Art is terrorism

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Yet another case of law enforcement officials going overboard, in this case of an artist being accused of being a bioterrorist.

Steve Kurtz is Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the State University of New York’s University at Buffalo, and a member of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble.

? Kurtz’s wife, Hope Kurtz, died in her sleep of cardiac arrest in the early morning hours of May 11. Police arrived, became suspicious of Kurtz’s art supplies and called the FBI.

Within hours, FBI agents had “detained” Kurtz as a suspected bioterrorist and cordoned off the entire block around his house. (Kurtz walked away the next day on the advice of a lawyer, his “detention” having proved to be illegal.) Over the next few days, dozens of agents in hazmat suits, from a number of law enforcement agencies, sifted through Kurtz’s work, analyzing it on-site and impounding computers, manuscripts, books, equipment, and even his wife’s body for further analysis. Meanwhile, the Buffalo Health Department condemned his house as a health risk.

Kurtz, a member of the Critical Art Ensemble, makes art which addresses the politics of biotechnology. “Free Range Grains,” CAE’s latest project, included a mobile DNA extraction laboratory for testing food products for possible transgenic contamination. It was this equipment which triggered the Kafkaesque chain of events.

FBI field and laboratory tests have shown that Kurtz’s equipment was not used for any illegal purpose. In fact, it is not even possible to use this equipment for the production or weaponization of dangerous germs. Furthermore, any person in the US may legally obtain and possess such equipment.

“Today, there is no legal way to stop huge corporations from putting genetically altered material in our food,” said Defense Fund spokeswoman Carla Mendes. “Yet owning the equipment required to test for the presence of ‘Frankenfood’ will get you accused of ‘terrorism.’ You can be illegally detained by shadowy government agents, lose access to your home, work, and belongings, and find that your recently deceased spouse’s body has been taken away for ‘analysis.'”

Though Kurtz has finally been able to return to his home and recover his wife’s body, the FBI has still not returned any of his equipment, computers or manuscripts, nor given any indication of when they will. The case remains open.

More details can be found in this article from the Washington Post.

Just ludicrous.

(via Boing Boing)

Saved!

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The Seattle PI has an interesting (if short) Q-and-A session with director Brian Dannelly, the man behind one movie that’s been high on my radar for a few weeks now — Saved!

“Saved!” — Brian Dannelly’s first feature — is a high school comedy with a twist: It’s set in an evangelical school. It’s a world he knows well, having been educated in a Catholic elementary school and a Baptist high school (with holidays at a Jewish summer camp). His affectionate satire stars Jena Malone as a passionately Christian teen who gets pregnant after trying to “cure” her gay boyfriend and Mandy Moore as a popular student whose uses public demonstrations of devotion as social currency. The film won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and played to a sold-out gala presentation at the Seattle International Film Festival. It opens a regular theatrical run tomorrow in Seattle.

“Saved!” also has been polarizing viewers and critics in the Christian community. While many, young and old alike, have embraced the film’s loving approach to acceptance and diversity, it was condemned by Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, as “a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.” Dannelly knows he’s courting controversy, but he believes passionately about his message.

Saved! opens tomorrow, and I think that it’s definitely on my list of things to do this weekend.

iTunes: “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” by Cruise, Julee from the album Until the End of the World (1991, 2:37).

Ink or champagne?

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Following up (in a way) on my printer ink woes, today MetaFilter points out that by volume, printer ink is six times more expensive than Dom Perignon champagne.

I still haven’t bothered to replace my printer, though I need to at some point — I’m just still pissy about spending the money on the ink just to find out that my printer was dead. Still, at the moment, as long as I don’t mind waiting for a bit I can just bring anything I need printed out to work (side benefits of working in a copy shop), so I’m not entirely without options. It’s still a frustrating situation, though.

iTunes: “Get Bizzy Time” by Voight Kampff from the album In to the Mix II: The 2nd Coming (1998, 5:03).

Little details

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Former Microsoftie Will Parker has an interesting post about the Microsoft Mac Business Unit’s work on a generally under-appreciated aspect of software publishing: the packaging.

Our study team handed a fresh, unopened Office X box to the subject and asked them to talk a bit about their work habits, their plans and expectations for Office X, and a little bit about the box design. They then asked the subject to open the box, install Office on their machine, and do some work.

One result of this study was a painfully funny Office X Blooper Reel — five straight minutes of people trying to get that damned plastic pack open and get at the CD, by any means necessary. Scissors tended to bounce right off of this thing, so Improvised Opening Devices were the order of the day – pocket knives, steak knives, paper trimmers, teeth, staple removers — even screw drivers made an appearance. Our research team lived in fear of blood spatters.

Not being an Office user, I never had to deal with this, but I’ve certainly dealt with enough other horridly packaged items to be able to put myself in these poor people’s shoes all to easily. Shrink wrap, and its many variations, is evil.

iTunes: “3 Floors Above You” by Meat Beat Manifesto from the album Actual Sounds and Voices (1998, 5:00).

VisitorVille

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Apache log file analysis plus SimCity equals VisitorVille, a program that displays your website as a city, with traffic represented by people moving from building to building (page to page), and arriving via bus (referrers and search engines).

Visitors come to your web site from other sites (referrers). Some of these referrers are search engines. In VisitorVille, referrers are depicted as buses. And web pages on your site are depicted as buildings. When a new visitor arrives, a bus delivers them to a building. To move between buildings, visitors either walk, take a cab or — if you have designated them as a VIP — a limousine. VIPs also fly in by helicopter.

When you have many visitors on your web site, it begins to resemble midtown Manhattan, and it’s hard to get your eyes off the screen! Buildings resize and illuminate dynamically based on the number of people inside, their relative popularity, and how many visitors exited through them. Buses, taxis, and limos race around the streets; pedestrians walk across crosswalks; helicopters ply the air. It’s all very real, because it’s reflecting something that’s also very real: Your visitors are human beings, and they exhibit human behavior. They are not abstractions, and with VisitorVille you no longer have to think of them as such!

As goofball as it sounds, after spending some time perusing their website, I have to admit that this is a really cool idea. Unfortunately, it’s a really cool idea whose client software only runs on Windows. Such a shame…

(via Wired)

iTunes: “Part 2 (Bomb the Bass/Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five/The Charlatans/Prodigy/Jane’s Addiction/Tim Dog feat. KRS-One)” by Howlett, Liam from the album Prodigy pres. The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol. 1 (1999, 6:44).

No longer the top of the heap

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Well, it lasted longer than I thought it would, given how fast technology advances, but my dual 2.0 GHz Power Mac G5 is no longer the top-of-the-line machine from Apple.

Apple today introduced updates to their Power Mac G5 line, now featuring a full range of dual processor systems at 1.8 GHz, 2.0 GHz, or 2.5 GHz — and ~~all~~ [the 2.5 Ghz model]{.underline} features a new liquid cooling system to keep heat and fan noise down. Nice!

(via MacMinute and /.)

iTunes: “Hazy Daze” by Wax Police, The from the album Acid: Breaks and Beats (1998, 2:24).

iTunes supports AC3 and DTS?

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I was just reading this Macworld article on how AirTunes works (the new audio streaming technology built into Airport Express), when I noticed this paragraph…

If iTunes is playing back a digital multichannel file format like AC3 (Dolby Digital) or DTS, those bitstreams are wrapped in Apple’s compression and encryption, and then decoded at the other end. In those cases, AirPort Express would end up streaming the raw AC3 or DTS stream via an optical cable to your home theater receiver for decoding.

blink

iTunes can play and output AC3 and DTS? How does that work — and from what source? Are there standalone AC3/DTS audio tracks out there somewhere? I’ve generally only seen them used on DVDs, though I know that there are some audio CDs made that use DTS, and probably some that use AC3. If I had such a CD, how would I put an AC3/DTS audio track into iTunes?

I don’t have a use for this information right now, I’m just really curious. It’s news to me.

iTunes: “Sweet Surrender (Roni Size v2)” by McLachlan, Sarah from the album Plastic Compilation Vol. II (1998, 4:00).