you tell at least two other people about this, and make sure they promise to tell two other people. In this way, the whole country will know about it in a week, and then something will happen". As soon as I got out of the cab, he called his wife and went into an attack.

I then mentioned it to the people that I was having a meeting with; all of whom are medical professionals. One blurted out, "This is pure Fascism. I despise David Blunkett, and am horrified that they are getting away with this. What are we going to do about it?"

None of these professionals knew that RIPA was being made law. Needless to say, once they found out about it, they were outraged and deeply offended.

I encourage all of you to do what I did; tell people that you dont even know that this is at its very beginning, and that it can still be stopped. If everyone in the country is up in arms about it, it will be reveresed. This can only happen if there is 100% knowledge about the new powers.

Tell everyone you know, and make them promise to tell at least two people.
posted by Irdial , 7:16 PM Þ 

Are Blogdialians using BlogThis? I just installed BlogThis for Mozilla and it makes the act of blogging that much easier/faster.
posted by Josh Carr , 7:02 PM Þ 


Mine, all mine!

All I need do now is RTFM...
posted by Alun , 6:28 PM Þ 

Koopa
You are Koopa. Unlike Wario, you ARE bad. You don't
just put on. (plz rate)
posted by alex_tea , 5:57 PM Þ 

Mario
You are Mario. You're pretty good-all-around.
You're most of the time the hero, and you don't
get too hung up in it...just try and let others
get a little spot-light too, k? (plz rate)


What Nintendo Charater are You? (pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by meau meau , 4:56 PM Þ 

Daisy
You are Daisy. You're just the opposite of Peach,
you're very down-to-earth and mabie even a
little athletic. You love to have fun. (plz
rate)


What Nintendo Charater are You? (pics)
brought to you by Quizilla
posted by Alison , 4:30 PM Þ 
posted by Alison , 4:23 PM Þ 
posted by Alison , 4:19 PM Þ 

My cool list:
Suzi Godsons "The Sex book", finally a well-written book on the subject!
"Jungle Fever"
People that looks good both on the inside and outside
irdial discs
Christian, Bj?rn and Matthew
My beautiful and nerdy boyfriend
Curtis Mayfield


My uncool list:
Fashionvictims
Danish police
VIP's
Television
Beeing a woman in general
Cafepress.com I have been waiting ages for my Vagina Power-bag and other goodies!
posted by Alison , 3:48 PM Þ 

Telepathic charm seduces audience at paranormal debate

JOHN WHITFIELD


[LONDON] Scientists tend to steer clear of public debates with advocates of the paranormal. And judging from the response of a London audience to a rare example of such a head-to-head conflict last week, they are wise to do so.

Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist at University College London, made the case against the existence of telepathy at a debate at the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London on 15 January. Rupert Sheldrake, a former biochemist and plant physiologist at the University of Cambridge who has taken up parapsychology, argued in its favour. And most of the 200-strong audience seemed to agree with him.

Wolpert is one of Britain's best-known public spokesmen for science. But few members of the audience seemed to be swayed by his arguments.

Sheldrake, who moved beyond the scientific pale in the early 1980s by claiming that ideas and forms can spread by a mysterious force he called morphic resonance, kicked off the debate.

He presented the results of tests of extrasensory perception, together with his own research on whether people know who is going to phone or e-mail them, on whether dogs know when their owners are coming home, and on the allegedly telepathic bond between a New York woman and her parrot. "Billions of perfectly rational people believe that they have had these experiences," he said.

Wolpert countered that telepathy was "pathological science", based on tiny, unrepeatable effects backed up by fantastic theories and an ad hoc response to criticism. "The blunt fact is that there's no persuasive evidence for it," he said. "An open mind is a very bad thing — everything falls out."

For Ann Blaber, who works in children's music and was undecided on the subject, Sheldrake was the more convincing. "You can't just dismiss all the evidence for telepathy out of hand," she said. Her view was reflected by many in the audience, who variously accused Wolpert of "not knowing the evidence" and being "unscientific".

From Nature.com
My emphasis.
posted by Alun , 3:39 PM Þ 

Education film from 1984 about Computer Music

Interesting bit on self publishing towards the end, something which has now become true?
posted by alex_tea , 3:27 PM Þ 

It is recognisable that the government may try to reduce costs by using a private firm to handle data that they collect, and we've been through those arguments, however to create a situation where covert information gathered about a person is released into a market where it can be traded between bodies not only undermines an individuals expectation of privacy, but increases enormously the opportunities for such data to be mishandled and leaked to third parties or into the public domain.

While covert data harvesting is handled by the government, those institutions with which a person has a direct contract, ISPs, card agencies etc. have a recognised authority to which they may be required to cede information. The use of private firms to collect information will again increase the possibility for data to be leaked or mishandled due to the multitude of firms that could request it.

The article states millions of requests could be made a year, and there only appears to be a legislative safeguard, the commisioner would presumably look into breaches of privacy by which time it would be too late too stop; Identity fraud; proliferation of false information; denial of services to an individual...
posted by meau meau , 1:55 PM Þ 

This is absolutely wrong.

Say why.
posted by Irdial , 12:32 PM Þ 

£3bn hole in defence budget (guardian)

It's that crazy number again, wasn't £3bn the cost of invading Iraq? Now I wonder where that hole came from.
posted by meau meau , 11:44 AM Þ 

bbc

Snooping powers given to more than 600 public bodies look set to create a small industry of private firms that will help process requests for information about who people call, the websites they visit and who they swap e-mail with...

This is absolutely wrong.
posted by meau meau , 11:34 AM Þ 

the one cool thing i can think of at the mo;
Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall's River Cottage Year. Seasonal produce for seasonal recipes. Tomorrow is a kind of coq au vin, but with pheasant.
Jerusalem artichokes, savoy cabbage, Jersey cream, Colston Bassett stilton. Chips and gravy.
posted by Alun , 11:23 AM Þ 

the cool list

Hanna
Ogun recordings and Ogun Recordings
Spotani
Roy Harper (always the fucking coolest)
Mats G for the Swedish psych
this

the totally uncool list

Acanthamoeba Keratitis
eBay
posted by Mess Noone , 10:54 AM Þ 

Gated residential areas are just so wvil, yes so wvil they made me type wvil just by thinking about them. They reinforce social stratification by income, discourage use of public space - because it's dangerous, encourage a mode of living based purely upon individual requirements - excessive car usage and increased travelling to shops and schools, etc. Their presence encourages a heightened perception of crime by THEM out there. Gated community/Open prison. Maybe it is better for government to keep people happily tucked up in their own houses while they look after the big bad world outside.

-

I have a defecit of cool in my life this month.

Touching The Void (film) was neat though
posted by meau meau , 10:24 AM Þ 

The cool list from Davros:

Xysma - Lotto
Hffax
Tandy M100 and CGP-115 plotter
My shed
Polaroids
King Crimson
Thermal Printers
My girlfriend
FreeDos
Laptop picture frames (coming soon)
Websites that advertise themselves in CW on shortwave (apparently there's one that uses a CW beacon to give out the URL).
posted by captain davros , 9:22 AM Þ 

Congratulations, clegso!

Nasa rover breaks down on Mars
I guess we better send a manned mission over there to fix 'er up! *cough*

if i'm going to listen to noisy crescendo-rock,
I was listening to the new album by "Explosions in the Sky," and doggone it, I LIKED it, which surprised me. It's the most dynamic crescendo-rock I've ever heard (that is a GREAT term, btw), it's downright Romantic if I do say so.
However the entire 50 minutes of that album is still not close to as good as the 8 minutes of "Ratts of the Capital." Brilliant. But I still like 'Splosions, even if they are from Texas.
More COOL:
Philip K Dick - The Man in the High Castle (is it just me or was this man a genius?)
Ursula K LeGuin - The Left Hand of Darkness
our new kitten
no new music since school started :( Some cool stuff on the college radio though.

Solaris OST
Get the Criterion DVD of the original movie, too. Breathtaking!
posted by Barrie , 7:29 AM Þ 

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool
Nothin' Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico

11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm hungry and I'm going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I'd like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven't spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that's exactly what we're going to do. But I'm here to take somebody's order. That would be you, Stretch -- what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It's part of how the economy grows. You've got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I'm ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib?

Q But Mr. President --

THE PRESIDENT: Stretch, thank you, this is not a press conference. This is my chance to help this lady put some money in her pocket. Let me explain how the economy works. When you spend money to buy food it helps this lady's business. It makes it more likely somebody is going to find work. So instead of asking questions, answer mine: are you going to buy some food?

Q Yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. What would you like?

Q Ribs.

THE PRESIDENT: Ribs? Good. Let's order up some ribs.

Q What do you think of the democratic field, sir?

THE PRESIDENT: See, his job is to ask questions, he thinks my job is to answer every question he asks. I'm here to help this restaurant by buying some food. Terry, would you like something?

Q An answer.

Q Can we buy some questions?

THE PRESIDENT: Obviously these people -- they make a lot of money and they're not going to spend much. I'm not saying they're overpaid, they're just not spending any money.

Q Do you think it's all going to come down to national security, sir, this election?

THE PRESIDENT: One of the things David does, he asks a lot of questions, and they're good, generally.

END 11:29 A.M. MST


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040122-5.html

I dont want Blogdial in the refferer logs of those bastards.
posted by Irdial , 7:15 AM Þ 

a pdf file

Note how light needs to enter a CCD
posted by meau meau , 4:40 AM Þ 

Music:
Max Richter : The Blue Notebooks
Sylvain Cheauveau : Un Autre Décembre
Jan Jelineck avec The Exposures : La Nouvelle Pauvreté
France Gall
Serge Gainsbourg

Film:
Valley of the Dolls
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
A Bout de Souffle
Tron
posted by alex_tea , 12:06 AM Þ 
Thursday, January 22, 2004

please, miracle, happen and let us move to the country

Amen brother.

better than film ever was.

hmmm digital is good for vegans because it doesnt use gelatin, made from gound up cows bones.

Black Dice: NO Absolutely NO.

I actually want to hear about specific acts that are new and that I have not heard yet, but of course, broke my own rule, and listed old stuff. Oh well. Lets add this truely wonderful thing that is doing it for me:

Wagner: Das Rheingold- Thus, we begin in the green

Oh dear, thats special!

Solaris OST: now THAT I want to get.
posted by Irdial , 10:56 PM Þ 

rhythm & sound 'w/ the artists' burial mix
various artists 'chicago one-stop: staff picks, vol. 1' aestuarium
rope 'widow's first dawn' family vineyard
michel krasna 'remembrance of things to come ost' argos films
monolake 'momentum' [ml/i]
russ gabriel 'voltage control' input neuron
surgeon 'live @ u-club' mp3
edward artemiev 'solaris ost' toei music publishing
popol vuh 'in the gardens of pharao/aguirre' celestial harmonies
tim hecker 'radio amor' mille plateaux
posted by Ken , 9:33 PM Þ 

Got a very well paid job today. That's cool.
In negotiations with HP Inksupport in Sweden to get neutral greys with my new printer. I send them a packet of samples. On my second call, the supporter recognized me. They are very professional. That's cool.
Did I mention that I bought a Canon EOS 10D, with a 17-40mm L lens for christmas? That's very cool, and Barrie I'm afraid it very much better than film ever was.
And I'm romantically involved now, which is very very... hot.

Neil Young "Ragged Glory"
Public Enemy "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back"
Public Enemy "Fear of A Black Planet"
Bappi Lahiri "Disco Dancer" "Tarzan" "Kasam Paida Karne Wale Ki"
80'ies India in general is cool.
Prince "The Hits 1"
Ors "Moonboots"
Tavares "It Only Takes a Minute Girl"
Silver Connection "Get Up And Boogie"
Tom Moulton is MEGA cool, check out Loleatta Holliday "Dreamin' (Tom Moulton Edit), The Chocolat's and Tavares.
Larry Levan is cool.
The "Funky Kingston" compilation from Trojan is this months absolute killer however. Absolutely fab.
Timmy Thomas "Why Can't We Live Together?" (Whauuw!)
Sebastian "Den store flugt"
Blogdial stay cool.
posted by Claus Eggers , 9:24 PM Þ 

One child genius to another: Study

do you guys know about sho yano? modern-day doogie howser, md.

i love the part where watson says to try and avoid girls. it is also interesting that he thinks we're getting close to curing cancer, so he cautions against entering that area of research. what a different world!

re: black dice, i find their music boring and linear... dfa/constellation stuff in general, really. not really all that exciting to me. live they seem to be quite heavy-handed and dull. i don't get it. if i'm going to listen to noisy crescendo-rock, i'll take mogwai. all these other bands are a fad. you don't like wolf eyes, do you?

i'd much rather put on a labradford lp.
posted by Ken , 9:07 PM Þ 

not part of the cool lists, just 'emo phillips'

also not on the list, but in my head...
mingus primer in the wire for those in need, finally.
jeremy paxman's 'the political animal', fucking hilarious in a 'democracy has never really been democratic and now less than ever even though we continue to kid ourselves and MY GOD are any politicians AT ALL sane? and the old adage that those who seek power should by default be excluded from doing so seems particularly appropriate' kind of way
please, miracle, happen and let us move to the country
london stinks. you notice after a few weeks out
velvia blows my eyes
simpson, eh?
i need new books again
wellcome trust meeting in the morning, i need to sleep
robert crumb
light by m. john harrison, good but no cigar
i saw innocence, alive and well in a village in the jungle over the western ghats, and it put a glow in my heart
posted by Alun , 8:57 PM Þ 

emo phillips
posted by Alun , 8:54 PM Þ 

Lets do the thing where we lists of what everybody thinks is cool right now. Ill start:

The Bristols "Tune in With the Bristols" Gonna Cry
Alvarius B & Cerberus Shoal "The Vim & Vigour Of Alvarius B & Cerberus Shoal" - Ding
Thelonius Monk "Complete Riverside Recordings" Coming on the Hudson
posted by Irdial , 8:53 PM Þ 

That is BAD news.

It has to be said, that NASA has the BEST language for when things go wrong:

"Obviously a major malfunction" Chalenger Disaster.

"There has been an anomaly" A delta rocket blows up.

"This is a serious problem. This is an extremely serious anomaly" Spirit.

On the same subject:

"The rainy weather at the Deep Space Network communications station in Canberra hampered the transmission of commands from Earth to the Spirit rover today."

From http://spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html

Why dont they have a satelite in orbit specifically to get data from deep space missions? It would have to be a big dish, but really, the rain stopping a download is totally insane. Of course, all future missions could use this space dish, and I hope that they dont plan to send people to mars without such a communications setup. Can you imagine, "we cant get messages from the men on Mars because its raining in Australia".

"If the spacecraft believes it's in a fault mode, its command rate should be 7.8 bits per second. We sent a beep today, this morning, about the time that we came down here to talk to you at 7.8. We sent a command that says if you get this send us a beep. And I'm told from Richard that Jennifer came down here to tell us that they think they got it," Theisinger said.

Lets hope that they can get it to reboot!
posted by Irdial , 8:44 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 8:42 PM Þ 

"But Spirit was only transmitting 'pseudo-noise', a random series of zeroes and ones in binary code and not anything the scientists could decipher."

Maybe the Martians have captured the buggy and are trying to communicate with us?!?!

Also, please explain why you think Black Dice suck, I like them, I'd like to know your thoughts though.
posted by alex_tea , 8:11 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 6:36 PM Þ 

Coachella Music and Arts Festival

don't really know if i could take this extreme, either. radiohead, pixies, kraftwerk, and the cure have confirmed, which is exciting.
posted by Ken , 6:34 PM Þ 

RE~TG

my brother has tickets set aside (his friend reserved a berth, i think), but it's a lot to pay for travel and board. amazing lineup, though. not sure if i could take a whole weekend of it.

addendum: too bad tg care about bands like black dice. they suck.
posted by Ken , 6:32 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 6:00 PM Þ 

Gated communities

What the hell? What is there to be afraid of? It's not like private security firms like Wakenhut are actually that good anyway.
Around here we consider the few gated communities in town to be populated by rich, insecure, xenophobic paranoid freaks. When people isolate themselves like that it is only fair to treat them with the same level of suspicion that they treat us.
posted by Barrie , 5:09 PM Þ 

Blunkett's latest brainwave; make the poor pay for their own security!
posted by Alun , 4:04 PM Þ 

UNITED
posted by Irdial , 2:08 PM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 2:00 PM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 1:55 PM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 1:52 PM Þ 
posted by Mess Noone , 1:05 PM Þ 

The UK Home Office has announced the next step in its love affair with biometrics. As of March, visa applicants in five east African countries will be required to provide a record of their fingerprints. This is what applicants for visas for the US have to do these days, but in Britain we appear to be going for the thin end of the wedge rather the 'fingerprint the lot of them' counterstrike favoured by the Brazilians.

The Home Office move is an initiative to tackle asylum abuse rather than to guard against terrorism and, says the announcement, "is part of a Government action plan to tackle unfounded asylum claims from Somali nationals and fraudulent claims by individuals claiming to be Somalis [and] represents the next step in the Government?s phased roll-out of biometric technology to tackle immigration abuse." [...]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/35034.html

Hmmmm RTFA. On the surface, it makes sense; asylum seekers come into the UK, then destroy their passports so they cannot be identified. The state managed to catch seven people who had done this very thing, beacause they had been fingerprinted in advance of coming to the UK.

There is a problem however.

In order for this system to work, every police station and police car in the country is going to have to be kitted out with iris and fingerprinting equipment. Whenever they encounter someone who might be an asylum seeker, and this always means a "black(ish)" person, the only way to see if they are legal or illegal will be to fingerprint them on the spot. "Report to the police station within three days if you please sir." simply will not cut it. And as I have said before, if they do not show up on the database, what does that indicate? That they are in the country illegally but have not been previously scanned, or that they are OK by the database? The only way the system can work is if everyone in the UK is on th esystem.

For certain, the police will be sweeping all foreign looking people on a daily basis. Imagine it; you get caught in a sweep taking place in Oxford Street, get scanned and then are released. You get on the underground, come out at Liverpool street, where they are doing another sweep, and you get scanned again.

Even if you are reqired to carry ID before you leave your house, like the Belgians, people fitting the profile will be rotinely stopped for checks, multiple times, on a daily basis.

Populations have rioted because of this sort of mistreatment; you can expect the same again, only on a much wider scale.
posted by Irdial , 9:13 AM Þ 

Bob DyLAN Party
posted by alex_tea , 8:08 AM Þ 
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Bob Dylan Klebold
posted by Irdial , 9:08 PM Þ 

We call it "momentum":

I realise this is very unAmerican of me but, you see, I'm not actually American. I'm British, and over here, on the whole, Blair notwithstanding, we mostly tend to work on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. God knows, it's stupid of us to do this, but it does mostly work.The onus is on the prosecuting authority to prove that a person is guilty, rather than on the person to prove that he or she is innocent. It's fine and dandy to say 'if you're innocent, you've nothing to fear' but that doesn't go as far as you might think. [...]

We call it "common sense":

thirty years of IRA bombing campaigns on the mainland has made us Brits very vigilant, but you'll notice that life went on during that time – but vigilance is very different from the measures your administration is currently putting in place. Vigilance is an ongoing low-key kind of thing that involves people quietly observing and doing what needs to be done, not this arm-waving 'we're all going to die if we don't stop every brown-skinned person coming into our country' hysteria. Your country boasts continually about its intelligence gathering, yet from here I can't help thinking that your intelligence gathering isn't very effective if you can't actually find the people you're looking for – the ones who you claim to know about – without harrassing everyone else along the way. [...]

We call it "resolve":

Yours used to be a fine country, Mr Government Affairs Spokesman; I liked the straightforward way most people went about their business, and the 'how can we make things work for you' attitude. It was invigorating and I got a real buzz out of visiting. Now I'm not so sure I want to come and visit. I can stay at home and experience administrative paranoia; I don't need to see that your country can do it bigger and better than anyone else. I feel uncomfortable trying to deal with an administration that feels so threatened, without being able to define what that threat really is, that it has to tell itself bigger, ever more bizarre stories about perceived threats in order to justify its reactions to what are now effectively pieces of fluff moving in the breeze. [...]

The British are the best.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/brisingamen/223233.html
posted by Irdial , 8:42 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 7:35 PM Þ 


Chipotle, your smokey warmth adds the perfect final flavour to my cod chowder... today is a chowder day.
posted by Alun , 7:30 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 6:52 PM Þ 

Bush Vows Guerrillas Will Not Stop Iraq Handover

Er... Isn't that what they want?
posted by meau meau , 3:32 PM Þ 

posted by meau meau , 3:07 PM Þ 

Bell Labs Develops Engine for Cell Users
Mon Jan 19, 2:46 PM ET
By BRUCE MEYERSON, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - Now that wireless companies can track a mobile phone's
location, customers will want to control exactly who knows where they
are and when.

Bell Labs says it has developed a network software engine that can let
cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their
whereabouts, a step that may help wireless companies introduce
"location-based services" in a way customers will find handy rather than
intrusive...


Yahoo News
posted by Irdial , 12:41 PM Þ 

Aerogel - a lot of use in late eighties early nineties leisure facilities; swimming pools and the like.
-
Shaving, I only mention because I buy my shaving soap from a pro shaver, and his appointments book seemed very empty. I wasn't sure if it was a dying art.
-
The tax deadline looms.
posted by meau meau , 12:07 PM Þ 

I want to buy a new hand drill. It's really difficult! All the usual out of town superstores just stock rechargable power tools, and I don't want those. I want a plain old hand drill, preferably two speed but not essential. Am I just too old fashioned?
posted by captain davros , 11:27 AM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 10:46 AM Þ 



Aerogel is a silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume is empty space. By comparison, aerogel is 1,000 times less dense than glass, another silicon-based solid. Discovered in the 1930s by a Stanford University researcher, aerogel is the world's lightest solid.

http://www.spacer.com/news/materials-02c.html
http://eande.lbl.gov/ECS/aerogels/sahist.htm
http://www.nasatech.com/Spinoff/spinoff2001/ch5.html

My emphasis. I didnt know that Aerogel was so old!!!
posted by Irdial , 9:51 AM Þ 
posted by Claus Eggers , 9:49 AM Þ 

this has to be a sign
posted by Ken , 4:21 AM Þ 
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
posted by Ken , 10:45 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 10:43 PM Þ 
posted by Ken , 8:23 PM Þ 

30 rupees

Ah...the pleasures of of being shaven in an Indian barbers [for 15p]. Have you been offered a 'head massage' yet? I had varying experiences of them from being 'almost nirvana' to grevious bodily harm.

When I was in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh I noticed that the Tibetan men had a distinct lack of facial hair except the occasional moustache.


The Tao of Programming

A master was explaining the nature of Tao of to one of his novices. ``The Tao is embodied in all software - regardless of how insignificant,'' said the master.

``Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?'' asked the novice.

``It is,'' came the reply.

``Is the Tao in a video game?'' continued the novice.

``It is even in a video game,'' said the master.

``And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?''

The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. ``The lesson is over for today,'' he said.
posted by chriszanf , 7:28 PM Þ 

30 rupees.

I hope they didnt nick you.

* Since 1957, all Disney workers had to be clean shaven (although Walt Disney himself had a moustache). This ban was lifted in 2000, allowing workers to grow moustaches, but not beards
* Police authorities in Assam, India, are paying a monthly bonus to an officer who grows a moustache. One officer said “Having a big moustache is a symbol of masculinity and that helps you to excel in your professional duties as people are afraid to challenge you” (Daily Telegraph)
* Beards grow faster in spring, possibly indicating a seasonal variation in androgen (male hormone) production
* Sharing electric razors has been blamed for spreading diseases such as viral hepatitis
* There have been cases of men who fail to grow a beard on one side of the face, but this is very rare

http://www.embarrassingproblems.com/pages2/shavingrash.htm
posted by Irdial , 6:15 PM Þ 

FYI
posted by Ken , 4:49 PM Þ 

I have had professional shaves, cut-throat stylee, every few days for the last couple of weeks. 30 rupees.
posted by Alun , 4:46 PM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 4:17 PM Þ 
posted by captain davros , 3:42 PM Þ 
posted by captain davros , 12:56 PM Þ 

posted by Mess Noone , 11:06 AM Þ 
Monday, January 19, 2004

When President Bush signed the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2004 on November 24, 2003, the event received considerable attention in the news media. At $401.3 billion, the public's visible cost of funding the nation's defense seemed to be reaching astronomical heights, and the president took pains to justify that enormous cost by linking it to the horrors of 9/11 and to the “war on terror.” He pledged that “we will do whatever it takes to keep our nation strong, to keep the peace, and to keep the American people secure,” clearly implying that such payoffs would accrue from the expenditures and other measures that the act authorizes.

Although the public may appreciate that $401.3 billion is a great deal of money, few citizens realize that it is only part of the total bill for defense. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as -- sometimes even more surely than -- the money allocated to the Department of Defense (DoD). On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the nuclear-weapons activities of the Department of Energy (DoE), but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized. [...]

Defense Outlays in Fiscal Year 2002
(billions of dollars)

Department of Defense 344.4

Department of Energy 18.5

Department of State 17.6

Department of Veterans Affairs 50.9

Agencies incorporated into Department of Homeland Security 17.5

Department of Justice (homeland security) 2.1

Department of Transportation (homeland security) 1.4

Department of the Treasury (homeland security) 0.1

National Aeronautics & Space Administration (homeland security) 0.2

Other agencies (homeland security) 4.7

Interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays 138.7

Total 596.1

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/031222Higgs.html
posted by Irdial , 8:08 PM Þ 

Dec. 16, 2003 (Salon) On Saturday, Nov. 22, a few dozen police on bicycles rode by the warehouse that activists protesting Miami's Free Trade of the Americas summit were using as a welcome center. The big protest had taken place on Thursday, Nov. 20, and most demonstrators had already dispersed. Some were in jail, others were nursing their injuries. But the cops wanted to deliver a final message to those still around. "Bye! Don't come back here!" shouted one. A pudgy officer gave the finger to an activist with a video camera. "Put that on your Web site," he said. "Fuck you."

It was the end of two days of what many observers called unprecedented police vindictiveness and violence toward activists. Certainly, complaints about the police have become a standard ritual after each major globalization protest. But what happened in Miami, say protesters, lawyers, journalists and union leaders, was anything but routine.

Armed with millions of dollars of new equipment and inflamed by weeks of warnings about anarchists out to destroy their city, police in Miami donned riot gear, assembled by the thousand, put the city on lockdown and unleashed an arsenal of crowd control weaponry on overwhelmingly peaceful gatherings.

Videos taken at the scene show protesters being beaten with wooden clubs, shocked with Taser guns, shot in the back with rubber bullets and beanbags, and pepper-sprayed in the face. Retirees were held handcuffed and refused water for hours. Medics and legal observers, arrested in large numbers, say they were targeted. A female journalist, arrested during a mass roundup, was made to strip in front of a male policeman. A woman's entire breast turned purple-black after she was shot there, point-blank, with a rubber bullet.

Afterward, many observers said the same thing: "This is not America." Civil libertarians, though, worry that -- in an era when legitimate homeland security fears have begun to edge over into hysterical paranoia about "anarchists" -- it might offer a glimpse of where America's response to protest is headed. [...]


"This is not America"

sorry Ken, had to add that to this important post! ./a
posted by Ken , 5:42 PM Þ 

Micro$oft Baiting; the new internet sport!
posted by Irdial , 1:40 PM Þ 

Coalition faces new battlefront

BORZOU DARAGAHI IN FALLUJAH

POP music was always meant to be subversive but in Iraq it is proving to be too subversive for the coalition.

As Americans flood Iraq’s airwaves with radio stations playing harmless Western and Arab pop tunes, the young are turning elsewhere for their musical inspiration.

They turn to artists like Sabah al-Jenabi who sings: "America has come and occupied Baghdad. The army and people have weapons and ammunition. Let’s go fight and call out the name of God."

Banned from the air, such songs are proving increasingly popular in the CD and tape shops of Baghdad, Fallujah and Ramadi.

As anti-United States rebels shoot down helicopters at a rate of about one a week in the Fallujah area, al-Jenabi’s tunes ring out in the bazaars of central Iraq.

"The men of Fallujah are men of hard tasks," he sings in an Arabic dialect only people from Fallujah and Ramadi can decipher. "They paralysed America with rocket-propelled grenades. May God protect them from [United States] planes." [...]

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=64722004
posted by Irdial , 1:34 PM Þ 

...Therefore it is no surprise when dealing with criticisms that the greatest hypocrisies emanate from the world of politics and from those with political agendas.  In fact the only consistency in this inane realm appears to be the motto, "It is wrong for them, but it is not wrong for us."

Perhaps there is no politician today who personifies this motto more than Tom Delay, a Republican Congressperson from Texas and Leader of the House of Representatives.  In 1999, when former President Bill Clinton (a Democratic) endeavored to militarily intervene in Bosnia to quell the tide of ethnic cleansing, Delay sanctimoniously declared, "Bombing a sovereign nation for ill-defined reasons with vague objectives undermines the American stature in the world. The international respect and trust for America has diminished every time we casually let the bombs fly. We must stop giving the appearance that our foreign policy is formulated by the Unabomber."

Yet, after the corruptly appointed Bush dictatorship... Pravda
posted by meau meau , 12:59 PM Þ 
posted by meau meau , 10:22 AM Þ 
Sunday, January 18, 2004
posted by Ken , 9:46 PM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 1:13 PM Þ 

The Guide from yesterdays Guardian guide (paper version) had a cover ad for sky one - if you do the folds and turn over, at the bottom it reads

we repeat tat 10pm.

no doubt very true.
posted by meau meau , 12:18 PM Þ 

http://www.asahi.com/english/nation/TKY200401160150.html

PRIVACY MATTERS: Assembly chief leaks resident's data
The Asahi Shimbun, 16/1/04

NAGANO-Information disclosure laws seem to work two ways in Nagano
Prefecture, a curious resident has learned to his chagrin.

After the man applied Jan. 9 for the release of travel data on three
prefectural assembly members who had gone on business trips using public
funds, administrators leaked the man's personal data to the very people
he was checking...

===

Northwest Gave U.S. Data on Passengers
Airline Had Denied Sharing Information For Security Effort
By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post, January 18, 2004; Page A01

Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a
secret U.S. government air-security project soon after the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks, raising more concerns among some privacy
advocates about the airlines' use of confidential customer data.

The nation's fourth-largest airline asserted in September that it "did
not provide that type of information to anyone." But Northwest
acknowledged Friday that by that time, it had already turned over three
months of reservation data to the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration's Ames Research Center. Northwest is the second carrier
to have been identified as secretly passing travelers' records to the
government...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26422-2004Jan17.html
posted by Irdial , 10:54 AM Þ 

This is just sooooo perverted!
posted by Irdial , 1:12 AM Þ 
posted by Irdial , 1:10 AM Þ 
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