Randall Stross writes that the iPhone itself is largely responsible for faults commonly blamed on AT&T's 3G network. The story, published by the New York Times, offers AT&T consultants as sources, and doesn't address the fact that only users in the U.S. (where AT&T is the sole carrier) report the chronic issues at hand. One could say that Gruber delivers a killing blow, but Stross' piece is quite daft, so it's more like a sanity insurance policy to ensure it never attains life. Photo: Mike Boylan. (via)

krou writes "A new study by a team from Rutgers and Columbia has discovered that poorer children are more likely to be given powerful antipsychotic drugs. According to the NY Times (login required), 'children covered by Medicaid are given powerful antipsychotic medicines at a rate four times higher than children whose parents have private insurance. And the Medicaid children are more likely to receive the drugs for less severe conditions than their middle-class counterparts.' It raises the question: 'Do too many children from poor families receive powerful psychiatric drugs not because they actually need them — but because it is deemed the most efficient and cost-effective way to control problems that may be handled much differently for middle-class children?' Two possible explanations are offered: 'insurance reimbursements, as Medicaid often pays much less for counseling and therapy than private insurers do', and because of 'the challenges that families in poverty may have in consistently attending counseling or therapy sessions, even when such help is available'. The study is due to be published next year in the journal Health Affairs." The full article is available behind a paywall from the first link. The lead author of the study said he "did not have clear evidence to form an opinion on whether or not children on Medicaid were being overtreated."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This neat video about "Radio Hams" from 1939 has recently been circulating on the ham email lists. It's neat to see the excitement and sense of adventure that people had for hacks or "kinks" as they called it way back when...

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Brandon has been doing some research into the manufacturing and design of a custom Daft Punk helmet. He points out this great build log on the project from Volpin Props:

Part one shows the process of creating the basic form out of cardboard, expanding foam, clay and other materials.

In part two, the process of making a mold of the original is detailed.

The Q & A edition is a response to a number of the questions fielded about the project and details a number of features of the electronics.

There is a lot to like here. If you've made an excellent object and want to have more, then check out Adam Savage's moldmaking primer from MAKE, Volume 08.

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jamie passes along a Newsfactor piece that begins "In a not-uncommon development for the social-networking leader, Facebook's recently released privacy controls are leaving the company a bit red-faced. As a result of a new policy that by default makes users' profiles, photos, and friends lists available on the Web, almost 300 personal photos of founder Mark Zuckerberg became publicly available, a development that had gossip sites like Gawker yukking it up."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hubert.lepicki writes "I use Google all the time. I keep two GMail tabs open when I'm online (one is private, another is a corporate account), I use Google search, and recently I switched to the Chromium browser. Google's services are fast, easy to use and usually reliable. At the same time, I know Google is tracking everything I do; I can see it in search results or their ads on web pages, which tend to match my interests. After the recent post by Mozilla's community director suggesting Bing has a better privacy policy (a response to questionable comments from Google CEO Eric Schmidt), I started to... 'google' ways of keeping my private data safe while browsing and using Google services. The results weren't very helpful, so I ask you, Slashdotters: how do I stay anonymous to Google while using their services?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter based in New York.)

I heard some good records this year, but one stands out for the way it compelled me to listen over and over: Cuban pianist Omar Sosa's Across the Divide: A Tale of Rhythm & Ancestry.

I don't listen to all that much recorded music, though you wouldn't know it from the way my apartment is bulging with recorded music in every format known to man or woman. About an hour a day, usually, not counting my work, which entails studying music. I prefer my music live, in the presence of other people hearing it with me. And if I play a recording, I listen to it. I don't play recorded music while I'm doing something else, unless it's a routine task.

I must have thousands of CDs, but there are about thirty I play repeatedly--my comfort records, so to speak. By which I mean, when I want to relax with an old friend, I put this one on. My idiosyncratic, impulsively personal selection goes beyond the constant parade of r&b and salsa oldies on my computer to albums that have an arc, an identity, and a context of their own.

João Bosco's Zona de Fronteira. Big Sam's Funky Nation. Lecuona plays Lecuona. Alicia de Larrocha plays Albéniz's Iberia, though I wish I could hear a ripping new interpretation of it with close miking. Everything by Dr. John, and Coco Robicheaux's Spiritland. Cash Money Greatest Hits. George Clinton's T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M (The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mother Ship), and another acronymic title, Miles Davis's E.S.P., King Tubby. Boukman Eksperyans's Kalfou Danjere. Terry Allen, Joe Ely. And my favorite Christmas record of all time (because it doesn't sound like a "Christmas record"), El Gran Combo's Nuestra Música. And, previously, one record by Omar Sosa, the elaborate, African-orchestral Afreecanos (2008).

Sosa's Across the Divide was my only new comfort record this year. It's a powerful, spiritual record that features Tim Eriksen, who sings traditional Anglo-American ballads with musicality and soul, and plays a nice banjo too.

Superficially, it resembles one of those mash-ups of legacy singing voices with new tracks (of which, Little Axe's underappreciated 1995 release The Wolf That House Built, is the best I've heard.) But this is not a mash-up; it was recorded live on stage at New York's Blue Note jazz club, together with the singer. It's on the Blue Note's label, Half Note; the album's producer, Jeffrey Levenson, also contributed first-rate liner notes.

It's not a bunch of overdubs stacked up over programming. I saw Sosa's group in April, with Eriksen, and I'm here to tell you they played it live, including the Langston Hughes samples that Sosa triggered from the piano.

The samples figure in the album's first cut, "Promised Land," Sosa's setting of an 18^th-century Welsh hymn in Eriksen's repertoire. (You can read more about Sosa and Eriksen's collaboration here.) Recalling the free blacks who emigrated from Seville to the Americas (negros curros, they were called in Cuba), Hughes speaks from beyond the grave, the way ancestors do: "By the early 1500s black explorers were coming to the New World. They came as explorers." A trailing echo underscores the word: explorers... and Eriksen's voice returns.

There's something going on here besides a Cuban piano virtuoso with a band to match. The music proposes the paradox of hemispheric history. Sosa is telling a story, or maybe it would be better to say he's exploring a question through music, not only across the divide of black and white, but also of two great musical-cultural regions of the New World - the former empires of England and Spain, with their distinct associated African legacies. Eriksen's banjo is in the "white" tradition, but the banjo is an African-descended instrument. The album's standout, "Gabriel's Trumpet," passes the goosebumps test. But more than that--it begins with just banjo and maraca. Which sounds good, but then you think: wait a minute, I've never heard these two instruments playing together before. And you haven't, because they come from different traditions. The banjo is as absent from the folk music of Cuba as the maraca is from black music in the United States. Moreover, they come from different parts of Africa (more about that in my book Cuba and Its Music.)

Tonight, Omar Sosa is playing with his group in Nairobi. On December 16^th, he'll be in Mauritius.

Next time: Principles of Postmamboism, and continuing excerpts from The Year Before The Flood.

---

azoblue writes "Daniel Reetz did not want to lug around heavy textbooks, so he built a book scanner to create digital copies. '... over three days, and for about $300, he lashed together two lights, two Canon Powershot A590 cameras, a few pieces of acrylic and some chunks of wood to create a book scanner that's fast enough to scan a 400-page book in about 20 minutes (PDF). To use it, he simply loads in a book and presses a button, then turns the page and presses the button again. Each press of the button captures two pages, and when he's done, software on Reetz's computer converts the book into a PDF file. The Reetz DIY book scanner isn't automated — you still need to stand by it to turn the pages. But it's fast and inexpensive.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

dumuzi writes "Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society. The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. In nature, bacteria live in large colonies whose numbers may reach up to 100 times the number of people on earth. Many bacteria respond to extreme stress — such as starvation, poisoning and irradiation — by creating spores. Alternately the bacteria may 'choose' to enter a state called competence where they are able to absorb the nutrients from their newly deceased comrades. 'Each bacterium in the colony communicates via chemical messages and performs a sophisticated decision making process using a specialized network of genes and proteins. Modeling this complex interplay of genes and proteins by the bacteria enabled the scientists to assess the pros and cons of different choices in game theory. It pays for the individual cell to take the risk and escape into competence only if it notices that the majority of the cells decide to sporulate,' explained Onuchic. 'But if this is the case, it should not take this chance because most of the other cells might reach the same conclusion and escape from sporulation.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

curtS writes "The Economist's tech editor reviews the ever-more-detailed assistance of mobile GPS devices, and wonders if the attention-sucking visual complexity isn't more trouble than it's worth. He contrasts the simplicity of London's Underground map (not directionally accurate but visually easy to understand) and his own habit of dimming the display and using the audio commands for guidance."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jamie sends in a blog post from MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius calling for help to "save MySQL from Oracle's clutches." While the US DoJ approved Oracle's purchase of Sun back in August, the European Commission has been less forthcoming. Widenius points out that Oracle has been using their customers to put pressure on the EC, and he questions Oracle's commitment to MySQL, saying their vague promises aren't good enough. He writes: "Oracle has NOT promised (as far as I know and certainly not in a legally binding manner): To keep (all of) MySQL under an open source license; Not to add closed source parts, modules or required tools; To not raise MySQL license or MySQL support prices; To release new MySQL versions in a regular and timely manner; To continue with dual licensing and always provide affordable commercial licenses to MySQL to those who needs them (to storage vendors and application vendors) or provide MySQL under a more permissive license; To develop MySQL as an Open Source project; To actively work with the community; Apply submitted patches in a timely manner; To not discriminate patches that make MySQL compete more with Oracle's other products; To ensure that MySQL is improved also in manners that make it compete even more with Oracle's main offering."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Observer reports that an estimated $352bn of drug and mafia money was laundered by the major banks at the peak of the credit crunch, while regulators turned a blind eye, since the highly liquid criminal underworld was the only source of the cash necessary to keep the banks' doors open. As Charlie Stross notes, "A third of a trillion dollars is a lot of money; it's enough to fund the US military invading another country halfway around the world, or a manned Mars exploration program." Charlie goes on to mention that now that these narcobucks "aren't neatly bundled up inside the mattress any more; they're in the system," that there's $0.3 trillion sitting there, nice and legal, entering the investment world.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result...

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was," he said.

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

(Image: Money, Money, Money, a Creative Commons Attribution image from borman818's photostream)

Santa Claus was prevented from giving presents to the imprisoned children of asylum seekers at the notorious Yarl's Wood detention centre by private security guards. Yarl's Wood is a privately run prison whose inmates are UK immigrants who arrived seeking asylum, but whose claims have been denied. They are dragged out of bed in the dead of night and stuck in mesh-windowed vans without their belongings and without the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones, and then detained in terrible conditions that have been decried by human rights advocates, doctors, psychiatrists and other experts. Their "crime" is trying to escape torture, privation, and disaster.

The rent-a-cops at Yarl's Wood told the Anglican church's leading expert on Father Christmas (dressed in a Santa costume) that he couldn't enter the centre to give the children presents. They also blocked the canon theologian at Westminster Abbey. Then they cancelled a later scheduled visit with detained families at the centre.

And the whole mess is on video.

But when the Anglican church's leading expert on Father Christmas, dressed as St Nicholas himself, arrived with one of Britain's most distinguished clerics to distribute presents to children held at the Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedfordshire, things took a turn straight out of Dickens.

An unedifying standoff developed that saw the security personnel who guard the perimeter fence prevent St Nicholas, the patron saint of children and the imprisoned, from delivering £300 worth of presents donated by congregations of several London churches.

In a red robe and long white beard, clutching a bishop's mitre and crook, St Nick - in real life, the Rev Canon James Rosenthal, a world authority on St Nicholas of Myra, the inspiration for Father Christmas - gently protested that he was not a security threat, but to no avail.

Then as St Nicholas, accompanied by the Rev Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, canon theologian at Westminster Abbey, attempted to bless the gifts, the increasingly angry security guards called the police. The resulting ill-tempered and surreal impasse between church and state was videotaped by asylum seeker support groups and could become an internet viral hit.

Anglican 'Santa' barred from giving gifts to children at detainee centre

An anonymous reader sends along this quote from New Scientist: "Google's web services may be considered cutting edge, but they run in warehouses filled with conventional computers. Now the search giant has revealed it is investigating the use of quantum computers to run its next generation of faster applications. Writing on Google's research blog this week, Hartmut Neven, head of its image recognition team, reveals that the Californian firm has for three years been quietly developing a quantum computer that can identify particular objects in a database of stills or video (PDF). Google has been doing this, Neven says, with D-Wave, a Canadian firm that has developed an on-chip array of quantum bits — or qubits — encoded in magnetically coupled superconducting loops."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A group of Belgian university students from the Expertise centre for Digital Media (EDM) at Hasselt University created the Twoddler: a Fisher-Price busy-board connected to an Arduino that transmits toddlers' play into reassuring tweets for their parents (it's a real project, but the idea is a gag, no one really thinks that parents need to have "Jimmy hit the red button" tweeted to them) (this last to pre-empt the inevitable humorless comments about how this is emblematic of some kind of crisis in parenting).

Twoddler: Twittering Toddlers from Bart Swennen on Vimeo.

I am a toddler and want my mommy and daddy to know how I am doing while in nursery. They are so busy, but are thinking of me all the time. I want to let them know I am also thinking about them. I can't phone them, I can't mail them and I can't write letters, but I CAN twitter! They love to feel my presence and know that I am active. And that's not all: I can also twoddler with my friends; we have our own way of communicating that is way cooler than sending text messages. We are showing off what we are doing with our activity boards. When I play, my friends can see this! The best thing is: it doesn't have to make sense, no stupid boring grown-up logic -- just playing!

Twoddler: Twittering Toddlers (Thanks, JP!)

Last week, I wrote about Carl Malamud's upcoming testimony on the need to free America's governmental video archives for public consumption. This material is all in the public domain, but the government sells it through retail partners, to the taxpayers who funded its production. Carl is trying to convince them to free the video you paid for for your use. He wants to go into his testimony with some impressive viewership numbers to demonstrate the lurking desire for this video.

So Carl's pitch is simple: Watch some awesome public domain videos and do good for the world.

Now, Carl Malamud sez, "In preparation for my testimony on the future of the National Archives before the House Oversight Committee, we forked out another $461 and uploaded 28 more government videos. I'm trying to show that people care about this stuff, so I'll report the total number of views to the Congress. This batch has some amazing stuff. In addition to the Bob Hope Christmas Special, there are documentaries about the Manhattan Rhythm Kings, the Cambodian Royal Ballet, and James Audubon. If you're into spooks, don't miss the CIA's True Stories, a special on Mind Control and Hallucination, and KGB Connections."

Watch the public domain on YouTube.

Watch the public domain on the Internet Archive. (Thanks, Carl!)

A story at the BBC notes increasing pressure from the European Commission to set standards that would limit the maximum volume on portable MP3 players. Their reasoning is that it would protect users from damaging their hearing after listening to loud music for extended periods. Quoting: "This follows a report last year warning that up to 10m people in the EU face permanent hearing loss from listening to loud music for prolonged periods. EU experts want the default maximum setting to be 85 decibels, according to BBC One's Politics Show. Users would be able to override this setting to reach a top limit of 100 decibels. ... Some personal players examined in testing facilities have been found to reach 120 decibels, the equivalent of a jet taking off, and no safety default level currently applies, although manufacturers are obliged to print information about risks in the instruction manuals. Modern personal players are seen as more dangerous than stationary players or old-fashioned cassette or disk players because they can store hours of music and are often listened to while in traffic with the volume very high to drown out outside noise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Interesting mind stretching video with Kevin Kelly... via Kottke-

I'm interested in how people personally decide to refuse a technology. I'm interested in that process, because I think that will happen more and more as the number of technologies keep increasing. The only way we can sort our identity is by not using technology. We're used to be that you define yourself by what you use now. You define yourself by what you don't use.

What don't you use? For me, it's not so much as a refusal, perhaps I am just starting to optimize. I don't drive or have a car any longer, no TV, TiVo-like device, DVD player, land line or AM/FM radio, recently deleted accounts on most social networks that were value-negative. Removed all Office tools and replaced them with open source versions. "Voicemail" is no longer voice, it's text that is transcribed. Oh, I actually do refuse one thing, a microwave - have one, don't use, don't like it.

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in News from the Future | Digg this!

azoblue writes with news that following MySpace's acquisition and shutdown of imeem, independent artists who sold their music through imeem's Snocap music storefronts (on MySpace and other sites) won't be paid what's owed them. More than 110,000 artists are believed to be affected. The crux of the problem is that MySpace acquired only a certain portion of the assets that were imeem — "the domain name and certain technology and trademarks" — and not imeem’s outstanding debts, including the money imeem owed to artists under the Snocap relationship. According to the article, some artists have been owed money for more than a year. "Napster creator Shawn Fanning co-founded Snocap in 2002 to let artists sell their music through an embeddable storefront widget. At one point, the service was marketed as the exclusive way for artists to sell music on MySpace. Imeem bought Snocap last summer. But because MySpace left most aspects of Snocap out of its acquisition of imeem’s assets, all 110,000 or so of those storefronts are gone. The server that hosts them is offline and so is the Snocap website."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "A new model suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was filled in a gigantic flood some 5.3 million years ago. According to Daniel Garcia-Castellanos' paper in Nature, the sill at the Straight of Gibraltar gave way rather suddenly, with 40 cm of rock eroding and the water level rising by 10 m per day at its peak. They imagine a shallow, fast-moving stream of water (around 100 km/hr) several kilometers wide pouring into the basin with a flow greater than a thousand Amazon rivers — that's about 100,000,000 cubic meters per second." The flood would have dropped worldwide sea levels by 9.5 meters, probably triggering climate changes. In this model the Mediterranean filled in anywhere from a few months to two years at the outside.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

alphadogg, as is his wont, sends in a Network World piece on the resurgent rumors of a Google Phone. "Google has handed out a new mobile phone running its Android software to some employees, stirring another wave of speculation that the oft-rumored Google Phone is real. In a blog post on Saturday morning, Google said the phones are being distributed so that workers can experiment with new mobile features. It did not say the device will be a Google-branded phone. Since even before Google unveiled Android, onlookers have wondered whether the search giant will release its own phone. Instead, it released an open source operating system that other hardware vendors can use to make phones."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Tim Ellis sez, "Completely inexcusable 'transparency' from the FDIC, releasing hundreds of totally blacked-out docs in response to a Freedom of Information Act request about the closure of Washington Mutual. 'An unprecedented level of openness in Government' indeed."

On the plus side, at least one agency in the Administrative branch knows how to redact a document.

Both agencies have declined repeated requests to answer questions about how they decided to close WaMu. WaMu is just one of 155 financial institutions closed since the housing crisis got under way in 2008, including six closed so far this month.

Under FOIA, agencies are required by law to provide information within 20 days.

The FDIC has offered several explanations for the delay, most often citing its workload. A lot of banks have failed since the onset of the financial crisis, they said. "We're drowning in paperwork," one of the agency's FOIA officers said.

The fight for WaMu documents (Thanks, Tim!)

Gareth Branwyn from Make Magazine sez, "Phil Torrone has posted his monstrously magnificent annual open source hardware guide for 2009. It includes over 125 projects in 19 categories." Wa-hey -- electric open source menorah!

MakerBot is an affordable, open source 3D printer. It makes almost anything up to 4" x 4" x 6" using ABD plastic. Price: $750 and up

Open source hardware 2009 - The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009 (Thanks, Gareth!)

Perhaps you've followed the great armed Goldman-Sachs Banker story here, but if not, a quick recap: first, a Bloomberg columnist wrote an unsourced report alleging that Goldman Sachs bankers in New York were arming up, getting permits to carry handguns in the event of a peasant uprising fuelled by outrage over their government-subsidized profiteering on the econopocalypse's human misery. The story had legs, and got widely reported.

Then, a Wall Street Journal reporter filed an article in which New York law enforcement repudiated the armed Goldman Sachs story, saying that there was no record of Goldman Sachs bankers getting NYC carry-permits. On this basis, the WSJ called the story a myth.

Now, a third salvo: an anonymous tipster writes in with word of a secretive, undocumented parallel handgun permitting system available to the wealthy. Essentially, a would-be gunslinger just pays a small-town sheriff somewhere in the USA to make him a "reserve" or "honorary" officer. Now he is entitled to carry all through the USA, without being subject to normal regulations, even as they pertain to ammo, or even carrying guns onto commercial, scheduled airplanes.

The anonymous tipster's point seems to be, "If you disbelieve the armed Goldman banker story because the NYPD doesn't have a record of carry permit applications, then perhaps you should reconsider, because these vampires could be legally arming up without having to go through the NYPD." Click through the jump to read the whole story.

Update: In the comments, Phanatic cites the applicable law and makes a compelling case that this theory isn't true -- or that, at least, it's overstated.

Update 2: William Gibson writes, "Ran the story past a friend at LAPD. Smart guy, and usually very clear and accurate on this sort of thing. His reaction:

'In 2004, President Bush signed into Federal LAW, the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act, formerly known as HR 218. LEOSA does empower full time sworn law enforcement officers to carry in all 50 states. This law extends to retired law enforcement officers provided certain provisos are met (i.e. regular qualification). However, with respect to "reserves" and "honorary" titles. In order for a reserve to qualify under LEOSA, they must undergo the same rigorous training and certification as a full-time sworn officer. Simply being bestowed a badge and title by some hick Sheriff will not cut it. You must then be certified by the state by undergoing hundreds of hours of training and required field time. I highly doubt most of these "gifted" individuals have done so. On the other hand, it is true that certain wealthy patrons have obtained CCWs by heavily supporting certain regimes. That is true... As a matter of fact, any hick sheriff can give out a CCW that is good for his county and state. However, the CCW holder will not be able to cross state boundaries unless there is a reciprocity agreement with the other states.'

Well, they are the ones who are bogus because they don't understand how CCWs (pistol permits) operate. Let me give you some insight into CCW in restrictive places like NYC and California. The key fact is there are *two* parallel CCW systems. There's the official system, and there is a whole parallel "stealth" system which I will explain after explaining the official system. I hope you will indulge my long email to understand the ugliness of this particular area of law in the US.

In the ten "may-issue" states, which include NY, CA and 8 others, permits are handled by a local official, usually the chief of police or the county sheriff. These officials decide who gets permits, usually based on power, money and status. These permits are public records.

When the police chief of NY says, "Goldman Sachs execs aren't getting permits!" he means, they are not applying to NYPD for permits. That's not a surprise to me, because the VIP status threshold for permits in NYC (and LA and SF) is very very high, above the status of most corporate executives.

(Note that in NYC, unlike most of the US, a permit is needed to merely possess a gun, so the chief knows about all those applications. In California, no permit is needed to possess, but a permit is needed to carry, and that permit is highly restricted in urban areas.)

That's the "official" permit system.

There's also a little-known parallel permit system in place, which has substantial advantages over the "official" system.

Permits in this parallel system are not public records. They may be issued from other states. The permits themselves are *fantastic* because they let the holder possess and carry guns in all 50 states and in DC (state-issued permits are much more restricted). They also let the permit holder disregard a lot of state gun laws (things like magazine limitations, assault weapons bans, etc, which are present in California, NY and a few other states). Also, permits within this parallel system are available at lower status / dollar thresholds than within the official systems in places like NYC. In short, this parallel, stealth system is the smart way to go, with numerous advantages.

This parallel system is the result of the intersection between the various "reserve" or "honorary" officer statutes which exist in every state, and a 2004 Federal law called the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act. It's often referred to as the LEOSA, or even more commonly, HR218. In fact this parallel system was (intentionally or not) created by HR218, so it's necessary to understand this little-known law to understand the parallel permit system.

HR218 says that a law enforcement officer (as defined by the statute) can carry his gun in all 50 states and in DC, and generally is not bound by nutty state- level restrictions, like magazine capacity laws, hollow point ammo bans in NJ, that kind of thing.

Put HR218 together with all the states that have "reserve" officer programs, and you have a stealth permit-for-dollars system.

In short, what happens is this: a wealthy New Yorker, with a need to carry a gun in NY (and other states, such as when he visits NJ or DC, two places where permits are impossible) finds a financially-strapped small-town police department in some other state, like Alaska for example. The wealthy New Yorker buys the town's PD a new Crown Vic, or makes a donation of some kind.

The police chief then gives the wealthy New Yorker credentials as a "reserve" officer, which do not have any powers of arrest, or any duties, but do qualify as a "law enforcement officer" under HR218. (Remember, every state has various "reserve" officer statutes, and many states have no training requirements at all for those "reserve" officers.) At that point, the chief is happy to have a new Crown Vic, and the New Yorker is happy that he has a permit which lets him possess and carry in every state and exempts him from NY's asinine restrictions (magazine capacity and so on). And it's all "stealth": his reserve officer status is not a public record anywhere.

Given that many people can afford to donate a Crown Vic, but very few people have the VIP status and "juice" to get an official NYPD carry permit, and given that a NYPD permit is actually much more restricted than HR218-carry, you can imagine that the "official" permits in NY may be just the tip of the iceberg. The NYPD chief would have *no way* of knowing how many people are (legally) owning and carrying pistols in NYC using HR218. There is *no* central registry or database of such information. "Reserve" officer status is something which exists only in the private files of the issuing police department, which may well be a small town in Montana or Alaska or somewhere like that.

I have no idea of the actual scope of these "stealth" HR218 "permits" because they are, in fact, stealth.

So the NYPD chief's statements that Goldman Sachs execs aren't getting gun permits is baseless and probably incorrect.

There are a few other neato aspects of these HR218 permits. Because these people are "officers" they can also get letters, on department letterhead, authorizing even cooler things. Want to carry a machine pistol (like a Glock 18 or mini-Uzi) in NYC? If you can get officer status, and the right letter of authorization, from a police chief in a small town in a rural state, you probably can do it legally. Want to carry your piece *on commercial flights*? Again, get an "armed 24x7" letter from a small-town police chief, and you can carry your pistol onto commercial flights. I have no idea how common these practices may or may not be, but the legal framework is in place and it's a win-win for both parties involved.

Here in California we have a big problem with sheriffs such as Sheriff Baca operating extremely corrupt, financially-motivated CCW programs, and so some Californians have explored the idea of bypassing California's CCW law using HR218, and have posted a lot more research about this legal framework. They also want to bypass California's weird handgun restrictions ("not unsafe" handgun roster and magazine limitations). Here is the discussion thread.

The Portuguese video documents the creation of the revolting Porco Pizza, a pizza whose crust is an entire, flattened suckling pig.

Campo e Lavoura: Porco Pizza (Thanks, Rodolfo!)

Douglas sez, "Realms of Fantasy Magazine has just launched its brand-new website. It includes a .pdf of our latest issue (February 2010), available for free download. We have also created Readers Awards for fiction & art, we have brought back longtime fiction editor Shawna McCarthy's editorial column, and there are a host of other reading and visual goodies for fans of speculative literature. Lots more contents and features will be added in the coming days and weeks."

It's great to see the print sf/f magazines really starting to explore the web. I really enjoy RoF!

Realms of Fantasy Magazine (Thanks, Douglas!)

A 19-year old university student at a dance party was apparently killed by bass, after being pushed up close to speakers blasting very loud techno. Doctors say he died of sudden arrhythmic death syndrome (SADS), a heart disorder which kills 12 young people a week. (via Doug Lussenhop)

Danny Sullivan's observations on Facebook's collossal privacy/public relations flustercluck: "Is this Facebook's Microsoft Moment?" In other words, the moment people see it as having gone from benign to pretty much evil. Required background reading: the EFF's Kevin Bankston breaks down Facebook's privacy changes.

One wonders if they might have been arrested for the crime of wearing these shirts. What Not to Wear (via Jesse Dylan)

Update: Weird, the site is suddenly unavailable, as of 10pm PT, Dec. 12. Maybe it'll be available again. Sorry!

andy1307 passes on this from the NY Times: "The United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace. American and Russian officials have different interpretations of the talks so far, but the mere fact that the United States is participating represents a significant policy shift after years of rejecting Russia's overtures. Officials familiar with the talks said the Obama administration realized that more nations were developing cyberweapons and that a new approach was needed to blunt an international arms race ... While the Russians have continued to focus on treaties that may restrict weapons development, the United States is hoping to use the talks to increase international cooperation in opposing Internet crime. Strengthening defenses against Internet criminals would also strengthen defenses against any military-directed cyberattacks, the United States maintains."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In response to guest author George Hart's "Mathematically-correct breakfast" piece in last week's inaugural "Math Monday" column, the folks at Serious Eats New York wanted to know "Why should the bagel get all the geometric jollies?" So they made themselves a "Möbius doughnut." Sweet.

(The finished product is actually NOT a Möbius strip, but two interlocking rings, just like the bagel, with each half achieved via a Möbius cut.)

And Now, We Present the Mobius Doughnut

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I recall late great UT-Austin Philosophy professor Robert Solomon once saying in lecture, "We're lucky babies are so helpless, because if they had any power at all they would destroy the world." Well, Chinese artist Shi Jinsong is apparently trying to immanentize that particular eschaton by arming the world's infants with engines of destruction worthy of a Space Marine Terminator. Way to go, dude. [via Dude Craft]

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jamie found a long and painstaking piece up at The Economist asking and provisionally answering the question: "Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?" The author, who is not named, spent sevaral hours picking apart the arguments of one Willis Eschenbach, AGW denialist, who on Dec. 8 published what he called the "smoking gun" — it was supposed to prove that the adjustments climate scientists make to historical temperature records are arbitrary to the point of intentional manipulation. The conclusion: "[H]ere's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further 'smoking gun' claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story. And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job. Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This morning Matt Mullenweg announced on his blog that WordPress.com has enabled posting and reading blogs via the Twitter API. Now any Twitter app that supports a custom API URL (Tweetie is one such) can be used to either post updates to a WordPress.com blog, or to read updates from blogs to which one has subscribed. Dave Winer calls the move by Automattic, WordPress.com's parent company, "deeply insidious," and notes that 10 years ago he did a similar thing in his Manila blogging platform when the Blogger API came out. Winer opines that Automattic's move has made the Twitter API into an open standard, due to WordPress.com's large base. Winer notes (in a comment on the above-linked post), "The fun starts if they [WordPress] relax some of the limits of the Twitter API and fix some of the glaring problems."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In Iran, hundreds of men are presenting themselves as women in Hijab on their Facebook profiles to support Majid Tavakoli, a student activist who was arrested earlier this month. Authorities claim Tavakoli disguised himself as a woman to escape after delivering a speech in Tehran on Student Day.

Flour is not as innocuous as it may seem. Like other carbohydrates, it's really just a tiny chain of sugars at heart. And (as anyone who's ever made s'mores knows) sugar can light up like a dried-out Christmas Tree that's been exposed to an electrical spark. In fact, flour dust is highly explosive. Today's experiment takes advantage of the burnability of flour to create a cool fire-breathing trick.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr user pinkmoose, via CC

Not a whole lot of build info, but this looks like it would be an exciting ride! [Thanks, Star!]

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