Category Archives: other
“No Man. No Problem.”
Fourth in the series of indeterminate length, Recolonizing Detroit
The root cause of the problems Paul Romer encountered in Madagascar was the local population. So how about founding these cities not just in unpopulated areas, but in areas people do not identify with as well? Could this be effective? From the European perspective, that’s what the era of colonization was, but most of us have a more expansive view of ownership now. Today, the only land that doesn’t have recognized claims on is Antarctica (Actually, it’s a bit more complicated on that, but more on that later.), but that location is not likely to attract many people to it. What if instead of land, these cities were built in international waters, or somewhere else unclaimed by any country? What then?
That’s right, we’re talking about micronations.
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The Most Isolated Man on the Planet
In the Amazon, there is one man who lives completely alone. He’s believed to be the last survivor of an contacted tribe – a single village really – that were killed by illegal loggers in 1996. He’s in his late 40s, naked, and armed with a bow and arrow. A
bow that he’s not afraid to use on interlopers. In 2007 the Brazilian government declared a 31 square mile area around where he resides off limits. If all goes well, he’ll die alone, probably from disease or infection.
USS Astrarium
An unnamed lieutenant on the USS Voyager, is creating a Star Trek theme park in Jordan.
This is much cooler (or at least geekier) than Hamad’s totally not overcompensating exploits.
D.B. Cooper Lead
Besides being fascinated with Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, I’ve also been fascinated with D.B. Cooper. Hijacked a plane, demanded $200,000 and a parachute, jumped out of the plane into the night, and was never seen again. Oh sure, the FBI said that he was probably dead, but no body was ever found.
Personally, I want to believe, the man that caused a redesign of aircraft, got away.
I even love how the airplane he commandeered, became part of the Janet flights to Area 52 and Area 51. (Civilians didn’t know that 727s rear airstairs could be deployed in flight, while the CIA was using this feature to deploy operators into Vietnam, and now the plane gets used to ferry works into Area 51 and 52? Interesting. ;) )
So why am I spreading the love for old D.B.? The FBI says it has a lead. The suspect? A man who died 10 years ago. In other words, the FBI says D.B. Cooper might have gotten away with it.
Nice.
Updated: Tue Aug 9 10:17:45 PDT 2011
So the “lead” turned out to be a woman named Maria Cooper contacting the FBI after she suddenly remembered her uncle, Lynn Doyle Cooper, saying at Thanksgiving, “We did it, our money problems are over, we hijacked an airplane.”
Not exactly a hot lead.
Red flag #1: Recovered memory. She was 8 years old at the time, and now suddenly remembers everything.
Red flag #2: Why would someone provide a fake first name, but a real last name?
Shockingly, the DNA samples she provided the FBI didn’t match the DNA from the necktie left onboard the plane by the hijacker, but the FBI has said they have no proof that the DNA on the J.C. Penny’s clip on tie belongs to D.B. Cooper or not.
A clip on tie? D.B. Cooper just got a bit less cool.
The Photos of Anders Behring Breivik
This post is not about what Anders Behring Breivik (allegedly) did. Instead it’s about the photos.
Everywhere you look, you see professional portraits of the suspect. Where did these images come from? Obviously, they came from the Anders Breivik, but where did the media get them? What was the context that they were taken in?
I found the proximal answer to where the media got them. Most photos of the man on CNN are attributed to Getty Images, but where did Getty get them? I didn’t know, until I read the attribution on the above picture from CNN. “Facebook via Getty Images.” [Original Link]
Wait. “Facebook via Getty Images?” What does that mean? How does Getty get the attribution? Do they own the right to license the images to news agencies or what? Did Facebook just invoke their right to sub-license (See section 2.1 of Facebook’s Terms and Conditions) Anders Behring Breivik’s photos to Getty for (blood) money?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Update: Mon Jul 25 01:28:50 PDT 2011
Let me be clear. It’s not not just Facebook and Getty. There’s this photo that carries a Reuter’s copyright notice no less. This photo appears again, this time with “AP Photo / Twitter” attribution. And again, but with Getty. Either Getty, AP, and Reuters are engaging in widespread unauthorized redistribution of copyrighted materials for commercial gain, someone (meaning Facebook and possibly Twitter) has sublicensed the photos, or the AP, Reuters, and Getty are making a very dubious fair use claim over distributing the photos.
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Pandora’s Vox
From Carmen Hermosillo’s (aka humdog) 1994 essay Pandora’s Vox
i have seen many people spill their guts on-line, and i did so myself until, at last, i began to see that i had commodified myself. commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money-value. in the nineteenth century, commodities were made in factories, which karl marx called “the means of production.†capitalists were people who owned the means of production, and the commodities were made by workers who were mostly exploited. i created my interior thoughts as a means of production for the corporation that owned the board i was posting to, and that commodity was being sold to other commodity/consumer entities as entertainment. that means that i sold my soul like a tennis shoe and i derived no profit from the sale of my soul. people who post frequently on boards appear to know that they are factory equipment and tennis shoes, and sometimes trade sends and email about how their contributions are not appreciated by management.
Seventeen years later, it’s still the same, but in one sense it’s worse. Before it was just selling ads based on traffic. Now we’re processing the text of your posts for sentiment. Processing your social connections to determine whether your or one of your friends are more of an “influencer.” We’re trying to peer into meaning. Typically the concerns about text-mining / social-network-analysis / big-data revolve around privacy, which I believe mostly clouds the issue.
If Your Child Reads Only One Book…
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
GGB Jumper Survives
A 17 year old high school student survived the 220 foot jump with a broken tailbone and a torn lung.
He did it on a dare.
Navy Goes Vintage
The US Navy is celebrating a century of naval aviation with vintage paint schemes. The T-45C pictured above is decked out in a modified of scheme reminiscent of the 1938 Enterprise Air Group colors. (The red nose is new, due to training plane color requirements.)
The Air Force did something similar a few years ago for the 90th anniversary 111th Fighter Squadron, which is now part of the Texas Air National Guard.
While normally I despise anything retro or vintage, I do enjoy these color schemes. The Navy has tended to retain distinctive squadron insignias (the F-14 squadrons seemed to be especially distinctive), reminiscent of nose art on the tails of their airplanes, while the Air Force have defaulted to boring two letter codes. Supposably, nose art is added to a some aircraft in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it’s hard to find examples on the web beyond scorecards.
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