Saturday, May 13, 2006

boswell's Sheetrock the Cockpit cites Making Aircraft Security Screening A Thing of the Past, by Tom Parker with a surprising potential solution to terrorists turning jetliners to flying bombs for landmark buildings. 2:24:58 PM    comment []

'Strange Piece of Paradise,' by Terri Jentz: Living to Tell. Fifteen years after she was assaulted by a maniac with an ax, Terri Jentz sets out to investigate the unsolved crime for herself. By Review by MARY ROACH. [NYT > Books] 2:21:11 PM    comment []

Racist soccer chanting neutralized with echoes. Dutch scientists have developed a system for stopping "racist chanting" at football matches: they feed back the audio of the chant at a slight delay, and the resulting confusion makes it impossible for mobs of football hooligans to synch up their shouting with one another, leading to chaos. The volunteers were surrounded by loudspeakers that simulated the sound of a chanting crowd and were asked join in. However one speaker replayed the crowds chant with a short delay. When the delay was greater than 200 milliseconds the volunteers found it too difficult to chant coherently. Increasing the delay, up to about 1 second, was even more effective. "It was very confusing," van Wijngaarden says. Link (via We Make Money, Not Art) [Boing Boing] 2:15:04 PM    comment []

Two Minutes Hate: Choicepoint. This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB. The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts. Read "The Spies Who Shag Us," by Greg Palast. Don't miss the bits about who's the number one supplier of DNA to the FBI. [Emergent Chaos] 2:11:19 PM    comment []

REM joins Network Neutrality effort Suppose musicians had to pay a vig to the telcos for each download or stream. It'd hurt the big record companies and famous musicians, but it might deny access to small, struggling musicians and indy labels entirely. I thought that I heard you laughing I thought that I heard you sing I think I thought I saw you try [ link to REM net-neutrality page] Technorati Tags: Music , NetworkNeutrality [isen.blog] 2:07:04 PM    comment []

NSA Eavesdropping. This is the line that's done best for me on the radio: "The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mother's this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system." [Schneier on Security] 2:03:00 PM    comment []

Negativland on copyfight -- video. Here's a video of Mark Hosler of the illegal art band Negativland giving his views on the copyfight. "You don't get total control." Mark Hosler is a founding member of sound collage pioneers Negativland. He talks about their role in creating the Creative Commons sampling license, and about copyright + culture in general. He says Creative Commons is the Sierra Club of intellectual property, and Negativland is more like Earth First!. Mark is in Minneapolis for the opening of "Negativlandland" which is touring the country. Here's another video of Mark from the same visit where he talks about the ubiquity of online video and their famous connection to a Minnesota axe murderer. Link (Thanks, Chuck!) [Boing Boing] Quicktime MP3 Quicktime Special-Edition Negativland vs. U2 iPod Negativland web site Some Assembly Required podcast Negativland videos on YouTube And, Minnesota Stories' Welcome to the Future, about fleeting moments, the personal media explosion, cameras replacing lighters, and friction at a loacl concert. A dandy little remembrance and commentary in a little more than three minutes of video. 2:02:42 PM    comment []