I'm sure many of you by now have heard of Ben Stein's new movie:  Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

I'm ashamed for Ben Stein that he was involved so deeply with this.  The interview tactics and editing techniques used as well as the  logical fallacies presented are worthy of Michael Moore, and what (until now) I would have considered far beneath Mr. Stein. 

All these arguments are separate from whether or not the science surrounding evolution or ID is any good (which SHOULD be the pre-requisite for it being taught in schools).  I suppose with all the bad science getting popular press and support as part of the global warming scam, the proponents of ID must think there's a chance for them to achieve similar acceptance.  Apparently, Mr. Stein saw how lucrative this kind of hucksterism has been for Al Gore, and wanted to get in on the action.

Whether you choose to spell truth with a capital "T" or not, the facts remain.  The 'theory' of evolution is good science because it can be, and has been, tested and refined time and again. Indeed, it continues to be thus.  You cannot produce a valid test for the theory of intelligent design.  Belief in it is therefore religion, and NOT science, and has no place being taught in a science curriculum.  If you insist that creationism be taught, teach it right alongside the dozens of other religious theories for the origins of life.

Not exactly an unbiased source, but at least balanced vs. the film's propaganda: Expelled Exposed 

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No, the title of this post is not a typo.  Here's an idea (for free) for all the materials nuts out there:

Graphene circuits aligned 3-dimenaionally in aerogel.

Discuss.   

No, seriously.  They are already working on functional, fashionable wearable computing platforms - this would make it easy.  Any temperature issues are already minimized by the properties of the graphene circuits, the insulating properties of aerogels make that whole line of problems a non-issue.  Lower power consumption: check.  And the density of the circuits available...wow.  I could conceivably run a computer that could defeat BlueGene at chess...in my shorts.

They're already working on display technologies with graphene, but consider an artificial eye.  If we replace nature's aqueous humor with this circuitry infused aerogel, how small could we make the current computing rigs required for the latest artificial vision projects?

Just the tip of the iceberg, if you ask me. 

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Here we are again in the season of treachery and Irish saints. This year, my friends in Anonymous have decided to add a few more reasons to celebrate.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ANONYMOUS PREPARE FOR ANOTHER WORLDWIDE PROTEST AGAINST THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY

CLEARWATER, FLORIDA. March 8, 2008 — As Project Chanology continues, thousands of people worldwide will stage a protest on March 15th against the Church of Scientology's corruption, and abuse of its members and critics. The group Anonymous, will picket at local Church of Scientology centers around the world, beginning at 11 a.m. local time in each respective time zone. Anonymous has been increasing awareness for the cause, whilst simultaneously acquiring and spreading new information about the Church of Scientology obtained from their increasing number of informants within the organization, as part of its campaign to "systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in it's present form".

A number of former Scientology members who had previously been afraid to give their own testimonies for fear of retribution from church officials have joined the movement, and a number of new websites informing the public about Scientology have been launched. Of special note is ExScientologyKids.com[1], known as "ESK" within the critic community. The ESK website is owned and administered by Kendra Wiseman, Astra Woodcraft and Jenna Miscavige-Hill. All three women are former members who grew up in Scientology, and are related to high ranking officials of the Church of Scientology and its associated front-groups. Kendra Wiseman is the daughter of the President of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR)[2], and niece of the President of Narconon[3]. Jenna Miscavige-Hill is the niece of the Chairman of the Board of Religious Technology Center (RTC) David Miscavige, who is generally considered to be the "Leader" of the Church of Scientology.

Both Kendra and Jenna have been "disconnected" by their family since leaving the church. Astra, whose mother is a high-ranking Sea Org[4] member, fled the Sea Org when they insisted she terminate her pregnancy. ESK tells these stories, and the stories of many other former Scientology children. Kendra Wiseman has said that in light of the recent efforts of Anonymous, and because of the efforts of those who have supported her over the last two years while she dealt with her families disconnection from her, she has been made to feel safe in speaking out and now wants to afford the same luxury to others, who may not feel as safe. Douglas Frantz, a former editor at the L.A. Times who has covered Scientology for the New York Times in the 1990s has said "Before this Internet onslaught, they were always able to go after their critics and do a good job of being able to discredit or intimidate them"[5].

The date of the March 15th Protest, referred to as "Operation Party Hard" and "The Ides of March" has been chosen as it falls near a major Scientology holiday, the birthday of Church founder L. Ron Hubbard. The 15th also marks the death of Ellie Perkins, a Scientologist who was killed by her son Jeremy. Jeremy, a sufferer of the disease of schizophrenia was denied Psychiatric drugs, and was instead treated with vitamins and auditing[6]. Anonymous intends to continue its campaign to educate the public about the true nature of the Church of Scientology; with the March 15th protest, and future events such as Operation Reconnect.

Scheduled to take place during April, Operation Reconnect[7] will shine a spotlight on families torn apart by the Church of Scientology. The aim is to bring these families together, with a number of the "disconnected" giving detailed accounts of their experience with Scientology and making public pleas to their families to "reconnect" with them.

On the 15th of March, Anonymous intends to bring "cake, good will and the gift of knowledge." As usual, Anonymous have contacted and worked with city officials to ensure safe and law-abiding protests. Many protesters will wear masks, scarves and other facial obstructions to protect their identities due to organization’s practice of intimidating and silencing those that speak out against it.

Promotional Videos:

- March 15th - Operation Party Hard - The Ides of March -
- [youtube] - http://youtube.com/watch?v=KXTnTkPw4LU
- [download raw file - mp4 format] - http://img1.anonbw.com/press/MARCHPRESS.mp4

- April 12th - Operation Reconnect -
- [youtube] - http://youtube.com/watch?v=NSSgwD-9PS4
- [download raw file - wmv format] - http://img1.anonbw.com/press/Reconnect.wmv

- Download PDF of this Press Release:
- http://img1.anonbw.com/press/march_press_release.pdf

About Anonymous:

Anonymous is a collective composed of many Internet users, combined under one name. The group have gained influence both on the Internet and in the real world.
Anonymous have launched campaigns against various White Supremacy entities, and played a major role in the capture of Canadian pedophile Chris Forcand.
Anonymous has been referred to as a "Cyber Vigilante Group" by The Toronto Sun[8], "Internet Activists" by The Economist[9], "the latest thorn in Scientology's side" by Newsweek[10] and "cyber-terrorists...reminiscent of Al Qaeda spreading anti-American hatred and calling for U.S. destruction" by the "Church" of Scientology[5].

References:
[1] http://www.ExScientologyKids.com
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_C ... man_Rights
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narconon
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Org
[5] http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/ne ... full.story
[6] http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/JeremyPerkins/
[7] http://www.reconnect.org
[8] http://torontosun.com/News/TorontoAndGT ... 8-sun.html
[9] http://www.economist.com/world/internat ... d=10609174
[10] http://www.newsweek.com/id/109410

Anonymous : Project Chanology Information:

http://www.march15.org
http://www.reconnect.org
http://www.WhyWeProtest.net
http://www.enturbulation.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Chanology
http://harbl.wetfish.net/cosplay/
 

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When this kind of thing happens in the United States, there is something seriously wrong.  Wrong to the point of reminding people just why we have the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

The United States has joined China and Thailand in attempting to censor Wikileaks, however the site itself goes on.

A Californian judge ruled that Dynadot, the name registrar for Wikileaks.org, should remove all traces of Wikileaks from its servers and further should “prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.” The ruling followed an application from Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss bank named by Wikileaks as being involved in money laundering, to have documents relating to the company removed from the site.

Although Wikileaks has lost its URL, the site is hosted in Sweden, and is still up at 88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks. Unfortunately for Bank Julius Baer, the legal action will probably result in more people reading the documents in question.

Something is rotten in the state of California.  Even more than usual. I'm urging anyone and everyone to visit the Wikileaks site and, like responsible citizens of the world, and the Internet, come to your own conclusions. 

From this article earlier, we get a brief and accurate analysis of what should be very disturbing about this.

While it's understandable that the bank might not want those documents online, or that those documents might impact current litigation, that doesn't explain why the California court ordered the entire site offline, demanded that its registrar block the transfer of the domain, force the registrar to point all visitors to a blank page and also having the registrar hand over all information on IP addresses of people who accessed the wikileaks site. All of that seems rather excessive, and of questionable legality. After all, doesn't Section 230 of the CDA provide safe harbor for the service provider?

What country, and what period in history is this?  No day in court?  No opportunity to move the domain registry?  I want to know who this judge is, and I believe it incumbent upon concerned Internet citizens (and, indeed, U.S. citizens) to out this judge with an appallingly flawed understanding of the law.

Also being covered by Wired here.

Despite the ruling, Wikileaks continues to host the sensitive documents from servers located outside the U.S. Coincidentally, or not, the organization's hosting center in Sweden was also struck by a denial-of-service attack, after which a fire erupted in the center as well. Attempts to reach Wikileaks to obtain more information were unsuccessful.

I wonder how long before my friends in Anonymous get hold of this?

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I was just reading this post at TechCrunch about the looming battle in the social gaming space. I'm not normally interested, because I'm one of those unhip people who have yet to see the value of spending a lot of time and effort on those sites. But as I was skimming the article (TechCrunch and TechDirt are two of a very few blogs that I actually try to get the gist of EACH post from), I saw this:

"It’s most popular game is Texas Hold’Em poker (with 609,000 daily active users in Facebook alone), followed by Blackjack, Attack!, Scramble, and Sea Wars. At least on Facebook, it appears that Zynga has more daily active users."

I have no idea what this company's version of Sea Wars is like. I don't know anything about the game. But all I could think about at the moment was the old (and I mean green-screen old - forget your fancy 8-bit characters) Sea Wolf arcade game. I remember fondly the rest of the family happily enjoying their meal on a Friday night in the dining room of our local pizza joint while I bathed my retinas in the blue glow of line drawn ships in the first arcade game to introduce a stored high-score. I had an idea.

We could do this on the Internet. The game could take up about 2 vertical inches of screen real estate, edge to edge. It would consist of the old style view port, a few keys to pan left and right, move forward and back, and a radar screen on which to track enemy ships. Here's the cool part: the other ships are other users. Their location on the playing field (the Earth) indicated by geo-IP. Ok, geo-IP isn't very accurate, but work with me here. There would need to be some concentrations of targets anyway to produce decent game play.

The very simple controls would take your Sea Wolf! attack submarine under the surface toward where your radar, and or signals intelligence, indicated there were enemy ships. Attempt to maneuver in undetected to within torpedo range, fire and escape.

Of course, most players are going to want to drive a Sea Wolf attack sub. But there should be options for surface vessels as well. Destroyers, Carriers, (the game used P.T. boats as the enemy),etc. Anything that can pose a plausible threat to submarines. Players could form battle groups, steam in convoy for protection, and have to approach safe harbors for repairs or supplies as warranted. Players could sign up to represent their home nations. There would be ongoing point totals, tournaments over time periods of days or weeks, allies, enemies...all the great things that helped the cold war spawn the birth of electronic gaming in the first place!

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Just as the housing market is in a bit of turmoil over valuations, foreclosures, lack of credit and over-supply, I've been noticing that the rental market seems to be a bit off as well. Obviously the two are related, but I think it is the number of "for rent" signs I've been seeing on my way to and from the shop this week that started this one brewing.

What if landlords, people who have invested money in a property in the hopes of selling it for a profit later on, stopped charging rent? What if instead of rent, tenants were offered a 2, 5 or 10 year contract to reside in the property, maintain it and even improve it? The contract could include a 'punch list' just as contractors are responsible for, and at the end of the contract period, either the list is completed or rent is due in full.

The benefit to the renter is that they get to live in a nice place, make it their home, without the huge outlay for rent. They should be encouraged to be saving the entire time so that they can become owners themselves at the end of the contract.

The benefit to the property owner/investor is that the property is being maintained and improved while their value appreciates without the expense normally incurred.

Why would any landlord/investor agree to such a thing when they could be making rent on that property?!?! Well, for one thing, there are a lot of landlords right now sitting on properties that are not producing. Worse, while they're not producing, they're costing money to maintain. Worse still, while they're sitting empty and costing money to maintain, they're not appreciating in value. This may be a situation unique to the particular market we find ourselves in right now, but if there's one person upside down on a second property, there are thousands. Not all of them amateur house-flippers, either.

A positive solution to this would be to get those properties occupied, maintained, improved and help the hard working people who would be qualified for such an arrangement. Think of it as Habitat for Humanity, but with pre-existing property. (It is even possible that property investors involved with such programs might qualify for charitable tax considerations, thus further justifying the idea.)

I can see where there would be a problem with securing the landlord's risk, but there are ways to deal with that. First, there is the contract as a binding legal instrument. Second, the tenants for such programs would have to be screened carefully. It would be more like interviewing for a job, than for an apartment. Third, there would be the option of a minimal payment from the tenant monthly in lieu of rent. This money would be held in an interest bearing account or in the case of longer term contracts, rolled regularly into stable government instruments with higher rates of return. At the end of the contract, if the 'punch list' is not fulfilled, the tenant would forfeit the entire amount in the account. If the tenant has fulfilled the contract, then the principal is returned to the tenant and the interest is split between landlord and tenant after fees. Win/Win.

If there are any real-estate types out there sitting on empty property, you'll find the link to the contacts page below.

In addition to the hard working, but low income family who could greatly benefit from such opportunities, there will be other markets for these arrangements as well. One of the first to mind would be relocation specialist companies. In some instances they will be sitting on property they don't want to/can't move because they would be at a loss. In this case they would sit on the landlord side of the contract. In other cases, they may have a long term arrangement with a company and be moving people in and out of an area on a regular basis, creating a need for temporary housing. They could, for nominal maintenance costs, act as the tenant in one of these situations during a period when their major client was experiencing periods of dramatic change. They get the full use of a property without having to pay rent or keep it on the books as real estate.

Admittedly, this kind of arrangement will be a tough sell. I think it's worth exploring, however. For our part, if anyone was interested in exploring this further, I think we would simultaneously explore creating an online marketplace as a clearinghouse for landlords and tenants showing interest. It would also be good to work with local and state government agencies to see if there might be any help to be given in moving people out of housing projects. Certain properties in private hands that need some work would be excellent transitional arrangements for specific candidates.

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