==pla|\|ing lakes==

Friday, January 28, 2005

A review of new Mac Mini

I like how you can plug it into any keyboard/mouse/monitor with a $20 device.

And it's really all many people need.

Kind of expensive to add a portable monitor for wi-fi-ing around, though.

11:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Area 51 mainstay Chuck Clark is now a free man after a year of "pretrial diversion" (probation essentially) after stealing a motion sensor from the perimeter, just in time for the 50th anniversary cookout [The Anomalist]

11:15 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Can't sleep, clowns will eat me

A few months ago Susan & I agreed on a bumper sticker for our used van, to cover an old "honor student" sticker I couldn't get off, which featured this phrase we found amusing and edgy and enigmatic; since then I've found out it's a line from a Simpsons episode, and that a surprising number of people young and old suffer from coulrophobia -- including someone I work with

11:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thai Tourism officials tell media to stop reporting on ghost appearances in tsunami areas [The Anomalist]

10:56 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tim from the English online art gallery Urban Art emailed me for a mention, and there it is; there's an art fair in July too

Looks like the site serves as a node for collectors to interface with artists directly, which I like.

Worth a look, esp. if you're an English artist looking for a place to send people to online to see your work.

Thanks for the head's up, Tim.

9:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

A group of international artists have restored/recovered a spy satellite dish in Latvia for use in multi-media projects

The pilot project - Acoustic Space Lab symposium took place from August 4 - 12, 2001 in the forests of western Latvia in Irbene at the site of Soviet-era d=32 meter dish antenna. Formerly used to spy on satellite transmissions between Europe and North-America by the KGB, the antenna was abandoned and nearly destroyed when the Russian Army departed in 1994. The dish was successfully repaired by VIRAC (Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Center) radio astronomers.

Over the days of the symposium international team of 30 sound artists, net and community radio activists and radio amateurs in co-operation with VIRAC scientists were exploring the possibilities of antenna. The participants made recordings of the sounds and data from planets' observations, communication satellites and surrounding environment.

It was a great chance for artists to access and work with this big antenna. But most important was that this "old and heavy" technology - big dish - because of its' secret past, specific location in so far remote place, and its' never unexploited potential for civilian use, succeeded to facilitate new context for collaborative exploring, experimenting and data processing.

I heard about this through Douglas Benford's SPRAWL newsletter, which mentioned he had a track on a DVD/CD associated with the project. But I couldn't find any info on the site about it. I emailed one of the coordinators and will post what I hear.

If anyone reading this knows anything about it, please comment below or email me at the address at the top of this page.

10:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

You can get a copy of scanner's 6 track Europa 25 CD -- some whatnot to do with the EU -- for free by emailing here

I didn't think they'd ship to the US, but they do. I haven't heard it but what the hell. You can dowload it too, but they're wmas, which don't work for me.

More news, mp3s etc. at his site.

9:12 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, January 24, 2005

The Strange Death of American Democracy: Endgame in Ohio: a detailed analysis of how Bush couldn't have won Ohio [xymphora]

So who ever thought the 2004 U.S. presidential election had the remotest chance of being honest and democratic?

Not, one might guess, the electronic voting security experts like Ken Thompson, Roy Saltman, Rebecca Mercuri, Bruce Schneier, Doug Jones, Victoria Collier, Aviel Rubin, Lynn Landes, and Bev Harris, who have for years been warning that the new voting technology coming into use in the United States offers unprecedented opportunities for electoral fraud...

And certainly not Republican Congressional Representative Peter King, who made [a] notable video statement on the afternoon of November 2nd, long before the polls closed, in the course of a White House function that seemed to have put him into a celebratory mood. "It's already over," he told the interviewer. "The election's over. We won." Asked how he knew at that early hour, King replied: "It's all over but the counting. And we'll take care of the counting."

[...]

For now at least, the forms of a democratic republic remain in place--as, in a parallel way, the residual forms of the Roman Republic remained in place well after its devolution into a militarized imperial autocracy.

One of the early emperors, Tiberius, got sadistic pleasure out of writing deferential letters to the Roman Senate, humbly requesting the terrorized senators' direction and advice. (It is not recorded, though others of his missives had a similarly noxious effect, that he ever went so far as to have the envelopes dusted--did the Romans use envelopes?--with weaponized anthrax.)

Tiberius's successor, known to history by the fond nickname, Caligula, given him by the Roman legionaries, likewise held the Senate in high esteem: he is said to have planned to have his horse--or was it his donkey?--elected to that august body.

10:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()