Saltwater Burning Man

Here's a connect to retired garage inventor John Kanzius who has astounded news reporters and confounded experts with his accidental discovery that plain saltwater can burn like oil to 3k degrees in a radio wave field, and was shocked himself when a test tube erupted in flames during a desalination experiment while looking for a cancer cure.
This could change everything, if he survives the sights of Big Oil.

Since the YouTube videolink keeps dropping, try http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6vSxR6UKFM&mode=related&search=

Posse Comitatus - does it exist anymore?

from Wikipedia:
"The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act was intended to prohibit Federal troops from supervising elections in former Confederate states. It generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement."

Well, let's see what this news outlet says:

Flying Off The Showroom Floor

After decades of being told that a futuristic flying car was just over the horizon or down the road, it looks like this is one tech prediction that will finally come true.

A little outfit called Terrafugia (http://www.terrafugia.com/) made up of some visionary M.I.T.ites, is tantalizing "sport fliers" with a plane design that folds in its wings in and up, to zip down the highway after you've landed at the airport.

I still have a framed 1950 Popular Mechanix cover with flying saucer buses to ease traffic jams, so could atomic garbage disposals be far behind?
via truemours.

Changing the Vote

The New York Times published a good-sized article on 8-28 regarding the world wide trend in lowering the voting age down to 16. A few countries have already done it for their young citizens, while only Iran is paddling backwards by raising their minimum age. Numerous opinions are given in the article for lowering the U.S. voting age from 18 to 16, and a few faint voices in the wilderness of U.S. proponents even cite a few good reasons.

Unfortunately, they all miss the big "X" mark. Outspoken Noctaluca lead singer Jason Ludwig (http://www.noctaluca.com/) has long wondered about the voting age being held up at 18, but his slant is probably the most lucid of all arguments I've heard.

"It's a travesty in this country that for two to three years of your young working life, you are paying your government dues without any democratic recourse, namely the right to vote." He ties it all together neatly with, "It's clearly taxation without representation."

He's right. I'm surprised it's gone on like this so long, and wonder why those kids aren't protesting this at Post Offices every April 15th. We know Congress will never dump those taxes. So just lower the voting age now. Period, no argument. We fought a little revolution over this a few years ago, didn't we?

Personally, I'd prefer a total pre-voting tax moratorium, and I wonder if the current policy isn't intentional to disenfranchise that demographic from the election process even before they get started. What else explains the very low entry U.S. voter turnout percentage? (See chart in NYT article.) Either that, or, after working tax free for a few years, lawmakers don't want young workers to suddenly feel the full shock from Uncle Sam's bite suddenly slashing take home pay right at voting age.

If that happened, they might start asking what all that money is really used for.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?query=voting+age&srchst=nyt

Reactable: basic demo #1

A position-sensitive interactive effects synth interface. Wow. Pure wow.

RFID lighting Sequencer (Daito Manabe + Motoi Ishibashi)

Here is a less-than-Big Brother app of RFID (radio freq ID) using tagged cards to LED lighting and synth audio in an interactive interface system, probably shot at a Japaneese lab or museum.

Mario Bros Got Electroshock Therapy

Late one June night out in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn, a genius supermega Tesla coil creation gave the Mario Brothers an ear-ringing and spine-tingling round of musical shock therapy for a cheering crowd of supergeeks, proving this is what Dr. Frankenstein really was hoping to create. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ff_AXVlo9U

Fed Makes Counter Moves!

Funny enough to make you blow milk through your nose, comes this highly-processed packaging of our new Reserve fearless leader, Mr. Fed.

Posted by Mark of "The Kingsland Report" via contributor cometgold.com, Credit Crunch cereal is "Fortified With Hedge Funds" and has "Sugar Coated Derivatives", and even serves up fresh squeezed consumers in a liquid market. But best of all, it has a Free Helicopter Inside* to follow the acrobatic ups and downs of the market.

I wonder if you can hear the housing market bubbles bursting when you pour on the milk, or if it'll just slowly go sour. Mark Kingsland is at http://www.buttonwood1792.blogspot.com/ .

* The asterisk allows the Fed to bend their own rules.

Big Brother In Your Toilet

Just when you thought it was safe to relax on the pot, it's not.

A news story just leaked in the Lima Ohio Times from Associated Press Science Writer Beth Borenstein states that researchers are flush with the glow of success at having tapped into a community-wide drug test using just one teaspoon of municipal waste water. They claim their improved process is a response to under reporting drug use via less-than-candid incriminating questionnaires, and gives a whole new meaning to the idea of wiping out dangerous drugs.

In a recent report to the American Chemical Society in Boston, an Oregon State University team of scientists revealed test results for 10 unnamed U.S. cities with snapshot results for both legal and illegal drugs. I guess they're on a roll to blow the lid even further off our privacy.

This so-called community urinalysis, which is more accurate than previous attempts by two Federal agencies (oh, really?), showed significant differences in meth abuse city to city. One unspecified urban locale with a gambling industry sampled 5 times higher than others, with methamphetamine readings virtually non-existent in some other smaller Midwest towns. A different upper crust municipality metered low on illegals except for coke, which, along with ecstasy, peaked way up on weekends, while meth and presciptors stayed steady.

Hmnmmm. Sure sounds like Big Brother to me, if not Little Sister.

I wonder if the American Chemical Society Conference would enjoy seeing the aggregated piss test results of their little gathering analyzed and published, especially for the weekend. They should all get one of these http://inventionshowcase.com/jlhome.htm doohickeys to help them see the light and tank all their future porcelain protocol papers.

For the published story with quotes search the AP homepage or go to
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CITYWIDE_DRUG_TEST?SITE=OHLIM&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Stage Tech's Conversion Chart

1,000,000 Microphones = 1 Phone
1,000,000 bicycles = 2 megacycles
500 millinaries = 1 seminary
2,000 mockingbirds = 2 kilomockingbirds
2,000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton
10 cards = 1 decacards
1/2 lavatory = 1 demijohn
0.000001 fish = 1 microfiche
453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
1,000,000,000,000 pins = 1 terrapin
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 picolos = 1 gigolo
10 rations = 1 decoration
100 rations = 1 C-ration
10 millipedes = 1 centipede
3 1/3 tridents = 1 decadent
5 holocausts = 1 Pentacost
10 monologs = 5 dialogues
5 dialogues = 1 decalogue
2 monograms = 1 diagram
8 nickels = 2 paradigms
2 snake eyes = 1 paradise
2 wharves = 1 paradox
Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi
1 Millionth of a mouthwash = 1 microscope
Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond
Weight an evangelist carries with God = 1 billigram
365.25 days of drinking low-calorie soda = 1 lite year
Half of a large intestine = 1 semicolon
1000 aches = 1 kilohurtz
1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 Fig Newton

FBI and CIA Caught Scrubbing Wikipedia

Reuters News Service reports that a renegade computer program created by a lone ranger citizen to nab counter-productive and biased Wikipedia scrubs and alterations, revealed that the Federal Government was a Wiki snark. The official red handed story is at http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN1642896020070816?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&rpc=22&sp=true. Boinged again.

More Flip Flop Slop

I really, really, REALLY tried hard not to slap another Bush graphic or story up, but I failed like an ugly third party candidate. Here is a sideshow-freaky, two-face tango from the Prez, snarfed from a great humor photo site loaded with a missle silo full of political posters with you-know-who as the all too often target.

This image matches up well with the previous post of our Vee Pee's forgotten assertion that invading Iraq would be a "quagmire", which I've just heard mentioned on a Cleveland Clear Channel AM station in the wee hours.

The images are at http://www.twistedhumor.net/fpgallery/political, and many are expert redos of old WWII morale boosters from pre second term. What really struck home, was that they are all funny because they are also sadly true. You could wallpaper a bathroom with all these.

Chaney: Iraq Invasion a QUAGMIRE idea

Here is the 1994 video where Cheney (prior to his conversion/head injury) explains why it's a bad idea to invade Iraq in this boingboing link to Live Leak. Go to http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9a8_1186873756. Thanks to boingboing.

The Man From T.W.A.T

I came across this twat, I mean T.W.A.T., underground political poster a few days ago on www.myspace.com/jeffomatic. I kept checking several times for background info to credit the artist or artiste, but all I kept getting was mega white space and a big-brotherish line of type saying that the page was down for routine maintenance, and a lame "sorry for the inconvenience" tag.

Hmmmm.

Is this another example of the far right-wing NeoCons of the Executive Branch over-reaching and hindering the freedom of speech rights guaranteed under the Constitution which Prezy Bushy swore to uphold. I dunno. The image is also posted at http://www.the-gog.org/twat.jpg, but there's nothing else there either, presumably by the artist's design.

I don't blame them for keeping a low profile. Attach a handle to this poster and it becomes a bona-fide Reagan "dangerous stick weapon"!!!