Thursday, May 08, 2008

When Will You Stop Believing In The Illusion Of Law?


Deity condemned anal orifice porcines and their bureauRAT advocates!!! Why should these mater fornicator offsprings of unmarried parents be allowed to continue to exist peacefully in this town? If you want to do something, help THIS guy at least with something! -

Tracy Ingle: Another Drug War Outrage

About a month ago I got a call from a reporter for the Arkansas Times inquiring about my research into paramilitary drug raids. He'd been reporting on a raid in North Little Rock involving a 40-year-old man named Tracy Ingle. When he told me the story over the phone, I was floored, even given all the abuses and mistakes I've reported and read about over the last few years. What makes the case especially egregious is not that the police may have gotten the wrong home, that they shot a man, or that they were covering it up or going silent. We've seen all that before. What's mind-blowing about this one is that they've continued abusing the poor guy, even after it should have been clear for some time now that they made a mistake.

Here's a quick rundown:

• On January 7, 2008 a paramilitary police unit in North Little Rock, Arkansas conducted a drug raid on Tracy Ingle's home. Ingle says he had fallen asleep for several hours, and was asleep when the raid happened. He awoke when the police took a battering ram to his door. Another team of officers approached form the outside of the house, and shattered the window to his bedroom.

• When he awoke, Ingle says he thought his home was being invaded by armed robbers. He reached for a broken gun, a pretty clear indication that he had no intention of killing anyone, but rather was trying to scare away the intruders. When he grabbed the gun, an officer inside the house fired his weapon. The bullet hit Ingle just above the knee, shattered his thigh bone, and nearly severed his lower leg. When the outside officers heard the shot, they opened up on Ingle, hitting him four more times. According to Ingle's sister, one bullet still rests just above Ingle's heart, and can't be removed.

• Ingle was taken to the hospital, and spent a week-and-a-half in intensive care. He was then removed from intensive care—still in his hospital pajamas—and taken to the North Little Rock police department, where he was questioned for five hours. He was not told he was suspected of a crime, and his family wasn't allowed to speak with him. After the interrogation, he was arrested and transferred to the county jail.

• Ingle spent the next four days in jail. He says he was never given his pain medication or his antibiotics. Though hospital nurses told him to change his bandages and clean his wounds every 4-6 hours, Ingle told the Arkansas Times that jail officials changed them only twice in four days. Ingle's wounds became infected during the time he was in jail.

MORE HERE

A Tale of Two Trailers: 'Batman' and 'The Dark Knight' Compared?

False alarm: It's just another mash-up...and I LOVE mash ups!

In case you haven't seen the most recent Dark Knight Internet meme to hit IM, blogs, Twitter, humor sites and just about every user-generated link farm around let Freedom Shenanigans & High Jinks be the latest site to post the "Dark Knight/Batman Trailer Split-Screen" video -- but with a twist. For those who haven't heard about it yet, the video was passed around by many 'net users who claimed it was a split-screen comparison of the eerie similarities between the trailers for the 1989 Tim Burton Batman film and the upcoming Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight.



Despite the video's sudden popularity today (with quite a few people linking to the video via the College Humor website -- which also seemed to frame it as a comparison of the two trailers), this video has been around since late 2007, and was created by YouTube user VaportrailFilms after the Dark Knight trailer was released. As many Digg.com users have pointed out, this is also not a magical moment of synchronicity in the vein of Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz, either. In fact, it's actually a "mash-up" of the Tim Burton film and the Dark Knight trailer -- made up of bits and pieces sampled from the 1989 film and arranged for the best possible match.

So, while I hate to burst a good online conspiracy bubble, that's not the original Batman trailer in the video, folks. It is, however, the product of some very nice video editing skills.

But I have to admit, the version that used the 1966 Batman film is more my cup of tea.

That being said, as much as I'm looking forward to seeing Iron Man, I still believe Dark Knight will kick it's tin ass in the theatres.

What's great about Batman is that he is vulnerable. He goes in with black kevlar and a utility belt - and NO GUNS and still kicks ass. It's one reason why Superman doesn't do anything for me - unless you happen upon a piece of kryptonite - he's invincible.

Batman is the shiznit and the best franchise around. Sorry - you can't deny this.

Concerning Iron Man, the Civil War Series and the killing of Captain America, I don't care for Iron Man. Now that doesn't mean I won't see the movie or can't appreciate a good action flick with all the CGI bells and whistles. I just don't care for the overt fascist memes promoted by Marvel. (After close to 60 years in print, Marvel Comics has killed off Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, one of its most famous and beloved superheroes amid an already controversial story line, "Civil War," which is pitting the heroes of Marvel's universe against one another. In the comic series, Rogers was to stand trial for defying a superhero registration law passed after a hero's tragic mistake causes a 9/11-like event. Steve Rogers eventually surrenders to police. He is later mortally wounded as he climbs the courthouse steps.Marvel says the comic story line was intentionally written as an allegory to current real-life issues like the Patriot Act, the War on Terror and the September 11 attacks.)

Now if Marvel were using the "Devil's Advocate" technique to actually criticize the contemporary state of our Federal Fascist Union that would be great. However, they seem to be actually endorsing the fascist behavior. (How many military recruitment ads are running along with this everyday? Right, ruin the economy, devalue the money so that poor folks have no other option than to become government employees and work to capture and incarcerate their fellow citizens for things that were not crimes before this present administration stole the elections.)

Since the end of Civil War, Iron Man has been running S.H.I.E.L.D. as its current Director. His main goal seems to be making sure the SHRA is followed and that illegal heroes are shut down. This makes me wonder why the SHRA doesn't apply to the villains running around. Sure, many of them have public identities, but that isn't the same thing as registered.

We have seen many moments of Tony Stark being an asshole ever since Civil War started. From kowtowing to Miriam Sharpe all the way to taking his best friends in for being noble and selfless.
Partial list of crimes:

-Supporting a blatantly unconstitutional Law.

-Failing to provide adequate security for Steve Rogers (a man known to have many powerful enemies.)

-Employing known killers and thugs in the pursuit of unregistered heroes.

-Failing to apprehend known villains in favor of apprehending unregistered heroes.

-Attempting to use his authority to recruit a new Captain America

-Engineering two near-International situations in order to further his agenda.

-The unlawful imprisonment of American citizens

-Attempting to bind non-American citizens to the Registration Act

-Using the good name of a deceased American Hero in order to trap and apprehend
unregistered heroes.

The acts of this man are clearly fascist and elitism at its worst. The hubris of this man, who believes himself to be the one to lead all heroes leans towards megalomanicsm (yeah, I made the word up, you know what I mean) >8{D}

At this point, I don't think there is anything Marvel can do that would repair the harm to Tony's character. They may even have had a chance at retconning some of it if this did seem out of character. Instead, this looks like a direction that Marvel was headed towards for a long while now. As far as I am concerned, the only way to save Iron Man is for Stark to go away and a new man step in.

However, that won't happen, at least not in the near future. According to http://io9.com/378102/iron-man-armor-now-comes-with-proprietary-software

Iron Man! Now he's the kind of guy who's off crusading against... Linux? The latest interview promoting movie tie-in comic The Invincible Iron Man seems to suggest a more software-based approach to the character than ever before. According to series writer Matt Fraction, the battle between Tony Stark and new bad guy Ezekiel Stane is really just an allegory for the battle Bill Gates wages against smaller software providers every single day of his life.

For me, there is no redemption for Iron Man.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

How To Think

By Ed Boyden

Ed Boyden is an assistant professor in the MIT Media Lab. His lab broadly invents new tools to engineer brain circuits, in order to treat intractable disorders, augment cognition, and better understand the nature of existence.

When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.

1. Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

2. Learn how to learn (rapidly). One of the most important talents for the 21st century is the ability to learn almost anything instantly, so cultivate this talent. Be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Know how your brain works. (I often need a 20-minute power nap after loading a lot into my brain, followed by half a cup of coffee. Knowing how my brain operates enables me to use it well.)

3. Work backward from your goal. Or else you may never get there. If you work forward, you may invent something profound--or you might not. If you work backward, then you have at least directed your efforts at something important to you.

4. Always have a long-term plan. Even if you change it every day. The act of making the plan alone is worth it. And even if you revise it often, you're guaranteed to be learning something.

5. Make contingency maps. Draw all the things you need to do on a big piece of paper, and find out which things depend on other things. Then, find the things that are not dependent on anything but have the most dependents, and finish them first.

6. Collaborate.

7. Make your mistakes quickly. You may mess things up on the first try, but do it fast, and then move on. Document what led to the error so that you learn what to recognize, and then move on. Get the mistakes out of the way. As Shakespeare put it, "Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

8. As you develop skills, write up best-practices protocols. That way, when you return to something you've done, you can make it routine. Instinctualize conscious control.

9. Document everything obsessively. If you don't record it, it may never have an impact on the world. Much of creativity is learning how to see things properly. Most profound scientific discoveries are surprises. But if you don't document and digest every observation and learn to trust your eyes, then you will not know when you have seen a surprise.

10. Keep it simple. If it looks like something hard to engineer, it probably is. If you can spend two days thinking of ways to make it 10 times simpler, do it. It will work better, be more reliable, and have a bigger impact on the world. And learn, if only to know what has failed before. Remember the old saying, "Six months in the lab can save an afternoon in the library."

Springfield, IL Censors Free Speech

A SIGN OF THE TIMES

Monday, May 05, 2008

Freedom Shenanigan #29
Use The Miranda Civil Rights Camera Recorder
Document Your Arrest!

Ok you activists who still believe in going out in public without your masks on, and if you still believe that a mass protest accomplishes anything other than a field day for poLICE agents to gather names, pictures, facial recognition patterns, voice prints, DNA etc., THEN YOU NEED MIRANDA!

"Security for Civil Rights." By designer, Gabriel Lam via Core77. First impression of the project is a marriage of personal passion with elegant design sensibilities; the small unit is simply a cheap video recorder with some flash memory and a 3-axis accelerometer, ruggedized with a Santoprene boot and blessed with clean, utilitarian styling reminiscent of early Peter Saville. As a recorder and protector for political protesters, it's a solution whose appropriateness is immediately obvious.

It helps you to record all things happening around you and also helps finding thieves or anything suspicious as it goes around with every time. It’s small, adaptable and cheap. Lams convincing thoughts has helped in showing the results of the brutal processions. It is very effective in the elimination of corruption from a body (mostly government). Requires very little maintenance and very effectively and generate proportional benefits. It also plays a major role in the security of civil rights.

It also works well in the night as it has embedded flash light. It can help the police in their dangerous work. It works more effectively than a CCTV camera, CCTV camera has a limit range view, but this device has no range as it is in motion all the time with you, help you solving many problems such as theft in your daily life. This designer with his unique mind has bought out something fantastic and has done something good for the mankind and making them independent of cops and working towards their own security.