FBI Director upset they can't break into your phone as easily

Perhaps if you (the government), hadn't spent all your credibility to snoop on people who are not suspected of a crime. Also, trying to play the terror card and the child card doesn't fool anyone anymore. [Link]

Apple said last week that it would no longer be technically feasible to unlock encrypted iPhones and iPads for law enforcement because the devices would no longer allow user passcodes to be bypassed. The move comes as tech companies struggle to manage public concerns in the aftermath of last year's leak of classified National Security Agency documents about government access to private user data.

On a privacy site for its new mobile operating system, iOS 8, Apple outlined new features and tips for users on how to manage their privacy. It also included an explanation of how Apple will respond to government information requests in the future.

"Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data," the company said. "So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

Comey said that while he understood the need for privacy, government access to mobile devices may be needed in extreme circumstances, such as in the event of a terror attack.

"I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone's closet or their smart phone," he said. "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened -- even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order -- to me does not make any sense."

Comey said FBI officials have had conversations with both Apple and Google about the marketing of their devices.

"Google is marketing their Android the same way: Buy our phone and law-enforcement, even with legal process, can never get access to it," he said.

"There will come a day -- well it comes every day in this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. I'd hate to have people look at me and say, 'Well how come you can't save this kid,' 'how come you can't do this thing.'"

The director further expressed concern that public outcry over privacy in the wake of the NSA scandal may lead to unforeseen consequences.

"I get that the post-Snowden world has started an understandable pendulum swing," he said. "What I'm worried about is, this is an indication to us as a country and as a people that, boy, maybe that pendulum swung too far."

No, no it hasn't.

They really do not like this. Chicago Chief of Detectives claims the iPhone will now be the choice for pedophiles. [Link]

Now, the chief of detectives for Chicago's police department has issued an alarming statement on the effects of Apple's heightened encryption.

Speaking to the Washington Post, John J. Escalante said, "Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile. The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone."

UK secretary of state: "There is no surveillance state"

Britain once again mistakes 1984 as a manual to implement rather than a cautionary tale. [Link]

UK Secretary of State Theresa May -- part of a regime that presides over a spy service thatclaims the right to intercept all webmail, search and clicks; that spends hundreds of millions sabotaging Internet security; that dirty-tricks and psy-opses peaceful protest groups; thatlaunched illegal denial of service attacks; that slurps up 200M SMS messages a day; thatuses Google cookies to follow people around the Web; that targets NGOs and charities for deep surveillance; that sent spies into World of Warcraft hunting jihadis; that hacked a Belgian Internet exchange; knowingly participated in illegal surveillance at the telcos' data-centers; attacked Tor; detained a journalist's boyfriend under anti-terror laws; accepted£100M from foreign spies for help in spying on Britons; tapped into undersea cables; andmore -- insists that Britain is not a "surveillance state."

But, she says, there's all kinds of scary, scary terrorists out there. And she's foiling lots of terrorist plans. But she can't tell you about it, because that would be "cavalier and reckless." But we should trust her. And give her more powers to spy on us without a warrant.

As unbelievably stupid as this is, it at least beats last time, when the prime minister said TV crime dramas demonstrated the need for mass surveillance.

The Death of Archie

Coming soon to "Life with Archie". The Alex Ross variant cover is creepy. [Link]

What is assuredly the weirdest sentence I’ll have written in all my years at this website: Archie Andrews will heroically sacrifice his life to save that of a deae friend in the penultimate issue of Life With Archie in July. 

Written by Paul Kupperberg with art by Pat & Tim Kennedy and Fernando Ruiz, Life With Archie #36 will depict the title character’s death and come with a plethora of variant covers by some of our favorite artists like Francesco Francavilla, Fiona Staples, Ramón Pérez, Walt Simonson, Jill Thompson, Mike Allred, Cliff Chiang, Adam Hughes, Tommy Lee Edwards and Alex Ross.

The series has explored the lives of the Riverdale characters as they extend into a possible future, with notable storylines including Archie marrying Veronica Lodge, an alternate timeline in which Archie marries Betty Cooper, the marriage of U.S. soldier Kevin Keller to a male partner, and Cheryl Blossom suffering from breast cancer.

“We’ve been building up to this moment since we launched Life With Archie five years ago, and knew that any book that was telling the story of Archie’s life as an adult had to also show his final moment,” said Archie Comics Publisher/Co-CEO Jon Goldwater in a press release. “Archie has and always will represent the best in all of us—he’s a hero, good-hearted, humble and inherently honorable. This story is going to inspire a wide range of reactions because we all feel so close to Archie. Fans will laugh, cry, jump off the edge of their seats and hopefully understand why this comic will go down as one of the most important moments in Archie’s entire history. It’s the biggest story we’ve ever done, and we’re supremely proud of it.”

Issue #37 will take place a year hence, with the surviving Riverdale gang dealing with the loss of their friend and honoring his legacy.

School district decides to monitor all of their students' social media

Creepy, and I expect more school districts to follow. [Link]

"People are always looking to see what we're doing to ensure that their kids are safe. This just gives us another opportunity to ensure the kids are safe at all times," he said.

But kids are never going to be "safe at all times." That's an unreachable goal, and when you set it, it justifies any and all intrusion into the lives of kids and their families. Moreover, the school is responsible for kids' safety when kids are at school. "At all times" is none of their damn business.

I can see a reason for schools to search public social media in response to specified threats or as part of specific investigations. But sucking up all the public data kids leave out there and hiring companies to data-mine it? That's a thoroughly creepy increase in government surveillance.

Fortunately, it's also an excellent opportunity to teach kids a lesson. Hey kids: (1) things you do on the internet are public unless you take sufficient steps to make them private; (2) the government will spy on everything you do if you let it; (3) your government feels entitled to know about everything you do; (4) your government feels entitled to have a say about everything you do; (5) your government is not to be trusted.

Teletubbies as Wells' Eloi

Teletubbies as utopia. [Link]

It seems clear from the world of the Teletubbies that, whether alien or posthuman, they come from a technologically advanced culture. Like the Borg they have assimilated technological devices into their own bodies, but unlike the wholly technological/artificial worlds of the Borg they have chosen to inhabit an environment shaped largely by the aesthetics of the natural world. We have, then, a disparity between (on the one hand) the high degree of intelligence and technological know-how needed to build the ’tubbies home, their automated toasters and vacuum-cleaners, the periscopes, the broadcasting tower and all that; and (on the other) the evident puerility and immaturity of the Teletubbies themselves. Rather that reading this in terms of parental abandonment, I suggest a reading more in keeping with the traditions of SF.

The Teletubbies, I’d suggest, are contemporary versions of Wells’s Eloi, those indolent foppish creatures from The Time Machine. Indeed, they are a more thoroughly-worked through rendering of the Eloi mode of life. Where Wells saw his Eloi as adults, still capable despite their degeneracy of adult pastimes (so that Wells’s time traveller is for instance able to have sex with the Eloi Weena), the Teletubbies inhabit a more self-consistent vision of complete degeneracy.

Let’s put it this way: imagine a culture that develops such sophisticated technical prostheses that its inhabitants no longer need to work, to worry, to strive in any way. Imagine those inhabitants, through choice or through evolutionary pressure, losing all stress-related functions of adult consciousness: work-ethic, conscience, guilt, lust, anger, avarice. Imagine them, in other words, regressing back wholly to a toddler’s existence, finding in that simplicity a maximum fit between existence and stress-free-satisfaction, like those German 40-something businessmen who like dressing in nappies and rolling around on the carpets of speciality brothels. Or, in fact, not like those men, because (unlike the Eloi) the Teletubbies have discarded the sex impulse as well, abandoning with it the dangerously fretful anxiety-gratification ratio of adult sexual life.

The machines in Teletubbyland, in other words, are the devices necessary to free mankind from its attachment to the adult world of necessity, provision and work. And once freed from those constraints, the show suggests, evolution or choice leads life back into the calm, bright satisfactions of toddlerdom. The Teletubbies are purer Eloi than the Eloi, a more complete rendering of the old SF convention about degeneration. Wells characterised his Eloi as child-like in some respect, but adult-like in others (physical appearance, sexual appetite). Huxley’s Brave New World also posited human global happiness upon an infantilisation of the human animal, although his future humans are also adult in appearance and physical appetite.

Sex With Animals Will Give You Penis Cancer

How did they find this out? They asked them. [Link]

I hope you didn't need the risk of death to convince you to not have sex with animals. But just in case, know this: bestiality will give you penis cancer.

Researchers studied 432 men between 18 and 80 years old in rural Brazil, 118 of whom had penile cancer. Of those with the disease, 35 percent reported that they had had sex with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals. And those are just the ones who admitted it.

The scientists, who published their work in the Oct. 24 issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, also asked the men if this was a habit or a one-time thing. "Zoopilia" was a regular indulgence for 59 percent of them, who had sex with animals over a period of between one and five years, while 21 percent did it for more than five years. Some did it daily, others monthly.

Stop reading now if you thought or wished desperately it couldn't get any more disturbing: Men who had sex with animals also had higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases, and the researchers think that might be because they're all having group sex. More than 30-percent practiced sex with animals in groups. This is not done alone in a remote stable—it's a party!

Now this is stuck in your brain too. Ugh.

Oslo killer REALLY Liked Microsoft Word

Really. [Link]

In his 1500-page manifesto—spammed to one thousand people more than one hour before the massacre—Norewegian killer Anders Breivik devoted pages and pages about how to read his deadly boring tome, including why he chose Microsoft Word:

I chose to send the compendium as a Word file for the following reason:

1. MS Word is one of the most common and popular software formats
2. Significantly easier to edit the document compared to PDF
3. A Word file is significantly smaller than a PDF file (3,5 MB vs 8-10 MB)
4. The quality of the images are conserved a lot better than in a PDF
5. Distribution: it is easier to avoid spam filters with a file smaller than 5 MB

Since I have chosen to send the document in Word format you can easily extract all information and the images from the Word file. I deliberately avoided locking the document for this reason.

Yeah. The nutcase actually prefaced his plans to kill a few dozen people in cold blood with some notes about why Word was perfect to distribute his condensed stupidity.

"Intellectuals" upset with IMF chief rape allegations

It's the Roman Polanski apologists all over again. Who will say "it wasn't rape-rape" like Whoopi? [Link]

Yesterday it was Bernard Henri-Lévy, the Cirque du Soleil of modern philosophy. Today, it is Ben Stein, professor and presidential speechwriter, roused to insinuate that IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged victim must be lying. Henri-Lévy merely waved his literary arms passionately, but Stein suggests class warfare is behind the hotel maid's claims and the "embarrassing" treatment that Strass-Kahn received.

Why Wonkette Self-destructed

because the Trig Palin hit piece. [Link]

Liberal blogger, Tommy Christopher of Mediate, hit it out of the park when he wrote the following with regard to this disgusting piece of filth:

Hey, that’s really funny, calling Trig a gentleman scholar because he has Down Syndrome. And the speculation that Todd Palin may have raped his daughter? Pure comedy gold. You know what will be even funnier? The first time Jack Stuef runs into Todd Palin. That one practically writes its own punchline.

Now, if drawing the ire of the Twitterverse–as well as conservative bloggers everywhere (and a few liberal bloggers)–wasn’t bad enough, Wonkette has wound up losing a total of nine advertisers thus far. So, the question is, why would Wonkette engage in such hateful and self-destructive behavior? Well, there are actually three reasons, and if you will bear with me, I will thoroughly explain them all to you.

1.) Many liberals’ favorite pastime seems to be hating Sarah Palin.

I have written a lot in the past about liberals’ love-affair with hating Sarah Palin. For instance, I’m sure that many of you are aware of the mainstream media’s immediate, hateful leap to blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party for Jared Lee Loughner’s murder spree in Arizona back in January. The liberal MSM blamed her because she had a target map putting certain districts in the “crosshairs”….but wait, that fell apart because the Democrats had a similar target map for the 2010 elections. Then, it was because she used incendiary language like, “Don’t retreat, just reload”….but wait, liberals conveniently forgot that Barack Obama had said, “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun”. So, in a nutshell, liberals were reduced to arguing, “We hate Sarah Palin because she exists; therefore, she must have inspired some far-left, paranoid schizophrenic–who never even saw her target map–to commit mass murder.” Pathetic.

Now, liberals’ hatred of all things Sarah Palin has also included her family, as well as her uterus, for some time now. Last December, I wrote a piece titled, “Sarah Palin Makes Liberals Act Like Weirdos” where I documented how Bill Maher called Bristol Palin a “Hillbilly Heroine”, how Sandra Bernhard called Bristol Palin a “hooker”, how Kathy Griffin called Bristol Palin “fat” in front of a group of US soldiers (who promptly booed her), how screenwriter Aaron Sorkin compared Sarah Palin to Michael Vick for hunting a caribou, how Andrew Sullivan attacked sixteen year old Willow Palin for her Facebook postings, and finally, how Andrew Sullivan has gone on a two year long crusade to prove that Trig Palin is not really Sarah Palin’s son.

[Furthermore, last fall, Michael Gross wrote a gross column for Vanity Fair where he wrote about Sarah Palin's underwear, admitted to asking the local people of Alaska about Todd and Sarah Palin's sex life, and even interviewed/had dinner with Joe McGinniss....you know, the creep who moved in next door to the Palin family in order to better stalk them.]

So, the question is why have so many mainstream liberals turned hatred of all things Sarah Palin into a creepy spectator sport? Simple. First of all, because they can. (Who is going to call them on it–the MSM? Don’t make me laugh.) Second of all, because many liberals see conservative women (as well as conservative African-Americans) as traitors, or as “suffering from Stockholm Syndrome” (to quote Janeane Garofalo). I recently wrote a column where I explained how feminism is not really about standing up for women’s rights any more, but is currently more about political correctness, multiculturalism and making sure that women check all the right boxes with their belief system (pro-abortion–check, pro-multiculturalism–check)–and, Sarah Palin refuses to check any of the boxes that liberals want checked.

Creepy vintage Valentines

Real vintage, real creepy. [Link]

a series of vintage Valentine’s Day cards that, similarly, have a different effect given our contemporary cultural sensibilities. After decades of efforts to draw attention to and problematize men’s violence against women, these cards seem misguided at best:

Comics fans will find this one prescient. Women in Refrigerators.

An amazing Lego Victorian house

Very well done and creepy. Lots of construction details at the link. [Link]

It's not a tumor

It isn't. It's a worm. [Link]

Rosemary Alvarez started experiencing numbness in her arm and blurred vision. She went to the emergency room twice and had acat scan, but everything came up clear, MyFOXPhoenix.com reported.

Click here for a video.

It wasn’t until doctors took a closer look at an MRI that they discovered something very disturbing.

“Once we saw the MRI we realized this is something not good,” neurosurgeon, Dr. Peter Nakaji told the news station. “It's something down in her brain stem which is as deep in the brain as you can be.”

Alvarez was wheeled into surgery where Nakaji and his colleagues were expecting to remove a tumor, but they uncovered a worm instead.

On a video of the surgery, Nakaji can be heard chuckling after he made the discovery.

“I'm sure this is a very strange response for the people in the operating room,” he told MyFOXPhoenix.com. “But because I was so pleased to know that it wasn't going to be something terrible.”

My head is itching just thinking about it.

School Kids Sing For Health Care Reform On Set Of CNN

Should CNN be broadcasting political propaganda? Rather, even more than usual.
Political propaganda done by children? Is that appropriate? Video at link. [Link]

Kids from the Ron Clark Academy are on CNN singing for health care reform set to Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA." The song mentions "Obama says everyone needs health care now."

Mysterious Private Security Firm Gets Control Of Empty Jail In Small Montana Town

Creepy. [Link]

Under a lease signed with Hardin, APF, based in Santa Ana, California, and incorporated just six months ago, is now in control of a 400-bed detention facility the town built a few years ago but never used, a town official confirmed to TPMmuckraker today. The town reportedly stands to make over $2 million per year.
Just what American Police Force plans to do with the detention facility, which comes with 50 acres of land in the small south-central Montana town, is unclear. Also not clear is who, if anyone, APF plans to put in the jail. (Watch a video tour of the jail here.)
Hardin, which is in default on the bonds it used to build the jail, recently undertook an unsuccessful campaign to make the jail a new home for Gitmo detainees. When that failed, the town turned to APF
The 10-year contract that is now awaiting final approval of lawyers gives APF the option of building a training facility, said Al Peterson, spokesman for the Hardin economic development authority. APF has said it plans to invest $30 million in the site, including $17M in the training facility, where law enforcement will get sniper training and learn "DNA analysis" skills.
And where is American Police Force getting the money for this venture? Company spokeswoman Becky Shay -- until about a week ago the Billings Gazette reporter covering APF -- says they are no plans to answer that question. She did not respond to a request for comment.
The matter has attracted the attention of the Montana state legislature, which is seeking more information about the arrangement between Hardin and APF. The committee that deals with legal matters will send a letter to Hardin officials to get more details on the deal, Representative Bob Ebinger (D) tells TPMmuckraker.
"Because of the apparent secretiveness of this, it gives the far right and far left to come up with all kinds of ideas. That's why I'd like to see some clarification," Ebinger says.
Peterson, the Hardin official, says the controversy sparked last week when APF executives appeared in black SUVs marked "City Of Hardin Police Department" was a misunderstanding of an act of goodwill by the company. The decals were taken off within the day, he says.

Tone Deafness in Calls for Polanski's Release

Apparently, drugging a 13 year old and raping her just isn't that big a deal.

Megan McArdle

His victim now says she has forgiven him and doesn't want him to serve jail time, but at this point, it's not really about her.  We're doing this pour encourager les autres.

The French, too, have forgiven him of course:

"Seeing him alone, imprisoned while he was heading to an event that was due to offer him praise and recognition is awful. He was trapped," French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said at a news conference Sunday. "In the same way there is a generous America that we like, there is also a scary America, that has just shown its face."

You would think we'd busted him for unpaid parking tickets.  The guy drugged a thirteen year old girl in order to rape her.  Perhaps the French have some sophisticated, European point of view on these things that I, with my puritan ancestry, simply cannot rise to.

You're not the only one.

Ann Althouse

Allahpundit trashes the Hollywood crowd for rushing to the defense of Roman Polanski.

Magically transformed, by Hollywood libertinism and douchebaggery, into an honest-to-goodness victim who’s being persecuted by the evil empire for, um, forcibly sodomizing a 13-year-old and then skipping bail.... ... Polanski and his cretinous supporters don’t care if he’s guilty or not. They want him to walk free, in the name of “art,” without another word spoken on the subject.

Is it just art, or is there a particular love in Hollywood film art of the forbidden love between the adult and child?

Maybe.

Patterico Go to the link and watch Whoopiclaim it wasn't "rape-rape". WTF?

Oh: Goldberg says Polanski thought: “You know what? This guy’s gonna give me 100 years in jail, I’m not staying.” I have read variants of this claim all over, mostly commonly that the judge was going to give Polanski 50 years. What?? The judge wasn’t even going to give him 50 extra days. He was going to give him 48 extra days. I get this from the motion filed by Polanski’s lawyers.
Paragraph 16 of the declaration of Polanski’s lawyer says: “Judge Rittenband announced to counsel that he now intended to send Mr. Polanski to prison for the second time under the following conditions: (1) that he serve 48 additional days in prison . . .” The other conditions were that there would be no further hearing, and that Polanski “deport himself.” Polanski had been sent to prison for a “90-day diagnostic” and had served only 42 days; the 48 days was meant to complete the 90 days.
This allegedly went against a previous in-chambers promise by the judge that the initial 42 days would be all Polanski would serve; however, Polanski did not plead based on the previous promise, which was made after the plea. That previous promise did not induce the plea, and when commentators say the judge “reneged” on a deal they are adopting the language of Polanski’s lawyers, who argue that the judge said he would make his decision after reading the probation department report and listening to the lawyers’ arguments. Instead, Polanski’s lawyers claim, the judge made up his mind before listening to the lawyers. Which, truth be told, judges always do; they just usually put on a better show of listening to us.

Big Hollywood

The Huffington Post has made it crystal clear where it stands on the news that director Roman Polanski may have to answer for his 31-year-old crime of child rape: “Move on, everyone. Nothing to see here. Keep on directing, Roman. Love ya!”
The popular liberal site has posted numerous essays since news that Polanski was arrested in Switzerland broke over the weekend, each arguing vehemently against the Oscar winner’s persecution.

• Kim Masters: “Roman Polanski understands women” – starts with her exasperation over the Polanski witch hunt.

• Bernard-Henri Levy: Let’s start a petition in support of Polanski.

• John Farr: Leniency for Polanski.

But HuffPo readers aren’t buying it. And boy, are they angry.
Check out the comments left on each of these essays and you’ll see faithful HuffPo readers aghast that the site could be defending the indefensible.

Breaking News: North Korea no longer Communist

Just read their revised constitution. [Link]

North Korea has officially made Kim Jong-il its “supreme leader” and his “military first” policy its guiding ideology, according to the text of the country’s newly revised Constitution made available on Monday.
The Constitution also declared for the first time that North Korea “respects and protects” the “human rights” of its citizens, and expunged the term “communism” from its text.
Analysts saw the changes as signs that one of the last holdouts from the former Communist bloc was trying to improve its international image in an effort to engage the United States and that the ailing Mr. Kim was trying to burnish his legacy.
North Korea revised its Constitution in April when its rubber-stamp Parliament re-elected Mr. Kim as chairman of the National Defense Commission amid uncertainty over his health. But the outside world was kept in the dark about the details of the amendment until Monday, when South Korea released what it called the text of the North Korean Constitution.
The new Constitution defined one of several titles Mr. Kim holds, chairman of the National Defense Commission, as “supreme leader” of the country. Though Mr. Kim has ruled the country as an undisputed leader, the Constitution revision is the first time he has acquired such an official designation since the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994.
The chairman “oversees the entire national business,” appointing important military figures, ratifying or abrogating treaties with foreign nations, appointing special envoys and declaring states of emergency or war, the new Constitution said.

Radio controlled bugs

Really. [Link]

The device is much simpler to program and use than similar ones developed previously, because it makes implicit use of the beetle's own flight control capabilities. The researchers found that flight could be initiated by simply applying a single pulse of electrical stimulation via the electrodes implanted into the left and right optic lobes. A single pulse from the same electrodes was also sufficient to stop the wing beats. Exactly how this occurs is unclear; it is known that visual inputs can initiate flight in locusts and fruit flies, and the researchers speculate that stimulation of the optic lobe activates large diameter "giant fibre" motor neurons which project from the brain to the wing muscles.

Once initiated, flight continued in the absence of further stimulation. The beetle powers its own flight, and levels with the horizon on its own, so that the neural and muscle stimulators are only used when a change in orientation or elevation is required. Turning could be initiated by asymmetrical stimulation of the muscles at the base of the wings, with a left turn being triggered by an electrical pulse to the right flight muscle, and vice versa. The stimulator could also be used to modulate the frequency of wing oscillations, which caused changes in altitude.

Cult of personality

I find this more than a little creepy. [Link]

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

Bizarre Craigslist adverts

From Althouse. [Link]

3) Seeking adult drunk clown for 30th birthday party
"We need an Adult Drunk Clown who is good at getting drunk and stupid. No need to do any clown tricks, just hang out and drink a shit load. We will be hopping around to different bars and want a clown to tag a long and drink heavely. He doesn't even need to socialize with anyone, just drink."


5) Woman to sit in my bath tub full of noodles, wearing a bathing suit
"I will pay you $1 to sit in my bathtub full of noodles while you wear a one piece bathing suit. I will not be home, nor will anyone else while you do this. I will leave the key for you, and you will sit at your leisure. DO NOT bring any sauce. I will season the pasta after I return home prior to dinner."


7) I have a huge bathroom
"I am a female in my mid 60's and I am looking for a room mate. Times are tight and I need some extra money. I am willing to rent out my bathroom in my 1 bedroom east village home. My bathroom is large. You can easily put a twin air mattress in there. I only ask that when I need to use the bathroom, you or your air mattress are not in it. I do ask that when you are in the apartment, you confine yourself to the bathroom. I do not feel comfortable with a stranger walking around my living room. This might change as I get to know you better."


9) Need someone to hide easter eggs in my apartment when im not home
"I need someone to hide easter eggs in my apt when i am not there ! They are small and filled with candy! I would like to find them myself on sunday! I am willing to pay! Serious inquiries only!"


11) I took your purse and felt a connection
"Tuesday night around 11:30. On 53rd btw 1st and 2nd. You came out of the subway and I followed you. You looked over your shoulder, saw me and started walking faster. I ran up, grabbed your arm, took your purse and ran away. I've done many a snatch-and-grab but no one has ever stuck in my mind like you. There was a quick moment when our eyes met that I felt something strong. I think you felt it too. If I wasn't so shy (or so committing a crime) I would have asked your name. I, of course, later got your name from your drivers license. So Jennifer if you'd like to get together for a drink sometime get back to me."


14) My teeth
"I left my Dentures in your Silverado last night. I gave you my number but did not get yours. Please call me asap. I need my teeth. We met in the parking lot of Margarita Jones. Get back to me asap please. Thank you."


16) Autographed copy of Plato's Republic
"1st edition of The Republic signed by its author. There is of course a reasonable amount of wear and tear, (light highlighting and underlining, dog-eared pages, back cover missing, etc.), but it is in overall good condition considering its age."


20) 300 stuffed penguins
"I'm going through a pretty weird time in my life right now--having just gone through a break-up and graduated college and temporarily living in my parents' house before I move out for good in in the fall, though I remain unemployed because my philosophy degree is at *such* a premium--and sifting through my room (which has become a strange amalgam of my adolescence and burgeoning adulthood), it's been brought to my attention that I probably won't "catch a man" or have anyone believe I'm about to turn 23 with 300 penguins and a bunch of purple furniture around, that looking at my current room one might think some sort of 13-year-old with developmental issues is living here."

 Wow.

Why are they making Robots that eat food?

This is just asking for trouble when the robots start going on a human eating rampage. [Link]

The idea of EATR is ostensibly that military reconnaissance droids far behind enemy lines would be able to forage for fuel. Robotic Technology Inc, lead contractor on the EATR, puts it thus:

EATR is an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance military missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling. The patent pending robotic system can find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment, as well as use conventional and alternative fuels (such as gasoline, diesel, propane and solar) when suitable.

The machine runs on a "biomass furnace" which powers a steam generator driving a "waste heat engine" from Cyclone Power Technologies. These pieces of kit will now be mated together within 90 days, according to RTI.
The robot steamers are envisaged as being equipped with powerful articulated arms in order to rip trees or bushes out of the earth and stuff them into their glowing maws. By way of a treat, it seems that the machines will also be able to loot or forage more conventional fuel supplies from the petrol tanks of cars, domestic gas cylinders and so on. Cyclone says that their engine can also run happily on old apple cores, banana peel and other kitchen garbage gleaned from bins.
Hapless drivers or householders will be in no position to object to such robotic plundering: military reconnaissance vehicles are typically heavily armed, and doubtless the EATR will be no exception. It might also be fitted with DARPA's SELF tech, enabling it to construct copies of itself and modify its own design.

UPDATE: EATR is a vegetarian and follows the Geneva Conventions. [Link]

RTI’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.
“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” stated Harry Schoell, Cyclone’s CEO. “We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.” (emphasis in the original)