Urban gardeners will this weekend be tending their humble crops. Few will have studied gardening, instead picking up useful skills as children. Why do we value such domestic knowledge less than a formal education?

gardening is good for the soul
the article talks about gardening as "woman's work" -- i remember helping my grandfather in the garden and I know my father created my childhood garden so I don't have that stereotype -- but I do know that i discovered growing plants is rewarding. A garden is a place of peace, tranquility, creativity and patience. Gardening reminds us to be patient and humble. Nature is in charge and she demands respect but there is growth and life and fertility from death (compost).

BBC NEWS | Magazine | You say potato...

In Vietnam, the mobility of the Vietcong guerrilla forces was eventually crippled by a laborious hamlet-level census completed by hand in 1968. Biometric tracking and databases have since made extraordinary advances, yet our vaunted technical experts have failed at this elementary task in Iraq.

Any time a car is stopped in the United States, the police run an immediate check. The New York Police Department tracks criminal trends by neighborhood and block in a real time database called Compstat. The Chicago police have handheld devices that send fingerprints over the airwaves and get a response in minutes. So do America's border police. But in Iraq, for four years American military units have been forced to concoct their own identification databases using laptops, spreadsheets and poster boards. At any one time, the military is conducting dozens of separate census operations. Houses are labeled by one unit and re-labeled by the next.

Meanwhile, it is common for an Iraqi civilian to carry two or three IDs with different names. The result: Last year 400,000 coalition and Iraqi troops made fewer than 40,000 arrests; in contrast, 22,000 New York City patrolmen made more than 500,000 spot checks and 313,000 arrests.

The laptop is mightier than the sword - International Herald Tribune

Salman Rushdie, who went into hiding under threat of death after an Iranian fatwa, has been knighted by the Queen.

excellent Salman Rushdie is cool
and a stout democrat and a great writer

BBC NEWS | UK | Rushdie knighted in honours list

The Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, says it has sent a message to the kidnappers of BBC journalist Alan Johnston, demanding his release.

A Hamas spokesman told reporters in Gaza - which is now controlled by the group - that it would not allow the BBC correspondent's captivity to continue.

a silver lining

BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hamas demands BBC man's release

Today's global liberal democratic order faces a significant challenge from the rise of nondemocratic great powers - the West's old Cold War rivals, China and Russia, now operating under "authoritarian capitalist" rather than Communist regimes.

The return of Authoritarian Capitalists - International Herald Tribune

China is seeking to unseat the United States as the dominant power in cyberspace, a U.S. Air Force general leading a new push in this area said Wednesday.

"They're the only nation that has been quite that blatant about saying, 'We're looking to do that,"' 8th Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Robert Elder told reporters.

Elder is to head a new three-star cyber command being set up at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, already home to about 25,000 military personnel involved in everything from electronic warfare to network defense.

The command's focus is to control the cyber domain, critical to everything from communications to surveillance to infrastructure security.

"We have peer competitors right now in terms of doing computer network attack ... and I believe we're going to be able to ratchet up our capability," Elder said. "We're going to go way ahead."

The Defense Department said in its annual report on China's military power last month that China regarded computer network operations -- attacks, defense and exploitation -- as critical to achieving "electromagnetic dominance" early in a conflict.

China's People's Liberation Army has established information warfare units to develop viruses to attack enemy computer systems and networks, the Pentagon said.

China also was investing in electronic countermeasures and defenses against electronic attack, including infrared decoys, angle reflectors and false-target generators, it said.

Elder described the bulk of current alleged Chinese cyber-operations as industrial espionage aimed at stealing trade secrets to save years of high-tech development.

He attributed the espionage to a mix of criminals, hackers and "nation-state" forces. Virtually all potential U.S. foes also were scanning U.S. networks for trade and defense secrets, he added.

"Everyone but North Korea," he said. "We've concluded that there must be only one laptop in all of North Korea -- and that guy's not allowed to scan overseas networks," Elder said.

In October, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff defined cyberspace as "characterized by the use of electronics and the electromagnetic spectrum to store, modify, and exchange data via networked systems and associated physical infrastructures."

General: China taking on U.S. in cyber arms race - CNN.com

The gist:

Goth obviously emerged from punk, but punk didn't last. The same is true of most subcultures: Hippies are old hat; skinheads have come and gone; grunge is yesterday's news. Why does goth alone remain undead?

Some tidbits:

If it suits you, you can be a goth all your life.

Taking for granted the misery of the human condition, goth turns depression into an aesthetic, a semi-ironic pose — a perfect style for the awkward and self-conscious.

Goth's Wan Stamina

I have consumed a massive amount of Red Bull in the last 2 weeks in a run up to finishing the manuscript for my Ajax Security book. We are talking on average 2-3 a day, with an occasional day of 4. Once there was a day of 5. Just once, and *never* again. At some point you can't really call them "days" anymore. A day is simply a convenient unit of 24 hours that may or may not start at 12:00am.

There is an elusive euphoria stage of Red Bull consumption where you are unbelievably productive and yet task that seemly take hours take only about 27 minutes or so. That was the odd thing. It always seemed 27 minutes later. I like to call this stage "Fry-Time" in reference to that Futurama episode where Fry drinks 100 cups of coffee and time slows to a crawl. Fry-Time occurs only in a narrow band on the line between total exhaustion and caffeine-induced heart attack and is a difficult stage to reach. I've hit Fry-Time maybe 3-4 times ever. 2 of those times have happened in the last 2 weeks.

Then, there is the "attention deficient disordering" stage. This stage occurs beyond Fry-Time and before the caffeine-induced heart attack phase. In this phase, you want to be productive. You are aware of all the work you need to accomplish as well as its importance. You feel motivated and excited about all your projects. In fact, it feels like you are in the Fry-Time stage. But you aren't. You are ADDing. Because as soon as you try to do something. You can't. Halfway through your brain jumps to thinking about another task and you stall. Its like OS scheduler that has so many jobs to do it spends all it time context switching instead of actually making any progress on any of them. This is an extremely frustrating phase because you know what's happening. And the very act of noticing that you are being scattered brained brings to mind all the tasks you still need to do which makes you think about how cool some of them are and suddenly you aren't doing any more work on whatever it was you were working on. You've context switched to another job.

The only thing to do in the ADD stage is wait it out and try to be productive later. The only problem is when you are in the ADD phase you have had so much Red Bull you can't sleep! So you are wide awake, too hyped to do anything, knowing you have shit to do, and losing time that you could be sleeping.

This is exactly what happened to me around 4:00am this morning. On an upside, I got through about 60 pages of Guns, Germs, and Steel. Elonka's cousin sure can write!

Taming the Bull

First came the breast-feeding fatwa. It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times, to establish family ties. Then came the urine fatwa. It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.
...
For many Muslims, fatwas, or religious edicts, are the bridge between the principles of their faith and modern life. They are supposed to be issued by religious scholars who look to the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad for guidance. While the more sensational pronouncements grab attention, the bulk of the fatwas involve the routine of daily life. In Egypt alone, thousands are issued every month.

The controversy in Cairo has been more than just embarrassing. It comes at a time when religious and political leaders say that there is a crisis in Islam because too many fatwas are being issued, and that many of them rely on ideology more than learning.

A Compass That Can Clash With Modern Life - New York Times

‘I will live in a very quiet world’
By David Searle
Robin Wood and the aerials that neighbours have complained about.
Robin Wood and the aerials that neighbours have complained about.

A BLIND amateur radio ham fears he may lose his contact with the outside world if he is given an antisocial behaviour order over the aerials he keeps in his garden.

Robin Wood, 61, of Ombersley Close, Woodrow, is a licensed amateur radio operator who has had aerials in his garden for 15 years.

But after a visit from an ASBO officer, Redditch Council wants to reduce the size of the aerials, meaning he will no longer be able to communicate with his friends around the world.

"I'm blind and the radio is the only way I can communicate with the outside world. I use the radio as my social life," said Mr Wood.

"I'm not prepared to lose my quality of life. I feel threatened when I go outside and haven't been out on my own for 15 years.

"I can't watch the TV either - without my radio, I will live in a very quiet world."
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Mr Wood uses the radio to keep in touch with friends from as far afield as New York, Australia and Canada but the reduced sized aerials would not be able to transmit that far.

"The council just won't listen to me. They won't find anyone technically competent enough who can tell me exactly what the problem is and exactly what I have to take down and why I have to do it.

"They've threatened me with court if I don't take them down. I speak to them but they don't take anything on board," said Mr Wood.

Mr Wood's wife June said: "When you think of ASBOs, you think of young delinquents, not a 61-year-old man."

Mr Wood is now involved in talks with lawyers about the steps he can take to keep his aerials the same size.

A council spokesman said: "Residents are concerned about the visual impact of this resident's aerials, the radio interference they are experiencing and the nuisance this is causing them.

"Following legal advice, we're working with the resident and the relevant organisations involved to come to a solution that meets the needs of all parties."

This is bullshit.... Hams here in the US are required to take the steps to reduce and/or eliminate interference and I am sure it is the same in the UK.... Someone has a beef with someone and they bend the laws to take them out....

Just like the DoD jumps on hams on the coasts for the interference to PAVE/PAWS radar... but why is it now a problem? I can not seem to find out why?

see link http://www.eham.net/articles/16786

*update*

"Let's see if I understand this: The Anti Social Behavior Officer is wanting to remove the primary social outlet of an individual because of neighbors who are not very sociable. OK, I thing I have it. The antisocials are upset that he is being sociable. The Anti Social Behavior Officer is trying to enforce antisocial Behavior."

I Will Live In A Very Quiet World (from Redditch Advertiser)