- Many Women May Ovulate More Than Once a Month, Study Says
- Marriage ‘tames’ geniuses, criminals:
- Kanazawa suggests “a single psychological mechanism” is responsible for this: the competitive edge among young men to fight for glory and gain the attention of women. That craving drives the all-important male hormone, testosterone. After a man settles down, the testosterone level falls, as does his creative output, Kanazawa theorises.
- Wired article on machinima
General
10
Jul 03
Many Women May Ovulate
08
Jul 03
Interesting article
The only thing is, if this guy can do it couldn’t someone else? I wonder if the other governments of the world are studying this and making their own maps. I’m sure the US has probably done something like this with other countries.
05
Jul 03
Quotations from J.W. Goethe
05
Jul 03
Some interesting bits
- New and unusual things from the bottom of the ocean: Delight in ugly creatures
- 41 foot remains weighing in at 13 tonnes [pix]: Giant sea creature off coast of Chile identified as giant squid
- Russia Resumes Strategic Sub Patrols After Year Off
- From the establishment point of view with some general historical bits (sicari, zealots, assassins, and thugees) Center for Defense Information: A Brief History of Terrorism
- US control of the global airways: Force down rogue state jets, say US, Australia
27
Jun 03
Iraqi Resistance Stiffens
Guerrilla resistance to American occupation forces has been stepped up. Note that the media is very careful to only discuss it in terms of ‘Baathist resistance’. It is very important to the US and to the western media by proxy not to give the idea that this resistance is supported by the Iraqi people.
- The soft-approach headline: Experts Question Depth of Victory:
- Because the war was so narrowly focused on Hussein’s government in Baghdad, a large part of the Iraqi population does not feel as if it was defeated, said retired Army Col. Scott R. Feil. “As I heard one Iraqi say, the Americans defeated Saddam, but not the Iraqi people, so the psychology of the loser is not present,” he said
- U.S. Soldier Shot Shopping in Baghdad-Witnesses
- 4 Dead, 2 Abducted in Iraq Ambushes
- British troops agree to suspend arms searches
- No First Amendment: Iraqi Youth Arrested for Insulting US Soldiers
- Marsh Arabs threaten to resist ‘army of occupation’
26
Jun 03
Incredible Flaming Mechanism
A friend of mine from high school called me up out of the blue last night and wanted to see if I’d be interested in resurrecting our long dead zine, Incredible Flaming Mechanism. We’d done like seven issues over a year or so and while it was a surprise I kinda liked the idea of it. I mean, to reattempt something after almost ten years when I’m older (and fatter) and arguably smarter, at least about some things. I wonder anything will come of it.
22
Jun 03
Little bits
- Obvious implications of the so-called war on terror being felt: Russian general say “war on terror” used as pretext for global dominance:
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“It is one thing when a country is fighting terrorism on its own territory, and some other countries assist them,” the Interfax-AVN military news agency quoted Kvashnin an officers’ graduation ceremony in Moscow.
“But it is quite another thing when, under the guise of fighting international terror, some countries are in fact trying to get involved in the internal affairs of the nation they are meant to be helping,” said Kvashnin.
He urged the graduating officers to keep this in mind as they “carefully analyze what is happening in the world.”
- India might be dangling the issue of Indian troop deployment in Iraq for an advantage at the expense of rival Pakistan: Indian Deputy PM, Advani, says US unlikely to release F-16s for Pakistan
- Space junk renders missions dangerous
22
Jun 03
Traffic analysis, transaction analysis, and social network discovery
From Cryptome.org, I found this a good point, and it’s something I’ve often thought about:
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One problem that most naive paranoid types completely fail to grasp is the titanic volume of modern communications. The flow is so overwhelming that only a powerful God could possibly process it all to find interesting material. The entire federal budget could not pay enough humans to screen and analyze ALL the electonic communications of even a medium size city in 2003. So communications intercepts are necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important will turn up with finite effort.
The notion that an all powerful big brother is listening to everything and capturing everything just is not realistic, and a very very high percentage of what does get captured is never looked at or listened to or even stored for very long.
Which of course is why traffic analysis and transaction analysis and social network discovery is far more important than flying airplanes around trying to collect incidental radiation from local copper T1 lines. Knowing who calls or emails who makes it possible to find the needles which you want to monitor in the vast haystacks. Thus there is a much greater probability that records of your calls and IP traffic addresses are looked at for patterns and association with known bad guys than that someone is actually listening to or reading your traffic looking for the word bomb.