] Campaigners from Greenpeace say they have found abandoned
] uranium "yellow cake" scattered across the local
] community, after the plant just south of Baghdad [Tuwaitha]
] was looted during the recent US-led conflict.

BBC NEWS: Radiation fears grow in Iraq

] In a week long survey Greenpeace radiation experts found
] abandoned uranium yellowcake and radioactive sources
] scattered across the community. Much of the material was
] looted from the facility by villagers who used it for
] house building and water and food storage. Local people
] are still storing radioactive barrels and lids in their
] houses, as they do not realize the potential danger.
 . . .
] "If this had happened in the UK, the U.S. or any other country,
] the villages around Tuwaitha would be swarming with radiation
] experts and decontamination teams," said Mike Townsley of
] Greenpeace. "It would have been branded a nuclear disaster site
] and the people given immediate medical checkups."

I agree! I've been following this Tuwaitha story for almost two months now, and have been horrified by the reports of radiation poisoning there, that have not been resulting in any kind of international outcry. This place is Iraq's Chernobyl. It needs cleanup, and it needs it now.

Greenpeace Takes 'Hot' Iraqi Canister to U.S. Forces

] It's difficult to say exactly how many of the 113
] million married Americans are too exhausted or too grumpy
] to get it on, but some psychologists estimate that 15 to
] 20 percent of couples have sex no more than 10 times a
] year, which is how the experts define sexless marriage.
] And even couples who don't meet that definition
] still feel like they're not having sex as often as
] they used to.

Now the question is, are the numbers reflective of a change in sexuality from how things were a hundred years ago? Or are we just getting better statistics to prove something that already existed?

Newsweek: Are Married Couples Having Less Sex?

] Monday - June 23 - 2003 - TIME Magazine, March 18, 1991.
] "Secrecy at CIA headquarters extends all the way to
] the courtyard. Kryptos, a granite-and-copper sculpture by
] Washington artist Jim Sanborn, was quietly installed last
] November near a new building on the agency's
] grounds. Taxpayers financed the $250,000 work, but that
] does not guarantee public access. Sanborn's
] sculpture features a 2,000-character encoded message that
] is believed to have been penned by a well-known writer
] whose name has not been disclosed. Besides the artist and
] the author, only CIA director William Webster knows what
] the top-secret phrase says." True no longer! 3 of 4
] parts solved. Visit The First Lady of Online Games for
] more.

Game Designer God Cliff Johnson blogged me! (I'm walking on cloud 9)

Cliff Johnson's Blog on Kryptos

This is an online javascript Vigenere utility. Alas, it can't be used for something like Kryptos, because this utility only allows single key, and Kryptos is double-key. Still though, it's useful for single-key Vigenere.

Looks like if I want an online double-key Vigenere decoder, I'm going to have to write one... Stay tuned. :)

Vigenere Encoder/Decoder

Morse code encoder/decoders in both CGI and Java.

Morse Code Utilities

I spent days scouring the web trying to find some sort of comprehensive list of James Sanborn's artwork, but no dice (Sanborn, btw, is the sculptor that made "Kryptos"). I even contacted his agents and asked for a list, but they said that there wasn't such a thing, and that if they were to ask the artist for a complete list of his sculptures, he'd probably laugh at them since there were so many.

So, I went ahead and made my own list. I guess this makes me the self-appointed head of the Jim Sanborn fanclub. ;)

Artist/Sculptor James Sanborn

From court documents involving Iyman Faris, on trial for Al Qaeda plots:

] C-2 [Khalid Shaikh Mohammed] described the equipment as
] "gas cutters" but instructed the defendant [Faris]
] to refer to them in code as "gas stations" in any
] subsequent communications sent to C-2. C-2 also
] explained that al Qaeda was planning to derail
] trains. C-2 assigned the defendant to obtain the
] necessary tools for the train-derailment plot as well. In
] messages to C-2, those tools were to be referred to as
] "mechanics shops." The defendant indicated that he had
] email and was familiar with the internet. C-2 instructed
] the defendant never to access email immediately after
] logging on but only after opening other internet sites
] first.
  . . .
] Between April 2002 and March 2003, the defendant sent
] several coded messages through another in the United
] States to C-1 in Pakistan, indicating that the defendant
] was still trying to obtain "gas stations" and "mechanics
] shops" (i.e., he had been unsuccessful in his ongoing
] attempts to locate the equipment). In March 2003, the
] defendant inquired about C-2's arrest through a message
] to another here in the United States.
 . . .
] In late 2002, the defendant traveled to New York City. After
] examining the particular bridge, he concluded that the plot to
] destroy the bridge by severing the cables was very unlikely to
] succeed because of the bridge's security and structure. In early
] 2003, after scouting the bridge, the defendant sent a message to
] C-1 which stated "the weather is too hot." This message was coded
] and meant to convey the defendant's assessment that the bridge
] plot was unlikely to succeed.

Interesting stuff on the codes that Al Qaeda was actually using (as opposed to all the rumors about steganographic embedding in porn images).

It's also worth noting that one of the messages between Atta and Binalshibh (according to Binalshibh when he granted an interview to Al-Jazeera last year) also used a similar message: "the summer will surely be hot" when planning the September 11th attacks.

Question though: What would be the benefit of checking Email *after* browsing other internet sites first? Would this just be to throw watchers off the scent by making a session look like an "innocent" session, or would that kind of pattern mess with sniffer programs somehow? Or maybe the "other internet sites" were specific ones designed to disguise source IP?

Al Qaeda Codes: Gas Stations and Mechanics Shops

This would save on *soooo* much typing. :)

The 3l33t HaX0r Keyboard

] This is a transcript of the "Cyrillic Projector"
] sculpture. The sculpture was created in the early 1990s
] by James Sanborn (best known for the enigmatic "Kryptos"
] at Langley), and was installed at the University of North
] Carolina, Charlotte, in 1997.

Here's my current crypto project -- compiling an accurate transcript of the Cyrillic Projector. It's my hope that by cracking this code, we may get inspiration for cracking the uncracked section IV of Kryptos. To my knowledge, this transcript that I've created is the only publicly-available transcript on the web.

Sanborn's Cyrillic Projector Code