Category Archives: Culture

from Israel, with love

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Israeli children sign Howitzer shells

Yep, that’s Rule #1 of any military regime: they’re all tameable if you catch them young enough, before the brain has fully developed.

Of course, this does not excuse the parents.

From BoingBoing:

Here, some Israeli girls have apparently been told to “sign” bombs Howitzer shells directed at Lebanon, writing messages like “from Israel with love.” Link (via lawrenceofcyberia and thismodernworld) Update: That link keeps crashing my browser. Here are better links, to the source of these photos: one, two.

Caption, via AP, “Israeli girls write messages on a shell at a heavy artillery position near Kiryat Shmona, in northern Israel, next to the Lebanese border, Monday, July 17, 2006.” AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner.

Chico rocks out on YouTube

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From BoingBoing. As a YouTuber noted, it’s great to see somebody having that much fun doing his job. Chico is everyone’s second favorite Marx Brother, but when it comes to the piano, there is just no contest.

you scream, I scream…and only the abyss answers

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“It was for the safety of the children,” Lt. David Young with the Lufkin Police Department told the Lufkin Daily News.

Ice Cream Demon...on the loose!

Sploid reports from a small town deep in the dry, shrivelled heart of Texas, where the children cry tears of dust.

The ice cream man is gone. Forever.

Unlike most kids, those in Lufkin won’t have their summer daze interrupted by the faraway ringing that signals the approach of cool refreshment.

No, the city elders have decided it’s best if the ice cream man not round these parts any longer.

…

Young says the law was passed several years ago to stop children from running into the street and getting hit by a car. He makes no mention of it ever happening, only the ever-present danger.

No word on whether or not he’s stopped children from running into the street, or actual cars hitting them. But the half-ton slab-sided gaudy monstrosity painted with Day-Glo cartoon characters, moving at five miles per hour and playing Turkey in the Straw at 80db, nope, no kids kilt by them since the ban went in.

Nor by no dragons neither.

“I remember the ice cream truck when I was young,” Ibarra said. “It’s something I wanted to do for the community.”

So Ibarra bought himself an ice cream truck, got a vendor’s license from the county and started making 240-mile round trips to Houston for supplies.

…

Sadly, no one at the county office warned Ibarra that Lufkin was the only town in Angelina County where the ice cream man was not welcome. It wasn’t until a member of Lufkin’s finest pulled him over that Ibarra learned about city ordinance 97.03.

The law states “It shall be unlawful for any person … to sell … commodities or any goods or merchandise upon any part of the public streets or public squares of the city, including the sidewalks thereof.”

…

Texas in July is a sweltering nightmare. Ice Cream TruckOn Tuesday the mercury hit 101. The forecast calls for more of the same tomorrow. The kids in Lufkin have already had the cannonball taken away from them. Now the ice cream man’s gone, too. It’s gonna be a long, hot summer.

PSA: Province and City Backpedal on Olympic Housing Commitment

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From Pivot Legal Society:

Province and City Backpedal on Olympic Housing Commitment

Vancouver – In a complete reversal on their Olympic commitment to protect rental-housing stock to ensure no residents are displaced, evicted, or made homeless as a result of the 2010 Games, the Province of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver are working together to close the 48-unit Lucky Lodge residential hotel at 134 Pender Street that currently houses more than 60 low-income Vancouver residents.

“I have been informed that welfare will no longer be issuing cheques to individuals who wish to move into the Lucky Lodge,” said David Eby, lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society. “The current tenants in the building will be moved out into existing low-income stock elsewhere. Once the building is empty, the plan is that the Ministry of Employment and Income Assistance will sever its relationship with the building, and those housing places will be lost.”

On July 17, 2006, the first phase of the plan went into effect, with MEIA representatives at the Dockside welfare office refusing to issue rent or deposit cheques to a homeless individual who applied to rent a room at the building.
“I spent Friday afternoon calling representatives from MEIA and the city for a tenant of the Lucky Lodge, trying to get MEIA to issue the shelter allowance this tenant was entitled to by law,” said Kim Kerr, Executive Director of the Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association. “Each time a hotel closes, and the Lucky Lodge is no exception, people in Vancouver should recognize that that many more people will be living on the street.”

The impending closure of the Lucky Lodge by the City and the Province follows the dramatic closures of the Burns Block hotel (18 units) and the Pender Hotel (36 units) in March, 2006, and the closure of the Marble Arch hotel (148 units) and St. Helen’s hotel (100 units) to low income tenants, bringing the elimination of low-income housing to a record number of 300 units. The 100-unit Brandiz hotel is operated by the same landlords as the Lucky Lodge.

The 2010 Inner-City Inclusivity Commitment to protect low-income housing and ensure that people are not made homeless was part of the Vancouver Bid Book, the formal application to host the Olympic Games.  To read the Inclusivity Commitment Statement, visit:
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvcs/housing/sra/pdf/statement.pdf 

Further Comment:     David Eby (778) 865-7997 – Pivot Legal Society 
                                Kim Kerr (604) 785-0009 – Downtown Eastside Residents’ Association
 

About Pivot Legal Society
Pivot’s mandate is to take a strategic approach to social change, using the law to address the root causes that undermine the quality of life of those most on the margins.   We believe that everyone, regardless of income, benefits from a healthy and inclusive community where values such opportunity, respect and equality are strongly rooted in the law.

MIT investigates tinfoil helmets

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There are a few politicians and bloggers I know who should read this. But I won’t give them the link!

On the Effectiveness of Aluminium Foil Helmets:

An Empirical Study

Ali Rahimi1, Ben Recht 2, Jason Taylor 2, Noah Vawter 2
17 Feb 2005 1: Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, MIT.
2: Media Laboratory, MIT.

Header image, heh heh

Abstract

Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.

The Classical

We evaluated the performance of three different helmet designs, commonly referred to as the Classical, the Fez, and the Centurion [can’t you just see a certain classically-inclined Tory sporting this model?]. These designs are portrayed in Figure 1. The helmets were made of Reynolds aluminium foil. As per best practices, all three designs were constructed with the double layering technique described elsewhere [2].

The Fez

A radio-frequency test signal sweeping the ranges from 10 Khz to 3 Ghz was generated using an omnidirectional antenna attached to the Agilent 8714ET’s signal generator.

The Centurion