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Secretly Filmed Movie Highlights Tehran’s Gutsy Rock Scene
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Long before Iranian civilians tapped Twitter to alert the world about bloodshed on the streets of Tehran, the country’s young music fans routinely subverted the nation’s rigid regime by going online to get transfusions of American rock ‘n’ roll.
The fruits of those furtive sessions can be seen, and heard, in No One Knows About Persian Cats. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at 2009’s Cannes Film Festival, the movie about Tehran’s underground rock scene was filmed secretly, run-and-gun style, in 17 days by director Bahman Ghobad.
“Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black” – Tim Wise
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Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.
So let’s begin.
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.
Woz has fun with leaked iPhone T-shirt
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True story, I swear!Cartoons
Nice PR Stunt
But if it’s worth losing a 4G iPhone over?
Next you know, Microsoft will advertise with something like “when you lose Windows 7 phone, it’s sure to be there, waiting, when you get back”
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Today’s blame for pederast priests
WellPoint routinely targets breast cancer patients
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The women paid their premiums on time. Before they fell ill, neither had any problems with their insurance. Initially, they believed their policies had been canceled by mistake.
They had no idea that WellPoint was using a computer algorithm that automatically targeted them and every other policyholder recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The software triggered an immediate fraud investigation, as the company searched for some pretext to drop their policies, according to government regulators and investigators.
Once the women were singled out, they say, the insurer then canceled their policies based on either erroneous or flimsy information. WellPoint declined to comment on the women’s specific cases without a signed waiver from them, citing privacy laws.
[..]
In his push for the health care bill, President Barack Obama said the legislation would end such industry practices.
But many critics worry the new law will not lead to an end of these practices. Some state and federal regulators — as well as investigators, congressional staffers and academic experts — say the health care legislation lacks teeth, at least in terms of enforcement or regulatory powers to either stop or even substantially reduce rescission.
“People have this idea that someone is going to flip a switch and rescission and other bad insurance practices are going to end,” says Peter Harbage, a former health care adviser to the Clinton administration. “Insurers will find ways to undermine the protections in the new law, just as they did with the old law. Enforcement is the key.”
Drawing Illusion
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Win!
Suing Mohammed’s Heirs for Libel
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In August of last year, a Saudi law firm brought legal action against all the Danish newspapers that published the Mohammed cartoons. It was a blatant probe of the infidel system of defenses, using lawfare to breach the virtual walls of Danish society in order to inflict maximum damage on the culture that dared to insult the prophet.
[..]
And now a new organization has sprung up to take exactly the action I was hoping for last year: it is countersuing the descendants of Mr. Mohammed Pbuh, Esq. Led by Hans Erling Jensen, a group called Eticha has filed a libel lawsuit on behalf of all the non-Muslims whom Mohammed defamed and insulted in the Koran.
Mr. Erling sent me a copy of the letter he sent to the Saudi law firm. The full text and his introductory explanation are included at the bottom of this post, but here’s the meat of his case:
You and your clients apparently continue to insist that Muhammed ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi may not be portrayed or caricatured. This implies that you and your clients give your unconditional support to the text of the Quran, as it exists today, as well as to the Hadith that, combined with the Quran (and the Sirat) form the basis of Islam and Sharia.
The descendants of the people whom your clients’ forefather compared to apes, pigs and rats, and whose case we now represent, feel not only personally insulted, but also emotionally aggrieved by these denigrations, as their own ancestors have been ridiculed, persecuted and expelled from their lands, since the Quran and Hadith imply that non-Muslims are the enemies of Allah and therefore were and are to be treated as outlaws. Due to the fact that Muhammed ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi claimed, that not he, but Allah was the author of this insult and thus ascribed the saying to him, we find this not only blasphemous but also a thinly disguised attempt to decriminalize Muhammed ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Hashimi al-Qurashi’s own misdemeanors. This will possibly be addressed in a later court case.
The lawsuit demands an apology, and also that the offending passages of the Koran be changed or removed from all publicly available copies of the book in mosques, libraries, etc., by the end of this year.
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Belgian bishop resigns over paedophile scandal
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One of Belgium’s bishops has resigned over a paedophile case, adding to a growing list of churchmen tainted by abuse scandals that have been shaking the Catholic Church.
The Belgian episcopal conference called a media conference today to be attended by the head of the Belgian Catholic Church, Andre-Joseph Leonard, as well as officials of a church committee inquiring into paedophilia.
It did not name the bishop concerned or give the exact reasons for his resignation, but Belga news agency said he was the bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe.
A source close to the affair told AFP that it was a case of paedophilia while Belga, quoting “reliable sources”, reported that “serious facts” were behind the resignation. However it was not clear whether the churchman himself was guilty or whether he had covered up for someone else.
Cartoons
Lost iPhone Top Ten
The iPad DJ
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Today’s blame for pederast priests
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When Copyright Goes Bad
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Ben Cato Clough and Luke Upchurch’s “When Copyright Goes Bad” (from Consumers International) is a great, 15-minute mini-documentary on what copyright can do, what it is doing, and what it needs to stop doing. Appearances by Fred Von Lohmann – Electronic Frontier Foundation; Michael Geist – University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock – Open Rights Group; and Hank Shocklee – Co-founder of Public Enemy.
Android running on iPhone!
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Pre-built images and sources at http://www.mediafire.com/?xqjzn12igfn. Read the README. For generic openiboot instructions, there’s plenty now that you can search for.
Men With iPhones Are More Attractive to Women
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Good news for those men out there who are fixated on the latest gadgets in lieu of a love life; 54% of women stated that they would be more likely to date a man if he owns an iPhone. One respondent suggested “if he has an iPhone then he’s obviously intelligent and well-off.”
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Eyjafjallajokull April.19 2010
Why Gizmodo paid for the 4G iPhone
Next up in the list of things to blame: the Devil
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A Chicago bishop who once blamed the devil for sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church and proposed shielding the church from legal damages has been named to lead an Illinois diocese.
Thomas Paprocki, an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago, was announced Tuesday as the church’s ninth bishop of Springfield.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said it was disappointed with Paprocki’s promotion.
“It says to us that the Vatican is more interested in doctrinal purity than child safety — or at least that child safety isn’t the No. 1 priority,” said David Clohessy, SNAP’s executive director.
Paprocki, 57, said three years ago that the principal force behind the waves of abuse lawsuits was “none other than the devil.”
He said the cost of litigation was making it more difficult for the church to perform charitable works. An attorney himself, Paprocki proposed that the courts revive an old policy of shielding nonprofit organizations from lawsuits over negligence and abuse.
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Depth Perception
Statistics
On Adobe, Flash CS5 and iPhone Applications
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Personally, I am going to shift all of my mobile focus from iPhone to Android based devices (I am particularly interested in the Android based tablets coming out this year) and not focus on the iPhone stuff as much anymore. This includes both Flash based, and Objective-C based iPhone development. While I actually enjoy working in Objective-C, I don’t have any current plans to update and / or maintain my existing native iPhone applications (including the AS3 Reference Guide, and Timetrocity). As I wrote previously, I think that the closed system that Apple is trying to create is bad for the industry, developers and ultimately consumers, and that is not something that I want to actively promote. Don’t worry though, I definitely plan to get both Pew Pew and Bacon Unicorn Adventure running on Android and am planning on open sourcing both.
We are at the beginning of a significant change in the industry, and I believe that ultimately open platforms will win out over the type of closed, locked down platform that Apple is trying to create.
The irony is that this was written in an attempt to promote Flash. Which is itself a closed, locked down platform. There are plenty of arguments to make about Flash and the iPhone, but “open platforms will win out” isn’t one of them. Because if “open platforms” are going to win, Mike may want to check out the status of WebKit.
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Cartoons
Seven DIY iPad Stands for Six Bucks or Less
Google: U.S. Demanded User Info 3,500 Times in 6 Months
Claim Chowder: Tomi Ahonen on iPhone Sales
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Tomi Ahonen, former Nokia executive and self-professed expert on mobile phones, 11 days ago:
The Apple iPhone sales pattern differs from all other major smartphone makers because Apple only releases one new model per year. So the sales take off strongly and then decline as the rivals keep releasing newer phones. Apple’s best quarter is its Christmas quarter. This year they were not able to grow market share. And we already know, that Apple’s January-March quarter was a heavy fall from the Christmas level of sales (as it always is, this is the normal pattern).
The Company sold 8.75 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 131 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
So the “heavy fall from the Christmas level of sales” we “already know” about was, uh, an increase of 50,000 iPhones.
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i love you
Nuclear Reactor Pulse
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The Engineers at the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab (NETL) at UT Austin demonstrate a reactor pulse.
All the Control Rods are removed simultaneously allowing the nuclear reaction to proceed un-dampened, bringing the energy output of the reactor to 680 Megawatts in 50 milliseconds.
What you see is Cherenkov radiation.
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May I point out that the tea-party guy with the rifle was black?
That would be some of the tea-party guys.
Especially the first one who were portrayed as a “racist, arm wielding man fighting against healthcare reform, disturbing a public meeting” then poof.. the camera moves up and he is black.
May I point out that the tea-party guy with the rifle was black?
There were some black soldiers fighting with the South in the Civil War. That does not mean slavery wasn’t an issue in the war.
Nobody said that the tea party issue – which is not racism – is nonexistent. The healthcare reform – which, lets admit it, is broken -, the idea that Obama is introducing a socialist system – he doesn’t – are the problems.
I love how now everyone tries to push racism onto it – “you don’t like my ideas, you are racist!!”
But, lets not forget that whenever people start the “white men are running the tea party!” and “tea partiers are racists, because they are white!!” they are racists too.
Thanks for this link, to make such an “reversal” experiment can yield very interesting results and illuminating insights, regardless of the original group.
I remember an experiment which was done at my university in the 90s. A student group took a typical feminist pamphlet which were widespread on campus at that time, simply swapped “women” and “men”, and published the modified text in the local student information paper.
This triggered a medium scandal. The angry mob yelled “Who wrote that chauvinist-fascist piece of s***??? Off with their heads!”
Racism and primitive chauvinism is widespread among radicals. Regardless of “left” or “right”. Often a slight change in perspective (like Tim Wise has done here, or the students at my university) can very efficiently demask it and show the dangerous ideology behind it.