I recently received an email asking if it’s okay to use my image Lotus as a tattoo.

What an honor! Of course I was flattered and delighted, and happy to give my blessing.

The above image shows the tattoo, alongside the original sketch.

This is the first time that anyone* has used one of my designs as a tattoo, and I’m tickled pink!

Philip Zimmermann is the author of ZRTP, a technology for encrypting Internet telephone calls. So far, not even teams of supercomputers and cyberspies at the National Security Agency have cracked ZRTP.

Zimmermann spoke with Forbes recently about the future of internet telephony, also known as Voice Over IP (VoIP):

With traditional telephony, our threat model was mostly government wiretapping. With VoIP, anyone can wiretap us: the Russian mafia, foreign governments, hackers, disgruntled former employees. Anyone.

Historically, there’s been an asymmetry between government wiretapping and everyone else wiretapping that’s been in the government’s favor. As we migrate to VoIP, that differential collapses. The government itself is just as vulnerable. Wiretappers can reveal details of ongoing investigations, names and personal details of informants, conversations between officials and their wives about what time they pick up their kids at school.

… Everyone thinks that VoIP is the future of telephony. It’s cheaper, more versatile, more feature-rich. So technological pressure herds us towards VoIP; we’ll have to encrypt it. Wiretapping will become so easy that the criminals — not just governments — will be able to do it routinely. There will be insider trading, blackmail, organized crime spying on judges and prosecutors, key witnesses killed before they can testify.

- Phillip Zimmermann, interview @ Forbes (03.18.08) : Link.

ZFone Project

“Zfone is a new secure VoIP phone software product which lets you make encrypted phone calls over the Internet. Its principal designer is Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, the most widely used email encryption software in the world. Zfone uses a new protocol called ZRTP, which has a better architecture than the other approaches to secure VoIP.”

Zfone is open source, and it’s free. Link.

Lotus 2

Full size image

My latest graphic design. Digitally modified sketch.

See also Lotus — same sketch, different modifications.

“Anyone is a potential target.”
- Julian Sanchez

The award for the most bald-faced lie on the House floor Friday, however, goes to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who insisted that the bill “does not allow warrantless surveillance of Americans.” She is wrong. It does.

… The bill … allows the government to conduct “vacuum cleaner” surveillance — sweeping up international traffic willy-nilly — then filter it for anything that looks interesting. Indeed, many believe that licensing such surveillance is precisely the point of this legislation. If so, “warrantless surveillance of Americans” could well become routine, whether or not they are the formal “targets” of eavesdropping.

- Julian Sanchez @ American Prospect (June 25, 2008): Link.

Via Boing Boing: Link.

See also Obama’s support for the FISA “compromise”.

Wikipedia: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

“Wars are won by destroying the enemy’s will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women.”
- Spengler

The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian “tourists” entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world’s fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in Iranian women explains Iran’s predicament.

- Spengler @ Asia Times Online: “Jihadis and whores” (Nov 21, 2006): Link.

Via Rudy Carerra @ Tower of Babel: Link

“If anyone expects President Obama to roll back Bush’s illegally-gained dictator powers, they are smoking rope.”
- Mark Frauenfelder

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald reports:

It is absolutely false that the only unconstitutional and destructive provision of this “compromise” bill is the telecom amnesty part. It’s true that most people working to defeat the Cheney/Rockefeller bill viewed opposition to telecom amnesty as the most politically potent way to defeat the bill, but the bill’s expansion of warrantless eavesdropping powers vested in the President, and its evisceration of safeguards against abuses of those powers, is at least as long-lasting and destructive as the telecom amnesty provisions. The bill legalizes many of the warrantless eavesdropping activities George Bush secretly and illegally ordered in 2001. Those warrantless eavesdropping powers violate core Fourth Amendment protections. And Barack Obama now supports all of it, and will vote it into law. Those are just facts.

- Glenn Greenwald @ Salon: Link.

From the comments:

What really rubbed me the wrong way was how Obama in his statement says essentially trust me with these powers, I’ll use them responsibly.

- Hume’s Ghost: Link.

Via Boing Boing: Link.

Speaking of Barack Obama:

“Obama’s campaign, which could spend as much as $500 million ….”

Breaking an earlier vow, Senator Barack Obama announced that he will opt out of the public campaign-finance system, in order to be able to spend unlimited amounts of money in the last two months of his presidential campaign, rather than merely $84 million, the amount to which Senator John McCain will be limited under public-funding laws. “It’ll be like George Steinbrenner’s Yankees in the 90s,” Democratic consultant Chris Lehane said of Obama’s campaign, which could spend as much as $500 million, “against the 90s Kansas City Royals.”

- Harper’s Weekly Review: Link.

Via Boing Boing: Link.

Poop Sign now available!

Need a Poop Sign? Can’t live without one? Buy one today!

poopsign.com

Poop Sign is the brainchild of artist Chris Yates: Link.

I recently created a new summertime banner for the blog:

I’m very pleased with the results … hot and hazy like a Minnesota summer day.

I concocted the image from two different photographs, both by John Symchych. Used by permission — thanks, John!

JES Photography @ Flickr: Link.

SlashDot reports:

“The Senate mortgage bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (who was the recipient of a sweetheart deal on his mortgage from Countrywide, one of the beneficiaries of the bill) includes an attempt to sneak into law a requirement that all electronic payment processors send detailed transaction data to the federal government. The proposed law contains an exception for businesses with fewer than 200 transactions or a total value less than $10,000. Quoting FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey (former House majority leader) from the article: ‘This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America’s small businesses are breathtaking.’”

- StealthyRoid @ SlashDot: Link.

See Also

“Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government”
@ FreedomWorks: Link.

MMY

Kim Matthews (2008)

Abaca, waxed cord, reed, graphite, wire, unryu and iron oxide.

Kim Matthews creates amazing sculptures, exploring biomorphic forms and the relationship between sculpture and environment.

Normandale Community College (Bloomington, Minnesota) is currently featuring a solo exhibition of her work.

Through July 31, 2008.
Reception June 19, 2008, 6 to 8 pm.
Phone NCC @ 952-487-8399.

kim matthews art.com

My friend Eric Sneve knows and loves good wine, so I sent him this link to a brief article about Kentucky wine. Eric replied:

I have had great wines from Michigan. They say Llano Estacado (AZ or TX) makes great vintages. Thomas Jefferson was a total wine fanatic — importing lots of French wine and growing lots of vines at his Monticello estate in Virginia. NY is famous for its Finger Lakes region for Chardonnay. I think Long Island is also a player, Maryland and Idaho too.

So much depends on the microclimate, soil, and what the current growing season gives you. Minnesota is tough because the European vines (Vitus Vinifera) like longer growing seasons and freeze in our harsh winters. The University of Minnesota has created a lot of hybrids of Vitus Vinifera x Vitus Labrusca domestic US vines. They aren’t quite as tasty as the European varietals but do usually survive the winters and make acceptable wines. St. Croix vineyard and orchard will make you think you’re somewhere in Northern California. Well worth the visit.

You can find a some of these in the better local shops [Minneapolis/Saint Paul area]. There was a lot of talk about being able to order by web in or across state lines. Don’t know how or if that got resolved.

Best Kentucky ‘wine’ I have tried so far is Bourbon.

Cheers, Eric.

Baltimore Oriole Eating Seed (May 2008)

Copyright 2008 by John Symchych. Used by permission.

Among his many other talents, my friend and collaborator John Symchych is an excellent photographer, and I’m pleased to share his work here. He writes:

Here’s a picture of a Baltimore Oriole eating seed from our bird feeder. They normally eat insects and fruit (can be attracted with grape jelly), and are not know to eat seed. I will be going out to The Wild Bird store today to purchase some more already shelled seed to help them out. We are seeing other species that are also feeding on seed as well.”

It’s a hungry year for songbirds: late spring snowstorms, delayed plant growth, not enough food for the early migrators. Minnesota DNR has received reports of dead or dying swallows, bluebirds, and other birds from around the state. Some years this happens: the DNR expect the bird populations to recover.
Link to article @ MPR.

For more of John’s photos, see JES Photography @ Flickr: Link.

Over at Play This Thing!, game commentator the99th has published some highlights from the Games for Change 2008 Conference.

I find this bit particularly interesting:

I got to meet Paolo Pedercini, he’s working on a new game called Oilgarchy which is about peak oil, and might do another Monsanto* game. Soon, Monsanto* games will reign down in a saturation akin to terminator seeds or social network sites. He also told me something that is probably historic, but it hasn’t gone public yet.

- Patrick Dugan (the99th) @ Play This Thing!: Link.

* I’m pretty sure the99th really means McDonald’s, not Monsanto. No doubt the conference was hectic and the99th had a lot on his mind as he blogged his notes.
See McDonald’s Video Game.

Games for Change Conference 2008: Link.

Paolo Pedercini: Link

Peak Oil: Link.

Over at Alpha Mummy, columnist Caitlin Moran has posted a thoughtful, wry essay about how raising children has improved her life:

“Have children? Yeah, but what am I going to get out of it?” … I reckon I have got a lot out of my becoming a mother … Indeed, I reckon I’ve got so much out of it, I could make a list … ”

3) Really getting a handle on the fact I’m going to die. I was never really that ambitious before I had children, because I thought I had approximately six million years left to sit around smoking marijuana, watching daytime TV and keeping a scrapbook of Richard Madeley’s best sayings. But now I’ve made a child who’s nearly four feet tall, I am very aware of the passing of time. I am going to die relatively soon. I need to get on with things. I’ve got my hustle on.

- Caitlin Moran @ Times Online: Link.

“Most ruins are – let’s face it – disappointing.”

Above: Bara, Syria - Link

I don’t mean all ruins, of course. I challenge anyone to find Pompeii or the Parthenon or the Colosseum disappointing or boring (though, according to Peter Green, William Golding did mount the Athenian Acropolis, muttering, “the bloody Parthenon again” and sit down firmly with his back to the monument gazing out at the Eleusis cement works). I mean those ivy clad mouldering walls of some third rate English Abbey or the pile of stray stones outside some jolly Cretan village which claim to be the remains of a Minoan rural settlement.

To most people in the world, this disappointment will not seem a great revelation, but to archaeologists and cultural theorists ruins are an object of intense interest (and so they are to me when I am wearing one of those hats). Archaeologists will bang on for hours about the minute significance of the position of one stone against the next. Cultural theorists will bang on even longer about ruins as a metaphor for the past, the fragility of human success, the melancholy of contemplating the death of the past, and so on.

The voice that most academics refuse to hear is that of most other people in the world who do not share this enthusiasm.

- Mary Beard @ Times Online: Link.

Reader comment:

Speaking of ‘broken down’ ruins, my favourite line overheard from some Americans in a taverna in Athens.

She: “We’re going to Knossos tomorrow.”

He: “No more ruins! I’ve had enough ruins.”

She: “But these ruins are different.”

He: “You mean they’re not destroyed?”

- Lucy @ Times Online: Link.