Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
Oceans of Motion, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
something about this photo I like, but apparently nobody else does, including the ‘interesting’ filter at Flickr. This photo is among my 100 least “interesting” photos.
outside of SAM
www.seattleartmuseum.org/visit/visitRSG.asp
[view large on black: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=110 ]
rear view mirror sign says:
"I [heart] my penis".
Alrighty, then.
[visible in large version: www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/2738773786/sizes/o/ ]
Please Don’t Ticket Me, originally uploaded by swanksalot.
The plea is laminated even
This scooter has only a 49cc engine yadda yadda.
mostly readable in the large version:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/2752299416/sizes/o/
Stewards of our planet, failing again.
[Wheel of transformation]
The Great Salt Lake is so briny that swimmers bob in the water like corks. It is teeming with tiny shrimp that were sold for years in the back of comic books as magical “sea monkeys.” And, for reasons scientists cannot explain, it is laden with toxic mercury.
“We’ve got a problem, but we don’t know how big it is,” said Chris Cline, a biologist for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service who has been collecting the eggs of cinnamon teal ducks from nests along the rim of the lake so that they can be cracked open and analyzed in the laboratory.
Three years ago, in an alarming finding, tests by the federal Geological Survey showed the lake had some of the highest mercury readings ever recorded in a body of water in the United States.
…
Researchers say mercury released into the atmosphere from coal-fired power plants in the West, gold mines in Nevada, volcanoes in Indonesia or industries in rapidly developing countries such as China or India may be settling in the lake.
[From Studying Great Salt Lake’s High Mercury Levels – NYTimes.com]
Let us speculate: man-made pollution from coal plants, or some unknown natural phenomenon? What are the odds? My money is on coal plants, whether locally, or elsewhere.
Way to stay classy, John McCain. Get out the evangelicals’ vote any way possible, even by duplicitous means.
An Internet ad launched last week by the McCain presidential campaign has attracted more than one million hits by appearing to mock Barack Obama for presenting himself as a kind of prophetic figure.
The ad has also generated criticism from Democrats and religious scholars who see a hidden message linking Sen. Obama to the apocalyptic Biblical figure of the antichrist.
[From McCain Web Ad Is Accused Of Linking Obama to Antichrist – WSJ.com]
The End Times, a New Testament reference to the period surrounding the return of Christ, were popularized in recent years by the “Left Behind” series of books that sold more than 63 million copies. The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the series, said in an interview that he recognized allusions to his work in the ad but comparisons between Sen. Obama and the antichrist are incorrect.
“The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania,” the 82-year-old author said.
or like the Panama Canal…
The ad has provoked a growing debate on the Internet over whether it is playing with apocalyptic themes. Those ideas are chiefly shared by fundamentalist Protestants and some other evangelical Christians. Among their expectations: the ascension of a false prophet, a one-world government and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Critiques of the ad started surfacing earlier this week when Eric Sapp, a Democratic operative, circulated the first of two memos pointing out images that he believed linked Sen. Obama to the antichrist.
“Short of 666, they used every single symbol of the antichrist in this ad,” said Mr. Sapp, who advises Democrats on reaching out to faith communities. “There are way too many things to just be coincidence.”
Dog whistle politics, in other words. Though, I doubt very much if conservative evangelicals were ever going to vote for Obama, no matter what.
In some swing states with concentrated pockets of fundamentalists and evangelical Christians, like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Virginia, the ads could have particular impact. Suggestions that Sen. Obama is the antichrist have been circulating for months in Bible-study meetings in towns like Chillicothe, Ohio, where congregants compare his remarks and his biography with verses from the Bible.
Stewart Hoover, director of the Center for Media, Religion and Culture at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the references to the antichrist in the McCain ad were “not all that subtle” for anyone familiar with “apocalyptic popular culture.” Some images in the ad very closely resemble the cover art and type font used in the latest “Left Behind” novel. The title of the ad, “The One,” also echoes the series; the antichrist figure in the books, Nicolae Carpathia, sets up “the One World Religion.”
I had sort of skimmed over the coverage of this DNS poisoning news, thinking it didn’t really apply to me as we don’t run any (public) servers. But John Welch explains the issue clearly enough for even distracted folks like me to understand:
security researcher Dan Kaminsky accidently discovered a technique wherein an attacker could compromise DNS servers (part of the essential functionality of the Internet) via what is known as Cache Poisoning. This technique allows an attacker to change, or “poison” the caches where DNS servers store the data that allow you to use “www.apple.com” to get to 17.112.152.32.
So let’s say, you want to get an update to an application. You enter in the URL, i.e. “http://www.goodvendor.com/”, and connect to that site to download the update. The problem is, the DNS server you use—say, your ISP’s or your own—has had its cache “poisoned”, so while you explicitly typed in the proper URL, you end up at some other server; instead of downloading the correct, safe update, you download a trojan horse and install it, because you think it’s safe. While attacks on DNS servers have been around for a while, this vulnerability made such attacks far easier to pull off than they previously had been.
This kind of attack makes most of the ways you detect phishing sites useless, because the URL will be the correct one, not some “almost” correct URL. You’ll just get re-routed to the wrong place. This is not theoretical either—there are active exploits for this right now.
Apple did really fail in this instance. I wonder what their reasoning was? I’ve still never read a compelling reason why Apple, of all major computer vendors, took so long to issue the patch.
Our tax dollars at work, well, possibly at work, if we could figure out what exactly is being done. Some backstory on the 2001 anthrax scare/hoax can be found here
The federal government has spent nearly $50 billion on programs to fight bioterrorism since 2001. Still, experience in New York City and elsewhere underscores the enduring difficulty of contending with this type of terror attack. Experts in the field say that the nation’s ability to detect biological weapons is still inadequate in most locales, as is its ability to distribute drugs to the population once the lethal agent is identified. Hospitals warn that the volume of casualties from an effective attack could simply overwhelm facilities.
“We’ve made very little progress in [any] of those very big areas,” says Dr. Tara O’Toole, director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
[snip]
With easier access to fatal pathogens, it may be impossible to uncover preparations for an attack, leading government officials to focus more on lessening the impact of an attack than preventing one.
New York is using the next generation of sensors that the federal BioWatch program hopes to distribute nationwide by 2010. The city has been asking the federal government for more sensors. Most of the devices require up to 34 hours to detect a lethal bug, but about a half dozen new machines can detect an agent more quickly.
Yet New York remains at the leading edge. In most other cities, there was little federal guidance about which systems to buy, which led to a patchwork of often ineffective programs. The BioWatch system is active in more than 30 cities.
In New York, if a lethal agent is detected, the city plans to immediately distribute drugs to counter the bug. The federal government has worked to develop a national stockpile of drugs to deploy anywhere in the country, and biosecurity experts give the program high marks, saying that it can get the drugs to an affected region quickly. The problem, they say, is getting the medication out of the airport, where the federal government leaves it, and into communities.
If a biological attack were to happen tomorrow, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a bioterrorism expert at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities, the best advice the government could give would be for people to stay where they are. He adds: “I have no idea how they would get to my suburban Maryland neighborhood and get me an antiviral or antibiotic.”
And biosecurity specialists lament that little progress has been made even on the most public of possible biological threats: countering an anthrax attack. Seven years after the nation contended with just such an attack, an $877 million effort to develop a new anthrax vaccine has failed; there’s no quick way to test patients for an anthrax infection; and efforts to develop a drug to counter anthrax’s lethal chemicals haven’t produced much.
[From Bioterrorism’s Threat Persists As Top Security Risk – WSJ.com] [non-WSJ subscribers use this link]
What are the 30 cities who are participants in this boondoggle, you might ask? Not mentioned in the article, but there’s a list at wikipedia. The budget is somewhere around $1,000,000 per city, per year, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) wants to expand the program to include 120 cities.
BioWatch is a United States Federal Government program to detect the release of pathogens into the air as part of a terrorist attack on major American cities. Reportedly operating in Philadelphia, New York City, Washington, DC, San Diego, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, Houston, Los Angeles and 21 other cities, the BioWatch program was created in 2001 in response to the increased threat of bioterrorism sparked by the 2001 anthrax attacks, and was announcing in President George W. Bush’s State of the Union Address of 2003. The program, described as “the nation’s first early warning network of sensors to detect biological attack” operates via a system of filters located within existing Environmental Protection Agency air filters which monitor the quality of the air. Results from these filters are analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who then pass any significant results to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
and
The BioWatch system has received a mix of responses since coming online, many that result in waste of resources and a lowering public confidence in the system. A Congressional report in 2003 recorded that there was concern that the BioWatch filters would fail to detect indoor or underground releases, and also that the existence of BioWatch filters in some cities would direct terrorists to attack other cities without such protection. The report also highlighted the risk of the filters themselves being detected and destroyed. The report also states that, as EPA filters are located based on different policies than those which would provide optimum locations for counter-bioterrorism sensors, the BioWatch filters may not be optimally located. Furthermore, the BioWatch system may miss releases that take place within the gaps in coverage. The House of Representatives also concluded that models used to predict the spread of an infectious agent after release and detection may be inaccurate.
The Congressional Report also raises concerns as to whether BioWatch can detect pathogens in large, polluted cities, as well as issues relating to the BioWatch filter reporting harmful pathogens which are actually within safe background levels, and thus would throw up more positive hits than actual investigation warrants. There are also concerns that the BioWatch filters kill whatever pathogen has set them off, thus removing the possibility of further tests being undertaken.[8] Finally, concerns were raised in the Congressional Report regarding the sensitivity of the filters, and the fact that each filter would be exposed to different environmental conditions and thus a standardized detection rate would be near impossible to achieve. The complicated response that would be required should the BioWatch filter detect a pathogen would also be difficult to implement and put strain on local health authorities.
A probable big waste of money, in other words, protecting nobody in particular, with the exception of some defense contractors and other DHS friends and cronies. BioWatch does contribute to the climate of fear and apprehension, the so-called terrorism theatre.
Worth noting.
Senior lawmakers are launching an investigation into potential privacy problems stemming from companies that tailor Internet advertising to consumers’ Web surfing.
Four top Democrats and Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to 33 companies asking detailed questions about how they serve Web ads to customers and whether they collect or store data on people’s Internet searches.
The letters went to large companies such as Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., AT&T Inc., Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. as well as smaller companies such EarthLink Inc.
The letters were signed by John Dingell (D., Mich.), Joe Barton (R., Texas), Edward Markey (D., Mass.) and Cliff Stearns (R., Fla.).
Two Republicans, two Democrats. Hmm, apparently non-partisanship can occur, if need be.
Nancy Nord is the worst kind of government official: more interested in protecting the businesses she is supposed to regulate than protecting the consumer. Surprisingly, the Chicago Tribune editorial board agrees with me.
Nancy Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has to go. If she won’t quit, fire her.
Nord ought to be too embarrassed to stay on the job. She spent the last few months working to weaken Congress’ efforts to strengthen her own agency. Fortunately, Congress didn’t listen to her. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act was approved overwhelmingly in the House and Senate.
…
The act authorizes more money for the commission, hikes fines for companies that violate product-safety rules, and makes more information about potentially dangerous products available to consumers.
It virtually bans lead in toys. It requires manufacturers to test the safety of toys and baby products—through independent third-party labs—before they hit store shelves.
Nord argued against many of those provisions. She doesn’t want the commission to have more power to do its job.
and the real reason Nord should be forced to resign sooner than later:
Nord is far too cozy with manufacturers, lobbyists and industry lawyers to lead the oversight work of the commission. As the Tribune’s Patricia Callahan reported, Nord, and her predecessor, Hal Stratton, went on dozens of junkets that were paid for, at least in part, by the industries her agency regulates.
In a speech last May, as a conference committee was crafting the compromise safety bill, Nord urged the National Retail Federation to push back. Among the things she suggested they fight: The provision to make product safety information available to the public in a searchable Internet database.
I am already on record supporting Cuban as the new owner of the Cubs, even though baseball bores me, and I haven’t watched a baseball game in Chicago since 2005.
[Las Vegas Showgirls at Wrigley Field]
Think of it: Mark Cuban as the Chicago Cubs’ owner, bonding with the Bleacher Bums at Wrigley Field, splurging for rounds of Old Style beer and screaming at umpires. The concept is almost Veeckian, as if Bill Veeck, the populist former owner of the Browns, the Indians and the White Sox, had had zillions of dollars.
Buying the Cubs is the latest project for Cuban, the owner of the N.B.A.’s Dallas Mavericks, but he is not alone in the expensive quest. Four other individuals and groups have given the debt-laden Tribune Company nonbinding offers of at least $1 billion for the team, its stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago, and 92-year-old Wrigley Field.
Cuban is reported to be the top bidder, at nearly $1.3 billion
[From Cuban Wants Cubs, but Will Baseball Want Him? – NYTimes.com]
Richard Sandomir of the NYT keeps harping on the dollar amount of fines Cuban has gotten from the NBA, but there is a clear pattern of decline there, and Cuban has been less publicly inflammatory in recent years. I follow the NBA very closely, and Cuban has been a boon for the Dallas Mavs. The Cubs, and Chicago, would be well served to have an owner as activist as Mark Cuban.
Glenn Greenwald recaps the anthrax scare, and lays the blame quite convincingly right at the breathless reporting of ABC News. Would we be mired in a never-ending war in Iraq without a government employee sending anthrax to public figures? Maybe, maybe not.
The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential. The 9/11 attacks were obviously traumatic for the country, but in the absence of the anthrax attacks, 9/11 could easily have been perceived as a single, isolated event. It was really the anthrax letters — with the first one sent on September 18, just one week after 9/11 — that severely ratcheted up the fear levels and created the climate that would dominate in this country for the next several years after. It was anthrax — sent directly into the heart of the country’s elite political and media institutions, to then-Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt), NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and other leading media outlets — that created the impression that social order itself was genuinely threatened by Islamic radicalism.
If the now-deceased Ivins really was the culprit behind the attacks, then that means that the anthrax came from a U.S. Government lab, sent by a top U.S. Army scientist at Ft. Detrick. Without resort to any speculation or inferences at all, it is hard to overstate the significance of that fact. From the beginning, there was a clear intent on the part of the anthrax attacker to create a link between the anthrax attacks and both Islamic radicals and the 9/11 attacks
[From Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News – Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com]
[snip]
During the last week of October, 2001, ABC News, led by Brian Ross, continuously trumpeted the claim as their top news story that government tests conducted on the anthrax — tests conducted at Ft. Detrick — revealed that the anthrax sent to Daschele contained the chemical additive known as bentonite. ABC News, including Peter Jennings, repeatedly claimed that the presence of bentonite in the anthrax was compelling evidence that Iraq was responsible for the attacks, since — as ABC variously claimed — bentonite “is a trademark of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s biological weapons program” and “only one country, Iraq, has used bentonite to produce biological weapons.”
ABC News’ claim — which they said came at first from “three well-placed but separate sources,” followed by “four well-placed and separate sources” — was completely false from the beginning. There never was any bentonite detected in the anthrax (a fact ABC News acknowledged for the first time in 2007 only as a result of my badgering them about this issue). It’s critical to note that it isn’t the case that preliminary tests really did detect bentonite and then subsequent tests found there was none. No tests ever found or even suggested the presence of bentonite. The claim was just concocted from the start. It just never happened.
That means that ABC News’ “four well-placed and separate sources” fed them information that was completely false — false information that created a very significant link in the public mind between the anthrax attacks and Saddam Hussein. And look where — according to Brian Ross’ report on October 28, 2001 — these tests were conducted:
And despite continued White House denials, four well-placed and separate sources have told ABC News that initial tests on the anthrax by the US Army at Fort Detrick, Maryland, have detected trace amounts of the chemical additives bentonite and silica.
Lots more here. Corrupt bastards. For all we know, Bruce Ivins might just be a convenient fall guy, a sacrificial goat so that inconvenient questions can never be answered.
