Track your friends without their knowledge

The strange world we live in. The all encompassing presence of technology that was in science fiction I read as a child is here, and not in much less outlandish ways than the fiction had it.

Guardian Unlimited | Science | Guardian life bad science:
I asked my girlfriend if I could, in principle, track her for a day, without telling her how: she agreed and I set the service up on her phone, in five minutes, while she was asleep. I have a map of her movements in front of me right now. It feels very wrong. And it required no technical knowledge, or 'hacking', whatsoever. That this is possible, and so easy, to my mind, is extremely sinister. I had a squabble with one of these companies on Radio 4 yesterday, and they seemed astonished at what I was saying. They promised that they would tighten up security, and think about getting better consent for tracking people's location than one response to a text message. The notion that this technology could be misused in this way had not, apparently, occurred to them. It took me to point it out to them. Who the hell am I? Nobody. Do I work for a phone company? Do I work for the government?

In that moment, I can honestly say, I felt the fear that so many people feel with technology. I don't fully understand how mobile phones work. But now I know that anybody can use them to track people, without their permission, I share that uneasy sense that everything is, somehow, out of control ...

Zogby Poll: Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping | Democrats.com

Zogby Poll: Americans Support Impeaching Bush for Wiretapping | Democrats.com:
"By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

The poll was conducted by Zogby International, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,216 U.S. adults from January 9-12."

Telegraph | News | 'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader

Telegraph | News | 'Divine mission' driving Iran's new leader: "The 49-year-old Mr Ahmadinejad, a former top engineering student, member of the Revolutionary Guards and mayor of Teheran, overturned Iranian politics after unexpectedly winning last June's presidential elections.

The main rift is no longer between 'reformists' and 'hardliners', but between the clerical establishment and Mr Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary populism and superstition.

Its most remarkable manifestation came with Mr Ahmadinejad's international debut, his speech to the United Nations.

World leaders had expected a conciliatory proposal to defuse the nuclear crisis after Teheran had restarted another part of its nuclear programme in August.

Instead, they heard the president speak in apocalyptic terms of Iran struggling against an evil West that sought to promote 'state terrorism', impose 'the logic of the dark ages' and divide the world into 'light and dark countries'.

The speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to 'hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace'.

In a video distributed by an Iranian web site in November, Mr Ahmadinejad described how one of his Iranian colleagues had claimed to have seen a glow of light around the president as he began his speech to the UN.

'I felt it myself too,' Mr Ahmadinejad recounts. 'I felt that all of a sudden the atmosphere changed there. And for 27-28 minutes all the leaders did not blink…It's not an exaggeration, because I was looking.

'They were astonished, as if a hand held them there and made them sit. It had opened their eyes and ears for the message of the Islamic Republic.'"

TV Psychic Sylvia Browne Misses Mark on Miners

TV Psychic Misses Mark on Miners:
Controversial TV psychic Sylvia Browne made a major mistake about the West Virginia miners tragedy on a Tuesday night radio show.

I always like it when psychics are asked, ‘If you know so much, how come you haven’t won the lottery or cashed in big in Vegas or in stocks?’

Maybe Browne was thinking the same thing when she was a guest on George Noory’s live syndicated radio show, "Coast to Coast" at around 3 a.m. on Wednesday. She had the bad luck to be commenting on a developing news story — the mining disaster in West Virginia —- which took a surprise turn.

Lying Media Bastards: We’ll Bomb Our Way Out

Lying Media Bastards � We’ll Bomb Our Way Out:

This story is just not getting the coverage it needs.

It’s the US exit strategy for Iraq: decrease the number of American soldiers on the ground, and replace them with air support for Iraqi troops and police. This decreases the number of American casualties and makes the Iraqi forces look more effective.

Of course, dropping 500 pound bombs from thousands of feet above the target means that more civilians will be accidentally killed in this new strategy, but when has the White House shown concern for Iraqi lives?

How much bombing are we talking about? Well, for the first 8 months of the year, the US averaged 25 airstrikes in Iraq per month. In November there were 120, and December 150.

True, the US will be using laser-guided bombs, which means that there will be fewer civilian deaths than if they were simply dropping bombs blindly. But it seems undeniable that many more innocent people will be killed than would be by US ground troops. The article above gives one example of a US airstrike against three men allegedly planting explosives in Kirkuk. Two laser-guided bombs later, all three were dead– along with seven other people who were standing nearby. And just today, CNN has reported about another US attack gone awry. The bomb hit the wrong building, destroying a family’s home, killing six and wounding three of them.

And the bombing is clearly ramping up at an incredible rate, as this strike was reportedly one of 58 airstrikes that happened in one day.

Spread the word, folks. This is terrible news that’s just going to get worse.

Africans in America/Part 4/"Diseases and Peculiarities"

Africans in America/Part 4/"Diseases and Peculiarities":
'Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race'

De Bow's Review
Southern and Western States
Volume XI, New Orleans, 1851
AMS Press, Inc. New York, 1967

Wal-Mart sells lower-quality products

I would very much like to find out how many name-brands that Walmart sells are lesser-quality versions with the same nameplate on them to cut down cost.

It wasn't until I began working for Zingerman's that I realized the same product on our shelf, with the same brand name, could be a higher quality product than on some other store's shelf. With Zingerman's it's because we have such a relationship with certain producers (like Agrodolce vinegar or Vermont Grafton cheddar) that we request the best of their products be reserved for us, at a higher cost. I didn't translate that to the other extreme, that some store would request a lower-quality product than average from a name brand on other stores' shelves.

How many people who shop at Walmart because of the lower prices understand that they aren't buying the same Levi's sold elsewhere?

The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart:
The Wal-Mart vice president responded with strategy and argument. Snapper is the sort of high-quality nameplate, like Levi Strauss, that Wal-Mart hopes can ultimately make it more Target-like. He suggested that Snapper find a lower-cost contract manufacturer. He suggested producing a separate, lesser-quality line with the Snapper nameplate just for Wal-Mart. Just like Levi did.