Homeland Security.
Since there are no checks for guns leaving the
terminal, you have to assume this was to be used inside the terminal.
Machine
gun found in terminal at JFK Airport
The discovery of a
machine gun at one of JFK's largest terminals is raising a lot of
questions at this hour. Of chief concern is whose gun is it and how
did it get past security?
Earlier Thursday, a
Mac-11, subcompact machine pistol was found inside a
closet during renovation work at Terminal One, an
international terminal used by Air France, Turkish Airlines, Korean
Air and others.
At a mere 524 pages,
I'm sure I'll memorize it. (Something for my Homeland Security
students)
Newly
Declassified Documents Show How the Surveillance State was Born
Almost no one
noticed when the book was quietly released this summer. It has
perhaps the most benumbing title in publishing history. Yet inside
this volume of previously confidential legal opinions is the story of
how the surveillance state grew into a monster.
… They are found in a volume of 66 previously confidential legal
opinions, issued between 1934 and 1976, that the Justice Department’s
Office
of Legal Counsel (OLC) released over the summer. Bearing a title
that is wonky even by Washington standards,1
the book nevertheless is riveting reading, amounting to a secret
history of the rise of the national security leviathan. But just as
the book shows how that apparatus has been built up, it also tells a
second story: of how public outrage, loud and sustained, can tear it
back down.
[Book
title: Supplemental Opinions of the Office of Legal
Counsel of the United States Department of Justice Consisting of
Selected Memorandum Opinions Advising the President of the United
States, the Attorney General, and Other Executive Officers of the
Federal Government in Relation to Their Official Duties.
http://www.justice.gov/olc/docs/op-olc-supp.pdf
Uh oh, he looks angry.
Ready the tasers! Would this work on those so divorced from reality
that they are merely doing what the voices tell them to?
Surveillance
AI Is Learning To Interpret Human Behavior
As a concept,
autonomous behavior analysis makes facial and body recognition seem
quaint. Think about it: in the latter situation, the machine merely
identifies you as you or at least some database version of you,
however accurate. In a situation where the computer is analyzing
your actions/movements, it’s making a deeper and arguably more
dangerous determination. In ascribing behavior to you, the program
is doing more than recalling information, but creating information.
The software is adding to the profile. This is the
difference between profiling and profile-creating, the opening of
an entire new world of fiction.
I suppose this could be
an indication that science education is failing everywhere, or proof
that a jury of one's “peers” is rather poorly defined. Mostly I
think, how did this ever get to trial?
Convicted
earthquake scientist says he can't be blamed for 309 deaths
On April 6, 2009, a 6.3
earthquake struck the Italian city of L’Aquila. The quake damaged
thousands of medieval-era buildings and killed 309 people.
Those deaths prompted
Italian prosecutors to charge six seismologists and a government
official with manslaughter on the grounds that they gave "inexact,
incomplete and contradictory information" about the mortal risks
a quake in the area would pose.
I can see the Class
Action Lawyers lining up now...
Digital
motion sickness will be the occupational disease of the 21st century
The better technology
gets, the more likely it is to give you a headache or make you throw
up. The trend is inescapable: Whether it’s videogames,
Apple’s latest mobile operating system, 3D
movies and television, or Google
Glass, a portion of the population—basically, anyone
predisposed to motion sickness—is going to spend their sunset
years, when this kind of technology is ubiquitous, in serious
discomfort.
Helping me explain US
Copyright Law to my students... Not!
Free
Sherlock Holmes: the Copyright Battle of Baker Street
Who owns Sherlock
Holmes, the world’s greatest detective? Is it the estate of Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle? Or the mysterious socialite Andrea Plunket? Or
does Sherlock Holmes belong to the public?
… “The characters
of Holmes, Watson, and others are fully established in those 50
"public-domain” stories. Under US law, this should mean that
anyone is free to create new stories about Holmes and Watson."
Klinger noted that the
ten remaining stories still in copyright will be in the public domain
after 2022, 95 years after the last one was published.
In other jurisdictions,
such as the United Kingdom and Australia, the copyright in the works
of Sherlock Holmes had expired, and the stories had fallen into the
public domain.
Interesting from an
open source intelligence, news gathering perspective. Needs lots of
work.
– Trends are a pretty
useful feature of Twitter that offer a glimpse of what people are
talking about around the world. Twitter offers trending topics for
415 places and the list on Trending Topics includes all the major
cities and countries, on an easy-to-view map, along with the
currently popular subjects.
Humor from Trending
Topics:
I'm
gonna be a Democrat for Halloween. When kids knock, I'll take half
their candy to give to kids too lazy to go trick-or-treating
Perspective. Soon, if
not already, any device will work with any media.
– Play your music on
every computer, phone, tablet and TV – online or offline. Simply
sync your music to any of your devices – your phone, tablet,
computer, and connected TV – whenever you’d like. In one
click, import all your music to MyMusicCloud from your iTunes and
Windows Media Player libraries, Dropbox, Google Drive or any folder
on your computer. Storage is free.
For my Android toting
students.
Contactive
- Free Caller ID
Identify millions of
unknown callers before you even answer the call with Contactive's
Universal Caller ID! It collects information from
your social media networks, publicly available sources,
and Contactive’s Global Directory to show who’s calling before
you even answer the call.
Our growing list of
sources include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail, Google +,
WhatsApp, Tango, Skype, Yelp, Google Places, and Contactive’s
Global Directory
(Related) Similar(?)
Apps
Caller
ID Apps For iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Nokia Devices
Compare and contrast?
It takes more than just finding the word online...
Quickly
Compare Two or More Things in Wolfram Alpha
In their 15th
anniversary blog post last week, Google
mentioned that you can now compare things by simply typing
"compare" between the things that you want to compare.
Google used the example of comparing butter with olive oil. I tried
the new function and it wasn't terribly effective beyond the basic
examples that Google provided.
Wolfram
Alpha has had a comparison function for years and it works very
well. To compare biographical information about two or more
people, just type their names into the Wolfram Alpha search field
(use commas between names). To compare other things just type them
into the search field (again, use commas to separate them) and
Wolfram Alpha will provide data for comparison. You can even compare
apples, oranges, and bananas (Wolfram Alpha will provide nutritional
information for the fruits).
One of the aspects of
Wolfram Alpha's comparison function that can be of use to students
researching the lives of famous people is the timeline comparison.
The timeline will show students where the lives of two or more people
overlap. In social studies classes the comparison function is useful
for creating a quick guide to the party affiliations of a set of
politicians. In a health class the comparison function is great for
helping students quickly see the differences in the nutritional
qualities of various foods.
Since I work at a
“Technical University,” it should be no surprise that we've
solved this problem ages ago. (You could add a line in your syllabus
requiring students to check their email, but they don't read that
either...)
Technology
and the College Generation
As a professor who
favors pop quizzes, Cedrick May is used to grimaces from students
caught unprepared. But a couple of years ago, in his class on early
American literature at the University of Texas at Arlington, he said
he noticed “horrible, pained looks” from the whole class when
they saw the questions.
He soon learned that
the students did not know he had changed the reading assignment
because they did not check their e-mail regularly, if at all.
… “Some of them
didn’t even seem to know they had a college e-mail account,” Dr.
May said.
[Try
using this: http://tweetymail.com/
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