Month: June 2004

Wow — I’m Not the Only Cyberpunk Fan

Okay, I know I’m not the only fan of cyberpunk fiction, but I was afraid I was the only person who was a fan of Billy Idol’s ill-fated Cyberpunk CD until I ran across Michael Hanscom’s page extolling the virtues of the album.

This was the last studio album that Idol recorded, back in 1993, and it was a commercial disaster (its poor sales performance is probably one of the main reasons Idol hasn’t done another record since). Beyond poor sales, the album was just savaged by reviewers who tended to see the album as a pretentious effort to, as Hanscom puts it, “cash in on the new subculture that was gaining popularity.”

I received a reviewers copy of the album back when it was released, and it is one of the few albums I listen to regularly. The album’s title was probably a mistake in retrospect, but Cyberpunk holds up well with similarly inspired techno albums — I tend to put it and Information Society’s excellent Peace & Love, Inc. in shuffle mode and its a nice mix.

And Idol’s techno-tinged cover of Lou Reed’s “Heroin” is itself worth the price of the CD if you ever see it at a used CD shop.

Ronald Reagan, Dead at 93

I called my wife from the car telling her I think Ronald Reagan died today — National Public Radio was running some sort of program about him, and I can’t imagine them doing that unless he had died. Sure enough, Reagan died today at his Los Angeles home. He was 93.

Reagan was clearly far and away the most important Western political figure in the post-WW II era, and his two terms as president completely altered the political landscape in the United States.

One of the things that always fascinates me about Reagan is that his views and policies are portrayed as having been radically right wing, but in many ways he was simply retaking ideological ground that his opponents had chosen to give up.

Take Reagan’s vehement anti-Communism. His description of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” and similar statements were widely ridiculed by the press and his opponents as, at best, oversimplistic sloganeering and, at worst, dangerously destabilizing ideas that could bring the U.S. into direct military conflict with the Soviet Union.

But if you actually read the speeches and statements he gave, they are not all that different than statements and speeches given by another great American president and anti-communist, John F. Kennedy. Like others born well after Kennedy’s death, I learned about the “ask not what you can do for your country . . .”, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and of course his assassination, but it’s amazing to go back and read Kennedy’s speeches and realize just what a hawk and critic of Communism and champion of freedom Kennedy was.

It wasn’t Reagan who necessarily lurched right in his anticommunism views, but the Democratic Party which lurched left with Jimmy Carter and others who mistook the American fiasco in Vietnam as delegitimizing anti-Communism.

Certainly Reagan’s foreign policy included its fair share of problems and fiascos, but I couldn’t disagree more with an NPR reporter’s observation this afternoon that his foreign policy had mixed results. The man presided over the rapid decline and eventual dismantling of the Communist empire, for Christ’s sake, after every elitist politician and journalist said his policies would never work and would likely result in a stronger, not weaker, Soviet Union. Yes, you could point to Iran-Contra or the Lebanon disaster, but that’s like saying that Winston Churchill’s efforts during World War II were “mixed” because of the Operation Market Garden defeat.

Minolta Dimage XG

Last year I bought a 3 megapixel Sony Cybershot digital camera, and took more than 6,200 pictures with it in that year. I liked the camera — it produced pretty good pictures and wasn’t very big — but lately I’ve been on a kick to see just how small and lightweight I can get the various gadgets that I feel the need to carry around, and the Cybershot just wasn’t cutting it anymore.

So I wanted a camera in as small a form factor as I could find that would take pictures comparable to the Sony camera, as well as do video and audio recording. After a lot of research online I happened across what I think is the perfect mix of features, size and cost with the Minolta Dimage Xg.

First, the camera is certainly diminutive enough. Its physical dimensions are a bit larger than a credit card but only .8 inches thick and weighing only 4.2 ounces. With the Cybershot I could never just stick it in a pocket and go — the Dimage Xg practically begs to be taken everywhere.

The downside of this is that it does use a proprietary 750 ma battery (which, unfortunately, can’t be charged while in the camera — it requires a separate battery charger). I picked up a second battery for $40 and the batteries aren’t much bigger than a compact flash card, so it’s not much of a burden to carry around a spare if necessary.

An upside compared to the Sony product is that the Dimage Xg uses SD cards rather than crappy Memory Sticks (which are the most fault-prone flash memory I’ve ever used). SanDisk finally came out with a 1 gigabyte SD card a few months ago which can be had for about $250-$300. I picked up a 512 mb SD card when I purchased the camera, but will likely add a couple 1 gb cards later as I use them in many of the portable devices I own so I can put them to multiple uses.

As I said, the ability to record video was very important to me. The Sony camera I had would record 320×240 video at 15 frames per second. I ended up using that a lot more than I thought I would — I have a mid-range digital camcorder, but I found many times when something happened I wanted to record and the digital camera was with me a lot more often than the camcorder.

The Dimage Xg records video at 320×240 at up to 30 frames per second. That eats up a lot of space — about 22-24 minutes per gigabyte, so it will also let you lower the frame rate to 15 frames per second or lower the resolution to 160×120. Personally, I’m sticking with the 30 fps second video and just buying more memory cards. The video looked pretty good considering it was produced by such a diminutive device. I took my kids on walk to a nearby park the other day and recorded quite a bit of video of them tackling the slides and other playground equipment. Lots of neat stuff I can show my wife later that never would have been captured otherwise, since both the Sony camera and the camcorder I own would have both been too bulky to bring along comfortably.

The Xg will also record audio, up to a limit of 180 minutes at a time.

As I said the video quality was impressive given the size of the device, and the picture quality as pretty good as well. The pictures I take with the Xg are slightly inferior to the ones I took with the Sony camera because the Cybershot uses an Autofocus Illuminator to lock on focus, whereas the Xg doesn’t, so getting a sharply focused picture is a lot trickier. The camera has an internal 3x optical zoom that is very fast and works as advertised. Other than the focus issue, the 3 megapixel pictures I took with the Xg are comparable to the ones I took with the Cybershot.

And finally the price was right — I bought my Xg at a local camera store which was retailing them for $269 (roughly the same price they’re going for on Amazon or Buy.Com, though you can find them a bit cheaper at other online stores).

Update:

There are a couple of caveats that aren’t dealbreakers for me but might be for others:

1. First, the camera runs very hot which probably isn’t surprising given its small size. If you shoot 40-50 pictures over the span of a few minutes, as I frequently do, the camera heats up noticably.

2. The video mode looks great in outdoors settings, but is not so great in indoor settings. Video shot indoors tends to be very grainy and noisy, even under relatively good conditions.

3. As the camera is so small and lightweight, very minor hand movements can ruin shots very easily. It takes a bit of getting used to just how small the camera is, and some users might find it difficult to hold the camera as steady as possible (frequently I resort to steadying either the camera or my arms on objects in the environment).

Arizona Governor Vetoes Animal Rights/Environmental Terrorism Legislation

On May 12, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed legislation that would have modified that state’s racketeering laws to cover some acts of animal rights and environmental terrorism.

The bill would have modified Arizona’s statutory definition of racketeering to read,

1. “Animal activity” means any activity that involves the use of animals or animal parts, including hunting, fishing, trapping, traveling, camping, production, preparation or processing of food or food products, clothing or garment manufacturing, medical or other research, entertainment, recreation, agriculture, biotechnology or any other service involving the use of animals.

2. “Animal facility” includes a vehicle, building, structure, research facility, nature preserve or other premises where an animal is lawfully kept, handled, housed, exhibited, bred or offered for sale, including a zoo, rodeo, circus, amusement park, hunting preserve and horse and dog event.

3. “Animal or ecological terrorism” means any felony, including any completed or preparatory offense, that involves criminal damage, the use of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument or the intentional, knowing or reckless infliction of serious physical injury with the intent to obstruct, impede or deter any person from participating in a lawful animal activity, from mining, foresting, harvesting, gathering or processing natural resources or from being lawfully present in or on an animal facility or research facility.

In her message vetoing the bill, Napolitano said the bill was “overbroad, unnecessary and susceptible to a host of unintended negative consequences.”

The full text of the vetoed legislation can be read here.

Source:

Napolitano vetoes ‘overbroad’ ecoterrorism legislation. Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services, May 13, 2004.

HLS First Quarter Revenue and Profits Reach Five Year Highs

Huntingdon Life Sciences reported in early May that its revenues and operating profit for the first quarter of 2004 were the highest the company has reached in the last five years.

Revenues for the first quarter were $37.2 million, an increase of 16.7 percent above the company’s revenues in the first quarter of 2003.

HLS president and managing director Brian Cass said in a press release announcing the results,

When we announced our results for 2003 I noted that new business enquiries remained strong and that we were seeing indications of strong order demand in the beginning of the year. I am pleased to report that net new orders in the first quarter were a record for this company, 34% up on the first quarter of 2003 and 29% ahead of the last quarter of 2003. This growth in orders has increased backlog, and helped support the continuing growth in revenues. Toxicology and pharmaceutical chemistry, two of the company’s core competencies have shown strong growth in orders.

Source:

LSR Announces Q1 2004 results. Press Release, Huntingdon Life Sciences, May 6, 2004.

Federal Agents Arrest Seven Activists in Four States

On May 26, federal agents in four states arrested seven people associated with Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty’s campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences in the United States.

The activists arrested were Josh Harper arrested in Washington state; Kevin Kjonas (AKA “Kevin Jonas”, “Steve Shore” and “Jim Fareer”), Lauran Gazzola (AKA “Angela Jackson” and “Danielle Matthews”), and Jacob Conroy arrested in California; Darius FUllmer and John McGee arrested in New Jersey; and Andrew Stepanian arrested in New York.

The indictment of the activist charged all seven activist with,

. . . knowingly and willfully combine, conspire and agree with one another and others to use a facility in interstate and foreign commerce for the purpose of causing physical disruption to the functioning of HLS, an animal enterprise, and intentionally damage and cause the loss of property used by HLS, in an amount exceeding $10,000.

That conspiracy charge carries with it up to three years in prison and a $250,000 if convicted.

In addition, Kjonas, Gazzola and Conroy as well as Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty itself were charged with three counts each of interstate stalking and one count each of conspiracy to engage in interstate stalking. Each of those charges carries a sentence of up to five years in jail and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

SHAC’s response was predictable,

Osama Bin Laden must be feeling pretty comfortable right now, as the FBI and the United States Government have shown their investigative hand and it is disturbingly pathetic. Ironically on the same day John Ashcroft held a press conference to warn the country of impending terrorist attacks coming this summer (a warning based on “intelligence” the AG has now had to backtrack from) – the FBI set about tackling their number one priority, the capture of those menacing animal rights activists.

The reader can imagine just about every criminal enterprise from the mob to the local petty bank robber making this argument — “but judge, why waste time prosecuting me when they should be out tracking down Osama bin Laden.”

SHAC also had some hilarious whining about the means of their arrest,

With a seemingly unlimited budget the FBI did spare no expense. To arrest three of the seven supposed SHAC USA volunteers, 15 agents from the FBI, Secret Service, and even US Air Marshals (with their chopper over head) stormed into a home at 6 AM with guns drawn. They were, after all, apprehending people suspected of operating a website, and you never know what sort of floppy disk such thugs could be concealing as a weapon.

Excellent. SHAC might be surprised that it doesn’t require an unlimited budget to have 15 agents execute arrests in four separate states. It is amusing, though, to see the folks who advocate and support the most vile sort of threats and intimidation tactics upset because agents serving a lawful warrant “stormed into a home at 6 AM.” Don’t worry too much for them — hopefully most of those arrested will soon reside in prison cells and not have to worry about anyone storming their homes at 6 AM.

And just to make sure it got some publicity out of the matter, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals was quick to tell any media outlet who would listen that it doesn’t see anything wrong with what SHAC does and that these arrests are part of a government crackdown on mainstream activism.

The New Jersey Star Ledger noted that,

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, however, questioned yesterday whether legitimate activism was under attack.

“Some of the names being bandied about in this instance are longtime activists and well respected,” said PETA spokeswoman Lisa Lange, referring to the SHAC indictment.

Well, at least its good to get Lange on the record. After all of this nonsense of late from PETA that it doesn’t support or condone animal rights terrorism, it’s nice to see them be up front about their admiration for these folks.

The full text of the indictment against the SHAC activists can be read here.

Sources:

Animal rights activists charged in actions against testing lab. Associated Press, May 26, 2004.

FBI targets ‘terrorism’ by animal, eco-activists. Brian Murray, New Jersey Star-Ledger, May 27, 2004.