Some people need to get a life.

The strange cross-country ride of Howard Wooldridge, a founding member of LEAP.

"Ignored by most media, an array of prominent federal judges, government officials, and other members of the legal establishment has joined in a historic rebellion against George W. Bush's unprecedented and unconstitutional arrogance of power that threatens the fundamental right of American citizens to have access to their lawyers before disappearing indefinitely into military custody without charges, without seeing an attorney or anyone except their guards."

Weird pro-sex, err, pro-family messages are coming from conservative politicians in England. An even weirder quip from the American past in this BBC article - 'In a 1951 letter only now made public, Ronald Reagan revealed his angst about sex. "Even in marriage I had a little guilty feeling about sex, as if the whole thing was tinged with evil," the man who would be US president wrote to a friend. '

The largest arctic ice shelf has ruptured, but don't worry, it's not due to global warming. Don't worry, we don't need to do anything differently. (M)

Statistic of note: There are approximately two million people in jail in America today, 2,166,260 at last count: more than four times as many people as thirty years ago. David Garland's The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society - reviewed.

If ye ignorant wenches and stupid salty dogs don't celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day (today, Sept. 19th!), I'll make ya walk the plank!

"What ideas and worldviews motivated the push to overreach and try to dominate the globe, with Iraq as step number one? What secrets, maneuvers behind the scenes policy power struggles after the attacks of 9/11, led the U.S. to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11?" The U.S. Plan for Global Domination. (M)

The Science Behind Prohibition - A scientific study (widely quoted in support of the oppressive RAVE ACT passed earlier this year) that claimed to prove the negative health effects of Ecstasy use has been retracted because the authors were using the wrong drug on the monkeys.

"Within six months of passing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was conducting seminars on how to stretch the new wiretapping provisions to extend them beyond terror cases," said Dan Dodson, a spokesman for the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. "They say they want the Patriot Act to fight terrorism, then, within six months, they are teaching their people how to use it on ordinary citizens." (via reason.com)

An interview with the voice of reason at the NYTimes, Paul Krugman.

Johnny Cash died today. I'll miss him.

The RIAA is fighting the inevitable.

We have posted new work from artist Mirjana Ugrinov.

When do we resist convienence? (Especially) In questions of technology, does it seem sometimes as if there is an ineveitable wave of increased use that swamps and erodes one's choice to opt in or out? I am thinking about cell phones (previously blogged article), which I most likely will obtain one of in the near future, but also things like the rise of friendster, E-Z toll passes and related intelligent transportation systems, the internet in general, automobiles and many other things that change our identity and perhaps nibble at our privacy. Will I be able to buy a car in 5 years that doesn't have a GPS enhanced tracking, err, navigation system? By law, all your cell phones have GPS these days. Sometimes the choice is taken from us.

Related posts - Commercial tracking, Technoculture, Taste...

Be careful, because in Ashcroft's America, you can be jailed for what you - whoops, check that - for what other people write.

In Search of the Buy Button - What makes some products irresistible? Neuroscientists are racing to find the answer to that question--and to pass it along to consumer marketers. (via the ccle)

"There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade." Listen to the story on Talk of the Nation, and examine the U.S. Department of State's 2003 Trafficking in Persons Report.

Here's a follow-up to Rosie's post on sprawl=fat yesterday: Sprawling Cities, Higher Scales.

"MTV has built its empire on such acts of mass delusion, billing itself as a young and edgy network while in fact functioning as a staid corporate hit factory."

Friday Selections:
Paul Krugman on the Bush Team's blundering of the budget and occupation. (nytimes login: opensewer; password: iswatching)

The Voice's J. Hoberman on the Bush - 9/11 "documentary."

Slate on Bill O'Rielly's favorite two-word phrase.

Reason's Nick Gillespie on attorneys general running out of crime to fight.

A long, interesting read entitled Technoculture and the Religious Imagination by Erik Davis in the Journal of Cognitive Liberties, put out by the Center for Cognitive Liberties and Ethics.

They want to take bitter away. Don't they get it? Bitter is important. They want us to only have the easily enjoyed sweet and salty, and maybe a mild sour. Bitter signifies something. It is an evolutionary asset, the ability to recognize bitter. It is associated with potency in herbs like ginseng. Bitter adds character and is essential to things you learn to love, like coffee (ok, I hate coffee) and flavorful beer. My grapefruit juice shouldn't taste like orange juice. Don't homognize my food. I hate this kind of thing.

Even the NY Times gets in on the act, calling Ashcroft's tour to promote the liberty crushing Patriot Act "Unpatriotic." - nytimes login:opensewer; password: iswatching

Early next month, a dozen families whose tar-paper shacks lack even running water will move into new homes here with heat, flush toilets and hot showers. ... The people of Bayview, most of them related by marriage or blood, are descended from freed slaves. ... As a child, [Alice Coles] picked potatoes with her seven brothers and sisters for 10 cents a bag. ... Those were the good days, when the big farmhouses had high-pitched roofs and screened porches, and when it was possible to get enough work to pay the rent, maybe even buy a house. ... Ms. Coles, who has at one time or another done all those jobs, blamed government subsidies and what some might call progress for the area's decline. ... "They paid farmers not to plant — or what to plant, like soybeans and barley," she said. "And harvesting machines put people out of work." ... Now retirement houses, second homes and golf courses are spreading in the town of Cape Charles on the bay, for those who can afford the $14 round trip from Norfolk through the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. But down the back roads, away from the water, half the people are barely literate, and the average income is $9,000 a year. (NYT; usr: opensewer; pwd: iswatching)

Leading the way - US notches world's highest incarceration rate.

We should learn to love our cars: "The truth in question is that motorcars are dreadful things but human beings love 'em. There's a contradiction there, but refusing to accept that we are a mass of contradictions is one of our biggest denial issues... [Does the car culture] make New York a machine city, a petro-freak, abhorrent waste land? Not a bit. Architect Rem Koolhaas calls it the culture of congestion. The city where the car runs free is the most human-proportioned metropolis on the planet, the most encouraging to walk in and on and through. It is a natural landscape, a modern natural landscape. For all its skyscraping, it is curiously human-dimensioned. And curiously full of cars... The streets run hither and thither across town and the avenues are adorned by carefully synched traffic lights to help people drive up and down the island. Get a roll on at 42 miles per hour and you can get halfway downtown in one exciting rush."

"When students in Biloxi, Miss., show up this morning for the first day of the new school year, a virtual army of digital cameras will be recording every minute of every lesson in every classroom." The language in the article betrays the military/prison charateristics of such a project. Schools into prisons = students into prisoners...

The Unbearable Heaviness of Industry: The scenes in these black-and-white photographs ... seem from the Industrial Revolution at its worst. But they are very much part of today's China, where glitzy electronics and the crudest of mechanical industries coexist.

From the New York Times. Be sure not to miss the slide show, and take a look at Zhou Hai's website. Thanks to our friend Maria for the link. (usr: opensewer; pwd: iswatching)

Politics and Science - an appropriate name.