NO NO NO!

On Channel 4's programme about Guantanamo, an Oxford student who volunteered to be tortured was shaved bald, stripped naked, and forced to listen to... THROBBING GRISTLE: 'SUBHUMAN' and...that was the point at which he broke. This total moron (and another one who bottle out) thought that Guantanamo was needed 'to catch the bad guys'. After 40 hours and TG, he totally changed his mind. What a stupid idiot. Will somebody please PLEASE wake me up!

The ugly face still remains

The new EU ''constitution,'' for example, would be unrecognizable as such to any American. I had the opportunity to talk with former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing on a couple of occasions during his long labors as the self-declared and strictly single Founding Father. He called himself ''Europe's Jefferson,'' and I didn't like to quibble that, constitution-wise, Jefferson was Europe's Jefferson -- that's to say, at the time the U.S. Constitution was drawn up, Thomas Jefferson was living in France. Thus, for Giscard to be Europe's Jefferson, he'd have to be in Des Moines, where he'd be doing far less damage.

But, quibbles aside, President Giscard professed to be looking in the right direction. When I met him, he had an amiable riff on how he'd been in Washington and bought one of those compact copies of the U.S. Constitution on sale for a buck or two. Many Americans wander round with the constitution in their pocket so they can whip it out and chastise over-reaching congressmen and senators at a moment's notice. Try going round with the European Constitution in your pocket and you'll be walking with a limp after two hours: It's 511 pages, which is 500 longer than the U.S. version. It's full of stuff about European space policy, Slovakian nuclear plants, water resources, free expression for children, the right to housing assistance, preventive action on the environment, etc.

Most of the so-called constitution isn't in the least bit constitutional. That's to say, it's not content, as the U.S. Constitution is, to define the distribution and limitation of powers. Instead, it reads like a U.S. defense spending bill that's got porked up with a ton of miscellaneous expenditures for the ''mohair subsidy'' and other notorious Congressional boondoggles. President Ronald Reagan liked to say, ''We are a nation that has a government -- not the other way around.'' If you want to know what it looks like the other way round, read Monsieur Giscard's constitution. [...]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn27.html

The European constitution really is a pile of shite, that much is true.

And yet, when any representative of a government can come out with an insanely wild statement like this:

Canada Has Given Up Control of its Airspace: US Ambassador ... Ottawa – Canada's announcement that it won't join the US missile shield provoked an immediate warning that it has relinquished sovereignty over its airspace. ... www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350588/posts - 44k - Cached - Similar pages

24 Hours - TopStory: Canada giving up sovereignty: US ... Canada's announcement that it won't join the US missile shield provoked an immediate warning that it has relinquished sovereignty over its airspace. ... 24hrs.ca/TopStory/home.html - 25k - 26 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

Raulken.co.uk - Divergent Paths: Canada Breaks With US Over ... ... budget.". Martin's announcement provoked a warning from Washington that Canada had relinquished sovereignty over its airspace. Paul ... www.raulken.co.uk/gate.html?name=News& file=article&sid=14778 - 23k - 26 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

bankrupt artist v.3 » slime ... According to this piece of shit that is the American Ambassador to Canada, Canada has "relinquished sovereignty over its airspace" since we will not allow the ... foo.ca/wp/category/slime/ - 29k - 26 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

TheRant.us - World ... Canada.com - Canada's announcement that it won't join the US missile shield provoked an immediate warning that it has relinquished sovereignty over its airspace ... www.therant.us/world.htm - 73k - 26 Feb 2005 - Cached - Similar pages "relinquished sovereignty over its airspace" According to Google. the reality is that a facist power annexing the skies of another country is a really bad thing. Best for people like Steyn to take care of (in writing) this sort of problem, rather than 'problems' like a European constitution that is rubbish and which, according to him, will not ever impact him in the slightlest since Europe is going to 'implode'. I wonder what the Canadians think and are going to do about this outrageous statement? Perhaps they should build their own missile defence system to protect and maintain the soverinty of their airsopace; after all, if the facists launch an unprovoked misslie attack against another country through Canadian airspace, Canadians will be responsible for letting it happen unchecked. Of course, this is the same Canada that will send back concientious objectors to the meat grinder should they turn up in 'Tabernacle City'. All that being said, its a superb, bilious, barberous piece quoted above - the sort of talk Morton Downey Jr. used to spit out, but without the 'big words'.

Swoon's cut paper

Swoon is a paste up artist in NYC whose work always brings a smile or a pondering stare. The meticulous cut paper method which stresses positive and negative space is what drew my attention in the first place. But her characters seem to have a life of their own, and are asking for their stories to be heard. You can see more of her work at Flickr: Photos tagged with swoon and Fotolog's swoon site.

Try this at home

Japanese Airport Hotel One partner lies on his back. The other partner lies on top, feet by her partner's head. Both partners hold each other's ankles and attempt to straighten their arms. The partner on top should end up in the air, with her arms in a straight push-up position. Armpit Pose One partner lies on her back. The other partner stands above, feet on either side of his partner's waist. The partner on the floor lifts her feet into her partner's armpits. The standing partner squeezes his partner's feet with his armpits, and bends his knees until his feet lift off the floor. Partner Yoga

A Tribe to discuss TCP

the conet project - tribe.net ... post to tribe.net. the conet project. Connected Tribes. ... dfilms (19 members). the conet project. a tribe to discuss and learn about the fascinating conet project. ...

'The' Kilogram

Background Information on the Proposal The new paper proposes that the next General Conference on Weights and Measures adopt either one of two definitions for the kilogram to effectively fix its value by selecting a specific value for either the Planck constant or the Avogadro constant. Two types of experiments are leading the effort to realize either of these definitions. The first one measures a kilogram against the amount of magnetic force required to balance a 1-kilogram mass against the pull of Earth’s gravity. The experimental apparatus used to make the measurement is called a watt balance. A kilogram mass is placed on a balance plate that is surrounded by a coil of copper wire, which in turn is surrounded by a coil of superconducting wire. Magnetic fields produced by sending electricity through the coils push on the balance plate to offset the artifact's weight. The amount of electric current and its voltage then is used in defining a kilogram. Electrical power can be related to the Planck constant, defined as the ratio between the frequency of an electromagnetic particle such as a photon of light and its energy. This experimental method of defining the kilogram relies on selecting a fixed value for the Planck constant, which is currently determined experimentally based on the fixed value of the kilogram artifact. The second proposed way to re-define the kilogram involves counting the number of atoms of a specific atomic mass that equal the mass of 1 kilogram. This method involves using X-rays to measure the spacing between atoms in a perfect crystal to estimate the volume of each atom, and measuring the density of the crystal and weight of the atoms, to arrive at a number of atoms equivalent to 1 kilogram. This experimental method for defining the kilogram depends on selecting a fixed value for the Avogadro constant, which describes the number of atoms or molecules in a specified amount of a substance. Either method for redefining the kilogram would have positive ripple effects on many other physical constants such as the charge and mass of the electron. The specifics would depend on which definition is chosen. Either way, the uncertainties of some constants would be reduced to 0, while others would be reduced by factors ranging from about 7 to over 1,300, according to the paper. Physical constants are used by scientists and engineers to make innumerable types of calculations, and also are used in designing and calibrating quantum-based measurement systems. Such systems are becoming more important in technology development and the growth of trade that relies increasingly on electronic testing, quality control and environmental monitoring. Reduced uncertainty in the values of many quantum-based constants also may stimulate new experimental and theoretical work aimed at testing fundamental theories of physics. The last time a base unit of the SI was redefined was in 1983, when the meter was formally redefined in terms of a new value for the speed of light. In this case, the scientific community decided to fix the value for a physical constant—the speed of light—at a specific value so that length measurements could be made with greater precision. The speed of light is equal to the wavelength multiplied by its frequency. The meter previously was defined by wavelength only; the new definition was made possible by more precise frequency measurements. By redefining the meter to equal the distance light travels in a vacuum in a specific time, scientists were able to determine distance by measuring time and frequency, the two quantities of nature that can be measured experimentally with the greatest precision. In a similar way, redefinition of the kilogram by assigning a specific value to the Planck constant or to the Avogadro constant will allow scientists to make mass calculations for a wide range of quantum physics problems much more precisely than previously possible. The authors stress that regardless of which redefinition of the kilogram is chosen, efforts should continue to reduce the measurement uncertainty of both the watt balance and X-ray crystal experiments. Currently, both methods are 10 to 100 times less precise than the measurement uncertainty produced when comparing the kilogram artifact to national standards. What’s more, the results of the two approaches disagree by nearly 1 part per million. Eventually, when uncertainties of experiments with the watt balance or X-ray crystal density method reach a sufficiently low level, the cylinder artifact would no longer be needed. [...] http://www.physorg.com/news3178.html

7 to over 1300?! What I now wonder is, why during all of this time, no scientist has devised her own definition of a kilogram for use in a calculaton only. This would allow her to take advantage of this greater resolution immediately instead of having to wait...for what exactly? The sort of maths that is done by string theorists and that sort is purely theoretical; surely they are already using these natural effect only definitions for mass? Chemists in every school world wide titrate in examinatoins using the mole - in fact, you can do a calculation for a theoritcal titration on paper thanks to the mole (or NO THANKS if you are a student that hasnt revised---har har!) Its simply odd that a Kilogram...that there is 'The Kilogram' in a jar in France, and that this is what defines a Kilogram. Its rather like the foot of the king defining the length of the foot, as they used to do it in England, only worse, because the nature of the universe is being spelled out to everyone based on measurements and inferences drawn from this example mass. And this is REAL!

Antennae sprouting

http://athec.blogspot.com/2005/02/testing-1-2-3-7-9-4-274-947-017-848.html Antennae on soverign soil.

Mac Help

First of all, back up everything immediately. Then run software update. But you probably did that part right?

the Kids are, alright

Get the kids started early, so that they don't question it when they are older and collared with their RFID's!!!! RFID's used in US School. "When students walked into class, an RFID scanner mounted above the door recorded it, pumped out the roll on a teacher's wireless Palm Pilot and stored the attendance figures on a central computer."

Introduction to a state

a storage place

As you drive into Maine, USA.. gas tanks with lobster graphics greet you,

Linked up!

Now: This is Six Degrees of Separation, spread out in front of your eyes!

See the repulsion

And now: http://www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph/ you can see the threads passing through us.

Security by Hunter S. Thompson

Security

by Hunter S. Thompson (1955).

---

Security ... what does this word mean in relation to life as we know it today? For the most part, it means safety and freedom from worry. It is said to be the end that all men strive for; but is security a utopian goal or is it another word for rut?

Let us visualize the secure man; and by this term, I mean a man who has settled for financial arid personal security for his goal in life. In general, he is a man who has pushed ambition and initiative aside and settled down, so to speak, in a boring, but safe and comfortable rut for the rest of his life. His future is but an extension of his present, and he accepts it as such with a complacent shrug of his shoulders. His ideas and ideals are those of society in general and he is accepted as a respectable, but average and prosaic man. But is he a man? has he any self-respect or pride in himself? How could he, when he has risked nothing and gained nothing? What does he think when he sees his youthful dreams of adventure, accomplishment, travel and romance buried under the cloak of conformity? How does he feel when he realizes that be has barely tasted the meal of life; when he sees the prison he has made for himself in pursuit of the almighty dollar? If he thinks this is all well and good, fine, but think of the tragedy of a man who has sacrificed his freedom on the altar of security, and wishes he could turn back the hands of time. A man is to be pitied who lacked the courage to accept the challenge of freedom and depart from the cushion of security and see life as it is instead of living it second-band. Life his by-passed this man and he has watched from a secure place, afraid to seek anything better What has he done except to sit and wait for the tomorrow which never comes?

Turn back the pages of history and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs, but they lived rather than existed. Where would the world he if all men had sought security and not taken risks or gambled with their lives on the chance that, if they won, life would be different and richer? It is from the bystanders (who are in the vast majority) that we receive the propaganda that life is not worth living, that life is drudgery, that the ambitions of youth must he laid aside for a life which is but a painful wait for death. These are the ones who squeeze what excitement they can from life out of the imaginations and experiences of others through books and movies. These are the insignificant and forgotten men who preach conformity because it is all they know. These are the men who dream at night of what could have been, but who wake at dawn to take their places at the now- familiar rut and to merely exist through another day. For them, the romance of life is long dead and they are forced to go through the years on a treadmill, cursing their existence, yet afraid to die because of the unknown which faces them after death. They lacked the only true courage: the kind which enables men to face the unknown regardless of the consequences.

As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

[...]

Thanks to Ram for this one: http://www.ram.org/contrib/security.html

Microsoft must die!

In case you missed this one:

Either Microsoft is getting rather desparate in their search for
intellectual property, or they have now switched to actively subverting
the whole notion of software patents by filing truly ridiculous
applications:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/

United States Patent Application 20040230959
Vick, Paul A. JR. ;   et al.

A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a
single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine
if the two variables point to the same location in memory.

What is claimed:

1. A system for determining if two operands point to different locations
in memory, the system comprising: a compiler for receiving source code
and generating executable code from the source code, the source code
comprising an expression comprising an operator associated with a first
operand and a second operand, the expression evaluating to true when the
first operand and the second operand point to different memory
locations.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the compiler is a BASIC-derived
programming language compiler.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the operator is IsNot.

...

Yes, they are talking about the <> (Pascal), != (C, C++, C#, Perl, ...)
or /= (Ada) operator applied to pointer variables.

[...]

http://www.fipr.org/

Thats why you need to develop your software in the free world, ie, Europe. Why should everyone need to constanly fight this sort of garbage? Its a pointless waste of energy. Did you know that Skype does not have the 'other person is typing' in the IM part of the package because M$ owns the patent on that feature? I'm not making this up; a company in Estonia will not give the users of its software a feature because of a US patent.

Pringles never tasted so good!

http://www.freeantennas.com/projects/template/ Drool not from the prospect of eating so much salt, but from all the free broadband!

Dastardly monsters on the loose and out of control

Aboard Air CIA

The agency ran a secret charter service, shuttling detainees to interrogation facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next? A NEWSWEEK investigation.

By Michael Hirsh, Mark Hosenball and John Barry

Newsweek

Feb. 28 issue - Like many detainees with tales of abuse, Khaled el-Masri had a hard time getting people to believe him. Even his wife didn't know what to make of his abrupt, five-month disappearance last year. Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was taken off a bus in Macedonia in south-central Europe while on holiday on Dec. 31, 2003, then whisked in handcuffs to a motel outside the capital city of Skopje. Three weeks later, on the evening of Jan. 23, 2004, he was brought blindfolded aboard a jet with engines noisily revving, according to his lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic. Masri says he climbed high stairs "like onto a regular passenger airplane" and was chained to clamps on the bare metal floor and wall of the jet.

Masri says he was then flown to Afghanistan, where at a U.S. prison facility he was shackled, repeatedly punched and questioned about extremists at his mosque in Ulm, Germany. Finally released months later, the still-mystified Masri was deposited on a deserted road leading into Macedonia, where he brokenly tried to describe his nightmarish odyssey to a border guard. "The man was laughing at me," Masri told The New York Times, which disclosed his story last month. "He said: 'Don't tell that story to anyone because no one will believe it. Everyone will laugh.' "

No one's laughing these days, least of all the CIA. NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror. And the Boeing's flight information, detailed to the day, seems to confirm Masri's tale of abduction. Gnjidic, Masri's lawyer, called the information "very, very important" to his case, which is being investigated as a kidnapping by a Munich prosecutor. In what could prove embarrassing to President Bush, Gnjidic added that a German TV station was planning to feature Masri's tale ahead of Bush's much-touted trip to Germany this week. German Interior Minister Otto Schily recently visited CIA Director Porter Goss to discuss the case, and German sources tell NEWSWEEK that Schily was seeking an apology. CIA officials declined to comment on that meeting or any aspect of Masri's story.

The evidence backing up Masri's account of being "snatched" by American operatives is only the latest blow to the CIA in the ongoing detention-abuse scandal. Together with previously disclosed flight plans of a smaller Gulfstream V jet, the Boeing 737's travels are further evidence that a global "ghost" prison system, where terror suspects are secretly interrogated, is being operated by the CIA. Several of the Gulfstream flights allegedly correlate with other "renditions," the controversial practice of secretly spiriting suspects to other countries without due process. "The more evidence that comes out, the clearer it is that there's been a stunning failure of accountability," says lawyer John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

[...]

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/

The Stalinization of planet Earth.

What this does show however, is that they have not made the final conversion; normally when people are dissapeared, they just kill them and thats the end of it; people dissapear every day, and nothing is done or said about it. They might have let this guy go to find out who he is connected to...who knows...and who knows how many they have murdered and then ground up into dog meat.

Remember; this is what they want you to know; MSNBC doesnt print news of outrageous scandals in real time; normally you have to wait twenty years for them to get a hold of something, and even then, they might not run with it.

Still True!

Intro + Young Mc And The KLF : You Know What Time It Is [STREAM] [MP3] DJ Shadow And The Chemical Brothers : Chemical Donor [STREAM] [MP3] ILS And The Sugababes : Next Load [STREAM] [MP3] Prince And Freq Nasty : When Freq'y Doves Cry [STREAM] [MP3] Michael Jackson And Dave Clarke : Dirty Dave [STREAM] [MP3] Ludacris And Sonic Infusion : Reformatted Rolls [STREAM] [MP3] Layo & Bushwacka! And Mc Hammer : Love Hammer [STREAM] [MP3] Donna Summer And Josh Wink : I Feel Higher [STREAM] [MP3] Abba And Prisoners Of Technology : Chiq [STREAM] [MP3] Raw Deal And Britney Spears : Headless Baby [STREAM] [MP3] Alliyah And John B : Try My Secrets [STREAM] [MP3] Ed Rush & Optical And Destiny's Child : Survive This [STREAM] [MP3] [STREAM FULL MIX] The copyright to the source recordings in this mix is retained by the original copyright holder info@outlawdjs.com | www.outlawdjs.com [...] Courtesy of Ken Meier

Hilarious

The letter, from the Home Office, says the home secretary has the power to refuse passport facilities under the Royal Prerogative if past or proposed activities were so demonstrably undesirable that the granting of a passport would be contrary to the public interest.

so this means that they will not be fingerprinted and entered into the NIR system?! Why should they comply with it if they are not allowed to have a passport?! Thus, only people who the government say they want to catch in the biometric net are excluded from it. Ha Ha HA! Bloody idiots!!!!!

Hands

http://www.onlylight.com/

Bears and Squirrels

http://www.saunalahti.fi/~frigrenj/postcards/

Memes spreading out

http://www.audioscrobbler.com/user/SoylentBlack/ It's all true!

Charity in reverse

We've Got Howard's Back

by The People

Contributions thus far: 1679 donors, $80242.22 Let's give Howard Dean the ammunition he needs to successfully reform our party. [...] http://actblue.com/list/dnc This is the right idea, only it needs to work in reverse. All the democrats in America simply need to refuse to finance their illigitimate and life threatening government - that will be enough to bring the whole facist regime down. Giving money to Dean will accomplish absolutely nothing. But you know this.

14 characteristics common to fascist regimes

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

53

Number 53 brings relief to Italy

Superstitions surround Italy's lottery fever

The elusive number 53, blamed for several deaths and bankruptcies, has finally popped up in the Venice lottery after a two-year wait.

Italians had bet more than 3.5bn euros (£2.4bn), hoping that 53 would turn up, in what became a national obsession.

Last month a woman drowned herself in the sea off Tuscany after she bet the family savings on 53, Reuters reports.

And police said a man living near Florence shot his wife and son and then himself because of his number 53 debts.

The Italian national lotto invites bets of any amount on numbers from 1 to 90 in bi-weekly draws.

The draws take place in 10 cities across the country. For each draw, 50 numbers are picked, five in each of 10 cities.

A consumer group, Codacons, recently urged the government to ban the number 53 from the draw, to halt the country's "collective psychosis".

After 53 finally appeared on Wednesday night, it said it was delighted that Italy's "bewitchment" had been broken.

Italy's Ansa news agency said the wins from Wednesday's draw would cost the Italian state up to 600 million euros (£413m; $768m).

[...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4256595.stm

t r u t h o u t - Simon Head | Inside the Leviathan

Simon Head wrote a piece about Wal-Mart for the New York Review of Books called Inside the Leviathan. Some interesting statistics he digs up from his sources: [...]One of the most telling of all the criticisms of Wal-Mart is to be found in a February 2004 report by the Democratic Staff of the House Education and Workforce Committee. In analyzing Wal-Mart's success in holding employee compensation at low levels, the report assesses the costs to US taxpayers of employees who are so badly paid that they qualify for government assistance even under the less than generous rules of the federal welfare system. For a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store, the government is spending $108,000 a year for children's health care; $125,000 a year in tax credits and deductions for low-income families; and $42,000 a year in housing assistance. The report estimates that a two-hundred-employee Wal-Mart store costs federal taxpayers $420,000 a year, or about $2,103 per Wal-Mart employee. That translates into a total annual welfare bill of $2.5 billion for Wal-Mart's 1.2 million US employees. Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state's program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.[...]

Blood Sweat & Tears For Fears

Blood Sweat & Tears For Fears

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1




1234567890
ACHTUNG!
.---- ..--- ...-- ....- ..... -.... --... ---.. ----. -----
New copies of The Conet Project are now in our offices!

Please buy your copy now by going to:

http://tinyurl.com/3zdya

Ours is the only Amazon listing that everyone should use to buy The
Conet Project online, and it is our listing alone that will have
copies for immediate delivery. Eveyone that buys TCP from our listing
gets the quadruple CD and a woven Irdial clothing tag.

We recommend that if you want to buy TCP you either buy it from us
via our Amazon listing, or buy it in your local independent music
store. You should not buy TCP online anywhere else but from the
listing provided by Irdial~Discs on Amazon.co.uk.


READY, READY
.---- ..--- ...-- ....- ..... -.... --... ---.. ----. -----
This re-press of The Conet Project is identical to the original, in
every detail but one. This edition has 4 CDs, the 80 page booklet and
*two* postcards instead of one.

The second postcard will enable you to take part in a world-wide
experiment we are unleashing, called "The Conet Project: Six Degrees
of Separation". We are using these cards to attempt to track down the
staff that operated Numbers Stations in the past, wherever in the
world they are now living.

Everyone on earth is connected to everyone else; it only takes six
steps to get from any one person to any other person on the planet,
hence the phrase 'Six Degrees of Separation'. If this really is the
case, then we should be able to track down people who worked in
Numbers Stations from the last three decades, simply by deploying the
special cards that we have produced.

Hopefully the people that we are able to locate (and that are willing
to divulge their secrets to us) will have kept a private, detailed
record of what they did, the decisions that were made, who made them,
why, and everything else we are keen to know. We may finally find out
why a little girl's voice was thought to be appropriate for use in a
Numbers Station!

We are very sensitive to matters of privacy. This system has the
wonderful side effect of being completely anonymous, so that when you
participate in it, there is no way for us to know who sent which card
to whom, should we score a 'hit'.


I SAY AGAIN
.---- ..--- ...-- ....- ..... -.... --... ---.. ----. -----
If you are prompted to insert the postage and shipping costs into
your orders for TCP. here are the rates:


Anywhere in the UK: £1.50
EU £2.68
USA/Japan/AUstralia and elsewhere £4.48


Please let your friends and colleagues know about TCP:SDoS. If you
are a blogger, please blog about this special release, and our
ambitious experiment. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to
email us.

Thank You for your interest in The Conet Project!

Akin O. Fernandez
Irdial-Discs

ENDE!
... .. -..-    -.. . --. .-. . . ...    --- ..-.
... . .--. .- .-. .- - .. --- -.    .. ...    - .... .
- - - - - -.- . -.-- .-.-.-




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Z62HwtQLNtNoNucCBdlXCV51
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Lists of CD collections....2005 style

http://www.marumushi.com/apps/flickrgraph/flickrgraph.cfm?q=ross Now imagine this interface showing us something other than the modern equivalent of peoples lists of whats in their CD collection.... HT.

Black Sabbath

Monday, February 7th, 2005

3:19 pm

Email to my Internet Service Provider (I signed on with a small regional isp at the end of 1999. Since then the company has grown and amalgamated with others. My service has become progressively worse as police and agents become more assertive at trying to remove me from Canada. I have had several conversations with staff at the isp and we have corresponded about my service problems, but the company can't stop toadying to police and agents. It would be senseless to change isp's because the problems would follow, and I would have to start over trying to make a new company aware of my rights.) ----- Original Message ----- From: To: help@xxxxx.com Sent: Monday, February 07, 2005 2:59 PM Subject: Violation of my civil liberties Dear Sir or Madam: Yesterday at 3:20 pm, you put a false recorded message on your telephone help line at the request of police, CSIS, and/or the FBI. It was directed only at me, and it was intended to hoodwink me into believing that it was a technical error and not police or agents who were preventing me from sending and receiving email. I have previously sent you a copy of my submission to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of xxx describing the harassment and abuse I have endured simply because xxxx Police were angry with me for creating a defense-oriented project at Provincial Court and denounced me to security agencies. I have asked you, my ISP, to respect my civil liberties. Yesterday was the second time that I was aware that your help line answered with a mendacious message which was directed only at me. Police and agents regularly interfere with my internet use and remove both my outgoing and incoming email, but it is unethical for your company to aid them in their illegal efforts. I am tired of repeated error messages of "your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection" when I am working with email or writing in my online journal. If these or similar disruptions continue, I shall lodge a written complaint with federal regulatory agencies. Once again, I ask you to respect my civil liberties. Yours truly, xxx xxx

http://www.livejournal.com/users/malcanada/

Smash The Tones

http://smashthetones.smashsworld.com/

Ends With The Sea

I wasted the whole day troubleshooting network connectivity problems when the subject of this 'solo' journey came up. The point the people where this dead installation is made, was that she was never really alone. She was in constant contact with the shore, via telephone, email and fax, with chaser aircraft overhead 'and all'. The words that were said were, "being alone means being away from people and help entirely; if you are not out of contact, out of helps reach, you are not really alone, so its all rubbish!". Indeed. Nothing is gained by doing this, unlike space exploration, or medicine, or the other things that are very hard or useful. This is an act of pure selfish self fulfillment; nothing wrong with that, but it has no meaning, no resonance, no suffering, no revelations, no uniqueness, offers no insights into the human condition, save to re-affirm the bottomless well of egocentric selfishness sludge from which idiots like this drink day and night. There is someone that I know that has gone to SriLanka (trip planned before the Tsunami) 'to help children who live between the railway lines'. She read about this opportunity in The Guardian. She will be out there for three weeks, and the whole package costs £1000, half of which is spent on the airfare. This is another example of me me me behaviour. That £500 pounds airfare could be spent on just about anything else other than making a Londoner feel good about herself - the same spirit that drove that person to sail without physical help for her own glory is the same one that makes people waste hundreds of pounds in airfairs to 'help' people in other countries when there are people right here in the UK who cant even read and write english. Better to send the £500 to SriLanka where there are people already in place engaged in doing good works, and then spend the other half on train fares to the places in the UK where someone educated can make a difference in her own back yard.

to those in need of some beauty

Kind of sad weekend, at work today, general sense of fogginess until some work research put my face toward Loie Fuller. Born in 1862, Fuller worked as a skirt dancer on the burlesque circuit in the United States, but by the 1890's Fuller had made it to Paris, where Mallarme dubbed her "La Loie" and described her dancing as "the dizzyness of soul made visible by an artifice." Fuller remained in Europe for the rest of her career, continuing to develop her theories of movement using material and lighting effects. She returned to the United States to perform, but was never fully appreciated by her own countrymen. What made Fuller special was her experimenting with her costumes, and lighting effects including "the first chemical mixes for gels and slides and the first use of luminescent salts to create lighting effects." Fuller was well respected in the French scientific community, where she was a close personal friend of Marie Curie and a member of the French Astronomical Society!! To those in search of a small bit of transcendental beatury, I recommend clicking...

For goodness Sake

300ml £17.50 720ml £42	300ml £12.80 720ml £30.70	300ml £12 720ml £28.80	1800ml £41	300ml £13.20 720ml £31.70
300ml £12.90 720ml £31	300ml £11.90 720ml £28.60	1800ml £35	300ml £15.50 720ml £27.20	300ml £21.50 720ml £51.60
300ml £32 720ml £76.80	300ml £21.90 720ml £52.60	300ml £20.80 720ml £49.90	300ml £36.50 720ml £87.60	300ml £11.40
720ml £21.80	300ml £18.90 720ml £45.30

http://www.isake.co.uk/

Celestia 1.4 beta

Celestia 1.4 beta http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/celestia/files/celestia-win32-1.4.0pre6.exe Look at this amazing screengrab from the Celestia beta. It shows the orbit of Cassini spiraling along the orbit of Saturn. Now that is very very cool. You can fly down the orbit of Saturn and watch the orbit of Cassini furl and unfurl like a watch spring; its astonishing. Here is a torrent of a movie I made, showing Cassini orbiting Saturn in accelerated time, from the moment of injection. You can see the moons whizzing around Saturn as we travel along the line of its orbit, and Cassini's eliptical orbit in red, coiling up around Saturns's orbital path.

Tehran Responds!

President George W. Bush, President of the United States of America,

WE, the undersigned, would like to emphasize our opposition to military interference in the internal affairs of Iran. As a sovereign, independent people, Iranians have every right to defend their country against the intrusion of external forces. That is WAR leading to massacre, human misery and chaos and ruining the resources of Iran and its people. We, the undersigned, hereby wish to manifest our desire for freedom and democracy in Iran, which can be achieved without the imposition of force or the shedding of blood of people from either of our countries.

Please stop instigating war and imposing force and do not stain your pride and harm your nation's image in the eyes of freedom-lovers of the world.

http://nowar.21mehr.com/

Sign the petition. It won't change a single thing ... but its fun!

Its Green, See?

Vauxhall's new terminal sign, fading from blue to red. From our Flickr account.

The Trains Run On Time On Linux

The Trains Run On Time On Linux 02 February 2005

World's largest Linux migration gets major boost

German national railway puts all its weight behind open source.

By Kieren McCarthy, Techworld

The world's largest Linux migration is speeding ahead, with the German national railway announcing today it has successfully moved all its 55,000 Lotus Notes users onto the open-source operating system.

Describing the moment as the first important milestone in its company wide move to Linux, Deutsche Bahn said it expected the move to provide it with continuous cost savings, greater flexibility and integration benefits as it gradually moved the rest of its business over.

The company has already shifted its vital train timetabling system from HP Non-Stop to Linux. Next, it will move various SAP systems, including sales support, from Unix to Linux. And by the end of the year all remaining critical systems such as databases, application servers, web servers, mail servers and network infrastructure will be running on Linux, the company said.

The vast project - which dwarfs even the frequently quoted migration of Munich Council to Linux - was agreed upon last year, with half of its 300 or so servers moved by November 2004. The announcement today demonstrates that the company is now determined to go full speed ahead with the adoption of open-source software - giving it a big credibility boost.

"Our mission is to develop and deliver an efficient and economical IT service for German railways. Linux is a key element in our strategy and the smooth process of migrating our mainframe-based Lotus Notes system is a clear sign that this major project will be successful”, said Detlef Exner, director of production at Deutsche Bahn's IT service provider, DB Systems.

The roll-out is also being overseen by IBM - whose hardware most of Deutsche Bahn's systems run on. European VP for IBM's technology group, Steve Menadue, had this to say: "IBM congratulates Deutsche Bahn on their visionary decision to move all critical systems to Linux. This strategic choice is further proof that Linux has matured as a strategic enterprise platform offering a variety of advantages like cost savings, shorter development time and high level of security. IBM continues to deliver strong support for Linux across all of IBM’s technology platforms as still more companies look for simple, safe and cost-effective enterprise computing."

Quite what Microsoft will make of that is anyone's guess.

[...]

http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=3064

Barter Card

Barter Card Benefits Businesses who use Bartercard for making purchases have many advantages over the traditional "cash" currency.

• Benefits of Buying using your Bartercard
• Purchase with an interest-free line of credit
• Purchase with a discount equivalent to your gross margin
• Bartercard Sales staff act as your purchasing agents on behalf of members
• Conserve cash by buying through Bartercard
• Finance purchases out of additional sales
• Use down-time or idle inventory to make purchases that your business is currently spending cash on
• Assistance from your own dedicated Account Managers
• Over 1000 new Members joining every week worldwide
• Benefits of Selling using your Bartercard
• Bartercard guarantees you extra business
• Bartercard's professional sales team assists in promoting your product or service
• Gaining an edge over competitors
• Extensive advertising locally, regionally, nationally and internationally
• Complete record-keeping service
• Access to international markets
• Improved cashflow
• Increased networking opportunities at Trade/social functions

[...] http://www.bartercard.com/ Hmmmm 'cashless economy'...

Submitted for your appraisal

"ap:: towards an artistic OS ap is concerned with the liberation of data encoding and generation from any given model or architecture (any fixed operating system in its widest sense). such a liberation operates at the border of control and non-control" http://www.1010.co.uk/ Take a look at that site. I would dearly love to read what you think about it, and that sentence in particular. I got the link from this mail:

crash feb 11th 2005 london uk
crash revelations for holographic binding OS
crash forced expanded opening for new post-software-art
crash melancholia and fascism
crash post humanist ontology
crash abstraction + machinic representation
crash auto-destructive art relation to the computational
crash self-coded post-algorithmic constructivist noise performance

crash florian cramer, stewart home, otto e roessler, anthony moore, sunny bains, dick j bierman, lisa jevbratt, martin howse, jonathan kemp

crash andy bolus, russell haswell, yves degoyon, erich berger, ap, stillupsteypa, farmers manual, kaffe matthews, pita

crash shoreditch town hall london ec1 [on door £3 / online £3,33] 10 am
crash ica london sw1 [tickets through ica 02079303647] 8.30 pm
crash crashing@1010.co.uk crash.1010.co.uk
crash ap project supported by arts council england, smal + mute


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

crash is a unique event exposing a radical new space for post-software art and examining links to theories of endodata, holographic programming and auto-destructive art.

crash builds from two components, a one day symposium at shoreditch town hall with speakers including florian cramer, stewart home, dick j bierman, lisa jevbratt and otto roessler. the evening component at the ica collides theory with practice, combining constructivist noise, self-coded applications and self-constructed hardware. participating international artists include pita, farmers manual, yves degoyon, andy bolus, ap, erich berger, stillupsteypa, kaffe matthews and russell haswell.

crash necessary apologies for cross-posting or dupes / crash please disseminate further


one-off email

!!!

We are all prostitutes

Women who refuse to take jobs as prostitutes could be refused state benefits, because they have 'turned down a job'. No way? Way.

The Gold Dinar

MALAYSIA TO USE GOLD DINAR IN TRADE WITH ISLAMIC NATIONS

WAR ON TERROR "IS" THE COVER FOR A GOLD WAR

NEW ARTICLES

Gold Dinar Can Play Big Role in Global Trade

Malaysia to use gold dinar in trade with Islamic nations

Malaysia unveiled additional info about its Islamic dinar project

Iran sees large inflow of gold and capital

Western World Would Be Unwise To Ignore Proposal For Gold Dinar Currency

....... more, please scroll down

To: Central Banks, Secretariats, Governors, Concerned Others:

Yesterday we sent many of you a correspondence speculating that perhaps the Republican-contrived "war on terrorism" may be actually a cover for the expressed purpose of eradicating any alternative circulating mediums to the US dollar, namely gold and gold-redeemable substitutes.

Subsequent to my e-mail I discovered a remarkable and prophetic 4-year old article on the advent of the gold dinar by Mr. Jay Taylor. Jay gives us the list of countries that could become members of this newly emerging Gold Bloc:

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_98/taylor112598.html

He has a superb site on gold stocks: http://www.miningstocks.com/

His e-mail has since changed and is now: jtaylor9@ix.netcom.com

Back in the heady days of the 70s oil embargoes, hostages & rising gold prices I recall a rumour going around that South Africa was paying Iran in gold for oil. Never attributed much to it at that time, but that maneuver, even if it wasn't true, could be an early precursor of what may be unfolding upon us now, twenty+ years later.

I find it notable that the 9-11 terrorists hit our financial centers in the heart of New York. It was a terrible and horrific event, make no mistake about that. If the intent was to make a statement in opposition to Yankee imperialism, they did that, for sure! But, if Osama and his family have such considerable influence with the Saudis why does the Saudi Central Bank, and other Islamic central banks continue to hold dollar reserves? Granted, we don't have an answer for that. However, if all the Islamic countries, in keeping with muslim edicts, begin to settle their national accounts in gold - watch out! Be cautioned that the US Insider propagandists and their NY bank co-conspirators will be pointing the Homeland Security squads at the American gold owners as furnishing aid and comfort to our enemies!

Worse, if they begin to demand gold for their oil, WE'RE BROKE!

Osama might have been just a warm-up! We would not be surprised to begin seeing an increase of social unrest in these pro-gold Islamic countries as the gold cabal does its darndest to bring down regimes that are gold friendly. We encourage all of you to seek out through your resources any information which materially can support these conjectures.

UPDATE:

We are pleased to realize that consistent with the Monetary Protocols for the 21st Century, you are making good progress in retrieving your gold reserve assets from third party custodians in New York and London. While the below article is not new to any of you, it's best to review where we are so as to remain focused. Furthermore, as those inclined to remain on a US dollar based reserve footing at the outset, gold dinar signatories can expect to be attracted to the gold dinar because of its inherent stability and superior trading characteristics. As more than half of the central banks' foreign exchange reserves (US$2 trillion, mostly US dollars) reside in Asia, we can anticipate strong resentment and maybe a more antagonist response from the U.S., particularly when it becomes realized that the Peoples Republic of China is entertaining a strong inclination to join the Islamic system for trade settlement.

While not of considerable concern to the American authorities, it should be strongly noted that America's foreign trade deficit was US$38 billion for the most recent month. As the substantial portion of America's manufacturing base has been transferred to foreign entities, primarily Asia, it's unlikely this hemorrhage of their debt obligations can continue, and a sharp reduction in American consumption of our imported goods is anticipated. Therefore, you are urgently encouraged to accelerate your foreign exchange diversification programs from the US dollar to competing mediums, including gold.

- - CBOM

[...] http://www.moneyfiles.org/goldwar.html

Panse

/PANSE
Mp3 stream: 130.208.220.190:8002/panse tcp server: 130.208.220.190 port: 6667 contact: pall@fa.is PANSE is an open platform for the development of audio-visual netart, open to all. PANSE is an Mp3 streaming audio program with a tcp server running at 130.208.220.190 port 6667 that allows for multi-user, realtime interaction. It consists of two 16 step sequencers, a monophonic synthesizer and an effects generator. Many of the sound parameters can be edited over any tcp connection, such as the speed of the sequencers and number of steps to be played by each, note values of each step can be changed as well as filters on the sounds. The monophonic synthesizer is playable via messages over tcp and also has a controlable filter and the effects generator is controlled in the same way. Access to the server is completely open. Anyone who wants can create an interface, in Flash for instance, to control the audio program. But that's not all PANSE does. It also streams out numerical values such as amplitude levels and midi note values. These numerical values can be used to control visuals in a Flash movie or Java applet or whatever else you can think of. If you're interested in exploring how this works, see the resources link. But before you start exploring, you should connect to the mp3 stream (if you can't connect, check out the HELP link in the lower right corner). Also, check out the gallery page. Thanks to: The Icelandic Academy of the Arts The Icelandic Ministry of Education and Culture Olaf Matthes Martin Howse The Pure Data Community for their assistance and support.

Ye are many - they are few.

Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Mask of Anarchy

Written on the occasion of the massacre carried out by the British Government at Peterloo, Manchester 1819

As I lay asleep in Italy
There came a voice from over the Sea,
And with great power it forth led me
To walk in the visions of Poesy.

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

And many more Destructions played
In this ghastly masquerade,
All disguised, even to the eyes,
Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw -
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

With a pace stately and fast,
Over English land he passed,
Trampling to a mire of blood
The adoring multitude.

And a mighty troop around,
With their trampling shook the ground,
Waving each a bloody sword,
For the service of their Lord.

And with glorious triumph, they
Rode through England proud and gay,
Drunk as with intoxication
Of the wine of desolation.

O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
Passed the Pageant swift and free,
Tearing up, and trampling down;
Till they came to London town.

And each dweller, panic-stricken,
Felt his heart with terror sicken
Hearing the tempestuous cry
Of the triumph of Anarchy.

For with pomp to meet him came,
Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
The hired murderers, who did sing
'Thou art God, and Law, and King.

'We have waited, weak and lone
For thy coming, Mighty One!
Our Purses are empty, our swords are cold,
Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'

Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
To the earth their pale brows bowed;
Like a bad prayer not over loud,
Whispering - 'Thou art Law and God.' -

Then all cried with one accord,
'Thou art King, and God and Lord;
Anarchy, to thee we bow,
Be thy name made holy now!'

And Anarchy, the skeleton,
Bowed and grinned to every one,
As well as if his education
Had cost ten millions to the nation.

For he knew the Palaces
Of our Kings were rightly his;
His the sceptre, crown and globe,
And the gold-inwoven robe.

So he sent his slaves before
To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
And was proceeding with intent
To meet his pensioned Parliament

When one fled past, a maniac maid,
And her name was Hope, she said:
But she looked more like Despair,
And she cried out in the air:

'My father Time is weak and gray
With waiting for a better day;
See how idiot-like he stands,
Fumbling with his palsied hands!

He has had child after child,
And the dust of death is piled
Over every one but me -
Misery, oh, Misery!'

Then she lay down in the street,
Right before the horses' feet,
Expecting, with a patient eye,
Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.

When between her and her foes
A mist, a light, an image rose,
Small at first, and weak, and frail
Like the vapour of a vale:

Till as clouds grow on the blast,
Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
And glare with lightnings as they fly,
And speak in thunder to the sky,

It grew - a Shape arrayed in mail
Brighter than the viper's scale,
And upborne on wings whose grain
Was as the light of sunny rain.

On its helm, seen far away,
A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
And those plumes its light rained through
Like a shower of crimson dew.

With step as soft as wind it passed
O'er the heads of men - so fast
That they knew the presence there,
And looked, - but all was empty air.

As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
As waves arise when loud winds call,
Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.

And the prostrate multitude
Looked - and ankle-deep in blood,
Hope, that maiden most serene,
Was walking with a quiet mien:

And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
Lay dead earth upon the earth;
The Horse of Death tameless as wind
Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
To dust the murderers thronged behind.

A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
A sense awakening and yet tender
Was heard and felt - and at its close
These words of joy and fear arose

As if their own indignant Earth
Which gave the sons of England birth
Had felt their blood upon her brow,
And shuddering with a mother's throe

Had turned every drop of blood
By which her face had been bedewed
To an accent unwithstood, -
As if her heart had cried aloud:

'Men of England, heirs of Glory,
Heroes of unwritten story,
Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
Hopes of her, and one another;

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.

'What is Freedom? - ye can tell
That which slavery is, too well -
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

'Tis to work and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In your limbs, as in a cell
For the tyrants' use to dwell,

'So that ye for them are made
Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
With or without your own will bent
To their defence and nourishment.

'Tis to see your children weak
With their mothers pine and peak,
When the winter winds are bleak, -
They are dying whilst I speak.

'Tis to hunger for such diet
As the rich man in his riot
Casts to the fat dogs that lie
Surfeiting beneath his eye;

'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More that e'er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.

'Paper coin - that forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.

'Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.

'And at length when ye complain
With a murmur weak and vain
'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
Ride over your wives and you -
Blood is on the grass like dew.

'Then it is to feel revenge
Fiercely thirsting to exchange
Blood for blood - and wrong for wrong -
Do not thus when ye are strong.

'Birds find rest, in narrow nest
When weary of their wingèd quest
Beasts find fare, in woody lair
When storm and snow are in the air.

'Asses, swine, have litter spread
And with fitting food are fed;
All things have a home but one -
Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!

'This is slavery - savage men
Or wild beasts within a den
Would endure not as ye do -
But such ills they never knew.

'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves
Answer from their living graves
This demand - tyrants would flee
Like a dream's dim imagery:

'Thou art not, as impostors say,
A shadow soon to pass away,
A superstition, and a name
Echoing from the cave of Fame.

'For the labourer thou art bread,
And a comely table spread
From his daily labour come
In a neat and happy home.

'Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
For the trampled multitude -
No - in countries that are free
Such starvation cannot be
As in England now we see.

'To the rich thou art a check,
When his foot is on the neck
Of his victim, thou dost make
That he treads upon a snake.

'Thou art Justice - ne'er for gold
May thy righteous laws be sold
As laws are in England - thou
Shield'st alike the high and low.

'Thou art Wisdom - Freemen never
Dream that God will damn for ever
All who think those things untrue
Of which Priests make such ado.

'Thou art Peace - never by thee
Would blood and treasure wasted be
As tyrants wasted them, when all
Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.

'What if English toil and blood
Was poured forth, even as a flood?
It availed, Oh, Liberty,
To dim, but not extinguish thee.

'Thou art Love - the rich have kissed
Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
Give their substance to the free
And through the rough world follow thee,

'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
War for thy belovèd sake
On wealth, and war, and fraud - whence they
Drew the power which is their prey.

'Science, Poetry, and Thought
Are thy lamps; they make the lot
Of the dwellers in a cot
So serene, they curse it not.

'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou - let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.

'Let a great Assembly be
Of the fearless and the free
On some spot of English ground
Where the plains stretch wide around.

'Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.

'From the corners uttermost
Of the bounds of English coast;
From every hut, village, and town
Where those who live and suffer moan,

'From the workhouse and the prison
Where pale as corpses newly risen,
Women, children, young and old
Groan for pain, and weep for cold -

'From the haunts of daily life
Where is waged the daily strife
With common wants and common cares
Which sows the human heart with tares -

'Lastly from the palaces
Where the murmur of distress
Echoes, like the distant sound
Of a wind alive around

'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,
Where some few feel such compassion
For those who groan, and toil, and wail
As must make their brethren pale -

'Ye who suffer woes untold,
Or to feel, or to behold
Your lost country bought and sold
With a price of blood and gold -

'Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free -

'Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

'Let the tyrants pour around
With a quick and startling sound,
Like the loosening of a sea,
Troops of armed emblazonry.

Let the charged artillery drive
Till the dead air seems alive
With the clash of clanging wheels,
And the tramp of horses' heels.

'Let the fixèd bayonet
Gleam with sharp desire to wet
Its bright point in English blood
Looking keen as one for food.

'Let the horsemen's scimitars
Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
Thirsting to eclipse their burning
In a sea of death and mourning.

'Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war,

'And let Panic, who outspeeds
The career of armèd steeds
Pass, a disregarded shade
Through your phalanx undismayed.

'Let the laws of your own land,
Good or ill, between ye stand
Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
Arbiters of the dispute,

'The old laws of England - they
Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
Children of a wiser day;
And whose solemn voice must be
Thine own echo - Liberty!

'On those who first should violate
Such sacred heralds in their state
Rest the blood that must ensue,
And it will not rest on you.

'And if then the tyrants dare
Let them ride among you there,
Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew, -
What they like, that let them do.

'With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay
Till their rage has died away.

'Then they will return with shame
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek.

'Every woman in the land
Will point at them as they stand -
They will hardly dare to greet
Their acquaintance in the street.

'And the bold, true warriors
Who have hugged Danger in wars
Will turn to those who would be free,
Ashamed of such base company.

'And that slaughter to the Nation
Shall steam up like inspiration,
Eloquent, oracular;
A volcano heard afar.

'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

Tsunami Wave Captured from Space

Original Caption Released with Image:

The initial tsunami waves resulting from the undersea earthquake that occurred at 00:58:53 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) on 26 December 2004 off the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, took a little over 2 hours to reach the teardrop-shaped island of Sri Lanka. Additional waves continued to arrive for many hours afterward. At approximately 05:15 UTC, as NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead, the Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer (MISR) captured this image of deep ocean tsunami waves about 30-40 kilometers from Sri Lanka's southwestern coast. The waves are made visible due to the effects of changes in sea-surface slope on the reflected sunglint pattern, shown here in MISR's 46° forward-pointing camera. Sunglint occurs when sunlight reflects off a water surface in much the same way light reflects off a mirror, and the position of the Sun, angle of observation, and orientation of the sea surface determines how bright each part of the ocean appears in the image. These large wave features were invisible to MISR's nadir (vertical-viewing) camera. The image covers an area of 208 kilometers x 207 kilometers.

Since the greatest impact of the tsunami was generally in an east-west direction, the havoc caused by the tsunami along the southwestern shores of Sri Lanka was not as severe as along the eastern coast, though there was still substantial damage in this region--as evidenced by the brownish debris in the water--because tsunami waves can diffract around land masses. The ripple-like wave pattern evident in this MISR image roughly correlates with the undersea boundary of the continental shelf. This surface manifestation is likely to be caused by interaction of deep waves with the ocean floor, rather than by the more usually-observed surface waves driven by winds. It is possible that this semi-concentric pattern represents wave reflection from the continental land mass; however, a combination of wave modeling and detailed bathymetric data is required to fully understand the dynamics. Examination of other MISR images of this area, taken under similar illumination conditions, has not uncovered any surface patterns resembling those seen here.

This image is an example of how MISR's multiangular capability provides unique information for understanding how tsunamis propagate. Another application of MISR data enabled measuring the motion of breaking tsunami waves along the eastern shores of Andhra Pradesh, India.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA04373

1964 World's Fair

The sounds of 1964 New York World's Fair experienced through the narration of Jean Shephard can be yours here to be heard: a description of the Wonderful World of Disney, IBM's People Wall and Information Egg, the voice of a mechanical man, Kodak Picture Spots, the Fountain of the Planets, the Clairol Exhibit's wigs, and some terribley spooky muzak. While listening, view the maps of the grounds + attractions of the fair.

DIE DIE DIE!

Freedom of what? First Amendment no big deal to students

AP | Jan 31 2005

The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag-burning is hardly protected free speech.

It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released today.

The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

"These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous," said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. "Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future."

The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says.

When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97% of teachers and 99% of school principals said yes. Only 83% of students did.

The results reflected indifference, with almost three in four students saying they took the First Amendment for granted or didn't know how they felt about it. It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

Three in four students in the survey said flag-burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.

"Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don't know the rights it protects," Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report, "Future of the First Amendment." "This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment." [...]

WHERE IS MY BUTTOOOOOOON?!?!?!

Россия новый источник правды!

Gorbachev Calls Iraqi Elections “Fake”

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev called the Iraqi parliamentary elections a profanation.

In an interview with the Interfax news agency, he said the elections are “very far from what true elections are. And even though I am a supporter of elections and of the transfer of power to the people of Iraq, these elections were fake.”

“I don’t think these elections will be of any use. They may even have a negative impact on the country. Democracy cannot be imposed or strengthened with guns and tanks,” the agency quoted Gorbachev as saying.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it respected the results of Iraq’s elections. However, the statement said that it was important for the Iraqi people to acknowledge and accept the poll’s results. Russian President Vladimir Putin also welcomed the parliamentary elections in Iraq, calling it a “step in the right direction” and a “positive event”.