I like Google News Alerts. When something bugs me, I pop it into an alert, and keep track of it, often long after it’s fallen off the front page. (I still have one running for “brazilian london investigation Menezes”, and it still gets hits. The Met police chief Sir Ian Blair just met Menezes family face to face for the first time yesterday, in the House of Commons, for example.)

Anyway, the new one is easy. quoted(“no photos, no stories”). From SF Chronicle, (via boingboing):

• As bodies recovered, reporters are told ‘no photos, no stories’

Already, up pops the Army’s response:

• Media have complete access, Army says.
  Brass contradicts soldier who threatened Chronicle team covering body recovery

As long as that “Joe” who doesn’t get it is getting an earful right
now (from a sergeant who got an earful from a Captain who got his ass
chewed by a Colonel, hopefully), then I’m ok with that. Because it’s
NOT ok for an active-duty 82nd Airborne trooper to threaten a
reporter for doing his job within in the state of Lousiana, barring a
state of martial law. (which hasn’t been declared. There is a state of
emergency, but it doesn’t suspend the Constitution.) When a
professional soldier threatens to kick you out of the state and take
your press credentials, it’s scant comfort to hear that a spokesman
for his commanding officer says otherwise, unless they make the
situation VERY clear to the men on the ground VERY fast.

Disclaimer for militant nutballs: I have the greatest respect for our professional soldier cadre, but
(as Spidey’s Uncle Ben said), “with great power comes great
responsibility”. When you get guns and bombs to play with, you have to
play by the rules.

And yeppers…I left in the Google News Alert. So if anything interesting about this pops up, the power of the Interweb will let us know.

Check it out…browncoats rule! Session 416.

Another excellent rant: Booming Babies Still Want Bidey

This looks pretty cool: Black Dog.

I’ve got happy and sad today.

First off, funny. Kung Fu Monkey is consistently clever, funny, and insightful; it’s worth reading in your aggregator. Recently, David Brin pointed to one of KFM’s older posts, though…which I hadn’t seen, and flat out cracked me up:

• I Miss Republicans

TOO freakin’ true. I miss Republicans, too. And, to be fair, Democrats. And pragmatism, rational discourse, debate, and compromise. (Who IS this who’s hijacked my blog?? *grin*)

---

Secondly…sad and disturbing. The reports aren’t all in yet in the
investigation of the “shoot to head” mistaken killing of Jean Charles de
Menezes in London last month, but there are new allegations that are
not good. Like…he wasn’t running from police. He wasn’t wearing
a heavy coat. He basically left a flat that was under investigation,
went to the train station, got on, sat down, and had a guy jump on the
train and put a bullet in his head. And then several more, just to be
sure.

Uhhh…uhh…anyone else feeling a little sick?

Noted…all the info isn’t in yet. These are allegations, and part of an ongoing investigation. And the London police DO seem to be taking the investigation seriously. But this is not the sort of situation we want to get in, folks. Yeah…it got a little crazy, and no one was sure…so we removed the guy’s head. It’s policy. It’s the only way to be sure.

In case I haven’t said it recently…if this sort of thing becomes accepted, THE BAD GUYS WIN.

I actually think I’m to the point where I hope these new allegations are false. If they are, I’ll make sure to point it out as soon as I hear that.

Holy crap, this is cool! After being pointed to mises.org (which I had visited
previously, but forgotten about, I’m ashamed to say) by the recent slashdot
article on the FCC and spectrum scarcity, I was pleased to note they
have both a blog and a podcast! Mises’ Human
Action is one amazing work. Now that I think of it; I haven’t read
it since college…it may be time for a re-read.

I think there may be something to this podcasting thing…*grin*.

UPDATE: Wow. They have a freakin’ boatload of audio available. This is great.

Thanks (um…I guess *shiver*) to Bruce Schneier for the link:

Last year, Gainer (DC Chief of Police) retrained his officers to shoot
to kill when faced with a suspected suicide bomber who is uncooperative and refuses to stop and be searched.

…

The police organization’s behavioral profile says such a person might
exhibit “multiple anomalies,” including wearing a heavy coat or jacket
in warm weather or carrying a briefcase, duffle bag or backpack with
protrusions or visible wires.

So…I build the build the wearable PC kludgefest that I’m now
tentatively planning (full o’ protruding wires, I imagine), I exercise
my 4th Amendment rights at a checkpoint in DC…and they kill
me. Wouldn’t THAT be fucked? Maybe a MAKE magazine subscription for my
anniversary isn’t such a good idea…too dangerous. That stuff can get
you killed!

Mark Cuban’s stuff is good in general, but if you haven’t immersed yourself in “Mark-ism” yet, a good quick starting point is a recent Larry’s World IT Conversations podcast. An entertaining listen.

I’ve moved back to using a RSS aggregator (the firefox extension sage), so I’ve slowly started upping my blogroll again. Some new additions that I particularly like:

• World Changing
• Greaseblog
• Bitworking

IT Conversations hit a couple of home runs in the past week:

• Adam Bosworth: Database Requirements in the Age of Scalable Services
• Jamais Cascio: Participatory Panopticon

These both seriously kick butt. And I get the double bonus…Adam Bosworth I was already a fan of, but Jamais Cascio is a new read. I love finding new cool people.

More good stuff…Phillip Torrone at Make has posted multiple
podcasts that he captured at Defcon. It’s been a good week for
podcasts! FYI…there’s a zip file of
audio-only MP3s available corresponding to the M4B files that
Phillip has put up at Make. Thanks for hooking us up with that so
quickly, Phillip! Not all of us have iPods yet…*grin*