Besides, BoingBoing has already done the “clever” part for us; we’re just giving directions:

• Cory Doctorow Debunks DRM
• The EFF publishes a list of technologies and products we wouldn’t have if the RIAA/MPAA cabal got their way
• Cory explains why Big Media’s claim that “if [consumers] don’t put up with DRM, they’ll just stop releaasing content” is so much hooey

Boing Boing has the scoop.

Now they’re after Spongebob Squarepants, whom they view as somehow encouraging tolerance of homosexuals.

Jesus, would you please talk to these people?

Jenna Jameson is working with Wicked Wireless to provide moantones.

Sounds inflammatory, doesn’t it? Well, take a look at this. Short version: documentaries (about, e.g., the civil rights movement) made years ago are being removed from circulation because the filmmakers cannot afford to re-clear the excerpts included therein.

Hey, Frank, dig this:

MEMPHIS, Tennessee (AP) — Defense attorney Leslie Ballin called it the “jury pool from hell.” The group of prospective jurors was summoned to listen to a case of Tennessee trailer park violence. Right after jury selection began last week, one man got up and left, announcing, “I’m on morphine and I’m higher than a kite.” When the prosecutor asked if anyone had been convicted of a crime, a prospective juror said that he had been arrested and taken to a mental hospital after he almost shot his nephew. He said he was provoked because his nephew just would not come out from under the bed. Another would-be juror said he had had alcohol problems and was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer. “I should have known something was up,” he said. “She had all her teeth.” Another prospect volunteered he probably should not be on the jury: “In my neighborhood, everyone knows that if you get Mr. Ballin (as your lawyer), you’re probably guilty.” He was not chosen. The case involved a woman accused of hitting her brother’s girlfriend in the face with a brick. Ballin’s client was found not guilty. CNN

Boing Boing points us to this MP3 of the outgoing voice mail message at the Mississippi State Tax Comission from yesterday.

You’ve reached the Mississippi State Tax Commission. On Monday, January the 17th, the State Tax Commission offices will be closed in observance of Robert E. Lee and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Tax Commission offices will reopen on Tuesday, January the 18th. Office hours are from 8 until 5. Thank you, and have a safe and happy holiday.

We can’t verify that the message itself is real (though the accent is authentic), but we have verified that yes, Robert E. Lee’s birthday is also a state holiday, and is observed concurrent with MLK’s birthday. What better way to honor the progress we’ve made than by honoring a man who fought to preserve slavery on the same day we honor Dr. King?

So. Fucking. Proud.

A Las Vegas weatherman has been fired for describing yesterday as “Martin Luther Coon Jr. Day” during his forecast.

Clickable before and after satellite photos of tsunami locations. Wow. Just wow.

CNN has let Tucker Carlson go. Aw, poor guy.

MSNBC has an interview with Desmond Tutu that’s well worth reading. A few choice excerpts:

I still can’t believe that [Bush’s reelection] really could have happened. Just look at the facts on the table: He’d gone into a war having misled people–whether deliberately or not–about why he went to war. You would think that would have knocked him out [of the race.] It didn’t. Look at the number of American soldiers who have died since he claimed that the war had ended. And yet it seems this doesn’t make most Americans worry too much. I was teaching in Jacksonville, Fla., [during the election campaign] and I was shocked, because I had naively believed all these many years that Americans genuinely believed in freedom of speech. [But I] discovered there that when you made an utterance that was remotely contrary to what the White House was saying, then they attacked you. For a South African the deja vu was frightening. They behaved exactly the same way that used to happen here [during apartheid]–vilifying those who are putting forward a slightly different view. [. . .] It’s unbelievable that a country that many of us have looked to as the bastion of true freedom could now have eroded so many of the liberties we believed were upheld almost religiously.

And on religion:

I keep having to remind people that religion in and of itself is morally neutral. Religion is like a knife. When you use a knife for cutting up bread to prepare sandwiches, a knife is good. If you use the same knife to stick into somebody’s guts, a knife is bad. Religion in and of itself is not good or bad–it is what it makes you do… Frequently, fundamentalists will say this person is the anointed of God if the particular person is supporting their own positions on for instance, homosexuality, or abortion. [I] feel so deeply saddened [about it]. Do you really believe that the Jesus who was depicted in the Scriptures as being on the side of those who were vilified, those who were marginalized, that this Jesus would actually be supporting groups that clobber a group that is already persecuted?

Word.

Or, as Rob puts it, “A last-minute entry into the meanest headline of 2004 contest”: U.S. Should Not Help Tsunami Victims.

The Mexican city of Villahermosa has passed a law making indoor nudity illegal. No, really.

A Florida State prof, irritated at the possibility of a chiropractic school being established there, created the spoof map at right. Apparently, 7 profs have threatened to resign over the possible school, since they (rightly) believe chiropractic to be, well, quackery.

Via BoingBoing; more at this St. Petersburg Times story.

Bush gave Tenet, Bremer, and Franks Presidential Medals of Freedom — the highest award for a civilian — for fine, fine job they did with Iraq and against terrorism.

What. The. Fuck?

Wired’s Regin Lynn explains why the new crusade against porn is a bad, bad idea.

Our congresscritters have been regaled this week with tales of the New Enemy, PORNOGRAPHY, which is apparently a HUGE threat to our country now (and never you mind terrorism, the economy, the deficit, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, etc.; we’re now threatened by HARD CORE FUCKIN’). Wired News’ coverage seems to be the best account. One witness famously described the porn plague as worse than crack or heroin (we suppose we’ve just missed the ravaged inner cities and rampant violence associated with porn).

The best part of the story is the demand by one particularly uptight group (California Protective Parents Association, in the person of Judith Reisman) that we fund research into “erototoxins,” which are produced when we view arousing pornography:

Pornography triggers myriad kinds of internal, natural drugs that mimic the “high” from a street drug. Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins — mind-altering drugs produced by the viewerÕs own brain. […] A basic science research team employing a cautiously protective methodology should study erototoxins and the brain/body. State-of-the-art brain scanning studies should answer these questions with hard, replicable data. As with the tobacco suits, these data could be helpful in litigation and in affecting legal change. […] An offensive strategy should be planned, mandating law enforcement collection of all pornography data at crime sites and judges, police, lawyers and law schools should receive training in the hard data of sexology fraud and erototoxins as changing brains absent informed consent. Congress should end all Federal funding of educational institutions that train students with bogus Kinseyan academic pornography and/or that teach pornography as harmless. Congress should also remove the authority of so-called sexology institutes–most of whom are pornography grantees–to confer professional credentials and serve as expert witnesses. Cite

Of course, the thoroughly debunked ex-gay movement has its say, too, through Jerry Satinover:

Pornography really does, unlike other addictions, biologically cause direct release of the most perfect addictive substance,” Satinover said. “That is, it causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids. It does what heroin can’t do, in effect.”

Could these people be more hysterical? “Erototoxins“? We wonder how these porn-induced erototoxins differ from the changes in our brains due to arousal from, say, normal human sexual activity. Smart money says “not at all,” and once you realize that, you realize that these people are threatened by sexuality, not pornography.

Of course, with the religious right calling the tune, this may not matter; their hostility to any sort of discussion of sexuality — let alone actual material designed to be arousing, sex toys, and erotic literature — is well documented, and this puritannical strain of American culture desperately wants to force its values on the rest of us. And with this administration, they have more influence than ever before. Pay attention.

Secrecy News points out something we should all be profoundly pissed off about: there now exist laws and regulations governing our behavior and limiting our rights that are secret, meaning the governmentmental body in charge does not have to show you in order to justify their actions.

Last month, Helen Chenoweth-Hage attempted to board a United Airlines flight from Boise to Reno when she was pulled aside by airline personnel for additional screening, including a pat-down search for weapons or unauthorized materials. Chenoweth-Hage, an ultra-conservative former Congresswoman (R-ID), requested a copy of the regulation that authorizes such pat-downs. “She said she wanted to see the regulation that required the additional procedure for secondary screening and she was told that she couldn’t see it,” local TSA security director Julian Gonzales told the Idaho Statesman (10/10/04). “She refused to go through additional screening [without seeing the regulation], and she was not allowed to fly,” he said. “It’s pretty simple.” Chenoweth-Hage wasn’t seeking disclosure of the internal criteria used for screening passengers, only the legal authorization for passenger pat-downs. Why couldn’t they at least let her see that? asked Statesman commentator Dan Popkey. “Because we don’t have to,” Mr. Gonzales replied crisply. “That is called ‘sensitive security information.’ She’s not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else,” he said. Thus, in a qualitatively new development in U.S. governance, Americans can now be obligated to comply with legally-binding regulations that are unknown to them, and that indeed they are forbidden to know.

Secret laws and regulations not subject to public scrutiny are anathema to an open, free society. Period.

Creationists are having their way with the Parks service, who are being compelled to sell a book at the Grand Canyon insisting that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that the canyon was created by Noah’s flood.

So. Fucked. Up.

No, really. They just want your money, and don’t care about anything else. Why else would they be trying to make it illegal to skip commercials? We’re not making this up:

The [Intellectual Property Protection Act] would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content — like a gory or sexually explicit scene — in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited. The proposed law also includes language from the Pirate Act (S2237), which would permit the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits against alleged copyright infringers.

So, to recap:

1. No commercial skipping; and
2. The DoJ is the MPAA/RIAA’s law firm; which means
3. The taxpayers will be footing the bill for their copyright enforcement efforts, both reasonable and unreasonable.

It’s not law yet, though. Call those congresscritters.

The tortise (tortises?) at right live in the UK. Apparently, he/she/they get along just fine.

As it turns out, hail can be fatal. Though in this case, it took a few hundred years to figure out what, exactly, the culprit was.

Terror is clearly at bay, since Homeland Security is pursuing toy companies for violating expired patents.

The missing Iraqi explosives cache was huge, huge, huge — 380 tons is the estimate I keep seeing. But what was it? See, that’s where it gets even better. According to analysis found here, the material lifted at AQQ (RDX, HMX, and PETN) is among the most potent conventional stuff that exists, representing (by weight) 170% of the explosive power of an equivalent mass of TNT (if I understand correctly). It took less than a pound of this sort of thing to shatter Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, according to the NYT coverage.

To compare this to something we can actually grok, consider that the Murrah Building bomb was about 5,000 pounds of ammonium-nitrate-based explosives. That stuff isn’t nearly as good as Alfred Nobel’s baby, working at 3%-10% of the same mass of the good stuff, so say the Murrah was 150 to 500 pounds of TNT.

The missing explosives are the equivalent of 646 tons of TNT. Time to quote:

Convert this back into my OK City metric, and this means that the lost material at AQQ equals betwen 2,584 – 8,613 OK City-size bombs. That’s one hell of a lot of material to be on the street — enough to fuel a car-bomb and IED-based insurgency for years, if not decades.

Oh boy. But it gets better. (And by “better” I mean “worse”.) Not only is a shitload of this stuff presumably readibly available to use against our men and women on the ground over there, but it’s really compact, high-density stuff. I’m a long way from any real math, but it sounds to me like it’s amost twice as powerful by weight. If Murrah was accomplishable with (split the range) 325 pounds of TNT, then (at 170%) you can do the same trick with less than 200 pounds of the AQQ stockpile. Put another way, you can do your own Iraqi Murrah job with a motorcycle and a sidecar. Or a mule. Or a four-wheeler.

(If anyone has any more direct knowledge of explosive power, the Murrah bomb, conversions, or anything else, please feel free to email or comment; I’m a sucker for accuracy.)

From Boing Boing:

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) makes it illegal to break software locks. Under that theory, Lexmark sued a competitor, Static Controls, for making compatible printer cartridges because refilling the cartridges necessitated resetting the cartridge software, and doing that meant breaking the lock that intended to keep you from refilling your cartridge. Get that: they claimed, basically, that the printer cartridge was a copyrighted work, and that by refilling it, you were pirating it. Anyway, this is so much bullshit, it makes your head spin. And as of today, the appeals court agrees: Lexmark can’t use the DMCA to prop up its business-model of charging you a 1000 percent markup on its inkjet carts. Neener, neener, neener. Link.

Three Oregon schoolteachers were ejected froma Bush rally and threatened with arrest for wearing t-shirts that said “Protect our Civil Liberties.” How much clearer can this administration’s contempt for the Constitution be?

I mean, just think about this for a minute: wearing a T-shirt that paraphrases part of the oath Bush took four years ago is grounds for ejection, presumably based on the assumption that anyone who lobbies for civil liberties MUST be anti-Bush. That assumption is incredibly telling.

Three hundred and fifty tons of explosives belonging to the former Iraqi army went missing during the invasion. There’s a coverup a-brewing, too, as it appears nobody bothered to tell Condi Rice until last month.

Yeah, this Iraq thing looks like a better idea all the time, doesn’t it?

People die. Innocent bystanders nowhere near riots, even.

We keep giving police more power — via PATRIOT, for example — for what reason, exactly?

Felton: DOJ to divert resources for copyright enforcement.

PlanetOut became the first gay-directed business to trade on a major stock exchange today. Its symbol, of course, is LGBT. Coverage at — shocking! — the SF Gate. (Via BoingBoing.)

Reports out of Nevada are that a private, GOP-affiliated voter registration firm has been surrepticiously shredding the registrations of those they believe to be Democrats. Kos has it, and points to coverage at a local TV station.

Approximately a jillion people have passed this TinyRevolution post our way in the last day or so. Precis: Sy Hersh spoke in Berkeley last week, and had a very disturbing story to relate passed to him by a soldier in Iraq. Hersh, for those with short memories, also wrote the more authoritative pieces on the Abu Grahib scandal.

Shining City on a Hill? Who, us?

Researchers think they may have found a new kind of gorilla in the Congo. Said gorillas are TWO METERS TALL.

I for one welcome our new gorilla overlords.

Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons.

Fox News is now making shit up to post about Kerry. They’ve since retracted the story, but, I mean, damn. Unlike with CBS, there’s not any room for “we were duped” in this one.

“I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged,” Scalia said.

A significant portion of the PATRIOT Act has been declared unconstitutional:

U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in the first decision against a surveillance portion of the act, ruled for the American Civil Liberties Union in its challenge against what it called “unchecked power” by the FBI to demand confidential customer records from communication companies, such as Internet service providers or telephone companies. Marrero, stating that “democracy abhors undue secrecy,” found that the law violates constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches. He said it also violated free speech rights by barring those who received FBI demands from disclosing they had to turn over records. Because of this gag order, the ACLU initially had to file its suit against the Department of Justice under seal to avoid penalties for violation of the surveillance laws.

Jon Stewart appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show last month, and during the show O’Reilly repeatedly referred to Stewart’s Daily Show audience as “stoned slackers.” The folks at Comedy Central took exception, so they had a bit of research done.

As it happens — according to Neilsen Media Research — Stewart’s audience is more educated than O’Reilly’s, which presumably surprises no one other than O’Reilly. Heh.

That fair city’s forces of prudishness (both of them) were dealt a setback last week in their efforts to stop the “Naked Yoga Guy” from doing, well, yoga in the buff at Fisherman’s Wharf:

“Simply being naked on the street is not a crime in San Francisco,” said Debbie Mesloh, a spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.

This reminds us of a particularly apt Venn diagram, reproduced below:

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(Diagram from this piece by Lore Sjoberg at the now-defunct Brunching Shuttlecocks humor site.)

Security expert Bruce Schneier has two op-eds worth reading from last week:

• City Cops’ Plate Scanner is a License to Snoop
• Academics locked out by tight visa controls

Read ’em both.

BoingBoing points us to a hilarious “open letter” supposedly from the computer industry to the content industry. Heh.

He was one of the American citizens detained indefinitely, without counsel or charge, on the grounds that he was an “enemy combatant” and therefore not subject to the rights of the accused as we enshrine them here. See, he was SO DANGEROUS that they had to hold him in secret and not allow him to address the evidence against him.

Right. He’s being released in a deal wherein he must (a) renounce his US Citizenship and (b) leave the US for Saudi Arabia.

I’m sorry, but What. The. Fuck?

The agreement to free Yaser Esam Hamdi represents a stunning reversal for the Bush administration, which argued for more than two years that the former Taliban fighter was potentially so dangerous that he had to be detained indefinitely in solitary confinement with no access to counsel and no right to trial.

It will be interesting to hear how Hamdi characterizes his ordeal once he’s free to talk. Terrorist or not, I’m not happy with the DOJ’s actions here, and this deal seems custom-tailored to save face in the wake of several rulings putting them in their place. As it happens, the Constitution is, you know, LAW and all.

But CNN covered it, albeit briefly and without substantial comment. Over at Tom Tomorrow’s site, Bob Harris writes about seeing the coverage of a US attack killing a working journalist on camera, supposedly because the reporter was too close to a disabled American vehicle. There’s a bit more coverage through Tom’s post, or directly here; there’s a CNN transcript here.

Bob goes on to note precisely what behavior like this is likely to produce. Hint: it ain’t stable democracies in the middle east.

From VOA: “US, Iran Headed for Possible Showdown on Nuclear Issue.”

The 9th Circuit has denied both Department of Justice motions in Gilmore v. Ashcroft concerning secret arguments in support of secret laws.

The group behind the subturranean cafe reveals how they built it; apparently, it took about 18 months.

Senator Bob Graham has some disturbing things to say in his new book. More coverage at the Miami Herald.

The gist is this: a web of politically motivated secret classifications has prevented a genuine inquiry into the relationship between the Saudis and the 9/11 hijackers, and this stonewalling continues to this day. What is known is that at least two of the hijackers were financially supported by Saudi agents prior to 9/11, which is more than a little disturbing.

Australian prisoners are milking spiders and using the venom to get high.

JWZ points out that Chuck Jones heirs have loaned Jones’ “The Scweam” (at right, click for larger version) to Norway’s Munch Museum as a stand-in until the genuine article is returned.

At least, you know, if there’s a convention in town. Check it out; the NYPD basically arrested everyone they could find — more than at any other political convention in the US — and held them far as long as they wanted (i.e., until the convention was over) with no regard for whether or not the people arrested were breaking laws, or were really even protesters.

Dollars to donuts says there will be no real repercussions against the cops who did this, and even less against those who ordered it, and that makes it much easier for NYPD or LAPD or anyone to do exactly the same thing again, any time they decide they want to quash legal dissent.

Who is it that hates freedom again? I forget.