Temporary Hiatus

It's been a while since I've posted, yes.

But give it time. Man Bites Dog is going to get a massive content influx soon. It's just that it needs to be thought out quite a bit first.

Until then, if you're actually reading this site, leave a message.

I think I have a readership of 2, so I'll be very impressed to get three messages.

external short-term memory 3-17-06

AI, Inner-Life, and the Multiplayer World

Capragas Syndrome

Technology, Language, and Imagining Tomorrow

Human Genome Still Evolving

Quantum information can be Negative

A Republican could be listening to you right now

If that title didn't scare you, maybe the recent events in the ongoing wiretap scandle will. Senate Republicans have been trying to set up oversight for the NSA's domestic surveillance program, which was already little in the way of restrictions, and along the way, decided that long-term wiretapping on Americans without a court warrant was a nifty idea.

(from the New York Times article)

Civil liberties advocates called the proposed oversight inadequate and the licensing of eavesdropping without warrants unnecessary and unwise. But the Republican senators who drafted the proposal said it represented a hard-wrung compromise with the White House, which strongly opposed any Congressional interference in the eavesdropping program.

external short-term memory 3-11-06

The Grim, Meathook Future

For the Women of South Dakota: An Abortion Manual

The Structure of God's Mind

Propulsion Research Goes Into Hyperdrive

Dark Energy & Dark Matter potentially explained

It's nice to see that the short term memory still has no real rhyme or reason.

Z-Machine hotter then the inside of stars

This device pumps out more heat then the interior of suns. With further research, the Z-Machine will allow us have smaller, less expensive nuclear fusion plants that pump out just as much energy as the larger nuclear fusion plants. Science is fascinating, yes, but I've mostly just posted this because the Z-Machine is the best name for a scientific device ever. It also looks very slick.



(link to the Z-MACHINE article)

Don't forget your umbrella

It's a weird time to be in India. A while back, a peculiar, red rain fell on western district of Kerala, raising a general red-hued ruckus. Investigations into the dark pink torrent had...odd results.

(from the Observer article)

Investigations suggested the rain was red because winds had swept up dust from Arabia and dumped it on Kerala. But Godfrey Louis, a physicist at Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam, after gathering samples left over from the rains, concluded this was nonsense. 'If you look at these particles under a microscope, you can see they are not dust, they have a clear biological appearance.' Instead Louis decided that the rain was made up of bacteria-like material that had been swept to Earth from a passing comet. In short, it rained aliens over India during the summer of 2001.

Human Sacrifices for Kali

Poverty, economic stagnation, illiteracy, superstition, and a hearty helping of sociopathia in India lead to a series of brutal ritualistic murders.

(from the Observer article)

Sumitra Bushan, 43, who lived in Barha for most of her life, certainly thought she was cursed. Her husband had long abandoned her, leaving her with debts and a life of servitude in the sugarcane fields. Her sons, Satbir, 27, and Sanjay, 23, were regarded as layabouts. Life was bad but then the nightmares and terrifying visions of Kali allegedly began, not just for Sumitra but her entire family.

She consulted a tantrik, a travelling 'holy man' who came to the village occasionally, dispensing advice and putrid medicines from the rusty amulets around his neck.

His guidance to Sumitra was to slaughter a chicken at the entrance to her home and offer the blood and remains to the goddess. She did so but the nightmares continued and she began waking up screaming in the heat of the night and returned to the priest. 'For the sake of your family,' he told her, 'you must sacrifice another, a boy from your village.'

War on Truth

What do you do when reporters keep telling people about the underhanded, illegal things you do? President Bush has a good idea.

(from the capitol hill blue article)

Bush recently directed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to use "whatever means at your disposal" to wiretap, follow, harass and investigate journalists who have published stories about the administration's illegal use of warrantless wiretaps, use of faulty intelligence and anything else he deems "detrimental to the war on terror."

Miscellaneous 3-06-06

Art Portfolios and E-Magazines

Benares, by Harri Kallio




The Ten Commandments of Simon, by Derek Kirk Kim


Questionable Content, by J. Jacques




contaminated cinema

Depleted Uranium Hazard Awareness training video, link

Between October and December 1995, the U.S. Army's Depleted Uranium (DU) Project completed a series of training videos and manuals about depleted uranium munitions. This training regimen was developed as the result of recommendations made in the January 1993 General Accounting Office (GAO) report, "Army Not Adequately Prepared to Deal with Depleted Uranium Contamination."

(direct download)


Pee Pee, link

I want to describe this, but the best I could come up with is Care Bears on a bad acid trip.

Enough deep thoughts and disturbing-ness. Here's a cat hitting a hammer.


Blackflag-related Bittorrent

Henry Rollins goes to London

link
.avi| 898.12 MB
isoHunt

New Fay Vo Rite Website

Married to the Sea

I love Toothpaste for Dinner, so I'm looking forward to the new online comic by the author, Drew.

The Country Club-ization of America

As posted earlier, Homeland Security is paying a Halliburton Subsidary to built internment camps for all removable aliens, potential terrorists, and if we're being honest with ourselves around here, anyone the Administration doesn't like.

Olly North seems to think it's a good idea. It also seems to be a part of a longer spanning plan by the Govt' to get rid of everyone that they aren't fond of. They call it 'ENDGAME', apparently.

from the Pacific News Service article:

It is relevant that in 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants." On Feb. 17 of this year, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country's security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called "news informers" who needed to be combated in "a contest of wills." Two days earlier, citing speeches critical of Bush by Al Gore, John Kerry, and Howard Dean, conservative columnist Ben Shapiro called for "legislation to prosecute such sedition."

We'll give them frickin' laser beams next

Just what is the Petnagon up to in the ocean nowadays? It's perfectly understandable to have some odd machinery on hand, but some of this stuff is downright Frankensteinian. Then comes an idea surely inspired by Dr. Evil from Austen Powers...

from the Science Daily article:

In the United States a team funded by the military has created a neural probe that can manipulate a shark’s brain signals or decode them. More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to use remote-controlled sharks as spies.

The neural implant is designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movemens, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

"It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Walter Soehnge, a retired Texas schoolteacher, and his wife, Deana Soehnge were investigated by Homeland Security for paying a $6,522 credit card debt.

Apparently, paying for a bit more then usual is considered suspicious, at which point, they have to call Homeland Security. Just in case, you know, Osama has something to do with it. Terrorists have great credit rating, it seems.

"If it can happen to me, it can happen to others," Walter said.

(scripps howard news service)

The Magical Kingdom Secret Service

If you're in the job market...

from the Defense Tech article:

Employer: The Walt Disney Company
Sector: Public
Type: Job
Status: Full-time
Location: Burbank, CA
Title: Intelligence Analyst

THE SITUATION: Basic Purpose and Objective of the Position: The Intelligence Analyst anticipates and assesses threats that could harm, or make vulnerable, The Walt Disney Company (TWDC), its employees, guests, or assets.

THE POSITION: The analyst thoroughly reviews information from open/public sources, official sources, and professional contacts, and conducts regular assessments of world events, regional/national security climates, and suspect individuals and groups. The analyst produces a range of written and verbal analyses for employees and management of the Company and provides tactical intelligence support to the Company's security and crisis management operators..."

Codename: Basketball

So your invasive anti-terrorism program is being shot down by lawmakers because people had a problem with the whole...total invasion of privacy and violation of rights thing. Do you clean out your desk and get a job with Disney?

No, you change the name of the program (something innocous...), and pick up right where you left off: Nose deep in people's personal information.

from the National Journal article:

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

It is no secret that some parts of TIA lived on behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget. However, the projects that moved, their new code names, and the agencies that took them over haven't previously been disclosed. Sources aware of the transfers declined to speak on the record for this story because, they said, the identities of the specific programs are classified.

Miscellaneous 3-01-06

Books for those without money

Manifesto for Networked Objects | Julian Bleecker

mind-bending moving images

You will beleive that Google Video can be used for LSD and Aliens!

Alien Dimensions, featuring Terrence McKenna and Mark Pesce, explores the concept of the Alien and the Psychedelic Shaman and shamanism in modern culture.

(google video stream)

How To Operate Your Brain, with Timothy Leary, gives a mind-reprogramming for dummies lesson.

(google video stream)

Who's Out There? A 1975 film that discusses the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations out in the universe.

(google video stream)

Taking LSD, a documentary which is essentially lysergic acid diethylamide use for dummies.

(google video stream)

Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, another '75 film, featuring Dr. Richard Berendzen, astronomy professor and historian of science at Boston University; Dr. Ashley Montagu, anthropologist, social biologist and author at Rutgers University; Dr. Philip Morrison, physicist educator and philosopher of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Dr. Carl Sagan, astronomer and exobiologist at Cornell University; Dr. Krister Stendahl, clergyman and theologian at Harvard University; and Dr. George Wald, biologist at Harvard University, all of whom get thoughtful on the possibility of Extraterrestrial Life.

(google video stream)

Recommended Downloading

Bill Hicks-The Lost Hour

things that've been on my mind lately

Professor McCoy exposes the History of CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror

Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book "A Question of Torture", a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib.

Rumsfeld's Star Wars

the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, a small office in Maine, is being spied on. Why?

It may have something to do with the Pentagon is showing interest in putting space-based weaponry into orbit.

It's not that far fetched of an idea. The DoD published a report called Joint Vision 2020 (pts 1 & 2), stating that they sought Full Spectrum Dominance, be it on sea, land, air, or space.

from the Wired article:

"While our ultimate goals are truly to 'exploit' space through space force enhancement and space force application missions, as with other mediums, we cannot fully 'exploit' that medium until we first 'control' it," said U.S. Space Command in the recent Strategic Master Plan FY06 and Beyond.

Combine that with an already existent plan to control the Internet, and the United States has just officially declared war on just about everything that exists.

Fashion for the legally questionable

'Suspect' Coat
Originally uploaded by troy_doney.

I definitely want one of these.

Washable, water resistant, windproof nylon shell, jersey lined body with mesh lined sleeves, snap front, slash pockets, elastic at cuffs and drawstring at bottom. Sizes M-XL. $35, plus shipping.

Linky

So where's the Ctrl+Alt+Del?

An enzyme computer that can perform calculations has been made by researchers in Israel. They say that it can be someday used inside the human body for various computational tasks.

from the New Scientist article:

The team built their computer using two enzymes - glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) - to trigger two interconnected chemical reactions. Two chemical components - hydrogen peroxide and glucose - were used to represent input values (A and B). The presence of each chemical corresponded to a binary 1, while the absence represented a binary 0. The chemical result of the enzyme-powered reaction was determined optically.

Quantum Computers=Headache

I'm not that big into quantum physics. I don't even have the brain for algebra. Though I do love hearing about some of the things that quantum physics brings out...it sounds like computers designed by Terrence McKenna.

from the New Scientist article:

With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works.

If you can't wait for a natural epidemic....

Because I have a sick sense of humour, I'm following that 'mankind is at the mercy of malicious microbes', I would just like to post a link to Biowar for Dummies.

I guess we could tell Mother Nature "thank you very much, but we can do this ourselves."

World-wide Wrath of the Pathogens

I try to have some kind of wittiness at hand for articles like this, but in the face of exotic ecumenical epidemics cutting swathes out of humanity like G.I. Joes in front of a Wheat Thresher, I just shut up.

From the BBC article:

"This accumulation of new pathogens has been going on for millennia - this is how we acquired TB, malaria, smallpox," said Professor Mark Woolhouse, an epidemiologist at the University Of Edinburgh, UK.

"But at the moment, this accumulation does seem to be happening very fast.

"So it seems there is something special about modern times - these are good times for pathogens to be invading the human population."

Professor Woolhouse has catalogued more than 1,400 different agents of disease in humans; and every year, scientists are discovering one or two new ones.

(bbc article)

Shouldn't they be on the look out for terrorists, or something?

Montgomery Homeland Security officers went into a Little Falls library in Bethesda, and declared that it is forbidden to look at Internet Pornography.

This little bit of fascism ended with the Homeland Security officers leaving in frustration, and patrons still free to look at porn if they please.

It's nice to see that a $3.6 million budget is being well spent on porn-watch. If not, the terrorists will have won.

(washington post article)

Looks like Spiderman

Under normal conditions the molecules within the material are weakly bound and can move past each with ease, making the material flexible. But the shock of sudden deformation causes the chemical bonds to strengthen and the moving molecules to lock, turning the material into a more solid, protective shield.

(new scientist article)

You can't fill the hole in your life with stuff, apparently

"Consumer culture is continually bombarding us with the message that materialism will make us happy," said Tim Kasser, a psychology professor at Knox College in Illinois who has led some of the recent work. "What this research shows is that that's not true."

(intl' herald trib article)

Six Legged Cyborg Slime hides in the dark

Physarum polycephalum is a large single-celled organism that responds to food sources, such as bacteria and fungi, by moving towards and engulfing it. It also moves away from light and favours humid, moist places to inhabit. The mould uses a network of tiny tubes filled with cytoplasm to both sense its environment and decide how to respond to it. Zauner's team decided to harness this simple control mechanism to direct a small six-legged (hexapod) walking bot.

(new scientist article)

Homeland Security setting up Internment Camps, yours truly looks into Canadian passport

So Homeland Security is building 'temporary' detention centers in America, now. Now, I'm not a man prone to paranoia and dread, but I am thinking up escape routes.

The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.

(robwire article)

Olbermann burns O'Reilly

I'm aware that it's kind of a bandwagon now, to give O'Reilly flack for being a bullying hypocrite the likes of which haven't been seen since elementary school playgrounds in Germany had the Nazi Youth for bullies, but still: Olbermann verbally tears O'Reilly a brand new one in such a way that I literally said "Ooooh, burn!"

So watch. Get a kick out of it. A point by point analytical takedown is beautiful at times. It's a very fun bandwagon, I have to say.

(one good move quicktime movie)

Screw Students

An article on the greed, manipulation, and outright treachery of Sallie Mae, and student loans in general. A must read for those of us who will have to change their names, move to different countries, fake their deaths, and repeat the process just to be safe after they graduate from College.

So, an article for me.

(village voice article)

DoD vs. WWW (or, 'insert Orwellian phrase here)

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap".

The "roadmap" calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military's ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.

(bbc article)

There's one final gem that the document has that really creeps me out: The document says that the US should pursue the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

From sea to shining sea, indeed. Click here to download 'Information Operations Roadmap'

Homeland Security has it's fingers in your safe deposit box

At this point they were told that no weapons, cash, gold, or silver will be allowed to leave the bank - only various paperwork will be given to its owners. After discussing the matter with them at length, she and the other employees were then told not to discuss the subject with anyone.

(bellacio article)

I don't claim to be privy to the inner workings of banks, or just why Homeland Security would want us to not have access to things like precious metals and handguns...but I do find it very ominous.

Liberal or Conservative, you're being stupid

Using M.R.I. scanners, neuroscientists have now tracked what happens in the politically partisan brain when it tries to digest damning facts about favored candidates or criticisms of them. The process is almost entirely emotional and unconscious, the researchers report, and there are flares of activity in the brain's pleasure centers when unwelcome information is being rejected.

(new york times article)

Bullshit Detector Invented

David Skillicorn and his group, of Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, have created a program that distinguishes spin in speeches.

Spin, in this case, is defined as “text or speech where the apparent meaning is not the true belief of the person saying or writing it”, says the algorithm’s developer, David Skillicorn at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada.

He and his team analysed the usage patterns of 88 deception-linked words within the text of recent campaign speeches from the political leaders. They then determined the frequency of these patterns in each speech, and averaged that number over all of that candidate’s speeches.

I hope that this program has a high spin threshold. Ten minutes with Scott McClellan might crash it.

(new scientist article)

Illegal spying data useful as an appendix

In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans.

(new york times article)

Celebrate Zhang He weekend

A map due to be unveiled in Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

(bbc article)

You still can't 'discover' a place were people already live, but I'll take what I can get.

Fail at math, fail at...everything?

How do you convert written words into math? Goldman says it takes a combination of algebra and geometry. Imagine an object floating in space that has an edge for every known scrap of information. It's called a polytope and it has near-infinite dimensions, almost impossible to conjure up in our earthbound minds. It contains every topic written about in the press. And every article that Inform processes becomes a single line within it. Each line has a series of relationships. A single article on Bordeaux wine, for example, turns up in the polytope near France, agriculture, wine, even alcoholism. In each case, Inform's algorithm calculates the relevance of one article to the next by measuring the angle between the two lines.

By the time you're reading these words, this very article will exist as a line in Goldman's polytope. And that raises a fundamental question: If long articles full of twists and turns can be reduced to a mathematical essence, what's next? Our businesses -- and, yes, ourselves.

(physorg article)

One overseas call is all it takes

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

(abc news article)

Soldiers need sexual purity, not body armor

Chaplain Randy Brandt, stationed in Schweinfurt, Germany, said the kits have helped combat the "problem of pornography."

"Even while we were in Iraq, the pervasion of this problem was evident — soldiers had porno CDs they could play on their personal DVDs, and they had sexually suggestive magazines "graciously" donated for the soldiers' entertainment," Brandt said.

(abc news article)

Sure, we're over-extended, under-equipped, poorly organized, with an unclear goal, bad leadership, and an enemy that we really can't figure out a way to defeat and still keep Iraq from turning into an even worse hellhole when it all (someday) wraps up...but at least our soldiers will not be unchaste heathens.

Look at the upside. If you strap enough of those propaganda boxes to yourself, the fundamentalist anti-sex kit could take shrapnel for you.

Jesusland can't be saved

Pat Robertson, the American televangelist, today appeared to withdraw a diatribe against Ariel Sharon in an attempt to salvage his $50 million plan for a biblical theme park in Galilee.

Ministers in Jerusalem were furious after the millionaire preacher suggested that the Israeli Prime Minister suffered a stroke in divine retribution for carving up the Holy Land in withdrawing from Gaza

(times article)

Global Safety Net

WITHIN a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity.

(new scientist article)

The article itself ends up being a bit on the dry side...heavy words like doomsday, reinforced concrete, polar bears are being thrown around, and it's all just a rainy-day jar for agricultural revival.

Don't get me wrong, the concept is neccesary and needed. There are legitimate reasons to have a bastion to help rebuild the world just in case we do get around to fucking things up horribly. I just don't see why we're only putting seeds in there.

Homeland Security can, will and does open your mail

Last month Goodman, an 81-year-old retired University of Kansas history professor, received a letter from his friend in the Philippines that had been opened and resealed with a strip of dark green tape bearing the words “by Border Protection” and carrying the official Homeland Security seal.

(infoshop article)

Dropping the Love Bomb?

The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

(bbc article)

And here I was, taunting them for the hyperspace travel interest.

Did it go on your Permanent Record?

Get information that the NSA might have on you.

Submit a Privacy Act Request

Gravitophotons and the US military

An obscure German physcist's theories on a six-dimensional space may allow the American military to get to a quagmire faster.

Hell, if this physcist's theories work out, we can get into all kinds of new and exciting quagmires...amongst the stars!

(new scientist article)

"This country cannot afford to be without its protections..."

Vice President Dick Cheney defeneded the recently uncovered NSA domestic espionage program. It's hard to think of any upsides to the program, but then again, I still see a bit of hypocrisy in screaming about the ideals of freedom then wiretapping my own citizens.

(cnn article)