More news from Albany, the New York governor David Patterson pardoned Slick Rick for the attemped murder of his cousin in 1991. The exoneration of the aggravated weapons charge makes it easier for Slick Rick to challege removal proceedings.
Hey Young World
Hang it Up
A Dead Letter?
Ellen Degeneres will be marrying her long time girlfriend Portia Di Rossi at the President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. Laura Bush and her newlywed daughter Jenna Hager obliged that Ellen Degeneres would be able to use the ranch for her wedding when both were guests on Ellen's show today. To complete the 180 degree shift, John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for the 2008 election will be officiating the ceremony. Who in the hell opened the let flood gates open or rather the Golden Gate Bridge? A Republican avowed non-supporter of same-sex unions officiating gay marriage ceremonies on President Bush's ranch? Gay marriage is still unlawful in Texas so the validity of the arrangement looks like a bum steer. However, it is possible in Massachucettes and California, and other states like New Jersey with favorable state court rulings. Maybe McCain is clearing the way for a middle of the road Vice Presidential candidate like Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachucettes and my top pick for nominee.
Catch a Fire
Catch a Fire is the title of the Bob Marley and the Wailers song that threatens retribution for slavery and oppressive ignorance. Far from anti-white uprising, South Africa has resorted to black on black violence utlizing apartheid-like tactics to preserve nationalistic integrity.
On top of the country's AIDS and HIV pandemic, South Africa has been reeling from violent clashes of xenophobia, and racial upheaval. Silencing tactics like those used during apartheid such a tire "necklacing" have been revived against immigrants from other African nations like Zimbabwe. Humanitarians believe the violence to be contrived by a nationlist opposition party and fueled by the bribery and corruption rampant in the South African immigration system. Self-deprecating racism is now apparent as well. Maligned by the international press, white Afrikaaner Free State dormitory students videotaped a black housekeeper initiation by videotaping the middle aged women and men drinking urine drenched stew and repeating racist and sexist slurs. These actions are assumedly generated by a desperate willingness on the part of the African National Congress to preserve black and white South African relations by acquiesing to overt racism to differentiate black citizens from destitute immigrants.
The 2006 film with the same title recaptures and reinvents Marley's Catch a Fire. In the film, a young adult South African man played by actor Derek Luke is wrongly jailed for pro black militarism, is released, and engages in the same behavior he was wrongly charged for. I had a chance to view Alicia Key's new video starring Luke for the song "Teenage Love Affair" early morning last week. Unlike the title of the song, it depicted Key's as a college student circling around her black power activist love interest played by Derek Luke. Unlike Luke's character in the video, Alicia Key merely flirts with the focus of her attention, Luke himself. They catch eyes on the steps of the college. They pass each other in the campus stair wells and engage in coy hand play. The couple arrives at a school dance separately. As Keys walks in the room with her clique of similarly clad co-eds, she and Luke share an intoxicating gaze and thus ends the video. The dormitory that housed the Free State School initiation rites is now closed. However, South Africa's numerous problems stay constant and severe with no end in sight.
Science Fiction
Direct Flights to Havana
Cubans can now use American cellular phones thanks to George W. Bush. Ahh... if the United States had that same discretion over communist China. One billion served.
read more | digg story
Tennessee Valley Authority
Is this commercial from the same group that sponsors ads against candidates that take money from porn hustlers?
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Hear No Evil
Speechless communication is now a tangible reality thanks to the Ambient Corporation. Ambient Devices Incorporated is a spin off from the Massachucettes Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab. The Ambient Corporation has moved from specializing in harnessing electric power grids to wireless stock tickers and energy joules. The demo of the speechless neck brace featured above is a clip from the Texas Instruments convention held this past March in Dallas. Texas Instruments manufactures the ultra-low power MSP430 microcontroller component used in the device. Strange reversal of fortune? The last time Texas Instruments racked up in market allocation was for its graphing calculators ubiquitous in high school Trig and AP Calculus classes.
Guns or Butter?
After his stint dismantling the Berlin Wall, Mikhail Gorbechev's first assumption of self aggrandizing markers of Western civillization failed to garner a following. In 1991 Gorbechev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial to the disgust of the same Western imperialists that helped to topple the European communist bloc. Now Mikhail is again toting principals by starring in the Core Value series of Louis Vuitton luggage ads. In the print ad the former magnate peers out the back of a limo with a brown hide, flesh trimmed "keepall" detailed in the Louis Vuitton gold leaflet insignia, the caption reads "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves. Berlin Wall. Returning from a conference." Placed in atop the luxury portmanteau, a Russian Daily critiques the radiation posioning saga implicating the succesor Russian administration. Does the Vuitton ad marquee an age now where politicians and other beauracrats are now apparatchiks for the middle class becoming aparat "chic"? Or is the luggage, baggage or suitcase of beauracratic "red" tape proper if it remains out of the camera's view waiting for the bell boy in the hotel's lobby? Let them eat cake!
How About a Quickie?
New passport holders aren't the only people who should be wary or weary of burgeoning surveillance technology. RFID or Radio Frequency Identification tags are convenient no doubt. I carry a key ring of discount club cards that are very handy for getting coupons in my email and mail boxes and great discounts at the cash register. RFID tracks preferences and assists in grouping and targeting interests and likes making discount shopping easier for the retailer and the consumer alike. Like in the Quickie electronic transmit paper showcased above, organizing notes and thoughts are infinitely easier when there is a backup directory that serves as a reference. Electronic transmit paper utilizes embedded conductive layers. The same technology is incorporated in metallic RFID ink that be read by radio waves without the use of a bar code scanner. Katherine Albrecht's and Liz McIntyre's 2005 expose' on the RFID apocalypse SPYCHIPS describes how companies like Wal-mart, Procter & Gamble, and Gillette desire for consumer research can transgress into a hidden method of human-tracking. Here is a quick rundown of the types of products one of the RFID companies, Proctor & Gamble manufactures and were advertised in the last issue of one of my favorite monthly magazines: Crest, Charmin, Always and Tampax. No need for a quick note, the writing is on the wall even if it shows up in some corporate database as graffiti on the bathroom stall . . .
Digital Topography
Google is experimenting with face-blurring technology on its Street View service. The technology is expected to use an algorithm to detect and search human faces automatically. Who knew that the picture was that clear? The free version of Google Earth looks like a screen from the Sims or the X-Box video game.
Found in Barnes and Noble
When something rather than someone catches my eye, I like to take pictures with my cellular phone's camera. My quirky taste for weird, uncanny, or ironic goes beyond the regular "capture the moment" group picture. My taste ranges from profile shots to air-brushed hairstyles with leopard print. It makes for interesting conversation and it always helps in getting a message, albeit silly or absurd, across to those folks out there in telecomm' network land. My latest artwork includes a poster found in the window of a discount department store:
I thought that sign was a clever way to sell misses dresses and business slacks. I think the caption that was sent with the Picture Mail was "Check this out!" or something like that. This other picture I took of a blank greeting card after leaving a book store really caught me eye for some reason:
Found and purchased at Barnes and Noble, the two docile animals nestled together motivated me to take a picture before I mailed it. Yet another cute shot to go with my telephone's array of strange and exotic photography. Picture Mail can always enhance cellular phone civility even when the mail never arrives or your credit card company calls you from someone's house in Missouri or New Mexico. Even though I sent the card, I am still deciding how to caption the snap shot when I send off another round of tongue in cheek text messaging.
Quote of the Day Part Deux
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
Steven Wright
Steven Wright
Back to Coastal International Security from the last time that I imparted a Quote of the Day on this blog. Somehow an invalid parking ticket equates being restrained from a public building. 2500 TC Jester sits a on a bayou next to the Boy Scouts of America. Faced with the choice opening another forged or improper bank statement in the mail after liquidating and closing a three month old checking account, I chose to take a ride to 2320 La Branch. ICE, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau was the captain steering the ship. This oddessy, strange enough was after the FBI agent that I spoke to when I called (713) 693 - 5000 obliged that I could go to the FBI in person to show evidence that I had been a victim of phishing, among other things. The ICE agents searched me, put me in a car, and took me to some random building downtown on La Branch with an electric fence and a playground in the back lot. I received a CITATION leveeing a $50.00 fine for the entire ordeal and ride from my brother and his girlfriend back down 610 West.
Make Me Care
Well, you already missed the auction highlighted on NPR over the past three months and featured in the time pressured Make Me Care segment where advocates get their chance at winning you over on news stories undifferentiated or squelched by mainstream news services. This past March, technology companies such as Google, Phillips, and Free Press bid over the FCC regulated electromagnetic spectrum that follows 58MHz - 698MHz TV channels 1-51 known commonly as "white space." Formerly these 700MHz and above air waves were the unused portion hoarded by major networks and overridden by your computer. These are the same range of radio waves that powers your 800.22 Mbps Wireless Internet Connection and your iPhone. Someone forgot to send you the memo! TV is going from analog, think of Ma Bell and telephone poles, to digital starting February 29, 2009! The FCC is mandating that all new TV's have a digital connection so that your old "rabbit ears" will now pick up a streaming TMZ video or two. Brit, Paris, Winehouse, and Whitney Houston in heavy cycle on your monitor, your PDA, and the old living room TV set. Now does that jolt you?
Indecision 2008: Vote McCain!
In this clip, John McCain reaches out to John Stewart of the Daily Show the media blowhorn for Indecision 2008.
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Surreptitious Sampling
Without the necessity for law enforcement to petition a judge for a warrant, police can pick up DNA samples from water bottles and cigarrette butts by the use of Surreptitious Sampling. Akin to digging through your neighbor's garbage set by the case California v. Greenwood, Courts look the other way when it comes to finding a dead ringer after he takes his last sip from a styrofoam Dixie cup. In comes the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2008 (GINA). GINA restricts genetic tests or genetic illnesses from being used to deny insurance applications, health care coverage, or employment. What can be used against you in the Fourth Amendment, reasonable search and seizure context, cannot be used against you to violate your other civil rights. GINA passed in the Senate and the House of Congress except for Representative Ron Paul who cited the government's poor record in protecting privacy. Now how about them apples?
Dear John
When prominent men step out on their wives we see the hysteria it causes namely because of the illegal or scandalous ends that are taken. For example over the past several weeks the media has saturated our brains with Debra Jean Palfrey's abrupt death and Ashley Alexandra Dupre's' race for stardom and our noses with the stench of dirty laundry. But what happens when hubby Client Nine sends you text message: "86" or you can smell the cheap perfume via text message before he walks in the door? My supposition starts when technology supercedes the relationship by the use of sending written messages or even scents via your cell phone. KC Jones from Information Week reports that the new German patent for the smell-phone will only emanate whiffs of "ocean breezes" and "nice fragrances." If only technology was that merciful. In this day and age, Islamic law is debating whether it is lawful for a man to divorce his wife via text message, three times the charm. Take Kwame Kilpatrick, the Detroit Mayor's series of text messages with his Chief of Staff were uncovered through a whistle-blower law suit and eventually subjected him to perjury charges. A pair of scisscors or a the flush of a toilet handle won't rid a jilted wife of the remnants of a steamy trist his motorola. The electronic trail is recorded on the mother board for posterity. Unfortunately that also leaves Palfrey's DC Madam call grid as well.
No Free Parking
Although my first choice for a New Jersey Hall of Fame would be the Monopoly board game, Bruce Springsteen was one of the first inductees yesterday at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. The Hall of Fame requires an inductee to live in the state for at least five years. Harriet Tubman was allowed an exception although she only lived in New Jersey for one year (Source???). I would like to buy Reading Railroad.
BWI's Mile High Club
Strange enough, NPR released a broadcast about the Transportation Security Administration's "whole-body scanner." The "whole body scanner" operates by using radio waves released in a glass booth to see under your clothes before you enter the airport terminal. This machine is not for the squemish, both women and men must enter the booth. It is supposed to release pictures of your body to be viewed remotely by airport security for drugs, bombs, or other contraband. Your face will be blurred. However is this a small price to pay for a safe flight or is it worth the agony over a stranger looking at you under your briefs when there are friends out there like Antonella Barba's?
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Warrant Less Wiretapping...
Comrades, the stuffed animal is a prop for some subversive movement...
$10 Remote Home Security Hack - video powered by Metacafe
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