Identifying falsified images can be straightforward if you know a few tricks.

I'm pretty good at telling fake images, but this info is interesting...

oe magazine - photofakery

Where anti-skateboard architecture and anti-pigeon spiking combine to create aggressive anti-loitering architecture. People suck...

Transfer: The Anti-Sit Archives

This dude jumped the Great Wall on his skateboard. Next stop, Springfield Gorge!

The Official Site of Danny Way | Photos

The U.S. government lacks a broad vision for broadband and wireless technologies and is losing ground as countries like South Korea and India push new technologies from the highest level of government, the chief executive of Nortel Networks said Tuesday.

Nortel CEO comes out swinging | InfoWorld

Several graphs depicting a network of FOAF (Friend of a Friend) documents available from the O'Reilly connection network. the visual connections in this network resemble air traffic patterns, as specific social network nodes act as critical communication channels that bridge the gap between disconnected clusters of individuals.

These are similar to Rattle's social network graphs. Much bigger though...

information aesthetics: foaf network

The first installment of the Offnominal Podcast is now available. For this pilot episode, I’ve made a live mix of two previously recorded rehearsals, taking the best segments of each and molding them into a new composite piece entitled FlightDynamics Suite, separated into individual movements in the best prog-rock style. Following on from that are Cfmmmmmma, one of my many excursions into Time Machines-style drones and Ashen, a rough mix of a track culled from the 30 or so currently in process.

While I was on blogging hiatus MemeStreams user Logickal started podcasting his industrial music. From droning atmospheric noise to fast IDM... definately an interesting music experience. Episode 2 walks the spectrum, from moody noise to dancey clicks to jazzy melodies. Check it out!

FlightDynamics

MemeStreams user Infinite and his friends do a bad ass Drum and Bass set which is streamcast from here every Thursday night 10PM Central 11PM Eastern. They also host Jungle Nerd Radio which offers more beats every Wednesday at 9PM Central 10PM Eastern. Blast these beatz and show Senator Biden and his camo clad buddies from Utah where they can shove their law and order!

VINYLBEATS.NET

Hijexx wrote:
Wal-Mart LP's Kill Suspected Shoplifter

Man held down on burning pavement until he died

Two observations:
1. Most retailers do not advise security guards to get in physical skirmishes with shoplifters. (Read the last post on that link, from Maco dated 8/15.) Shrinkage is not worth the legal costs associated with accidentally killing a shoplifter. If WalMart's policy is to chase people down they actually are responsible and you can bet a wrongful death suit will be forthcoming. WalMart will settle the suit. This is an example of why you face potential legal problems if you kill a robber who has broken into your house (depending on the circumstances). If it wasn't a tort, WalMart could kill anyone who refused to leave after being asked to by a security guard.

2. There is widespread press coverage right now because some nutjob walked into a WalMart in Arizona and killed two employees. Google says 317 stories. Press coverage of this incident, where a poorly trained Walmart employee killed a shoplifter, is extremely hard to find. A spattering of local news coverage. No national coverage. Some blogs, mostly lefties who don't like Walmart.

Why did one story get lots of coverage and the other got almost none? There seem to be two options.

1. People simply wouldn't be interested in reading this WalMart story. Its not newsworthy. The random shooting story IS newsworthy.

Why?

A. Completely innocent victims are more sympathetic then someone guilty of stealing a bag of diapers?
B. People who are gainfully employed are more sympathetic then people who are poor?
C. Random deaths at the hand of crazy people are more scary then random deaths at the hand of poorly trained security guards?
D. Insane killers are more interesting to read about then cases of extreme negligence resulting in death?

2. This story would be interesting to the reading populace, but it hasn't been run because the Newspapers are not interested in running it.

Why?

1. Newspapers don't like to run stories that aren't in the interests of a large advertiser?
2. Newspapers don't want to focus attention on the Security Guard, who was simply operating out of ignorance and doesn't deserve to be at the center of a national brewhaha.

Am I missing any? Which reason is the most compelling?

RE: Walmart Kills Houston Man for Shoplifting

Pat Robertson wrote:

"There are a number of ways of taking out a dictator from power besides killing him. I was misinterpreted by the AP, but that happens all the time."

Why is this acceptable in our society? Robertson clearly said assasinate him. He is on the spot. This happens with public figures all the time. If you have political enemies they will take any unreasonable thing that you say and nail you to the wall on it in an attempt to discredit you wholesale. Its part of how politics works.

The appropriate thing to do, it seems, would be to take responsibility for what was said, acknowledge that it was wrong, and apologize. People need to understand the humanity and fallibility of other people. If they did, these kinds of political attacks would be less effective. Yeah, he fucked up, he was wrong, so what?

Instead, Robertson says "I didn't mean what I clearly meant, I meant something different." This is the standard response. To Spin. And people buy it. This sort of spin war happens because its effective. All of the people on Robertson's side of the isle who want to beleive that Robertson is infallible will grab this hook and hold onto it. Apparently this kind of spin is more effective then simple honesty even in a cut and dry case such as this. Its perspective jousting in the public sphere, similar to what goes on in a courtroom.

Why is this acceptable? Are people really so stupid that they cannot see through this despite having heard it over and over again from so many different political figures? Why won't people think critically about their favorite leaders? Why can't they separate their beleifs from the people who represent them?

U: It gets better: Aparrently after going on his TV show and saying he didn't call for assasination and its all the AP's fault, he issued a statement to the press saying that he did call for assasination and apologizing. There is absolutely no need for consistency at all, apparently. On TV, his viewers can't rewind and see what he really said, so unless they actually read the news, they won't know what happened.

Pat Robertson Says He Was Misinterpreted - Yahoo! News

The default reaction to the Rave bust in Utah from a number of people has been of the form "blah, blah, Republicans, blah, blah, Bush, blah, blah, Police State." This is more then a little annoying. Raves have been targetted federally by a bipartisan coallition led by Democrats. Yes, Virginia, Democrats have jack boots too.

In 2002 Democratic senators Biden, Leahy, and Durbin along with Republicans Grassley and Hatch proposed the Rave Act of 2002. Biden was the primary sponsor.

This law included a findings section, essentially a list of justifications, which is basically a collection of paranoid rantings that have little or no connection to reality. For example:

Many rave promoters go to great lengths to try to portray their events as alcohol-free parties that are safe places for young adults to go to dance with friends, and some even go so far as to hire off-duty, uniformed police officers to patrol outside of the venue to give parents the impression that the event is safe.

There is no way they might actually have a legitimate interest in hiring security guards!

Because rave promoters know that Ecstasy causes the body temperature in a user to rise and as a result causes the user to become very thirsty, many rave promoters facilitate and profit from flagrant drug use at rave parties or events by selling over-priced bottles of water and charging entrance fees to 'chill-rooms' where users can cool down.

You'd think maybe people who were dancing at an all night party would, you know, not want to drink a lot of alcohol, need bottles of water, and want to chill out, irrespective of whether or not they were on drugs, wouldn't you? Furthermore, I've been to a LOT of raves and I have never ever seen a separate fee charged for access to a chill room!

Apparently Leahy and Durbin dropped their cosponsorship, possibly when they started getting angry faxes. But Biden pushed on. He was joined by Presidential hopeful Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and everyone's favorite Democratic Senator, Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The thing was rolled up into s.151, an omnibus protect the children law that, among many other things, calls for 2-4 year prison terms for anyone who puts sexually explicit material on a "misleading" internet domain name. It is now law.

Now, yeah, people do drugs at Raves. Some aspects of the rave culture are drug related. However, the same thing can be said of any pop culture in the past 50-80 years including Rock, Jazz, HipHop, etc... These laws don't target drugs specifically. They target Raves. They specifically target culture.

When I left Atlanta in the late 90s there was a vibrant rave culture in the city with a real community that corrdinated online and threw parties. Its completely gone. There is nothing left but a few high priced clubs that play similar music. This website stub is all thats left of a once vibrant mailing list of people who threw parties on a regular basis that I participated in for years. The police wiped it out. They wiped out a culture. They did it with strong support from the Democrats.

FOXNews.com - Views - Straight Talk - Raving Lunacy