“…new government restrictions aimed at terrorists threaten to ground a hobby that can get youngsters fired up about science.
Homeland security regulations that took effect in May require a background check, fingerprinting and a $25 federal permit for people wanting to buy high-powered rocket engines.” Newsday
“You have two new big brothers and both are watching you closely.
The Democratic National Committee boasts electronic files on 158 million Americans. The Republican National Committee says it’s way ahead, with files on 165 million.
National party computers today keep track of where you live, your phone number and e-mail address, whether you vote, your willingness or refusal to make political contributions, your interests, ethnic background, reading habits and church attendance. Some files contain hints about your sexual preferences, whether own a gun, and your views on abortion and other issues.
The Democrats call their system “Demzilla.” Republicans call theirs “Voter Vault.” Advocates of privacy call it Orwellian.”
Are you familiar with the Fotolog phenomenon? “12,238 Fotologgers,
171,861 Photos, 882 Photos Today.” I wasn’t, until this Wired piece:
The increasingly popular Fotolog website is becoming a battleground where high and low culture clash.
Fotolog is a relatively new weblog-cum-photo-gallery that allows anyone to post digital photos in chronological order. Thanks to the ability to link to, and comment on, others’ work, the site is rapidly building a large community of enthusiast snappers.
But like many new online societies, members with radically different ideas are waging a battle for its “soul.”
“The environmental writer and poet says George Bush is ‘our shadow’ embodying the arrogance, impatience, entitlement and greed that we are all complicit in.” AlterNet
Molly Ivins riffs off Joshua Marshall’s “(award) for the Iraq-hawk who can come up with the most ingenious, Orwellian, up-is-down rewriting of the history of the year-long lead-up to the Iraq war.” Nominees include William Safire, the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and good ol’ Ari Fleischer. At one point in her column, she refers to one of the twisted concoctions that passes for the truth these days as ‘what the BBC — not normally noted for overstatement — called, “One of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.” ‘ It is a sad commentary on the prominence of this rogue’s gallery of Orwell Award contenders that you would be hard pressed to even figure out to which of the current distortions the out-of-context BBC quote might refer.
Blood disease symptoms resemble child abuse. “…(A) study in the latest issue of Pediatrics (vol 111, p 636)… is the first time attention has been drawn to the potential confusion between HLH and child abuse injuries. No one knows how many other cases there are like this worldwide – and the tragedy is not just that parents are wrongly accused, but that without prompt diagnosis and treatment HLH can be fatal.
(…)
The rareness of HLH and the commonness of child abuse are a disastrous combination. “Most paediatricians will never see a case of this during their careers,” says James Whitlock of Vanderbilt College of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. So when they are confronted with symptoms such as retinal haemorrhaging, widely taken to be a sure sign of “inflicted injury”, the logical assumption is child abuse.
Most of the time they are right. Indeed, child protection workers worry that raising the profile of HLH could let child abusers off the hook…” New Scientist
“CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) The winner of the state’s annual tall-tale telling contest is planning a career in politics.
Justin Wood, 17, a junior at George Washington High School, was named the biggest liar in last month’s Liars Contest, held in conjunction with the 27th annual Vandalia Gathering.
“I’m just a natural liar, I guess,” said Wood, the recently elected class president who plans to major in political science at either American University or George Washington University.” Boston Globe
“…(H)ow, precisely, did we get here — to a point where the midsection has supplanted all other parts of the female anatomy as the one most eroticized in the culture’s image bank?” NY Times
