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MATTATHIAS SCHWARTZ writes in the NY Times:
One afternoon in the spring of 2006, for reasons unknown to those who knew him, Mitchell Henderson, a seventh grader from Rochester, Minn., took a .22-caliber rifle down from a shelf in his parents’ bedroom closet and shot himself in the head. The next morning, Mitchell’s school assembled in the gym to begin mourning. His classmates created a virtual memorial on MySpace and garlanded it with remembrances. One wrote that Mitchell was “an hero to take that shot, to leave us all behind. God do we wish we could take it back...”
Someone e-mailed a clipping of Mitchell’s newspaper obituary to MyDeathSpace.com, a Web site that links to the MySpace pages of the dead. From MyDeathSpace, Mitchell’s page came to the attention of an Internet message board known as /b/ and the “trolls,” as they have come to be called, who dwell there.
/b/ is the designated “random” board of 4chan.org, a group of message boards that draws more than 200 million page views a month. A post consists of an image and a few lines of text. Almost everyone posts as “anonymous.” In effect, this makes /b/ a panopticon in reverse — nobody can see anybody, and everybody can... read more
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Eleven people were indicted Tuesday for allegedly stealing more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers, federal authorities said.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the effects of identity theft are sometimes felt by victims for years.
The indictments, which alleged that at least nine major U.S. retailers were hacked, were unsealed Tuesday in Boston, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California, prosecutors said.
It is believed to be the largest hacking case that the Justice Department has ever tried to prosecute.
Three of the defendants are from the United States; three are from Estonia; three are from Ukraine, two are from China and one is from Belarus.
The remaining individual is known only by an alias and authorities do not know where that person is.
Under the indictments, three Miami, Florida, men -- Albert "Segvec" Gonzalez, Christopher Scott and Damon Patrick Toey -- are accused of hacking into the wireless computer networks of retailers including TJX Companies, whose stores include Marshall's and T.J. Maxx, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Barnes and Noble and Sports Authority, among others. read more
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Some people look at Coney Island and see a paradise of carefree entertainment. Others see a cesspool of gritty squalor. Few are those who gaze upon its shrieking kids, grizzled wanderers and fast-talking flimflam artists and see an opportunity for engaged political discourse.
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Mark Frauenfelder writes on BoingBoing:
Freaks, a 1932 movie starring real life human marvels, is available for download at Archive.org. It stars the handsome and talented, 18-inch tall Johnny Eck (shown here in black jacket and bow-tie). I first saw Freaks when I was about 15, and when Eck came running across the screen using his hands and arms, I was dumbfounded.
From Julie Ng's review at 11th Hour:
"What always amazes me every time I watch it is its darkness, its audacity and well, the very fact that it even got released at all. Especially in the Production Code era of cinema. Despite the fact that some places did ban it and that MGM foolishly hacked out parts of it that are now lost forever, Freaks still got away with a lot, for its time." read more
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From Julie Ng's review at 11th Hour:
"What always amazes me every time I watch it is its darkness, its audacity and well, the very fact that it even got released at all. Especially in the Production Code era of cinema. Despite the fact that some places did ban it and that MGM foolishly hacked out parts of it that are now lost forever, Freaks still got away with a lot, for its time."">
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Conventional wisdom has it that CDs are selling in ever-decreasing numbers, but there's one place where business is booming: prison. A Los Angeles company called Pack Central started selling music to The USA's incarcerated in 2003, and is now doing $1 million of business every year.
Surprisingly, it's not just CDs that are popular either — 60% of the company's sales are on good old analogue cassette. Why? Because shiny silver discs are banned in many facilities, as the authorities fear that they could be used for purposes other than aural entertainment. Screws in the cassettes have to be removed for the same reason.
Pack Central's success is easy to explain — prisoners have to buy their music in physical formats because they can't download it. "I have dodged every conventional bullet that has hit most music retailers," says company owner Bob Paris. "The beauty of it is that prisoners don't have internet access and never will."
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Ask David Galenson to name the single greatest work of art from the 20th century, and he unhesitatingly answers “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso.
He can then tell you with certainty Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on, as well. His confidence in the ranking doesn’t come from a stack of degrees in art history (though he has read a lot on the subject). After all, Mr. Galenson is an economist at the University of Chicago who initially specialized in colonial America. But during the past 10 years he has turned his attention to artists and creativity, convinced that the type of economic analysis that explains the $4-plus gas at the pump can also explain the greatest artists of the last 100 or so years.
His statistical approach has led to what he says is a radically new interpretation of 20th-century art, one he is certain art historians will hate. It is based in part on how frequently an illustration of a work appears in textbooks.
“Quantification has been almost totally absent from art history,” he said. “Art historians hate markets.” read more
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Don't ask me to cite the source, but I recall Terence McKenna once suggesting that the Mayan calendar calculations might possibly have been off by two thousand years, in which case it is the year 4012 for which we need to be gearing up, not 2012. That gives us a little breathing room to finish wrapping up our affairs and stockpiling Basmati rice, peanut-butter cookies and Power Bars, and if you have a generator, the complete set of Seinfeld DVDs to help pass the time on those long, apocalyptic nights. And lately survivalists are also recommending stashing huge quantities of Benadryl in order to deal with all the new allergic reactions that the end of the world is likely to precipitate. Clearly the last thing you want to be dealing with when reality as we know it comes crashing down is a runny nose. read more
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