Tendrils of the hivemind: subversive technologies, disruptive paradigm shifts, internet samizdat, memeplex engineering, FREE BEER!!
Must read:
Washington Post: FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists in anthrax attacks
FleetBoston Celebrity Series: The Polar Express & Elijah's Angel
Independent.co.uk: Anthrax attacks now being linked to US right-wing cranks
Save Harry from the grasp of Coca-Cola: "The Harry Potter craze is being turned by Muggle moguls into a sales vehicle for liquid candy!"
What could possibly be more nerve-wracking for the folks on the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission team than waiting to find out whether the Mars Orbit Insertion has succeeded? Knowing that in addition to live news coverage on the web, there's also a webcam in the command center.
Must attend: NIPS*2001: Neural Information Processing Systems: Natural and Synthetic
Washington Post: Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma:
"FBI and Justice Department investigators are increasingly frustrated by the silence of jailed suspected associates of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. [...] Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture."
Congressman Steve Buyer (R-Indiana) advocates the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in Afghanistan: "We'd be very naïve to believe that biotoxins and chemical agents were not in these caves. Put a tactical nuclear device in, and close these caves for a thousand years."
From Seven Million at Risk, by Jonathan Schell, in The Nation:
"It is a very, very urgent situation. It is very hard to get convoys of food in when there is a military campaign.... You have millions of people, they say up to 7 million, at risk. Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people this winter because we did not use the window of opportunity?"
-- Mary Robinson, United Nations commissioner for human rights
"It's as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people. We can drag them back from it or push them in."
-- Dominic Nutt, of Christian Aid
FindSounds.com - Search the Web for Sounds. Makers of the Comparisonics Audio Player! Current search faves: burp, harp, Ren and Stimpy.
The Translation Site at ajeeb.com provides automatic translation of Al Jazeera's website (among others) from Arabic to English. Probably not state-of-the-art, but I'm impressed that it can be done at all. And the price is right.
Fox News: U.S. Bombing a Criminal Act? -- Berkeley, CA city council member Dona Spring stands up to war-frenzied media bully Bill O'Reilly.
From Guardian Unlimited: Gagging the sceptics:
"Members of Women in Black have routinely risked their lives in the hope of preventing war. They have stayed in the homes of Palestinians being shelled by Israeli tanks and have confronted war criminals in the Balkans. They have stood silently while being abused and spat at during vigils all over the world. But now, in this looking-glass world in which war is peace and peace is war, instead of winning the peace prize the Women in Black have been labelled potential terrorists by the FBI and threatened with a grand jury investigation. They are in good company. Earlier this year the [former] director of the FBI [Louis J. Freeh] named the chaotic but harmless organisations Reclaim the Streets and Carnival Against Capitalism in the statement on terrorism he presented to the Senate. Now, partly as a result of his representations, the Senate's new terrorism bill, like Britain's Terrorism Act 2000, redefines the crime so broadly that members of Greenpeace are in danger of being treated like members of al-Qaida."
The Curl Content Language - A free presentation by Paul Metzger
11 October 2001: Members of the San Francisco vigil of Women in Black are being investigated by the FBI:
"The FBI is threatening my group with a Grand Jury investigation. Of what? That we publicly call the Israeli military's occupation of the mandated Palestine lands illegal? So does the World Court and the United Nations. That destroying hundreds of thousands of the Palestinians’ olive and fruit trees, blocking roads and demolishing homes promotes hatred and terrorism in the Middle East? Even President Bush and Colin Powell have gotten around to saying so. So what is to investigate? That some of us are in contact with activist Palestinian peace groups? This is bad?"
From Science News: Sperm Protein May Lead to Male Pill:
"Scientists have now found a protein that helps a mammalian sperm wiggle its long tail to speed along. Mutations in the gene for this protein, which appears to permit calcium ions to enter the sperm's tail, may account for some cases of male infertility. By rendering sperm immobile, a drug that inhibits the protein could serve as a male version of the birth control pill."Or... imagine an engineered retrovirus that inserted such a mutation, or otherwise disabled the gene that codes for this sperm-tail-wiggling protein. If such a virus could be made hardy enough for airborne transmission, e.g., by combining it with just the right genes from, say, influenza or rhinoviruses, the result could be large-scale male infertility. If the new virus had no other symptoms, it might take a very long time to identify the culprit. Hmmm.... But it would be wrong...
AI USA: Colombia: Stop the Massacres. Stop the Military Aid:
11 October 2001
The two most recent massacres carried out in the past few days by paramilitaries in the northern department of Magdalena and south-western department of Valle del Cauca demonstrate ever more clearly why it is imperative to stop military aid from reaching the Colombian army and their paramilitary allies.
Must read:
Z Magazine: "Say What You Want, But This War is Illegal", by Michael Mandel
From When Branes Collide: Science News Online, Sept. 22, 2001:
"In the ekpyrotic scenario, the fifth dimension is finite in size and bounded on either side by a three-dimensional brane. One of these boundary branes was the surface that was to become our own cosmos, and the other represents another universe. [...] One of the boundary branes moves slowly but steadily toward the other, attracted by an exchange of lower-dimension branes between the two. As the boundary brane moves, it shrinks the fifth dimension. When the two boundary branes touch, the fifth dimension collapses completely, an event the researchers call the Big Crunch. [...] The collision triggers the Big Bang. However after the impact, the two boundary branes bounce off each other and move apart, recreating the fifth dimension. This rebound starts the expansion of our universe."
The Power of Persevering for Peace, by Larry Yates
"Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
-- Hermann Goering, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II
BBC News mirrors one of those Al-Qaeda rants that the U.S. government doesn't want you to see. What's next? U.S. air-strikes on London?
ACLU Action Alert: Oppose Extreme and Unnecessary Expansions of Government Authority in the form of S.1510, the "Uniting and Strengthening America (USA) Act"
Infoshop.org: Bush Admin Urges Simultaneous Pledge of Allegiance in Schools on Friday. Can you say "forced speech"? I knew you could. How about a nation-wide school walkout on Friday to protest state-sponsored terror?
From Killer Food Drops, by Laura Flanders:
Here's the half of the story that the media and the Bush team bring you: Under cover of darkness, U.S. food packets rained from the sky like manna upon the hungriest parts of Afghanistan. Here's the other half -- which requires some independent research and imagination: unguided crates crash to ground in the pitch black. Hungry Afghans rush to gather them up. Too late. Another explosion, then another. Parents watch in horror as the brightly colored packets tempt their children onto landmines.
Let's play "Find the Terrorist"!
National Post: Earplugs recommended for orchestra musicians
A great idea -- source unknown:
What to do with Osama bin Laden:
Killing him will only create a martyr. Holding him prisoner will inspire his comrades to take hostages to demand his release. Therefore, I suggest we do neither. Let the Special Forces, or Seals or whatever covertly capture him, fly him to an undisclosed hospital and have surgeons perform a complete sex-change operation. Then we return her to Afghanistan to live as a woman under the Taliban.
IEEE / ACM Bioinformatics Lecture Series, Talk #2:
From BBC News:Tackling terror with technology (Sep. 21):
"There's so little encryption going across the net that any that is used stands out like a sore thumb".So now do I have to worry about being taken out by a pinpoint air strike if I check my bank account from my cell phone?
-- Brian Gladman, Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR).
Village Voice: A User's Guide to Antiwar Activism, by Coco McPherson
Mostly harmless. They call me... "Dangerously Cheesy"
