Bolivian Puss Caterpiller

Pretty neat critter. Highly cute.

Stop the Clash of Civilizations

An amazingly edited video with a great message.

Sportakrobatik - Die 5 Disziplinen

A truly jaw-dropping ten minutes. Well worth it.

Guy catches glasses with face

Pretty clever.

Funny the things we don't know...

I found this while searching for my previous post...
Title 18, Chapter 71 of the US Code says:

Every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance; and—
Every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use; [...]
Is declared to be nonmailable matter and shall not be conveyed in
the mails or delivered from any post office or by any letter carrier.

I'd just like to remind everyone that this is current US law. I am not familiar with any case interperetations of this, and I highly doubt it's enforced (Pro-Choice America's site doesn't seem to have any info on it), but it strikes me as a bit odd that it's never been repealed in a country where abortion is legal...

Comment I made on a Wired Blog

@ David: The legislation usually invoked in foreign wiretapping cases is FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act). The act was expanded by the Patriot Act to include monitoring of terrorist activity approved by a court(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act). However, no court applies if there are no U.S. citizens involved in the exchange, so my sense is that foreign citizens can be tapped as long as the President wants them to be.Regarding US citizens, though, the FBI is allowed to wiretap based on acceptance by a judge (first approved by the Attorney General) so long as it suspects a wide range of crimes(http://www2.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002516----000-.html). Unfortunately, we only have to look at the Church Committee reports, such as this one on the FBI wiretapping Martin Luther King, Jr,(large PDF file explaining the whole thing: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_2_MLK.pdf). ) to see how this kind of oversight can be ignored or abused...

(an update later)

RE right to privacy: The Supreme Court found in 1967's Katz v. United States that a person's conversations are protected by the fourth amendment (law is at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=389&invol=347 with a simple summary at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katz_v._United_States ).

Now, if an intelligence agency gets a court order, then everything is "reasonable" and they can snoop all they want. But if it's easier for the FBI to wiretap, it makes sense for them to seek more court orders. Thus, privacy concerns.