Thursday, 14 April 2011 08:45 'San Francisco's Entertainment Commission has proposed that all bars, clubs, and venues should be required to photograph and collect ID from everyone who comes in for a drink or a show. The photos and personal information would be retained so that police could get a list of every person who was in the club on any given night. Leaving aside the (obvious) fourth amendment issues inherent in governments collecting massive databases of presumed-innocent people's lawful activities and movements, this is also a security nightmare, in which thousands of club staff and their friends would have access to personal information that would be of great interest to stalkers, creeps and identity thieves.' Read more: San Francisco to Require ID Scans, Photos of Everyone Who Goes to a Venue Well, people should simply refuse to give any information and if that means they can't get into a 'venue' for a while, then fine. What is more important, going to 'venues' or basic human freedom? If people didn't give the information and therefore left the 'venues' empty they would have to drop the policy. Don't moan and do it anyway - make a statement. Thursday, 14 April 2011 08:39 'The headline in yesterday’s USA Today read “The World to the Rescue.” It was followed by the sub-headline, “Japan crisis showcases social media’s muscle.” When I saw this, I immediately thought that the nuclear crisis was under control and folks were using the Internet to help the island country recover. The story said, “Japan’s disaster has spotlighted the critical role that social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, You Tube and Skype increasingly are playing in responses to crises around the world. They may have been designed largely for online socializing and fun, but such sites and others have empowered people caught up in crises and others wanting to help to share vivid, unfiltered images, audio and text reports before governments or more traditional media can do so".' Thursday, 14 April 2011 08:26 'By simply utilizing what nature has to offer in terms of water, scientists from Stanford University have developed an effective way to generate electricity naturally and without causing pollution. Yi Cui, associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford, and his colleagues have developed a system that generates electricity using electrodes and a combination of freshwater and saltwater -- and nothing more. The process involves the utilization of ions found naturally in saltwater, as well as those generated by electrodes submerged in water. A positive and negative electrode pair are first used to charge freshwater with ions, which is then drained and replaced with saltwater. The saltwater, which is naturally up to 100 times more ionic than the freshwater, increases the voltage causes a net gain in electricity. This electricity is then captured and stored in large batteries.' Read more: Scientists Successfully Generate Electricity Using Freshwater and Saltwater Thursday, 14 April 2011 08:12 'A mugger confronts a business man walking down the street, flashing a sharp knife. "Give me all your money. I've got kids to feed," he insists. The business man calmly responds, "Well that's not fair, I've got kids to feed, too." Momentarily flummoxed, the mugger works out a bit of math and retorts, "Okay, I'm gonna take a balanced approach with you. Just give me HALF of all your money, and we'll call it even." Such is the logic of the Obama administration, which now absurdly proposes that spending America into a total debt collapse is somehow a "balanced approach." Sure, it is balanced in the same way that a man walking a tightrope strung 35 stories above the city street, carrying two suitcases stuffed with hundreds of pounds of T-bills, with strong winds and a forecast of an approaching hail storm is also "balanced".' Read more: The False Prophet of Obama and his Ministry of Economic Voodoo
Thursday, 14 April 2011
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