|
|
|
||||
|
| ||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
|
Friday, September 30, 2005 via New York Times 2 Teams Identify Chinese Bat as SARS Virus Hiding PlaceBy LAWRENCE K. ALTMANPublished: September 30, 2005  The SARS virus, which has killed 774 people worldwide, has long been known to come from an animal. Now two scientific teams have independently identified the Chinese horseshoe bat as that animal and as a hiding place for the virus in nature. The bats apparently are healthy carriers of SARS, which caused severe economic losses, particularly in Asia, as it spread to Canada and other countries. In Asia, many people eat bats or use bat feces in traditional medicine for asthma, kidney ailments and general malaise. The Chinese horseshoe bat does not exist in the United States. The finding is important in preventing outbreaks of SARS and similar viruses carried by bats because it provides an opportunity for scientists to break the transmission chain. posted by Gary Williams at 11:48 PM | link | via Danish proverbs - Wikiquote 'En fugl i h?nden er bedre end ti p?taget.'* Translation: 'One bird in your hand is better than ten on the roof.' posted by Gary Williams at 10:35 PM | link | [Politech] Member of DHS committee asks for comment on privacy"framework" [priv]From Declan McCullagh's Politech[Politech] Member of DHS committee asks for comment on privacy"framework" [priv] -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Privacy Framework for Public Comment Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2005 12:29:21 -0400 From: Jim Harper To: Declan McCullagh Declan: At this weeks meeting of the Department of Homeland Securitys Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, Joanne McNabb, Chief of the California Office of Privacy Protection, and I circulated and presented a draft Framework for assessing homeland security programs in terms of their consequences for privacy and related values. Members of the Committee will be reviewing it and test-driving it in their respective work and studies of DHS programs and technologies. Public comment on the draft would also be welcome, addressed to privacycommittee@dhs.gov. I have posted a copy of the draft framework here: http://www.privacilla.org/releases/Framework_Draft_9.2.05.pdf Jim _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/)  NEW OPHOTN SONG UPLOADED Check it! It is the first track "Dream State." It is off the new Ben Yomen album The Circles In Which We Walk dropping in February. We went to radio with his 12" EP late last year, which made number 4 most added, and made love in SF, Vancouver, & Ohio. You can peep some of the tracks early at the OPHOTN Records page. www.myspace.com/ophotnrecords www.ophotn.com Note (from Gary)Ophotn is on my contacts list on flickr.com. Recently, they added me to their contacts list, and I looked on their site and found this announcement, which seemed worthwhile...Update:oh, and poking around, I found an mp3 release of The Circles In Which We Walk (part of the album, at least). posted by Gary Williams at 11:42 AM | link | Wednesday, September 28, 2005 [Doctorow] I've started podcasting my stories in serial formI've finally started podcasting! I love reading my stuff aloud, but it's not practical for me to find quiet places to sit down with a mic and a Powerbook and record. So the idea is that I'm going to record my stories in serial form from wherever I am: hotel rooms, friends' sofas, airport lounges, whatever, and post 'em. You can subscribe to the feed, or download individual installments as MP3s. The podcast is also available through iTunes. Thanks to the Internet Archive for hosting the MP3s and to Feedburner for munging the feed. I've started the podcast by reading aloud from a novellette-in- progress called "After the Siege," inspired by my grandmother's hair- raising stories of being a little girl in Leningrad during the 900- day Siege of Leningrad, which she recounted this summer while we were at a family reunion in St Petersburg, Russia (Leningrad that was). Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast MP3s: http://craphound.com/podcast.php -- Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com via Yahoo! News Russian admiral named patron saint of nuclear bomber forceMon Sep 26,11:09 AM ETMOSCOW (AFP) - Historic Russian admiral Fyodor Ushakov -- a hero of Russia's wars against Turkey and Napoleon Bonaparte -- was designated the patron saint of nuclear-armed, long-distance Russian bombers by the Orthodox Church. Russian Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, carried a reliquary and an icon of the admiral, who was canonised in 2004, into the Moscow chapel of the Russian Air Force's 37th Air Army in Moscow, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency said Monday. 'I am sure he will become your intermediary as you fulfil your responsible duties to the fatherland in the long-range air force,' the patriarch said. 'His strong faith helped Saint Fyodor Ushakov in all his battles,' the religious leader said, reminding his audience that the famous admiral of the 18th and 19th centuries never lost a battle. posted by Gary Williams at 12:17 AM | link | Tuesday, September 27, 2005 via Google/ig Quote of the DayThere are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.- James Thurber posted by Gary Williams at 6:58 AM | link | Monday, September 26, 2005 via KWTX Sheehan Arrested During White House ProtestPolice arrested anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan Monday during a protest outside the White House.Sheehan and several dozen other protesters had sat down on the sidewalk after marching along a pedestrian walkway on Pennsylvania Avenue. Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along. Then, officers began making arrests. Sheehan was the first to be taken into custody. She stood up and was led to a police vehicle. Protesters nearby chanted, 'The whole world is watching.' The demonstrators who were arrested cooperated with police. A police spokesman says they'll be charged with demonstrating without a permit, which is a misdemeanor." posted by Gary Williams at 11:29 PM | link |  via Yahoo! NewsDon Adams of 'Get Smart' Dies at 82By BOB THOMAS, Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 26, 6:46 PM ETLOS ANGELES - Don Adams, the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s TV spoof of James Bond movies, 'Get Smart,' has died. He was 82. Adams died of a lung infection late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, his friend and former agent Bruce Tufeld said Monday, adding that the actor broke his hip a year ago and had been in ill health since. posted by Gary Williams at 11:22 PM | link | [Doctorow] Themepunks part three is liveBy Cory DoctorowSalon is serializing the first third of a novel I'm working on, whose working title is Themepunks. The first 50,000 words are a stand-alone short novel, and every week for ten weeks, Salon is publishing another ~5,000 words from the story. The third installment is online. In this week's piece: Perry and Lester, the garage hackers that Andrea (the tech journalist) is profiling, take her on a tour of the new technology esthetic, brought on by the lost generation of out-of-work photoshoppers, html jocks, and perl hackers left behind by the dot-bomb. > He handed her a white brick, the size of a deck of cards. It took > her a moment to recognize it as an iPod. "Christ, it's huge," she > said. > > "Yeah, isn't it just. Remember how small and shiny this thing was > when it shipped? 'A thousand songs in your pocket!'" > > That made her actually laugh out loud. She fished in her pocket for > her earbuds and dropped them on the table where they clattered like > M&Ms. "I think I've got about 40,000 songs on those. Haven't run > out of space yet, either." > > He rolled the buds around in his palm like a pair of dice. "You > won't -- I stopped keeping track of mine after I added my hundred- > thousandth audiobook. I've got a bunch of the Library of Congress > in mine as high-rez scans, too. A copy of the Internet Archive, > every post ever made on Usenet... Basically, these things are > infinitely capacious, given the size of the media we work with > today." He rolled the buds out on the workbench and laughed. "And > that's just the point! Tomorrow, we'll have some new extra fat kind > of media and some new task to perform with it and some new storage > medium that will make these things look like an old iPod. Before > that happens, you want this to wear out and scuff up or get lost--" > > "I lose those things all the time, like a set a month." > > "There you go then! The iPods were too big to lose like that, but > just look at them." He passed back the iPod. The chrome was > scratched to the point of being fogged, like the mirror in a gas- > station toilet. The screen was almost unreadable for all the > scratches. "They had scratch-proof materials and hard plastics back > then. They chose to build these things out of Saran Wrap and tin- > foil so that by the time they doubled in capacity next year, you'd > have already worn yours out and wouldn't feel bad about junking them. > > "So I'm building a tape-loading seashell robot toaster out of > discarded obsolete technology because the world is full of > capacious, capable, disposable junk and it cries out to be used > again. It's a potlatch: I have so much material and computational > wealth that I can afford to waste it on frivolous junk. I think > that's why the collectors buy it, anyway." This week's installment (part three): http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/09/26/themepunks_3/index.html Part one: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/09/12/themepunks_1/index.html Part two: http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2005/09/19/themepunks_2/index.html -- Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com Sunday, September 25, 2005 via essays & effluvia: New Office Slang New Office SlangBeepilepsy - The brief siezure people sometimes suffer when their beepers go off, especially in vibrator mode. Characterized by physical spasms, goofy facial expressions, and stopping speech in mid-sentence.Betamaxed - When a technology is overtaken in the market by inferior but better marketed competition as in “Microsoft betamaxed Apple right out of the market” Blamestorming - A group discussion of why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who was responsible. Blowing Your Buffer - Losing one’s train of thought. Occurs when the person you are speaking with won’t let you get a word in edgewise or has just said something so astonishing that your train gets derailed. “Damn, I just blew my buffer!” (Synonym: “Head Crash”) Body Nazis - Hard-core exercise and weight-lifting fanatics who look down on anyone who doesn’t work out obsessively. Bookmark - To take note of a person for future reference. “After seeing his cool demo at Siggraph, I bookmarked him.” via The Observer | International Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrinaby Mark Townsend HoustonSunday September 25, 2005 The Observer It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing. Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly. Leo Sheridan, 72, a respected accident investigator who has worked for government and industry, said he had received intelligence from sources close to the US government's marine fisheries service confirming dolphins had escaped. 'My concern is that they have learnt to shoot at divers in wetsuits who have simulated terrorists in exercises. If divers or windsurfers are mistaken for a spy or suicide bomber and if equipped with special harnesses carrying toxic darts, they could fire,' he said. 'The darts are designed to put the target to sleep so they can be interrogated later, but what happens if the victim is not found for hours?' via Alton Brown.com So, Who the Heck is Alton Brown?Alton Brown may have spent much of his childhood hanging out in his family's kitchens and his high school and college years toiling in rib shacks and pizza joints, but he never considered a career in food. In fact, the theater major didn't give food much thought despite the fact that a semester performing summer stock in Tuscany turned him into a self-professed "chow hound". It also planted the seeds of what would become Alton's Food Network series "Good Eats".Alton Photo After college, Alton worked as a cameraman and eventually as a director of commercials and corporate films. When he wasn't shooting he was cooking, and watching cooking programs which he constantly criticizes as dull and uninformative. Tired of the griping, Brown's wife (and producer) DeAnna suggested they do something about it. So they left their careers, sold the house and moved to Vermont so that Alton could attend the New England Culinary Institute. During the years of work and study that followed Alton started to concoct a new kind of food show, one that would blend wit with wisdom, history with pop culture, and science with the kind of common cooking sense that our grandmothers took for granted. It would be a show for people who'd rather understand their food than follow a recipe. It would be Good Eats, now one of the top-rated shows on Scripps-Howard's Food Network. Now heading into its fifth season, Good Eats' success has allowed The Browns and their firm, Be Square Productions, to expand into other food related productions. Development of new show concepts has kept Alton and the company consistently on the run. While he writes, directs and hosts his own show, he is also Executive Creative Director on other properties. Additionally, Alton's first book is due out from Stewart Tabori and Chang Publishers in spring of 2002, entitled "I'm Just Here for the Food." Alton and DeAnna live in Georgia along with their daughter Zoey and what Alton refers to as "one worthless hound dog". In his spare time Alton likes to cycle, read, smoke a good cigar, judge recipe contests and, occasionally…cook. posted by Gary Williams at 9:58 PM | link | [BAD SIGNAL]Where I Am On Teh IntarwubFrom Warren Ellis's Bad Signal
__________________________________________ BAD SIGNAL mailing list Archived at BAD SIGNAL mailing list Moderated by Warren Ellis (probably in a pub) (http://www.flirble.org/mailman/listinfo/badsignal)  via National Center for Missing & Exploited ChildrenHelp Find Missing KidsFeatured ServicesRetired, law-enforcement professionals volunteer their time and expertise to assist law enforcement |
|
|
|
|
|||
|
 |
||||||
|
|||||||
Quantum Tea
