Downtown

Touched

★ Americans Shoplifted $1.8 Billion Worth of Stuff This Christmas: Hope you have a Merry Christmas, America, because you’ve been extremely naughty at the mall this year. After surveying retailers in the U.S., the Global Retail Theft Barometer says that shoppers pinched $1.8 billion worth of merchandise during the four weeks leading up to Christmas, reports the AP. $1.8 billion! For context, $1.8 billion is a 6 percent increase from 2010 — a total of approximately 62 million Tickle Me Elmos at retail. And this is a year when there aren’t even any good toys to buy. When stores are offering big markdowns because people aren’t spending as much. But that’s exactly the point: while there will always be some built-in kleptomania to society, the sour economy drives some people to buy less and steal more. Or at least gives them a good excuse for doing so.
★ Cardinal Faces Pushback For Comparing Gay Rights Movement To The KKK: Change.org has released a petition calling for the resignation of Catholic Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, following comments the Cardinal made to FOX Chicago Sunday comparing the gay rights movement to the Klu Klux Klan’s anti-Catholicism. Equally Blessed, an umbrella group of pro-LGBT rights Catholic organizations, has reinforced the pushback by releasing a statement declaring in part that George, “has demeaned and demonized LGBT people in a manner unworthy of his office. In suggesting that the Catholic hierarchy has reason to fear LGBT people in the same way that blacks, Jews, Catholics and other minorities had reason to fear the murderous nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan, he has insulted the memory of the victims of the Klan’s violence and brutality.” The petition has already garnered well over half the 2,500 signatures the organization was aiming for.
★ Aquaponics: Baltimore city, suburban residents try hand at fish farming: The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s Baltimore County home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates. Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round. Sustainability is more than a buzzword for Meir Lazar, 32, a computer systems administrator and teacher who’s pursuing aquaponics in his small suburban backyard off Greenspring Avenue. He said he’s inspired at least in part by news reports about food tainted by pesticides, bacteria and even radiation from the Japanese nuclear reactor meltdown earlier this year.
★ Man Dressed as Santa Believed to Shoot Six: Police were looking for a motive in a shooting in which they believe a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six family members in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb on Christmas day before shooting himself. No one survived the carnage in the living room of a two-story apartment in Grapevine, Texas. Police said it was the single largest mass-shooting death in the city’s history and among the worst in Texas in recent years.
★ Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012: The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system. Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline.
★ 8-Bit Yulelog
★ Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system: The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.
★ Killin’ for Candy and Concords: The Price of Black Life: In recent news, an up and coming rapper was killed in a crowded Atlanta mall. According to authorities, Joe Blackmon, aka “Killa Black,” was standing in line for a pair of Air Jordan Concords when he, accidentally, knocked a Jolly Rancher out of the hand of the man in front of him. The man, described only as “an African American in a black hoodie with saggin’ pants” pumped five rounds in him before fleeing the scene. Witnesses say that the crowd just stepped over the dying Blackmon like nothing happened ,some even refusing to let paramedics through for fear of losing their places in line… Recently, people were shocked that Brick Squad affiliate, Slim Dunkin, was murdered in an Atlanta studio, allegedly, stemming from a fight over a piece of candy. This tragic event was coupled by media images of mobs of people beating each other senseless over the new Air Jordan XI Concords
★ Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story: Submitter: Hello, I’m a librarian in [NY] and a huge college football fan. Shortly after the sex abuse scandal at Penn State I decided to look on amazon and in our library catalog to see if we had anything by or about Jerry Sandusky. There are 14 copies of his unfortunately titled autobiography, Touched, floating about according to WorldCat
★ Israel Spyware Sold To Iran: The clandestine arrangement worked smoothly for years. The Israeli company shipped its Internet- monitoring equipment to a distributor in Denmark. Once there, workers stripped away the packaging and removed the labels. Then they sent it to a man named “Hossein” in Iran, an amiable technology distributor known to them only by his first name and impeccable English, say his partners in Israel and Denmark. Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say their departments didn’t know that the systems for peering into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel’s ban on trade with its enemy failed, even though a paper trail on the deals was available in Denmark.
★ Report Assails Japan Response to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident: From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power. Three of the plant’s six reactors overheated and their fuel melted down, and hydrogen explosions blew the tops off three reactor buildings, leading to a major leak of radiation at levels not seen since Chernobyl in 1986.
★ An Independent America: Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves: A recent analysis conducted by USA Today showed that American voters are fed up with both mainstream political parties and are leaving them in droves. The newspaper claims that “More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections.” Over the last decade this trend has only seemed to accelerate says USA Today. While many people feel there is little difference in the parties, their options remain slim. Yet, voters switching to Independent have climbed dramatically. According to the statistics gathered from eight swing states, “Democrats’ registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans’ by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.”
★ ATF and D.C. Police Impersonate Rap Label; Arrest 70 in Year Long Guns and Drug Sting: Over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons were confiscated after a year long investigation by the Washington D.C. Police and the Bureau the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which operated as fictional rap label. According to Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. police and ATF agents acted as undercover officers and “music industry insiders” during the year-long sting. The police created the “Manic Enterprisess” studio in Northeast Washington, for fictional rap artist Richie Valdez in November of 2010. Agents then told the underground world and black market that they were seeking to purchase weapons and drugs. Over the course of the year, agents confiscated 161 firearms (including a rocket launcher), 29 assault weapons, 80 pounds of methamphetamine, 21 pounds of cocaine, 1.25 gallons of PCP, 24 pounds of marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy. “If these drugs and guns had made it to our streets, the impact would have been devastating to community,”
★ LAPD botched use of downtown crime cameras: Most of the surveillance cameras installed in downtown Los Angeles as part of an effort to help police crack down on crime have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times. The cameras were installed over the last few years in a highly publicized partnership between local business groups, which purchased them, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which was to monitor and maintain them. But officials said the majority of the cameras don’t work. Some broke down and were never fixed. In the case of six cameras purchased to watch over Little Tokyo, LAPD officials admit that they were never plugged in to the police station’s monitoring bank.

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on December 27, 2011

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Hack Yer DNA

✧ 1972 Kenner Toy Comic Book Catalog: 1972 Kenner Toy Comic Book Catalog (Newspaper Insert)
✧ THE COOLEST TOYS EVER: The barely legal pleasure palace: If there’s one thing that kids have in common, it’s a love of toys. Whether your parents got you ever latest new flashy thing, or you just found an armless GI JOE to pass the time with, toys have played an important role in all of our lives. Here’s a loving look at the coolest toys of all time, resulting from an intensive 8 year multi-million dollar study performed by our website.
✧ Sandusky’s Lawyer: If You Believe Witness, “I Suggest You Dial 1-800-REALITY.” That’s A Gay Phone Sex Line.: Joe Amendola, the attorney for Jerry Sandusky who thus far has been lawyerin’ like a man who got his J.D. from the bottom of a cereal box, did some more lawyerin’ in front of the cameras this morning. The choicest moment: At one point, Amendola discussed the possibility that Mike McQueary witnessed a rape, told Joe Paterno and two university administrators, and no one did anything except tell Sandusky to stay out of the locker room with kids. To anyone who believes that version of events, Amendola said, “I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” We did. Here’s what we got: Hey guys, welcome to the hottest place for triple-X action. Get ready for bulging, bursting pleasure with horny gay, bi, and bi-curious studs. Just 99 cents per minute.
✧ “Mad Honey” Sex Is A Bad Idea: “Mad honey” is honey made by bees from the nectar of toxic Rhododendron flowers. In places where wild Rhododendrons grow, including Turkey, it’s a health hazard. The dangers of mad honey were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it’s reported that leaving tainted honeycombs in the path of invading armies was a popular military tactic. 2000 years later, some people still haven’t quite got the message. According to a case report from cardiologists Yarlioglues et al, a married couple deliberately ate some mad honey “for reasons of sexual performance”.
✧ The Internet Blacklist vs. The Constitution: Last week, two leading Constitutional scholars offered detailed analyses of the Internet blacklist bills now pending in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP, or PIPA. Both scholars concluded that the proposed law could not pass muster under the U.S. Constitution. So you’d think that the new version of SOPA circulated this week would have resolved those concerns. You’d think wrong. While the revised SOPA briefly mentions the First Amendment, the substantive text makes clear that’s just lip service. Here’s a selection of fundamental flaws that remain in both SOPA and PIPA:
✧ Rosemount High parent-on-student kissing prank has principal apologizing: A prank on some blindfolded Rosemount High School athletes — they were unknowingly and at times amorously kissed by their parents during a recent pep fest — is collecting YouTube views by the tens of thousands and has the principal apologizing for what happened… …The captains of the school’s winter sports teams — boys and girls — were lined up and blindfolded. They were told they would be kissed and then asked to guess who was on the other side of their lips. Some of the parents during the 59-second YouTube video are seen holding the kisses for several seconds, cupping their child’s faces or embracing and swaying. One mother moved her son’s hand down to her behind during the encounter. Another mom has her son down on the gym floor to the delight of two male students nearby. The hoots, screams and laughter rolled on as the students pulled off their blindfolds to realize it was Mom or Dad they were smooching.
✧ Brain scans should not be used in court… for now: Should an offender’s sentence be decided on the basis of a brain scan? A group of neuroscientists have put together a report for the Royal Society to assess this issue and other ways that progress in brain science might impact the law. Neuroscience is already making waves in court: an Italian woman convicted of murder recently had her sentence reduced on the grounds that her behaviour could be explained by abnormalities in her brain and genes. The authors on the Royal Society panel, led by Nicholas Mackintosh of the University of Cambridge, also flag up research that suggests the brains of psychopaths are fundamentally different. This raises the question: should individuals with the brain anatomy of a psychopath have their sentence reduced on the ground of diminished responsibility, or should brain scan evidence be used to keep dangerous individuals locked away?
✧ Gingrich ‘proposed the death penalty for marijuana’: Over the weekend, struggling Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson reminded MSNBC viewers that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich had once to called to punish some drug offenders with death. “Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana,” Johnson explained. “And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who’ve smoked marijuana.”
✧ Machine reads your age, gives sample: Big Brother isn’t just watching, he’s also about to size you up via a new product sampling machine that can determine whether you’re the right age — or even the right sex — to receive a sample. Kraft’s new sampling machine, developed by Intel, scans your face and can detect it you’re an adult or a child and blocks dispensing if you are a child. Today, Kraft Foods, the nation’s biggest foodmaker, will roll out in Chicago a device that dispenses its mousse-like Temptations dessert by Jell-O, but only to the product’s target market: grown-ups. The machine, developed by Intel, can detect facial age with a special camera that scans your face and determines if you’re an adult or a kid. If the machine detects a child, it shuts down and asks the child to step away. If it detects an adult — bingo — the sample can be dispensed.
✧ China Keeps Slapping America In The Face And America Just Keeps Taking It: Today, China is absolutely crushing the United States on the global economic stage, but they are hardly playing fair. They shower their own firms with huge government subsidies, they brazenly steal technology, they publicly violate intellectual property rights, they manipulate currency rates so that foreign firms cannot compete with Chinese prices and they slap ridiculously high tariffs on many classes of foreign goods. In short, they basically do everything that they can get away with to give themselves a trade advantage. This predatory behavior has caused an enormous transfer of wealth from the United States to China. It isn’t as if it is just some sort of an “accident” that we now owe China about a trillion dollars. The truth is that China just keeps slapping America in the face and America just keeps taking it. We are like an abused spouse that just keeps coming back for more. It is disgraceful and it needs to stop.
✧ As Facebook Aims at Millions of Users, Some Are Content to Sit Out: As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population. But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try. One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated. “I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”
✧ 10 Ridiculous Things That Make You a Terror Suspect: You thought you weren’t doing anything wrong, so why should you care about who they call a terrorist? Well, you may not believe it, but you’re likely a terror suspect in America’s new paradigm of the Land of the Fear. The government is casting a wide net over its citizens in its search for potential threats. Now, you don’t need to actually commit a crime to be hauled away to a detention center and held without charges while you are tortured; you just need to appear suspicious by sympathizing with anti-government views to be labeled a domestic terrorist.
✧ DNA: The next big hacking frontier: Imagine computer-designed viruses that cure disease, new bacteria capable of synthesizing an unlimited fuel supply, new organisms that wipe out entire populations and bio-toxins that target world leaders. They sound like devices restricted to feature-film script writers, but it is possible to create all of these today, using the latest advances in synthetic biology. Just as the personal computer revolution brought information technology from corporate data centers to the masses, the biology revolution is personalizing science.
✧ DNA Hackers: Synthetic biology weaponized virus, zero-day exploit to infect your brain?: From the let’s get futuristically freaky department, future hacking crimes could take a decidedly sinister twist; not hacking to breach systems but brains, bodies and behaviors. This DNA hacking goes way beyond potentially using police bees to bust biohackers, or even storing unhackable data in box of bio-encrypted bacteria. It’s not science fiction to hack insulin pumps or to use jamming signals to stop hackers from lethal pacemaker attacks, but now bioengineers and security futurists are warning that the day is coming when criminals and bioterrorists hunt for vulnerabilities that will give a new meaning to zero-day exploits. In the future, a weaponized virus will aim to infect you, your brain and body biology, and not just your computer or mobile device.
✧ Woman sues sex toy company after injuring herself using vibrator: A California woman claims a little foreplay nearly put her six feet under. April Bonjour says her pleasure turned quickly to pain while using a “vibrator/dildo” with her boyfriend last November when the sex toy caused a sharp vaginal pain and massive bleeding. “I started to get faint from the loss of blood,” she wrote in a personal injury complaint filed Aug. 30 in California Superior Court. “My boyfriend called 911. By the time they got there, I was in and out of consciousness.” Bonjour, in her suit against Pipedream Products Inc., said both she and her son “thought I was dying … Once we got to the hospital, I had lost so much blood I was given several pints.” Thanks Jasmine
✧ Mother tasered and buried alive in cardboard box by ‘bored’ lover, court told: “Terrified” Michelina Lewandowska, 27, was bound by her hands and feet and left to die in a shallow grave, Leeds Crown Court was told. In a bid to stop her getting free Marcin Kasprzak, her partner and father of their two-year-old son, had a friend help him bury her in a box less than 2ft high and then covered it in soil and leaves and then put a large branch over the top, a jury heard. But she eventually managed to free herself and raise the alarm. A jury was told how Kasprzak, 25, had decided that he no longer wanted to live with his partner and wanted his mother to bring up their young son. In a bid to get her out of the way he used a 300,000 volt electric stun gun on her at their home in Waterloo, Huddersfield, West Yorks, before using parcel tape to gag her and tie her hands and feet.
✧ Woman caught smuggling 1.5kg of cocaine in her dreadlocks on flight to Bangkok: A woman was caught trying to smuggle 1.5 kilograms of cocaine in her dreadlocks on a flight to Bangkok, it was reported today. South African Nobanda Nolubabalo, 23, was arrested and held in Thailand’s capital yesterday after customs officers allegedly noticed a suspicious white substance in her hair. Officials later carried out a search and discovered she had allegedly matted the Class A drug into her dreadlocks before boarding a flight from Brazil.
✧ Man dressed as Santa drugs teen at Berlin Christmas market, 9th victim in a week: A man dressed as Santa drugged a 15-year-old girl at a Berlin Christmas market over the weekend — the latest such attack that has seen holiday revelers left either sickened or unconscious, police said Monday. At about 10 p.m. Saturday the suspect approached the girl and her friend at Berlin’s downtown Alexanderplatz Christmas market, offering both of them what he said was a shot of alcohol in a paper cup, police said. One girl refused, but the other girl drank both of the shots. She soon started vomiting and had to be taken to the hospital, where she underwent a blood test, before being released. Police said it appeared she had been slipped some type of a date rape drug, but released no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
✧ Man dressed as Santa drugs teen at Berlin Christmas market, 9th victim in a week: A man dressed as Santa drugged a 15-year-old girl at a Berlin Christmas market over the weekend — the latest such attack that has seen holiday revelers left either sickened or unconscious, police said Monday. At about 10 p.m. Saturday the suspect approached the girl and her friend at Berlin’s downtown Alexanderplatz Christmas market, offering both of them what he said was a shot of alcohol in a paper cup, police said. One girl refused, but the other girl drank both of the shots. She soon started vomiting and had to be taken to the hospital, where she underwent a blood test, before being released. Police said it appeared she had been slipped some type of a date rape drug, but released no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.
✧ Indonesia: Punkers’ Mohawks Shaved, Piercings Stripped By Hard-Line Police: Police in Indonesia’s most conservative province raided a punk-rock concert and detained 65 fans, buzzing off their spiky mohawks and stripping away body piercings because of the perceived threat to Islamic values. Dog-collar necklaces and chains also were taken from the youths before they were thrown in pools of water for “spiritual” cleansing, local police chief Iskandar Hasan said Wednesday. After replacing their “disgusting” clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked “use it.”
✧ If you want to drink less, then turn down the music: Alcohol tastes sweeter as noise impairs judgement of intake: Alcohol tastes sweeter when loud music is playing and the noise could make it difficult for drinkers to judge how much they are consuming, new research has claimed. Dr Lorenzo Stafford, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, conducted the first experimental study to find out how music can alter the taste of alcohol. Dr Stafford said: ‘Since humans have an innate preference for sweetness, these findings offer a plausible explanation as to why people consume more alcohol in noisy environments.’
✧ Man grows new fingertip on stomach: Doctors in China saved a man’s partially-severed finger – by attaching it to his stomach. Furniture worker Wang Yongjun, 20, cut off the end of his middle finger with an electric saw in an accident at work. Wang, of Liaoyang, Liaoning Province, was rushed to hospital where doctors had to think fast. Dr Huang Xuesong said the muscle and skin had been cut away from the end of his finger leaving only the bone showing. “We had to make a quick decision or he could have lost his finger. We decided to cultivate a new fingertip on his stomach,” he said. Doctors operated and attached Wang’s finger to his stomach in the hope that new skin and muscle would grow around it.
✧ Baby, baby, baby, no: Pay up or be forced to listen to Justin Bieber: For someone who isn’t a fan of teen idol Justin Bieber, being forced to listen to one of his songs over and over again could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. At Evanston Township High School this week, they called it a fund-raiser. To motivate their fellow students to donate money for a struggling cafe/arts center popular with ETHS kids, seniors Charlotte Runzel and Jesse Chatz persuaded administrators to let them blast Bieber’s hit “Baby” over the school’s loudspeaker system at the end of each class period — and not stop playing the song until Runzel and Chatz had met their goal.
✧ Bye Bye Booie! California’s smoking chimpanzee who learned sign language dies at 44: A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a California animal refuge. Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife WayStation, said Booie was being treated for a heart condition when he died on Saturday, at the age of 44. The chimp had been living at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles since 1995, after he retired from a research lab. Ms Colette said she successfully turned Booie away from his smoking habit but could not make a dent in his love of sweets. She said he would use his signing skills to panhandle for candy by signing: ‘Booie see sweet in pocket.’
✧ Girl, 13, brought booze-laced milk to school: A Glen Ellyn junior high student brought chocolate milk mixed with Bailey’s Irish Cream to school as a “joke,” Glen Ellyn police said. Glen Ellyn Deputy Police Chief Bill Holmer said this week the 13-year-old girl allegedly brought the liquor mixed with chocolate milk to Hadley Junior High School on Dec. 9. Holmer said it’s unclear if any students actually drank the concoction, but it was “given to some other students who claimed to not know what they were given.” The “kid brought this stuff to school claiming it was meant to be a joke,” Holmer said. A student at the school informed staff about the drink, who interviewed other students about the incident then called police, Holmer said. Police worked with the juvenile and her parents “regarding enforcement action,” according to a police report.
✧ Pig Born Without Back Legs: A Balancing Act Like No Other: Wang taught her to walk on her front hooves and she learned in just a few days. After about a month, she began walking on her own, balancing her weight on her front legs as she moves about. Today, despite a body weight of 50 kg (110 pounds), the piglet walks upside down quite effortlessly.
✧ 14 bomb-sniffing dogs on way to Afghanistan died in truck: The death of 14 bomb-sniffing dogs allegedly housed in an unventilated sealed truck while awaiting air shipment from Houston to military forces in Afghanistan has spawned a lawsuit in which requested damages may top $1 million… In an unsuccessful bid to settle the matter without going to court, a Houston lawyer for the Florida company asked the defendants to pay $1.3 million in damages and $30,000 in legal fees. According to the lawsuit, the animals — Tiny, Rex, Rocky, Crock, Dork, Harrie, Stress, Sigo, Rex, Jaco, Kimbo, Kilo, Albert and Bak — were taken the Houston shipping facility on Dec. 20.
✧ Giant Smiley Feel-o-Meter Reflects the Mood of the City: Fuehlometer (Feel-o-meter) by Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck, and Benjamin Maus is a light installation consisting of a giant smiley face that reflects the average mood of the people living in the city. An earlier version of this work originally used a more standard light screen installation instead of kinetically moving the different parts of the smiley face. The average emotional value is calculated through the computational analysis of the faces of people passing a camera located in a specific part of the city,
✧ The teenage politics of the British Churches are summed up by their pathetic Christmas poster: The Baby Jesus will not be visited by Three Wise Men bearing gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh this Christmas. Three different sorts of guys will turn up at the manger, bringing the young Son of God a Fabergé egg, a Swarovski crystal perfume bottle and a Damien Hirst skull. All this is on the seasonal advertising poster issued by the British Churches. There are no shepherds either. These are replaced by a cycle courier and a plasterer. As King Herod himself might have said: “Gee, it’s so relevant and accessible it fair sets your teeth on edge.” Jesus famously commanded us: “Take no thought for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? Why take ye thought for raiment?”
✧ As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit: A new wave of startups is working on algorithms gathering data for banks from the web of associations on the internet known as “the social graph,” in which people are “nodes” connected to each other by “edges.” Banks are already using social media to befriend their customers, and increasingly, their customers’ friends. The specifics are still shaking out, but the gist is that eventually, social media will account for at least the tippy-top of the mountain of data banks keep on their customers. “There is this concept of ‘birds of a feather flock together,’” said Ken Lin, CEO of the San Francisco-based credit scoring startup Credit Karma. “If you are a profitable customer for a bank, it suggests that a lot of your friends are going to be the same credit profile. So they’ll look through the social network and see if they can identify your friends online and then maybe they send more marketing to them. That definitely exists today.”
✧ How common is Nazi fancy dress?: It is really very easy to avoid a controversial costume, but that does not seem to stop some people. And one of the most offensive outfits is a Nazi uniform, as Conservative MP Aidan Burley has discovered. The MP for Cannock Chase in Staffordshire has been pictured in a national newspaper sitting next to another man dressed as an SS guard. Burley, who was on a stag do in a French ski resort at the time, has apologised for the “clearly inappropriate behaviour” of some of his friends. In some countries, wearing a swastika armband in public would be illegal But he is not the first person, and will surely not be the last, to hit the headlines over a Nazi costume. Prince Harry is perhaps the most famous Nazi fancy dress costume-wearer in the world. In 2005, he was pictured wearing a German desert uniform and a swastika armband at a friend’s birthday party. The fancy dress theme was “colonial and native”.
✧ The school of Jay-Z studies: Judging by the amount of fuss he caused, one would think Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson had floated the idea of abolishing child labor laws. In reality, all he had done was announce that this semester he would be teaching a course entitled “Sociology of Hip-Hop – Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z.” And it was Glastonbury all over again. The outrage flew from all directions. A SPIN headline referred to “Georgetown’s Semi-Ridiculous Jay-Z Class”, while the main article nonchalantly mentions that tuition at the university is $40,920, attaching the price to a particularly inarticulate quote from a college sophomore. Gawker was still more ruthless in its takedown, declaring: “One notable thing about Michael Eric Dyson is that although he is very good at being an academic celebrity, he doesn’t know shit about hip-hop.”
✧ Census data: Half of U.S. poor or low income: Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.
✧ China’s deserted fake Disneyland: Situated on an area of around 100 acres, and 45 minutes drive from the center of Beijing, are the ruins of ‘Wonderland’. Construction stopped more than a decade ago, with developers promoting it as ‘the largest amusement park in Asia’. Funds were withdrawn due to disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers. So what is left are the skeletal remains of a palace, a castle, and the steel beams of what could have been an indoor playground in the middle of a corn field.
✧ Memphis Cop Sexts & Rapes 14 Year Old Relative: A Memphis police officer is behind bars after investigators say he sent a 14-year-old girl nude pictures and had a sexual relationship with the teen. Officer Ericck Cain, 25, has been charged with aggravated statutory rape and exploitation of a minor by electronic means. Investigators say Cain emailed a naked picture of himself to a 14-year-old relative in January. About six months later, police say, the two had sex in a house in the 5600 block of Cottonwood. “He gave us a statement of admission,” said Dave Martello, of the Memphis Police Department. Police say the initial report was made at the Mt. Moriah precinct. One of the teenager’s friends came went to the station Monday night and told police everything she knew about the relationship. Police say they do not suspect there are any other alleged victims, but that one is enough. “It’s such a disappointment,” said Martello.”This person is a criminal just like the people that we deal with on the streets every day.”
✧ Somalia’s Rebels Embrace Twitter: Think of it as the Battle of the Tweets. Somalia’s powerful Islamist insurgents, the Shabab, best known for chopping off hands and starving their own people, just opened a Twitter account, and in the past week they have been writing up a storm, bragging about recent attacks and taunting their enemies. “Your inexperienced boys flee from confrontation & flinch in the face of death,” the Shabab wrote in a post to the Kenyan Army. It is an odd, almost downright hypocritical move from brutal militants in one of world’s most broken-down countries, where millions of people do not have enough food to eat, let alone a laptop. The Shabab have vehemently rejected Western practices – banning Western music, movies, haircuts and bras, and even blocking Western aid for famine victims, all in the name of their brand of puritanical Islam – only to embrace Twitter, one of the icons of a modern, networked society.
✧ ‘White Only’ Pool Sign Owner Explains: A female landlord, Jamie Hein, had a sign that read, “Public Swimming Pool, White Only” hanging on a gate at her house and her private pool. (Photo credit: Ohio Civil Rights Commission) An Ohio landlord accused of discriminating against an African-American girl with a “white only” sign at her swimming pool told ABCNews.com that the sign was an antique and a decoration. “I’m not a bad person,” said Jamie Hein of Cincinnati. “I don’t have any problem with race at all. It’s a historical sign.” The sign in question reads, “Public Swimming Pool, White Only.” It is dated 1931 and from Alabama. Hein, 31, was unapologetic about the racist origins of the sign that she displayed at the entrance to her pool. She said she collects antiques and was given the sign as a gift. She also said that even though the sign seems to indicate that the pool is public, the pool is on her private property and “everybody has to ask before getting in my pool.”

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on December 16, 2011

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There’s No Place To Hide When The Dead Are Alive

✭ Internet archivist seeks 1 of every book written

Tucked away in a small warehouse on a dead-end street, an Internet pioneer is building a bunker to protect an endangered species: the printed word.Brewster Kahle, 50, founded the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996 to save a copy of every Web page ever posted. Now the MIT-trained computer scientist and entrepreneur is expanding his effort to safeguard and share knowledge by trying to preserve a physical copy of every book ever published.

“There is always going to be a role for books,” said Kahle as he perched on the edge of a shipping container soon to be tricked out as a climate-controlled storage unit. Each container can hold about 40,000 volumes, the size of a branch library. “We want to see books live forever.”
✭ America’s city of broken dreams: 50 jobless and destitute people set up forest community on New York’s doorstep

In scenes reminiscent of the Great Depression these are the ramshackle homes of the desperate and destitute U.S. families who have set up their own ‘Tent City’ only an hour from Manhattan.More than 50 homeless people have joined the community within New Jersey’s forests as the economic crisis has wrecked their American dream.

And as politicians in Washington trade blows over their country’s £8.8 trillion debt, the prospect of more souls joining this rag tag group grows by the day.

Building their own tarpaulin tents, Native American teepees and makeshift balsa wood homes, every one of the Tent City residents has lost their job.
✭ Who’s Grabbing Africa’s Land? U.S. Speculators, Including Universities

China and Arab countries have generally been scrutinized in the media for their land deals, but much of the cash flow comes through U.S. and European investors, according to Oakland Institute—through established pension funds, agribusiness behemoths and even educational institutions.
✭ Facebook – the destruction of the innocence of computing

Facebook is a living computer nightmare. Just as viruses took the advantages of sharing information on floppies and modems and revealed a devastating undercarriage to the whole process, making every computer transaction suspect… and just as spyware/malware took advantage of beautiful advances in computer strength and horsepower to turn your beloved machine of expression into a gatling gun of misery and assholery… Facebook now stands as taking over a decade and a half of the dream of the World Wide Web and turning it into a miserable IT cube farm of pseudo human interaction, a bastardized form of e-mail, of mailing lists, of photo albums, of friendship. While I can’t really imply that it was going to be any other way, I can not sit by and act like this whole turn of events hasn’t resulted in an epidemic of ruin that will have consequences far-reaching from anything related to archiving.
✭ Burning Man Sells Out – limits tickets, increasing scalpers

And now it has come to this: For the first time ever, Burning Man has literally sold out.Organizers were forced to cap the number of attendees to the weeklong event, an art-focused, community-centric festival that starts Aug. 29. The event sold out last week, giving rise to a profitable black market that some past Burning Man participants say goes against the festival’s principles.

The cap on ticket sales was necessary to limit attendance as required by the permit issued by the federal Bureau of Land Management. That permit allows for 50,000 people at any one time, organizers said, and more than 51,500 tickets were sold last year.
✭ Cremated Ashes Packed into Ammunition

If you’d like to go out with a bang, Holy Smoke LLC offers to pack your cremated ashes (or those of your loved ones) into ammunition cartridges. You tell them the caliber or gauge, ship the remains to them, and they’ll load the cartridges:Once the caliber, gauge and other ammunition parameters have been selected, we will ask you (by way of your funeral service provider) to send approximately one pound of the decedant’s ash to us. Upon receiving the ashes our professional and reverant staff will place a measured portion of ash into each shotshell or cartridge.[...]
✭ Amy Winehouse planned to adopt little girl

Amy Winehouse was in the process of secretly adopting an adorable Caribbean child — hoping to save her from her impoverished life — just before the tragic singer died, the little girl’s family said.Bright-eyed Dannika Augustine, 10, of St. Lucia, had caught the eye of the 27-year-old “Rehab” crooner during one of the singer’s many jaunts to the island and was going to be formally adopted by Winehouse before the troubled star died in her London pad on July 23, London’s Mirror newspaper reported yesterday.
✭ Do trees communicate?

Graduate student Kevin Beiler has uncovered the extent and architecture of this network through the use of new molecular tools that can distinguish the DNA of one fungal individual from another, or of one tree’s roots from another. He has found that all trees in dry interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. glauca) forests are interconnected, with the largest, oldest trees serving as hubs, much like the hub of a spoked wheel, where younger trees establish within the mycorrhizal network of the old trees. Through careful experimentation, recent graduate Francois Teste determined that survival of these establishing trees was greatly enhanced when they were linked into the network of the old trees.Through the use of stable isotope tracers, he and Amanda Schoonmaker, a recent undergraduate student in Forestry, found that increased survival was associated with belowground transfer of carbon, nitrogen and water from the old trees.
✭ Ghostface Killah Sued By ‘Iron Man’ Composer for Copyright Infringement

On his second album, “Supreme Clientele,” Killah allegedly “copied verbatim” the Urbont-written “Iron Man Theme” on two tracks.The album was released back in 2000 (way before the recent Jon Favreau-directed movies) and it’s unclear why it took Urbont so long to sue. But he may have grown tired of seeing Killah’s name attached to his music on the Internet.

Much of the case is a typical copyright infringement claim, but Urbont throws in an unusual unfair competition allegation that caught our attention.

According to the complaint: “Defendant Ghostface is also known for the nickname, ‘Tony Starks,’ which is a take-off of the name ‘Tony Stark,’ Iron Man’s real name and true identity. In this way, Defendants’ use of Urbont’s ‘Iron Man Theme’ gives them a substantial commercial advantage by linking Ghostface to Iron Man without paying for it.”
✭ Joe Biden likens tea partiers to terrorists

Vice President Joe Biden joined House Democrats in lashing tea party Republicans Monday, accusing them of having “acted like terrorists” in the fight over raising the nation’s debt limit, according to several sources in the room.
✭ Nikon’s Racist Camera

Did someone blink?
✭ How Facial Recognition Technology Can Be Used To Get Your Social Security Number

Those freaked out by facial recognition technology have fresh fodder: a study from Carnegie Mellon University in which researchers were able to predict people’s social security numbers after taking a photo of them with a cheap webcam.At the head of the research team was Alessandro Acquisti, a CMU professor who pointed out in 2009 that the social security number system has a huge security flaw — social security numbers are predictable if you know a person’s hometown and date of birth. This study essentially adds a facial recognition component to that study. Acquisti, Ralph Gross and Fred Stutzman ran three experiments. In the first, they data mined Facebook for photos of people with searchable profiles. They then used that database of faces and identities when applying off-the-shelf facial recognition technology (PittPatt) to “anonymous” singles on a popular dating site. Acquisti told me in an interview last month that they were able to reidentify 15% of the digital Cupids.
✭ Twitter admits editing offensive Trending Topics, plans more

Today Twitter’s CEO said they may in the future “edit out any…clearly offensive [trending topics].” He also said “we edit out any [trending topics] with obscenities.”
✭ Stasi Chic: Exhibition Unmasks the Art of the East German Spy Disguise

At first glance the photos look staged. They show stocky men stiffly clad in various outfits that include fur hats and thick coats with upturned collars — and, most importantly, sunglasses. But these photos aren’t stage props from a silly low-budget spy film, they are images snapped by members of the feared East German secret state police, or Stasi, for an internal course called the “art of disguising.”Berlin-based artist Simon Menner unearthed the images while sifting through the Stasi archives, which were opened to the public after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He was allowed to reproduce the photos and they are now on display in an exhibition entitled: “Pictures from the Secret Stasi Archives.”

Morgen Contemporary, the Berlin gallery hosting the exhibition, says in its description of the collection that “many of the snapshots seem absurd and they may even be amusing. And yet we ought not lose sight of the intention that led the Stasi agents to take them.”
✭ Mind Control: Car’s Brakes, Bicycle Gears Worked by Brain Signals

It’s the future. You’re racing down the highway when, all of a sudden, the driver ahead of you slows down. You know you need to hit the brakes to avoid an accident, but your foot can’t move as fast as your brain. You’re about to rear-end the guy, except. …… except that your car has read your mind. It picks up your brain waves and automatically slows down. Accident averted.
✭ Twitter Avatar Portraits
✭ Hideouts or Sacred Spaces? Experts Baffled by Mysterious Underground Chambers

At least 700 of these chambers have been found in Bavaria alone, along with about 500 in Austria. In the local vernacular, they have fanciful names such as “Schrazelloch” (“goblin hole”) or “Alraunenhöhle” (“mandrake cave”). They were supposedly built by elves, and legend has it that gnomes lived inside. According to some sagas, they were parts of long escape tunnels from castles.
✭ Quadriplegic man dies in Mont. skydiving accident

A quadriplegic man with five years of skydiving experience died in a weekend skydiving accident in northwestern Montana, Flathead County officials said Monday.Sheriff Chuck Curry said Zack Fogle, 27, of Kingston, Wash., died Saturday afternoon when his parachute did not open during a jump at the 44th annual Lost Prairie Boogie, a 10-day skydiving event near Marion that typically draws hundreds of participants.
✭ Republican Congressman Refers To President Obama As A ‘Tar Baby’

Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) has equated negotiating with President Obama to ‘touching a tar baby’.
✭ Downtown L.A.: A nightmare on Every Street

“Look, Daddy, that man’s going to the bathroom!”No, not the words any daddy wants to hear from his 10-year-old daughter, especially during a stroll through their brand-new neighborhood.
‪✭ Pig Race Mosque [Video]

Upset neighbor races his pigs during prayer in protest of new mosque
✭ U.S. Now an Electronic Concentration Camp

We’re under constant scrutiny—our movements monitored by cameras, tracked by satellites and catalogued by a host of increasingly attentive government agencies. No longer does the idea of an omnipresent government seem all that farfetched. As technology becomes ever more sophisticated, the idea of a total surveillance society moves further from the realm of George Orwell’s science fiction fantasy into an accepted way of life.In fact, surveillance has become a huge moneymaking industry in itself, with many sectors having sprung up devoted to developing increasingly sophisticated gadgets to keep targeted individuals under surveillance, with or without their cooperation. The science behind this technology is particularly brilliant.
✭ Soaring demand spotlights secret NY gold hoard

If there’s one place a James Bond villain — or even some actual governments — would love raiding today, it’s the basement of a somber building in lower Manhattan: the world’s biggest gold vault.Gold prices hit a record $1,632.8 an ounce Friday, reflecting a nervous rush by private and national investors from stocks, dollars and euros to the safe-haven commodity.

And the biggest single pile of the stuff on the planet lies deep beneath the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve Bank, a stone’s throw from the Stock Exchange.

On a visit, a guide from the bank revealed the 7,000-ton hoard gleaming softly in a vault carved from Manhattan’s bed rock, five stories under the Big Apple’s teeming streets.

Cast in bricks, stacked ceiling-high in blue-painted, caged boxes, the heap is worth a staggering $350 billion.
✭ Computer To Wed Couple In Texas

You could call it “My Big Fat Computer Geek Wedding.”After a Houston couple couldn’t get a friend to serve as the minister at their wedding, they decided to create their own.

When Miguel Hanson and his fiancee, Diana Wesley, get married on Saturday, a computer will conduct the ceremony. Well, technically, a computer program Hanson wrote will serve as the minister.

During the wedding, to be held in the Houston home of Hanson’s parents, the couple will stand before a 30-inch monitor in the backyard. In a robotic voice, the computer will greet the guests, say how the couple met and go through the ceremony.
✭ Obama Says Becoming A Dictator Is Very Tempting As La Raza Crowd Cheers [Video]

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Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on August 2, 2011

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Fight Or Fuck

◆ TSA readying new behavior detection plan for airport checkpoints

The federal government is planning to introduce new behavior detection techniques at airport checkpoints as soon as next month, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole said Thursday.

TSA already has “behavior detection officers” at 161 airports nationwide looking for travelers exhibiting physiological or psychological signs that a traveler might be a terrorist. However, Pistole said TSA is preparing to move to an approach that employs more conversation with travelers—a method that has been employed with great success in Israel.
◆ Existence: Am I a hologram?

TAKE a look around you. The walls, the chair you’re sitting in, your own body – they all seem real and solid. Yet there is a possibility that everything we see in the universe – including you and me – may be nothing more than a hologram.

It sounds preposterous, yet there is already some evidence that it may be true, and we could know for sure within a couple of years. If it does turn out to be the case, it would turn our common-sense conception of reality inside out.

The idea has a long history, stemming from an apparent paradox posed by Stephen Hawking’s work in the 1970s. He discovered that black holes slowly radiate their mass away. This Hawking radiation appears to carry no information, however, raising the question of what happens to the information that described the original star once the black hole evaporates. It is a cornerstone of physics that information cannot be destroyed.
◆ Are cancers newly evolved species?

A molecular biologists has long believed that cancer results from chromosome disruption rather than a handful of gene mutations, which is the dominant theory today. That idea has led him to propose that cancers have actually evolved new chromosomal karyotypes that qualify them as autonomous species, akin to parasites and much different from their human hosts.

“Cancer is comparable to a bacterial level of complexity, but still autonomous, that is, it doesn’t depend on other cells for survival; it doesn’t follow orders like other cells in the body, and it can grow where, when and how it likes,” said Duesberg. “That’s what species are all about.”
◆ Photo Tampering throughout History

Though photo manipulation has become more common in the age of digital cameras and image editing software, it actually dates back almost as far as the invention of photography. Gathered below is an overview of some of the more notable instances of photo manipulation in history. For recent years, an exhaustive inventory of every photo manipulation would be nearly impossible, so we focus here on the instances that have been most controversial or notorious, or ones that raise the most interesting ethical questions.
◆ Why Your Dad’s 30-Year-Old Stereo System Sounds Better than Your new One

If you fashion yourself as an audiophile and just threw down a decent wad of cash on a new A/V receiver, you probably won’t like hearing that the receivers of yesteryear produce comparable sound. Why is that? Technological advancement, ironically.

Cnet’s Steve Guttenberg sheds light on this interesting development that over the years, actual sound quality became a secondary selling point since most people started buying their equipment either online or from big box retailers. People started caring more about the number of connections and wireless interfaces and wattage of systems. As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound.
◆ You Can’t Keep Your Secrets From Twitter

When you tweet–even if you tweet under a pseudonym–how much do you reveal about yourself? More than you realize, argues a new paper from researchers at the Mitre Corporation. The paper, “Discriminating Gender on Twitter,” which is being presented this week at the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing in Scotland, demonstrates that machines can often figure out a person’s gender on Twitter just by reading their tweets. And such knowledge is power: the findings could be useful to advertisers and others.
◆ New Twitter Algorithm Could Out Dudes Pretending to Be Lesbians

Anonymous tweeters may have just become a little less anonymous. Researchers have put together an algorithm that can predict the gender of a tweeter based solely on the 140 characters they choose to tweet. Of course, determining the gender of an Internet personality has its monetary benefits for Twitter. “Marketing is one of the major motivators here, adding that he had heard talk that Twitter was internally working on similar demographically identifying algorithms internally,” linguist Delip Rao told Fast Company’s David Zax. But it could also help identify phonies misrepresenting themselves. Like, say, older men pretending to be lesbian bloggers. Remember when the Gay Girl in Damascus revealed himself as a middle-aged man from Georgia?
◆ Belsen Was A Gas parka by Australian label Evil Twin causes furore

An Australian designer has been forced to apologise for referencing the Holocaust in the name of one of its garments.

The “Belsen Was a Gas” military parka designed by Australian label Evil Twin, caused a furore among shoppers on the online retail website Buy Definition this week.

Shoppers condemned the label for “committing the sin of such hateful, shallow and selfish callousness”.
◆ Atheist group sues over cross at Sept. 11 museum

The installation of a cross-shaped steel beam at the Sept. 11 memorial at ground zero is unconstitutional, a national atheist group argued in a lawsuit filed Wednesday, asking a judge to order it removed or request that other religions and nonreligious views be equally represented at the site.
◆ Woman allegedly pulls baby from stroller, slams him against truck – says she wants to eat baby’s arm

A 36-year-old woman allegedly snatched an infant from his stroller and slammed him into the metal railing of a truck as his mother and aunt tried to fight her off, police said Wednesday.

The woman, Natasha Hubbard, later told police she wanted to eat the baby’s arm. The baby suffered only minor injuries.
◆ Thief dresses like armored truck guard — and walks out of Queens check-cashing spot with $15K

A clever crook, dressed as an armored truck guard, waltzed out of a Queens check-cashing joint last week with almost $15,000 in cash, cops said.

After stepping into Lorenzo’s Enterprises on 31st St. in Astoria about 10:15 a.m. Friday, the disguised bandit said he was there for a pickup and was given the load of cash, police said.

The employees never suspected the man, who was clad in a GARDA Armored Courier uniform, was a thief.

It wasn’t until a few hours later, when an actual guard from the same armored truck company arrived for the cash, that the workers realized they had been had, cops said.
◆ Homeless man killed in Fullerton police brawl; witnesses sought

Responding to reports of someone breaking into cars, officers had confronted Thomas, a transient well-known to merchants and officers in downtown Fullerton.

The Orange County Register reported that Thomas, who suffered from schizophrenia, began to struggle as officers tried to search him and that Thomas sustained head and neck injuries.
Thomas’ father, a retired Orange County sheriff’s deputy, has asserted that officers used excessive force to subdue his son, who was unarmed, slight and of medium height.

After seeing his son’s injuries and talking with witnesses, Thomas told the Register his son “was brutally beaten to death.”

“When I first walked into the hospital, I looked at what his mother described as my son … I didn’t recognize him,” Thomas said. “This is cold-blooded, aggravated murder.”
◆ Paul Krassner: My Lesson in Mindfulness

A dozen police cars had been set on fire, which in turn set off their alarms, underscoring the angry shouts from a mob of five thousand understandably outraged gays. The police were running amuck in an orgy of indiscriminate sadism, swinging their clubs wildly and screaming profanity-laden homophobic epithets.I was struck with a nightstick on the outside of my right knee and I fell to the ground. Another cop came charging at me and made a threatening gesture with his billy club. When I tried to protect my head, he jabbed me viciously on the exposed right side of my chest. Oh, God, the pain! It felt like an electric cattle prod was stuck between my ribs.
◆ Know Your Rights!

Your computer, your phone, and your other digital devices hold vast amounts of personal information about you and your family. This is sensitive data that’s worth protecting from prying eyes – including those of the government.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects you from unreasonable government searches and seizures, and this protection extends to your computer and portable devices. But how does this work in the real world? What should you do if the police or other law enforcement officers show up at your door and want to search your computer?

EFF has designed this guide to help you understand your rights if officers try to search the data stored on your computer or portable electronic device, or seize it for further examination somewhere else.

Because anything you say can be used against you in a criminal or civil case, before speaking to any law enforcement official, you should consult with an attorney.
◆ T-Shirts to Offend Lesbians

The rabidly politicized, mad-as-hell, accept-us-or-die quotient of gay Americans—at last count, somewhere between 97 to 99 percent of them—seem determined to prove that they can get just as offended as your average hillbilly breeder mountaineer, if not more so.

It’s as if they’re taking it to the streets, up into the hills, and down into the hollers to spread a simple message—“You think you can get offended, you stupid, hateful, one-toothed, inbred, Christ-worshiping rednecks? You ain’t seen an uptight bunch of whiny wah-wah emotionally retarded walking fetuses until you’ve tangled with us!”
◆ Scientists clone beagle that glows fluorescent green

Scientists in South Korea have used a cloning technique to created a “glowing” dog, which they hope to use to investigate certain human diseases. The “glowing” effect in the two year old beagle named Tegon can be turned on and off with a doxycycline antibiotic.
◆ WANTED IN GREENPOINT: “Hipstras”

Fuck MTV
◆ Apple Now Has More Cash Than The U.S. Government

According to the latest daily statement from the U.S. Treasury, the government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion at the end of the day yesterday.

Apple’s last earnings report (PDF here) showed that the company had $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities at the end of June.

In other words, the world’s largest tech company has more cash than the world’s largest sovereign government.
◆ Damaged Nuclear Fuel Rod Stuck At Japanese Plant for 17 Years

A damaged nuclear fuel rod was stuck inside a reactor at Japan’s ageing Hamaoka nuclear plant after an accident 17 years ago and is still there, the plant’s operator said Thursday.

The operator, Chubu Electric Power Co., said experts were unable to remove the spent fuel rod from the plant, located 125 miles (200 kilometers) southwest of Tokyo, Kyodo News reported.

The rod was stored inside a special container in the spent fuel pool of a decommissioned reactor. The company sought help from domestic and foreign experts on how to safely extract it, but no solution was found so far.
◆ War Texting : Hackers Unlock Car Doors Via SMS

Don Bailey and Mathew Solnik, Two hackers have found a way to unlock cars that use remote control and telemetry systems like BMW Assist, GM OnStar, Ford Sync, and Hyundai Blue Link. These systems communicate with the automaker’s remote servers via standard standard mobile networks like GSM and CDMA — and with a clever bit of reverse engineering, the hackers were able to pose as these servers and communicate directly with a car’s on-board computer via “war texting” — a riff on “war driving,” the act of finding open wireless networks.