Archive for May, 2011
What Happens When A City Tears Down Its Highway?
Five years ago, Seoul, South Korea demolished the Cheonggyecheon Freeway, an elevated highway running through downtown, in a move critics called “crazy”. The results have been nothing short of beautiful. Is there a lesson for other cities? Via Grist:
What he and his colleagues accomplished — tearing down a busy, elevated freeway, re-daylighting the river that had been buried beneath it, and creating a spectacular downtown green space, all in under two and a half years — is nothing short of amazing, not because it actually worked (there was plenty of evidence from other cities to suggest that it could), but because they were able to get public support for it. It’s the stuff urban planners dream about — not to mention a timeline for a major freeway project that would make Seattle drool.
By the early 20th century, as Seoul was burgeoning into the megacity of 10 million it is today,…
Inflatable Crowds For Rent
In need of a massive crowd of people, but don’t have thousands of adoring followers at your disposal? Why not go with Inflatable Crowd? The company rents out blow-up versions of giant masses of humanity, for use in films, political rallies, or other needs. When decked out in clothing, wigs, and masks and viewed from a distance, the blow-up denizens are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, and are far cheaper than paying large numbers of extras. Their Flickr is pretty disturbing.
The Inflatable Crowd Company was created for SEABISCUIT in 2002. Since then, our Inflatable Crowds have been seen (but not noticed) in over 80 feature films & many TV shows & commercials.
Are We Entering A New Age Of Feudalism?
Everything old is new again. Current makes note of the growing belief that, in the era of postindustrial perma-recession, our sociopolitical structures increasingly resemble those that were found in feudalist societies — a concept called neofeudalism:
Among the issues claimed to be associated with the idea of neofeudalism in contemporary society are class stratification, globalization, mass immigration/illegal immigration, open borders policies, multinational corporations, and “neo-corporatism.”
A Baby Gets a TSA Patdown (Photo)
Cynthia Newsome reports on NBC KSHB-TV
KANSAS CITY, Missouri— A photo of two Transportation Security Administration agents doing a full pat down on a baby, approximately 8 months old, has gone viral.
It happened at the Kansas City International Airport.
A passenger, Jacob Jester, captured the image on his cell phone. Since he tweeted the picture on Saturday, it has had more than 200,000 hits.
The photo shows the helpless baby being held up in the air by his mother while the TSA workers do their job. Jester has an 8-month-old son and would not want his son to be subjected to a hand search by TSA agents.
5,200 Pentagon Employees Bought Child Pornography, Investigation Halted After 8 Months
Mark Crispin Miller writes on News from Underground:
Here’s one I missed completely, and it’s likely you did, too. It aired on CNN last January.
The Vatican Takes on Climate Change
Eric Bangeman writes on ars technica:
The Vatican Pontifical Academy of Sciences has just released a strongly worded report (PDF) on global climate change demanding in the strongest possible language that humans act decisively to avert a coming crisis. “We call on all people and nations to recognize the serious and potentially reversible impacts of global warming caused by the anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants,” says the report. “If we want justice and peace, we must protect the habitat that sustains us.”
The report was not authored by the Pontifical Academy itself; rather, the Vatican convened a group of scientists with relevant experience, along with a few Nobel Prize winners. The group’s focus was on increasing evidence of glacier retreat, and the report ended up focused on its causes. The group’s co-chair, Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen, used a somewhat controversial name for the “man-made” geologic era in which we are now living: the “Anthropocene.”
Seeing Beyond ‘Evil’
Kate Kelland reports on Reuters via MNN:
Simon Baron Cohen has been battling with evil all his life. As a scientist seeking to understand random acts of violence, from street brawls to psychopathic killings to genocide, he has puzzled for decades over what prompts such acts of human cruelty. And he’s decided that evil is not good enough.
“I’m not satisfied with the term ‘evil’,” says the Cambridge University psychology and psychiatry professor, one of the world’s top experts in autism and developmental psychopathology.
“We’ve inherited this word … and we use it to express our abhorrence when people do awful things, usually acts of cruelty, but I don’t think it’s anything more than another word for doing something bad. And as a scientist that doesn’t seem to me to be much of an explanation. So I’ve been looking for an alternative — we need a new theory of human cruelty.”
Baron Cohen, who…
Bin Laden Operation Featured In Two Video Games
This didn’t take long … Stephen Johnson reports on G4’s The Feed:
This Saturday, Kuma games released their Osama Bin Laden chapter in Kuma War. There’s also a Counter-Strike map so players can relive the glorious victory of the U.S. over the terrorist leader again and again in their homes.To be fair, the Counter-Strike map is simply a recreation of Osama’s hideout, not a full fledged, “let’s kill Osama” game, but it’s still interesting, both in terms of how quickly the game and map appeared, and in terms of what they say about how we feel about war.
Samoa To Jump Forward In Time By One Day
Apia, Samoa. Photo: LukMak (CC)
For better business, Samoa decides to switch time zones. BBC reports:
The South Pacific island nation of Samoa is to jump forward in time by one day in order to boost its economy.
Samoa will do this by switching to the west side of the international date line, which it says will make it easier for it to do business with Australia and New Zealand.
At present, Samoa is 21 hours behind Sydney. From 29 December it will be three hours ahead.
The change comes 119 years after Samoa moved in the opposite direction.
Then, it transferred to the east side of the international date line in an effort to aid trade with the US and Europe.
However, Australia and New Zealand have increasingly become Samoa’s biggest trading partners.
[Continues at BBC News]
Orlando Uses Sewage To Produce Electricity
Photo: wfmillar (CC)
Can poop be turned into power? The city of Orlando has been working with private-industry partners on turning sewage into electricity in an attempt to answer the age-old question: ‘What if you could take sewage and get rid of it cleanly and quickly, without dumping it in rivers or landfills — and generate pollution-free electricity at the same time?’ Orlando Sentinel reports:
Orlando officials think they’ve perfected a technology that has flummoxed scientists for decades — one they hope will be used worldwide to turn sewage into electricity and earn the city tens of millions of dollars in royalties.
If city officials and their private-industry partners are right, it could be the biggest thing in sewage treatment since the flush toilet.
“We call it poop to power in five minutes,” said project consultant Roy Pelletier.
While the five-year, $8.5 million project has drawn little attention locally, a small, experimental test plant off busy…
Louisiana Man Gets Life Imprisonment for Marijuana
And I thought the Rockfeller Drug Laws in New York State were terrible, this is crazy. Ramon Antonio Vargas reports in the Times-Picayune:
Cornell Hood II got off with probation after three marijuana convictions in New Orleans.
He didn’t fare too well after moving to St. Tammany Parish, however. A single such conviction on the north shore landed the 35-year-old in prison for the rest of his life.
State Judge Raymond S. Childress punished Hood under Louisiana’s repeat-offender law in his courtroom in Covington on Thursday. A jury on Feb. 15 found the defendant guilty of attempting to possess and distribute marijuana at his Slidell home, court records show.
Hood moved from eastern New Orleans to the Slidell area after he admitted to separate charges of distribution of marijuana and possession with intent to distribute marijuana on Dec. 18, 2009, in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. He received a suspended five-year prison sentence and…
Religious Newspaper Removes Hillary Clinton From Situation Room Photo
Minor controversy erupted after people noticed that a Brooklyn-based, ultra-Orthadox Jewish newpaper’s version of the iconic “Situation Room” photograph had Hillary Clinton mysteriously vanished.
The story is an interesting and ironic example of a number of things — the literal erasing women’s accomplishments, and religious fundamentalists’ use of technology in postmodern fashion in their efforts to turn back society’s clock. From New York’s Daily News:
A Hasidic newspaper got into the business of revisionist history Friday when it printed a Situation Room photo that was doctored to remove Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Brooklyn-based publication Der Zeitung published the now iconic photo showing only men present to monitor a daring 40-minute Navy SEALs raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist. National Security team member Audrey Tomason was also scrubbed from the historic image.
As a rule, Der Zeitung does not run images of women that could be considered “sexually suggestive,” Jewish…
The Science Of Why We Don’t Believe Science
Wondering how evolution developed us into creatures who don’t believe in evolution? Mother Jones explains why large numbers of people tend to believe things that make no sense, and why the human brain is averse to evidence and reasoning:
An array of new discoveries in psychology and neuroscience has further demonstrated how our preexisting beliefs, far more than any new facts, can skew our thoughts and even color what we consider our most dispassionate and logical conclusions. This tendency toward so-called “motivated reasoning” helps explain why we find groups so polarized over matters where the evidence is so unequivocal: climate change, vaccines, “death panels,” the birthplace and religion of the president (PDF), and much else. It would seem that expecting people to be convinced by the facts flies in the face of, you know, the facts.
The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually…
Augment Your Body With Brainwave-Controlled Cat Ears
Completely real and available for purchase now from Japanese startup outfit Neurowear. Being a bionic cyber-feline has never looked cuter. Via Wired UK:
The ears twitch through a range of different positions, which correspond to different brain activity. So when you concentrate, the ears point upwards and when you relax the ears flop down and forwards. Mind control isn’t new, but lately advances have been made to make mass market control devices at affordable prices.
South Korean Man Crucifies Himself on Easter
Via UPI:
A South Korean man with a religious obsession crucified himself around Easter, police said.
The body of the 58-year-old taxi driver was discovered Sunday in an abandoned quarry in Mungyeong in North Gyeongsang province, The Korea Herald reported. He was nailed to a wooden cross.
Police said the man went to great lengths to simulate Jesus’ crucifixion. He was wearing only underpants and a headdress resembling a crown of thorrns, had a wound on his right side and had drilled holes in his palms.
Investigators said he had apparently been living in a tent near the quarry. They found plans for self-crucifixion and a whip there.
A pastor in Mugyeong said the man once came to him to talk about religion. He described him as having extreme views.
Newark’s Prayer-Based Crime Fighting Effort Isn’t Working (Video)
Expanding the effort to the state of California? Well in the words of Brian Wilson: I wish they all could be California/I wish they all could be California/I wish they all could be California … Bruce Wilson writes on Talk To Action:
A radical notion: who needs cops? Just pray down crime. But in Newark, where the murder rate has risen over 70% from 2010 to 2011, the approach doesn’t seem to be working very well.
Privatizing government services has long been a key goal of the American religious right, and as a 2-part new Talk To Action report details (here and here), the push for education vouchers has been orchestrated by right wing funders dedicated to eradicating public schools altogether. But voucher initiatives are presented as secular. Then, there’s prayer-based crime fighting, an even more radical privatization scheme:
Charged With Sorcery: Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Inner Circle
More specifically of summoning djinns … Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, secret “Magic: The Gathering” player? Saeed Kamali Dehghan writes in the Guardian:
Close allies of Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being “magicians” and invoking djinns (spirits).
Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as “a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds”.
The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.
Washable RFID Tags Help Catch Hotel Towel Thieves
Damn you, Big Travel! Discovery News reports:
Plush terrycloth bathrobes, 800-thread-count sheets and fluffy, freshly laundered towels can tempt even the most law-abiding hotel guest to take up a life of suitcase-stuffing crime.
Irresistible as they may be, petty theft of these luxurious (and free!) linens are gouging the hotel industry to the rude wake-up call of approximately $100 million a year.
Sticky-fingers everywhere, consider this a warning! Some hotels are reinforcing their defences against pilfering patrons like yourself and they’re using radio frequency identification (RFID) to catch you in the act.
Three hotels in Honolulu, Miami and New York City have begun using towels, sheets and bathrobes equipped with washable RFID tags to keep guests from snagging the coveted items. Just to keep you guessing, the hotels have chosen to remain anonymous.
Two Imams in Traditional Dress Removed From Airplane: They Were On Their Way to a Conference on Muslim Prejudice
Via CNN:
An airline is investigating the removal of two imams from a flight headed to North Carolina, ostensibly because passengers felt uncomfortable with their presence of the pair — both clad in Islamic attire.
The incident occurred Friday on an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight from Tennessee to North Carolina and it involved Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were wearing traditional Muslim dress, CNN affiliate WCNC reported.
The two — who hold high religious positions in the Muslim community — were headed to North Carolina for a conference on prejudice against Muslims, or Islamaphobia. The meeting is sponsored by the North American Imams Federation.
Rahman, who is a professor at the University of Memphis, told the affiliate that the incident reminded him of the prejudice Rosa Parks faced during the civil rights movement.
