Frust

• There is now a two part test to determine whether an act by the [US] government is a “search” (either makes it so):
  • Is the act a trespass on the property of the suspect?  Exception: If the act (for example, attachment of a gps tracker) is done before the item becomes the property of the suspect then it is not a search even after it has become the property of the suspect.
  • Does the act violate the suspect’s reasonable expectation of privacy?  With the trespass rationale coming back to the fore, the role of the reasonable expectation of privacy might become narrower.  In most cases the opening of a car trunk or entry into a building is a trespass.  Therefore, the reasonable expectation of privacy would apply to something else.  The thing which comes to mind is “emanations.”  Emanations are those things which escape from a person/property through the air (energy, heat, smell, sound) and do not require the police to actually touch the suspect’s property.  Reasonable expectation of privacy requiring a search warrant for emanations tracks with the cases such as sound that emanates out of a phone booth requires a search warrant and energy emanating from a house requires a search warrant.  Exceptions: Those emanations which are readily noticeable by another may not require a search warrant.  For instance an officer that smells marijuana, or sees stolen property in a car or hears someone in a house yelling “Rape!” would not have to go get a search warrant.  Emanations (scents) which are alerted to by a dog also do not require a search warrant.
• Some US domestic police forces are now equipped with spy drones.  One drone manufacturer plans to sell 18,000 drones to police departments throughout the country; it advertises a small drone, the “Switchblade,” which can track and land on a person, then explode.  State and local police are being “federalised” to an extent.  It is not only military armaments and spy technology that local police are receiving from Washington, but also an attitude toward the public and the federal oversight and collaboration that goes with that.  When Homeland Security, a federal police force, comes into states (such as has happened in Georgia and Tennessee) and works with state police to stop cars and trucks on Interstate highways, subjecting vehicles to baseless searches, then state police become de facto deputies of Homeland Security.  Homeland Security;s reach goes far beyond airline security and includes highways, bus and train stations, and even Social Security offices.  In January, the Social Security office in Leesburg, Florida, apparently a terrorist hotspot, became a Homeland Security checkpoint complete with automatic weapons and sniffer dogs.  The district manager for the Social Security Administration office said staff were not informed beforehand.  I presume they were looking for illegal immigrants, but I’m unsure what the sniffer dogs were used for.  The federal police, a new entity in American life, has authority over state and local police offices and can appear out of the blue to interrogate local citizens.  America, get used to it.  (okay, the middle poster above may be a bit extreme.  Consider it a reminder not to drift in that direction.  Like these guys may have done.)
• Propranolol (also known as Inderal) is a beta blocker drug that was invented in 1964 by James W Black for heart attacks and high blood pressure.  Beta blockers block the action of endogenous catecholamines — epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenaline) in particular — on β-adrenergic receptors, part of the sympathetic nervous system which mediates the “fight or flight” response.  Propranolol helps in the relief of headaches and migraines (and also, oddly, shrinks hemangiomas in babies and young children); it blocks the action of stress hormones that etch memories in the brain.  This means that its use causes the dampening of the memory of being under stress.  This effect is associated with 5 specific problems:
  • It may prevent the user from truly coming to terms with trauma.
  • It may tamper with identity, leading to a false sense of happiness while remaining in a potentially bad situation.
  • It may demean the genuineness of human life and experience.
  • It may encourage forgetting memories that one may be obligated to keep (for example, that fire burns and that drunk driving kills).
  • It may inure the user to the pain of others.

The use of propranolol is a complex issue.  Learning from the past plays a huge role in the person that one becomes.  People learn from mistakes in the process of growing and developing.  Propranolol can make traumatic memories “more abstract and less painful” and brings into question the significance of reality.  Its common use might lead to a basic shift in remembering and forgetting, allowing us someday to change the very character of what we do and don’t recall.  How to Build the Perfect Soldier (video).  More.

• Off the coast of Rio de Janeiro — below a mile of water and two miles of shifting rock, sand and salt — is an ultradeep sea of oil that could turn Brazil into the world’s 4th-largest oil producer, behind Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US.  The country’s state-controlled oil company, Petrobras, expects to pump 4.9 million barrels a day from the country’s oil fields by 2020, with 40% of that coming from the seabed.  One and a half million barrels will be bound for export markets.  The US wants it, but China is getting it.  With the Lula and Carioca discoveries alone, Brazil added a possible 38 billion barrels of estimated recoverable oil.  Brazil’s Petrobras signed a technology cooperation deal with the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation, or Sinopec.  Petrobras also signed a memorandum of understanding with Sinochem, a massive state-owned company with interests in energy, real estate and agrichemicals.  The Sinochem deal aims to identify and build “business opportunities in the fields of exploration and production, oil commercialisation and mature oil-field recovery,” according to Petrobras.  China rescued Petrobras in 2009, when the oil company was looking at tight credit markets to finance a record-setting $224 billion investment plan.  China’s national development bank offered a $10 billion loan on the condition that Petrobras ship oil to China for 10 years.  Money is power.
• President Barack Obama’s decision to reject a permit for TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL oil pipeline may prompt Canada to turn to China for oil exports.  Canada’s Natural Resource Minister said relying less on the US would strengthen Canada’s financial security.  (Currently, 99% of Canada’s crude exports go to the US.)  Canada accounts for more than 90% of all proven reserves outside OPEC according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.  Obama said the rejection wasn’t based on the project’s merit and Canada was free to reapply for a permit after it develops an alternate route around the Nebraska Sandhills, a sensitive habitat.  TransCanada said the 1,661-mile (2,673-kilometre) project would carry 700,000 barrels of crude a day from Alberta’s oil sands to refineries on the US Gulf coast, crossing 6 states and creating 20,000 person-years of work in construction and supply.  According to an editorial in the Washington Post, “Obama is so obsessed with his reelection that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.”  Is that true?  Stopping the pipeline won’t stop the development of the tar sands.  Environmental groups have lobbied against the project, arguing that the extraction of oil sands — a process more akin to strip-mining than drilling — is so energy-intensive that it contributes to climate change.  They also assert that the pipeline could leak, possibly endangering the giant Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking and irrigation water to much of the Great Plains.

One cabbage plant had a leaf cut off with scissors and started emitting a gas – methyl jasmonate – thereby “telling” its neighbours there may be trouble ahead.  Two nearby cabbage plants, which had not been touched, received the message they should protect themselves.  This they did by producing toxic chemicals on their leaves to fend off predators such as caterpillars.  For the first time, such a process was caught on camera.  Scientists say it raises the possibility that plants are all communicating with each other in a complex “invisible language”.  There could be a constant chatter going on between different plants, as they in some way sense chemically what is happening to others around them.

• Renunciation is a voluntary act of relinquishing one’s citizenship or nationality.  It is the opposite of naturalisation whereby a person voluntarily acquires a citizenship, and related to denaturalisation where the loss of citizenship is not voluntary, but forced by a state.  Renunciation of citizenship is the only way to eliminate the lifetime tax obligation of countries which tax based on citizenship rather than residency.  (Currently, the US is the only major country to do this.)  In 1996, the US changed its immigration law to include a provision to “name and shame” renunciants.  (Where does the shame come in?)  The Department of the Treasury became obligated to publish in the Federal Register the names of those citizens who renounce citizenship.  There were 226 in 2008, 731 in 2009, and 1,485 in 2010.  (Notice a trend?)  There is a common concern that individuals about to relinquish citizenship don’t become stateless; many countries require evidence (or promise) of another citizenship before they release that person from citizenship. Effective June 2008, US citizens renouncing their citizenship are subject under certain circumstances to an expatriation tax.  This a mark-to-market regime, which generally means that all property of a covered expatriate is deemed sold for its fair market value on the day before the expatriation date.  This usually results in a capital gain (on which tax must of course be paid).
• Would-be US renunciants must also prove that they don’t intend to live in the US afterward. Furthermore, one cannot renounce inside US borders; the declaration must be made at a consul’s office abroad.  In 1970, roughly 20,000 Americans became permanent residents of Canada.  That number has dropped over the last decade to an average of just about 5,000.  Today, it takes an average of 25 months to be accepted as a permanent Canadian resident, and this is only the first step in what is likely to be a 5-year process of becoming a citizen.  Mexico’s citizenship programme is equally complicated.  The country does offer a lenient programme for retirees, who may essentially stay as long as they want.  But they are not able to work or to vote, and, more important, they must remain American citizens for at least 5 years.  It takes at least 5 years to become a citizen of Pakistan unless one marries into a family; each applicant for residency is judged on a case-by-case basis.  Uzbekistan imposes a 5-year wait, with an additional twist: the nation does not recognise dual citizenship so one must renounce his current citizenship first.  Citizenship in St Kitts and Nevis can be purchased outright.  Prices start at around $125,000, which includes a $25,000 application fee and a minimum purchase of $100,000 in bonds.  Processing time, which includes checks for criminal records and HIV, can take up to 3 months.  Similar passport-vending programmes in Belize and Grenada have been shut down since 2001 under pressure from the US State Department, which does not approve.
• People hoping to spend some or all of their retirement to New Zealand will be able to apply for residency under a new type of visa. The "retirement" category is open to those aged 65 and over, and takes the form of either a parent retirement visa — for those with family in the country — or a temporary retirement visa for those who have no existing relationship with NZ.  Previous to this, NZ didn’t accept migrants over the age of 56.  The temporary retirement visa offers a 2-year permit for people who wish to spend some of their retirement in NZ, provided that they invest in the country.  It requires at least NZ$750,000 in qualifying investments, as well as $500,000 (£230,000) for maintenance, and an annual income of at least $60,000 (£28,000) from pensions and other investments.  (It is unclear whether this is per person or per family.)  It can be renewed after 2 years, provided that settlers continue to meet the criteria.  The parent visa grants permanent residency to applicants who have an equal number or more of their family inside NZ than anywhere else.  These applicants are also required to meet financial criteria, as they must offer at least NZ $1 million (£465,000) in qualifying investments over 4 years, as well as $500,000 for maintenance and an income of at least $60,000 per annum.  There are around 215,000 British expats living in NZ, and statistics from their Department of Labour show that the UK is the largest source country of migrants approved for permanent residency (17%).  For more info, see NZ’s official website.

Practically every newspaper and blog in Wellington has written about Ben Hana, known locally as Blanket Man, after he died on 15 January.  (I’m late.)  Ben showed up on Courtenay Place while we were living in New Jersey.  Though he lived on the street, unlike every other homeless person I’ve seen, he asked for nothing.  Indeed, when people offered him money or food, he usually refused.  I never stopped to speak to him, but he always made eye contact with me, smiled, and nodded — like we were old friends.  I liked him.  But it was only after his death that I learned anything about him.

• Ben was mostly Maori.  He’d been raised a Jehovah’s Witness in a strict household.  His brother is a fisherman in the South Island; his sister lives in China.  He was considered a deep thinker in his youth, but left home at 16 to hang around gangs.  At 22, drunk and driving, he had an accident that killed his best friend.  Around this time, he married and he and his wife eventually had 4 children plus one from her previous relationship; Ben worked in the forestry industry to support them.  This “normal” period lasted little more than a decade — they separated in the 1990s; charges were laid against Ben, who ended up in jail.  After that, Ben’s deterioration accelerated.  He stopped wearing shoes, then clothing (no matter the weather) except for his blanket.  Sometimes, through carelessness, he exposed himself; a judge finally issued one of the country’s most bizarre bail conditions: Ben had to wear underwear at all times.  Local shopkeepers once chipped in to buy him a new blanket; police routinely checked his underwear.
• Three years ago, Ben became the subject of a presentation for the NZ Folklore Symposium at the National Library, which explored the emergence of celebrity culture; attention shifted from the exploits of recognised achievers (such as sporting heroes) to people who lack any exceptional ability (Kardashians, Kevin Federline, Kimberly Stewart, and Peaches Geldof spring to mind).
• Ben was not, as some regarded him, a happy-go-lucky vagabond cheerfully thumbing his nose at the establishment and living without a care on the streets.  Rather, he was a broken man, mentally unwell, haunted by personal demons, chronically malnourished, and with a serious drug and alcohol problem that caused him to waste away.

• So Blanket Man is dead.  Now for the commemorative sculpture from Weta Workshop — I see the call for a sculpture has begun already — and the funeral attended by local dignitaries and those who used to feed him booze and junk food in Courtenay Place.  They meant well, but didn’t do him any good.  He wouldn’t let them.
• Ben was 54 when he died of malnourishment and complications.  He usually sat in the sun, but for the two days before he died, I saw that he was huddled in a heap on the cold footpath wrapped in his filthy blanket.  He looked distinctly unwell.  Did I stop to help?  No.  No one else did, either.  He died of slow suicide right in front of us all.  I don’t want to ever forget that.  (No propranolol for me.)

• Repeated speciation and the divergence of life (evolution) can be inferred from shared sets of biochemical and morphological traits, or by shared DNA sequences.  These homologous traits and sequences are more similar among species that share a more recent common ancestor, and can be used to reconstruct evolutionary histories.
• “Atheism is just another religion”, or “Atheism requires as much faith as religion does”.  This isn’t true.  Atheism is a religion in the same way that off is a television channel.  In the same way that bald is a hairstyle.  In the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
• Drink this strange brew in conjunction with other beverages which complement, or mask, the delicate flavour of Purple Death.  Please note, the term “some” implies a certain flexibility.

Or use for: punch base, ice cream topping, trifles, steak marinade or with fruit juice.  [A quick google search turns up information that Purple Death was quite popular in the NZ armed forces during the 70s and 80s at airmen’s clubs, and such.  It’s apparently a bit like a cheap port – fairly sweet, and very strong.  Like very alcoholic cough syrup, according to one review.  Another said it turns your tongue green.  It also apparently makes a decent marinade for steaks, although one person claimed it turns the steaks a bit green too.  Almost makes you want to try it, doesn’t it?]

• This embodies what I like most about Paris.
• In 1961, Hollywood audition were held for director Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962), film adaptations of a trio of Edgar Allen Poe stories including “The Black Cat” (starring Vincent Price and Peter Lorre).  Every cat seems to be as far away from its owner and the other cats as it can get.  Lots more photos here.
• In Europe, enemy tracer bullets weave an intricate pattern as they shoot towards the planes of the royal air force during a night attack on Hamburg, 23 December 1943.  This picture was reportedly made from one of the raiding planes, according to information found on the back of the photo.

• Golden Gate Bridge, opening day, 27 May 1937.  The bridge’s first day was solely for pedestrians (some 200,000 showed up).  Its second was for vehicles.  Then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt had pressed a telegraph key in the White House declaring the bridge open to the entire world.  In the first hours of business, 1,800 cars passed over the bridge.  By the end of the day, 32,300 vehicles and 19,350 pedestrians had paid tolls and crossed.  San Francisco and its neighbouring northern counties were linked at last.  That night, the city celebrated the bridge with an enormous display of fireworks.
• Located on a scenic waterfront site in downtown St Petersburg, the 68,000-square-foot structure doubles the size of the original 1982 Salvadore Dali Museum.  Despite the complex processes required to construct the building, which stands more than 75 feet tall and is adorned by 1,062 unique triangular glass panels, the $29.8 million building project was completed on time and $700,000 under budget.  The building protects its priceless art collection from hurricane-force winds and water.  The fortress-like structure is designed to withstand the 165-mph wind loads of a Category 5, 200-year hurricane.  The roof is 12-inch-thick solid concrete and the cast-in-place reinforced concrete walls are 18 inches thick.  Located above the flood plain on the 3rd floor, the art is protected from a 30-foot-high hurricane storm surge.  Storm doors shield the vault and galleries.  Specially developed for this project, the triangulated glass panels are 1½ inches thick, insulated and laminated, and were tested to resist the 135 mph winds, driven rain, and missile impacts of a Category 3 hurricane.
• An arcade is a succession of arches, each counterthrusting the next, supported by columns or piers or a covered walk enclosed by a line of such arches on one or both sides.  In warmer or wet climates, exterior arcades provide shelter for pedestrians.  I don’t know where this one is located.

• These peacocks are at a peacock farm located 8 kilometres from Burgas, Bulgaria.
• Henry Horenstein has a very unique view of the animal kingdom, often characterised by shooting very close to the subject.  At times, his photographs are even difficult to identify (but unique and often quite moving).  Horenstein is currently a professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design; he has been a teacher for 38 years, beginning at Harvard in 1974.  This is his lovely depiction of Pteropus mearnsi.
• Italian photographer Pasquero has an eye for birds and wildlife.  It shows.

• I had thought this was a photograph of a swimming snake, but it may best be considered artwork instead.  Adam Fuss (born London, England, 1961) grew up moving between rural Sussex in the South of England and Australia before settling to work in New York in 1982.  He made his first photogram in 1986.  He put photographic paper at the bottom of a tray holding a swimming snake, then used a flash to capture snake and ripples.
• A spitting cobra is one of several species of cobra that have the ability to eject venom from their fangs when defending themselves against predators.  The sprayed venom is harmless to intact skin.  However, it can cause permanent blindness if introduced to the eye and left untreated.  Despite their name, these snakes do not actually spit their venom.  The venom sprays out in distinctive geometric patterns, using muscular contractions upon the venom glands.  When cornered, some species can “spit” their venom as far as 2 metres (6.6 feet).  Several viper species (notably the Mangshan Pitviper) may “fling” or even spit venom forward in a spray when threatened.

• The Asian tiger prawn, a foot-long crustacean with a voracious appetite and a proclivity for disease, has invaded the northern Gulf of Mexico, threatening prized native species (from crabs and oysters to smaller brown and white shrimp).  Scientists fear a tiger prawn takeover could turn a healthy, diverse marine habitat into one dominated by a single invasive species.  Tiger prawns from the western Pacific have been spreading along the Gulf Coast since 2006, but their numbers have recently increased sharply.  Some speculate the Gulf invasion began with an accidental release of farmed prawns in South Carolina in 1988.  Another theory: The prawns may have escaped from flooded industrial shrimp ponds in the Caribbean Sea during recent hurricanes.  The threat underscores concerns about large-scale fish farming, also known as aquaculture, in the Gulf.  Tiger prawns weigh more than 8 ounces and have distinctive black and white tail stripes.  They eat the same types of food as native shrimp species, but also prey on their smaller cousins, as well as crabs and young oysters.  What complicates things is that they’re tasty, fetching a higher market price than native brown shrimp on the New York market this month.
• Using submerged cameras and a large trap designed by Aberdeen University’s Oceanlab, researchers were able to explore up to depths of 6 miles.  They were hoping to find specimens of deep-sea snailfish, which have been photographed before but have not been seen since the 1950s.  Expedition leader Alan Jamieson said: “The moment the traps came on deck, we were elated at the sight of the snailfish as we have been after these fish for years.  However, seconds later I stopped and thought, 'What on earth is that?’ whilst catching a glimpse of an amphipod far bigger than I ever thought possible.  It’s a bit like finding a foot-long cockroach.”  Seven specimens were caught in the trap and up to 9 were photographed gathering around the camera system.  (To me, the creepy thing about this creature is its spiky tail.)
• Lyme Regis is a coastal town in West Dorset, England, situated 25 miles west of Dorchester and 25 miles (40 kilometres) east of Exeter.  The town lies in Lyme Bay, on the English Channel coast at the Dorset-Devon border.  It is nicknamed “The Pearl of Dorset.”  The town is noted for the fossils found in the cliffs and beaches, which are part of the Heritage Coast — known commercially as the Jurassic Coast — a World Heritage Site.  Lyme is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086.  In the 13th century it developed into one of the major British ports.  A Royal Charter was granted by King Edward I in 1284, with the addition of 'Regis’ to the town’s name.  This charter was confirmed by Elizabeth I in 1591.  A museum houses a large collection of local memorabilia, historical items and exhibits explaining the local geological and palaeontological treasures.  Set into the pavement outside the museum is an ornate example of a Coade stone (it is artificial) into which is worked designs that look like ammonites, reflecting the palaeontology for which the town is famous.  The name ammonite, from which the scientific term is derived, was inspired by the spiral shape of its fossilised shell, which somewhat resembles a tightly coiled ram’s horn.  Pliny the Elder (d. 79 AD near Pompeii) called fossils of these animals ammonis cornua (“horns of Ammon”) because the Egyptian god Ammon (Amun) was typically depicted wearing a ram’s horns.  They are an extinct group of marine invertebrate animals in the subclass Ammonoidea of the class Cephalopoda (okay, so they aren’t crustaceans).  These molluscs are more closely related to octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish than they are to shelled nautiloids such as the living Nautilus species.

The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.  It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.  Although the original Orient Express was simply a normal international railway service, its name became synonymous with intrigue and luxury travel.  On 14 December 2009, the Orient Express ceased to operate and the route disappeared from European railway timetables, reportedly a “victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines”.  The Venice-Simplon Orient Express train, a private venture using original carriages from the 1920s and 30s, continues to run from London to Venice and to other destinations in Europe, including the original route from Paris to Istanbul.  The company also offers a similarly-themed train line in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Laos, called the Eastern & Oriental Express.  It transports passengers through beautiful rainforests, around mountains, and into quaint villages.  Ticket price start at US$2,300 dollars per person.

Aerial photographer Jason Hawkes, from Oxfordshire, has captured different types of living arrangements people have around the world.  He travelled above 4 continents by helicopter in a 12-year project to record how housing developments have produced abstract patterns on the landscape.

• A circular row of grand houses in St James’s Park look on a giant tree.
• Villas line up, each with a glistening swimming pool, in Cala en Porter.
• The sprawling suburb of one of the fastest-growing cities in the US.

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t seen any of these sculptures in person.  I find it extraordinary that it’s possible to chip away at solid rock and end up with the illusion of a transparent veil.  Few artists display that skill.

• Bust of a Veiled Woman (Puritas) Marble, Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice, by Antonio Corradini (6 September 1668 – 29 June 1752), a Venetian Rococo sculptor.  Though his desire to display his technical skill at times outstripped his inspiration, his virtuosity in marble remains remarkable.
• In 1750, Corradini completed Veiled Truth (also called Modesty or Chastity) a tomb monument dedicated to Cecilia Gaetani dell’Aquila d’Aragona, mother of the main patron of the Sansevero Chapel in central Naples, who had died at the early age of 23.  While being one of the most bizarre works in the history of sculpture, it is inspired technically.  (With great virtuosity the sculptor manages to make the marble seem transparent.)  The conceit of modesty shielded by the flimsiest of veils creates a piece that, while perhaps being overdone for a chapel funerary monument, does compel remembrance.
• The statue is titled A veiled Vestal Virgin by Raffaelle Monti (1818-1881).  It was commissioned by the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1846 and finished the following year.  From the time of its arrival from Milan, it was kept at Chiswick House until it moved to Compton Place in 1892.  In 1901, it arrived at the Compton Place Gallery.  Finally in 1999, it was relocated back to the Sculpture Gallery at Chatsworth House whence it had originated.  The statue was featured in the recent Jane Austin film, Pride and Prejudice.

1. A few minutes earlier, the same photographer took this picture. But I like the one above slightly better.  Photographed by Evan Leeson (Ecstaticist) in Victoria, British Columbia, 2009.  (He uses a flood filter, which I don’t care for, so I removed it, but click the link just following to see his version.)  photo source: BigHugeLabs from Ecstaticist
2. Sarah Beeny’s Rise Hall in East Riding, Yorkshire, UK.  Photographed by Andy Marshall.  photo source: Uploads from AndyMarshall