In honor of 9/02/10, here’s some 90210. Check out our 90210 Style Trends post from back in the day here.

Note: Watch for Tori Spelling’s intro scene, while everyone else got to come off looking relatively cool, poor Donna just eats a sandwich.

posted by: Tricia Rock

L.A. JAILS PLAN TO USE HEAT-BEAM RAY-GUNS ON PRISONERS

A device designed to control unruly inmates by blasting them with a beam of intense energy that causes a burning sensation is drawing heat from civil rights groups who fear it could cause serious injury and is “tantamount to torture.”

The mechanism, known as an “Assault Intervention Device,” is a stripped-down version of a military gadget that sends highly focused beams of energy at people and makes them feel as though they are burning. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department plans to install the device by Labor Day, making it the first time in the world the technology has been deployed in such a capacity.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California criticized Sheriff Lee Baca’s decision in a letter sent Thursday, saying that the technology amounts to a ray gun at a county jail. The 4-feet-tall weapon, which looks like a cross between a robot and a satellite radar, will be mounted on the ceiling and can swivel.

It is remotely controlled by an operator in a separate room who lines up targets with a joystick…

Read the full article via Salon.com (published August 26, 2010)

Our two cents: Making people feel like they are burning alive doesn’t really seem like the best way to quell a riot or rehabilitate inmates. Besides wouldn’t they just move around more as they attempt to dodge the heat beam?

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THE GOVERNMENT CAN NOW TRACK YOUR EVERY MOVE WITH GPS, AT LEAST IN THE 9th CIRCUIT

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn’t violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway – and no reasonable expectation that the government isn’t tracking your movements.

That is the bizarre – and scary – rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states (Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants – with no need for a search warrant.

It is a dangerous decision – one that, as the dissenting judges warned, could turn America into the sort of totalitarian state imagined by George Orwell. It is particularly offensive because the judges added insult to injury with some shocking class bias: the little personal privacy that still exists, the court suggested, should belong mainly to the rich.

This case began in 2007, when Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents decided to monitor Juan Pineda-Moreno, an Oregon resident who they suspected was growing marijuana. They snuck onto his property in the middle of the night and found his Jeep in his driveway, a few feet from his trailer home. Then they attached a GPS tracking device to the vehicle’s underside…

In fact, the government violated Pineda-Moreno’s privacy rights in two different ways. For starters, the invasion of his driveway was wrong. The courts have long held that people have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their homes and in the “curtilage,” a fancy legal term for the area around the home. The government’s intrusion on property just a few feet away was clearly in this zone of privacy.

The judges veered into offensiveness when they explained why Pineda-Moreno’s driveway was not private. It was open to strangers, they said, such as delivery people and neighborhood children, who could wander across it uninvited.

Read the full article via Time/Yahoo News (published August 26, 2010)

Our two cents: We can only hope the Supreme Court will reverse this decision, otherwise say goodbye to the 4th Amendment.

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FDA FINDS ‘OBJECTIONABLE CONDITIONS’ AT EGG FARMS RESPONSIBLE FOR MASSIVE RECALL

Flies “too numerous to count,” rodents, wild birds, maggots, and open piles of manure four to eight feet high were among the observations released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration yesterday, illustrating “significant objectionable conditions” at two Iowa egg farms responsible for the recent recall of over half a billion eggs.

With the release of the inspection reports for Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms, FDA said the two companies failed to implement internal protocols and FDA egg regulations, which went into affect July 9.

The farms came under investigation after being linked to a sharp spike in Salmonella enteritidis illnesses between May and August. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost 1,500 reported illnesses are likely linked to the outbreak.

Federal officials are still trying determine exactly how the disease-causing bacteria entered the large-scale egg facilities. The observational reports released yesterday indicate there are numerous possible modes of contamination.

Read the full article via Food Safety News (published August 31, 2010)

Our two cents: Where the F was the FDA before this outbreak? Open piles of manure four to eight feet tall don’t exactly show up overnight. At least I hope not…

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A U.S. MAN MAY FACE 16 YEARS IN PRISON FOR POSTING A VIDEO OF HIS ARREST ON YOUTUBE

When police arrested Anthony Graber for speeding on his motorbike, the 25-year-old probably did not see himself as an advocate for police accountability in the age of new media. But Graber, a sergeant with the Maryland Air National Guard, is now facing 16 years in prison, not for dangerous driving, but for a Youtube video he posted after receiving a speeding ticket.

The video, filmed with a camera mounted on Graber’s motorcycle helmet designed to record biking stunts rather than police abuse, shows a plain clothes officer jumping out of an unmarked car and pointing a pistol at the motorcyclist. It does not portray the policeman in a positive light.

After he posted the video on Youtube, police raided Graber’s home, seized computers and put him in jail.

“The case is critical to the protection of democracy because I don’t think you can have a free country in which public officials are able to criminally prosecute people who film what they are doing,” David Rocah, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union in Maryland who is representing Graber, said.

Read the full article with video via Al-Jazeera (published August 28, 2010)

Our two cents: Although it’s unlikely Graber will have to do any time because The Maryland Attorney General’s Office has publicly stated a police stop is not a private conversation and therefore is not covered by Maryland’s Wiretap Act, the fact the plain clothes cop pulled a gun on a citizen for speeding still makes us say WTF.

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VENEZUELAN POLITICIAN RAFFLES BREAST IMPLANTS TO RAISE MONEY

A Venezuelan politician is offering breast implants as a prize in a raffle to raise funds for his parliamentary election campaign.

“Some people raffle TVs and we decided to offer this. It’s an interesting prize and there’s a lot of interest,” Gustavo Rojas, an opposition candidate for a National Assembly position, told Reuters while campaigning in Caracas.

Cosmetic surgery, especially breast enlargement, is widespread in image-conscious Venezuela, whose beauty queens have won numerous international pageant titles.

Read the full article via Reuters (published August 27, 2010)

Our two cents: American politicians please take note, this is how you raise money without going through corporate lobbyists.

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JAPANESE MEN GO TO A HOTEL TO BE WITH VIRTUAL GIRLFRIENDS

This resort town, once popular with honeymooners, is turning to a new breed of romance seekers—virtual sweethearts.

In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen. The trips are actual, can be expensive and aim to re-create the virtual weekend outing featured in the game, a product of Konami Corp. played on Nintendo Co.’s DS videogame system.

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

Read the full article with video via The Wall Street Journal

Our two cents: So you still have to impress these virtual girls by working out and doing homework, still have to listen to irritating girl talk, still have to spend money on expensive dates and still can’t have sex with them? It sounds more like a level of purgatory then anything remotely resembling fun.

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Bonus: Rubber Puppet of Sweden performs during a Rubberdoll contest at the rubber and fetish event ‘Latexpo 2010′ in Hamburg late August 21, 2010. Rubberdolls are mostly men wearing a female shaped bodysuit made of latex or rubber and dressed in fetish related dresses. The Latexpo runs August 20-22 and designers will present new materials and styles. There will also be fetish parties, a fashion ball and a Rubberdoll contest. See more weird photos via Reuters’ slideshow.

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Bonus: Watch supporters of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor ” rally pathetically try to explain their “reasoning”  in interviews with New Left Media.

posted by: Harold Johns III

Banksy hits England’s Brighton Pier with a “reconditioned dolphin ride with crude oil and a tuna net.”

Click here to see it in action.

Click here to see more of Banksy’s new work.

posted by: Brent Carter

MAN SHOT IN HEAD DOESN’T NOTICE UNTIL 5 YEARS LATER

A Polish man living in Germany went about his business for about five years without noticing he had been shot in the head because he was drunk when it happened. Police in the western city of Bochum said on Tuesday doctors found a .22 caliber bullet in the back of his head after the 35-year-old went to have what he thought was a cyst removed.

Presented with the 5.6mm projectile, the man recalled he had received a blow to the head around midnight at a New Year’s party “in 2004 or 2005,” but had forgotten about it because he had been “very drunk,” a police spokesman said…

Police said they were not treating the incident as suspicious as the bullet might have got lodged in the man’s head when a reveler fired a gun in celebration.

Read the full article via Reuters (published August 24, 2010)

Our two cents: The gauntlet for drunkenness has been laid down with vigor.

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BABIES WITH BREASTS SHOCK CHINA

Once again, China’s most vulnerable citizens – its babies – are the central figures in a food-safety scandal. Two years ago, milk powder tainted with the industrial chemical melamine killed six infants and left 300,000 more suffering from kidney stones. Now, some Chinese babies are growing breasts, and their parents are blaming the Nasdaq-listed company that produces the baby  formula they were drinking.

But tests conducted by the besieged Ministry of Health have exonerated Synutra International, based in the northern coastal city of Qingdao. No abnormalities were found in samples of Synutra’s milk powder or any other formula that was tested, the ministry announced on Sunday. Laboratory tests of 42 Synutra samples found no trace of added hormones that could have led to the premature development of four infant girls. But this may in fact increase the parents’ anxiety: if this was not caused by tainted milk then by what?

Read the full article via The Asia Times (published August 17, 2010)

Our two cents: Please, don’t try to visualize a baby with breasts, it’ll just make ya feel weird.

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JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SEEKS EBONICS EXPERTS – DEA TO HIRE NINE “BLACK ENGLISH” LINGUISTS

The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media”…

In contract documents, which are excerpted here, Ebonics is listed among 114 languages for which prospective contractors must be able to provide linguists. The 114 languages are divided between “common languages” and “exotic languages.” Ebonics is listed as a “common language” spoken solely in the United States.

Read the full article via The Smoking Gun (published August 23, 2010)

Our two cents: I had no idea Ebonics or “Black English” were terms (white) people still used.

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13 YEAR OLD BOY HIT BY LIGHTNING AT 13:13 ON FRIDAY THE 13th

A 13-year-old boy was struck by lightning — at 13:13 hours on Friday the 13th, according to reports.

The teen was watching an air show at Lowestoft, England, when he was struck and was later treated for burns to his shoulder, the U.K.’s Mirror newspaper said. He is expected to fully recover.

Rex Clarke, leader of the St. John Ambulance team that treated the child, described what happened.

“Suddenly there was this huge crack of lightning really close to the seafront and really loud thunder,” he told the Mirror. “Seconds later we got a call someone had been hit. The boy was breathing and was conscious.”

“He had a minor burn to his shoulder and was taken to hospital as a precaution. It could have been a lot worse,” he said, adding: “It’s all a bit strange that he was 13, and it happened at 13:13 on Friday the 13th.

Read the full article via MSNBC (published August 15, 2010)

Our two cents: If you’re gonna get hit by lightning, might as well do it with style.

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THE PACIFIC GARBAGE ISLAND HAS A NORTH ATLANTIC COUNTERPART AND NOW IT’S BEEN MAPPED

Millions of pieces of plastic — most smaller than half an inch — float throughout the oceans. They are invisible to satellites, and except on very calm days you won’t even see them from the deck of a sailboat. The only way to know how much junk is out there is to tow a fine net through the water.

Scientists have gathered data from 22 years of surface net tows to map the North Atlantic garbage patch and its change over time, creating the most accurate picture yet of any pelagic plastic patch on earth.

The data were gathered by thousands of undergraduates aboard the Sea Education Association (SEA) sailing semester, who hand-picked, counted and measured more than 64,000 pieces of plastic from 6,000 net tows between 1986 to 2008.

“The highest concentrations that we observe in the North Atlantic garbage patch  are comparable to that of the North Pacific, but we don’t have enough data about the size of the North Pacific one to say whether they are comparable in size,” said oceanographer Kara Law of SEA, lead author of the study published August 19 in Science…

The highest concentrations of plastic were found roughly from the latitude of Virginia to the latitude of Cuba. While they were able to clearly define the north and south boundaries of the patch, the cruise tracks didn’t venture far enough east to find the eastern boundary. They estimate the average concentration of plastic in this area is about 4,000 pieces per square mile, though it is as high as 250,000 pieces per square mile in some places.

Read the full article with photos and graphs via Wired (published August 19th, 2010)

Our two cents: U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. …

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3 COLOMBIAN TEENS ON FACEBOOK HIT LIST KILLED IN PAST 10 DAYS

Three teens who were on a 69-name hit list posted on Facebook have been killed in the past 10 days in a southwestern Colombian town, officials say.

Police say they do not know who posted the list or why the names are on it.

“It is still not clear,” Colombian national police spokesman Wilson Baquero told CNN. “This is part of the investigation.”

But officials note that a criminal gang known as Los Rastrojos and a Marxist guerrilla group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia operate in the area.

The hit list on Facebook, which was posted August 17, gave the people named three days to leave the town of Puerto Asis or be executed, said Volmar Perez Ortiz, a federal official whose title is defender of the public.

Police at first thought the posting was a joke, Perez said in a statement issued Saturday. But the publication of a second list with 31 additional names led authorities to convene a special security meeting Friday, Perez said.

Read the full article via CNN (published August 24, 2010)

Our two cents: I thought Facebook tattled on people all the time for much lesser crimes, so what gives?

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Bonus: TWILIGHT WEREWOLF TAYLOR LAUNTER EMOTIONALLY DISTRESSED OVER RV TRAILER

Bonus: BEDBUG INFESTATIONS ON THE RISE IN THE U.S. NEW YORK TOPS THE LIST

Bonus: TRAFFIC JAM IN CHINA REACHES 11 DAYS AS OF AUGUST 25, 2010

posted by: Harold Johns III

via doobybrain

posted by: Brent Carter

“La Batea Colony, Zacatecas, Mexico” by Larry Towell

The Getty Center (1200 Getty Center Drive in Los Angeles, CA) presents Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties. The show runs through November 14 and includes work from:

Philip Jones Griffiths
Leonard Freed
Eugene and Aileen M. Smith
Susan Meiselas
Mary Ellen Mark
Lauren Greenfield
Larry Towell
Sebastião Salgado
James Nachtwey

From the gallery:

In the decades following World War II, an independently minded and critically engaged form of photography began to gather momentum. Its practitioners have combined their skills as artists and reporters, creating extended photographic essays that delve deeply into topics of social concern and present distinct personal visions of the world.

Engaged Observers looks in depth at projects by a selection of the most vital photographers who have contributed to the development of this approach. Passionately committed to their subjects, they have authored evocative bodies of work that are often published extensively as books and transcend the realm of traditional photojournalism.

posted by: Tricia Rock