I didn’t get around to mentioning a few things this week past, and I wanted to be sure to squeeze them in before Ken Goldstein of the Week Week kicks in.

First, Chris points out that the FBI has confirmed to the H-T that they are performing aerial surveillance over my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana.

As for what surveillance can be done from the air, Davis said with image-stabilizing binoculars, FBI agents in a small plane can track a person on the ground. They also sometimes can follow their vehicular movements better than a car can, as well as keep businesses they might frequent under surveillance.

As an example of businesses that could be under surveillance, the two [agency sources] cited ones open late at night from which somebody can send faxes or e-mails.

Scott also noted this, as did Gulcher records honcho Bob Gulcher in an email to me. Bob saw it on a wire source, and I saw it in the P-I this morning.

Second, I’m working on a piece about the Reel Cinerama Film Festival and had the pleasure of sepnding part of Thursday afternoon at the Cinerama theater here in Seattle, part of it in the company of the Vulcan, Inc project manager who ran the theater’s restoration project in 1999. Last night we went to the opening, a screening of 1962’s How the West Was Won, and it was plenty neat.

Third, (my Cinescape visitors will know this already) I am off the case as the online news editor at Cinescape, although I will be continuing to contribute to the magazine for print and possible online features.

Fourth, I will be assembling a week’s roundup on Columbia, but won’t post it until after Ken Goldstein of the Week Week is over.

Fifth, Mr. Rogers, R. I. P. You are missed, neighbor.

Felicity at Goliard Dream posted a long memoir of her youth as the child of anti-war activists in Berkeley in the sixties.

I found it very interesting. I guess I might, in fact, enjoy that memoir of my mythical hippy house on Polk, circa 1968.

Modern Drunkard‘s propaganda posters pick up on the WWII poster remix idea.

Sadly, the level of wit in the copy on these leaves something to be desired, even if the imagery does not: see “Fight for Your Right to Party” in the lower left corner.

Another Poster for Peace has some really cool poster designs, only one of which I’ve seen previously (“No Blood For Oil”), but where? A design yearbook like Graphis, I think.

I love poster designs in general and when i was doing poster designs for the Boxers, I would often steal wholesale from designs I saw at the Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age exhibition.

This fellow has really set the standard for design “remixes” though. I laugh and laugh at most of this stuff, although sometimes I think the volume of the project overwhelms the cogency – editing would have helped keep his quality high, and one supposes, his powder dry.

I think everyone’s seen this by now, correct? As I recall, the first version I saw lacked the “run like hell” tag, which I think makes it stronger.

I shouldn’t neglect Alfred E. Bush or that Mad Magazine “Clone of the Attack” poster, now should I? Alas, the Mad image apears to not be easily linked (and their site a poster child of bad corporate web presence, blecch!).

I really love this sort of thing, where a design suddenly serves an unintended purpose.

Geez, when did I start making art like this? I must have been 14 or 15. Unfortunately I don’t have any examples from back then.

The idea, I later learned, was generally known as “detournement,” which, in cheese-eating surrender monkeyese, roughly means “turning back on.” The idea was associated with the May 1968 revolts and a both pathetic and influential group of radical intellectuals called the Situationists. They were pathetic because they are the poster children for the left’s tendency to splinter – by the time leader (some say “Pope”) Guy Debord died, he was the only person that he thought had the right to use the label (this assertion is, um, ungrounded, because I haven’t bothered to go research a source).

Not that anyone cared, because the technique had escaped his grasp and was busy producing all kinds of interesting things, including, according to Greil Marcus, punk rock itself.

Accidental Privacy Spills: Musings on Privacy, Democracy, and the Internet from James Grimmelmann on LawMeme takes a long look at a fascinating thing I’ve been watching bubble away on MeFi…

I’ll let James tell the story.

Well, maybe I’ll introduce it.

What if you emailed a letter to some pals detailing an interesting time you had among some very wealthy, powerful people, who had invited you partly based on your skill as a writer, and partly based on your discrection?

What if someone you mailed it to (let’s be charitable and invoke the proverbial Mom clause here) forwarded the message, and it ended up as the subject of a debate as to the authenticity of the note in a public forum such as MetaFilter?

Oh, it’s plenty interesting.

I awakened to find my ISP engaging in their apparently contractually-obligated incompetence provisioning, whereby my access to their DNS is provided only on a sporadic basis, unaccompanied by any form of notification or explanation to customers.

Naturally, my primary desktop machine chose this as the optimum time to experience repeated hard crashes necessitating a day’s worth of diagnostic activity. Viv and I had a 1pm appointment at the diabetes clinic so I set the disk utilities to start a-grindin’ and headed off.

I mention this mostly so that I can link to an article that appeared in the New Yorker, in the February 10 issue, “The Edmonton Protocol”, by Jerome Groopman, a layperson-oriented overview of what appears to be, in fact, the cure for insulin-dependent diabetes.

The catch? Well, insofar as the cure is concerned, it’s wholly dependent on a specific cell type, islets, which diabetics no longer produce and which the rest of us produce in small quantities. It’s a transplantation procedure. Which means that donors are required. But don’t rush out to make an appointment – you gots to be dead.

So in essence, the cure is here, but only a small, small percentage of insulin-dependent diabetics can ever be granted it.

Remember the ban on fetal cell culture harvesting from back in pre-9/11 days? The article, ever so non-confrontationally, points out that that policy has more or less kept experimentation from progressing insofar as human cell cultures are concerned. Astute observers will have no difficulty guessing my emotional state as I added this particular equation up.

I’ve been aware of the protocol since just prior to the inauguration of large-scale trials (10 people participated in them at Viv’s care provider, and I discussed with her the possibility of participation, something we decided against before ever contacting someone there), I was happy to see a long, clear exploration of the procedure and status of the trials today.

Sadly, this site notes (page search for “Edmonton Protocol”) that the article is under embargo from reprinting until April 4, and the New Yorker website does not apparently have a copy of it hidden away someplace.

However, a Google search reveals someone had it up at one time – it’s since been removed. Close examination of the Google search results may reward the determined, although discretion is advised.

MT Plugin Directory: own domain, better organization than the subdomain at blogstyle/kadyellebee.

and Chris, look:

WikiFormat

Oh, MT gets me all wiggly!

And what’s this? MT 2.6 is out? Well, smack me upside the haid and label me a cheese-eating surrender monkey.

Lawsy.

FRYER’S KINETIC CARD KITS – Paper engineering Based in the UK, this site offers one of my grails of cardmodeling – the paper clock.

The kit is based on a working seventeenth century wall clock. I once passed up a chance to pick one of these up, possbly from a different manufacturer, and have really regretted it since.

BONUS: Fryer offers a free trebuchet model as well.

Generally speaking the kits seen here are of a fairly high degree of refinement.

This post is the result of a desultry search for a free zep kit, not that I expect to turn one up.

College porn stars film their own punishment is the headline to Richard Roeper’s hard-hitting big thumbs down on Shane’s World, Vol. 32, Campus Invasion, the pro-am porn film shot in Bloomington last year to the delight of media professionals everywhere.

Not to worry – it’s not a serious review of a porn film. Heaven forfend that the Sun-Times, or most papers and large circulation printed news sources, would ever run something thoughful about porn. After all, they tried back in the mid-seventies, and look where that got everybody.

But, as far as fish in a barrel goes, it’s pretty funny.

The film runs 2-1/2 hours, and for the most part it’s about as sexy as a military educational film about transmittable diseases. Basically you get porn stars with ugly tattoos, bad teeth and been-around-the-block-a-million-times faces mingling with drunken-fool college students in pig sty apartments. It’s mostly pathetic and depressing.

One mope who meets the porn stars outside his dorm invites them back to his room. Another guy, toting a backpack, allows the women to fondle him in public and then says, “Awesome! OK, I gotta go to class.” There are several party sequences, with the porn stars putting on shows for the crowd and occasionally hooking up with young men.

Go I.U.! We’re number one! We’re number one!

(Really, this is about as far as I go with the whole team spirit thing.)

In Upon Silence, Paul Frankenstein hints that perhaps he’s got a touch of the blues, and rather poetically dances around what he ought to do about it.

I feel for him. Paul, you’ll get through. A shrink is an acceptable route.

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(Argh! Multiple trackbacks! Why must you plague me so!)