] Abd El-Rahman Al-Zobari, surveying the damage to his
] house, said he and his friends are not going to vote on
] Sunday. "Is this what they call democracy?" he said. "We
] don't want democracy that comes on the back of a tank."

[ Freedom is on the march.

This phrase has popped up in talking points for months, and the imagery is simply stunning. Indeed, what better way to convey freedom than the lockstep of a well armed military. -k]

CNN.com - Election leaves war-weary Fallujans cold - Jan 24, 2005

] When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome,
] N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had
] no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a
] secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state
] police.
]
] A federal judge in New York ruled last week that police
] did not need court authorization when tracking Moran from
] afar. "Law enforcement personnel could have conducted a
] visual surveillance of the vehicle as it traveled on the
] public highways," U.S. District Judge David Hurd wrote.
] "Moran had no expectation of privacy in the whereabouts
] of his vehicle on a public roadway."

Yowzer... The police "could have" visually observed the vehicle, but they didn't. They attached a tracking device to it. A tracking device it a wholly different animal and has wholly different privacy implications.

[ Agreed. Is the applicability to my person as well? Is it any more defensible to stick a tracking device on my car than on me? I think the difference is minimal, in truth, and the thought of traipsing around with homing beacons with no court oversight makes me real nervous. -k]

No court order required for GPS bugs! (More dumb judges.)

] A 63-year-old man who hasn't slept for more than two
] decades has been told there is nothing wrong with him by
] doctors.
]
]
] Ukrainian Fyodor Nesterchuk from the town of
] Kamen-Kashirsky said the last time he managed to doze off
] was more than 20 years ago.

[ As long as i wasn't tired all the time, I think i'd be ok with never having to sleep... -k]

Ananova - Ukrainian hasn't slept in 20 years

] LONDON - Volkswagen and DDB London are distancing themselves
] from a hoax viral commercial for the VW Polo . . .

I'm not even sure what to say about this one. Just look at it, you'll probably be speechless too.

[ Yeah, wow. -k]

Small But Tough

] The Bentley Snow Crystal Collection of the Buffalo Museum
] of Science is a digital library providing a high-quality
] collection of stunning, un-retouched images of Wilson A.
] Bentley%u2019s original glass slide photographs of snow
] crystals, and includes dynamic resources to further an
] appreciation and understanding of Bentley and his work.

[ Gorgeous, really... -k]

The Bentley Snow Crystal Collection

] In the stairway, I said, "You couldn't just watch a porn
] channel?"
]
] "It's not the same," she said. "That's all packaged and
] commercial. I wanted to interview them before and after.
] I have to know -- what it's like."
]
] "Why?"
]
] She paused on the stairs, and I stopped too. The
] muscleboys, muttering, went out onto the street, and we
] were alone in the flashing green and red light.
]
] "Suze, I'm going to start the clock."
]
] Like she'd poured a bucket of ice water down my spine.
] "You're what?"
]
] "I'm going to take the treatments." She spoke quickly, as
] if afraid I'd interrupt her. "They've gotten much better
] in the past couple of years, there are basically no side
] effects. They're even making headway with infants. In
] five years, it looks like most babies won't have any
] arrestation effects at all, and -- "
]
] Tears had sprung to my eyes. "What are you talking
] about?" I cried. "Why are you talking like them? Why are
] you talking like being like us is something to be cured?"
] I punched the wall, which hurt my hand. I sat down on the
] step and cried.
]
] "Suze," Abby said. She sat down next to me and put her
] hand on my shoulder. "I love being like us -- but I want
] --"
]
] "That?" I shouted, pointing up to the top of the stairs,
] where they were grunting again. "That's what you want?
] You'd rather have that than us?"
]
] "I want everything, Suze. I want every stage of life --"
]
] "Oh, every stupid stage, as designed by stupid God, who
] also gave us death and cancer, and --"
]
] She grabbed my shoulders. "Suze, listen. I want to know
] what that up there is like. Maybe I won't like it, and
] then I won't do it. But Suze, I want to have babies."

A neat new short story of Sci-Fi released under the Creative Commons license.

Fiction: Start the Clock, by Benjamin Rosenbaum

Now, here's something that really gets me heated. We have a brilliant 13 year old girl who hid her pregnancy from her parents for 9 months, who then threw the baby out her bedroom window after it was born because she was "scared." Please, you are kidding me. Put her in jail with Andrea Yates, and round up her ignorant 15 year old boyfriend, and the parents too. Do us a favor and rot in prison. There's no excuse for this.

[ Certainly, there's no excuse for killing an innocent baby, but this sounds more like the outgrowth of a more systemic problem, and one which I'm not convinced prison can solve. Prisoners are a huge drag on our society, the equivalent of treating the symptoms of a disease instead of it's causes. There's been a lot of motion lately in the medical community towards preventitive medecine, because it's cheaper to prevent a disease than to cure it, not to mention, more pleasant for everyone involved. I think the same sort of thinking is sorely lacking from discussions of social diseases.

Anyway, it's almost certain that the girl, at least, will be in jail for a while, and probably the boyfriend too. Negligence of that magnitude is undoubtedly deserving of punishment. I just think those who call for strong punishments ought to think extra hard about finding ways to minimize the number of people who recieve them. In some cases, prison may serve that purpose, but I don't think that's true in all cases. -k]

13 year old throws baby out her window and lets it die

] A computer program is changing the face of the music
] business by allowing record labels to predict a hit at
] the click of a mouse. Is this the death of pop as we know
] it, asks Jo Tatchell, or a new hope for unsigned bands
] everywhere?

Hit Song Science, ripping the soul out of a type of critical listening that's existed since the dawn of baroque music. Lovely. More product development then artist development..

[ This was and is inevitable. I'm all for it, for the following reason. As highly commercial music begins to sound more and more the same, the very need to create market differentiation will lead back to fragmentation. There will eventually be a backlash, and in the meantime, I really do think that technology will eventually be able to improve the plight of the unknown artist. When word of mouth can spread everywhere, instantly, the potential is there. Local buzz becomes international buzz. The framework for reputation and collaboration is in it's infancy, but it'll come. That should be more than enough to maintain the community of actual music lovers, and I think it'll grow it, in fact. Maybe not to the point where it eclipses the shiny package market tunes, but the dream is there. -k]

Guardian Unlimited | Together in electric dreams

] Wandering through the quadrangles and medieval bastions
] of learning at the University of Cambridge one overcast
] Sunday afternoon a few months ago, I found myself
] ruminating on how this venerable place had been a
] crucible for the scientific revolution that changed
] humankind%u2019s perceptions of itself and of the world.
] The notion of Cambridge as a source of grand
] transformative concepts was very much on my mind that
] day, because I had traveled to England to meet a
] contemporary Cantabrigian who aspires to a historical
] role similar to those enjoyed by Francis Bacon, Isaac
] Newton, and William Harvey. Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper
] de Grey is convinced that he has formulated the
] theoretical means by which human beings might live
] thousands of years%u2014indefinitely, in fact.

[ This is sort of a long article, and made longer by superfluous adjectives, but worth a skim, if not a detailed read.

The issue of immortality has always been interesting to me on a lot of levels, and this cuts right along that line. Pragmatically, I think there are a lot of issues, such as basic medicine and improved social conditions in much of the world, which might take precedence over a crusade for immortality. It seems certain that even were the goal achieved, it would benefit, at least for a time, only a selected elite class. I'm not convinced of the premise that living as long as possible is the most fundamental human right. I might say that providing a society in which basic needs (health, nutrition, housing) are universal, and in which everyone gets to have a life with opportunity and choices, is more fundamental. Even with the best of intentions, to offer immortality to a factory worker in a dismal slum hardly seems useful.

That being said, perhaps driving hard for this goal will advance technology enough to achieve some of those other goals. At any rate, it's interesting to think about the issues here... -k]

Do You Want to Live Forever?

Feel free to add your own pixel!

[ Neat... -k]

Experiments - Pixelfest collaborative artwork