[Fritz] I found this really well presented and understandable, yet unsettling.

Source: The Atlantic
Credits: Derek Thompson
Dated: 2012-01-18

World Bank to World: 'Prepare for the Worst'

... when we glowed in the dark to sell skin cream

Source: The Guardian
Credits: Polly Toynbee
Dated: 2012-01-23

Welfare cuts: now they're slamming the door on the truly desperate

After a dismal day in the Lords comes the cruellest cut to the welfare state, in which emergency loans go over to 'local' control

St Mungo's hostel in London. Emergency loans are clawed back from subsequent payments. Photocredits: David Levene/Guardian

No, said the Department for Work and Pensions, you can't visit a jobcentre to talk to social fund claimants. That's the first no I've ever had from the DWP's press officers, always helpful under both Labour and Tory governments. I have frequently sat in on interviews, so long as claimants were willing. But the Iain Duncan Smith-Chris Grayling regime has pulled down the shutters.

[ Emilie says : Soros, freaking the mildly right and the rabid-right with an interview which somewhat understates the current situation. And still the musicians fiddled on. ]

Source: Associated Press via Yahoo.com
Credits: Julie Watson (AP, Author), Barbara Surk (AP, Baghdad, Contrib), Mazin Yahya (AP, Baghdad, Contrib), Elliot Spagat (AP, San Diego, Contrib), Raquel Dillon (AP, Los Angeles, Contrib)
Dated: 2012-01-24

Marine faces 3 months in brig for Iraqi deaths

[ Emilie wonders : So mayhem on a grand scale, including responsibility for 19 known murders (but of arabs, which apparently doesn't count for much in US courts) in breach of International and American law, is worth 3 months in jail for one person. This, while sharing one file in breach of copyright is, in the minds of SOPA's congressional supporters, worth 5 years in jail, and while saying nasty things about the US, in Obama's opinion, makes it ok to kill you (and anyone else in your vicinity). Are Americans who claim to have "values" the laughingstock of the civilised world yet, or is this merely an exposition of the kind of "values" to which Americans aspire? I would say that the outcome of this trrial is, in fact, another war crime. If I am correct, this outcome will undoubtedly strengthen the hands of the prosecuters elsewhere in the world trying to bring Americans to justice for their role in war crimes in the Middle East, as one of the primary reasons for making war crimes general crimes (i.e. prosecutable in any jurisdiction), is because war criminals are frequently not prosecuted or merely, as here, given a token slap on the wrist, by their own countries. ]

Source: Antiwar.com (Antiwar Forum)
Credits: John Glaser
Dated: 2012-01-12

Obama to ‘Explain’ Legal Reasoning Behind Awlaki Killing

Daily Beast:

After months of internal debate, the Obama administration is planning to reveal publicly the legal reasoning behind its decision to kill the American-born leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Anwar al-Awlaki.

Marcy Wheeler:

The problem–the problem that strikes at the very heart of democratic accountability–is that the Administration plans to keep secret the details that would prove (or not) that Awlaki was what the Administration happily claims he is under the veil of anonymity, all while claiming that precisely that information is a state secret.

John Glaser:

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is one of the most popular image format used over the web - most of the graphics designers uses png format for designing logo of a website or in computer artwork (because PNG is more suitable for computer generated images). Optimizing image is a good practice in modern web development/work because it will allow the pages to load much faster due to reduced image size. Google also recommends all web masters to use optimized images for faster loading of pages and you may already know that SPEED is one of the most important thing to consider while designing a website or a web application.

Now, you understand the importance of optimize image – but there should be a balance between the quality and the size of an image. Loss-less compression is what most people prefer while compressing/optimizing an image. On Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, OpenSuse, PCLinuxOS etc you can also use GIMP with save for web plugin to optimize png images (it also supports other popular image formats such as JPG, GIF etc).

Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/supreme-court-rules-congress-can-re-copyright-public-domain-works.ars
Credits: David Kravets, wired.com
Dated: 2012-01-19

Supreme Court rules Congress can re-copyright public domain works

Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.” (PDF)

The top court was ruling on a petition by a group of orchestra conductors, educators, performers, publishers and film archivists who urged the justices to reverse an appellate court that ruled against the group, which has relied on artistic works in the public domain for their livelihoods.

We've had more unbelievable computer issues. And lost 3 drives including the boot drive, so it was time to upgrade from the no-longer-supported Fedora 12 to something else. Meshed Gears thought that running Ubuntu might let me get back into Second Life so he installed 11.10 - a bunch of times due to hardware issues - but the Unity desktop offended me to my inner core. It was as if somebody had unloaded a steaming turd across both monitors and every time I touched anything I got it on my hands and smeared it on the screens.

So we wrestled with it a bit to get back the Gnomish environment I like.

First I found http://blog.sudobits.com/2011/09/08/10-things-to-do-after-installing-ubuntu-11-10/ which is full of smart ideas, and from that learned much of the following, although I am adding a few of my favourite apps to the mix as well:

Open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + t) and execute the following commands -

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
sudo apt-get install libdvdread4 sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh
sudo apt-get install chromium-browser
sudo apt-get install chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra
sudo apt-get install vlc
sudo apt-get install audacity
sudo apt-get install soundconverter
sudo apt-get install transmageddon
sudo apt-get install gimp
sudo apt-get install gimp-data-extras sudo apt-get install gimp-plugin-registry
sudo apt-get install optipng
sudo apt-get install blender
sudo apt-get install inkscape
sudo apt-get install digikam
sudo apt-get install umbrello
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

Now log-out, reboot, click the gear wheel to select the classic gnome gui, and finally once you are back in, alt right-click/add to add your favourite widgets back to the panel.

Source: The Daily Mail
Credits: Liz Hull
Dated: 2012-01-21

The dream wire: Bra that provides the push of an underwire without the pain is unveiled

For years underwire has enjoyed the best supporting role in lingerie. But  wearing an underwired bra is not always the most comfortable experience.

Some women find they can dig into their ribcage or pinch the bust.

The non-underwired types, however, just don’t offer the same uplift.

Look, no wires: The Dreamwire bra claims to be more comfy and could be a godsend for women everywhere Brains: Michelle Mone, creator of Ultimo, decided to run with the Dreamwire bra after years of wearing painful underwired bras

Source: The Telegraph
Credits: Damien McElroy, Ahmad Vahdat
Dated: 2012-01-18

[ Emilie says : If you don't know the gorgeous, multitalented pianist, linguist and actress Golshifteh Farahani (also contains lanolin) from many award winning films, you owe it to yourself to view some. ]

Iranian actress banned from homeland after naked magazine shoot

An Iranian actress has been told she is no longer welcome in her homeland after she posed naked in a French news magazine as a symbolic protest against strictures on women.

Golshifteh Farahani said the government has sent a communication telling her not to travel back to her homeland Farahani appeared along Leonardo Di Caprio in the Hollywood film Body of Lies Photocredits: REX

Source: The Guardian
Credits: Chris McGreal
Dated: 2012-01-20

[ Meshed Gears says : There has been an awful lot of discussion of late over what that offensive term (though much less offensive than this drek) an "Israel Firster" might be, who might be one, and whether using the term is, to borrow a dreadfully overloaded word, now apparently meaning, not uncritically supportive of anything Israeli, "antisemitic".

No matter how terrible a President Obama may be, I'm going on record here that we have absolutely unarguable evidence of what an "Israel Firster" looks like - in summary, like most bigotry, it is not very pretty - and that, in this instance at least, some anti-this-editor would seem to be in order.

I held off posting this for a day while I thought about the implications of suppressing this entire story, or at least my take on it, and balanced that against the value of any potential lessons for others. I also considered censoring the young lady's identity, as this is clearly what somebody, perhaps the young lady in question, desires - and is clearly prepared to spend a lot of money to achieve. I decided that the last point established a clear "chilling effect" which, in the absence of an American court ruling to the opposite effect, I was reluctant to countenance. I was still not entirely comfortable with "outing" the connection, but on careful consideration decided that anything which is hidden so poorly that less than 30 seconds of digging by a knowledgeable researcher could expose it, was in fact published (and therefore public) information. An additional, though not completely neccessary point, is that as a company director, (which she was not at the time of the court ruling), the young lady in question is a person of public interest somewhat lessening her right to privacy. All of which goes to explain why the stories - and my commentary - follow as I wrote them.

Add <p><img src="PathToSomeGraphicFile-Black-64x64.png" style="width: 100%; height: 32768px; position: absolute; right: 0%; top: 0%; z-index: -1;"></p> (where the graphics file referenced is simply a small square the color of most of your text), to the top of of a pinned article. It will be automagically expanded to fill the screen width and to an enormous depth vertically, probably leaving only headlines, graphics and highlighting visible.

For example, on this site to hide the articles for the SOPA/PIPA protests, I used,

<p><img src="http://emilie.hermit.net/sites/emilie.hermit.net/files/Black-64x64.png" style="width: 100%; height: 16384px; position: absolute; right: 0%; top: 0%; z-index: -1;"></p>

Source: Planetearth.nerc.ac.uk
Credits: Adele Rackley
Dated: 2012-01-17
Noticed by: DJ dAndroid at the ChurchofVirus

'Lost' Darwin fossils rediscovered

A rare collection of fossils, including some collected by Charles Darwin, has been 'rediscovered' at the British Geological Survey (BGS).

This spectacular slide shows the cross-section of a cone of a monkey-puzzle tree.

This slide shows a piece of fossil wood that Darwin collected from the Island of Chiloe, Chile in 1834. Tertiary Period, 40 million years old.

The fossils, which had been 'lost' for 165 years, have now been photographed and are available to the public through a new online museum exhibit.

Dr Howard Falcon-Lang, a palaeontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London was in the BGS archive looking for carboniferous fossil-wood specimens when he made the discovery.

[Fritz] Well at least the IT world and the Politicians are as dysfunctional as every other relationship with the Politicians seems to be ... sigh.

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

It was a bad bill, but world needs IP incentive to keep producing

By Matt Asay • Get more from this author

Posted in Law, 19th January 2012 16:02 GMT

Open ... and Shut In response to internet technology companies leading a rousing protest against SOPA and PIPA, these bills appear to be doomed to ignominious defeat. Even the co-sponsors of these anti-piracy bills are deserting their legislation, leaving the tech world to cheer its success.

But what kind of success did we achieve?

And that's the problem, actually. The shouting.

The "mainstream media" is owned, directly and completely, by the same 0.1% that owns the banks - and the politicians

Which might be why the majority of the "One People Under Educated^(TM)" don't yet know about PIPA and SOPA

Perhaps Google's 3 billion hits per day and Wikipedia's 90,000 hits per day will raise awareness of how fast the US has become a fascist state in the hands of politicians who represent themselves, their corporate masters  and the 1%

Time for a new political system - one that represents the 99.9% by allowing everyone to represent themselves yet?

George Carlin - Religion is bullshit

 [Fritz] This will generate conversations around the dinner table whether you agree or not !

Under The Influence
with Terry O'Reilly

There is an odd truism in this world that men generally love The Three Stooges.And the majority of women can't stand them. Yet, an overwhelming percentage of women love romantic stories, and the films made from period pieces that explore issues of the heart: Which, generally speaking, repels men.

MP3 : http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2185811921

Website : http://www.cbc.ca/undertheinfluence/season-1/2012/01/14/men-are-from-sears-women-are-from-bloomingdales/