Is this some kind of anti-resistentialist movement? Or is it anti-anti-resistentialist? Love thine enemies? FOOLS! By basing themselves in our beds the objects have achieved the most intimate levels of control! This, combined with their conspiracy with gravity, surely spells doom for our species.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

Didn't Tom Robbins have some special insight on these matters? DoD needs to set him up a consulting contract right quick.

glad to see #62 recognized resistentialism at work; I believe this is a particularly malignant example of the conspiracy of objects and gravity, against which I am advocating the advent of antigravitism. f'reals.

I wouldn't be surprised if some bureau-rat looked at her blankly and said, "ma'am, I'm sorry if you can't provide us with a fingerprint then I can't give you an ID. I understand you have no arms, but I don't make the rules. Don't take an attitude with me!"

My grandfather once had an application for a disability parking permit rejected because a) they couldn't read the doctor's handwriting and b)they didn't accept the extension sticker on the back of the two-sided driver's license issued by Florida..."date of expiration must be on front of license". They don't make the rules, they just know that it's easier to follow them than to think.

Though in this case, the concern seems to be that in post-apartheid SA, really obvious points of discrimination still remain.

Add'l reportage on what Takuan snipped above:

China to meet Dalai Lama envoy (CNN)

Interesting bit of overlap/conflict in the Coke-Olympics connection: Peter Uebberoth, head of the US Olympic Committee (USOC Docs Page; PDF at Director Bios link), has a convenient seat on the Board of Directors of Coca-Cola. Going after the sponsors is an interesting angle, but there's just too much hanky-panky here to get any traction (e.g., getting some kind of official action from the US), I'd bet.

woke up light in life out

I have to pony up a comment simply to say it is always nice to see new product from Warren - even if it is a theme or gadget or even character we've seen before (heavens! comics rehashing characters and storylines! a travesty!). Warren has an inimitable style and treatment that always promises, at the very least, a chuckle, and at worst, gut-and-nut busting hilarity/insanity. The man is one of the most prolific writers in the history of the genre, and his hit rate must still be astonishingly high. And Paul Duffield's art has a nice tone and atmosphere. So what say we give the book a chance, and even if it falls a bit short, c'est la vie, c'est l'art. Move along. Comic Book Guy should get back to the secret room and eagerly await the next shipment of shrink-wrapped dolls or something.

Reminds me of when her event staff accidentally played Billy Joel's "Captain Jack" instead of "New York State of Mind" and it was broadcast live nationwide. D'oh! She seems to have a knack for these wee slips.

http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/12044920

i'd just like to point out something about theoretical destructiveness of advanced technologies: the atmosphere has not been ignited by nuclear technologies, particle accelerators have yet to collapse into black holes, and i'm willing to bet against gray goo. when an AI has gone wrong, it's usually because somewhere along the line a human made a fatal error, not an AI. skynet is a great metaphor for our fears, but a poor case to pose as historical possibility. AIs have a tremendous way to go before they are remotely capable of autonomously assessing threats and taking independent action. and even when they do, we have enough sci-fi based fears to at least temper those possibilities. or at least, i would hope the designers of such technologies do.

i also believe israel has an ethical component to its military doctrine that does not include MAD or relinquishing autonomy on strategic or tactical decisions to an AI, ever.

from my friend steve, a livejournal with all the videos including the incredible "Freedom of Valor Medal" presentation to TomTom by Scientologist head honcho David Miscivage.

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/19413610.html

"the whole panoply"

This is great! One of the best things about riding the bus to school along Flatbush Avenue years back was tracking the growth patterns of the storefront churches - at a peak there were blocks that had almost nothing but these joints. The names are as endlessly varied as the groups that populate them. This is a nice representation of how ridiculously diverse Brooklyn is - even within its subdivisions.

It's refreshing to see this kind of thought in Oklahoma:

"I kind of thought if anyone was caught having sex in public, it could have been me,"

It kills me that she had to fight this on a technicality.

I am consistently amazed at what American society tolerates. It seems that groups such as the MPAA have risen to quasi-cultural-police status, what with their nastygrams, lawsuits, and censorship...these powers that are specifically excluded from government are wielded with abandon by these "industry groups". Guess it's high time to brush up on some Lessig...

Mark - great find, this site looks like fun. You should also know, there is at least one healthily active Flickr group devoted to the same pursuit:

You Can't Take Pictures Here!

I'm sure there are others; that happens to be the one I am in. Cheers...

Also very important: BRAIN BINDLE!!!1!

Funny timing, a recent auction in chicago had some perfect pairings (or nearly did) for this little gizmo...apparently ~50k (US) can get you an imperial (8 bottles) of some of the fancy sauce:

The Things One Can Buy For $54,000 (Chicagoist)

and for $150k, hold your breath and you can get at this one:

Hold that toast: $150,000 wine pulled from auction (CNN Money)

@schmod - to echo devophill, most of Manhattan 9the densest area of NYC) remains dry in that scenario, but the coverage of roughly half of Brooklyn (including my house) and Queens still means that millions of people would be dealing with majority incursion by the water. Doesn't look like fun...

Also, the about page is really well written and informative. Interesting project...

TV Watch a bit of further analysis into the Thompson situation. It also mentions something I heard on the radio this morning, and a few other blogs have made mention of - Pat Paulsen, of Smothers' Brothers show fame, ran in 1968 as a member of the "Straight Talking American Government Party, or the S.T.A.G. Party (NY Times obit). He ran into the equal time problem, but gave some good runs and lines like, "If elected, I will win."

@Ianm - umm...could you possibly be more pedantic? Last I checked (and also the times I checked in the course of getting a degree in cognitive science), neither the improvement, development, or emergence (across evolutionary time) of cognition was solely dependent upon the ability to transduce meaning from squiggly lines on parchment or in pixels.

Please don't get me wrong - I am an avid reader, I wish I read more, and I wish everyone else did too. Books are the most delightful little portals we currently have to other universes (well, comics are neat too), and there is certainly much to be gained from their use.

But they are not the limit of the intellectual world. Far from it. To suggest that this is all one needs to enhance or preserve their cognitive abilities is to suffer from those ancient philosophical blunders, arrogance and tunnel vision. Not to mention the fact that your contention flies in the face of a great deal of established and ongoing research.

Before they can even string coherent sounds together, let alone decipher symbolic text, infants undergo an incredible degree of modulation and enhancement of their nervous system - the complexity and variety of sensory energies in the world force young neurons to move, connect, expand, and even die in the process of developing full human cognitive abilities. And well before they can read, children can demonstrate a wide and impressive range of perceptual and conceptual abilities. Meaningful interactions are embodied (literally - hand motions and facial expression...mean stuff!) well before language capacities are fully functioning.

To skip to the other end of the vital spectrum, it has been found that preservation of cognitive function in the elderly is related to some possibly surprising factors - at least they would be to you! Certain dietary factors, exercise, and ongoing social interactions all seem to have a positive effect on what is known as "cognitive reserve" - roughly a measure of preserved brain function that protects from natural deterioration - or even pathological degeneration, as in Alzheimer's - that may occur with aging. Which, again, is not to suggest that reading and other intellectual pursuits are not positive - they are just not enough. A quick google scholar search turned up this short paper (pdf), hosted by Columbia University, which gives a very nice (and encouraging) summary of some data from a few years ago that indicate the myriad ways that are being investigated has having protective effects on cognition through aging. The conclusions would at the very least suggest that a service such as SharpBrains offers cannot be dismissed out of hand.

You do so in an uninspiring, brusque, and heavy handed fashion. On top of which, you demonstrate such a weird cultural and temporal inverse-myopia (hyperopia?) - what exactly is the problem with books from the past hundred years from this continent? (oh how we could go on there...) It is really a greater shame that someone who claims to be a student of philosophy, shows such an apparent lack of interest in critical inquiry, investigation of the world, and consideration of their own possible error - and it definitely tells us that you sure aren't a scientist. If you want to help the "North American scum", you might want to consider ways to make them interested in the world that don't involved you "collectively shout[ing]" at them. And if I may, how does a single person do that, exactly? Is that in some fancy "book"?

-DH

Weirdness! I once had some oral surgery (removing extra teeth or something) as a little kid, and totally hallucinated that view... I love it when artists can capture perceptual states we only think can be in our heads.

it just clicked...lord british in space..wow.

"His father brought home gadgets NASA was testing, like the early version of a night-vision scope that Richard Garriott used to track the family cats in the backyard."

Totally sweet.

Also, as mentioned in the article, Garriott is an investor and future-participant in Space Tourism. More at The Space Review.

Some updates from one of my favorite NYC rags, the New York Post. NYC Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum calling for investigation, etc. Some details:

"A police spokesman yesterday said the chain connecting Carol's handcuffs had been attached to another handcuff that was on the end of a 24-inch-long shackle. The handcuff on the other end of that shackle was attached to a hook on a bench where she was placed.

"We still do not know how Ms. Gotbaum was able to manipulate the handcuffs to the position she was in," Sgt. Andy Hill said. "But when she was found, her handcuffs were in front, and the shackle was still attached to her handcuffs. The chain was not wrapped around her neck. It was pulled across the front of her neck area."

"Michael Manning, the high-powered lawyer hired by Gotbaum's family, scoffed at the police account. "Are you kidding me?" he asked. "You really think it happened this way?

And an eyewitness:

"On Friday afternoon, Carol began screaming, "I am not a terrorist," at an attendant in the Phoenix airport after missing her flight, said Omar Guerrero, 22, a worker who saw her.

"Carol dropped her bags, began stomping her feet and said, "I'm not a terrorist. I'm just sick. I need help. I'm just a mother. I'm just a sick mother," he recalled.

"When a security guard tried to calm her, Carol ran to a nearby checkpoint with her hands up and began speaking in a foreign language to three cops who surrounded her.

"She may have looked like she was crazy, but she looked sad to me. She was crying," Guerrero said of Carol, who broke away from cops and then punched and kicked at them when they tackled her.

Wow! Congrats, this is great! The production looks terrific and I can't think of a better topic to open with than "Visions of the Future"...you guys are the future. Back to my electroshock learning...

Another angle to perhaps consider - if Ms. Gotbaum was acting in a disorderly, irate, etc. manner, shouldn't that at least set off some warning bells that she was not in a healthy mental state at the time? That is, she could have been having a panic attack, manic episode, or hell, she could've been really angry and agitated. These are common enough states that police forces should be trained in how to manage such individuals as to minimize their potential risk to their own and others' health - without an arm around their neck or knee to the back. And I don't mean tranq shots or tasers or whatnot - unless they can identify the situation as something that can only be dealt with in such fashion. But certainly, leaving an agitated person unsupervised in a holding cell near the scene of an incident cannot be the ideal way to handle this situation.

Anyone see any H's? Or does the sign mean no hobo would approve...

Without even looking I bet it was Aloysius. Somehow.

Pareidolia! It has a flickr group!

BBC TV reported that Japan is sending their deputy foreign minister to investigate the death of the photog. A Burmese journalist they were interviewing in the studio said he had reports from the ground that hundreds are being killed today and the BBC also had reports of impromptu prison camps being set up, which the guy confirmed. Yikes. Looking for links...

To be fair, no one has managed to blow up a plane or use weapons on board since these measures have been implemented...so no matter how absurd it all is, they can always fall back on the claim that it is effective as a deterrent. This is not to in any way say these kind of absurdities should be tolerated. However I would love to know if there is any good data out there on how many occurrences of such overzealous TSA action there in comparison to hassle free movement. Are these cases occurring at a rate that is really significant, or are they statistically outliers that can be reduced by better training/hiring/literacy practices, and less targeting of info-conscious blogger types?

Or is it really approaching time to travel in bagless in clear plastic jumpsuits?

Art project!

Was just made aware of this delightful side-project of Erik Prince (co-founderof Blackwater; he's on the board of this other group):

http://www.christianfreedom.org/

Is what it is...

Was just alerted to one Blackwater co-founder Erik Prince's side project (he's on the Board of Directors)

http://www.christianfreedom.org/

Is what it is...

@107 - The reason you purchase an item is to use it, give it to someone, stomp on it, etc. It is not necessarily to be proud of owning it and thus excited to prove to any willing challenger that indeed, its yours. If someone is challenging your claim of ownership in a legal forum and has the proper standing and basis to make that challenge, then you should have to show the receipt as a point of evidence. As many have pointed out, that would be a claim that you are suspected of having shoplifted. It becomes a whole other game then.

I happen to show receipts because where I live, it is not just the "big box" stores that do it - many retail establishments do it, and I am sure the police here would be very quick to find some way to make your day worse if your pushed the challenge. So much so that it becomes a disincentive to act, and that is why I must respect mr. righi for actually taking a stand - it seems that today, just taking a stand is a risk in itself. Its not the nature of the transgressions against this guy that is most problematic - it's true to an extent that he is being a pain in the ass. But as mentioned above, that is not a crime (yet) and he gets points for being pissed that his rights to be a dick are being trampled upon. And that should be a strong point to the people who criticize him as such - shouldn't we be willing to defend this guy's right to be an annoyance since it falls under the same set of rights that allow us to freely (and sometimes anonymously) criticize him for same? It almost becomes a parody of itself, to think what these people would be saying if they lived in a fully authoritarian state:

guy: "my cousin disappeared!"
apologist 1: "guy, do you still have your ration tickets? this happens every day! quit being a pain in the ass!"
apologist 2: "jeez, why are you crying for attention? i mean, you are property of the state! you should know better! what are you, american? you want to sue somebody?"

and so on...

I am also somewhat leary of the main character, but to me, he isn't the driving force behind my interest in DMZ. The world Wood and Burchielli have created is absolutely stunning - I've lived in New York my whole life, and it is something of a lateral mindfuck to see the bombed-out shell of Manhattan compartmentalized into warring tribal territories, not to mention my home of Brooklyn turned into the last stand of the United States!

Even more than this alone, it is Wood's ability to create depth and color in the supporting characters, who tend to be the downtrodden, counterculture sort, that keeps it moving. Somtetimes, I feel that his characters can stretch into caricatures, but even then, they are fairly effective for progressing the narrative, which I think generally works.

For more quality Wood, I highly reccomend Demo, an indie monthly done with Becky Cloonan that focuses on people with superpowers who do not fit the "underwear-pervert" mold, and are more likely to be young, immature, uncomfortable with their powers, and frequently shunned for them. Smashing art and solid, gritty stories.

Rocketship is also a very neat little shop keeping it real on the rapidly hippifying Smith Street.