Nau­se­at­ing..

This.

It should never, ever be a crime to tape or record police offi­cers while they’re on duty. They’re pub­lic ser­vants. They work for us. If they can use sur­veil­lance to mon­i­tor pri­vate cit­i­zens, there’s no rea­son why we shouldn’t be able to use sur­veil­lance to mon­i­tor them. Again, this goes back to apply­ing the same laws to the gov­ern­ment that we apply to the people.

I’m work­ing on a police cor­rup­tion case right now where the guy on the receiv­ing end of the cor­rup­tion would be as good as dead were it not for the fact that he wised up to what was going on, and began wear­ing a wire for every inter­ac­tion with the police. The “if you’re not doing any­thing wrong, you have noth­ing to worry about” canard is indeed a canard when applied to pri­vate cit­i­zens. But when applied to peo­ple who work for us, to whom we’ve given an immense amount of power, and whom we’ve licensed to use deadly force, it’s per­fectly applicable.

One of the rec­om­men­da­tions in my paper is that every drug raid be video­taped. But it should go beyond that. It’s obscene for a cit­i­zen to be arrested for record­ing the actions of a police offi­cer. Laws crim­i­nal­iz­ing the prac­tice not only ought to be revoked, they should be replaced with laws cod­i­fy­ing the right to record law enforce­ment, and for­bid­ding the pros­e­cu­tion, intim­i­da­tion, or seizure of the record­ing of the peo­ple who do it.

[The Agi­ta­tor]

Michael Gan­non, 49, of 26 Mor­gan St., was arrested Tues­day night, after he brought a video to the police sta­tion to try to file a com­plaint against Detec­tive Andrew Karlis, accord­ing to Gannon’s wife, Janet Gan­non, and police reports filed in Nashua Dis­trict Court.

It’s bla­tantly obvi­ous that the real rea­son Gan­non was arrested is that he tried to file a com­plaint against an abu­sive thug. We can’t have the peas­ants get­ting uppity.

The Spring is Silent on DDT . Let there be no doubt that the war on malaria has failed. It is esti­mated that 800,000 chil­dren in Africa die from the dis­ease every year, and as many as three mil­lion peo­ple alto­gether every year.

We know how peo­ple con­tract it: from mos­qui­toes. We know how to con­trol it: kill the car­rier mos­qui­toes. And we know what kills them: DDT.

So why has the war on malaria failed? Because gov­ern­ments banned the cure. Now they claim to won­der why peo­ple are sick and dying.

[…]

The hid­den hand behind this hor­ror is none other than the envi­ron­men­tal­ists. The frenzy against DDT launched their move­ment. It is what embold­ened them, and gave their polit­i­cal agenda momen­tum. In some ways, their cam­paign against DDT per­fectly sums up their polit­i­cal bent: using state power to ban prod­ucts and ser­vices that help humans, and thereby cause his­tory to roll backward.

The extent to which the green move­ment is wrapped up in this his­tory is obvi­ous from the fact that we are liv­ing through a gen­uine silent spring, with the press ignor­ing the causes of malaria. The New York Times presents the epi­demic as “mys­ti­fy­ing,” and most peo­ple know noth­ing about the role of the envi­ron­men­tal­ists who are respon­si­ble for mil­lions of deaths by malaria, and in Africa, of all places, the con­ti­nent that the Left claims to love to help. [Lud­wig von Mises Insti­tute]

Japan Defense Chief: Iraq Was a Les­son. Japan’s 2 1/2-year mil­i­tary deploy­ment in Iraq will be a les­son for future mis­sions as its troops assume a big­ger role in regional and global secu­rity, the country’s defense chief said Wednes­day. [Hick­ory Daily Record]

Appar­ently the les­son wasn’t “mind your own busi­ness and keep your sol­diers at home.”

Day one of the UN gun ban sum­mit.

Cam Edwards at TownHall.com — the commU.N.ist gun grab­bers have con­vened in New York City. Most of them are attempt­ing to hide their agenda with rhetoric that sounds like they will pre­serve the right of indi­vid­u­als to defend their lives. But the state­ment from Indonesia’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive gives it away: [gun­blogs]

[End the War on Free­dom]

The Indone­sian rep­re­sen­ta­tive should tell that to the 300,000 Rwan­dans who were hacked to death with machetes (“light weapons”) because they didn’t have guns to defend them­selves with.

Microsoft acquires iView. It appears to be acqui­si­tion sea­son. Today iView Mul­ti­me­dia, who brought us Medi­aPro, has announced that it has ‘joined’ Microsoft. Medi­aPro is a fairly well known dig­i­tal imag­ing work­flow and man­age­ment appli­ca­tion which was orig­i­nally cre­ated for Mac and later evolved to Win­dows. In the announce­ment on the iView web­site today Yan Calo­ty­chos, founder of iView, stated quite clearly that Mac sup­port would con­tinue and that the iView prod­uct range will con­tinue to be avail­able (and sup­ported). [Dig­i­tal Pho­tog­ra­phy Review]

I use Medi­aPro to cat­a­log all the pho­tos I’ve scanned. I’m not par­tic­u­larly opti­mistic about the qual­ity of that con­tin­ued Mac sup­port, but then the cur­rent Mac sup­port hasn’t always been so great either. Hope­fully Microsoft’s resources will result in bet­ter QA.

Carl­son: Rep­ri­mand­ing a care­less kid is a crime? Appar­ently. You’re dri­ving down the street obey­ing traf­fic laws and gen­er­ally being a good cit­i­zen, when some idiot kid wan­ders into traffic.

You slam on the brakes and swerve, miss­ing the kid and leav­ing a pud­dle on the car seat.

You have two choices. You can shut up, drive home 5 miles an hour and have a stiff belt. Or you can take a moment to tell the kid how she almost got her­self killed and ruined your life forever.

You’re bet­ter off going with the first option, con­sid­er­ing what hap­pened to Barn­aby, who went with the second.

This is because the 28-year-old Evanston, Ill., man ended up — and this is not a joke — being offi­cially branded a sex offender.

The facts, as reported in the Chicago Sun-Times, show that an angry Barn­aby called to the 14-year-old he’d nearly run down, yelling, “Come here, lit­tle girl.”

He then got out of his car, took her by the arm and gave her a lec­ture about how step­ping in front of a vehi­cle is a very bad idea.

The girl ran away, com­plained to police and Barn­aby was charged with — again no joke — attempted kid­nap­ping and child abduc­tion. This is even though he didn’t attempt to take the girl any­where. Barn­aby beat those charges.

He was, how­ever, con­victed of unlaw­ful restraint of a minor. And in Illi­nois, that is con­sid­ered a sex offense.

That means even though he didn’t do any­thing to the kid other than take her by the arm and give her a lec­ture that might end up sav­ing her life, he must reg­is­ter as a sex offender. He is pro­hib­ited from liv­ing near a park or school and must keep local police advised as to his place of residence.

He might even get his name and pic­ture in the local news­pa­per, to advise neigh­bors they’re liv­ing near a sex offender. [Des Moines Reg­is­ter]

The moral of the story? If you’re dri­ving in Illi­nois and a kid runs out in front of your car, you’re bet­ter off gun­ning it and run­ning her down than giv­ing her a lec­ture on safety.

My Ety­motics ER-6 ear­phones gave out recently, with the right ear­phone no longer pro­duc­ing sound. This is the sec­ond set I’ve owned, and while they work really well while they last, both have failed after a rel­a­tively short time. I ordered a slightly more expen­sive replace­ment made by Shure.

Here’s a photo of soc­cer fans watch­ing a World Cup game in Kore­atown last Sunday.

Liq­uid Armor.

Eva Gladek at Sci­en­Cen­tral — a new nano-particle-impregnated liq­uid will make flex­i­ble body armor more effec­tive, espe­cially against punc­tures from knives or shrap­nel. Arti­cle links to Real and Quick­time videos. [codrea]

[End the War on Free­dom]

The idea of flex­i­ble armor that becomes rigid on impact has been around for years in sci­ence fic­tion, most com­monly known as “iner­tial armor.” It’s sur­pris­ing that the tech­nol­ogy is so close to real-world use. I’d def­i­nitely be inter­ested in buy­ing a suit once it comes on the market.

The next gen­er­a­tion of inkjet papers are here! The intro­duc­tion of new papers from Hah­ne­muhle, Innova, and Museo have every­one scram­bling for these papers, as they are sup­pose to be the rea­son to finally come out of the dark­room. After all, B&W sil­ver gelatin paper man­u­fac­tur­ers are start­ing to dis­ap­pear, caus­ing more artists/photographers to con­vert to dig­i­tal print­ing meth­ods. This does not mean that we should start expect­ing these paper com­pa­nies to cre­ate exact repli­cas of our favorite sil­ver gelatin papers. We as a com­mu­nity, need to start sug­gest­ing what we would like them to change about their cur­rent papers rather than ask­ing them to match paper that is ori­ented to a com­pletely dif­fer­ent process. These three papers are derived from exactly that, all three com­pa­nies lis­tened to the cries of those tired of RC semi-gloss or lus­ter papers. The papers they pro­duced are a tremen­dous accom­plish­ment for the first gen­er­a­tion of a new prod­uct, remem­ber these papers are first generation.

If you are tired of the plas­tic feel of the tra­di­tional Lus­ter or Semi-Gloss inkjet papers then the intro­duc­tion of these papers is just for you. I per­son­ally like to think the dif­fer­ence of these new papers to Resin-Coated inkjet Lus­ter papers, is a close com­par­i­son to that of Resin-Coated vs. Fiber-based paper in the B&W dark­room. The idea or con­cept of find­ing a paper that works with the look and feel that you are try­ing to find, to cre­ate the aes­thetic in your artwork/photography is finally back. These papers as you will read are very close in the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions, how­ever, you will find each one has unique ben­e­fits to the end-user. It is up to you to decide which of these tech­ni­cal fac­tors you care about in your imagery.

[…]

These three papers are truly com­pli­men­tary in my opin­ion, as every user will be look­ing for one of the unique char­ac­ter­is­tics of each paper. You will always here reviews of inkjet paper where peo­ple bash papers with infor­ma­tion that is more about per­sonal pref­er­ences then true qual­ity or paper issues. These papers are clearly close in tech­ni­cal qual­i­ties and the real ques­tion lies in “What is your pref­er­ence or feel­ing you are try­ing to pro­voke in your imagery?” We have finally returned back to the idea of which paper should I use to pro­voke the feel­ing and qual­ity I am try­ing to por­tray in my artwork/photographs. In clos­ing, do your­self a favor and try all three papers to see the unique qual­i­ties for your­self and do not lis­ten to all the hype from all of the reviews. Each of these papers is unique and you may find, as I have, that you may have dif­fer­ent uses for each of these papers.

The tough­est part of get­ting these papers to cre­ate beau­ti­ful inkjet prints, is the twid­dling of our thumbs as we wait for these papers to be avail­able on a reg­u­lar basis. [Books­mart Stu­dio]

I’ve been look­ing for sam­ples of these papers since I first heard about them a few months ago. The demand for them is so high among pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­phers that they are all very hard to find except in the 44″ rolls used by the largest high-volume Epson printers.

I man­aged to located a pack of 8.5×11 sheets of the Innova F-Type Gloss, and a two-sheet sam­ple of the Hah­ne­muhle Fine Art Pearl. I also have a pack of the Crane Sil­ver Rag en route, and should be able to try it early next week. Both the Innova and Crane paper were ordered from Jim Doyle at Shades of Paper.

I was quite pleased with the Innova and Hah­ne­muhle papers, although obvi­ously my test­ing of Fine Art Pearl was pretty lim­ited with only two sheets avail­able. Within that lim­ited test­ing I saw very lit­tle dif­fer­ence between the two. The Innova paper was just a hair warmer, and the man­u­fac­tur­ing qual­ity seemed a bit lower. The F-Type Gloss pack I got has sliv­ers of loose paper all along the edges, as if the sheets were cut with a dull blade. This doesn’t affect the print qual­ity, but I do have to care­fully remove the sliv­ers from each sheet before use to ensure that they don’t come off inside my printer and ruin the next print.

Both papers are very impres­sive (even with the man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lem), and I would gladly buy more of them–if only I could find them in stock. In fact, I already have a photo that needs to be printed at 11×17 or 13×19 on one of these new papers to look its best.