CNN- well, CNN International, anyway; CNN US is too focused on politics- has a really nice ongoing thing called the Freedom Project. The Freedom Project is an effort to expose modern-day slavery, wherever on the planet they happen to find it. As they reported about a week ago, the International Labour Organization estimates that 20.9 million people worldwide are living in slavery, 4.5 million of which are sex slaves. That's just an estimate, though; this isn't the antebellum South. Nobody is going around these days bragging about how many slaves they have, save for possibly pimps. (Yes, that counts.) It could be up towards 30 million.
In any case, slavemasters aren't exactly forthcoming. Neither are many of the slaves themselves, who are often in a position where coming forward means they would be arrested and prosecuted themselves for whatever it is their master made them do. So what tends to happen is every time slaves get unearthed in the Western world, it comes as a surprise to people- 'wait, we still have slaves here? The Civil War ended, right?'
If slavery is found in Mauritania or China or Afghanistan, on some level that falls in line with people's expectations. A general lack of freedoms means people might expect to see slavery result. But they don't expect to see slaves in, oh, say, Sweden.
Hope you're sitting down, because the ILO thinks it may have found slavery in Sweden, in the form of berry pickers. Specifically, workers brought in from eastern Europe and Asia, from whom their employers suddenly withhold payment and disappear.
I'll let the article, at ScienceBlog, go into detail on it.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Democrats Win 2648 Election, You Heard It Here First
Let's dispense with all the hoopla. I've found over the years that when you don't watch election coverage, and just get told who won and have that be the end of it, you come away with a much clearer head about the next step than if you put yourself on an emotional roller-coaster over every set of newly-announced votes.
So let's just rip the band-aid off if you haven't heard already: Scott Walker survived his recall attempt.
He isn't totally out of the woods yet, though; the Democrats gained a seat (pending a possible recount; it was pretty close) and in so doing took control of the Wisconsin State Senate, which throws a roadblock in front of any further legislative efforts by Walker. He also still has that John Doe corruption investigation to worry about. Any reporting you hear that tries to paint this as the definitive end to the story and predicting that Wisconsinites are going to now bury the hatchet and come together all puppies and rainbows is dead wrong.
Actually, no, let's have a little bit of hoopla. I want to point out this article where the Democrat in question, John Lehman, won the race that shifted control of the State Senate (again, pending potential recount). Take it away, Nameless Article Writer Person:
That's right. They needed to win four, and they came up big with a convincing three. Also known as less than four. Someone was paid money to write that.
That said, there is one part of the coverage that got me mad anyway: according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, NBC was the first to call the race for Walker, at 9 PM. Which is one thing; the polls were scheduled to close at 8.
The problem: they weren't actually closed yet. There were still people in line to vote at 9:30 PM.
This is a gigantic screw-up on the part of NBC, and one that I'm already seeing is helping to fuel the now-perpetual political anger further. You do not call a race while people are still in line to vote. It does not matter what the margin is. It doesn't matter if it's a 40-point blowout. If you call a race while people are still voting, and they hear the race called, what's going to happen is at least a couple of those people are going to get out of line and go home. After all, the people on the news just told them not to bother anymore, because they've already declared the winner. This literally causes people to not vote that otherwise would have, which undoes all the hard work done to get America's notoriously apathetic voting populace to the polls in the first place. In the process, not only is the race in question losing voters, but so are races downballot that, you never know, may end up swinging because of those lost voters.
I'm not accusing NBC of having a particular interest in who wins. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. That's not the issue at hand as far as I'm concerned. The issue at hand is calling a race while there are people in line who haven't voted yet. News networks on election night seem concerned primarily with being the first to call the race, sometimes even sacrificing accuracy for speed. You all remember Florida in 2000, right? Networks call Florida for Gore, retract call, call it again for Bush, retract it again, and then a month of hanging chads and butterfly ballots and accidental Pat Buchanan ensues. What exactly is the reward for being first? Does the first network to call a race get a food pellet? A new car? The antidote?
Effectively, all that happens when you're first is that you get to run ads afterward on your network complimenting yourself for being the first to call a race. That's it. Seriously, nobody outside the networks cares who's first. I have never once heard someone say 'I get my news from [network] because they were the first to call the race on election night!'
I have, however, heard plenty of people say 'What the hell is [network] doing calling the race so early? They haven't even counted any votes yet! Why are you calling a race on exit polls? Did you learn NOTHING from 2000?!' Calling a race is like calling balls and strikes: if people are noticing you doing it, you've screwed up.
In 2007, Canada's Supreme Court ruled on the case R v. Bryan. The court upheld, by a 5-4 ruling, section 329 of the Canada Elections Act, which states that election results cannot be published in areas that have not finished voting yet- with TV and the Internet, this basically means nobody announces results anywhere until everyone is done voting, so that nobody has any sort of an information advantage on anyone else. In 2000, a guy named Paul Charles Bryan published results from the Maritime provinces while polls out west were still open, and was brought up on charges in British Columbia, ultimately fined $1,000. According to CBC News' senior executive producer Mark Bulgutch, "We're disappointed, there's no doubt about it... We can't expand on what we do… the potential is not realized. It prevents us from engaging people in the story. We thought we could make election night a bigger event that it already is."
Believe me, Mark, you're better off with the blackout. Far better to sit there twiddling your thumbs for a couple hours and sacrifice the horserace coverage than to see people come out of line thinking their vote doesn't matter anymore where it did an hour ago. We could actually use something like that here, to keep things like what happened last night from happening again. If that means Squatter's Notch and Squirrel's Asshole, New Hampshire can't have their first-towns-in-America-to-announce-election-results 15 minutes of fame every four years, too bad. They can still vote first if they want; they just have to sit on the results until the last voter in Hawaii goes home.
Election night is always a big night. You don't need the media to make it a big night. The media just has to not ruin that night.
So let's just rip the band-aid off if you haven't heard already: Scott Walker survived his recall attempt.
He isn't totally out of the woods yet, though; the Democrats gained a seat (pending a possible recount; it was pretty close) and in so doing took control of the Wisconsin State Senate, which throws a roadblock in front of any further legislative efforts by Walker. He also still has that John Doe corruption investigation to worry about. Any reporting you hear that tries to paint this as the definitive end to the story and predicting that Wisconsinites are going to now bury the hatchet and come together all puppies and rainbows is dead wrong.
Actually, no, let's have a little bit of hoopla. I want to point out this article where the Democrat in question, John Lehman, won the race that shifted control of the State Senate (again, pending potential recount). Take it away, Nameless Article Writer Person:
Galloway's resignation left the chamber evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, 16-16, going into Tuesday's elections. Democrats needed to win just one race to seize the majority. Republicans needed to take all four.
And the GOP came up big, lodging three convincing wins:
That's right. They needed to win four, and they came up big with a convincing three. Also known as less than four. Someone was paid money to write that.
That said, there is one part of the coverage that got me mad anyway: according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette, NBC was the first to call the race for Walker, at 9 PM. Which is one thing; the polls were scheduled to close at 8.
The problem: they weren't actually closed yet. There were still people in line to vote at 9:30 PM.
This is a gigantic screw-up on the part of NBC, and one that I'm already seeing is helping to fuel the now-perpetual political anger further. You do not call a race while people are still in line to vote. It does not matter what the margin is. It doesn't matter if it's a 40-point blowout. If you call a race while people are still voting, and they hear the race called, what's going to happen is at least a couple of those people are going to get out of line and go home. After all, the people on the news just told them not to bother anymore, because they've already declared the winner. This literally causes people to not vote that otherwise would have, which undoes all the hard work done to get America's notoriously apathetic voting populace to the polls in the first place. In the process, not only is the race in question losing voters, but so are races downballot that, you never know, may end up swinging because of those lost voters.
I'm not accusing NBC of having a particular interest in who wins. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. That's not the issue at hand as far as I'm concerned. The issue at hand is calling a race while there are people in line who haven't voted yet. News networks on election night seem concerned primarily with being the first to call the race, sometimes even sacrificing accuracy for speed. You all remember Florida in 2000, right? Networks call Florida for Gore, retract call, call it again for Bush, retract it again, and then a month of hanging chads and butterfly ballots and accidental Pat Buchanan ensues. What exactly is the reward for being first? Does the first network to call a race get a food pellet? A new car? The antidote?
Effectively, all that happens when you're first is that you get to run ads afterward on your network complimenting yourself for being the first to call a race. That's it. Seriously, nobody outside the networks cares who's first. I have never once heard someone say 'I get my news from [network] because they were the first to call the race on election night!'
I have, however, heard plenty of people say 'What the hell is [network] doing calling the race so early? They haven't even counted any votes yet! Why are you calling a race on exit polls? Did you learn NOTHING from 2000?!' Calling a race is like calling balls and strikes: if people are noticing you doing it, you've screwed up.
In 2007, Canada's Supreme Court ruled on the case R v. Bryan. The court upheld, by a 5-4 ruling, section 329 of the Canada Elections Act, which states that election results cannot be published in areas that have not finished voting yet- with TV and the Internet, this basically means nobody announces results anywhere until everyone is done voting, so that nobody has any sort of an information advantage on anyone else. In 2000, a guy named Paul Charles Bryan published results from the Maritime provinces while polls out west were still open, and was brought up on charges in British Columbia, ultimately fined $1,000. According to CBC News' senior executive producer Mark Bulgutch, "We're disappointed, there's no doubt about it... We can't expand on what we do… the potential is not realized. It prevents us from engaging people in the story. We thought we could make election night a bigger event that it already is."
Believe me, Mark, you're better off with the blackout. Far better to sit there twiddling your thumbs for a couple hours and sacrifice the horserace coverage than to see people come out of line thinking their vote doesn't matter anymore where it did an hour ago. We could actually use something like that here, to keep things like what happened last night from happening again. If that means Squatter's Notch and Squirrel's Asshole, New Hampshire can't have their first-towns-in-America-to-announce-election-results 15 minutes of fame every four years, too bad. They can still vote first if they want; they just have to sit on the results until the last voter in Hawaii goes home.
Election night is always a big night. You don't need the media to make it a big night. The media just has to not ruin that night.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Wisconsin Recall Election Day
It's today. Go vote, Wisconsinites. Now. Put the keyboard down and go vote.
Monday, June 4, 2012
I'm Feeling Lucky
That, as you know, is the name of the button on Google's homepage you use when you want the first result for whatever it is you're searching for. You normally just think of it as something for the regular searches.
A couple of artists and designers from London, Ben West and Felix Heyes, have applied the concept to Google Image Search. Not only that, they've opted to make a dictionary out of it. What they've done is take 21,000 words out of the dictionary, and run a Google Image Search for each of them. They then took the first result of each word, alphabetized those images by keyword, and bound and printed the result, which they have naturally called 'Google'. It runs 1,240 pages.
They're looking to get a publishing run going- they bound and printed the book themselves- but if you'd like a copy, note that SafeSearch was clearly off, as according to West, "I would estimate about half of the book is revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons."Or, if you don't want to buy it, you can try and speed-read it through an animated GIF West made.
You may also get a free preview by typing random words into Google Image Search.
A couple of artists and designers from London, Ben West and Felix Heyes, have applied the concept to Google Image Search. Not only that, they've opted to make a dictionary out of it. What they've done is take 21,000 words out of the dictionary, and run a Google Image Search for each of them. They then took the first result of each word, alphabetized those images by keyword, and bound and printed the result, which they have naturally called 'Google'. It runs 1,240 pages.
They're looking to get a publishing run going- they bound and printed the book themselves- but if you'd like a copy, note that SafeSearch was clearly off, as according to West, "I would estimate about half of the book is revolting medical photos, porn, racism or bad cartoons."Or, if you don't want to buy it, you can try and speed-read it through an animated GIF West made.
You may also get a free preview by typing random words into Google Image Search.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Really? We Have To Clear This Up?
Fine. Apparently we have to.
Kids, are you eating Tide Pods detergent? Because apparently some of you are. THAT IS NOT CANDY. DETERGENT IS NOT CANDY. STOP EATING DETERGENT.
Cripes. Really?
Kids, are you eating Tide Pods detergent? Because apparently some of you are. THAT IS NOT CANDY. DETERGENT IS NOT CANDY. STOP EATING DETERGENT.
Cripes. Really?
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Wisconsinites Even Dumber Than Scott Walker
First off, reminder that the recall election is on Tuesday, Wisconsinites. Get out there and vote if you haven't already voted early.
I say this not only because of the proximity to Tuesday, but because that's how today's dumb criminal story began. Back in May, an employee of Bill Feehan, a Republican Wisconsin state Senate candidate in the fall elections, named Chris Rochester, saw that Scott Walker was making an appearance in his hometown of La Crosse. Being a Republican and the employee of a Republican candidate, Rochester went, and in fact filmed the event.
Then he got home and saw a whole bunch of videos he didn't remember taking.That's because someone had stolen the camcorder and later returned it.
Now, let's have a powwow for all the budding camcorder thieves out there:
1. Don't steal a camcorder.
2. If you must steal a camcorder, do not film anything incriminating with it.
3. If you must film something incriminating with the stolen camcorder, and you later feel the urge to return it, make sure to delete the incriminating footage, and in fact all footage that you shot, before the victim sees it.
4. Under no circumstances is it a good idea to produce any part of the following video:
The only reason this did not lead to arrest of the thief, Houaka Yang, is that by the time Rochester posted the video to YouTube, Yang was already in custody.
I say this not only because of the proximity to Tuesday, but because that's how today's dumb criminal story began. Back in May, an employee of Bill Feehan, a Republican Wisconsin state Senate candidate in the fall elections, named Chris Rochester, saw that Scott Walker was making an appearance in his hometown of La Crosse. Being a Republican and the employee of a Republican candidate, Rochester went, and in fact filmed the event.
Then he got home and saw a whole bunch of videos he didn't remember taking.That's because someone had stolen the camcorder and later returned it.
Now, let's have a powwow for all the budding camcorder thieves out there:
1. Don't steal a camcorder.
2. If you must steal a camcorder, do not film anything incriminating with it.
3. If you must film something incriminating with the stolen camcorder, and you later feel the urge to return it, make sure to delete the incriminating footage, and in fact all footage that you shot, before the victim sees it.
4. Under no circumstances is it a good idea to produce any part of the following video:
The only reason this did not lead to arrest of the thief, Houaka Yang, is that by the time Rochester posted the video to YouTube, Yang was already in custody.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Oh, What A World, What A World
Let's just leap right into this one. Take some styrofoam. Take some acetone- nail polish remover, perhaps, though the video about to be shown uses some more industrial stuff from Ace Hardware. Apply acetone to styrofoam.
Voila, you now have melted styrofoam.
As you can see, you can melt a lot of styrofoam like that. Anne Marie Helmenstine, writing for About.com, estimates that one cup of acetone is enough to melt a bean bag's worth of styrofoam peanuts- remember, styrofoam has 'foam' right there in the name, and all the air in the foam is released when it's melted down.
It doesn't stay melted, though. Styrofoam is a brand name for polystyrene, a hard styrene-based polymer. What the acetone is doing is loosening up the polymer chains, allowing them to move around more freely. When they move more freely, the styrofoam softens, releases the air, and melts. When the acetone goes away, though, the chains re-establish rigidity, un-melting the styrofoam. With the air pockets now gone, you end up with a piece of hard plastic.
Household Hacker, whom I've come to understand have had their videos busted by the Mythbusters on two separate occasions- the online-only 'iOnion' and 'Homemade Surround Sound', has a video of the hardening... right after the ad for Carbonite and before the monologue for Carbonite, plus the actual hardened product barely gets any screentime.
So you get this much-lower-production-quality-but-more-informative video instead. (I will say, though, that Household Hacker suggests letting the melted styrofoam sit for 8-10 hours, which is plenty more than this guy has let it sit.)
Voila, you now have melted styrofoam.
As you can see, you can melt a lot of styrofoam like that. Anne Marie Helmenstine, writing for About.com, estimates that one cup of acetone is enough to melt a bean bag's worth of styrofoam peanuts- remember, styrofoam has 'foam' right there in the name, and all the air in the foam is released when it's melted down.
It doesn't stay melted, though. Styrofoam is a brand name for polystyrene, a hard styrene-based polymer. What the acetone is doing is loosening up the polymer chains, allowing them to move around more freely. When they move more freely, the styrofoam softens, releases the air, and melts. When the acetone goes away, though, the chains re-establish rigidity, un-melting the styrofoam. With the air pockets now gone, you end up with a piece of hard plastic.
Household Hacker, whom I've come to understand have had their videos busted by the Mythbusters on two separate occasions- the online-only 'iOnion' and 'Homemade Surround Sound', has a video of the hardening... right after the ad for Carbonite and before the monologue for Carbonite, plus the actual hardened product barely gets any screentime.
So you get this much-lower-production-quality-but-more-informative video instead. (I will say, though, that Household Hacker suggests letting the melted styrofoam sit for 8-10 hours, which is plenty more than this guy has let it sit.)
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