Escaped Prisoner

I was walking east along Queen Street towards the Don and I saw a man coming towards me wearing an orange jumpsuit. Last time I saw a man in an orange jumpsuit he was shackled and being escorted into a hospital by two guards. The prisoner, in admitting, was wearing in addition to the the orange jumpsuit, those odd slip on sneakers. The sneakers on guy I saw on Queen street was wearing the same slip on sneakers.

I wore the same kind of sneakers when I was grade school. Kids today are able to press for something better. Only cons wear them now. I also wore a orange jumpsuit once . In my case it was a orange chainsaw suit. Look here for a video on chainsaw safety.

I should have called the cops.

Japanese Megaproject or Sci-Fi Movie set

This came from the offical site of a Japanese megaproject called the "G-Cans Project". What gets me is that the pictures are from the official site. It as if the builders also recognized the cool mythic nature of what they built.
(original link from Boingboing)

Agitprop Music Video

Here is a great little music video that encapsulates everything wrong with the current mindset in the states.
The Decemberists, Sixteen Millitary Wives

I Heart Gitmo

Is the American far right nuts. It is the same "community" that worked long and hard for there to be no official condemnation of lynching until last week.

The radical right have now leapt to the defense of Gitmo. Because many people and organizations have charged the whole system of indefinite imprisonment beyond the reach of either national or international law. The national law is the Yanks own constitution. The International law is the Geneva Accords. During the WWII the only two powers that did not follow the Geneva Accords were Soviets, who killed 20 million of their own citizens before the war, and the Japanese Empire. The Germans half followed the rules. Against the Soviets, who shot their own returned POW's, the German treated them badly. However captured allied, non-Soviet troops, were treated by the rules generally. After WWII the Yanks had a similar problem they have now in recognizing POW status, see James Bacque's Other Losses.

I went to Ted Rall's site and came across this bizarre "I Heart Gitmo" cartoon. A cursory search finds lots and lots of wing nuts who have some sense of pride in the latest atrocities. The latest pointless atrocity. The early reports showed that the professionals, FBI interogators, were aghast at pointless brutality of the interrogations. If torture and other "non-traditional" interrogation techniques truly worked the tyrannies that employ them would be the safest places in the world.

The American far right has now leapt to defense of the poor benighted troops that are forced to be jailers and torturers. Proving Sir John A . Macdonald's dictum that a true friend is someone who will defend you when you are wrong.

Dead Yanks

Lately I have been watching the daily obituaries on the The News Hour. After several months of this I began to wonder of the statistics of it all. In Vietnam the average American dead was 19. The average recruit was under 21. The only time in the past that armies have not had the demographics of 85% under 25, 10% 25-35, and 5% over 35 is during times of mass mobilization. The other exception is "mercenary" groups like the French Foreign Legion, or the British equivalent the Gurkhas. What surprised me was that a lot of the pictures that would show on the honor roll would someone other than the "expendable" 20 year old private. The problem with losing 35 year old staff sergeants is that beyond the human cost, which is bad, it takes longer to train a sergeant than even a officer. The Soviets proved by their absence that NCOs are vital to an army. The American army is now dealing with their personnel shortfalls with recruiting more teenagers straight from high school.

half finished institute in the former USSR.

Dead Tech

Boingboing had a great link for a Russian site filled with derelict buildings.

Medieval Technology Site

I was looking at some newsgroups I rarely visit. Most of soc.history groups were consumed by crossposted agruements about mideast politics. However at soc.history.medieval I came accross a thread about wheelbarrows. This lead me to this great site about medieval technology.

Slimier Mold Site

I was having a D&D flashback so I went googling for slime mold. I came accross this site with some great pictures. The only problem is that through the site has been created a university, by a prof and is hosted on university server. This site has a restricted sense of copyright.

We have received hundreds of requests from various organizations, agencies and individuals to use photos and information from Wayne's Word on their web sites and in published newsletters, compact discs, books, etc. All of the articles and 99.9% of all the photos and illustrations in Wayne's Word are copyright protected and may not be used in other on-line, CD or printed publications without our expressed written permission. This includes the display of our images and illustrations on other web sites. For anyone interested in this material, you may place hyperlinks (but no frames) to anchor tags on our pages from your web sites. See waynes-word.com for high resolution .tif images available for publications.

No picture, spectacular as they may be. Instead go here for slime.

Small Flag of Feldsparia

small flag

The Flag of Feldsparia

The Flag of Feldsparia

Background #1

Factory in Ruins

I will post the address of the site where I got this image.

Tropico in Real Life

The Current June 13, 2005

The first half hour is made up of a report from Boliva. A recent AP report called the Bolivian protestors "anti-american". The defination that AP uses is the same that the capitalist in the game Tropico use. Anti-American is any procedure or policy that benefits most people most of the time. The only time the Americans did not, as a foreign policy, work to spread misery and inequality was a couple years after WWII, the Marshall Plan, in Europe.