Links & Stuff

Just enjoying a lazy Sunday morning and thought I would share some links that grabbed my eye.

I love my iPhone for photography. I use to make videos (see above), time lapse photography and it constantly amazes me what I can do with it. If you're a budding iphonographer check out this link for some great accessories for your phone.

Here's more fuel for the fire of the nutty conspiracy theorists who think the bombing of the Boston Marathon was the work of our government. According to the story the first suspect was taken alive. They even have video evidence!

At the other end of the crazy spectrum we have Steven Kurlander conflating terrorists with anarchists over at the Huffington Post. I'll be posting more about this tomorrow, but the comment section does a great job of refuting Kurlander's nonsense. You might also want to take a look at "You Can't Blow Up a Social Relationship," for a great read on why anarchists reject terrorism and violence as a means of social change. It's over 30 years old and just as relevant today.

Perhaps the day's saddest story was reading about how the San Francisco Pride festival rescinded its offer to name Bradley Manning the Grand Marshal. Common Dreams has a great article on this hypocrisy. Apparently corproate criminals are great while heroes like Bradley Manning are questionable.

Hope you're having a great Sunday wherever you are.

 

 

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The Technology of Surveillance.

David Henneberry

One of the most popular memes coming out of the bombing of the Boston Marathon has been the way technology has helped. Story after story has been posted and published detailing the ways in which technology has made it easier to nab the bombers. A lot of this goes toward justifying the spiraling costs of our Big Brother government post 9/11 Security State that wants to keep tabs on us at all times--for our own good, of course. Perhaps the most ridiculous story to surface, however, has been the notion that Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) was instrumental in finding the second suspect, Dzokhar Tsarnaev.

Gizmodo's recent story is a great example of this. But perhaps the best one is their most recent story titled: The Crazy Accurate Thermal Images that Saw Dzokhar Tsarnaev Through a Boat Tarp. We're all supposed to be amazed and delighted that security forces have such amazing technology. More importantly, however, we're supposed to believe that this technology is somehow responsible for nabbing the latest incarnation of evil.

The fact of the matter is this technology had nothing to do with finding the suspect. The man who owned the boat, David Henneberry, was out having a smoke when he noticed something amiss with his tarp. When he went over to inspect it he saw the bloody body of Dzokhar Tsarnaev. You can read the full story here. But there was no major technolgy deployed or used to find this kid.

 

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