Poem: How He Lived

If he steps back
The whole machine

Wheels past in a blur.
Some nights he jettisons

What is left of his soul
Out into the void

And it dogpaddles back.
He's been it for too many turns.
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Face scans at airports are coming to the U.K.; it will happen here

A face recognition system will scan faces to match them against the biometric

chips on passports in England. Photograph: Image Source/Getty

In the United Kingdom, a new level of scrutiny is about to be added to the other indignities air travellers suffer from. I have been on roughly 80 different airplanes in the last 16 months, and have written here fairly extensively about the airlines and airport security, and the indignities to which we are subjected as we try to get from one place to the other[1]:

According to the U.K. Guardian:

"Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.

"From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.
Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

"But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

"They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks. "

[1]

Aviophobia: Pilot's gun discharges on US Airways flight
Blown by the TSA again/Aviophobia once again
Aviophobia, Part 26
Airport Screeners Miss Fake Bombs 75% Of The Time
Aviophobia, Part 22
Poem: Landing, or, Aviophobia, Part 26
Aviophobia Update
Hello Austin! Goodbye Fear of Flying!
A confession: How I slipped through the NSA metal detectors. . .with some heavy metal!
Fear Of Flying, Fear of Dying
Poem: Falling
Poem: Notes On Flying
One More Reason Why I Am Scared Sh**less To Fly: Video Of Fixing A Jet's Wing With Duct Tape
Airline passenger restrictions, hip replacements, and why the Executive Branch goes unmolested, while I am scanned, probed, poked and patted down
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The Nazis and "Degenerate Art"

click poster to enlarge

In Munchen, in 1937, the Nazis staged a huge exhibit of "degenerate art," from which this poster is taken. Unfortunately for the Nazis, this show it drew more visitors than a concurrent exhibit of state-sanctioned art. This poster announces the exhibition.

Stephanie Barron wrote a monograph called "Degenerate Art": The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany" (published by LACMA [a favorite museum of mine], or, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1991).

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The Mighty B

A couple of friends of mine in L.A. have a cartoon starting on TV this weekend, on Nickelodeon. "The Mighty B!" premieres Saturday morning, April 26th, at 10:30 a.m. Two other new episodes will appear on Sunday morning. There is an article on Wikipedia with more details than I can possibly provide.

Cynthia True (who wrote for Fairly Odd Parents and does lot of print work, not to mention her great (if somewhat handcuffed by overly-protective copyright holders) biography of Bill Hicks) and her husband, Erik Wiese (who wrote and storyboarded Sponge Bob and other cartoons), co-created the show with Amy Poehler of Saturday Night Live. It's been over three years in the making and it is finally hitting the air. It's a very charming show and I probably can't tell you how I know that, but we all--or a subset of us--will know tomorrow.

The cartoon is hand-drawn 2D, which doesn't happen much anymore [1]. Is that cool, or what?

According to my friend Daryle Conners, it is also the first Nick show "(and one of the only cartoons I can think of) that features a little girl in the lead, let alone a little girl who is goofy, crazy, ambitious and a little homely - typically the girls in children's animation normally act as reflectors for the male characters or play "the straight-man" role. "

Amy Poehler voice acts the lead Bessie Higgenbottom, and Andy Richter plays her little brother, Ben. Tune in and give Cindy and Eric a Nielson bump!
___________________________________________

[1] I remember when Disney sold all their animation tables a few years ago...it was kind of a big deal in the videogame and movie industries. We threw in the towel and it wasn't long before those who couldn't or wouldn't make the leap to 3D were left behind--tossed off the side of the prairie schooner to bolster the surviviors' chances.
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Map of the last 100 All This Is That visitors

This is sort of interesting (well, to me anyhow). It is a map of the last 200 visitors here. When I looked at this map a year or two ago, the visitors in the U.S. were almost all from the east and west coasts. It appears that we've penetrated the "flyover states," that we're completely sucking in South America, the Arctic and Antarctic, Cuba, and we don't seem to be reaching our brothers and sisters in Canada or Africa either. That red dot you see is the All This Is That offices...

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The Republicans and Tony Zirkle are now courting the Nazi voters

A congressional candidate is defending a speech he gave to to a group celebrating the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth, He said, he came because "he was asked."

Tony Zirkle, who hopes to become the Republican nominee in Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastikas, with a swastika flag in the background as e talked to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago last Sunday.


The Congressional Hopeful

"I'll speak to any group that invites me," Zirkle said Monday. "I've spoken on an African-American radio station in Atlanta."

Even at a black radio station, Tony? Wow. So, how's this one working for you,Tone?

The 2nd Congressional District includes a large portion of north central Indiana spanning from South Bend to Kokomo.
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A great new home improvement tool

This video was sent to me by Senor Dave Hokit. I have no clue as to where it actually originated.

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Let's get Kinky with Bizzare (and other) Magazines

Thanks to Dean Ericksen for pointing out this excellent article on Gawker. Dean reads Gawker so we don't have to! But look at what we miss! Check out their Best of the Bizarre and photo roundup here, on Gawker. In fact, one of the characters on one of the "girly" magazine covers is almost a dead ringer for Dean himself--I wonder if he put him through school The Hard Way?



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Back to California

All of a sudden I am returning to Orange County, California. Despite being a Republican hotbed, I kind of like the place. Certainly the weather, anyway. I barely unpacked my bags from the last trip. The good parts: I can be in the pool by five o'clock if everything goes right, and I am upgraded to first class, where I can swill, stretch out, and watch a movie or read in comfort. I'll just about have enough time to unpack when I return home Wednesday night, to get ready for my trip to England next week.
---o0o---

Are you a Godly person? Claim your 250,000 Pounds Sterling

Is this my lucky day?

-----Original Message-----

From: Mr. Jennifer Woodward [mailto:mrsjjwodward1958@yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 4:19 PM
To: Jack Brummet
Subject: Funds willed to you (Please Contact my Bank)

GOOD DAY TO YOU,
GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF GOD,

My name is Mrs. Jennifer Woodward. I am a dying woman who has decided to donate what I have to you/church. I am 59 years old and I was diagnosed for cancer for about 2 years ago, immediately after the death of my husband, who has left me everything he worked for. I have been touched by God to donate from what I have inherited from my late husband to you for the good work of God, rather than allow my relatives to use my husband hard earned funds ungodly.

Please pray that the good Lord forgive me my sins. I have asked God to forgive me and I believe He has because He is a merciful God. I will be going in for an operation in less than a month and I decided to WILL/donate the sum of £250,000 (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand British Pounds) to you for the good work of the Lord, and also to help the motherless and less privilege and also for the assistance of the widows.

At the moment I cannot take any telephone calls due to the fact that my relatives are around me and my health status. If you are a Godly person, please contact my Account Officer and he will arrange the transfer of the funds from my account to your preferred account. I wish you all the best and may the good Lord bless you abundantly, and PLEASE use the funds well and always extend the good work to others.

Pls. Contact Account Officer of Halifax bank Plc.

Account Officer; Mr. John Kerry
Halifax BANK PLC
HEAD OFFICE: Halifax Bank Plc. Address, 2170 Coventry Road, Sheldon Birmingham, B26 3JM.
EMAIL: halifaxbnkplc@hotmail.com


CUSTOMER SERVICE:
Tel: +44-704-576-9996
Tel: +44-704-577-0107
Fax: +44-707-570-7718

You are required to contact my Account Officer with the following information below Full Names; Address; Telephone number;

A scanned copy of your International Passport or driver?s license or any valid form of identification if available should be sent along

Mrs. Jennifer Woodward.
CC: Account Officer
John Kerry
Halifax Bank Plc

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The cold rain and snow

All last week, I was in Orange County, California, where it was mostly about 80 degrees. As I arrived home in Seattle, a month into spring, it was snowing. And it snowed all weekend sporadically...never sticking, but snowing every few hours. It even snowed on my way to work this morning. I was driving to the freeway, and there was an inch of snow on the ground and it was hailing and snowing. Traffic was slowing, and it looked like it might take hours to get to work. Three miles later, I was in the sunlight.

As it turns out, I am going back to Orange County tomorrow, where I'll get another blast of heat before returning to who knows what?

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A Blogger Meltdown, mostly of my own authoring?

You may have noticed the sporadic postings (partly due to being in California all week) in the last few days? I completely pooched my blogspot template. It seems partly due to collisions between last year's new blogger switchover and the new beta blogger sandbox. I am still missing a lot of the marginalia and widgets, but I have mostly recovered everything else. Except (!!!) the post date now appears beneath the first post of a day. And it's huge. And ugly. I've deleted all references to it, changed the color to white in the CSS section of the template, attempted to move it above the posy title somehow, and pasted in sections of old templates that I know looked good. All to no avail. I had one problem a couple years ago, where I sent the whole template to blogger and they immediately figured out what I'd done wrong. I have to throw myself on their mercy. I am a bonehead.
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