Elonka Sanborn research update: Various photographers (some who wish to remain anonymous) have been sending me pictures of the Antipodes sculpture at the Hirshhorn.

For those who have been following the story in my blog, this sculpture was particularly intriguing because it appeared to have the complete text of the Kryptos sculpture upon it, *and* the complete text of the Cyrillic Projector, and an additional 20% or so of other ciphertext in both languages.

It was my hope that perhaps there was extra text on the English side which would shed a clue towards cracking Kryptos. As it turned out, there *is* some additional ciphertext on the Cyrillic side, which does not appear anywhere on the Cyrillic Projector. On the English side though, it is just a mix and repeat of the code sections that are already on the Kryptos sculpture.

It's still useful though, because it is reassuring to see that Part IV is exactly the same length on Antipodes, as it is on Kryptos. There'd been some speculation that Kryptos part IV might only be the first part of a lengthier code, with the rest of the ciphertext "sucked into the whirlpool", but Antipodes seems to show that this is not the case.

Pics are now online, along with some additional info about the sculpture. Big hugs and thanks to all you anonymous photographers out there! :)

Sanborn's Antipodes Sculpture

] WASHINGTON - The FBI has identified a teenager as the
] author of a damaging virus-like infection unleashed on
] the Internet and plans to arrest him early Friday, a U.S.
] official confirmed Thursday.
]
] The 18-year-old, whose name and hometown was not
] immediately available, was accused of writing one version
] of the damaging "Blaster" infection, which spread quickly
] across the Internet weeks ago, the official said,
] speaking on condition of anonymity.
]
] The official asked that further identifying information
] about the teenager not be disclosed until his arrest.

FBI to Arrest Teen in Internet Attack (TechNews.com)

] Power engineers, IEEE members, and
] the Spectrum reporters and editors
] who cover power and energy have been sounding the alarm
] about grid problems and potential
] cascading failures for nearly a
] decade. What follows is a compendium of feature articles,
] news reports, and essays that have
] appeared in IEEE Spectrum magazine
] about previous power outages, grid reliability and
] security, and electric power policy.

If you are interested in the grid failure, everything you need to know is here.

Special Report: IEEE says I told you so (re: the grid)

Elonka wrote:
] More info about the fastest-spreading worm of all time, which
] enters a new phase today, trying to download unknown code to
] 20 specific home computers:

Turns out they may have failed here. From a post on Interesting People:

"All the experts were totally faked out. While everyone was concentrating
on getting the "magic 20" machines shut down, no one realized that
different copies of Sobig.f had different lists of servers to contact.

We put a block of udp port 8998 on our firewall this morning. We had 3
previously undetected infected machines on our network, each of which
tried to contact a different list of 20 machines. One of the lists
corresponds to the one that Sophos and others have published. The other
two lists have no addresses in common with the published list, or with
each other.

I wonder how many different sets of servers there were, how many
different variants of Sobig.f there were, and how many infected machines
now have some additional trojan, worm, or ddos code waiting for a
command to do something."

RE: New Phase of Sobig.F Set for 3 p.m. EST Friday 8/22/2003

From Decius:
"This case documents a real world use of stegonography and digital cash which allowed a blackmailer to anonymously collect payment for his victim."

Blackmail & steganography

2003 Darwin Awards
In case you have been waiting breathlessly for this year's Darwin
Awards,here they are. The awards this year are, once again, truly
classic.

These awards are given each year to bestow upon (the remains of) that
individual, who through single-minded self-sacrifice, has done the
most to remove undesirable elements from the human gene pool. Just
think... until these events, these same people were walking the
streets like normal people.

5th RUNNER-UP:
Goes to a San Anselmo, California man who died when he hit a lift
tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on
a foam pad. The 22-year old David Hubal was pronounced dead at Central
Mammoth Hospital.

The accident occurred about 3 a.m., the Mono County Sheriff's
department said. Hubal and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski
run called Stump alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from lift
towers, said Lt. Mike Donnelly of the Mammoth Lakes Police Dept. The
pads are used to protect skiers who might hit towers. The group
apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal crashed
into a tower. It has since been investigated and determined the tower
he hit was the one with its pad removed.

4th RUNNER-UP:
Goes to Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St.
Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call the police, Puelo
grabbed a hot dog, shoved it into his mouth and walked out without
paying. Police found him unconscious in front of the store. Paramedics
removed the six-inch wiener from his throat where it had choked him to
death.

3rd RUNNER-UP:
Goes to poacher Marino Malerba of Spain, who shot a stag standing
above him on an overhanging rock and was killed instantly when it fell
on him.

2nd RUNNER-UP:

"Man loses face at party." A man at a West Virginia party (probably
related to the winner last year, a man in Arkansas who used the .22
bullet to replace the fuse in his pickup truck) popped a blasting cap
into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his
lips, teeth, and tongue. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the
blasting cap as a prank during the party late Tuesday night, said Cpl.
M.D. Payne. "Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery and
was trying to explode it." "It wouldn't go off and this guy said I'll
show you how to set it off." He put it into his mouth, bit down and it
blew all his teeth out and his lips and tongue off, Payne said.
Stromyer was listed in guarded condition Wednesday with extensive
facial injuries, according to a spokesperson at Charleston Area
Medical Division. "I just can't imagine anyone doing something like
that," Payne said.

1st RUNNER-UP:
Doctors at Portland University Hospit... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

2003 Darwin Awards

] Do you ever wonder where that paper money in your pocket
] has been, or where it will go next? This is the place to
] find out.
]
] All you need to do is enter the denomination, series, and
] serial number of any US dollar bill, and your current USA
] ZIP or Canadian Post Code

Ever run across a dollar bill with the "http://www.wheresgeorge.com" URL on it? Be sure to enter in the bill's serial number to this database before you spend the bill somewhere else -- this site tracks the flow of certain marked bills around the world. Fun!

Where's George? - Currency Tracking

Looks like there'll be new extended versions of I and II coming out just before III:

] Running times for the extended editions are 208 minutes
] for "Fellowship of the Ring" and 214 minutes for "The Two
] Towers."

] Starting the week of Dec. 5, the extended DVD cut of
] "Fellowship of the Ring" will be released in some 100 or
] so theaters in the U.S. and in 20 theaters in Canada.
]
] Then, the week of Dec. 12, sequel "Two Towers" will
] unspool, just a month after having preemed on DVD,
] leading up to a worldwide Dec. 16 daylong marathon,
] during which all three films will be shown back-to-back.
] Exhib guidelines call for a 3 p.m. showing of
] "Fellowship" followed by a 7 p.m. screening of "Two
] Towers" and then an 11 p.m. screening of "Return of the
] King," which will carry over into Dec. 17 -- the day of
] its global release.

Three and a half hours of I, followed by three and a half hours of II, followed by "Return of the King". Popcorn-overdose, dude, I'm there! :)

Lord of the Rings Marathon for Release of 'Return of the King'

] Brian Robertson was just months away from graduation at
] Moore High School in Moore, Oklahoma, last year when he
] found the beginnings of what he thought was a short story
] on a school computer. He copied the file to another
] computer, added some paragraphs to the initial text and
] then promptly got arrested.
]
] Robertson, who was 18 when he wrote the story, was
] charged with a felony count of planning to cause serious
] bodily harm or death. The story he wrote, titled
] "Evacuation Orders," (PDF) described preparations for an
] armed invasion of his school that included directions to
] unnamed fellow commandos to kill the senior class
] principal and then plant plastic explosives around the
] campus.

what the hell is going on in this country?

Write a Story, Go to Jail

too bad she looks like Jenny Garth

by far the best case mod I've ever seen