Mood:  energetic

September 6, 2007

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:05 AM PDT

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Mood:  chillin'

We've heard of stealth airplanes, but never a stealth airplane factory. What you're seeing above is a photo, circa World War II, of a Lockheed aircraft factory in Burbank, California. The US Army Corps of Engineers was given the task of hiding it--the whole darn thing--from air visibility, so Japanese bombers coming off the Pacific wouldn't spot it.

How did they pull it off? Click here to see how they disguised the entire factory as a suburb by wrapping it in camouflage netting, prop houses, and what has to be the largest trompe l'oeil ever made. It's Christo meets Carpaccio...meets G.I. Joe.

BEFORE

AFTER

+++ The pictures and article I found here +++

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/an_early_green.php

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:06 PM PDT

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Mood:  bright

BEIJING

(Reuters news)

 http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-08-26T105120Z_01_PEK274110_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-ROBOTS.xml

A robot that can fly "like a mini-helicopter" and a second that can glide across ice will aid Chinese scientists during an Antarctic expedition slated for October, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The airborne robot can fly for an hour at speeds of 50 to 100 kilometers (30 to 60 miles) an hour and will be equipped with a camera and an infrared radiometer for observing ice on the sea.

The second robot can slide across ice crevasses and snowy slopes, the report said.

"The use of robots can reduce the risks and costs in scientific research," Xinhua quoted Qin Weijia, of the Polar Research Institute of China, as saying. "No matter how bad the weather is, they can still work normally."

The 200-strong expedition team will set up seismic stations in Antarctica to measure tremors and tectonic movements on the continent, the report said.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:53 AM PDT

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Mood:  celebratory

Free workshops

"learn media skills"

Is coming to Portland this weekend

I am participating in a Grassroots Media Camp this weekend in Portland Oregon

It will be all weekend with lots of cool “media type of stuff going on”

My workshop is going to be titled “how to upload a video to YouTube using a PC”

I have been preparing (slightly worrying, since this is a first time thing for me to do)

I do feel confidant that I can do this in a manner that will be understandable to the class, so I guess its just a little nerve racking due to the responsibility end of it all.

I have made just about 100 short video that are now on the Internet.

Most are on YouTube ….. about 25 on Google…… and then some other sites I have a few as well (My Space, Metacafe, etc)

The grassroots Media camp will be held at sites around Portland, my class is Saturday morning around 10am

The link on the Internet for the Media Workshops is here:

http://www.portlandmediacamp.blogspot.com/

The phone number to register or to assist in the workshops is here:

503-236-7916

Call now spaces are running out!

I posted a announcement on Portland Indy Media here:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/08/363741.shtml

But all it really shows is that I made a short YouTube video of the “Camp Flyer”

You can see that 2 min video I made right here

(of course it is on YouTube)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IfTo4llXWE

I have been hanging up flyers all over town, and going to meetings with the organizers.

I have a “training for facilitators” class to take tomorrow evening after work

The weekend camp/event is going to have Music on Friday night, a dinner on Sat evening, and a special movie screening on Sunday ….plus more stuff that I don’t even know about

More info is coming out every day (stay tuned - check their website)

Join with me

Join with the Media Camp

You B the Media …… come and learn some media skills or share yours with others....... "GET ACTIVE"

PEACE

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:14 PM PDT

Updated: Monday, 20 August 2007 1:16 PM PDT

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Mood:  irritated

THE PASSENGERS ON CONTINENTAL FLIGHT 1669Y WERE GUARDED BY AN ATTACK DOG

August 13, 2007 8:54 AM

BALTIMORE SUN reporter Meredith Cohn says:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicsasusual/2007/08/the-passengers-.html

Continental Flight 1669Y from Venezuela to Newark. N.J. was diverted to Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall airport on JULY 29th due to stormy weather. But according to 72 of the 120 passengers aboard, the weather inside the plane which sat on the runway at BWI from 2pm until 6:30pm, was a lot less pleasant than anything outside the aircraft.

There was NO FOOD, NO WATER, NO TOILET PAPER, and reporter Cohn says when the passengers who had spent "12 hours on a plane for a scheduled four-hour flight began clapping in protest, A FLIGHT ATTENDANT THREATENED ARREST AND POLICE WERE CALLED ON BOARD." In a letter to CONTINENTAL, passengers wrote "IT WASN'T ENOUGH TO NOT TREAT US WITH ANY DECENCY OR RESPECT AS CUSTOMERS OR HUMAN BEINGS, WE WERE NOW BEING TREATED AS CRIMINALS." The article says once inside the terminal the passengers claim they were yelled at, told to stay close to the wall and guarded by "OVERZEALOUS OFFICERS WITH AN ATTACK DOG."

The angry passengers have become among the newest members of the COALITION FOR AIRLINE PASSENGERS' BILL OF RIGHTS, a lobbying group started by Kate Hanna, herself an angry passenger, who wants CONGRESS to among many other things force the airlines to limit the length of time their passengers can sit on a stranded plane before being taken back to the airport terminal.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 4:10 PM PDT

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Mood:  loud

U.S. citizen wrongly deported

to Mexico three months ago

has been found

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:41 AM PDT

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Mood:  mischievious

"I'm not comfortable suspending the constitution even temporarily," said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee.

"The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security."

House Approves

Wiretap Measure

_{By Ellen Nakashima and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 5, 2007; A01}

_{The Democratic-controlled House last night approved and sent to President Bush for his signature legislation written by his intelligence advisers to enhance their ability to intercept the electronic communications of foreigners without a court order.}

_{The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation's wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats' fears of being branded weak on terrorism and on a general congressional desire to act on the measure before an August recess.}

_{The Senate had passed the legislation Friday night after House Democrats failed to win enough votes to pass a narrower revision of a statute known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The original statute was enacted after the revelation of CIA abuses in the 1970s, and it required judicial oversight for most federal wiretapping conducted in the United States.}

_{Privacy and civil liberties advocates, and many Democratic lawmakers, complained that the Bush administration's revisions of the law could breach constitutional protections against government intrusion. But the administration, aided by Republican congressional leaders, suggested that a failure to approve what intelligence officials sought could expose the country to a greater risk of terrorist attacks.}

_{Democrats facing reelection next year in conservative districts helped propel the bill to a quick approval. Adding to the pressures they felt were recent intelligence reports about threatening new al-Qaeda activity in Pakistan and the disclosure by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) of a secret court ruling earlier this year that complicated the wiretapping of purely foreign communications that happen to pass through a communications node on U.S. soil.}

_{The bill would give the National Security Agency the right to collect such communications in the future without a warrant. But it goes further than that: It also would allow the interception and recording of electronic communications involving, at least in part, people "reasonably believed to be outside the United States" without a court's order or oversight.}

_{White House spokesman Tony Fratto emphasized that the bill is not meant to increase eavesdropping on Americans or "to affect in any way the legitimate privacy rights" of U.S. citizens. Data related to Americans in communications with foreigners who are the targets of a U.S. terrorism investigation could be monitored only if intelligence officials have a reasonable expectation of learning information relevant to that probe, a senior U.S. official said.}

_{"There are a lot of people who felt we had to pass something," said one angry Democratic lawmaker who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of caucus discussions. "It was tantamount to being railroaded."}

_{In a sole substantial concession to Democrats, the administration agreed to a provision allowing the legislation to be reconsidered in six months.}

_{Some House Democrats were still upset by what they saw as a deliberate scuttling by the White House of negotiations on a compromise bill. On Thursday, Democratic leaders reached what they believed was a deal with the government's chief intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, only to be presented with a new list of conditions at the last minute. The White House and McConnell have denied that a deal had been reached.}

_{"I think the White House didn't want to take 'yes' for an answer from the Democrats," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), an intelligence committee member.}

_{The administration said that its bill is aimed at bringing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 into step with advances in technology, primarily by restoring the government's power to gather without a warrant foreign intelligence on targets located overseas.}

_{Because the law has not kept up with advances in telecommunications, McConnell said in congressional testimony, the government "is significantly burdened in capturing overseas communications of foreign terrorists planning to conduct attacks inside the United States."}

_{Civil liberties and privacy advocates and a majority of Democrats said the bill could allow the monitoring of virtually any calls, e-mails or other communications going overseas that originate in the United States, without a court order, if the government deems the recipient to be the target of a U.S. probe.}

_{Last night, several Democrats said the bill would undermine the Fourth Amendment. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said lawmakers were being "stampeded by fearmongering and deception" into voting for the bill. Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) warned that the bill would lead to "potential unprecedented abuse of innocent Americans' privacy."}

_{Republicans and administration officials argued to the contrary that the distinctions in the present law -- between calls inside and outside the country -- are outmoded in an age of cellphones that work on multiple continents. What intelligence officials seek, a White House official said in an interview yesterday, is the ability to "surveil a target wherever the call [or other communication involving that target] comes from," and that the new legislation would provide that.}

_{In place of a court's approval -- which intelligence officials worried might come too slowly -- the NSA would institute a system of internal bureaucratic controls.}

_{A senior intelligence official said that in cases in which an overseas target is communicating with people in the United States not relevant to an investigation, their names are "minimized," or stripped from the transcript, before it is disseminated. "You won't see data mining in there," the official said. "You won't see vast drift net surveillance of Americans. . . . What we do not do is target people in the United States without a warrant."}

_{Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said that the Democrats would introduce legislation on surveillance in the fall and would conduct oversight of the administration's surveillance program.}

_{A narrower Democratic alternative, which Democrats said they crafted partly in response to McConnell's concerns, won majority support but nonetheless failed because it did not collect the necessary two-thirds vote Friday night in the House. It failed after an emotional debate in which Republicans charged Democrats with being soft on terrorism and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) accused Republicans of not caring "about the truth."}

_{Under the administration's version of the bill, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general can authorize the surveillance of all communications involving foreign targets. Oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, composed of federal judges whose deliberations are secret, would be limited to examining whether the government's guidelines for targeting overseas suspects are appropriate. The court would not authorize the surveillance.}

_{The bill's six-month sunset clause did not assuage some critics.}

_{"I'm not comfortable suspending the constitution even temporarily," said Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a member of the House intelligence committee. "The countries we detest around the world are the ones that spy on their own people. Usually they say they do it for the sake of public safety and security."}

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:01 PM PDT

Updated: Sunday, 5 August 2007 2:08 PM PDT

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