June 2011

There were 44 posts published in June 2011 (this is page 4 of 5).

United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com

The United Nations says Internet access is a human right.

The Special Rapporteur believes that the Internet is one of the most powerful instruments of the 21st century for increasing transparency in the conduct of the powerful, access to information, and for facilitating active citizen participation in building democratic societies.

Indeed, the recent wave of demonstrations in countries across the Middle East and North African region has shown the key role that the Internet can play in mobilizing the population to call for justice, equality, accountability and better respect for human rights.

via United Nations report: Internet access is a human right – latimes.com.

Media-police dichotomy

There was one more thing I wanted to say about yesterday’s Amber Alert. The police were looking for a missing girl. The media responded in force with photographs and news trucks, keeping the story front-and-center all day long. The media’s wide exposure was needed for the girl to be found, yet police blocked the media from the street in front of her home. The road was open to through traffic but not to reporters. Any reporter who dared venture closer was gruffly told to stay in the “staging area.”

Why? Why treat the media so poorly when went above and beyond to help locate the girl? It was the top story all day yesterday, for goodness sake. I don’t know whether the coverage made the difference (and I’m inclined in this case to say no as I had a strong hunch she was with her boyfriend the whole time), but is this the proper way to treat your partners in a missing-child search?

I’m a staunch supporter of Raleigh Police but at best this looks ungrateful and at worst a breach of First Amendment law. Time for the officers to get some PR training.

On the air with Rivendell

By LeRe Pics

My use of online music services like Pandora, Mondomix, TaintRadio.Org, and my recent voiceover dabbling has gotten me itching to start my own online radio station. Or reignite my itch, I should say: back in 1997 I became one of the first to apply to the Library of Congress for a compulsory license for Internet radio (back when the list of online radio stations would fit on just few pages). I never followed through with it because it was a leap of faith: the song royalty rates were not fixed and could have been enormous once they were.
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Amber Alert

It’s not every day that I awake to find police cars and news media in the neighborhood, fortunately. It was because there was an amber alert in our neighborhood, with a 15-year-old girl reported missing early this morning. While the news was at first certainly distressing (especially since I’m acquainted with the family), when I realized who was missing I was almost certain there was no abduction.

It started just after midnight this morning. According to the 911 tape which was released later today, the girl’s mother got texts that indicated her daughter was in mortal danger. The search by police began soon after (followed by the media stake-out). Police put up crime-scene tape around the home and blocked off the road in front of the house, steering the media away from the home.
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Road Rage

I rediscovered this gem today.

Catatonia
Road Rage

If all you’ve got to do today is find peace of mind
Come round you can take a piece of mine
And if all you’ve got to do today is hesitate
Come here, you can leave it late with me

You could be taking it easy on yourself
You should be making it easy on yourself
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Rat Snake or Copperhead, How To Tell the Difference?

A great page on properly identifying copperheads from rat snakes.

It is startling to walk into the chicken coop and come face to face with a large rat snake though, especially since they often look very much like a dangerous copperhead. How does one decide which is which?

Rat snakes are not poisonous. They will bite when startled or threatened and the bite looks very much like a human bite on the skin. It lacks the two distinct fang marks of a poisonous snake. While it does hurt it is not going to make you sick. Just wash the area carefully with soap and water and watch for signs of infection as you would with any other wound.

via Rat Snake or Copperhead, How To Tell the Difference.

Skating on Thin Ice

Seems I’m not the only one who has grown tired of John Edwards’s publicity-hound ways. Carter Wrenn of Talking About Politics quotes Will Patton, who nails it.

… but then old Will Patton raised an even tougher question, saying, If I was prosecuting this case I’d only ask John Edwards one question: If you wanted was to keep your affair a secret from your wife why on earth did you run for President?

Richard thought that over and said: He might not testify.

Mr. Patton snorted, You couldn’t keep that fellow off the witness stand with a shotgun.

Sad but true.

via Skating on Thin Ice > Talking About Politics.

International intrigue in Raleigh

A story ran in March that caught my eye but didn’t seem to catch the full attention of the press. Federal officers from the U.S. Department of Commerce raided the offices of Law Enforcement Associates in Raleigh, charging the company with unlawfully exporting a sophisticated surveillance vehicle to Morocco.

The company, on whose board the former House majority leader Tony Rand once served as chairman, has been in trouble before. In 2005, founder John Carrington was charged with illegally exporting police equipment to China. He paid an $850,000 fine and agreed not to export anything for five years. Except Carrington couldn’t resist and got in trouble two years later for violating the ban again.

What’s up with this company? Is this another Blackwater in our own backyard? Are these sophisticated, Big Brother-ish tools being used against Middle Eastern democracy protesters? Was China using its “police equipment” to crush dissent? What’s the story here?

John Edwards

John Edwards in 2004

The federal prosecutors who are pursuing campaign finance charges against John Edwards better do whatever they can to make sure I’m not selected as a juror. I would tear them apart. It’s not that I’m a fan of Edwards: far from it, actually. I would be hopping mad at being forced to defend him.

Look, Edwards is a phony. He’s always been a phony. Though it’s true he could work a crowd like a rock star, I wasn’t impressed with him when I met him in 2004 (I misjudged his being “tired” for being bored). He became a “champion of the poor” while chilling in his posh mansion in Chapel Hill. He cheated on his dying wife and lied about it. Did the money he got from a donor friend and used to cover up his cheating rise to the level of cheating campaign finance laws? Hardly. Edwards may be a self-centered scumbag but I can easily see him doing the very same thing, finding a rich friend like Bunny Melon to paper over his infidelity, whether or not he was campaigning. It’s not like he was buying votes with the money.
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Emergency Management’s pCom unit


At tonight’s Rise Up Raleigh benefit concert there was a number of emergency vehicles parked out for the public to see. I spent some time talking with Raleigh Fire Department Battalion Chief Frank McLaurin about the state’s new mobile command post for disaster communications. The unit consists of a truck with desks, video, computers, and phone, towing a pCom satellite communications trailer.

Frank told me the pCom can provide 16 VoIP channels off of its self-aiming satellite dish. The trailer also provides 10kw of generator power, air-conditioned racks for networking gear and radio repeaters, and a 41 foot pneumatic tower for radio antennas, lights, or cameras. Oh, and an air compressor is included to raise the tower and also to provide compressed air for tools. It’s a pretty sweet setup!

Frank told me the state has owned it since August and has been building out the truck since then. He says the truck worked its first disaster during the April tornado, where it provided electricity and communications at the city’s Keeter fire training center in south Raleigh: one of the areas hit hard by the tornado.
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