Room 641A, 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco
The location of the Department of Defense' domestic spying program hardware, according to AT&T whistleblower on Wired News.
But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm. Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DOD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.
In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
Pot Smoking Not Linked to Lung Cancer
via WebMD, Pot Smoking Not Linked to Lung Cancer
People who smoke marijuana do not appear to be at increased risk for developing lung cancerlung cancer, new research suggests.
...
Even very heavy, long-term marijuana users who had smoked more than 22,000 joints over a lifetime seemed to have no greater risk than infrequent marijuana users or nonusers.
The findings surprised the study’s researchers, who expected to see an increase in cancer among people who smoked marijuana regularly in their youth.
“We know that there are as many or more carcinogens and co-carcinogens in marijuana smoke as in cigarettes,” researcher Donald Tashkin, MD, of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine tells WebMD. “But we did not find any evidence for an increase in cancer risk for even heavy marijuana smoking.” Carcinogens are substances that cause cancer.
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While two-pack-a-day or more cigarette smokers were found to have a 20-fold increase in lung cancer risk, no elevation in risk was seen for even the very heaviest marijuana smokers.
Here's where they try to speculate why.
So why isn’t smoking marijuana as dangerous as smoking cigarettes in terms of cancer risk?
The answer isn’t clear, but the experts say it might have something to do with tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, which is a chemical found in marijuana smoke.
Cellular studies and even some studies in animal models suggest that THC has antitumor properties, either by encouraging the death of genetically damaged cells that can become cancerous or by restricting the development of the blood supply that feeds tumors, Tashkin tells WebMD.
Of course the obvious seems to be neglected. Why do people enjoy pot? Because it relaxes them. It reduces stress and allows them to more easily cope with stressful lives. It helps them laugh. Lower stress = lower disease. Makes sense to me. 'course I don't know much about blood supplies and tumor cells.
Google Trends says Elmhurst, Ill., Loves Gay Porn
I'm sure I've mentioned how much I love Mark Morford. For your reading pleasure:
Then give Google Trends a play and let me know if you come up with any interesting stats. Turkey is really big on satan.
Wouldn't it be fascinating if you could do this, not just for what terms people throw at google, but for what people actually do? When you look at the stats for marijuana you can see related news stories on the timeline, mostly related to medical marijuana. There's spikes around all the medical marijuana initiative stuff, and I was imajining that it was people actually smoking pot rather than just typing "marijuana" into a google search box.
Wouldn't that be interesting though. Actual truth, what are people actually "doing" as opposed to what they're saying. Not any one specific person, just trends and demographics. It reminds me of Jamais Cascio's Participatory Panopticon. He says in the future it will not be one Big Brother watching, but lots of little brothers. You can't get mugged in a world where you have a wirelessly connected video recording device that records everything you see and hear. If you see the guy mugging you, he's caught.
Defense Department Fails to Release September 11 Pentagon Videos
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch seeking "all records pertaining to September 11, 2001 camera recordings of the Pentagon attack from the Sheraton National Hotel, the Nexcomm/Citgo gas station, Pentagon security cameras and the Virginia Department of Transportation," the Defense Department released the video footage from previously released frames showing the 9/11 impact on the Pentagon.
According to the BBC the footage was requested by a non-partisan organization hoping to dispel claims that a missile, rather than a jumbo jet, crashed into the Pentagon. Below are the four frames showing the impact that I took from the video.
Neither the BBC article, Judicial Watch nor the Defense Department offer any explanation or even mention of the unreleased videos. As others have noticed, the video released today doesn't contain new information and is not exactly compelling. You'd be hard-pressed to find someone who, not knowing the context, looked at the video and said it was a definitely a jumbo jet. In fact it looks to me slightly more like a rocket or Predator drone.
Judicial Watch seems to count this as a victory for the release exculpatory evidence while in reality it's the exact opposite. The failure to release the video from the Sheraton, Virginian DOT and the Citgo just makes the whole event more suspect, which is also the opposite of what whey they're claiming to be trying to do.
Also, what's with the bright flash? The third frame seems to catch a bright flash of light. When the plane struck the Twin Tower, there was no bright flash, just a big fireball.
It’s like we are living inside a giant dark energy star
A new concept of "dark energy" stars could do away with the concept of black holes.
Your Spam Filter Is Your Problem, Not Mine
If I send you an email and it's intercepted by your spam filter, that's your problem not mine. I've had people send me email telling me about how their spam filter blocked my email. Thanks for the info but that's a problem you need to deal with. There is absolutely nothing I can do about it. My email is functioning properly, your spam filter is not. It's your problem. Fix it. Add me to your safe list.
Mexico Legalizes Drugs
From Mexico to Allow Use of Drugs - Los Angeles Times
Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic sold by the same Mexican cartels he's vowed to fight during his five years in office, a spokesman said Tuesday.
The list of illegal drugs approved for personal consumption by Mexico's Congress last week is enough to make one dizzy — or worse.
Cocaine. Heroin. LSD. Marijuana. PCP. Opium. Synthetic opiates. Mescaline. Peyote. Psilocybin mushrooms. Amphetamines. Methamphetamines.
And the per-person amounts approved for possession by anyone 18 or older could easily turn any college party into an all-nighter: half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus.
But here's the clincher...
Selling drugs or using them in public still would be a crime in Mexico. Anyone possessing drugs still could be held for questioning by police, and each state could impose fines even on the permitted quantities, the bill stipulates. But it includes no imprisonment penalties.
So essentially now it's ok for everyone to use them, but only the mafia can sell them. Does that mean you can give them away without any problem? Maybe if the BLM continues to try suck even more from Burning Man to pay for prohibition, well Mexico has a few deserts I hear...