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Bragging Rights

Twenty-plus years ago when I was in high school, Billy Bragg's records prepared me for heartache I would face, and authority I should question, in decades to follow. And although he was not able to brace me for the future of technology and its impact on music, I'm glad Bragg is still looking out for us.

Bush Needs an Aide to Spell SAT

Back in the day there was a lot of hand-wringing on the right about how Clinton's example led to a boom in teenage blowjobs (not to mention corporate crime). I suppose that means we can now credit our President for the sharp drop in SAT scores.

And maybe a press conference where the CEO of Halliburton weepily confesses that he can't read.

WhyTheyHate.Us

I've got a new project I've set afloat called WhyTheyHate.Us -- a participatory photo project using images submitted to Flickr. The home page is a single image chosen at random from uploaded photos tagged "whytheyhateus."  The images aren't curated, edited, or censored. Anyone can contribute any image to the dialog and eventually every image will be shown in the random display. 

As it's just getting started, I'd like to encourage any Stay Free-ers to contribute some imagery and send it on to your photo-snapping friends.  The more images added, the more interesting it gets.

End Planetary Discrimination Now!

Hello I'm Charon. You might know me as Pluto's "moon." I've remained silent in the planet/not-a-planet controversy regarding Pluto, but I can remain silent no longer. The International Astronomical Union has decided to demote my life partner Pluto and take away his status as a planet. This blatant, divisive, and cruel discrimination can not stand.

Pluto and I are no strangers to controversy. Our very discovery was controversial. Percival Lowell's outer-solar system witch hunt first outed us in 1930 due to the public's panic about a supposed gravitational "influence" over Neptune. Well, now the truth is out there- our supposed "influence" on Neptune is minimal, people: minimal. Neptune is his own planet, and he lives his own life. As for us, we could live with the strange looks and being snubbed by space probes. But this time the astronomy establishment has crafted an arbitrary definition of "planet" simply to exclude Pluto. This is discrimination at its worst.

more...

MyRace

MySpace is horrible for a lot of reasons: unreliable software; ugly profile templates; fake profiles that redirect to NSFW webcam sites; talking ads(a screaming valley girl emoticon is a different kind of NSFW) and Dane Cook. And now you can add racism.

One of the reasons that the templates are so horrible is that they have to accomodate stupid animation games for a ringtone company. Take a look at the latest contest. You play the "savage" - I leave it up to you to decide whether this is more or less racist than playing a gorilla trying to hit a savage with a coconut.

Is all this enough to get me off of MySpace? Probably not. You can add "failure to make me rich and famous" to the crimes of MySpace - but I'm still optimistic.

Screencap via Liam McEneaney

To Catch a Terrorist. Or not.

The Wall Street Journal (what else?) reports that a new Israeli-developed "biometric device" may help airlines identify terrorists by their emotions.

At the heart of the system is proprietary software that draws on Israel's extensive field experience with suicide bombers and security-related interrogations. The system aims to test the responses to words, in many languages, that trigger psycho-physiological responses among people with terrorist intent.

The article continues:

The biggest challenge in commercializing Cogito is reducing false results that either implicate innocent travelers or let bad guys slip through.

In other words, in getting Cogito to work.

U.S. behavior-recognition expert Dr. Ekman... expects technology to advance even further, to devices like lasers that measure people's vital signs from a distance. Within a year, he predicts, such technology will be able to tell whether someone's "blood pressure or heart rate is significantly higher than the last 10 people" who entered an airport.

...so they'll be able to catch my mother. Now if only the robot could figure out a way to differentiate the terrorists afraid of getting caught from the people afraid of terrorists.

Anyway, this reminds me of that awesome documentary The Atomic Cafe, which, if you haven't seen it, is worth renting. By showing us the preposterous advice that the U.S. government promoted about how to stay "safe" during a nuclear attack, the film reveals a lot of similarities between the Cold War era and the current chaos.

Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'?
Biometric Device May Have the Answer
By JONATHAN KARP and LAURA MECKLER
The Wall Street Journal
August 14, 2006; Page B1

At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.

The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.

Neither the TSA nor Suspect Detection Systems Ltd., the Israeli company, will discuss the Knoxville trial, whose primary goal was to uncover the designated bad guys, not to identify threats among real travelers. They won't even say what questions were asked of travelers, though the system is generally designed to measure physical responses to hot-button questions like "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" or "Are you smuggling drugs."

The test alone signals a push for new ways to combat terrorists using technology. Authorities are convinced that beyond hunting for weapons and dangerous liquids brought on board airliners, the battle for security lies in identifying dangerous passengers.

The method isn't intended to catch specific lies, says Shabtai Shoval, chief executive of Suspect Detection Systems, the start-up business behind the technology dubbed Cogito. "What we are looking for are patterns of behavior that indicate something all terrorists have: the fear of being caught," he says.
[The Israeli-developed system combines questions and biometric measurements to determine if a passenger should undergo screening by security officials.]
The Israeli-developed system combines questions and biometric measurements to determine if a passenger should undergo screening by security officials.

Security specialists say such technology can enhance, but not replace, existing detection machines and procedures. Some independent experts who are familiar with Mr. Shoval's product say that while his technology isn't yet mature, it has potential. "You can't replicate the Israeli system exactly, but if you can incorporate its philosophy, this technology can be one element of a better solution," says Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, chief executive of Asero Worldwide consulting firm and a former senior official in Israel's security service.

To date, the TSA has more confidence in people than machines to detect suspicious behavior. A small program now is using screening officers to watch travelers for suspicious behavior. "It may be the only thing I know of that favors the human solution instead of technology," says TSA chief Kip Hawley.

The people-based program -- called Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT -- began undergoing tests at Boston's Logan Airport after 9/11 and has expanded to about a dozen airports. Trained teams watch travelers in security lines and elsewhere. They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion.

TSA officers observe passengers while consulting a list of more than 30 questionable behaviors, each of which has a numerical score. If someone scores high enough, an officer approaches the person and asks a few questions.

"All you know is there's an emotion being concealed. You have to find out why the emotion is occurring," says Paul Ekman, a San Francisco psychologist who pioneered work on facial expressions and is informally advising the TSA. "You can find out very quickly."

More than 80% of those approached are quickly dismissed, he says. The explanations for hiding emotions often are innocent: A traveler might be stressed out from work, worried about missing a flight or sad because a relative just died. If suspicions remain, the traveler is interviewed at greater length by a screener with more specialized training. SPOT teams have identified about 100 people who were trying to smuggle drugs, use fake IDs and commit other crimes, but not terrorist acts.

The TSA says that, because the program is based on human behavior, not attributes, it isn't vulnerable to racial profiling. Critics worry it still could run afoul of civil rights. "Our concern is that giving TSA screeners this kind of responsibility and discretion can result in their making decisions not based on solid criteria but on impermissible characteristics such as race," says Gregory T. Nojeim, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington legislative office.

Mr. Shoval, the Israeli entrepreneur, believes technology-based screening is the key to rolling out behavior-recognition techniques in the U.S. With experience in counter-terrorism service and the high-technology industry, Mr. Shoval developed his Cogito device with leading former Israeli intelligence officials, polygraph experts and computer-science academics.

Here is the Cogito concept: A passenger enters the booth, swipes his passport and responds in his choice of language to 15 to 20 questions generated by factors such as the location, and personal attributes like nationality, gender and age. The process takes as much as five minutes, after which the passenger is either cleared or interviewed further by a security officer.

At the heart of the system is proprietary software that draws on Israel's extensive field experience with suicide bombers and security-related interrogations. The system aims to test the responses to words, in many languages, that trigger psycho-physiological responses among people with terrorist intent.

The technology isn't geared toward detecting general nervousness: Mr. Shoval says terrorists often are trained to be cool and to conceal stress. Unlike a standard lie detector, the technology analyzes a person's answers not only in relation to his other responses but also those of a broader peer group determined by a range of security considerations. "We can recognize patterns for people with hostile agendas based on research with Palestinians, Israelis, Americans and other nationalities in Israel," Mr. Shoval says. "We haven't tried it with Chinese or Iraqis yet." In theory, the Cogito machine could be customized for specific cultures, and questions could be tailored to intelligence about a specific threat.

The biggest challenge in commercializing Cogito is reducing false results that either implicate innocent travelers or let bad guys slip through. Mr. Shoval's company has conducted about 10 trials in Israel, including tests in which control groups were given terrorist missions and tried to beat the system. In the latest Israeli trial, the system caught 85% of the role-acting terrorists, meaning that 15% got through, and incorrectly identified 8% of innocent travelers as potential threats, according to corporate marketing materials.

The company's goal is to prove it can catch at least 90% of potential saboteurs -- a 10% false-negative rate -- while inconveniencing just 4% of innocent travelers.

Mr. Shoval won a contract for the Knoxville trial in a competitive process. Next year, Israeli authorities plan to test Cogito at the country's main international airport and at checkpoints between Israel and the West Bank, where the goal will be to catch genuine security threats while testing the logistics of using the system more broadly. The latest prototype costs about $200,000 a machine.

Even though his expertise is in human observation, U.S. behavior-recognition expert Dr. Ekman says projects like Cogito deserve a shot. He expects technology to advance even further, to devices like lasers that measure people's vital signs from a distance. Within a year, he predicts, such technology will be able to tell whether someone's "blood pressure or heart rate is significantly higher than the last 10 people" who entered an airport.

With Apologies to Sparky

I have delighted in every page of Fantagraphics Books’ ambitious reprinting of The Complete Peanuts by Charles Schulz. It’s truly comforting that I can look forward to these volumes being rolled out over the next decade. As the strip rarely touched upon current events, there is a timelessness to it. But the next two books will cover the years 1961 to 1964. I wondered: Did Peanuts deal at all with the Kennedy assassination? Rather than do any actual research into the matter, I have imagined what those strips might have been like:

[Panel #1:]
LINUS: Charlie Brown, did you hear? The President’s been shot.
[Panel #2:]
No dialogue.
[Panel #3:]
CHARLIE BROWN: I’m usually a victim of character assassination.

(More after the fold.)

[Panel #1:]
SHERMY: Charlie Brown, did you hear? The President’s been shot.
[Panel #2:]
No dialogue.
[Panel #3:]
CHARLIE BROWN: I just got shot down by the Little Red-Haired Girl.
--------------------------

[Panel #1:]
SALLY: Linus, did you hear? The President’s been shot.
[Panel #2:]
No dialogue.
[Panel #3:]
LINUS: Next you’ll tell me there’s no “Great Pumpkin.”
--------------------------

[Panel #1:]
CHARLIE BROWN: Lucy, I still can’t believe that the President was shot.
[Panel #2:]
No dialogue.
[Panel #3:]
LUCY: I’d charge that Lee Harvey Oswald ten cents for psychiatric help.
--------------------------

[Panel #1:]
CHARLIE BROWN: Schroeder, please honor the President by playing “Taps.”
[Panel #2:]
Schroeder playing the piano, musical notes overhead.
[Panel #3:]
SCHROEDER: What? I thought the President would rather hear a selection by Beethoven.
--------------------------

[Panel #1:]
CHARLIE BROWN: Lucy, did you hear? Jack Ruby gunned down Oswald.
[Panel #2:]
No dialogue.
[Panel #3:]
LUCY: Wow, and I thought I was a fuss-budget!
--------------------------

[Panel #1:]
Snoopy eating, with thought bubble:
SNOOPY: In this time of national mourning…
[Panel #2:]
Snoopy eating.
[Panel #3:]
SNOOPY: It would be unpatriotic to skip suppertime.

New word coined!

Fellow word-users, rejoice! I have developed a new word to use in the following context: you wish to describe someone who habitually dances around the actual issue; someone who, as modern slang tells it, "pussyfoots" around, rather than saying what he or she means. That someone can now be described as a

GYNOPED (gy•no•ped) From Latin gyno-, vagina, + Latin ped, foot.

Enjoy.

Paris Hilton to magazine: I'm celibate

Silbert to Hilton: Join the freaking club.

Amateur anti-Gore video is by no amateur

The Wall Street Journal reports today that a spoof of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth circulating via YouTube.com is not, in fact, by some moronic amateur but by Exxon's public relations firm. The astroturfing of YouTube is bound to get more insidious, but I can't help but see this particular attempt as pretty pathetic.... if only because it's hard to take anything like this seriously in 100+ degree weather. (Yeah, the heat sucks, but I prefer to think of it as great PR for foes of global warming.)

Full article below the fold.

August 3, 2006

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Where Did That Video Spoofing Gore's Film Come From?
By ANTONIO REGALADO and DIONNE SEARCEY
August 3, 2006; Page B1

Everyone knows Al Gore stars in the global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth." But who created "Al Gore's Penguin Army," a two-minute video now playing on YouTube.com?
[penguin]
A frame from "Al Gore's Penguin Army," a video on YouTube lampooning the former vice president.

In the video, Mr. Gore appears as a sinister figure who brainwashes penguins and bores movie audiences by blaming the Mideast crisis and starlet Lindsay Lohan's shrinking waist size on global warming. Like other videos on the popular YouTube site, it has a home-made, humorous quality. The video's maker is listed as "Toutsmith," a 29-year-old who identifies himself as being from Beverly Hills in an Internet profile.

In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn't answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith's Yahoo account indicate it didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement.
VIDEO SPOOF

[See the video]1 • See the "Al Gore's Penguin Army" clip.2

Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.

A DCI Group spokesman declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video, or to explain why Toutsmith appeared to be sending email from DCI's computers. "DCI Group does not disclose the names of its clients, nor do we discuss the work that we do on our clients' behalf," says Matt Triaca, who heads DCI's media relations shop.

Dave Gardner, an Exxon spokesman, confirms that Exxon is a client of DCI. But he says Exxon had no role in creating the "Inconvenient Truth" spoof. "We, like everyone else on the planet, have seen it, but did not fund it, did not approve it, and did not know what its source was," Mr. Gardner says.

The anti-Gore video represents a less well-known side of YouTube. As its popularity has exploded, the public video-sharing site has drawn marketers looking to build buzz for new music releases and summer blockbusters. Now, it's being tapped by political operatives, public relations experts and ad agencies to sway opinions.
QUESTION OF THE DAY

[question] • Vote: How often do you watch video on your computer?3

Ogilvy & Mather, for example, says it plans to post amateur-looking videos on Web sites to spark word-of-mouth buzz about Foster's beer. (See related article4.)

For marketers and pranksters of all sorts, online video is the latest venue for tactics "they've been doing for years," says Fred Wertheimer, president of the watchdog group Democracy 21. "What we don't know is will this have any impact. In the political arena it's the great experiment right now."

Politicians and marketers already make wide use of email lists and blogs, and it has long been possible to distribute information over the Internet while disguising its origins. But Web video operates on a different level, stimulating viewers' emotions powerfully and directly. And because amusing animations with a homespun feel can be created just as easily by highly paid professionals to promote agendas as by talented amateurs, caveat emptor is more relevant than ever.

One politically charged issue has drawn dueling YouTube videos recently: whether phone giants should be able to charge Internet companies for speedier delivery of their content. One of the videos features a slide show and tinny voiceover, and takes the side of phone companies. At the end, it directs viewers to go to www.netcompetition.org, a Web site backed by AT&T Inc. and other phone and cable companies with a stake in the issue. On the other side are consumer groups, one of whose YouTube videos features musician Moby warning of the dangers of a two-tier Internet.

Mr. Wertheimer thinks videos like the Gore spoof, whose sponsorship is vague, can be disingenuous. "They're coming in under false pretenses -- under the guise of being a clever video you might be interested in," he says. For its part, AT&T says its affiliation with the group is clearly listed on netcompetition.org, just a few clicks away.

DCI is no stranger to the debate over global warming. Partly through Tech Central Station, an opinion Web site it operates, DCI has sought to raise doubts about the science of global warming and about Mr. Gore's film, placing skeptical scientists on talk-radio shows and paying them to write editorials.

Of course, Mr. Gore and his allies have also used the Internet to great advantage. To stoke interest in his film, the distributor of "An Inconvenient Truth," Paramount Classics, created its own YouTube video by cartoonist Matt Groening, creator of "The Simpsons." Called "Al Gore's Terrifying Message," the video, which features a cartoon version of Mr. Gore arguing with a robot, has had more than a million views. Paramount is identified as the source next to the video.

Meanwhile, critics of Mr. Gore have frequently sought to get their message out through conservative bloggers, talk radio and Internet news services. Marc Morano, communications chief for Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who has led opposition to climate legislation on Capitol Hill, says an Internet strategy is both effective and necessary because mainstream news organizations are "promoting the message of Gore uncritically."

Internet videos could prove particularly potent, because they may influence watchers in ways they don't realize. Nancy Snow, a communications professor at California State University, Fullerton, viewed the penguin video and calls it a lesson in "Propaganda 101." It contains no factual information, but presents a highly negative image of the former vice president, she says. The purpose of such images is to harden the views of those who already view Mr. Gore negatively, Dr. Snow says.

YouTube has an estimated 20 million viewers daily, but with thousands of videos on the site, it can be difficult for marketers to reach their audience, says Brian Reich, a consultant for Mindshare Interactive Campaigns, who helps nonprofits and political candidates learn to use YouTube and other video sites effectively. "You still have to micro-target your information and make it compelling and relevant and timely to get people to pay attention," he says.

Traffic to the penguin video, first posted on YouTube.com in May, got a boost from prominently placed sponsored links that appeared on the Google search engine when users typed in "Al Gore" or "Global Warming." The ads, which didn't indicate who had paid for them, were removed shortly after The Wall Street Journal contacted DCI Group on Tuesday.

Diana Adair, a spokeswoman for Google, says the search giant doesn't allow advertising text that "advocates against any individual, group or organization." However, the policy doesn't apply to the Web sites or videos that such ads point to. Although most advertisers want their identities known, Ms. Adair says Google will protect the identity of advertisers who want to remain anonymous, only releasing that information under a subpoena or court order.

--Jeffrey Ball contributed to this article.

Write to Antonio Regalado at antonio.regalado@wsj.com5 and Dionne Searcey at dionne.searcey@wsj.com

I bet it's making them even cuter

As the heat wave rolls on, I turn to the local TV news website to find out if there are power outages, whether the subways are running, all that stuff. But more than anything else, I really want to know one thing: how is the heat affecting cute baby animals?

Calling All Jews! Mr.Gibson Needs Our Help!

So by now all of America and her and collective cat have probably had a chuckle at Mel Gibson's booze-fueled tirade about us Jews, and how we love warmongering and whatnot-- and now he's sobered up, and, like all drunks, is feeling a mite fragile. And he wants our help.

Granted, he seemed to be asking this of Jewish leaders, but in a crazy religion like ours without a clear hirearchy (we ain't got no pope) I figure we all need to pitch in.

So, get ready to work some double shifts, Jews! I'll be pointjew for the west coast, Charles, you want to grab the east?

Grab your handpuppets, snacks, and massage rollers! We've got a job to do!