You may recall the NSA’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) project. The brainchild of convicted Iran-Contra conspirator and all-around wackjob John Poindexter, TIA was to compile every available data snippet on every US citizen and mine it to find out if you do or say anything that the government disapproves of. The public furor over the idea of such an invasive domestic spying program caused the Pentagon to withdraw the program, and Poindexter was ultimately forced to resign (but not before proposing a terrorism “futures exchange” which would have allowed people to bet on, and profit from, the probablity of future terrorist attacks, assassinations, etc.).

From this debacle, the Pentagon learned that if you are going to implement a Gestapo- or Kremlin-like dossier of your citizens’ activities, you don’t make it public. TIA was dismantled, and its core components renamed and spread out among other agencies. Now New Scientist has learned one of these renamed components has been reactivated. This one will scavenge and compile all of your online postings and identify relationships between you and everyone else you come in contact with on the web:

…the NSA is pursuing its plans to tap the web, since phone logs have limited scope. They can only be used to build a very basic picture of someone’s contact network, a process sometimes called “connecting the dots”. Clusters of people in highly connected groups become apparent, as do people with few connections who appear to be the intermediaries between such groups. The idea is to see by how many links or “degrees” separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation.

…

No plan to mine social networks via the semantic web has been announced by the NSA, but its interest in the technology is evident in a funding footnote to a research paper delivered at the W3C’s WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh, UK, in late May.

That paper, entitled Semantic Analytics on Social Networks, by a research team led by Amit Sheth of the University of Georgia in Athens and Anupam Joshi of the University of Maryland in Baltimore reveals how data from online social networks and other databases can be combined to uncover facts about people. The footnote said the work was part-funded by an organisation called ARDA.

What is ARDA? It stands for Advanced Research Development Activity. According to a report entitled Data Mining and Homeland Security, published by the Congressional Research Service in January, ARDA’s role is to spend NSA money on research that can “solve some of the most critical problems facing the US intelligence community”. Chief among ARDA’s aims is to make sense of the massive amounts of data the NSA collects – some of its sources grow by around 4 million gigabytes a month.

Local news guy: “[Tropical storm] Alberto is expected to make landfall somewhere along the coast.”

As opposed to making landfall elsewhere??

Muchos gracias to Socar Myles for use of her photo, The Suck.

This blog entry is long overdue. Several weeks ago, on April 27, the world lost a cultural pioneer. Odds are that you’ve never heard of her, nor seen her photograph, but Emma “Pem” Farnsworth was a key figure in the shaping of modern world culture.

You see, she and her brother Cliff Gardner were the first human images ever transmitted over television. On October 19, 1929, in a small upstairs “studio” at the corner of Green and Sansome in San Francisco, her husband Philo Farnsworth sent an image of Pem and Cliff to a 3.5″ screen in the next room. And with that, the greatest modern influence next to the computer was born.

Despite revolutionizing the way people spend their leisure time, Philo Farnsworth never received much recognition for his invention. After his death in 1971, Pem made that her mission, writing an autobiography called “Distant Vision” and doing interviews to give her husband the credit he deserved.

Pem was 98 at the time of her death.

One has to wonder how she and Philo privately felt about how TV has evolved over its 76-year lifespan. Would they look upon today’s spate of public-humiliation “reality” shows with a touch of horror, or feel disgust over the way their invention converted politics into a soundbite-driven publicity mill? Even early on, when the broadcast window was limited to one hour a day, television was about entertainment, not information. One of the earliest BBC broadcasts was a dance routine by the swimsuit-clad Paramount Astoria Girls. From there, we went to Milton Berle in drag, “I Love Lucy”, “The Love Boat”, “Dallas”, “Knight Rider”, “USA Up All Night”, “Baywatch”, (skipping a few years) “Survivor”, “America’s Next Top Model”, “American Idol”, “Desperate Housewives”, until, finally, we arrived at the bottom of the entertainment gulch: “CSI: Miami”. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be pointed out that as a youth I watched many of those shows religiously. I still hum the “A-Team” theme unconsciously.)

Mind you, not all was dreck and bilge water. We had some excellent journalism until Edward R. Murrow smoked too many cigarettes and Walter Cronkite wore out his sweaters. CNN gave us the ability to breathlessly watch no new developments at all–live!–24 hours a day from around the globe. “M*A*S*H” made people think as well as laugh. Um…I’m sure there were others that did not rely on bribing viewers with a glimpse of bare bum, but they escape me at the moment.

The point is that televion has done good things, but those moments are heavily outweighed by the hours of brain-sucking vacuum TV.

Does the consumer even shape the landscape of its viewing habits anymore, or have we become slaves to the electron gun, obediently watching whatever is put before us? How many times have you sat on the sofa flipping channels and complained to your mate (or pet), “There’s nothing on,” yet continued to flip channels anyway, finally settling on the least boring program you can find? Could this possibly be the future Philo and Pem envisioned, where instead of more enlightened beings expanding the horizons of our experience we are zombies stripped of the will to turn off the set?

In other words, are we the consumers, or the consumed?

The great irony of Pem Farnsworth’s death–her last great joke upon the planet–was that she died during TV Turn-off Week.

The hellburger
Originally uploaded by olivander.

Mr Efatima and I did the manly-man bonding thing by choking down a couple of these habanero burgers, billed by the pub’s owner as the world’s hottest. He may be right.

If you can get past the first few bites, it goes pretty easily, because by that point your brain’s ability to comprehend pain has burned out. I’m sure that if the heat hadn’t totally obliterated the flavor, this burger would have tasted wonderful.

Oh, and the evil bastards spiked the ketchup with chipoltes, so seeking relief by shoving a few ketchup-dipped fries in your mouth only exacerbates the heat.

The habanero burger (or hellburger, as we’ve come to call it) is also a gift that keeps on giving. Word of advice to anyone thinking about consuming one of these things: don’t do it the night before a long plane flight. You remember the scene in Alien, where John Hurt is flopping around a tabletop as the chestburster struggles to escape his body? Other than the alien invader being way down in my colon, that was me the entire flight home.

But hey, I got a free bumper sticker out of the deal. W00t!

And I always complain that there’s nothing to do in this town
Originally uploaded by olivander.

We’ve all seen them: those bracelets and necklaces and earrings made from old typewriter keys. The people who buy them think that they are somehow recycling parts from unusable typewriters. The sad truth is that the majority of those keys were cut from perfectly usable machines. Whole dumpsters filled with de-keyed typewriters have been spotted near flea markets. A look on eBay will reveal how desperate the situation is. Some of the key sets and typewriters being offered for harvest are highly collectible. Some are very rare (such as the Harry A. Smith branded Chicago typewriter whose keys were recently posted for sale). All are irreplacable, as these typewriters have not been manufactured for decades. I compare the harvesting of typewriter keys to the poaching of elephants for their tusks. Except the elephant has the advantage of reproduction.

Many, many years ago, on a trip through Montana, I clipped a ranting letter to the editor from a local newspaper. It was originally about drivers who fail to signal their turns, but I found that with very slight modification, it adapts nicely to my feelings about these keychoppers.

——–

People who cut off typewriter keys to make jewelry are of diseased instincts and flatulent morality. They are spavined and windbroken, possessed of the evil eye and have pockmarked brains.

They have the heads of goats, the perceptions of blind guppies and they dwell in malodorous holes beneath flat rocks.

Their eyes water. Their noses run without wiping. They lie, cheat and steal, beat children and spouses and pilfer from their employers.
Behind their ears there is perpetual damp.

Their lips move when they read, and the only writing they do is to forge signatures or leave messages on washroom walls.

All murder, rape, sexual depravity, dope-pushing, poaching and treason can be traced to them. they recite the Pledge of Allegiance backward and coin every dirty joke.

A yellow streak marches up their back, and then it marches down. They raid birds’ nests, to destroy the young. Their artistic appreciation is limited to graffiti, which they memorize and quote. When they think, they think Monday is the best day of the week.

The rarely vote, but everlastingly caterwaul about the worthless conduct of public affairs unless they can latch onto some political gravy train, whereupon they emit contented grunts and clap and claque for Sugar Daddy. They dote on pesticide, and curse the day defoliants were restrained. They streak.

They are America First for all native-born whites. They would burn crosses if they dared. They refer to Indian Americans as foreigners.
They hate all cops except those who beat up homeless people.

They belch in public places and spit on the sidewalks. Litter is their doing, as are the chuckholes in the streets. They light forest fires. They kick dogs. They vote early and often when they vote at all, and poison wells.

They cough and sneeze on others, spreading all infections. They waste electricity. Flowers wilt when they walk by. They rejoice in dirty streets, garbage-strewn alleys, and lynchings. They love biased news stories, corrupt politicians, shyster lawyers, medical quacks. Their armpits stink.

They consume most of the nation’s production of anti-itch medication.
They sing off-key and never brush their teeth. They strip mine. To multiply, they divide.

Their fingernails are black and they eat with their hands while lying on their bellies. Their hands are clammy, their feet are cleft. They are creatures of the Devil, and constitute a good reason for the death penalty.

And that’s only the bright side–the sweet talk.

They can, nevertheless, attain instant and perpetual grace, become radiant, beloved to God and man, by keeping their typewriters intact. Amen.

Lost holiday
Originally uploaded by olivander.

About fifty years ago, a family took a vacation to Miami Beach, FL. They brought along their Brownie Hawkeye Flash camera and took lots of pictures of themselves having fun. They got home, finished up the roll with a couple shots of the dog, and put the camera up. Perhaps that’s the day that they bought a new camera. Maybe they set the camera down somewhere and forgot it and it became lost. Somehow, life interfered and the roll was never removed from the camera.

For fifty years.

Recently, I bought a lot of vintage cameras on eBay, and this family’s Brownie Hawkeye Flash was among them. I found the roll of film inside and decided–without much expectation–to develop it and see what was on it. Film left in cameras is notorious for not surviving. The camera inevitably gets opened, and the unsealed film is repeatedly exposed to light and high temperatures and humidity. On top of it, it had traveled with its camera through standard postal service, undoubtedly being subjected to x-rays at least once. I figured I would get, at best, a bunch of fog-covered frames with faint images of someone’s new car or kids playing in the back yard.

The results blew me away. Verichrome Pan was long heralded for its superior range of tone and fine grain. Evidently, it was made to last, too. The only alteration I made to the developing process was to push the developing time from Kodak’s recommended six minutes to eight, in the hopes that the increased time would boost the contrast enough to cut through the inevitable fog.

You can see for yourself that the pictures were almost perfect.

This lost holiday brings up many questions. Who was this family? What brought them to Florida? Why didn’t they ever get their pictures processed? Did they ever wonder what ever happened to them? Does the kid in the pictures remember that trip? What ever became of them?

I created a set for these photos on Flickr. I hope that someone, somewhere, will see them and say, “Hey, that’s Dad/my aunt/me!” If that happens to be you, please get in touch with me so I can return your photos.

You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.

Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? v1.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Remember The Siege? The 1998 Denzel Washington/Annette Bening flick about the US government rounding up all Arab-Americans in the wake of a series of bombings seemed like heavy-handed paranoia at the time. Then came Sept 11, and the FBI began rounding up and detaining thousands of Arab-Americans for questioning. It was WWII all over again, when Japanese-Americans were pulled from their homes and held without charge in POW-style concentration camps. All that was missing was the concentration camps.

Guess what?

According to this rather undernoticed article, Halliburton has been awarded yet another no-bid contract, this one to build detention centers within the US. (Halliburton also built the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, camp where thousands of “enemy combatants” are being held incommunicado.)

There seem to be contradicting stories about exactly what branch of the government has contracted for the camps, or precisely what their use will be for. The prevelant story is that the camps will be used in the event of an “immigration emergency”, which is vague. Regardless of label, once built the camps could be used for almost any purpose the Bush administration desires.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the president has the power to detain American citizens outside the judicial system, and given this administration’s dismal civil rights track record, I wouldn’t be surprised if that purpose involved American citizens of Middle Eastern descent becoming “disappeared”.

Since articles older than 14 days get archived by the Press-Telegram, here is the full text, with apology.

Halliburton subsidiary nets contract amid suspicion

By Mason Stockstill, Staff writer

A Houston-based construction firm with ties to the White House has been awarded an open-ended contract to build immigration detention centers that could total $385 million a move some critics called questionable.

The contract calls for KBR, a subsidiary of oil engineering and construction giant Halliburton, to build temporary detention facilities in the event of an “immigration emergency,” according to U.S. officials.

“If, for example, there were some sort of upheaval in another country that would cause mass migration, that’s the type of situation that this contract would address,” said Jamie Zuieback of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“Essentially, this is a contingency contract.”

Under the contract, which was awarded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, KBR could also be tasked to operate one or more temporary detention facilities, and to develop a plan for responding to a natural disaster in which ICE personnel participate in relief efforts.

The contract is good for one year, with the option for four one-year extensions.

The open-ended nature of the contract raises concerns about overcharging and other potential abuse, said Charlie Cray, director of the Washington-based Center for Corporate Policy and a frequent Halliburton critic.

The Government Accounting Office has criticized both Halliburton and KBR for cost overruns and inappropriately obtaining government projects under a similar contingency-based program connected to reconstruction work in Iraq, Cray said. Halliburton’s billions of dollars in revenue from federal contracts, many of them awarded without competitive bidding, have made it a frequent target of critics who accuse the Bush administration of cronyism.

Vice President Dick Cheney is Halliburton’s former CEO.

KBR also has faced allegations that, through subcontractors, it hired numerous illegal immigrants to perform rebuilding work in the Gulf Coast region following Hurricane Katrina, and paid them sub-minimum wages. The company’s hiring practices in Iraq have come under scrutiny for the alleged exploitation of foreign workers.

But KBR officials said the contract for detention facilities is well-deserved, because of the firm’s experience in building infrastructure and support networks for U.S. military and law enforcement.

KBR’s revenues totaled $3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to company figures released Friday, and Halliburton plans to sell part of the subsidiary in the coming months.

“We are especially gratified to be awarded this contract because it builds on our extremely strong track record in the arena of emergency operations support,” said Bruce Stanski, KBR’s vice president of government and infrastructure, in a statement.

There’s no guarantee that any work will be performed under the contract; if no immigration emergency or natural disaster occurs, there won’t be anything for KBR to do, said company spokeswoman Cathy Mann.

W.A. Mozart
Jan 27, 1756 – Dec 5, 1791