Posts from — April 2005

The Middleman:
A Special Investigation
Asher Karni was “a genius” in South Africa’s military electronics trade. Now he’s in jail in Brooklyn, accused of orchestrating a nuclear black market deal.

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the stories are always good, but now mother jones…. does moveabletype. let’s all remember to visit mount olive and pay our respects to the inspiration.

Salt Lake Tribune – Salt Lake Tribune Home Page
:
Male students, faculty and staff strapped on pumps, sling-backs, uppers, wedges, pumps and thong sandals to “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes.”
In observance of national Sexual Assault Awareness Month, USU’s Sexual Assault and Anti-Violence Information office hosted the comical spectacle on the Logan campus Wednesday to raise awareness and money for campus sexual-assault education-prevention efforts, according to coordinator Rachel Hickman.

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while… i… would… probably not do it(i don’t even like heels on my boots) i’m 5′9″ and happy with it. I think this is the sort of empathizing system that helps in some respect.

Book review: It Can’t Happen Here | Needlenose:
The temptation in reviewing a book like Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here is to look for similarities between his fictional fascist takeover of the U.S. in the 1930s by demagogue Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip and his “The American State Corporate State and Patriotic Party,” aka the “Corpos,” and the current reactionary efforts to ‘turn back the clock’ on freedom, liberty and progress in the U.S.; that is certainly why I first picked it up.

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this sounds like a good read… i’ll nab it from the library.

Nice hackers:
Hacker Highschool – to create nice hackers (according to Dagbladet.no)…

i wonder…. given that knowledge can be used for almost any purpose, good or evil, how they indoctrinate goodness?

Cooking HOWTO roundup:

• How to cut vegetables
• How to choose a cut of meat
• How to chill wine fast

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this is worth noting….

Secret Service visits art show at Columbia :
Secret Service spokesman Brandon Bridgeforth said he couldn’t go into specifics about last week’s visit.

“We are doing some inquiries into the art exhibit. We’re just doing some looking into it,” Bridgeforth said.

Columbia College spokeswoman Micki Leventhal said agents were responding to citizen complaints about the artwork, which received some pre-show publicity in Chicago media.

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yep, they should have done this right, but no…. they had to make a scene.

Andrea Dworkin Has Died:
I received word this morning&mdash; from Doug Henwood, Carol Queen, and Rachel Kramer Bussel&mdash; that Andrea Dworkin has died. She was 59. Her partner John Stoltenberg found her near death in the morning, and she passed away around eight in the morning.
There is nothing about Dworkin’s death in the news yet, and unless this is a elaborate hoax, I bet we will hear a lot more details by the morning. I knew she had&nbsp; been ill for some time, but she was notoriously private about her health problems. I don’t know how bad or incapacitating her condition was. Most of us who&rsquo;ve seen her in person in the past couple years saw her move about in obvious pain and disability.&nbsp; It wasn&rsquo;t just physical, either. After her father died seven years ago, she had what could only be described as a nervous breakdown.

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this is the passing of someone that tried to change things for the better, and for that, she should be remembered.

Economy of Scales: iControl for GarageBand:
M-Audio’s new iControl (info in German at M-Audio; English analysis at createdigitalmusic) is hardware for controlling Apple’s GarageBand music software. It’s designed just for GarageBand, down to the fake wood-paneled sides of Apple’s interface. Buttons let you set up playback and recording, a big jog wheel and transport controls lets you move around your song with ease, and physical knobs control track volume. Best of all, you can adjust individual track parameters like effects via custom buttons. It’s all plug-and-play: connect via USB and GarageBand recognizes the device, no drivers required (thanks to USB class-compliance). Control surfaces have been tightly integrated with applications like this before, but usually on high-end boxes: M-Audio scores a first for an entry-level music interface. Expect a US price under $200.
What does this mean for the leaked Asteroid information that launched legal action by Apple? Not much: the Asteroid was an audio interface, whereas this box is just for control, not audio. That said, check the uncanny similarity to a user-created mockup of a GarageBand control surface posted here on Gizmodo during the flurry of Asteroid activity in November.
createdigitalmusic’s Peter Kirn reports this week on hot new gear from Germany’s Musikmesse conference; Europe’s major music technology show.
Update: The English page is up now: Product Page [m-audio]

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i think… that i will try to get one of these.

Save search results in 10.3:
I don’t know if everyone knows this, but it wasn’t documented as a shortcut in the Finder menu bar … pressing Command-T while doing a search from the Finder’s toolbar, or after finishing a search, the Finder will create a f…
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wow… i wish i knew this before.

Craigslist housing + Google Maps = brilliant:

Wow, this is cool. You can choose any city that Craigslist covers, sort by price range and see all of the places for rent in the city. If you click on a bubble, you can see the details including pictures. Sooo soo cool. I wish i would’ve had this when i was surfing for housing. *This* is how visualization becomes excessively useful.

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yes… this is very cool.