gravity’s rainbow

The FBI thinks that Hasan Elahi is a terrorist and he doesn’t trust them to get things right. So, he records pretty much everything about his life and puts it on his website.

The globe-hopping prof says his overexposed life began in 2002, when he stepped off a flight from the Netherlands and was detained at the Detroit airport. He says FBI agents later told him they’d been tipped off that he was hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit; subsequent lie detector tests convinced them he wasn’t their man. But with his frequent travel — Elahi logs more than 70,000 air miles a year exhibiting his art work and attending conferences — he figured it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. He might even be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so he decided to call before each trip; that way, they could alert the field offices. He hasn’t been detained since.

So it dawned on him: If being candid about his flights could clear his name, why not be open about everything? “I’ve discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away,” he says, grinning as he sips his venti Black Eye. Elahi relishes upending the received wisdom about surveillance. The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately. Plus, no ambitious agent is going to score a big intelligence triumph by snooping into your movements when there’s a Web page broadcasting the Big Mac you ate four minutes ago in Boise, Idaho. “It’s economics,” he says. “I flood the market.” [link]

I wonder if he uses AT&T?

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Gego via 3QD

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I know this picture is old and an ad that so openly supported sexual harassment [definitely? probably? hopefully?] wouldn’t get published today. But feminists from the 70s, when this picture was taken, get a bad name sometimes. And this demonstrates 1) how terrible it was and 2) a fantastic sense of humor.

Via Feministing.

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Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

So the French veecount is going to call up in the morning but I am not going to see him again. Because French gentlemen are really quite deceeving. I mean they take you to quite cute places and they make you feel quite good about yourself and you really seem to have a delightful time but when you get home and come to think it all over, all you have got is a fan that only cost 20 francs and a doll that they gave you away for nothing in a restaurant. I mean a girl has to look out in Paris, or she would have such a good time in Paris that she would not get anywheres. So I really think that American gentlemen are the best after all, because kissing your hand may make you feel very very good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.

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I posted the other day about how difficult it was to get convictions in rape trials even with incredible evidence. In this case the perpetrators’ lawyer claims that it couldn’t have really been rape because the girls were unattractive and probably wanted the attention.

lawyer Sheilagh Davies, acting for one of the defendants, said the girls consented to sex “maybe to gain attention, maybe to gain affection”.

She told the jury one of the girls, who testified via video link, had “slimmed down a lot” since the incident in southeast London last November.

The barrister added: “She was 12st 6lb – not quite the swan she may turn into. She may well have been glad of the attention.”

In addition to being just one more example of a case where women are blamed for being raped, the lawyer’s suggestion that fat women want to be raped is extremely dangerous and cruel.

Via Feministing.

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I’ve got a bunch of seeds coming coming in the mail. I hope they’ll do well inside in the winter. Most of my apartment doesn’t get much sun, so I tried to get shade-tolerant plants. But I wanted something colorful, so I went for impatiens and coleus.

I also got white and yellow black eyed susan vines to grow up my staircase.

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My living stones are so adorable! Though these green ones are doing something strange… They are supposed to be very short.

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We should be paying attention to this:

While Americans have focused on President Bush’s “war on terror,” Iraq, and the Middle East, democracy has been under siege in another part of the world. India — the most populous of all democracies, and a country whose Constitution protects human rights even more comprehensively than our own — has been in crisis. Until the spring of 2004, its parliamentary government was increasingly controlled by right-wing Hindu extremists who condoned and in some cases actively supported violence against minority groups, especially Muslims.

What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy in the world. The fact that it has yet to make it onto the radar screen of most Americans is evidence of the way in which terrorism and the war on Iraq have distracted us from events and issues of fundamental significance. If we really want to understand the impact of religious nationalism on democratic values, India currently provides a deeply troubling example, and one without which any understanding of the more general phenomenon is dangerously incomplete. It also provides an example of how democracy can survive the assault of religious extremism.

Via 3QD.

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While the price of birth control pills on college campuses in US has skyrocketed this year due to Bush’s Deficit Reduction Act, Brazil is looking to prevent unwanted pregnancy by subsidizing the pill. If our politicians really were interested in reducing abortions, they wouldn’t make it so difficult to prevent pregnancy.

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As Manolo says, this shoe is “designed solely to make you feel happy.”

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