"I met my wife on your captcha!!!" -- Steve, from New York

This captcha is based on pictures from Hotornot. You have to pick three hot people in order to prove you are not a robot. Possibly the most innovative security solution of 2006...

Captcha Mashup

They call them "boat raves" even though they're in the middle of the afternoon.

And it’s hard to imagine a more perfect confluence of money, skin and exhibitionism.

But not everyone is excited:

Some longtime regulars worry that the scene is becoming too big, too fast, and could be headed for calamity.

This type of thing has always been big on the Jersey Shore. Granted, it has a bit more of a family vibe than a Girls Gone Wild vibe, but that has always been present as well.

The great hotspot of old was Party Island. Basically a sand bar in the middle of Barnegat Inlet, it would surface every day during low tide. As the tide went out, every single weekend, several hundred boats would beach themselves on it's banks. At peak low tide, the boats would be fully out of the water, trapping visitors until the water rose again. The sandbar would be filled with BBQ grills, tents, fold out tables, lawn chairs, and whatever else anyone could get out there. My family was notable for being the first to bring off-road motorcycles to the island. I have many great childhood memories associated with this scenic spot by the lighthouse.

Sadly, Party Island has not existed for over a decade. When the inlet was re-engineered and dredged, the sand deposits that made up Party Island were eroded to the point where it no longer surfaces, saying at least a foot under water at all times.

The other hot spot, which is still in action, is Tices Shoal, located about 6 miles north of the Inlet and 3 miles south of Seaside Heights. At any given time, The Shoal may have anywhere between a few dozen to two thousand boats anchored on it's bay side. The location is extremely convenient for two reasons. First, the water is about 3ft deep for a very large area before dropping off to about 6ft, allowing a very wide range of boats to get up close to the shore within an area not as choppy as the rest of the bay. Second, there is a walking trail that connects the bay side to the ocean side, so the beach is only a brief walk away. The section of Island Beach State Park where Tices Shoal is located is directly at the point where you need an off-road pass to go any further by car, and has a big parking lot nearby, so it is possible for people to get there by land and join seafaring friends.

Water, Water, Everywhere, and Plenty to Drink

When [Bush] uses that "those of us who love freedom" line its hard to take him seriously or conceive that he has a plan. These people don't want to kill Americans because we love freedom. They want to kill Americans because we're the most prominent political power center for people who don't practice their religion. Maybe what Bush really wants to say is "those of us who love jesus" but, of course, that would be extremely divisive, so he says "freedom," knowing that his constituency sees "freedom" and "jesus" as interchangable concepts.

Every global conflict centers around a battle of ideas. We are not on top of our information warfare game. To prove that point, I only need to reference at any given speech President Bush gives.

Why our national rethoric is broken -OR- Why we are loosing the War on Terror

A online search database for the AOL search database that runs at a decent speed is now online.

AOL Search Database

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

I posted about Apocalypse Iran last month. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens. I wonder if this figures into the planned timeline for the conflict in Israel...

Does Iran have something in store? | Bernard Lewis

Excuse me, officer, but I have it on good authority that the man who just boarded the plane is composed of almost 70% liquid!

Oplan Bojinka (also known as Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, Bojinka Plot, Bojinga, possibly from Arabic: بجنكة – slang in many dialects for explosion and pronounced Bo-JIN-ka, except in Egyptian where it is Bo-GIN-ka) was a planned large-scale attack on airliners in 1995, and was a precursor to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Several media outlets, including TIME Asia [1], claim that the word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion" in Serbo-Croatian. In Croatian, "bočnica"[2] translates into English as "boom". Khalid Shaikh Mohammed fought with Muslim fighters in Bosnia and supported this effort financially [3]. Endnote 7 of Chapter 5 of the 9/11 Commission Report states that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed claims that "bojinka" is "a nonsense word he adopted after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan." In English, the acronym "BOHICA" for 'Bend Over Here It Comes Again' is common military slang which refers to an incoming enemy attack, often bombs and is also used in online chat, e-mail, or newsgroup postings.

Not all media or text that refer to Oplan Bojinka will call it by that name.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill Pope John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia and other buildings. Oplan Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks. This article will cover all three plans.

The money handed down to the plotters originated from Al-Qaida, an international Islamic militant organization which was then based in Sudan. Philippine authorities say that Operation Bojinka was developed by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed while they were in Manila, Philippines in 1994 and early 1995.

Much of the media commentary on the busted plot in the UK has been referencing Operation Bojinka.

Oplan Bojinka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scotland Yard successfully penetrated the plotters of a mass terrorist attack against airliners bound from the United Kingdom to the United States on Aug. 10 British time, resulting in the capture of nine people who planned to use liquid explosives contained in carry-on luggage to down the planes. Current reports indicate at least 21 people have been arrested in total, and perhaps the cell contains as many as 50 people.

There are four takeaway lessons from this incident:

First, while there obviously remains a threat from those not only sympathetic to al Qaeda, but actually participating in planning with those in the al Qaeda apex leadership, their ability to launch successful attacks outside of the Middle East is severely degraded.

Second, if the cell truly does have 50 people and 21 have already been detained, then al Qaeda might have lost its ability to operate below the radar of Western -- or at least U.K. -- intelligence agencies. Al Qaeda's defining characteristic has always been its ability to maintain operational security. If that has been compromised, then al Qaeda's importance as a force has diminished greatly.

Third, though further attacks could occur, it appears al Qaeda has lost the ability to alter the political decision-making of its targets. The Sept. 11 attack changed the world. The Madrid train attacks changed a government. This failed airliner attack only succeeded in closing an airport temporarily.

Fourth, the vanguard of militant Islam appears to have passed from Sunni/Wahhabi al Qaeda to Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. It is Iran that is shaping Western policies on the Middle East, and Hezbollah who is directly engaged with Israel. Al Qaeda, in contrast, appears unable to do significantly more than issue snazzy videos.

This shift will obviously refocus Western -- and particularly U.S. -- foreign policy from the old threat to the new threat.

Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.

"We want to be a dangerous band, like Fugazi or The Clash or Bob Dylan. Woody Guthrie's folk music influenced me a lot," Yang said. "But because the government doesn't care about us, we are not forbidden from playing. Maybe we are not dangerous. It's sad."

I'm sorry, but anyone whose music appears on "Friends" is not dangerous. Furthermore:

It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll. In 1998 Q magazine readers voted London Calling the 32nd greatest album of all time; Rolling Stone named it the best album of the 1980s (although it was released in 1979 in the UK, its U.S. release was in 1980) in 2000, and in 2003 named it number 8 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"; also in 2003, the TV network VH1 placed it at number 25. Pitchfork Media ranked it number two on their Top 100 Albums of the 1970s. In 2004, Entertainment Weekly named it the Greatest rock album of all-time.

They go on:

"We are trying to change the image of punk rockers. We just want to tell the audience that the music is pure and that we are nice and not violent."

Many punk rockers in China are long on style and short on substance, critics say. Few of them can articulate what they stand for or explain what their songs mean.

So which way do they want it? The scene seems split on the most basic issues.

China's Punks Look to Rock

From: Brad Malin
Date: August 9, 2006 1:05:55 PM EDT
To: David Farber
Subject: AOL Case and the EU Data Directive?

Hey Dave - I was wondering... As the AOL fiasco unfolds, the company finds
itself in a bit of a pickle. In its current state, AOL is potentially in
violation of the FTC's deceptive practices policy. This puts them in hot
water in the USA, and apparently a class action lawsuit is about to be
brought to the table.

But there exists the potential for even more concern. Specifically, I'm
wondering if AOL's published data concerns only US citizens? As you know,
several years ago AOL branched out and went international, e.g.,
http://www.aol.co.uk/. And if the published records contain information
gathered via its European branches, then AOL is in violation of the EU Data
Directive in many ways. First, it's in violation of the safe harbor
provision of the directive. Second, it's in violation of the directive
itself for protection mechanisms that must be in place for the secondary
sharing of person-specific data.

So, a question and a challenge:

1) Has AOL stated which population the data corresponds to?

2) If not, I don't have the time to do the re-identification study, but I
propose a challenge to any students or professionals with extra time on
their hands. First, try to categorize the users in the dataset into
countries and/or regions. Second, try to pinpoint individuals from
countries outside of the US.

I'm not trying to take down AOL - but make a point.

-brad

[IP] AOL Case and the EU Data Directive?