The 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Under the act, messages left on a server are considered abandoned after six months and are trivially subpoenaed by law enforcement. A group of ISPs is lobbying to extend the protections afforded to locally stored messages to messages stored on third party servers, but the Obama administration is urging Congress not to reform the law.
 "The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved a bill that would strengthen privacy protection for e-mails by requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant from a judge in most cases before gaining access to messages in individual accounts stored electronically. The bill is not expected to make it through Congress this year and will be the subject of negotiations next year with the Republican-led House." The EFF seems pretty happy with the proposed changes, but notes that the bill also reduces the protections of the Video Privacy Protection Act in order to allow Netflix et al to sell your viewing history.

Coffee The Elixir Of Life?

As I tap away at this laptop on a Sunday morning I am enjoying a fresh hot mug of my favorite brand of coffee that I made in my own kitchen. The steaming brew is something that I have imbibed since I was a small child. My french grandmother would give me coffee with a lot of milk and sugar in it when ever I visited her. And I have been enjoying my coffee ever since, although I drink it black with nothing added. Some people believe that coffee is evil and bad for you, can you believe that? 
Now the evidence remains overwhelmingly in coffee's favor. Yes, it was observational, but the study published in May in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at hundreds of thousands of men and women and found this bottom line result: people who drank coffee lived longer than those who didn't.
And the more they drank, the longer they lived. If you're into that sort of thing. The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

 "The Washington Post reports that Apple has finally unveiled their new version of iTunes, overhauling its look and feel and integrating it more closely with the company's iCloud Internet- storage service with one of the biggest upgrades Apple has made to the program with 400 million potential users since its debut more than a decade ago. The new design of iTunes moves away from the spreadsheet format that Apple has featured since its debut and adds more art and information about musicians, movies and television shows. It also adds recommendation features so users can find new material. According to David Pogue of the NY Times Apple has fixed some of the dumber design elements that have always plagued iTunes. 'For years, the store was represented only as one item in the left-side list, lost among less important entries like Radio and Podcasts. Now a single button in the upper-right corner switches between iTunes's two personalities: Store (meaning Apple's stuff) and Library (meaning your stuff).' Unfortunately, Apple hasn't fixed the Search box. As before, you can't specify in advance what you're looking for: an app, a song, a TV show, a book. Whatever you type into the Search box finds everything that matches, and you can't filter it until after you search. It feels like a two-step process when one should do. 'Improvements in visual navigation and a more logical arrangement of tools are good, but for me the biggest positive within iTunes 11 remains its vastly improved performance on all three Macs I've tested it on, including a relatively ancient five-year-old MacBook,' writes Jonny Evans."

 Martin of Cargospotter created this mesmerizing time-lapse video showing the constant stream of airplanes that land on a particular runway at London’s Heathrow airport, the third busiest airport in the world in terms of passengers (Atlanta Airport tops that list — did you know that?). The still photographs he captured are played back 17-times faster than real-time, causing the planes to look like RC airplanes floating around and bobbing in the breeze.

Yesterday, here in southern CA the sky was gloomy and misty. I was outside for most of the day hanging my Christmas decorations and lights so I had a great view of the sky. As clearings began to form in the sky you could see long chemtrails going every which way through the holes that were appearing in the gloom. And if you looked around you could see the aerial tankers spraying their chemicals all over the place. Soon enough the chemicals did what ever they were intended to do and the skies cleared up. Revealing long lines of chemtrails going all over the place. They continued their spraying operation for the rest of the day. This morning I ran across this story:

 Megastorms Could Drown Massive Portions of California. They should know... 

 "NPR pointed out a press release claiming that North Korean archaeologists have found a 'unicorn lair' in Pyongyang. The members of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have "reconfirmed" that this site was used for King Tongmyong's unicorn where the unicorn would concoct his unicorn schemes and do his unicorn things if anyone ventured too closely. The last line is, perhaps, the most important line of the article, 'The discovery of the unicorn lair, associated with legend about King Tongmyong, proves that Pyongyang was a capital city of Ancient Korea as well as Koguryo Kingdom.' Fear not that North Korea is surpassing the world in cryptozoology, Dr. Melba S. Ketchum of Nacogdoches, TX has claimed to have recently sequenced Bigfoot's DNA and he's part human."

 Ever cook with hot peppers, then rub your eye only to spend the rest of the night in agony? It's a pretty awful feeling, but you can soothe that burn the same way you'd soothe it after eating those peppers: with a little milk. Flush out your eyes with some milk and you should find relief pretty quickly.Milk binds to the capsaicin.

So if your mouth is burning and your eyes are watering and you feel like running around the house and water does nothing to relieve the burn, reach for that milk! Hot Peppers actually do you no harm at all.

Want to start eating hot peppers for health?
Start at the top of the list and slowly adapt as you progress along the list. Do not ever jump forward or you will get what we call a major "Time~out" as your mouth and throat burn while your nose runs and your eyes water and there is no relief. Eating peppers is a progressive thing as your body adapts to the capsaicin. At first it seems brutal in it's effects but eventually your body will adapt and you will actually begin to detect the subtle flavors that each variety of pepper offers. Few can ever make it to the Naga Jolokia.

The following is a list of Scoville ratings for peppers. The Scoville scale is a measure of "hotness." The number of Scoville heat units indicates the amount of capsaicin present. The higher the units, the hotter the pepper. The hotter the pepper, the better it is for you. After a while nothing but the best peppers will do for you. You will find yourself craving that burn!

Type of pepper
Bell pepper 0-no heat
Pimento 100-500
Pepperoncini 100-500
Tabasco Sauce (Sweet & Spicy) 100-500
Tabasco Sauce (Green Pepper) 600-800
Poblano Pepper 1,000-1,500
Texas Pete Sauce 1,000-1,500
Rocotillo Pepper 1,500-2,500
Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco Pepper) 2,500-5,000
New Mexico Peppers 4,500-5,000
Jalapeno Pepper 2,500-8,000
Wax Pepper 5,000-10,000
Tabasco Sauce (Habanero) 7,000-8,000
Serrano Pepper 10,000-23,000
Cayenne Pepper 30,000-50,000
Aji Pepper 30,000-50,000
Tabasco Pepper 30.000-50,000
Thai Pepper 50,000-100,000
Malagueta Pepper 50,000-100,000
Chiltepin Pepper 50,000-100,000
Pequin Pepper 50,000-100,000
Rocoto 100,000-200,000
Jamaican Hot Pepper 100,000-200,000
African Birdseye 100,000-200,000
Habanero Chile 100,000-350,000
Scotch Bonnet 100,000-350,000
Red Savina Habanero 350,000-577,000
Naga Jolokia 855,000-1,041,427
Standard US grade pepper spray 2,000,000-5,300,000
Nordihydrocapsaicin 9,100,000
Pure Capsaicin 15,000,000-17,000,000

And the contestant to beat?
 The Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Blend (Capsicum chinense), endemic to the district of Moruga in Trinidad and Tobago, is currently the world's hottest Chili pepper cultivar. The New Mexico State University's Chile Pepper Institute has identified the Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Blend as the newest hottest chili pepper in the world as of February 2012. According to the New Mexico State University Chile Institute, the Trinidad Scorpion Moruga Blend ranks as high as 2,009,231 SHU on the Scoville scale, making it the hottest chili pepper in the world to date.

 "In an extensive look at rebel communications, the New York Times reports that, 'In a demonstration of their growing sophistication and organization, Syrian rebels responded to a nationwide shutdown of the Internet by turning to satellite technology to coordinate within the country and to communicate with outside activists. To prepare, they have spent months smuggling communications equipment like mobile handsets and portable satellite phones into the country.'"

Time Lapse of Fall in Central Park NY

Want to win a bet? Don't flip a penny coin spin it and you will win every time...

Your new cell phone is going to be razor thin and flexible and if you are an early adopter it will be a Samsung.

"The ACM has an article describing the history and present of the Great Firewall of China (GFW). 'Essentially, GFW is a government-controlled attacking system, launching attacks that interfere with legitimate communications and affecting many more victims than malicious actors. Using special techniques, it successfully blocks the majority of Chinese Internet users from accessing most of the Web sites or information that the government doesn't like. GFW is not perfect, however. Some Chinese technical professionals can bypass it with a variety of methods and/or tools. An arms race between censorship and circumvention has been going on for years, and GFW has caused collateral damage along the way.'"

 Rare rock formation in France, Massif de la Chartreuse

Love a good conspiracy? I just viewed this one on TV and it was creepy. 

New World Order

 Strange Cases Of Slippage Through Time?

 Apple, Google, Microsoft Avoid Taxes By Keeping Billions In Profits Offshore: Senate Report

What If Jesus Doesn't Watch Football?

The bombing of Dresden Germany

NSA Whistleblower: Everyone in US under virtual surveillance, all info stored, no matter the post

A Serious Commitment to Tagging

Warsaw 1945