quoted:
---
The William Leonard Pickard Website

Dedicated to helping Leonard win his freedom

It has been over two years since Leonard was arrested for allegedly manufacturing LSD at a missile silo in Kansas. His trial has finally started with jury selection on January 13, 2003.

Since Leonard was arrested he has a newborn child with his young wife. Leonard has chosen to pursue the case at great risk. If he wins the case he will go free, and if he loses, he will serve life in prison. Leonard has chosen this difficult task so that he might have the chance to live the rest of his life with his wife and child.
---

Free William Leonard Pickard

] Hi, I'm Kelly, and this is my scream-body. Do you ever
] find yourself in a situation where you really have to
] scream, but you can't? Because you're at work, or you're
] in a classroom, or you're watching your children, or you
] are in any number of situations where it's just not
] permitted? Well, scream-body is a portable space for
] screaming. When the user screams into the scream-body
] their scream is silenced...but is also recorded, for
] later release where, when and how the user chooses."
] (screaming noises)]

] Now you laugh, which is great, but
] think about it: she designed a circuit board, she
] designed in a micro-controller, she programmed the
] micro-controller, she made the board herself, she
] developed PA-resistive squeeze sensors to control it,
] advanced engineering phones. You know, in a normal
] company there would be a team of engineers (a normal
] company wouldn't even do this anyway), and for her it's
] not product development, it's really kind of post-digital
] literacy, it's just mastering the means of expression.
] Design increasingly really can, and does, mean designers
] are crossing all these levels of description.

A really interesting article that goes from what to do with net connected microcontrollers to the idea of programming as basic literacy. Also happens to have the most annoying web page background I have ever seen in my life.

About Flow: Doors of Perception 7 on Flow

This is a pretty creepy use of Macromedia Flash. :)

Look Into The Eyeball

Radio Deregulation: Has It Served Citizens and Musicians?

On November 18, 2002 the Future of Music Coalition publicly released its report documenting the effects of radio station ownership consolidation on musicians and the public. This comprehensive analysis was conducted in partnership with Media Access Project and funded by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.

FMC | Radio Study

] Google has bought Blogger. Forget those peace protests
] around the world on Saturday: there is nothing more
] interesting to the weblog community than the weblog
] community, and this was the news of the weekend.
] What, you might ask, has happened? Put simply, the
] world's favourite search engine has bought one of the
] companies that pioneered the online diary, or weblog.
] Google now owns a service that makes it easy to publish a
] weblog, as well as an archive that holds the text from
] more than one million weblogs, 200,000 of which are
] active today.
] Naturally, the story was broken via breathless weblog
] postings. Dan Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News had
] learnt of the story and produced a special edition of his
] column to break it. Evan Williams, the chief executive of
] Pyra (the company that gave birth to Blogger) read
] Gillmor's story, which was published unexpectedly early,
] and announced the takeover at a US blogging event on
] Saturday afternoon.

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Google gets Blogger and better

] The U.S. government has asked Internet users and
] businesses to practice "safe computing" online and
] promised to bolster its own cyber-defenses in a much-
] anticipated online security plan released Friday.
] More than a year in the making, the National Strategy to
] Secure Cyberspace seeks to protect the nation's myriad
] computer networks from damaging attacks like the
] "Slammer" virus that knocked out wide swaths of the
] Internet last month.

] The report advocates increased spending on cyber-security
] research and a greater degree of coordination between
] high-tech firms and government agencies like the FBI that
] could track down cyber attacks.

Wired News: U.S. Plans for Online Defense

] Australian scientists have made a bra with a brain - it
] tightens its own straps if an energetic wearer needs
] extra support.
] The "smart bra" is made of a fabric with a special
] coating that makes it contract when the strain on it
] passes a pre-set level.

Just think of the applications for a fabric like this. Very cool.

New Zealand News - NZ - Brainy bra gives lift when you need it

quoted:
====
Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of her grandson's car when she was severely burned by McDonald's coffee in February 1992. Liebeck ordered coffee that was served in a Styrofoam cup at the drive-through window of a local McDonald's.

After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck
could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap.

The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonald's refused.

During discovery, McDonald's produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebeck's. This history documented McDonald's knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

FACT SHEET: MCDONALD'S SCALDING COFFEE CASE

Darwin wrote:
] quoted:
] ====
] Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the
] passenger seat of her grandson's car when she was severely
] burned by McDonald's coffee in February 1992. Liebeck ordered
] coffee that was served in a Styrofoam cup at the drive-through
] window of a local McDonald's.
]
] After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward
] and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck
] could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil
] justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that
] Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion
] when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed
] the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic
] lid from the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents
] of the cup spilled into her lap.
]
] The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and
] held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that
] Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns)
] over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs,
] perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was
] hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent
] skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement
] treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but
] McDonald's refused.
]
] During discovery, McDonald's produced documents showing more
] than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982
] and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns
] substantially similar to Liebeck's. This history documented
] McDonald's knowledge about the extent and nature of this
] hazard.

I remember when I first heard about this case. I thought that the woman was over exaggerating her injury. Everything I read was from terrible news sources (The local Phoenix paper). It wasn't until recently that I discovered just how much she actually had to go through because of her burns. Their coffee really is too damn hot.

RE: FACT SHEET: MCDONALD'S SCALDING COFFEE CASE

He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child. It has nothing to do with me. I should not feel threatened.

This is an amazing article. I've often had internal debates over the parent's choice in the life or death of a child with serious disabilities. Unfortunately, this article doesn't touch base on how Harriet McBryde Johnson feels about the advances of genetic engineering and early detection of such disabilties.

I'm still a bit confused about the animal rights angle that Professor Singer has. Perhaps he feels that by taking the animal rights angle, he has more of a valid argument that somehow people who are severely disabled suffer as much as animals by being subjected to life? Maybe he feels that if we value human life in its early development stages so much, then we should value animal life just as much in proportion? Which argument supports which ;-)

Unspeakable Conversations