Personally, I think that this was a horrible TED "talk". Cute illusions, but otherwise utterly worthless. He makes the argument that our minds can be tricked, and then utterly fails to prove it. The only thing the he proved was that through some mechanism, which could include simple collusion with the participants, mechanical devices, and other methods which fail to prove his point, he was able to pull off a few illusions.

Uh, great.

If you want to see something truly impressive and VASTLY more enlightening, try Darren Brown. Not only does he fool you, but he actually then goes and shows you HOW he fooled you and why you are a dumb sucker. Unlike this guy, he makes the assertion that you can be fooled, fools you, and then proves that the trick was actually entirely in your head.

While entertaining as a magic show, I found the talk to be uninformative and rather disappointing for TED talk.

Do you know what pisses me off about Nazis? Yeah, they suck for genocide, war, and in general acting like crazy super villains, but there is something even more than that. Those jerks managed to go through and take every other cool looking symbol and make it into pure evil. If you could detach the swastika from the whole killing 6+ million people with industrial mass executions (and lets not even bother going into how many people died putting the Nazis down...), the swastika is an awesome looking symbol.

Anyone who has ever doodled a four sided shape while they are bored ends up drawing the damn things... realize with horror what they just drew, and scribbling some more lines over their doodle to make it go away. The same goes with the SS symbol. That is a neat looking symbol... which the god damn Nazis promptly took and turned into the symbol of for genocidal maniacs. Thanks ass holes. Nazis suck.

In the word of Indiana Jones, "Nazis? I hate Nazis."

So our protest of torture being used in prisoners is, um, pissing off record store owners and confusing the hell out of customers? Right. The torture sticker is something funny I might slap a textbook, not a bold political statement.

I see a lot of activist groups making "bold political statements" titter between pointless and counter productive.

A sit in in a 1950's segregated dinner? Bold. Taking a few bullets during an anti-war rally? Bold. Thinking you are making a difference with minor acts of vandalism against utterly innocent parties? Both counter productive and pointless. That is roughly along the same as someone keying "fur is murder" on my car door when I don't even own any damn fur. It makes me both hate you and kind of want to go beat a fox to death just out of spite.

Petty acts of vandalism are easy and self gratifying, but in the end you just make someone fully unconnected to your complaint miserable (in this case, the guy who has to remove your uninformative stickers) while accomplishing absolutely nothing for your cause. Want to make a bold statement about torture? Get a friend waterboard you in public to show people how bad it is. Call some news media and post it on YouTube and BoingBoing. You might get arrested for violating some law or another, but that is kind of the point isn't it? Petty acts of vandalism just piss people off. Getting dragged off to jail for peacefully protesting on the other hand makes people look up.

My advice? If the stickers are to be jokes, great, sell them as jokes. I am sure my little brother would love a few for his text books. If you really have a political agenda though, I suggest dumping the idea and doing something worthwhile that doesn't involve petty acts of vandalism against unrelated parties.

No the security council did not collectively lose their marbles and justify rape as weapon. The point of classifying rape as a weapon of war is not to legitimize it. The point of classifying rape as a weapon of war is so to basically make it the UN's business to deal with it. In the same way if all of a sudden one nation started to poison water supplies as a military tactic the UN would, in theory (and probably only in theory), step in.

I know that the US is the great devil at the UN, but the US deserves a big round of applause for this one. This was a US sponsored and pushed resolution that China, Russia, Indonesia, and Vietnam (according the BBC article) all had reservations with. The measure was passed unanimously and hailed by human rights organizations. This was a good thing.

The practical use of this regulation can certainly be questioned. At best, this is just a new inroad to scoring sanctions. I wouldn't expect to see UN soldiers on the ground pointing gun barrels to stop atrocities any time soon.

I discovered Atomic Fireballs a few years ago via Rhapsody. I was on a swing kick and stumbled into them. They are frigging awesome. If "Man with the Hex" doesn't get you swinging, well, you could only be emo.

Personally, I miss the all but dead swing and ska bands like nothing else. The vast majority of "alternative" music today has all the cheer and love for life of a mass cultist suicide. Speaking as someone who recognizes that, but the rest of the world's standards, I am pretty well to do, well fed, and likely to have my age reach for the 22nd century mark, I just can't identify with self hating stuff that passes for music these days. Yeah, I have had girl friends dump me and loves lost, but eh, life is still good and there are three billion other women in the world I have yet to met.

Ska and swings rejection of self pity, self hate, and wallowing in its own misery is what makes me love those now nearly dead genera. Even at its most pessimistic and self hating, ska laments misfortunes with a smirk, some trumpets, and the realization that, if nothing else, there will always be sex and alcohol left in the world.

I miss you swing and ska. Come back and show the kids a good time.

The idea that this is people being irrational is silly. This is rationality at its height. Anyone who has lived in a large city quickly gets an elevated sense of caution when it comes to people trying to approach you at random or offer you something. It isn't paranoia because it is a rational response. Most people new to the city lack this sense of caution and get guilted, scammed, or intimidated out of a few bucks a few times. They quickly (and wisely) develop a mentality that if someone is trying to offer you something or approaches you, they have an ulterior motive that is not in your best interest.

Personally, I would have avoided the guy without a second thought. I would have automatically assumed that there was a catch which was going to require me to about face quickly and rudely, or spend half an hour listening to someone babble insanely or sell me something.

Would I have missed out on some cash? Sure. Of course, I would have been on to better things while the idiot talking to every crackpot that comes at him spends half talking to lunatics, marketers, bums, and religious nuts, and only have £5 to show for it. My time is worth a hell of a lot more than £5.

"One of the potential abuses of hidden RFIDs is to reveal the presence of an object which you have legitimately concealed. If this isn't happening already it's about to."

I am afraid I don't understand your example. Can you give one instance where putting an RFID on your baggage results in it revealing something you were trying to hide? Personally, I assume that if you put your baggage into the luggage system you probably want it to be tracked. The fact that it is being tracked with radio waves instead of photons seems like a trivial point.

The only thing RFID does that photons don't is spit back information a computer can read easier and faster.

P.S. How do you get spiffy quote tags in posts?

I am as much as a civil libertarian as they come, but I really don't see the issue here. Ok, so instead of bouncing photons off the tag to read it they can bounce radio waves and get the same information (or less)? Is this really worth worrying about? If you are so paranoid that someone will see that you have traveled and read the scant information on those tags... you already probably chopped them off to conceal the easy to read visual information.

Don't get me wrong, RFID has some serious potential abuses, but there is nothing inherently evil about RFID itself. RFID in your clothing that marketers use to track your every movement? Ok, that is evil. RFID in your passport that screams out personal information to anyone with a reader? Stupid for sure (never attribute to malice what you can attribute to government stupidity). Keeping track of your luggage by having an RFID tag display the same thing as the diposable visual tag? That is called making technology work to make our lives suck a little less. No evil Orwellian nightmares here. Believe me, if you want to scare yourself about going to the airport, forget your luggage, worry about your credit card and secret government black lists, not improved baggage handling techniques.

People need to take a breather on RFID. It is getting thrown around in civil libertarian crowds like a curse word the same way genetics and nuclear are tossed about in some environmentalist circles. In the same way a NMR machine is nothing to freaking out over, even if you are anti-nuclear, and not all genetic engineering is violent protest worthy, neither should the knee-jerk reaction to RFID to panic and screaming 1984. There are good reasons to freak out over some RFID related things, this really isn't one of them.

This is awesome... but seriously, you need to listen to it NOW. I give it less than a day before someone starts to fling DMCA take downs at this. You don't fuck with your mouse eared overlords and live to tell the tale.

Personally, I find the situation maddening. This should be full protected under fair use. Hell, it probably IS covered under fair use. Of course, that will not matter a lick once Disney flings a few take downs at it.

I find it utterly absurd that I can patent a useful technology and hold that patent for 14, but this post is copyrighted automatically, with no deed, no record, and no title... until long after I am dead.

I personally always liked the idea of making copyright have to be registered (like normal property is), and then requiring people to pay a single penny in order to maintain the copyright. The next year, they have to pay 2 pennies. The year after that, 4, 8, 16, and so on. After seven years, you are still paying just over 2 bucks. If you want to hold a copyright until the end of frigging time, well, it better be economically worthwhile.

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Besides, even if the police, the secret service, and the military spontaniously went insane, it wouldn't change the fact that the majority of the American population is armed to the teeth. Btwn hpp lbrl mt shlds (h yh gys, y pcflly prtst n th frnt f th mrch) nd crzy gn ttng rd ncks (w s gn' t sht rslvs prs--dnt!) th d tht mssvly npplr nd htd prsdnt s gng t hld fw mlln ppl n dtntn, mch lss sspnd lctn s t bsrd t vn wst smrk n.

I fail to see the "objectification, misogyny and sickening creepiness of this whole thing". First, lets pretend that this is more than just a cool art project (and it is a cool art project by the way). So the guy has a projected girlfriend in his bed? So what? Its only worthwhile purpose is to provide psychic support. Feels miserable, turns over, sees someone else in bed, feels a little relieved (even if it is clearly fake) and sleeps better.

There is no "objectification" because there is no object. It is a freaking beam of light that provides a little comfort when he is alone at night. There is certainly no "misogyny", as the guy pretty clearly would prefer a human next to him. I don't even find it "sickening and creepy". I think "sad" would be the first word that comes to my mind. It is sad that someone feels so miserable when they lack of the affections of a woman that they use this as a poor comfort.

#1, With unemployment still under 5% and the "recession" not actually being a recession (no negative growth), I can safely say that Americans are not going to relearn what it is like to live through the Great Depression. If you think that the current mild economic down turn rates anything even close to the Great Depression, you need to find a history book.

I have two problems with this article. The first is the implication that US food wasted is out of whack. This number means extraordinarily little unless it is put in context of other places. Is this number high or low? Has superior storage methods resulted is less spoilage, or has greater wealth resulted in people more accepting of waste? We can't tell because meaningless statistics have been tossed around without any sort of context.

The second question one needs to ask, is how much is food consumption really effecting world price There is the implication here that it is food consumption that is causing prices to rise, but is this actually true? I would be willing to bet, but unlike in this article admit that I have no evidence, that the vast majority of the rise in food prices stems from energy prices combined with a series of crop failures that all lined up.

If you really want to point I finger, I would suggest pointing it at energy prices. High energy prices encourages converting food into fuel. Even more importantly, high energy prices make the cost of transporting and storing food rise. Toss in some failed crops through natural and human made disasters, tack on the cost of trade tariffs, and you have a recipe for high food prices.

There is a silver lining to all of this. These prices might force use to iron out some of the insanity in our agriculture policy. It is pretty hard to justify sugar tariffs in the US to protect the corn industry (corn syrup) when US corn prices are not only pissing off Americans, but having far greater negative effects on other countries (Mexico).

It was a dumb maneuver on the Iranian's part, plain and simple. Since the bombing of the Cole, the US has been very clear and explicate that pulling little boats up next to US ships is a big old no-no. In this case, the American ships were indeed about to take "defensive maneuvers" which I imagine means either firing warning shots, or if they feel threatened enough, firing not-so-warning shots. As fast as those slick little boats look, it would have been a very short battle.

Irregardless of who sent the messages, and personally, I am inclined to believe that it was the Iranians rather then the worlds biggest coincidence, it almost turned ugly.