Saturday, December 29, 2007

Best Careers 2008

US News and World Report recently published an informative article on the Best Careers for 2008. Most or all of it was written by Marty Nemko, who might be familiar to radio listeners in the SF Bay area -- he has a radio show on KALW.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Thought Police, Part 1

Today I heard an interesting and disturbing segment on NPR's media criticism show, On the Media.

Perhaps you saw the Tom Cruise (ugh!) movie Minority Report? There's a scene in which his character is in a shopping mall, and ads are being targeted to him as he walks around. The mall has his identity and displays messages and ads related to past buying history.

Pretty creepy, eh? Well various companies (see this one) can now beam ads right at you using something called hypersonic sound projection.

And there are lie-detector technologies being developed that can essentially read your mind at a distance of up 10 feet, using infrared technology.

Thankfully an organization named The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics (CCLE) is on the case.

What can you do? Of course you can donate money to organizations such as CCLE. Also, keep your eyes and ears open for legislative issues in the U.S. Congress so you can write to your representatives. In many cases your faxes, phone calls, and emails are counted by legislative staffers, so the rep has sense of pro and con votes from the citizenry.

You've been warned...

Monday, September 03, 2007

U.S. Prepares to Attack Iran in 2007

According to several new sources, the White House and the Pentagon are planning a massive military attack against Iran.


How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bombing Iran

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-a-rodman/how-i-learned-to-stop-wor_b_62830.html


Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece


Write Your Representative


... or Senator




Sample Note:

I am concerned about recent news stories describing plans by the White House and the Pentagon to launch a massive military attack against the sovereign nation of Iran.

Pre-emptive strikes are unlawful under international law unless there is an imminent threat posed by a country. Iran is not directly threatening to attack the US, so our war planning must cease immediately.

Please use your power as our elected official to stop the increase of hostilities outside our borders.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Squirrels Spies Caught by Iranian Border

As reported by the Washington Post (requires subscription):

Each Wore a Tiny Trench Coat

"A few weeks ago, 14 squirrels equipped with espionage systems of foreign intelligence services were captured by [Iranian] intelligence forces along the country's borders. These trained squirrels, each of which weighed just over 700 grams, were released on the borders of the country for intelligence and espionage purposes. According to the announcement made by Iranian intelligence officials, alert police officials caught these squirrels before they could carry out any task.

"Fixing GPS devices, bugging instruments and advanced cameras in the bodies of trained animals like squirrels, mice, hamsters, etc, are among modern methods of collecting intelligence. Given the fast speed and the special physical features of these animals, they provide special capabilities for spying operations. Once the animals return to their place of origin, the intelligence gathered by them is then offloaded. . . ."

See also

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/07/squirrel-spies-.html

Thursday, June 14, 2007

The Orange Lights

Heard The Orange Lights recently on XM Satellite radio and really liked them.

They're from Newcastle, England and members of the group played with the bands Spiritualized and ?? (sorry lost the other name!).

http://www.myspace.com/theorangelights

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/music-gigs/reviews/article2602301.ece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2007/04/24/the_orange_lights_interview_feature.shtml


Kind of hard to find samples online to listen to, but here's one:

http://www.sonicx.com/The_Orange_Lights/

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Best and Worst Cities 2007, American Lung Association

Thankfully Boston is not in the "worst" city list... also not in the "best" list either.

For those of you in California the news isn't as good unfortunately.

click to see article

Friday, April 13, 2007

Iraq War Body Count again

The study from October 2006 by the British medical journal The Lancet stirred up a huge amount of controversy.

It was dismissed out of hand by the Bush Administration (of course!), and bashed by many political commentators in the MSM as well. Fortunately other researchers came to the defense of the study, supporting claims that the methodology was sound.

If the numbers are correct, and we may never know, they are truly appalling:

"We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601,027 ... were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire."

To put this in perspective:

If you accept the 2.5% estimate, imagine that a similar portion of US citizens were killed. There were roughly 300 million (300,000,000) people in the US in 2006. If you multiply those numbers you get

7,500,000

as the US equivalent of that excess death calculation. 7.5 million people. It's almost beyond comprehension.

Try to imagine our country suffering such losses under any circumstances, much less under false pretenses.

link to study abstract (free registration required)

Friday, January 19, 2007

Ex-Ohio Congressman Ney Gets 30 Months

Bob Ney, pal of Jack Abramoff, is going to jail...

read article


woo hoo!