“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will
eventually come to believe it.

“The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield
the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of
the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of
its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the
lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the
State.”

– Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945

[Quote:]

Kids with Cameras is a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world. We use photography to capture the imaginations of children, to empower them, building confidence, self-esteem and hope. We share their vision and voices with the world through exhibitions, books, websites and film. We are committed to furthering their general education beyond photography either by linking with local organizations to provide scholarships or by developing our own schools with a focus on leadership and the arts.

[Quote:]

If the newly elected pope wants his own website, he’ll have to talk to Rogers Cadenhead first.

The Jacksonville, Florida-based writer purchased the rights to BenedictXVI.com on April 1 — more than two-and-a-half weeks before Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger announced that he would assume the papacy under the name of Benedict XVI.

In an interview shortly after Ratzinger’s announcement Tuesday, Cadenhead said the purchase of the domain name was more of an educated guess than divine guidance.

Newly elected popes often take the names of previous popes in honor of them. So when media reports last month revealed that Pope John Paul II was in his final hours, Cadenhead worked out the possible names that the new pope might select and set out to buy those domains.

He ended up buying six in all — including ClementXV.com, InnocentXIV.com, LeoXIV.com, PaulVII.com and PiusXII.com. Some domains, like JohnPaulIII.com and JohnXXIV.com, already were taken.

[Quote:]

Television’s diet of forensic fantasy “projects the image that all cases are solvable by highly technical science, and if you offer less than that, it is viewed as reasonable doubt,” says Hoos’s boss, Peoria State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons. “The burden it places on us is overwhelming.” Prosecutors have a name for the phenomenon: “the CSI effect.”
Some of the “evidence” the CSI shows tout–using a wound to make a mold of a knife, or predicting time of death by looking at the rate at which a piece of metal might rust–is blatant hokum, experts say. But more and more, police and prosecutors are waking up to the need to cater to a jury’s heightened expectations. That means more visual cues, with PowerPoint and video presentations, and a new emphasis during testimony on why certain types of evidence haven’t been presented. If there are no fingerprints in evidence, more prosecutors are asking investigators to explain why, lest jurors take their absence as cause for doubt.

[Quote:]

A once secret plan to build a nuclear landmine ‘run’ by live chickens has gone on public display for the first time at The National Archives, Kew, as part of the acclaimed Secret State Exhibition.

Conceived during the Cold War, the seven tonne device was the size of small truck and was designed to be buried or submerged by a British Army retreating from Soviet forces. The landmine had a plutonium core surrounded by high explosive and would have been detonated by remote control or timer, causing mass destruction and contamination over a wide area to prevent subsequent enemy occupation.

Scientists working on the project realised that the bomb could fail in winter if vital components become too cold, so they explored ways of keeping the inner workings warm. One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing. Despite the potential importance of chickens to the project, the mine was codenamed ‘Blue Peacock’.

“As it turns out chickens aren’t as chicken as we thought,” said Tom O’Leary, Head of Exhibitions at The National Archives in Kew. “They knew about the foul-play and were hatching a plan to save Britain all along.”

Details of the chicken powered bomb are now on public display in Secret State, a new free exhibition about Britain’s preparations for nuclear attack during the Cold War, based on Peter Hennessy’s acclaimed book. The exhibition runs from 2 April to 31 October.

Chicken Kiev, anybody?

[Quote:]

During a White House press conference on March 16, George W. Bush was asked: “Mr. President, can you explain why you’ve approved of and expanded the practice of what’s called ‘rendition’�of transferring individuals out of U.S. custody to countries where human rights groups and your own State Department say torture is common for people under custody?”

The president: “[In] the post-9-11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. . . . One way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won’t be tortured. That’s the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture.”

Question: “As commander in chief, what is it that Uzbekistan can do in interrogating an individual that the United States can’t?”

George W. Bush repeated his talking point: “We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured.”

Actually, there is much that U.S. interrogators can learn from their counterparts in Uzbekistan on how to break down prisoners. One of the CIA’s jet planes used to render purported terrorists to other countries�where information is extracted by any means necessary�made 10 trips to Uzbekistan. In a segment of CBS’s 60 Minutes on these CIA torture missions (March 5), former British ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray told of the range of advanced techniques used by Uzbek interrogators:

“drowning and suffocation, rape was used . . . and also immersion of limbs in boiling liquid.”

Two nights later on ABC’s World News Tonight, Craig Murray told of photos he received of an Uzbek interrogation that ended with the prisoner actually being boiled to death!

Murray, appalled, had protested to the British Foreign Office in a confidential memorandum leaked to and printed in the Financial Times on October 11 of last year:

“Uzbek officials are torturing prisoners to extract information [about reported terrorist operations], which is supplied to the U.S. and passed through its Central Intelligence Agency to the U.K., says Mr. Murray.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair quickly reacted to this undiplomatic whistle-blowing. Craig Murray was removed as ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Here’s a list of the previous popes who took the name Benedict:

575-579 – Benedict I: Italian. Died in a siege of Rome during the Lombard invasions.

684-685- Benedict II: Italian. A scholar who worked to aid the poor. The patron saint of Europe.

855-858- Benedict III: Italian. Interceded in the conflicts between the sons of French leader Lothair I.

900-903 – Benedict IV: Italian. Crowned Emperor Louis III (the Blind) as Holy Roman Emperor.

964-965 – Benedict V: Italian. Abducted by Holy Roman Emperor Otto and taken to Germany, where he died.

973-974 -Benedict VI: Italian. Imprisoned and strangled by a faction of an opposing papal party.

974-983 -Benedict VII: Italian. Supported monasteries and higher learning.

1012-1024 – Benedict VIII: Italian. Faced an opposing candidate for pope and was enthroned by Henry II of Germany, whom he crowned Holy Roman Emperor. During his papacy, the Muslim Saracens attacked Europe and settled in Sicily.

1047-unknown- Benedict IX: Pope at 20 because of family connections. Was designated pope three times, forced from the papal throne twice and abdicated once. Finally deposed by Damasus II.

1058-1059 – Benedict X: Italian. Election deemed irregular because of vote-rigging, and his papacy was ruled illegitimate. Was deposed and excommunicated a year later.

1303-1304 – Benedict XI: Italian. Reigned for eight months and likely died of poison. His successor moved the papacy to Avignon, France, where it stayed for 72 years.

1334-1342 – Benedict XII: French. Before his election, he pursued heretics. As pope, he attempted to curb luxuries in monasteries and engaged in theological discussions.

1724-1730 – Benedict XIII: Italian. A strict disciplinarian who instituted reforms but was weak in international relations.

1740-1758 – Benedict XIV: Italian. Investigated the Jesuits, condemned the French playwright Voltaire and clarified rules on baptism, including forbidding forcible baptism of Jews.

1914-1922 – Benedict XV: Italian. Called for peace during World War I and canonized Joan of Arc. Emphasized training native priests instead of European missionaries.

[Quote:]

They (Nikon) decided to ENCRYPT the white balance data inside the NEF file for these cameras. Previously, the white balance data was stored in non-encrypted format, and was readable to third party raw converters using simple reverse engineering of the file format.

While any encryption system that stores the decryption key inside a PC computer program (vs. having the user type in a decryption key) is fairly easy to crack (Bibble has already broken Nikon�s encryption algorithm for the D2X), it does raise legal obstacles. Nikon might consider breaking the white balance encryption a violation of DMCA, and sue Adobe.

(I personally think that would be a bogus interpretation of the DMCA, since I think the copyrighted information inside the NEF file belongs to the photographer, not Nikon. But Nikon apparently thinks they own the information inside the NEF).

Adobe is a large company with deep pockets (unlike Bibble), and it is unlikely we would run the legal risk of breaking the white balance encryption unless we can get some assurance from Nikon that they will not sue Adobe for doing so. Since Nikon clearly does not want third party raw converters reading their files (they would much rather sell you a copy of Nikon Capture), the likelihood of Nikon providing such an assurance to Adobe is not very high.

Adobe has a history of abusing the DMCA themselves, so in a way it’s poetic justice that they’re hit by this. And Nikon is monumentaly stupid if they think their target audience (pro-users) for this camera will like them being unable to use their primary tool, PhotoShop. It’s likely they’ll pick a camera from a competitor over this. Here’s what Nikon says about this:

[Quote:]

Where does Photoshop come in? As graphic arts software, it’s great for removing a telephone pole, or adding a drop shadow, or affixing a caption to your photo. But if you’re using it to crop or straighten an image, or adjust contrast, brightness, saturation and curves, or to apply filters, you simply don’t need it.

Yeah. Right. Dream on, Nikon.

Aren’t Intellectual Property Laws great? Now we have camera manufacturers telling you what software you can or cannot use to edit your images.

DoubleClick has a report on “Ten years of online advertising“.

I could have summarized it in two words…

Here’s what the Hitch Hikers’s Guide to the Galaxy would have to say about advertising.

“Ford!”

Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner humming to himself. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part of space travel rather trying.

“Yeah?” he said.

“If you’re a researcher on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on advertising.”

“Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes.”

“Let me see what it says in this edition then, I’ve got to see it.”

“Yeah OK.” He passed it over again.

Arthur grabbed hold of it and tried to stop his hands shaking. He pressed the entry for the relevant page. The screen flashed and swirled and resolved into a page of print. Arthur stared at it.

“It doesn’t have an entry!” he burst out.

Ford looked over his shoulder.

“Yes it does,” he said, “down there, see at the bottom of the screen, just under Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6.”

Arthur followed Ford’s finger, and saw where it was pointing. For a moment it still didn’t register, then his mind nearly blew up.

“What? Annoying? Is that all it’s got to say? Annoying! One word!”

Ford shrugged.

“Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book’s microprocessors,” he said, “and no one knew much about advertising of course.”

“Well for God’s sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit.”

“Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it’s still an improvement.”

“And what does it say now?” asked Arthur.

“Increasingly annoying,” admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.

Het duitse blad Der Bild: