Tuesday, 2 July 2013

NSA Surveillance and the Failure of Intelligence Oversight

Recent disclosures of NSA collection of records of US telephone and email traffic have some unfortunate parallels and precedents in the early history of the Agency that were thought to have been repudiated forever.
“After World War II, the National Security Agency (NSA) established and directed three programs that deliberately targeted American citizens’ private communications,” wrote Army signals intelligence officer Major Dave Owen in a paper published late last year in an Army intelligence journal...

Don’t shun 3D printers - they might save your life one day

One of the very few non-gun-related 3D printing stories to make the mass media this year was about Australian researchers who developed a technique which may lead to the production of human tissues, and even organs.
A 3D printer can create a scaffold from implantable biomaterials that degrade safely in the body, allowing new tissues to grow.
New developments also allow printing of living cells or tiny pieces of tissue harvested from a patient biopsy and grown in the laboratory to engineer new functional tissues. Because in the ideal situation this tissue originates from the patient’s own cells, the chance of rejection is almost nil. And the technique is not limited to a specific tissue – it is a generic approach...

Monday, 1 July 2013

How The Copyright Industry Pushed For Internet Surveillance

Why You See What You See When You're Tripping on Psychedelics

♪♫ Sonic Youth & Spiritualized - Untitled Improvisation

A live untitled improvisation by Sonic Youth and Spiritualized, recorded at Meltdown '98 at the Royal Festival Hall on 1 July 1998 and broadcast on the John Peel show on BBC Radio 1

The US supreme court thinks racism is dead. It isn't

What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Understand About the Voting Rights Act

To those who deride the radical ecstasy in a barricaded hallway or a smashed window, we propose nothing less than to reject their homogenous banality, at all costs

From Sweden to Turkey: The uneven dynamics of the era of riots

A child's skull before losing their baby teeth

Via

Journalism, Even When It’s Tilted

Paul Kelly shares his respects for Dr Yunipingu

Former lead singer of Yothu Yindi and 1992 Australian of the year Dr Yunipingu has been remembered at a State Memorial at Gulkula in North East Arnhem land. Musician Paul Kelly shared his reflections on the ground breaking musician, inspirational teacher, and respected leader