Jumbo's
Since I'm 15 years old, I've been eating at Jumbo's. I eventually married the owner's daughter. It is a Miami landmark, but it's also the best fried shrimp and chicken anywhere. That's right. Anywhere. Sadly, because of the economy, it's been losing money by the handful. So take a look at this video and see why history will miss this one. Click here (YouTube) Labels: News To Astonish
It's Happening
I need to point this out. This is the gold mine from The Zero Game. This is exactly what I said they'd do with it. This is exactly what they're doing. They see you right now. They told me. They see you shaking your head. They see it all.
Work begins on world's deepest underground lab AP
By DIRK LAMMERS, Associated Press Writer
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Far below the Black Hills of South Dakota, crews are building the world's deepest underground science lab at a depth equivalent to more than six Empire State buildings — a place uniquely suited to scientists' quest for mysterious particles known as dark matter.
Scientists, politicians and other officials gathered Monday for a groundbreaking of sorts at a lab 4,850 foot below the surface of an old gold mine that was once the site of Nobel Prize-winning physics research.
The site is ideal for experiments because its location is largely shielded from cosmic rays that could interfere with efforts to prove the existence of dark matter, which is thought to make up nearly a quarter of the mass of the universe.
The deepest reaches of the mine plunge to 8,000 feet below the surface. Some early geology and hydrology experiments are already under way at 4,850 feet. Researchers also hope to build two deeper labs that are still awaiting funding from Congress.
"The fact that we're going to be in the Davis Cavern just tickles us pink," said Tom Shutt of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, referring to a portion of the mine named after scientist Ray Davis Jr., who used it in the 1960s to demonstrate the existence of particles called solar neutrinos.
Davis and a colleague named John Bahcall won a share of the 2002 Nobel Prize for physics for their work.
The old Homestake Gold Mine in a community called Lead (pronounced LEED) was shut down in 2001 after 125 years. Pumps that kept the mine dry were turned off years ago, so workers have been drying it out to prepare for the new research.
Before the labs are built, crews must also stabilize the tunnels and install new infrastructure. The lab at 4,850 feet is not much to look at yet. A rusty orange film covers the walls, floors, ceilings and debris left behind by miners.
The first dark matter experiment will be the Large Underground Xenon detector experiment — or LUX — a project to detect weakly interacting particles that could give scientists greater insight into the Big Bang explosion believed to have formed the universe.
Shutt, along with Brown University's Rick Gaitskell and nearly a dozen collaborators will work at the site to search for dark matter, which does not emit detectable light or radiation. But scientists say its presence can be inferred from gravitational effects on visible matter.
Scientists believe most of the dark matter in the universe contains no atoms and does not interact with ordinary matter through electromagnetic forces. They are trying to discover exactly what it is, how much exists and what effect it may have on the future of the universe.
Physicists have said that without dark matter, galaxies might never have formed. By learning more about dark matter, they hope to understand better whether the universe is expanding or contracting.
The research team will try to catch the ghostly particles in a 300-kilogram tank of liquid xenon, a cold substance that is three times heavier than water. If they tried to detect dark matter above ground, the highly sensitive detector would be bombarded by cosmic radiation.
Scientists hope to start construction on the two deepest labs by 2012 and open them by 2016. The projects are expected to cost $550 million.
Labels: News To Astonish
Violinist
Kinda hate the Washington Post for doing this (sinply because they can be exactly the kinds of snobs who’d walk right past this guy). But also gotta love them for doing this.
A Violinist in the Metro (Washington Post)
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes.
During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work. The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on. In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition. No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100. This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
Labels: Music, News To Astonish
Book of Lies. Copyedits done.
Copyedits are officially done and off and in the mail. Managed to sneak in a really good comic reference. Gotta make these things harder than just the Watchmen names in Tenth Justice. So today working on two new projects. One comics, one TV. Also, see below from today's Washington Post. And people say it was all fiction.
The Washington Post
April 9, 2008 Wednesday
Regional Edition
A Capital City With The Devil in the Details?; These Roads Aren't Paved With Good Intentions
BYLINE: Dan Morse; Washington Post Staff Writer
SECTION: STYLE; Pg. C01
LENGTH: 981 words
Presidential candidate John McCain keeps calling Washington the city of Satan. Turns out he's not alone.
"McCain was right," said David Bay, speaking by phone from Lexington, S.C., where as director of Cutting Edge Ministries he has long asserted that Washington's streets are positioned to usher in Lucifer as "the ultimate master of Government Center."
"You will need to have your maps of Washington, D.C., opened in front of you as we proceed," reads a treatise on the subject posted on Bay's Internet site.
Using Dupont and Logan circles as northern points, Bay instructs, you can trace various interlocking streets to form a demonic pentagram, one that bores directly into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
"It must be true, it's on the Internet," Larraine Wolman, a British tourist, said in perfect deadpan while gazing at the White House just before midnight recently.
She agreed to review Bay's map. Could she feel Satan?
No.
Wolman and her three British companions turned to walk back to their quarters at the Mayflower Hotel. This reporter followed, determining what they knew about the place. They knew that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer had stayed there, reportedly with a high-priced call girl. They didn't know how near the hotel is to the center of Bay's pentagram.
"He didn't get in trouble with Satan," Wolman said of Spitzer, as she stood in the Mayflower's lobby. "He got in trouble with his wife."
McCain, a Republican senator from Arizona, has regularly called Washington Satan's City over the past 10 years. He did so twice last month, including during a visit to the Atlanta headquarters of Chick-fil-A, the fast-food chain whose founder is such a devoted Baptist he keeps the eateries closed on Sundays.
"It's harder and harder trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan," McCain said, according to an Associated Press account.
Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, said the Satan comments are obviously jokes. Indeed, on the stump, McCain doesn't refer to the District per se, but to the culture of special interests and ethical lapses in Congress he has long railed against.
Satan and Washington go back. After John Wilkes Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln, printers rushed out images of a horned and clawed devil whispering into Booth's ear at Ford's Theatre, according to "Manhunt," a book about the search for Booth.
On Aug. 20, 1949, The Washington Post weighed in, greeting readers with a headline atop the front page: "Priest Frees Mt. Rainier Boy Reported Held in Devil's Grip."
The story told of a 14-year-old Prince George's County boy who underwent "between 20 and 30" exorcisms, most of which had him breaking into violent, cursing tantrums and bouts of Latin, a language he had never studied. The article quoted unnamed "Catholic sources."
The case inspired a book that became the 1973 movie "The Exorcist," set in Georgetown, which scared the wits out large swaths of America. The Archdiocese of Washington knows of no officially sanctioned exorcisms since the 1949 Mount Rainier case, said Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese.
The most persistent rumblings about Washington as the devil's workshop seem bound up in history about the city's design and the role of Freemasons in building it. It's a connection explored in the three-hour DVD "Riddles in Stone: The Secret Architecture of Washington, D.C.," which notched a respectable 90th out of 1,363 titles recently in Amazon's general history documentary category.
Among the film's highlights is 1993 footage of Mason Strom Thurmond, then a U.S. senator from South Carolina, cement trowel in hand, marking the 200th anniversary of the U.S. Capitol in a Masonic ceremony. And while Masons served as architects to the White House, Capitol, Supreme Court and Washington Monument, the suggestion their leaders worked with Satan is "absolute nonsense," said Akram Elias, Grand Master of the Masons of D.C.
"It's an old story," Elias added. "They don't come out with anything new."
In the 2007 New York Times bestseller "The Book of Fate," a central character named Nico Hadrian advances the demonic pentagram theory of Washington's street layout and describes the White House as the doorway to Hell itself. Author Brad Meltzer said he designed Hadrian, a crazed killer who shoots his way out of a mental hospital, to be a "walking Internet" of various beliefs about Freemasons, among the "great bogeymen of history." And "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown, according to his Web site, is at work on a novel that "explores the hidden history of our nation's capital," as "set deep within . . . the enigmatic brotherhood of the Masons."
Other satanic hot spots cited by believers include the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument. The latter was described by Bay, the South Carolina author, as a filthy, phallic and satanic homage to the god Baal.
Unlikely, said an avowed Satanist from Laurel.
He agreed to meet at the Washington Monument recently, strolling up the Mall in a long black robe and passing through a throng of sun-drenched tourists. A government contracting employee, the 37-year-old spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his satanic name (Gwydion Tiamat). Friends' houses have been firebombed, he said, and they're just pagans.
A husband and father and the director of the East Coast office of the Brotherhood of Satan, he said "a couple of thousand" Satanists live in the Washington area. This is a group that is widely misunderstood, he said: Members don't sacrifice cats; they're not out to hurt people; they simply acknowledge that humans are carnal animals and enjoy the freedoms and indulgences that flow from that understanding. "Having a whole Sara Lee strawberry cheesecake, for example," he said.
And in one sense, he mused, while looking toward the Lincoln Memorial and the infinite regions beyond, McCain is right.
"Satan," said Tiamat, "is everywhere."
Labels: Books, News To Astonish
DB Cooper!
Have to say, I've always been fascinated with this -- just jumping from the plane with the load of cash. How could I not be obsessed?
Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper's parachute found
via Boing Boing by Mark Frauenfelder on 3/26/08
36 years after he jumped from a hijacked plane with a bag containing $200,000 in ransom, D.B. Cooper's whereabouts remain unknown. But his parachute was discovered yesterday.
If it is Cooper's parachute, that will solve one mystery -- where he apparently landed -- but it will raise another, Carr said.
In 1980, a family on a picnic found $5,880 of Cooper's money in a bag on a Columbia River beach, near Vancouver. Some investigators believed it might have been washed down to the beach by the Washougal River. But if Cooper landed near Amboy and stashed the money bag there, there's no way it could have naturally reached the Washougal.
"If this is D.B. Cooper's parachute, the money could not have arrived at its discovery location by natural means," Carr said. "That whole theory is out the window."
Link (Via Reason)
Labels: News To Astonish
Analyzing White People And Books
Damn inllectuals ruin the f'ing joke by overanalyzing the damn thing. Why White People Like 'Stuff White People Like' (The New Republic) And here's booklamp (LifeHacker), which helps you find books you like by measuring style, length, density and all the other reasons that reduce 400 pages of goodness to a lifeless bunch of words from a keyboard. Of course, I'm such a pig, I wanna know what they say about me. Labels: News To Astonish
Best Buy Knows Who You Are
I have to say, I'm so fascinated by what Best Buy thinks of me. Becasue much as I hate to admit it, I know they're right. Read below (from The Consumerist). They're watching you now. They see you rolling your eyes at this...
LEAKS: Best Buy's Internal Customer Profiling Document [Insiders]
via Consumerist by Meg Marco on 3/18/08
Attention Profiled Shoppers: Consumerist is now in possession of an internal training document that teaches Best Buy blue shirts how to stereotype customers. While Best Buy's use of personas has been known for several years, our exclusively obtained document contains several brand-new Best Buy personas, including "Maria Middle America" and "Empty Nesters" Helen and Charlie.
Why do customers need to be stereotyped, you ask? Because some customers are good, and others are bad, and Best Buy employees need to know which ones are which.
Back in 2004, the Wall Street Journal announced that Best Buy had a new customer service strategy. The meat and potatoes of the new strategy was this: Best Buy would concentrate on outwitting pesky bargain-hunters (now known as "demons")and cater only to its most profitable customers, or "angels." This new philosophy was based on the work of Larry Selden, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, and consultant to Best Buy.
Larry is all about the customer. He hates products, "...the obsessive focus on products needs to be replaced by an even more obsessive focus on the customer," he says.
One might assume that with this customer-obsessed guy directing Best Buy's strategy, there'd be an emphasis on customer service. Not so.
In fact, the first thing Best Buy did after adopting Selden's method was amend their return policy to include a 15% restocking fee. Too many "demon" customers were returning things.
The most important part this new world order is the "persona." Personas are essentially stereotypes that Best Buy's salespeople study in order to sell their most profitable services to different "types" of customers. Young urban males are called "Buzz." Upper middle class women are known as "Jill."
Each persona comes with a customized sales approach. Jill wants Best Buy to "help me find and fuel my new passions so I can remain true to myself," whereas upscale suburban Barry wants "premium brands presented as a total solution."
And what happens to those bargain-hunting demons? Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson told the Wall Street Journal in 2004 "that Best Buy will first try to turn its bad customers into profitable ones by inducing them to buy warranties or more profitable services."
"In most cases, customers wouldn't recognize the options we've tried so far," he said. Maybe this new document (which adds several new categories to the known Best Buy persona universe) can help.
NEW PERSONAS:
Meet Carrie (Young Urban Female), Maria (Middle American Female), and (Empty Nesters) Helen and Charlie!
Click on the pictures below to bring up the slides. navigate using arrows that appear (when moused over) at the left, top and right of the slide, or using the "previous" "next" and "gallery" links at the bottom.
PREVIOUSLY: Best Buy Profiles Customers
Labels: News To Astonish
Death To Waiting On Hold
I love you so much I'm sharing this with you. Best hack ever.
How To Never Wait On Hold With Your Credit Card Company [Get To Human]
via Consumerist by Ben Popken on 1/7/08
Reader Jamie shares a neat workaround so that she never has to wait on hold with her credit card company. She says that whenever she calls, "I do not use the 800-number on the back of the card. Instead, I use their outside-the-US instructions on the back of the card and call them collect at their regular phone number. When the credit card thinks that they are paying international collect call charges, they do NOT put you on hold - they take your call right away!"
Sorry if this makes you sad, companies, but this what your interminable queue times have driven us to. We're not going to sit in your cattle chutes anymore. You've wasted enough of our time, now we're going to waste your money.
Labels: News To Astonish
Google Tricks To Make You Smarter Than Your Friends
Most are just eh, but the "better than" one is worth the admission. Have fun.
Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
via Digg on 1/2/08
When it comes to the Google search box, you already know the tricks: like searching for exact phrases in quotes like "so say we all" or searching a single site using site:lifehacker.com gmail. But there are many more oblique, clever, and lesser-known search recipes and operators that work from that unassuming little text box.
Labels: News To Astonish
New Year, New Color
I love this stuff. I love that some company out there predicts not weather or style or tie-width -- but just color. The sad part? The year they predicted orange was the year The Tenth Justice was published...and broke out...with an orange cover. Death to brown! In with blue!
Pantone cranks up the whalesong
'Anchoring and meditative' colour of the year
By Lester Haines
Published Monday 24th December 2007 10:34 GMT
In case you thought common-sense outfits like Pantone - the "global authority on colour" - were immune to rebranding madness, symptomised by the overwhelming desire to give forth in Strategy Boutique Newspeak, it's our sad duty to bring to your attention this announcement regarding the company's "colour of the year":
Pantone's colour of the year - Iris BluePantone, Inc, the global authority on colour and provider of professional colour standards for the design industries, selected PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris, a beautifully balanced blue-purple, as the colour of the year for 2008. Combining the stable and calming aspects of blue with the mystical and spiritual qualities of purple, Blue Iris satisfies the need for reassurance in a complex world, while adding a hint of mystery and excitement.
"From a colour forecasting perspective, we have chosen PANTONE 18-3943 Blue Iris as the colour of the year, as it best represents colour direction in 2008 for fashion, cosmetics, and home products," explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Colour Institute®. "As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays."
Splendid. Ms Eiseman doubtless did her soul-searching for this particular load of complete nonsense with the whalesong cranked up to 11 and in a thick joss-stick-generated scented fog. We wish her and our beloved readers a beautifully balanced, meditative, and anchored 2008. ®
Bootnote
Thanks to Roland Muts for the heads-up.
Labels: News To Astonish
I Wanted to Buy This
I promise, this is true: for a moment about two weeks ago, I told my wife I wanted to buy the Magna Carta. Now, let's not let the fact that I couldn't possibly come up with the expected $30 million for it get in the way of a good story. So I even mention this thought to my wife. She tells me I'm a schmuck. But let's examine: you know, just KNOW this thing is gonna go up in value. This isn't comic art. It's the MAGNA CARTA! And now, I see how right I was. Note to self: next time, buy Magna Carta.
Magna Carta sells for $21.3M in New York
From Tahoo News
NEW YORK - A 710-year-old copy of the declaration of human rights known as the Magna Carta — the version that became part of English law — was auctioned Tuesday for $21.3 million, a Sotheby's spokeswoman said.
The document, which had been expected to draw bids of $30 million or higher, was bought by David Rubenstein of The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, the spokeswoman said.
Labels: News To Astonish
Dead Man Lives!
I am so obsessed with this story...it just keeps getting better.
Sons of 'Dead' British Man Lash Out at Parents
Thursday , December 06, 2007
Panama City — The sons of "back-from-the-dead" canoeist John Darwin have declared they are the victims of a scam after their mother admitted knowing her husband was alive.
Anthony and Mark Darwin have now turned their backs on their parents.
In a joint statement the sons said: "Having seen the recent media speculation surrounding our parents ever since our dad was arrested, we are very much in an angry and confused state of mind.
"If the papers' allegations of a confession from our mom are true then we very much feel that we have been the victims in a large scam.
"How could our mom continue to let us believe our dad had died when he was very much alive?
"We have not spoken to either of our parents since our dad's arrest and at this present time we want no further contact with them."
Anne Darwin is said to have come clean after a picture was discovered showing the couple in Panama in 2006 - three years after he was declared dead.
"My sons will never forgive me. They knew nothing," the 55-year-old told reporters. "They thought John was dead. Now they are going to hate me."
John Darwin's father Ronnie, 90, was shocked at the news.
"I can't believe his wife lived down the road from me and said nothing if she knew he was alive," he said.
Anne Darwin, who moved to Panama just weeks ago, also admitted cashing in a life insurance policy - but says she got the money in good faith.
And she is now preparing to return to England to face questioning by detectives after Sky sources revealed the couple were involved in a "plot."
John Darwin disappeared in 2002 in a suspected North Sea canoeing accident.
The 57-year-old appeared as if out of the blue on Saturday, when he walked into a London police station and announced: "I think I am a missing person."
He has since been arrested on suspicion of fraud and has been passed fit to be questioned by Cleveland police.
Labels: News To Astonish
Vanity Plates
A reminder for those wondering what to do this weekend: you can still get a free (FREE) copy of The Millionaires on iTunes. Just go there and download away. Anyhow. This is so easy, but here in Florida, we have vanity central. Like Dave Barry said, we also have every boat named WET DREAM. And so, the best of the best...
ASSMAN
via In The Pink Texas by Pink Lady on 11/12/07
Out of the nine million vanity license plates, roughly one in 10 are in Virginia. This is not news to me. When I was in high school, my personalized plate on my Dodge colt was "YOU WISH."
Sixteen percent of the vanity plates are issued by Virginia, with New Hampshire and Illinois following close behind. Texas has the fewest, with only a half percent of drivers personalizing their plates. But Texas does have the most American eagle-cloaked-in-flag decals, as well as family names like Gonzalez stenciled on their rear windows.
"I think a lot of people have stories to tell and they really want pieces of those stories out there," said Stefan Lonce, an author on the subject. This is exactly why my license plate says "BLOGGER." I couldn't believe it was still available.
Labels: News To Astonish
Pilot Of Plane That Dropped A-bomb Dies
This guy fascinates me. Especially the, "slept just fine at night."
Pilot of plane that dropped A-bomb dies
By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press Writer
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Paul Tibbets, who piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died Thursday. He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night.
Tibbets died at his Columbus home. He suffered from a variety of health problems and had been in decline for two months.
Tibbets had requested no funeral and no headstone, fearing it would provide his detractors with a place to protest, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.
Tibbets' historic mission in the plane named for his mother marked the beginning of the end of World War II and eliminated the need for what military planners feared would have been an extraordinarily bloody invasion of Japan. It was the first use of a nuclear weapon in wartime.
The plane and its crew of 14 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed 70,000 to 100,000 people and injured countless others.
Three days later, the United States dropped a second nuclear bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, killing an estimated 40,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war.
"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."
Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight, said Tibbets was energetic, well-respected and "hard-nosed."
"Ending the war saved a lot of U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military," Jeppson said. "History has shown there was no need to criticize him."
Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.
"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.
"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."
He added: "I sleep clearly every night."
Tibbets took quiet pride in the job he had done, said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."
"He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch — and that was me,'" Greene said.
Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami.
He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.
"They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon."
Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He later moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.
The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton plans a photographic tribute to Tibbets, who was inducted in 1996.
"There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul Tibbets," director Ron Kaplan said in a statement. "Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul."
Tibbets' role in the bombing brought him fame — and infamy — throughout his life.
In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.
He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.
Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.
The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have examined the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of the target.
Veterans groups objected, saying the proposed display paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during and before World War II, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion.
They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and the exhibit should say so.
Tibbets denounced it as "a damn big insult."
The museum changed its plan and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.
He told the Dispatch in 2005 that he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.
Newhouse confirmed that Tibbets wanted to be cremated, but he said relatives had not yet determined how he would be laid to rest.
Tibbets is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons — Paul, Gene and James — as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium.
___
On the Net:
Enola Gay Remembered Inc.: http://www.enolagay.org
Labels: News To Astonish
Jon Stewart v. Hardball
Silly and small, but here's what's right in the world right now. Someone calling out what politics has become. YouTube link Labels: News To Astonish
Baseball
I rarely blog sports stories. Except for the ones that make me tear up in the end. And father-son references always help. From The Austinist
Austin Accountant Does the Right Thing with Historic Homer
When Will Stewart of Austin bought a ticket in the outfield seats for the Chicago White Sox-LA Angels game on Sunday, he had no idea he was about to become a part of history.
But he was in the right place at the right time as Jim Thome's game-winning home run bounced off the rows behind Stewart and into his hands. It was Thome's 500th career home run, a mark that only 23 players in baseball history have reached.
Memorabilia like that home-run ball can fetch thousands of dollars at an auction, but Stewart, 28, chose to return the ball to Thome. In return, the White Sox offered Stewart two season tickets for the 2008 season and an autographed ball and bat.
Stewart, however, chose to donate the two season tickets to the charity of Thome's choice. The tickets will be auctioned off during the Joyce Thome Benefit for the Children's Hospital of Illinois, an event named in honor of Thome's late mother.
The team said they will fly Stewart out from Texas with a group of his friends to sit in Thome's box during one of the White Sox-Cubs games next season.
In the days leading up to the record homer, Thome said he wanted the ball back and planned to drive with his father to deliver it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.
Labels: News To Astonish
Magical Thinking
I love magic. I really do. Because I so want to believe the impossible is possible. That's Velveeta cheesy but it's so darn true. And I so love magicians for being able to keep the secrets secret without the use of the law, courts, etc. Via Boing Boing Magicians innovate without IP law
Posted by David Pescovitz, September 12, 2007 3:38 AM
Jacob Loshin, a law student at Yale, drafter a paper exploring how stage magicians protect the secrets behind their tricks, and continue to come up with great new ideas, without getting caught up in the insanity of intellectual property law. Basically, magicians police themselves based on a set of norms for treating secrets, presentation styles, and techniques of making magic. Violate the norms by, say, stealing a trick or not giving credit where it's due and you'll be shamed and shunned by your fellow magicians. From the abstract:
Intellectual property scholars have begun to explore the curious dynamics of IP's negative spaces, areas in which IP law offers scant protection for innovators, but where innovation nevertheless seems to thrive. Such negative spaces pose a puzzle for the traditional theory of IP, which holds that IP law is necessary to create incentives for innovation.
This paper presents a study of one such negative space which has so far garnered some curiosity but little sustained attention - the world of performing magicians. This paper argues that idiosyncratic dynamics among magicians make traditional copyright, patent, and trade secret law ill-suited to protecting magicians' most valuable intellectual property. Yet, the paper further argues that the magic community has developed its own set of unique IP norms which effectively operate in law's absence. The paper details the structure of these informal norms that protect the creation, dissemination, and performance of magic tricks. The paper also discusses broader implications for IP theory, suggesting that a norm-based approach may offer a promising explanation for the puzzling persistence of some of IP's negative spaces.
Link (via TechDirt, thanks Sean Ness!)
Labels: News To Astonish
No Body
This is completely in sync with the best rule in soap operas/comics/and any movie ever: If there's no body, there's no death. Though we all still know Cap is coming back. C'mon...
Pics or it didn't happen
via Digg on 9/9/07
The top 10 stories from Digg when somebody commented, "Pics or it didn't happen"... and someone else came up with the goods for all to see...
Labels: News To Astonish
Batteries in Batteries
Suck it, MacGyver. This is even better than that one where you make a washing machine out of a baked potato at the end of season 2. From Lifehacker:
How To Get Eight Watch Batteries From a 12-Volt Battery
Do-it-yourselfer Kipkay did a little investigating and found that beneath the shell of a run-of-the-mill 12-volt battery was eight watch batteries. Considering watch batteries cost between $4 and $6 a pop, finding eight of them in a $2 battery makes for quite a savings. I guess this isn't surprising since 9-volt batteries are filled with six AAA batteries.
12 Volt Battery Hack! You'll be Surprised... [Instructables]
Labels: News To Astonish
CIA Plays Wiki
Not sure if I believe this, but I want to believe it so bad. So I believe it. From The BBC
Wikipedia 'shows CIA page edits'
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News
An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.
Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president.
It also purportedly shows that the Vatican has edited entries about Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.
The tool, developed by US researchers, trawls a list of 5.3m edits and matches them to the net address of the editor.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopaedia that can be created and edited by anyone.
Most of the edits detected by the scanner correct spelling mistakes or factual inaccuracies in profiles. However, others have been used to remove potentially damaging material or to deface sites.
Mistaken identity
On the profile of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the tool indicates that a worker on the CIA network reportedly added the exclamation "Wahhhhhh!" before a section on the leader's plans for his presidency.
A warning on the profile of the anonymous editor reads: "You have recently vandalised a Wikipedia article, and you are now being asked to stop this type of behaviour."
Other changes that have been made are more innocuous, and include tweaks to the profile of former CIA chief Porter Goss and celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey.
When asked whether it could confirm whether the changes had been made by a person using a CIA computer, an agency spokesperson responded: "I cannot confirm that the traffic you cite came from agency computers.
"I'd like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work."
Radio change
The site also indicates that a computer owned by the US Democratic Party was used to make changes to the site of right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
The changes brand Mr Limbaugh as "idiotic," a "racist", and a "bigot". An entry about his audience now reads: "Most of them are legally retarded."
The IP address is registered in the name of the Democratic National Headquarters.
A spokesperson for the Democratic Party said that the changes had not been made on its computers. Instead, they said that the "IP address is the same as the DCCC".
The DCCC, or Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, is the "official campaign arm of the Democrats" in the House of Representatives and shares a building with the party.
"We don't condone these sorts of activities and we take every precaution to ensure that our network is used in a responsible manner," Doug Thornell of the DCCC told the BBC News website.
Mr Thornell pointed out that the edit had been made "close to two years ago" and it was "impossible to know" who had done it.
Voting issue
The site also indicates that Vatican computers were used to remove content from a page about the leader of the Irish republican party Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams.
The edit removed links to newspaper stories written in 2006 that alleged that Mr Adams' fingerprints and handprints were found on a car used during a double murder in 1971.
The section, titled "Fresh murder question raised" is no longer part of the main online encyclopaedia entries.
Wikipedia Scanner also points the finger at commercial organisations that have modified entries about the pages.
One in particular is Diebold, a company which supplies electronic voting machines in the US.
In October 2005, a person using a Diebold computer removed paragraphs about Walden O'Dell, chief executive of the company, which revealed that he had been "a top fund-raiser" for George Bush.
A month later, other paragraphs and links to stories about the alleged rigging of the 2000 election were also removed.
The paragraphs and links have since been reinstated.
Diebold officials have not responded to requests by the BBC for information about the changes.
Web history
The Wikipedia Scanner results are not the first time that people have been uncovered editing their own Wikipedia entries.
Earlier this year, Microsoft was revealed to have offered money to trawl through entries about document standards it and other companies employ.
Staff at the US Congress have also previously been exposed for editing and removing sensitive information about politicians.
An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography
The new tool was built by Virgil Griffith of the California Institute of Technology.
It exploits the open nature of Wikipedia, which already collects the net address or username of editors and tracks all changes to a page. The information can be accessed in the "history" tab at the top of a Wikipedia page.
By merging this information with a database of IP address owners, Wikipedia Scanner is able to put a name to the organisation and firms from which edits are made.
The scanner cannot identify the individuals editing articles, admits Mr Griffith.
"Technically, we don't know whether it came from an agent of that company, however, we do know that edit came from someone with access to their network," he wrote on the Wikipedia Scanner site.
A spokesperson for Wikipedia said the tool helped prevent conflicts of interest.
"We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level," they said.
"Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to."
BBC News website users contacted the corporation to point out that the tool also revealed that people inside the BBC had made edits to Wikipedia pages.
Labels: News To Astonish
Cry
I love the mushy stuff. And I love this guy on this video clip. Yes, they could've lost the crappy montage music in the end, but man, this is what I believe in: those who love what they love at any cost. If you don't cry, don't look in the mirror. You'll turn to stone. Labels: News To Astonish
Harry Potter Guesses
Less than a week to go. We gotta get some guesses going. For me, I hope Harry dies, though don't think she'll do it. And Snape will turn out to be good, simply because, well: Dumbledore is always right. Also, saw the movie this weekend and just loved it. Imagine it's near impossible for a non-Potter reader, but I'd rather us book readers be happy (screw you moviegoers who don't read!). Also, for a truly great ending, check out this contest winning ending by Tamar Siegel, age 12. Love this idea. Labels: News To Astonish
China Makes Artificial Weather
"For a largely agrarian country like China, the weather was thought of as far too important to be left to the whim of gods or nature." I got dibs on the first lightning strike. Though let's be honest, this is gonna end so badly. Like Krypton badly... Also, less than 10 pages to go with JLA art for issue 12. I'm getting misty... From Asia Times
Greater China
Jul 13, 2007
Ready, aim, fire and rain
By Pallavi Aiyar
BEIJING - After weeks of watching the mercury soar, hardening the already cracked earth of their wilting orchards and farms, a group of farmers on the outskirts of Beijing gather in the Fragrant Hills that line the western fringe of China's capital city. Unlike their ancestors, they do not assemble to perform a rain dance or gather in a temple to pray to the Lord Buddha to bring the rain.
Instead, they grab rocket launchers and a 37-millimeter anti-aircraft gun and begin shooting into the sky. What they launch are not bullets or missiles but chemical pellets. Their targets are not enemy aggressors but wisps of passing cloud that they aim to "seed" with silver-iodide particles around which moisture can then collect and become heavy enough to fall.
The farmers are part of the biggest rain-making force in the world: China's Weather Modification Program.
According to Wang Guanghe, director of the Weather Modification Department under the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, each of China's more than 30 provinces and province-level municipalities today boast a weather-modification base, employing more than 32,000 people, 7,100 anti-aircraft guns, 4,991 special rocket launchers and 30-odd aircraft across the country.
"Ours is the largest artificial weather program in the world in terms of equipment, size and budget," Wang said, adding that the annual nationwide budget for weather modification is between US$60 million and $90 million.
It is no coincidence that the world's biggest such project is in China. The country's leadership has never been cautious about harnessing nature, taking on a slew of what were once thought impossible engineering challenges, such as the Three Gorges dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric project, and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, the world's longest highland railroad.
For a largely agrarian country like China, the weather was thought of as far too important to be left to the whim of gods or nature. As a result, Chinese scientists began researching man-made rain as far back as 1958, using chemicals such as silver iodide or dry ice to facilitate condensation in moisture-laden clouds.
In the beginning, the idea was to ease drought and improve harvests for Chinese farmers, but over the decades other functions have evolved such as firefighting, prevention of hailstorms, and replenishment of river heads and reservoirs. Artificial rain has also been used by some provinces to combat drought and sandstorms. In 2004, Shanghai decided to induce rain simply to lower the temperature during a prolonged heat wave to bring relief to an increasingly hot and sweaty urban populace.
And now China's weather officials have been charged with another important task: ensuring clear skies for the Summer Olympic Games next year.
Zhang Qiang, the top weather-modification bureaucrat in Beijing, said her office has been conducting experiments in cloud-busting for the past two years in preparation for the Games' opening ceremony on August 8, 2008.
She said that according to past meteorological data, there is a 50% chance of drizzle on that day. To ensure blue skies, the Beijing Weather Modification Office is busy researching the effects of various chemical activators on different sizes of cloud formations at different altitudes. The aim is to catch pregnant clouds early and induce rainfall ahead of the big day so that during the opening ceremony the sky is cloud-free.
Wang said similar efforts in the past have already helped to create good weather for a number of international events held in China, including the 1999 World Horti-Expo in Yunnan and the 1993 East Asian Games in Shanghai.
However, Zhang warned that her cloud-fighters will only be effective in the event of the threat of a drizzle: "A heavy downpour will be impossible to combat."
Her caveat goes to the heart of the primary criticism leveled against weather-modification efforts worldwide: doubts about their effectiveness. Wang himself admits that it remains notoriously difficult to establish how much real impact cloud-seeding has, since there is no foolproof way to establish how much rain might have fallen without intervention.
The United States, which pioneered cloud-seeding techniques in the 1940s and 1950s, has long cooled in its enthusiasm for the science behind artificial rain. However, Israel and Russia continue to have substantial weather-modification programs and Wang said experiments conducted in these countries reveal that cloud-seeding can increase rainfall by between 6% and 20%.
Zhang said reservoirs in Beijing have shown an increase of 10-13%, one directly attributable to the efforts of her rainmakers.
Despite some international skepticism, the Chinese authorities remain convinced of the merits of attempting to alter weather. China's state news agency Xinhua recently reported that between 1999 and 2006, 250 billion tonnes of rain was artificially created, enough to fill the Yellow River several times over. Moreover, China's 11th Five Year Plan, which kicked off last year, calls for the creation of about 50 billion cubic meters of artificial rain annually.
While declining to provide specifics, Zhang said her office's budget has seen sharp spikes in recent years and she expects it to continue to grow given northern China's extreme water shortages, which are exacerbated by the impact of climate change. Indeed, the annual per capita water supply for China is only 2,200 cubic meters, just 25% of the global average, according to the World Bank.
Artificial rain, however, is not controversy-free even within China. City dwellers have raised concerns about environmental pollution, though both Wang and Zhang insist that silver iodide is used in such tiny quantities that it brings no negative health consequences. Cloud-seeding shells and rockets have also sometimes gone astray, damaging homes and injuring inhabitants. Only last year a passer-by in the municipality of Chongqing was killed by part of a rain cannon that flew off during firing in May.
Wang says training programs and licenses have sharply curbed accidents in recent years, and the 135 farmers who comprise the on-call rainmaking force in Beijing go through intensive training, lasting several weeks, before they are let loose on the artillery. The farmers are paid about US$100 a month for their cannon and rocket-launching duties, which they perform about 40 times a year.
The person who gives the shooters the green signal to launch their cloud attacks is none other than Zhang, China's modern-day equivalent of Zeus, Indra, or the Chinese rain god Xuantian Shangdi. However, the businesslike bureaucrat is modest when it comes to describing her role: "We try our best, but there are no guarantees of success."
Could the rain gods have claimed differently?
Pallavi Aiyar is the China correspondent for The Hindu.
Labels: News To Astonish
Patton, Comedy and Mayer
Lots of stuff today. First, best interview of the last few months: personal favorite Patton Oswalt talking comedy (and therefore life) at The Onion's A.V. Club. Love them. Love him. Buy his album. In my mind, he's all that's right with art today. He is who he is and never forgets it. Second, in the theme of comedy, Tom Franck emailed me to ask you all to go check out the comedy competition he's in over at Famecast.com.
Have to admit, haven't seen the video yet, but Tom is a friend of a friend and therefore someone I'm rooting for no matter what (I'm sappy like that -- go fuck yourself).
And last, this snarkfest story on John Mayer switching to the Blackberry. It was a much cooler story when I thought Mayer had actually dumped the iPhone for the Blackberry simply because he liked it better. This...not so much. Labels: News To Astonish
Rock Paper Scissors
Best game ever. The only sport I was ever good at (besides hiding). This is the sport that us ordinary kids loved. From: Digg.Com
ESPN televises Rock Paper Scissors
via digg on Jul 09, 2007
ESPN will push the edge of the envelope in prime time Saturday with its debut coverage of the USA Rock Paper Scissors Championship.
Labels: News To Astonish
J.J.'s Marketing 101 And iPhone Sales
Anime Bigger Than Sex
The real truth is, America goes to Google for their sex.
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From Publisher's Weekly - "The Beat"
Anime bigger than sex?
Compete looks at what people are searching for in Wikipedia, and the results may surprise you:
Anime (26%)
There is a tremendous amount of interest in learning about Pokemon and Naruto. Perhaps these are parents who want to know what their kids are going crazy over. My Mom didn’t know what “He-Man” was until I was a grown man reflecting on how silly Castle Grayskull was. My mom could have used Wikipedia in the 80’s.
Sex (16%)
What’s interesting about the top sex related terms on Wikipedia is that they do not appear to have gratuitous intent. The top terms include very straightforward inquiries on human reproductive ‘parts’ and basic concepts of what sex is and how it is performed. It appears many people are learning about what sex is and how to have it by referencing Wikipedia.
Labels: News To Astonish
Prince And His Perfume
As it says in The Book of Fate, in 1985, I did want my first car to be a purple motorcycle. And so, Prince launches his perfume line.
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Prince: Perfumer. Macy's Shopper. Verizon Subscriber.
Also happens to write songs once in awhile
There's been so much afoot in the purple-hued parade of Prince lately, one never knows where to start. The new record? Residencies in London and L.A.? A fragrance line? A breakthrough in wireless technology? The Michael Jackson rumor? The department store gig? The miniature rock legend stays on his grind.
First, the new record. Though the details, at this point, are a bit scant, we know it's called Planet Earth, and we know that the lead single, "Guitar", is now available for exclusive download through Verizon Wireless. But get this: to get the song, you've gotta hold your phone (which must be V-Cast enabled, which translates, roughly, to "fancy") up to your computer speakers while the "Guitar" video is playing. On some Tron-ass shit, your phone will not only recognize the track, but ask if you'd like to download it for free.
For the rest of us still trying to figure out how to get that New Radicals song off our first gen iPods, this all seems like a scary glimpse into the future.
As for the perfume, Prince will make the world just a little more funky July 7, when he launches 3121, his very own fragrance collection. (Sadly, the perfume is not called Purple Rain or Black Sweat.) According to his website, the fragrance is comprised of "a refreshing sparkle of crisp bergamot, opulent jasmine and gardenia." Alas, "opulent jasmine" isn't exactly "sex and sin," but it could be the jump-off.
Prince's longterm residency Las Vegas' 3121 Club may be heading west for another seven week stint, as he'll reportedly move his regular gig to the 250-seat Blossom Room of Los Angeles' Roosevelt Hotel starting June 15. According to NME.com, Prince will invite a special guest onstage for each of the seven shows, as well as sit in with a jazz ensemble until the early hours. He'll definitely bring the party to London's O2 Arena for 21 nonconsecutive nights (the last of which haven't been firmed up yet) in August and September.
Also, there's a rumor going around that Michael Jackson asked Prince to tour with him and Prince said no. Good call, man!
Oh yeah, and he's playing at the Macy's in Minneapolis on the day his perfume comes out. I dunno, it's Prince. Dude can do whatever he wants.
Labels: News To Astonish
Google Told To 'Suck It!'
This is why book publishers are nerdier and cooler than Hollywood suits.
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Book Publisher Resorts To Cheap Stunts: Steals Google Laptops
Apparently the CEO of Macmillan Publishers decided to swipe two Google laptops from Google's booth at BookExpo America, wait for Google employees to notice the missing laptops (took about an hour) and then claim that he was just giving Google "a taste of their own medicine."
Labels: News To Astonish
Electric Slide II (No Boogaloo Jokes)
The best part is that we find out why he gave the dance 22 steps. So insane it's amazing.
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The copyright buzz from the 'Electric Slide'
By Daniel Terdiman
Story last modified Mon Jun 04 10:04:03 PDT 2007
The "Electric Slide" now has a Creative Commons license. Just how the iconic line dance came to be governed by that Internet-friendly license starts with a video of a software engineer and his friends having a go at the '70s moves.
In February, Richard Silver, the creator of the dance, persuaded YouTube to remove the video, which the San Francisco engineer shot at a recent convention.
Shocked by the takedown notice by Silver--which was based on a Digital Millennium Copyright Act claim--the engineer, Kyle Machulis, turned to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which quickly adopted his cause.
The argument: that the video contained nothing but noncommercial footage of the dance moves, and should therefore be fair use. The EFF quickly filed a lawsuit against Silver on Machulis' behalf.
And while experts said that it's possible to copyright choreography, few thought Silver could prevail in cases of noncommercial use.
On May 22, Silver and the EFF announced that they had come to an arrangement: the EFF agreed to drop its lawsuit, and in return, Silver said he would no longer pursue DMCA claims against anyone portraying his dance steps in a noncommercial manner.
Further, the parties agreed that from that point on, the Electric Slide would be protected under a Creative Commons license granting full noncommercial use rights to anyone wanting to shoot and post video of the dance.
Earlier this week, Silver gave a telephone interview to CNET News.com. His New York attorney, Mark Beigelman, whom he had retained to help with the EFF lawsuit and who seems to have helped Silver understand that he would likely lose in court, unexpectedly insisted on participating in the interview, often stepping in for Silver on responses.
During the interview, the two talked about Silver's position on public use of his choreography, the reasons he got YouTube to remove Machulis' and others' videos and which stars have done the dance the right way on the silver screen.
Q: What's your take on the settlement with the EFF?
Mark Beigelman: We're thrilled with it. It really conforms to everything that Rick has been trying to do with this. It relates purely for noncommercial use, which Rick has never had a problem with. The EFF lawsuit was somewhat of a surprise to him in light of the fact that the only thing he did to try to police it with regard to noncommercial use was with regard to the way the dance was actually done.
Richard Silver: Yeah, my choreography was 22 steps because my birthday is January 22. I wanted something that was uniquely mine, and so I created a dance with 22 steps. And the dances that are being portrayed on YouTube and MySpace and wherever are doing an 18-step dance instead of a 22-step dance. I fought for the last 28 years trying to get it not done as an 18-step dance, and now with all this being presented on the Internet, I had a problem with it.
What did you feel was the harm of this being caught on video at a convention and posted noncommercially on YouTube?
Silver: The only harm is that choreography is being presented incorrectly. By people watching it and learning it from them incorrectly. And prolonging what I've been fighting for for the last 30 years since I created the dance. Every night that I taught the dance I had a dream that someone was going to leave my class and teach it incorrectly and it was going to go around the world incorrectly and I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to correct it. And that is exactly what has happened.
Why do people get it wrong?
Silver: Because of places like (line-dance Web site) Kickit and line dance videos that have been presented by Diane Horner and a few other people that presented it as an 18-step dance without my permission. They posted it to the Internet and made line dance videos and sold them with the incorrect choreography.
And they called it the Electric Slide?
Silver: Yes.
What was your reaction when you found out the EFF was filing a lawsuit?
Silver: I was shocked. I couldn't understand why they would even be involved in this. I had gone on YouTube and found a number of people who were putting up notices where they were teaching line dancing. I noticed that there were some videos of dance classes where a teacher had a bunch of students and was teaching the dance incorrectly and eventually I just went through and (got YouTube) to pull them all off.
Beigelman: Rick is not a lawyer. He is a choreographer artist and his objection from day one was not just use of the dance. I think it was misinterpreted by many that his objection was to (any use of) the actual dance. But if it was done properly, if it was done with 22 steps, he had no objection.
Silver: There were a number of videos that I left on, that had 22 steps. I only pulled the ones off that were doing it incorrectly.
Beigelman: You know, we've both come to the conclusion that the more people that do it in the right way, in a noncommercial way, on the Internet, it's phenomenal for the dance. It only makes Rick's creation even more popular and valuable and more part of the American cultural mainstream. The issue of whether or not people learn it or get to know it in a 22-step version or an 18-step version is something that I think we're best to kind of deal with in more of an education realm than just pulling things off the Internet. And that that was the spirit by which Mr. Silver and I negotiated with the EFF.
What was the rationale behind agreeing to this Creative Comments arrangement?
Beigelman: The only thing that we really would object to in terms of the use of the dance is it being used in a commercial way. So, once we established with EFF that the objection was not necessarily the use but more of what this crowd (in Machulis' clip) did and how they did it, then we realized that we had really no argument with their position. They made some suggestions as to how we could further support the fair use, which we were very much in support of anyway, and I encouraged Rick to be very open-minded with this. I think that it was a terrific solution, a win-win for everybody.
What about the inevitable situation in the future where someone at a wedding shoots a video of people doing the 18-step version and posts it on YouTube, and they have no idea there's been a settlement? Are you going to say, "Hey, this is the wrong dance, take it down?"
Beigelman: If it's used in a noncommercial way, we acknowledge that we have no right to ask them to take it down or to have it taken down. We may on certain occasions just inform them that, "By the way, it's done improperly." What's more important for Rick is to make sure that the commercial exploitations that actually teach the dance do it in the proper 22-step (form), and we have some control over that. Going after noncommercial use of the dance is a waste of time.
You're saying it's a waste of time--but that's precisely what happened with Kyle Machulis, right?
Beigelman: Yes. It was a waste of time and a mistake, and it took perhaps a lawsuit and Rick getting an attorney helping him promote the commercial exploitation in a proper way to freely acknowledge that.
As a contact creator, what is your take on the EFF's position that we're in a new era and that new technology really is forcing us to re-examine how people share information?
Silver: I think in many ways they're doing a great job and otherwise I think they're publicity hounds and picking at straws. But they certainly opened my eyes to what I can and can't do with my copyright.
Do you feel like that's a good thing?
Silver: In many ways, yes. I still have a problem with people doing my choreography incorrectly, but we're working through that and I now have a great lawyer who's helping me control this.
So, from your perspective, who in the movies has done the dance the right way and who hasn't?
Silver: Joe Pesci in The Super and The Parkers TV show, episode eight, are the only ones who did it correctly. Those were both before 2000.
But there have been movies where it's been done incorrectly?
Silver: Since 2000, there have been a number of movies, (including) Keanu Reeves in The Replacements.
And have you contacted the producers?
Silver: Yes.
What's happened there?
Silver: I sent them a bill and they're waiting for the copyright office to send me my paperwork to pay it.
And in the case of The Super and The Parkers, did you want to get compensation for the use of the dance there?
Silver: Yes, I've written to both, and we're still in negotiations.
Labels: News To Astonish
Flynt Screwing Us Again
Don't love giving Larry Flynt even more free publicity, but it reminds me of a lunch I had at the Four Seasons in LA (I'm going to hell just for that) a few months back where I looked over, and at the next table was Larry Flynt eating with Larry King. It was a meeting of Larrys and I spent the entire lunch waiting for Hagman to show up.
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Hustler offers $1 million for sex smut on Congress
Sun Jun 3, 11:19 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hustler magazine is looking for some scandalous sex in Washington again -- and willing to pay for it.
"Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?" read a full-page advertisement taken out by Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine in Sunday's Washington Post.
It offered $1 million (500,000 pounds) for documented evidence of illicit intimate relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder. A toll-free number and e-mail address were provided.
The last time Flynt made such an offer was in October 1998 during the drive to impeach President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
In the following months, the pornographic publishing mogul threatened to expose one or tow members of the Republican Congress pushing for the impeachment, according to media reports at the time.
That long-awaited expose, published months after Clinton's trial, dropped no bombshells, according to a 1999 Slate.com article, but Flynt's efforts played a role in the resignation of House-speaker designate Bob Livingston of Louisiana.
Flynt's target this time, if he has one, was not immediately known.
Labels: News To Astonish
Bradbury Says Fahrenheit Misinterpreted
I just love that he doesn't go to the ceremony because they don't let him speak. Screw the handshaking...
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Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted
L.A.’s august Pulitzer honoree says it was never about censorship
By AMY E. BOYLE JOHNSTON
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 - 7:00 pm
When the Pulitzer Prizes were handed out in May during a luncheon at Columbia University, two special citations were given. One went to John Coltrane (who died in 1967), the fourth time a jazz musician has been honored. The other went to Ray Bradbury, the first time a writer of science fiction and fantasy has been honored.
Bradbury, a longtime Los Angeles resident who leads an active civic life and even drops the Los Angeles Times letters to the editor on his views of what ails his town, did not attend, telling the Pulitzer board his doctor did not want him to travel.
But the real reason, he told the L.A. Weekly, had less to do with the infirmities of age (he turns 87 in August) than with the fact that recipients only shake hands with Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia University’s president, and smile for a photograph.
He wanted to give a speech, but no remarks are allowed. “Not even a paragraph,” he says with disdain.
In his pastel-yellow house in upscale Cheviot Hills, where he has lived for more than 50 years, Bradbury greeted me in his sitting room. He wore his now-standard outfit of a blue dress shirt with a white collar and a jack-o’-lantern tie (Halloween is his favorite day) and white socks. This ensemble is in keeping with Bradbury’s arrested development. George Clayton Johnson, who gave us Logan’s Run, says, “Ray has always been 14 going on 15.”
Bradbury still has a lot to say, especially about how people do not understand his most literary work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. It is widely taught in junior high and high schools and is for many students the first time they learn the names Aristotle, Dickens and Tolstoy.
Now, Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury’s authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
“Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was,” Bradbury says, summarizing TV’s content with a single word that he spits out as an epithet: “factoids.” He says this while sitting in a room dominated by a gigantic flat-panel television broadcasting the Fox News Channel, muted, factoids crawling across the bottom of the screen.
His fear in 1953 that television would kill books has, he says, been partially confirmed by television’s effect on substance in the news. The front page of that day’s L.A. Times reported on the weekend box-office receipts for the third in the Spider-Man series of movies, seeming to prove his point.
“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site (http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html), titled “Bradbury on censorship/television.”
As early as 1951, Bradbury presaged his fears about TV, in a letter about the dangers of radio, written to fantasy and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. Bradbury wrote that “Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’... This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people.”
He says the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.
The book’s story centers on Guy Montag, a California fireman who begins to question why he burns books for a living. Montag eventually rejects his authoritarian culture to join a community of individuals who memorize entire books so they will endure until society once again is willing to read.
Bradbury imagined a democratic society whose diverse population turns against books: Whites reject Uncle Tom’s Cabin and blacks disapprove of Little Black Sambo. He imagined not just political correctness, but a society so diverse that all groups were “minorities.” He wrote that at first they condensed the books, stripping out more and more offending passages until ultimately all that remained were footnotes, which hardly anyone read. Only after people stopped reading did the state employ firemen to burn books.
Most Americans did not have televisions when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, and those who did watched 7-inch screens in black and white. Interestingly, his book imagined a future of giant color sets — flat panels that hung on walls like moving paintings. And television was used to broadcast meaningless drivel to divert attention, and thought, away from an impending war.
Bradbury’s latest revelations might not sit well in L.A.’s television industry, where Scott Kaufer, a longtime television writer and producer, argues, “Television is good for books and has gotten more people to read them simply by promoting them,” via shows like This Week and Nightline.
Kaufer says he hopes Bradbury “will be good enough in hindsight to see that instead of killing off literature, [TV] has given it an entire boost.” He points to the success of fantasy author Stephen King in television and film, noting that when Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451, another unfounded fear was also taking hold — that television would destroy the film industry.
And in fact, Bradbury became famous because his stories were translated for television, beginning in 1951 for the show Out There. Eventually he had his own program, The Ray Bradbury Theater, on HBO.
Bradbury spends most of his time now in a small space on the second floor of his home that contains books and mementos. There is his Emmy from The Halloween Tree, an Oscar that belonged to a friend who died, a sculpture of a dinosaur and various Halloween decorations. Bradbury, before a stroke left him in a wheelchair, typed in the basement, which is filled with stuffed animals, toys, fireman hats and bottles of dandelion wine. He referred to these props as “metaphors,” totems he drew on to spark his imagination and drive away the demons of the blank page.
Beginning in Arizona when his parents bought him a toy typewriter, Bradbury has written a short story a week since the 1930s. Now he dictates his tales over the phone, each weekday between 9 a.m. and noon, to his daughter Alexandria.
Bradbury has always been a fan, and advocate, of popular culture despite his criticisms of it. Yet he harbors a distrust of “intellectuals.” Without defining the term, he says another reason why he rarely leaves L.A. to travel to New York is “their intellectuals.”
Dana Gioia, a poet who is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and who wrote a letter in support of granting Bradbury a Pulitzer honor, compared him to J.D. Salinger, Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. Another supporter wrote that Bradbury’s works “have become the sort of classics that kids read for fun and adults reread for their wisdom and artistry.”
In June, Gauntlet Press will release Match to Flame, a collection of 20 short stories by Bradbury that led up to Fahrenheit 451. Pointing to his unpublished proofreading version of the upcoming collection, Bradbury says that rereading his stories made him cry. “It’s hard to believe I wrote such stories when I was younger,” he says.
His book still stands as a classic. But one of L.A.’s best-known residents wants it understood that when he wrote it he was far more concerned with the dulling effects of TV on people than he was on the silencing effect of a heavy-handed government. While television has in fact superseded reading for some, at least we can be grateful that firemen still put out fires instead of start them.
Labels: News To Astonish
Book Expo and The Electric Slide
Off to Book Expo where they're unveiling my publisher's new name (what was Warner is now Grand Central Publishing). My real goal is to corner Colbert at the book party.
Otherwise, the only thing getting me excited is the legal battle over the Electric Slide. All you Bar-Mitzvah bands owe this man!
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'Electric Slide' creator backs down from DMCA claim
Posted by Daniel Terdiman
The man who claims to have created the famed Electric Slide has backed down from a legal claim against an engineer who posted a YouTube video of people doing the dance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation announced.
The EFF had represented the engineer, Kyle Machulia, in a lawsuit against the dance's creator, Richard Silver. But on Tuesday, the EFF said Silver had backed down from his claim and his general "online video takedown campaign" and agreed to allow anyone noncommercial use of the dance.
In February, Silver filed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice with YouTube demanding that the service remove a video in which the dance briefly appears.
"Mr. Silver's misuse of the DMCA interfered with our client's free speech rights," EFF staff attorney Corynne McSherry said in a press release. "New technologies have opened multiple avenues for artists and their audiences to create, share and comment on new works. We cannot let absurd copyright claims squash this extraordinary growth."
Under the terms of the settlement, Silver agreed to license the dance under a Creative Commons license. That means anyone will be able to perform, reproduce, display or distribute recordings of the Electric Slide for noncommercial use in any medium.
For his part, Machulis said he was excited for what the settlement means for general use of content--like videos of people dancing in public places.
"This is a huge win for open-source licenses as well as line dance enthusiasts and hapless nerds with video cameras," Machulis said. "It's as much a win for Creative Commons as it is for me, as this is a much more understandable platform to talk to people about intellectual property and licensing on than the usual software claims that come up."
The video is now back online as a result of the settlement.
Labels: Books, News To Astonish
Book Burner
C'mon, it's the death of the written word. Gotta send this along...
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Mo. Man Burns Books as Act of Protest
By DAVID TWIDDY
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Tom Wayne amassed thousands of books in a warehouse during the 10 years he has run his used book store, Prospero's Books. His collection ranges from best sellers like Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October" and Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities," to obscure titles like a bound report from the Fourth Pan-American Conference held in Buenos Aires in 1910. But wanting to thin out his collection, he found he couldn't even give away books to libraries or thrift shops, which said they were full. So on Sunday, Wayne began burning his books protest what he sees as society's diminishing support for the printed word.
"This is the funeral pyre for thought in America today," Wayne told spectators outside his bookstore as he lit the first batch of books.
The fire blazed for about 50 minutes before the Kansas City Fire Department put it out because Wayne didn't have a permit to burn them.
Wayne said next time he will get a permit. He said he envisions monthly bonfires until his supply - estimated at 20,000 books - is exhausted.
"After slogging through the tens of thousands of books we've slogged through and to accumulate that many and to have people turn you away when you take them somewhere, it's just kind of a knee-jerk reaction," he said. "And it's a good excuse for fun."
Wayne said he has seen fewer customers in recent years as people more often get their information from television or the Internet. He pointed to a 2002 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, that found that less than half of adult respondents reported reading for pleasure, down from almost 57 percent in 1982.
Kansas City has seen the number of used bookstores decline in recent years and there are few independent bookstores left in town, said Will Leathem, a co-owner of Prospero's Books.
"There are segments of this city where you go to an estate sale and find five TVs and three books," Leathem said.
Dozens of customers took advantage of the Sunday's book-burning, searching through those waiting to go into the fire for last-minute bargains.
Mike Bechtel paid $10 for a stack of books, including an antique collection of children's literature, which he said he'd save for his 4-year-old son.
"I think given the fact it is a protest of people not reading books, it's the best way to do it," Bechtel said. "(Wayne has) made the point that not reading a book is as good as burning it."
Labels: News To Astonish
Passwords
PC Magazine says these are the most commonly used passwords. That's fine. What makes me feel the tingles is that "monkey" is one of them.
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- password
- 123456
- qwerty
- abc123
- letmein
- monkey
- myspace1
- password1
- blink182
- (your first name)
Labels: News To Astonish
Research and Misinformation
I love research. I do. I fill my books with it. And I just love when really great stories wind up being false AND getting reported as thus...
So...Canadian nanotech...
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'Poppy quarter' behind spy coin alert
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 35 minutes ago
An odd-looking Canadian coin with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a U.S. Defense Department false espionage warning earlier this year about mysterious coin-like objects with radio frequency transmitters, The Associated Press has learned.
The harmless "poppy coin" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "anomalous" and "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.
The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy — Canada's flower of remembrance — inlaid over a maple leaf. The unorthodox quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.
The supposed nano-technology actually was a conventional protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.
"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire like mesh suspended on top."
The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defense Security Service, an agency of the Defense Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.
One contractor believed someone had placed two of the quarters in an outer coat pocket after the contractor had emptied the pocket hours earlier. "Coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the contractor wrote.
But the Defense Department subsequently acknowledged that it could never substantiate the espionage alarm that it had put out and launched the internal review that turned up the true nature of the mysterious coin.
Meanwhile, in Canada, senior intelligence officials expressed annoyance with the American spy-coin warnings as they tried to learn more about the oddball claims.
"That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defense contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wrote in a January e-mail to a subordinate. "Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the story on this?"
Others in Canada's spy service also were searching for answers. "We would be very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the comment related to the use of Canadian coins in this manner," another intelligence official wrote in an e-mail. "If it is accurate, are they talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?" The identity of the e-mail's recipient was censored.
Intelligence and technology experts were flabbergasted over the warning when it was first publicized earlier this year. The warning suggested that such transmitters could be used surreptitiously to track the movements of people carrying the coins.
"I thought the whole thing was preposterous, to think you could tag an individual with a coin and think they wouldn't give it away or spend it," said H. Keith Melton, a leading intelligence historian.
But Melton said the Army contractors properly reported their suspicions. "You want contractors or any government personnel to report anything suspicious," he said. "You can't have the potential target evaluating whether this was an organized attack or a fluke."
The Defense Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an international furor, but until now it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode. The U.S. said it never substantiated the contractors' claims and performed an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page published report about espionage concerns.
The Defense Security Service never examined the suspicious coins, spokeswoman Cindy McGovern said. "We know where we made the mistake," she said. "The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there."
A numismatist consulted by the AP, Dennis Pike of Canadian Coin & Currency near Toronto, quickly matched a grainy image and physical descriptions of the suspect coins in the contractors' confidential accounts to the 25-cent poppy piece.
"It's not uncommon at all," Pike said. He added that the coin's protective coating glows peculiarly under ultraviolet light. "That may have been a little bit suspicious," he said.
Some of the U.S. documents the AP obtained were classified "Secret/Noforn," meaning they were never supposed to be viewed by foreigners, even America's closest allies. The government censored parts of the files, citing national security reasons, before turning over copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
Nothing in the documents — except the reference to nanotechnology — explained how the contractors' accounts evolved into a full-blown warning about spy coins with radio frequency transmitters. Many passages were censored, including the names of contractors and details about where they worked and their projects.
But there were indications the accounts should have been taken lightly. Next to one blacked-out sentence was this warning: "This has not been confirmed as of yet."
The Canadian intelligence documents, which also were censored, were turned over to the AP for $5 under that country's Access to Information Act. Canada cited rules for protecting against subversive or hostile activities to explain why it censored the papers.
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Associated Press writer Beth Duff-Brown contributed to this story from Toronto.
Labels: News To Astonish
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