[Link...]

A Flash site showing the work of PSYOP
Have a look at Propaganda / Psyop Anthem. Beautifully made but an
utterly sinister and cynical message. Unless they’re attempting irony
of course.
It seems that they are…

Psyop, a New York-based animation and design studio named for the military jargon for mind control, steers consumer urges via TV commercials using a concise credo: persuade, change, influence. Founded over dinner in 2000 by a cadre of friends (who all happen to have broadcast design pedigrees), Psyop’s five creative partners are Marco Spier, Eben Mears, Marie Hyon, Kylie Matulick and Todd Mueller. While they consistently generate clutter-busting motion graphics and animation for blue chip clients such as VW, Intel and ESPN, Psyop’s members often co-op the tools of their trade to produce more personal and thoughtful projects.

“Clients ask us to influence the public, and we understand that very clearly,” says Mueller, “but we are coming up with an extension of the company that plays with ways of discussing sociological issues in a candy-coated way.” In an attempt to meld the vernacular of advertising with veiled political irony, Psyop glazes Chomsky-style politics with the sort of kid-luring animation normally reserved for Saturday morning breakfast cereal spots.

Also, check out their short: “Brazil” in the Archive section.

Jef Raskin is the human-computer interface expert who began the Macintosh project for Apple Computer and is the author of The Humane Interface, which in large part builds on his earlier work with the Canon Cat. Raskin received a B.S. Mathematics and B.A. in Philosophy from the State University of New York and an M.S. in Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University. As an assistant professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), he taught classes ranging from computer science to photography.

Raskin joined Apple in January 1978 as the 31st employee. He later hired his former student Bill Atkinson from UCSD to work at Apple, and began the Macintosh project. He is credited with the decision to use a one-button mouse as part of the Apple interface, a departure from the Xerox PARC standard of a three-button mouse. He has since stated that were he to redesign the interface today, he would have used a two button mouse.
Raskin designed the Canon Cat, released in 1987.

At the beginning of the new millennium, Raskin undertook the building of The Humane Environment (THE). THE is a system incarnating his concepts of the humane interface, by using open source elements within his rendition of a ZUI or Zooming User Interface.

Jef Raskin passed away peacefully on Saturday February 26th, 2005.

[Quote:]

After a spirited discussion over a photo of a girl wearing a tuxedo at Thursday’s Clay County School Board meeting, the principal’s decision to ban the picture from the Fleming Island High School yearbook stands.

Kelli Davis, 18, had her senior class photo taken in a tuxedo top and bow-tie outfit provided for boys rather than the gown-like drape and pearls provided for girls. The school’s principal decided it could not appear in the yearbook because she didn’t follow the dress code.

Kelli, a straight-A student with no discipline problems, is a self-proclaimed lesbian. She said she was uncomfortable to have her chest exposed in the photo.

“Because that’s me, you know. That represents me. The drape does not,” Davis said. “They’re not accepting me, that’s the whole reason we’re here.”

Davis denies it’s about her sexual orientation, just about a student not following the rules.

“There’s a dress code to follow — a dress code expected for senior pictures in the yearbook, and she chose not to follow them. It’s just that simple,” Clay School Superintendent David Owens said.

More than half of the 24 people who addressed the controversy supported using Davis’ picture in the yearbook, some applauding after Cindi Davis, the teen’s mother, asked the board “What is so offensive about this tiny picture?”

Cindi Davis asked the school board not only to reverse the principal’s decision on the photo, but to apologize for firing the yearbook editor, who voiced her support of publishing the photo.

While the board’s ruling will keep the photo from appearing with other senior pictures, it will appear in the yearbook. Kelli’s parents bought a two-page ad in the back of the book for $700, which will feature the picture.

[Quote:]

The Iraq war helped bring record earnings to St. Louis-based defense contractor Engineered Support Systems Inc., and new financial data show that the firm’s war-related profits have trickled down to a familiar family name – Bush.

William H.T. “Bucky” Bush, uncle of the president and youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, cashed in ESSI stock options last month with a net value of nearly half a million dollars.

[..]

William Bush, 66, a onetime St. Louis bank executive and head of an investment firm, joined the board in 2000, eight months before his nephew won the White House.

The president’s uncle said in an interview that he never used his family connections to help the company win contracts.

“I don’t make any calls to the 202 area code,” he said, referring to the long-distance dialing code for Washington.

[..]

Some of the firm’s Defense Department work has included no-bid, sole-source contracts, including a $48.8-million deal to refurbish military trailers.

[Quote:]

Hoisting her Academy Award in one hand and newly won Razzie in the other, Halle Berry reveled in a career low point.

“Omigosh, oh my God,” Berry gasped Saturday night, feigning excitement. “I never in my life thought that I would be here, winning a Razzie. It’s not like I ever aspired to be here, but thank you.”

Berry was named worst actress for 2004′s action bomb “Catwoman,” which also took the prize for worst film at the 25th annual Razzies, an Oscar spoof that trashes Hollywood’s worst.

President Bush won the worst-actor award for his appearance in news and archival footage of Michael Moore’s satiric documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was voted worst supporting-actor for “Fahrenheit 9/11,” while Britney Spears’ fleeting cameo in the documentary brought her the worst supporting-actress award.

[..]

Berry, who wore a simple black dress, explained why she showed up at the ceremony.

“When I was a kid, my mother told me that if you could not be a good loser, then there’s no way you could be a good winner,” she said.

However, she added, “I hope to God I never see these people again!”

In this undated photo supplied by Geoff Hargaddon, ‘The Sommerville Gates’ in the Somerville, Mass., apartment of Geoff Hargadon, a takeoff on Christo’s $20 million ‘The Gates’ in Central Park in New York. More than four million people visited Hargadon’s Web site after he posted this and other photos of the 13 gates installation which he constructed in his apartment from materials he bought at Home Depot for $3.50. (AP Photo/Geoff Hargadon, Handout)

[Quote:]

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

Eric Hoffer (1902 – 1983)

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Less than a year after the 41st Mersenne prime was reported (MathWorld headline news: June 1, 2004), the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) project has discovered the 42nd known Mersenne prime. The candidate prime was flagged prime by an experienced GIMPS volunteer on February 18, independently verified by Tony Reix on Feburary 25, and the exponent was reported on February 26.

Mersenne numbers are numbers of the form M_n = 2ⁿ – 1, giving the first few as 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, 63, 127, …. Interestingly, the definition of these numbers therefore means that the nth Mersenne number is simply a string of n 1s when represented in binary. For example, M₇ = 2⁷ – 1 = 127 = 1111111₂ is a Mersenne number. Mersenne primes are Mersenne numbers that are also prime, i.e., have no factors other than 1 and themselves. So, since the number 127 is prime and is a Mersenne number, it is a Mersenne prime.

The new Mersenne prime is 2^25,964,951 – 1 = 12216463006127794810…98933257280577077247 (where the ellipses indicate that several million intervening digits have being omited for conciseness) and has a whopping total of 7,816,230 decimal digits. It is therefore not only the largest known Mersenne prime, but also the largest known prime of any kind. In fact, there is a particuarly efficient and, more importantly, deterministic primality test for Mersene numbers known as the Lucas-Lehmer test. The efficiency of this test combined with the high historical profile of the Mersenne numbers thus accounts for the fact that the four largest known primes are all Mersenne primes.