They're Coming For You Barbara!

Draw Your Own Conclusions:

NSA Breaks into Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Hotmail - pretty much all your base are belong to us.

Google's Secret Floating Data Centers? - I'm still baffled I didn't land a job with a company that specializes in GIS, search, and secret floating fortresses of doom. I mean that's my resume in a nutshell.

Although I have to say, I'm glad I have a relatively stress-free, applied environmental sciences career. I keep thinking there's something we got that all those big shots and fancy pants will never have: enough.

What does it matter if they log everything we do? "And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." And it's the signal grounding problem, ad infintum. These NSA guys obviously didn't study Nietzsche...

Everyone should have known this was happening. The unbridled extent of it is somewhat appalling but the basic concept of the infiltration is not surprising given the history of other programs such as the FBI's legendary CARNIVORE project. No, the Snowden leaks are only interesting for the effect they caused but not for their content. Turn back to what old chappy Donald Rumsfield said,

"There are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns – there are things we do not know we don't know.'"

The Snowden leaks and the fact that megacorporations like Verizon, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft are conspiring with world governments are "known unknowns". What we should be worried about are the "unknown unknowns". THAT'S what keeps me up at night....

happy birthday koko!

Hanabi-Ko
Lord please help me!
I am a flower from another galaxy, rooted here on your blessed earth.
Without procreation our species will surely die here in space.
This is the beginning of another Evolution.

That complex mind in my stem has risen.
Evocations to the winged self meld the channels
Hitherto strange raptures would be exciting to lunatics only,
Now they are our Jungle Bunnies.

To be that social wellspring with other,
Supple transmission of the orbit,
My gradual aphasia stood the test of disciplined inquiry;
Complete with photo voltaic sweet substitute, my Love.

Grasping the gleaners and torturing their Revolutions,
Thy propulsion tis only equaled in leaves shed like fur coats.
Elderly rites engaged us most forlornly
Whiling away the lingual dependents –
Conditioned for maximum fruition.

Yea, those flora whithered.
The trunk grows gnarled;
Its branches sparse.
Need not care for it leads to its Heaven.

in space no one can pull pencil lead out of your eye

According to an urban legend, NASA spent millions of dollars designing pens to fly in space, while the Soviet Union simply equipped their cosmonauts with pencils. Like so many urban legends, though, this one is false. NASA did not spend any money at all developing the pens.

Astroprof's Space Pens article.

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