Advertising can break into your crainum

It's official. There's not a place on Earth, or your very body, that's free from advertising now. They can beam commercials into your very living brain meats now.

I remember, after a long and memorable walk in the woods with some friends, we were making our way back to civilization. The silence and tranquility of nature was slowly but surely giving way to the glaring lights and noises of the city. It was then that I said to a friend, "Civilization...all they're trying to do is sell you stuff." Didn't think that I'd be so philosophical and utterly correct in the same breath.

From Advertising Age:

The billboard uses technology manufactured by Holosonic that transmits an "audio spotlight" from a rooftop speaker so that the sound is contained within your cranium. The technology, ideal for museums and libraries or environments that require a quiet atmosphere for isolated audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For random passersby and residents who have to walk unwittingly through the area where the voice will penetrate their inner peace, it's another story.

U.S. can kidnap whoever they damn well please

Now imagine what they can do to Americans.

from the Times Online:

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

Lobbying kills superior anthrax vaccine

It's who you know, not what you can do. Keep that in mind. The War on Terror has many corrupt and incompetent sides, and that also applies to anthrax defense. The War to Line Pockets rolls on.

from the Los Angeles Times:

The manufacturer, Emergent BioSolutions Inc. of Rockville, Md., prevailed in a bitter struggle with a rival company that was preparing what federal health officials expected to be a superior vaccine. The episode illustrates the clout wielded by well-connected lobbyists over billions in spending for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program.

Firefighters now part of War on Terror, Privacy

The Department of Homeland Security has a new idea. Surprise, surprise, it's a very bad idea.

from CBS5:

Unlike the police, firefighters and paramedics do not need warrants to get into private homes and buildings - that is why there's a new push to make them an important part of the war on terror and crime.

The Department of Homeland Security is testing a program with New York City firefighters - the idea is to give fire departments a way to share intelligence information with the appropriate agencies - a system that did not exist before.

According to the AP, Homeland Security is training New York firefighters to spot unusual or dangerous chemicals, surveillance equipment, maps, photos, blue prints, and also firearms or weapons.

Police secretly test flying surveillance drones in America

Don't be too surprised. It was only a matter of time. Have complete and utter surveillance control over your e-mails and phone conversations wasn't enough. They want to watch you from the skies.

from click2houston:

Houston police cars were surrounding the land with a roadblock in place to check each of the dignitaries arriving for the invitation-only event. The invitation spelled out, "NO MEDIA ALLOWED."

HPD Chief Harold Hurtt attended, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and dozens of officers from various police agencies in the Houston area. Few of the guests would comment as they left the test site.

News Chopper 2 had a Local 2 Investigates team following the aircraft for more than one hour as it circled overhead. Its wings spanned 10 feet and it circled at an altitude of 1,500 feet. Operators from a private firm called Insitu, Inc. manned remote controls from inside the fleet of black trucks as the guests watched a live feed from the high-powered camera aboard the 40-pound aircraft.

"I wasn't ready to publicize this," Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo said. She and other department leaders hastily organized a news conference when they realized Local 2 Investigates had captured the entire event on camera.

Billion light-year wide hole discovered in the universe

The universe is porous. A void exists in our reality, close to a billion light-years wide, and what's stranger...it may be another universe overlapping with us.

from National Radio Astronomy Observatory :

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the Universe," Williams said.

The astronomers drew their conclusion by studying data from the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), a project that imaged the entire sky visible to the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope, part of the National Science Foundation's National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). Their careful study of the NVSS data showed a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies in a region of sky in the constellation Eridanus.

"We already knew there was something different about this spot in the sky," Rudnick said. The region had been dubbed the "WMAP Cold Spot," because it stood out in a map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation made by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotopy Probe (WMAP) satellite, launched by NASA in 2001. The CMB, faint radio waves that are the remnant radiation from the Big Bang, is the earliest "baby picture" available of the Universe. Irregularities in the CMB show structures that existed only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.