First Cyberbuss uplink. THIS AIN'T NO KOA....if it weren't stupid and dangerous it wouldn't be any fun!......the closest I've been to sex out here is that somebody was making out on the hood of my truck.......Glitter is a hazard on the playa......Sam was abducted by clowns and he doesn't remember a thing...... Why waste your time on building theme camps on the playa when life is short. Playa weather report: hot and dusty. 1:53 pm. Still have not left camp today.
______________ Kitty Blue visits the Bureau of Land Management and asks why they let 30,000 people come out here and do all this crazy shit? Then the Kitty hopped a ride on the penis-mobile, hasn't found the swimming pool yet, did find a lawn surrounded by barbed wire, says that Burning Man is cooler than the Danbury Fair, and probably anybody could benefit from a visit.
_______________ |
Kitty
Blue arrives in San Francisco. While Big Cheese Marie has a shot
of bourbon, takes a shower and packs an espresso maker, Kitty contemplates
gathering an army in the all-night supermarket in Reno to storm the
Burning Man gate. |
Kay contemplates monopolizing the Cyberbuss
Bman report by delaying bringing the cable. See today's
inside scoop, now with paragraphs. |
The cable needed to uplink the Cyberbuss to the GammaBlaBlog is due to head for the playa on Wednesday, along with candied yams in a rusted cans, the now famous lingerie, and some mystery cheeses. "you never really know where you'll be until you get there and you never really know where you've been until you've left." Second word-stream from the Western woods. ____________________ |
Kay of Kitty Blue fame, who had been nesting in the Cyberbuss, is now maintaining the Cybernest while the Cyberbuss migrates to Burning Man. She confirms that the buss has left the nest, and that the forgotten cable that may be needed to reach the satellite uplink for The Cyberbuss One Sentence Burning Man Summary of the Day is in her duffel bag along with her lingerie. It's due to arrive on the playa when she does. Read the full word-stream. ______________________ _____________________ |
According to this letter on Earthfiles.com this is the translation from ASCII 8 bit encoding, reading out from the center of the spiral. Is anyone out there geek enough to confirm this translation? I love the flaky use of CAPS. I've put up two slightly higher res images of this circle code if you want to give it a shot. Here's what I had to say about this formation last week. I still think it reeks of clever fakery, especially since it seems confirmed that this took more than one night to make. Also it was on a dry, non-muddy field, that is easier to tromp around in without leaving visible footprints. But I am impressed with the maker's geeky science club prowess, that is if this de-coding pans out as a genuine translation. But most of all the lay of the wheat is just too crude to provoke wonder in me. ______________________ |
The Cyberbuss promises to strive daily to uplink the Cyberbuss One-Sentence Burning Man Summary of the Day, to the GammaBlaBlog. They are camped by a lake tonight, and arrive tomorrow. But what's their plan? "No Plan!" The Cyberbuss goes solar when out on the Playa. They're able to keeps the music, lights and radio broadcasting going, and still leave enough power in the batteries to start up and go home. All without running the engine to charge their bank of ten batteries, like all the RVs do. Their camp is made from junkyard finds. That's how to do it right, in that harsh alkali lake bed. Anything new you bring to this festival will be old by the time the wind, dust and heat, or mud, rain and cold get to your gear. This way, you bring trash with a little life left to it, use it up completely, and then throw it back where it came from. A fairly benign form of consumerism, I think. This years participants come from:England, Israel, Italy, Germany, Canada, Australia, Colorado, Harbin Hot Springs, San Francisco and Point Arena. I've invited them all to send in reports, but will feel lucky if a few KB's makes it to me now and then. The bandwidth and power needed to keep the uplink is precious, and could just as likely be monopolized by some impromptu concert, radio marathon or art event. And really, once you are there, the last thing in the world you want to deal with is the outside world. But you never know. Me I'm in NYC, but I was on that crazy Buss for the 2000 Burn. I am hoping that the state of electronic communications is at a point, that a number of people at Bman will be able to email and upload to their websites. But this is just a guess. News out in past years came mostly from commercial sources. I need to search out some sites that might be providing breaking news and photos from the desert. Not that I expect anything earthshaking. This is just for fun. _____________________ |
"We
need to understand if you let kindling build up and there's a lightning
strike, you're going get yourself a big fire," Bush said. - Nando
Times From this more balanced report It sound like the protester
might have gotten a bit pushy, and that the cops reacted with tactics
designed to inflict pain. The thing about any demo is that you need
to watch out for the numnutz, and worse, the professional provocateur. But "More forests, less Bush." I like the sound of that. _______________________ Special Court Rejects Ashcroft Rules "The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has not publicly disclosed any of its rulings in nearly two decades, rejected some of the Ashcroft guidelines in May as "not reasonably designed" to safeguard the privacy of Americans." - Ted Bridis AP in the Washington Post This is the most hopeful news of something turning in DC since Brent Skowcroft and Henry Kissinger cautioned Bush against war with Iraq the other day. Brent Scowcroft and Henry Kissinger, rose up to remind Junior that just such hubris had destroyed his father's presidency. - Robert Scheer Creators Syndicate in Working For Change.com ______________________ Has Bush heard of diplomatic relations? - Marianne Means - Hearst syndicatec columnist. "Is President Bush deliberately promoting a phony war fever to stoke new fires of patriotism, which work in his favor? That could distract voters from the shaky economy and corporate corruption, which work against him and his party." __________________ |
Over the years, Lariam's label, written by manufacturer
Hoffmann-La Roche and approved by the Food and Drug Administration,
has included increasingly troublesome side effects, and warns about
aggression, paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations and suicidal thinking.
Some patients complain of severe side effects lasting years after they
stopped taking the drug." From a UPI report by Mark Benjamin and
Dan Olmsted |
The Death Convoy of Afghanistan By Babak Dehghanpisheh, John Barry and Roy Gutman NEWSWEEK "....Many hundreds of their comrades, they said, had been killed on the journey to Sheberghan from Konduz by being stuffed into sealed cargo containers and left to asphyxiate. Local aid workers and Afghan officials quietly confirmed that they had heard the same stories. They confirmed, too, persistent reports about the disposal of many of the dead in mass graves at Dasht-e Leili. ......Standing at what he reckoned from the ‘dozer tracks was an edge of the grave site, he pushed a long, hollow probe deep into the compacted sand. Then he sniffed. The acrid smell reeking up the shaft was unmistakable. Haglund and local laborers later dug down; at five feet, they came upon a layer of decomposing corpses, lying pressed together in a row." This is being blamed on the supposed US ally, The Northern
Alliance. ____________________ Open
Letter to America from a Canadian by W.R. McDougall Your constitution is a shambles thanks to "national security" measures resulting from what might well be U.S.-government-sanctioned terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C., covert provocations designed to justify a malevolent, poisonous, oil-based military economy. Published in the Baltimore Chronicle they say it was submitted to, but not printed in the Washington Post. It's much allegation without documented facts, but the guy lays his opinions squarely on the line. I have no doubt that he summarizes what many others around the world think. We US citizens should be aware. via MeFi _____________________ This one has all the signs of a fake, but the image is startling enough that I thought I should put it up. The lines look printed on the field in the style of engravings, such as money. The circular pattern on the lower right of the image is a spiral of dots, bringing to mind digital info on a disk, or possibly the pattern on a music-box platter. Does it play the theme from Close Encounters? The face is such a cartoon sci-fi stereotype that I find it hard to take seriously. It appeared exactly one year after last year's amazing Chilbolton Face from Lucy Pringle. Linda Moulton Howe is the most science grounded reporter on the pro-crop circle scene. I'm sure someone is out there right now with a gauss meter, microscope and camera looking for signs of trickery or scientific wonder. She reports: "The field is about 10 miles from where the 2001 Chilbolton Radio Observatory face and code emerged. Hampshire crop formation researcher and photographer, Lucy Pringle, put me in touch with the farm's owner, Mike Burge. His tractor driver of twenty years, Sydney Collis, found the frame around the face partially completed in the field at 8 a.m. Hampshire time on Wednesday, August 14. Mr. Burge suspects that humans worked the nights of Tuesday, August 13 through Thursday, August 15 to create the "wheat art." Mr. Burge said no one from the Signs movie production office, nor any other person, asked his permission to work in his Vale Farm field." Here's what's going through my mind: I can imagine construction methods involving laying out guide lines with black painted on them where you want the crops to remain, and left white where you want to flatten the wheat with boards. Stretch them every yard or so and using that as a rough guide for flattening out the crops. The spiral could also be accomplished by winding a rope around something like a cardboard construction tube of the right diameter. If there is genuine information in the digital platter, I can't think of an easy way to do it, but it does not seem out of the range of a high-school science club. It just has that teenage artistic sensibility. ______________________ |
Dresden reels as floods hit ....a city submerged as waters rose above the 1845 record of 8.77 metres (28.8 feet) to a new high of 9.13 m (29.5 ft). In Prague, some residents have been allowed back to their homes - and are now busy clearing up layers of thick mud. Much of the historic part of the city is still closed, including Charles Bridge. ____________________ Another asteroid zips-by this weekend. What is it with all these asteroids nicking into our lunar neighborhood this year? Wasn't it just last month that one slipped in between the earth and the moon, and we didn't even see it until it was going away. This one is farther out than the moon, and scientists knew it was coming. It is visible with binoculars, to those of you with a clear dark sky. _____________________ |
The
Korean pilots may have misinterpreted the controller's comments as an
order to reset the transponder to the hijack in progress code. About Face: The Role of the Arms Lobby In the Bush Administration's Radical Reversal of Two Decades of U.S. Nuclear Policy - A World Policy Institute Special Report by William D. Hartung, with Jonathan Reingold
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute at New School University An Article
in The Nation by Hartung Sumarizing this report.
As soon as she was inside she stopped pretending to be mad, but it made no difference. They kept her there, and treated her by stripping her naked and pouring buckets of cold water on her, etc. Her editor got her out, after the agreed-on time of ten days. She also wrote stories on slum life, sweat-shops, and minor crime using the same undercover techniques. Bly is perhaps most often remembered for her widely-publicized attempt in 1889 to "beat the record" of traveling around the world in 80 days, set by Jules Verne's fictional hero Phileas Fogg, which she did, in 72 days. Later came this board game about her world travelling adventures. I picked this up from The Other Islands of New York
City, an excellent short film on the little noticed islands around
this city, on WNET last
night. Another
photo of the Prague flood. A view of the historical Charles Bridge
and flooded houses on Prague's Mala Strana (Lower Town), top, as the
Czech capital was hit by the worst flooding since 1954 A)
Product Is it preachy? Yes, but these are obviously heartfelt, personal statements, and that makes a difference. He lays out his figures, and shows you a mantra, has a message for all you kids, a plan that might work, and has some easy to digest ads. It is a bit of a chore having to navigate through each
section linearly. And his scheme of making you search each page for
the link to the next page, feels a bit coercive. Like we are in
an intrusive online form, being forced by lawyers to read (scroll
through some text) before we click. But once I relaxed into the artistic
pace of it, I was taken on a fascinating journey. But some sort of index
that would let you get to your anti-relentless-consumption needs quickly,
would be nice and friendly. |
"In Prague, more than 50,000 people left their
homes as the rushing waters of the river Vltava spilled over its embankments
into the medieval Mala Strana district, beneath Prague castle, seat
of the old Bohemian kings. Shop owners, soldiers and hundreds of volunteers worked furiously to build sandbag walls to protect the picturesque quarter from serious damage and keep the water -- which has risen over 20 feet above normal levels -- from the 13th century buildings on Old Town square. President Vaclav Havel said he was cutting short a holiday
in Portugal, where he had been convalescing from a bout of bronchitis,
out of concern over what officials said were the worst floods in the
city's 800-year history." From report by
Radek Narovec - Reuters Here in Manhattan it is hot, sticky and dirty. It's
Ten at night. Stick your head out the window and squint you can see
sweat turning to steam, and rising up to embrace the stars with a greasy
film. But how can I complain when I see things like this: At least the Hudson is not running down Broadway. |
"The massive Oregon wildfire that by Friday had consumed 308,000 acres, absorbed 5,400 firefighters and cost $27 million to battle has now become the poster child for the U.S. Forest Service as it campaigns to thin certain national forests by allowing selective timber harvests." -msnbc "With limited resources to fight fires, green groups contend that homeowners would be better protected if the Forest Service thinned trees near homes and conducted prescribed burns. "The real issue is we have more homes and communities at risk than we have the resources to handle, so lets do what is best to protect them," said Chris Mehl, a spokesman with the Wilderness Society." Reuters - Christopher Doering ________________________
Mike's Office of Homeland Security - Michael Moore's Blog. I've been listening to one of his speeches on WBAI. They are using his book, Stupid White Men and a video of one of his public appearances as a premiums during their Summer Emergency Fund Raiser. He's bellylaugh funny, in rallying his fellow slackers and couch potatoes revolutionaries. He's really sharp with a rolling delivery like George Carlin in the Seventies. I tried to see him when he came to NYU this past winter, but they were only letting students in. ____________________________
Woody Harrelson in support of George Michael's Shoot the Dog video. "He's incredibly brave to have done that song. Especially when doing something like that could be considered very dangerous in today's world." via Drudge _______________________ Winner of this year's 5K contest is Fruitiger's Toy by Rick Mullarky. But my favorite only made number 7 in the aesthetic category, Smoke by Kevin Newman. Here's some more of his Flash stuff. Human Motion Tunnel Blocks via MeFi |
Davey and Goliath is being produced again, it was the sanctified cousin of the psychedelic Gumby. As an enforced Catholic youth there was the lure of the illicit in watching this Lutheran produced animation. We hell-scared youth were discouraged from reading or viewing the propaganda of the competing religions. This was in the mid-fifties, pre-Vatican II. My relatives claim it is not the same these days, I don't know. At the end of each episode there was that cool Mighty Fortress melody, and a low-key blurb about the Lutheran church. It was for sure not an imprimatur. via MeFi The plots are usually laid out by Goliath, the dog who has a head and mouth large enough to swallow Davey's head whole. In a low drawling voice he says things like: "Oh Daaaavey whatcha wanna do that silly bad thing for,"(oops, Davey does the unthinking thing!)... but Jesus and mom and dad forgive and love him anyway in the end. Looking back this left me with a thick, sticky, syrupy sweet coating of guilt, and regret amplified by the obligatory Mass attendance later on those Sunday mornings. Who knows what this stuff did to other impressionable minds, for good or ill I can't say. "We got
hosed." Mountain Dew ad Looks like he'll be leaning on a tree in the middle of a suburban lawn clicking on his laptop. Davey and Goliath was from the same Clokey studios that brought you Gumby. That early inoculation in how inanimate objects could crudely achieve life, gave me some understanding of how Willis O'Brien achieved his masterpiece of life simulation, King Kong. That led to my earliest attempt at art, doing stop motion animation using my father's old 8mm camera. Of late I have been doing some Flash animations. Flashes' restrictions remind me very much of the restraints and advantages of stop-motion animation. Ray Harryhausen (fortune city site, watch out for pop-ups) is the last great hands-on special effects artist. His best is probably The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), where Sinbad had a sword fight with a skeleton, and battled a cool cloven hoofed cyclops. It was all in brilliant color, where previously combining live actors with stop motion puppets, was mostly in black and white to ease the difficulty in combining the footages. This was as mind blowing in technique at the time, as the major entrance of fluid photorealistic CGI to the movies in the second Terminator. From which point I have given up on having any real skill in telling the real from the not real in movies. __________________ |
U.S. Defies Judge on Enemy Combatant - Justice Dept. Refuses To Provide Documents - By Tom Jackman Washington Post Staff Writer "Government lawyers allowed a noon deadline to pass without handing the materials over, saying that the separation of powers clause of the Constitution gives the executive branch the authority to make that determination." "The Justice Department has said that the judicial branch has little right to intervene in the conduct of the war, but yesterday's action was the first time the government has not agreed to a judge's request." Via MeFi, where some are comparing this to Andrew Jackson's quote, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can." "....The Supreme Court this time ruled that the Cherokee Nation was sovereign thus making the removal laws invalid. The decision, rendered by Justice John Marshall, declared the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to be illegal, unconstitutional and against treaties made. President Andrew Jackson, who had the executive responsibility of enforcement of the laws, stated, "John Marshall has made his decision; let him enforce it now if he can." "In 1838 the removal of the Cherokee began when General Winfield Scott, along with several thousand men, forcibly removed thousands of Cherokees from their homes and their land. The trip was brutal and about 4000 Cherokees died along the way on what became known as the "Trail Where They Cried" or the "Trail of Tears." John Ross, then Chief of the Cherokee, led the later parties from Georgia to Oklahoma and helped many to survive the harrowing journey." From an article on allthingscherokee.com by Christina Berry where I also learned that: "Some Cherokees would rather carry two ten-dollar bills or twenty one-dollar bills than carry a single twenty-dollar bill. Why? Because the US has chosen to commemerate Jackson's presidency by putting his face on the twenty dollar bill." _______________________ |
Bloodhounds howl outside of Frederick, Md., apartment building of Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, an eccentric 48-year-old scientist who had worked in one of the Army’s top bioweapons-research laboratories. Agents presented the canines with “scent packs” lifted from anthrax-tainted letters mailed to Sens. Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy "The crime was especially terrifying because the anthrax—a sophisticated, “aerosolized” powder—escaped from the envelopes, spread through parts of the nation’s mail system and contaminated an entire Senate office building. Nearly a year later, the main mail-handling center in Washington, D.C., has yet to be reopened." But nothing is proved yet. "...The bureau is still haunted by its botched investigation of Richard Jewell, the falsely suspected Olympic bomber who was all but convicted in the press by anonymous leaks from government agents, who were sure he was guilty. Jewell was eventually cleared of all suspicion and successfully sued for damages. The deeply embarrassing episode left a permanent chill on the bureau. “Richard Jewell looms large around here,” says an FBI official. “We’ve got to be very careful.” " By Mark Miller and Daniel Klaidman NEWSWEEK on msnbc _________________________ Will this cripple current US stem cell research? For our health it should. A National University of Singapore team claims success in replacing animal cells and serum with muscle cells from human fetuses and human serum in the growth of embryonic stem cells. This is to avoid transmission of animal pathogens in the direct blood to blood transmission, inherent in the hoped for life saving medical procedures that this whole mess is eventually all about. "And the US government will only support research on the 78 cell lines that existed prior to August 9, 2001 - all of which were grown with animal cells and could therefore theoretically contain animal pathogens." "No one in their right mind commercially would try and develop a cell product that was xeno-derived," says Chris Juttner, medical director at BresaGen, an Adelaide-based stem cell company. "If they truly have derived cell lines that are pathogen-free, every one will be trying to repeat it." From The New Scientist via memigo The rest of the world is much more leery of Mad Cow/CJD
like diseases than official science in the US may want to grant creedence.
Will the US just keep using the cows and mice and risk xeno disease
transmission, just to appease the Christian lobby? I hope not. There
is promise in this amazing technology but also grave danger. Don't Link to Us, a compendium of stupid linking rules and links to their sites. |
I wonder how much Eugene Jarvis has influenced modern
warfare?
"Originally, "Robotron" was going to be a passive game with no firing. You killed the robots by making them walk into the electrodes. .... The grunt AI was extremely basic: plot the shortest path to the player and seek out the player until either the player or the robot is dead. It was fun for about fifteen minutes, running the robots into the electrodes. But pacifism has its limits. Gandhi, the video game, would have to wait; it was time for some killing action. We wired up the "fire" joystick and the chaos was unbelievable. Next we dialed up the Robot count on the terminal. 10 was fun. How about 20? 30, 60, 90, 120! The tension of having the world converge on you from all sides simultaneously and the incredible body count created an unparalleled adrenalin rush. Add to it the mental overload of a truly ambidextrous control, and it was insanity at its best. " via Metafilter The idea of Robotron is to shoot all the robots avoid the electrodes and save the mommies, daddies and mikies, and when you do that, it starts all over again. These game links via Hugh Mann, a former arcade rat if I ever saw one. He says: "Yeah, Defender and Robotron are two of the biggest games ever, on par with Pac Man." and "holy crap, here's the game, sounds and look are eerily exact. there's a link to buy it, but look closer and you'll see the link to play it free: Shockwave emulation of Robotron 2084 It seems like everytime I go to a site that requires
Shockwave I am required to update to the very latest version. This is
the second time in the past three months that I've had to update. But
the game is well designed and the keyboard controls make sense, and
can be customized. You may also need to download the game emulator plugin
as well. Sheesh!
The Stutterer's Alfalfabet - Panel by panel, this comic goes alphabetic. It made me laugh. Beautiful medievalesque hallucinations and gossipy contemporary caricature. By T Motley. It's from a challenge on the Oubapo/America site via MetaFilter |
"Now the FBI can open dossiers on every member and staffer and develop full information on them. It creates a great chilling effect on those who would be critical of the FBI," said Charles Tiefer, a University of Baltimore law professor and former House deputy general counsel. "The FBI, with their great boots, are tramping around on ground that is privileged and privileged for good reason, to preclude intimidation of members." Dana Priest Washington Post Staff Writer ____________________ The Lefty
Directory - This is a list of leftist blogs
edited by Brian Linse. "Diversity of ideology" that's something I can get behind. . Via Daypop ________________ 75,000 U. S. forces needed to protect a defeated Iraq from Iran The United States will be responsible for protecting the security of Iraq if it succeeds in toppling the Saddam Hussein regime, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was told in testimony Thursday. ....... according to Col. Scott Feil, former chief of
the strategy division for the Joints Chiefs of Staff. Feil, currently
a director of a program for post-conflict resolution at the Association
of the United States Army, said the U.S. force must include combat aircraft
and remain in Iraq for at least a year at an estimated cost of $16 billion. _____________________ Saudis block 2,000 websites - Alfred Hermida BBC News Online technology staff "Most of the blacklisted sites were sexually explicit
or about religion. But also caught in the net were sites about women,
health, drugs and pop culture. For the study, Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman at Harvard tested 64,000 websites, with the full collaboration of the Saudi Government." Whoever rules the filters rules the minds? Heavens-Above! Their goal is to provide you with all the information you need to observe satellites such as the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle, spectacular events such as the dazzlingly bright flares from Iridium satellites as well as a wealth of other spaceflight and astronomical information. Not that I have much chance of distinguishing an Iridium Flare in the milky dome of haze we call the night sky in Manhattan. But maybe if we have a blackout in this heat I can see what this site has to say about what is going on overhead. Ha. Via Doc Searls ___________________
Word Fun Instant nonsense. Enter a word and generate poeticals like Dr. Seuss. "it's all to do with Markov chains and probabilities of pairs of letters appearing after other pairs of letters." so says Richard Lawrence who put this cool thing together. via Metafilter _______________________ |
|
|