meta-roj

union de-discriminator

country gentleman

i knew guantanamo wasn’t big enough for this war on terror, but i assumed we’d build camps in canada to keep the detainees “off american soil” and away from the judicial system. nah. looks like we picked new york – camp wackenhut.

200 locked away & under the radar [new york daily news, august 19, 2004]

“Most of them were picked up in the aftermath of 9/11 and have been held without criminal charges or due process and, in some cases, without access to a lawyer,” Khan added. “The food is insufficient and inadequate, and even though some of the detainees have heart conditions or suffer from diabetes and ulcers, medical care is practically nonexistent.”

more on this story from democracy now and the hindustan times. don’t expect a lot of major-network coverage in the united states.

i also found a story about what it takes to get a congolese refugee out of the wackenhut detention center.

if you’d like a job, drop by the wackenhut career center, and you, too, can be in a position to abuse detainees, or maybe tattle on someone else that is. wackenhut is so good, they’ve got a whole website run by a union to keep track of their newsworthy activities. one interesting example has the company that runs security hired to test security – so we can invoke the whole “fox guarding the henhouse” line.

[core lead via boingboing]

if you’re in the mood for some wild speculation, jump on the niobium futures… the international linear collider will go with niobium magnets instead of copper magnets.

Particle collider edges forward [bbs news, august 2o, 2004]

Making its announcement at the International Conference on High Energy Physics, the International Committee for Future Accelerators said the collider should employ niobium superconducting technology in the system it uses to accelerate particles.

if the laws of physics don’t change between now and then… and if the politicians stay on track and fund this thing… and if there isn’t a major technological breakthrough that makes room-temperature superconductors made out of recycled office paper… then this beast will need 30 kilometers of niobium superconducting magnets. go go gadget magnets!

want to horde some niobium? cia. brasileira de metalurgia e mineração [brazil], mineração catalão de goiás [brazil], niobec [canada], silmet [estonia].

for more on niobium, a handy report from the us government is here [pdf].

in other drug news (not to be confused with inhaling alcohol), we have news about lesser methamphetamine through chemistry.

researchers at southern illinois university, carbondale cooked up some kid-safe, environment-safe and crop-safe stain to add to anhydrous ammonia as a theft-deterrent.

grainnet (of course there is) has the story of glotell, which you add to your anhydrous ammonia. and will be available starting september 1.

basically, anyone coming into contact with this stuff ends up flourescent pink for 24 to 72 hours. it also, apparently, makes your crystal meth pink, which is, presumably, not a desirable color to the average meth fiend. there are other advantages – it will show you where there are leaks in your tanks and such – but it’s mostly about making the agricultural chemical less interesting to illicit lab operations.

back in june there was some noise about some other anhydrous ammonia magic from iowa state university researchers, but that’s not this.

ow available in new york (and just in time for the party girls, now you can get all the benefits of alcohol without having to actually drink anything. you can inhale, right?

get one for your own bar (or bedroom), for just $2995.00.

there’s the risk that someone’s going to make this illegal, but what’s a few grand compared to your last full-on bender and hangover?

if you’re a geek and feel like hacking an mt plugin… ask me about the mt microcosmos thought.

senator edward m. kennedy of massachusetts made his way onto the no-fly list, and it took personal intervention of the secretary of homeland security to get fixed.

note to self: call tom if i ever run into trouble.

SunnComm’s MediaMax Surpasses the Five Million CD Mark [business wire via tmc net, august 19, 2004]

Over 5 million MediaMax CDs are in the hands of USA music fans!

read the cd label… it might not be a cd.

cat scanner