narc or g-men

Confronted with a novel and underhanded stratagem in America’s other endless war, the US Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Agency is defending its actions, which amount to the apotheosis of witness-protection. The government maintains that agencies have the right to impersonate suspected drug traffickers and cadets, using the photographs and data commandeered from any and all sources, and create a phony persona in order to lure unknown associates, since if one is accused of selling illicit drugs (this one instance covered happened before the case even went to trial) one automatically has forfeited one’s humanity and any identity would revert to the state. Not only is this the height of brutality and cowardice but it also puts the libeled stool pigeons at serious risk, in case one of the contacts trapped this way decide get revenge on the supposed betrayer.

ebola (a-licky boom boom down)

Despite the lack of a clearly defined plan to prevent more sporadic cases of Ebola occurring in Europe, there is an air of resignation that little can be done. While the Western, antiseptic world bears the guilt for not doing more to prevent the disease from becoming endemic and the real suffering and individual tragedies ought not be overshadowed by vague fears and pandering to something adjacent to godliness (something in which there’s always money), absent a direct onslaught on the inchoate epidemic, international passenger transportation should be severely curtailed.
Public health officials do not seem exactly forthcoming and are taking an apologetic, almost defensive stance for the airline industry—which would and will no doubt take a major hit, when the matter is finally forced. Screening passengers prior to departure is window-dressing at best and a farcical stab at prevention, considering that each flyer has a vested interest in avoiding detention or scrutiny. Those suspecting that they have the disease of course want to avail themselves to better treatment facilities in America or Europe and remove themselves from areas where Ebola is prevalent. They certainly do not want to be turned back or sent to a holding room for examination, undoubtedly full of sick people. Given the incubation time to become symptomatic and uncertainty (despite sworn surety) about how it is communicated, any exercise would be a post-containment one but—without hindering the delivery of supplies and the support of aid-workers in West Africa—flights ought to be grounded, and not selectively but world-wide since viruses do not respect the borders and remoteness that air-travel has also made obsolete. Restrictions, I think, ought to remain in effect until an outbreak occurring anywhere on Earth can be successfully treated on the spot and the standards (so long as that is an elevation and not healthy hegemony, a pharmacracy or a step backwards) for healthcare and sanitation that the West has are made available to everyone. Not only is it not an unreasonable dream, the costs of not doing so are quite dear.

cliché verre

Boing Boing documents the reaction of an artificial intelligence researcher when he uploaded his holiday snapshots to an new, quick photo processing service.

Depending on the size and quality of the sample, the developer will tweeze over the images as a whole in order to refine poses, lighting, smiles and focus. Further, it can create composite images that never quite happened in reality, as the IA researcher discovered, finding a picture that he as the photographer was never able to frame but achieved the imagined, desired outcome. Cliché verre refers to the rotoscoping effect one produces by adding etches and paint to a photograph. The implications are fantastic, well beyond tweaking and tuning, but also a bit chilling—as even though a photographic perspective is never really a moment committed, frozen and fixed to some media, the notion that the aesthetic sense of a clever algorithm could act as an independent studio shop, having its subjects sit and pose for pictures that never took place.  What do you think?  Would you submit your pictures to this rather surreal service, not quite sure what would come back?

average atmospherocepalic bureaucrat in the act of milking a cranial harp

A jam-maker in Spain in the late 1950s had the idea to expand to the confectionary business, after seeing a child being scolded for sticky hands from eating candy, got the idea to put a bon-bon on a stick. Investors were wary so the entrepreneur got aggressive with marketing, commissioning the renowned artist Salvador Dali to design the package’s logo in 1969. The lollipop’s original slogan was in Catalan, “És rodó i dura molt, Chupa Chups”—that is, it’s round and long-lasting. Chupar itself means to suck.

rebreather

With signature speculation and imagination, BLDGBLOG presents an interesting abstract on the implication of the peculiar properties of a cobalt-salt, which can rather horrifyingly like table-salt to slugs, suck all the oxygen out of a room. The crystal, however, is also capable of the reverse—that is timed-released of the sequestered oxygen. Learning how to harness this little trick could mean big advances it SCUBA operations—culling air from the water—and even for space exploration, as the storage medium is chemistry, rather than bulky, pressurized-containers.

fair-play or venue d’hiver

After having put the matter up to a popular vote, Norway—one of the top contenders to host the Winter Games—withdrew its bid for the 2022 Olympics.
Faced with the enormous costs for security, construction overruns, logistical demands, negative environmental impact and witnessing the hardships that the preceding host-nations have had to deal with, Oslo joined a slew of other candidates, due to public opposition, in pulling out of the competition. Now, instead of watching the Games played out in an enchanted snowy landscape of one of the Nordic countries (Stockholm was also in the running) or Kraków, St. Moritz or München, only two challengers remain: Almaty, Kazakstan and Beijing, China. To one unfortunate city go the spoils. Another major disillusioning factor is in terms of legacy and the boon that’s failed to materialize for local economies afterwards—it seems only oligarchs, cronies in capitalism, are beneficiaries of the sport—with construction, security firms and established sponsors seeing a lucrative profit out of a process that seems a bit tarnished all around. What do you think? Are big events becoming a liability rather than an honour and the stuff of shameless self-promotion and greed, for sale to the highest-bidder?