Mother Sheehan hangs up her spurs.

In a blog post entitled "Good Riddance Attention Whore", Cindy Sheehan calls it a day.  Seems she's tired of taking abuse from all sides.  Poor baby was fine as long as she restricted herself to slagging the Republicans, but when she started in on the Dems she made a shocking discovery.

Unlike Republicans, the DemocRats aren't gentlemen.  They use live ammo!

The first conclusion is that I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party. Of course, I was slandered and libeled by the right as a "tool" of the Democratic Party.  This label was to marginalize me and my message. How could a woman have an original thought, or be working outside of our "two-party" system?

However, when I started to hold the Democratic Party to the same standards that I held the Republican Party, support for my cause started to erode and the "left" started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used. I guess no one paid attention to me when I said that the issue of peace and people dying for no reason is not a matter of "right or left", but "right and wrong."

So, Mother Sheehan slinks off into a well deserved obscurity, another tool used to destruction and cast aside by the Left.  These are the wages of fraud and deceit, as many a useful idiot has discovered.

I can't say it makes me happy to watch this woman suffer.  She's just another example of the Universal Law:  what goes around, comes around.  Don't be a jerk and the Universe probably won't go out of its way to crap on your head. 

From these examples we learn wisdom.

The Phantom

Palestinian refugee camp shelled!

Yep, the Nahr al Bared  refugee camp has had the living crap blown out of it this week.  Bet you didn't know that.

On May 20, ... troops surrounded the camp, with tanks and artillery pieces shelling it at close range. Army snipers gunned down anything that moved. At least 18 civilians were killed, and dozens more injured. Water and electricity were cut off. By week's end, much of the camp had been turned into deserted rubble. Thousands of terrified residents fleeing the camp reported harrowing stories of famished, parched families trapped in their basements.

Palestinian women and children dying of thirst, lots of photogenic explosions for TV crews, guys getting blasted by snipers in broad daylight, big friggin' tanks tearing around blowing shit up... and not a peep out of CNN.  No mutilated bodies of kids, no stuffed animal pictures, no Green Helmet Guy.

How can this be? 

Its because it happened in Lebanon, not in Israel!  In Jenin the Israelis sent infantry to remove dug in Palestinians, with careful attention to civilian casualties.  The Lebanese Army just drove up to the fence and walked a barrage across the place.  For a week.

Just as Lebanon's stew of eternally warring Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, Hezbollah terrorists and militarized clans serves as a Mediterranean microcosm for the political dysfunction of the Arab world, this month's events capture perfectly the utter cynicism of the Islamic world's trumped up vilification of Israel, and the West as a whole. As with the Muslim- on-Muslim slaughter in Darfur, Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza and a dozen other hot spots, the siege at Nahr al Bared shows that what inflames "the Muslim street" (for lack of a better cliche) isn't Muslim suffering, but the relatively tiny fraction thereof that jihadi propagandists and their Western apologists can lay at the feet of Jews and Christians.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what makes the Lefties and their willing accomplices in the Main Stream Media such a bunch disloyal, lying bastards.  A pox upon them.

The Phantom

A picture of matter waves.

Remember back in high school when the teacher said matter was made of waves just like light?  And you nodded while thinking "As IF!!!" to yourself?


Check that out.  Matter waves.  Do we live in a cool time or what?

The Quantum Superimposing Phantom

Re: Panel loaded with gun buffs

Dear Ms. Delacourt,

With regard to your article of May 28th, "Panel loaded with gun buffs", you say that like its a bad thing.  Unlike previous governments over the last 17 years, the Conservatives have appointed a Firearms Advisory Council composed of people who actually know something about guns.  Odd that their opinions on the gun registry would be different than your own, isn't it?  Why would that be?

Its dozen members include a man who argued that more guns in the hands of students would have helped in the recent Virginia Tech massacre, in which 32 people were killed, and another shooting aficionado who described a weapon used in last September's Dawson College killings in Montreal as "fun."

The committee's pro-gun tilt lends to the perception that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence – especially in Toronto. Jordan Manners, 15, was killed last week in a school shooting, days after philanthropist Glen Davis was gunned down.

Let us take these objections in order.  First, it is self evident that the Virginia Tech Massacre wouldn't have been any such thing if even one of the students or staff had been armed.  Your outrage at the suggestion indicates you may have a very low opinion of people generally, and may consider them too unstable and/or unintelligent to be trusted with firearms.

Second, the weapon used at Dawson College was a Beretta CX4 according to the CBC.  That is a small rifle chambered for 9mm pistol ammunition.  Prior to Kim Campbell's gun ban of 1992 I used to own a rifle something like it.  They are fun at the range, as the man said.  Their purpose is primarily sporting, as in shooting pop cans and possibly the odd ground hog.  Your outrage at the suggestion that such a thing could be fun indicates you may be a spoil sport.

Third, the committee of men and women who are not just buffs but widely respected experts in the fields of firearms and policing "is out of step with urban concerns on firearms violence– especially in Toronto."  I agree, and I suggest the reason for that may be the unrelenting campaign against self defense and firearms generally by the kill-joy misanthropes in the Toronto press.  You tell people the same story often enough, and no matter how idiotic the story may be, many of them will start to believe it.

Your outrage that this panel refuses to conform itself to your views indicates you may be more attached to your propaganda campaign than you are to preventing more murders of little boys, because clearly your gun registry/gun ban ideas are not working.  Jordan Manners' murder is sufficient proof of that, if more proof was needed. 

There has been strict registration of pistols in this country since the 1930's, and a billion odd dollars has been spent registering all other types since 1995.  Yet a 17 year old with poor impulse control, who no doubt has a police record three feet long, was able to acquire and carry around the pistol he used to murder a 14 year old at school.  Possibly increased gun registration may not be the most effective means of stopping such atrocities.  A panel of experts would probably know that and advise accordingly.

Doing more and more of what isn't working seems to indicate your side of the argument has run out of ideas, wouldn't you say Ms. Delacourt?  Why not let somebody with a clue have a go?  I doubt they could do worse than Kim Campbell and Alan Rock.

The Phantom

News of America's decline premature.

Jihadis and other like-minded wankers of the world listen up.  Here's what you are messing with.


For those of you who didn't get the get the image, this is an 11 year old kid with a humongous revolver leaning on a wild hog.  A nine foot, four inch hog.  Its as big as a Volkswagen.

Jamison [Stone], who killed his first deer at age 5, was hunting with father Mike Stone and two guides in east Alabama on May 3 when he bagged Hogzilla II. He said he shot the huge animal eight times with a .50- caliber revolver and chased it for three hours through hilly woods before finishing it off with a point-blank shot.

Through it all there was the fear that the animal would turn and charge them, as wild boars have a reputation of doing.

Ya.  Think rhinoceros here.  Think half ton of pissed off pig with five inch teeth.  They needed an earth mover to get it out of the woods.

These are the kind of people Al Queerda thinks are going to be easy meat.  Doubt it eh?

The Phantom

Inevitable gun control screaming begins.

Well, here we are back again.  A little boy was killed yesterday, at school, in the Jane/Finch shooting gallery.  Guns are to blame. Ban the guns!

Ontario politicians called on the federal government Thursday to get tough on handguns following a tragic high school shooting that claimed the life of a 15-year-old Toronto boy.

"We have seen too many shootings result in too many funerals for our young people," Premier Dalton McGuinty wrote in an open letter to federal party leaders, urging them to push through proposed criminal justice legislation and implement a "real ban" on handguns.

"Handguns are designed for one purpose only – to shoot people – and should have no place in Ontario or anywhere in Canada."

Ontario AG goes farther, blaming those eeeevile gun owners.

The value of allowing handgun collections should be reconsidered, said Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant.

"There's got to be a balance between people's property rights and personal responsibilities to others," he said.

That rascal, he's pretending we Canadians have rights to property.  What a card!  Hee hee!

Finally the mayor of Hogtown gets to the real truth:  It isn't just those reckless gun "collector" lunatics, its the Americans, stupid!

Toronto Mayor David Miller, who voiced his support for an outright ban, went a step further and recommended that handgun regulation should become an international issue.

"We know that there's two sources of guns used in Toronto: one is guns that are stolen from collectors, and the other is guns that come from the U.S.," Miller said.

"The U.S. has to take some real steps, otherwise we're going to keep seeing tragedies. ... I mean, a 15-year-old boy. You know it's absolutely tragic."

To their credit, the (Red) Star actually includes the existing law in the comments which serve to mock these Liberal apparatchiks.  We've had full handgun registration for 60 years, handguns are extremely well controlled under the law, and carry permits are nearly nonexistent.  Meanwhile back in Ottawa there's some gun related legislation being stalled in committee by, yes friends, the Liberals!  Why?  I can only surmise because it isn't THEIR legislation, and it doesn't involve banning guns.  The Conservatives are pursuing the novel idea of actually jailing people for doing crime with a gun.  Liberals are afraid this might reduce the number of killers on the streets and give the Conservatives a win, so they resist with all available force.

Some random kid getting whacked in a school isn't a problem for the Liberals, its an opportunity! They get to whip out those polished speeches of outrage, make some mileage in the main stream press, and generally collect brownie points in the Toronto electorate.  Win win win!

Meanwhile, drunks armed with Kalashnikov style assault rifles (banned since 1992, thanks Kim Campbell) wander around Caledonia Ontario shrieking death threats, in plain view of Ontario Provincial Police, and indeed shoot young people with no intervention from the OPP.  I note that Premier Dalton, AG Mikey and Mayor Dave had nothing at all to say about that incident.  Could be because it didn't happen in Toronto, or possibly because it was only an Indian that got shot and they expect that kind of behavior from Indians.

Or, as an outside possibility it could be that the three of them are so full of shit their eyes are brown.  Hey Mayor Dave, we're going to "keep seeing tragedies" until murderers start getting life with no parole (at least!), and armed robbers get 25 years, no parole.  You point a gun at somebody, you go to jail.  No bail, no time off for good behavior.  After a couple hundred of these goblins get stuck in a hole someplace the crime rate should respond rather nicely.

Media logic.

Here we have an article by Mr. Don Cayo of the Vancouver Sun today.  I couldn't pass this one by.  Its just too illustrative of the kind of drek the MSM serves up as commentary.  Way to go Mr. Cayo.

He's reporting the findings by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation that taxes make up 1/3 of gas price at the pump.  Which they do.  The title of the piece is "Our gas prices are shocking -- they're far too low"

"A third?" I said when I saw the figure. "Is that all?"

I feel this way because the amount falls far short of what Canadians' love affair with the car actually costs our citizens and the economy.

Ok, here we go.  After the usual litany of PC offenses the humble car makes against humanity, he comes up with this beauty:

Driving-related taxes -- not just gas taxes, but also taxes on vehicles and repairs, licensing fees and the like -- add up to more or less enough to cover direct driving-related costs, such as road-building and maintenance. But if you subtract the general taxes like GST and PST -- which apply to everything else, so why should driving be an exception -- the revenue for government falls well short of the expenses.

And if you toss in the massive externalities -- the cost of car-related injuries and deaths, of productive hours lost to congestion, of health and economic losses caused by noxious and greenhouse gases -- then the extent of the free ride for car drivers starts to become clear.

Indeed, if the car hadn't been invented a century ago, there's not the slightest chance it would be allowed to be built today.

Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to a proposal to introduce the automobile now? I fancy the conversation would go something like this:

"You say that these new-fangled 'automobiles' will kill 300-400 British Columbians -- as many as 3,000 Canadians -- a year, and they'll injure tens and tens of thousands more? That they'll trap people for hours on end on roads, and tie them up so badly that Greater Vancouver alone will lose half a billion dollars a year, give or take, in forgone productivity? That they'll spew gases which may collect in the air and make vulnerable people sick in places like the Fraser Valley, and they'll become the biggest single contributor to global warming?

Clearly they do not teach logic in journalism school.  Or perhaps they do and Mr. Cayo is just being more biased than usual. 

Picture this headline:  Appendectomies kill hundreds annually! That's not even a lie, I'm sure a hundred or so people die world wide on the table or due to complications from appendix surgery.  Can you imagine how a regulator might respond to that?  If he had half a brain he'd say "well, but how many people die from burst appendix every year?"

This is a favorite rhetorical trick of some "journalists", they just cut off half of the cost/benefit ratio and then rage on about the cost part.  In this particular case we are treated to the spectacle of Mr. Cayo preaching in support of taxes to Canadians, who have nearly the highest level of taxation in the developed world.

Next up, the di-hydrogen monoxide threat.  It kills hundreds every year!  Deadly chemicals in our food!!!!  Run away!

The Phantom

Common sense prevails for park wardens.

Here's a refreshing change from the usual Liberal crap.

Canada's park wardens were stripped of all law enforcement duties and equipment Thursday, the day after a federal ruling called for them to be issued handguns.

Parks Canada has taken away enforcement tools such as batons, handcuffs, body armour and pepper spray from wardens. They have also been asked to turn in badges that identify them as peace officers.

And if they encounter any anything criminal on the job -- from wildlife poachers to noisy campers -- they are now under orders to call the RCMP and stay back until police arrive.

...

Parks Canada was ordered to either arm wardens and give them weapons training or remove their law enforcement role in a 200-page decision issued by appeals officer Douglas Malanka Wednesday.

What makes this a good thing?  Because for a really long time federal park wardens have been doing cop stuff out in the woods with NO guns at all.  Which is really, really stupid.  These guys are HOURS away from backup, not minutes.  For my money they should be issued .308 assault rifles, not just pistols.  Sometimes they have to shoot animals.  You get a rabid grizzly bear, ain't no little pistol round going to stop it.

Finally a somebody with the brains God gave a goat.  Arm the wardens or send cops, no middle ground.  Now if we can just get some progress on arming campers in bear country...

The Phantom

It's the Dust, stupid!

As I've reported here before, Mars is getting warmer. But now an MSM paper has discovered it! Woo!

Scientists from Nasa say that Mars has warmed by about 0.5C since the 1970s. This is similar to the warming experienced on Earth over approximately the same period.

Since there is no known life on Mars it suggests rapid changes in planetary climates could be natural phenomena.

The mechanism at work on Mars appears, however, to be different from that on Earth. One of the researchers, Lori Fenton, believes variations in radiation and temperature across the surface of the Red Planet are generating strong winds.

In a paper published in the journal Nature, she suggests that such winds can stir up giant dust storms, trapping heat and raising the planet’s temperature.

Yeah, dust. Right. Or it could be that the sun is having a 1000 year sunspot maximum and there's more sunlight shining on Mars, which is making for more wind and more dust as well as heating things up.

Naw, it must be my truck doing it.

The truth is like a flounder.

Yes it is.  You kick it under the table and ignore it long enough, it'll start to STINK.

Case in point:  University!

In their forthcoming book Ivory Tower Blues: A University System in Crisis, Prof. Côté and his co-author, Anton Allahar, sound the alarm about the demise of higher education, where many students are more interested in the piece of paper they get at the end of their programs than in the intellectual journey along the way, where professors are cowed into watering down courses and bumping up grades, and where universities are run like corporations hawking mass-produced degrees which are increasingly in demand but increasingly meaningless.

The consequences, the authors argue, are a disengaged student body, disillusioned faculty and a glut of bachelor-degree-holding graduates with unrealistically lofty aspirations in for a shock when they land in a job market fuelled by "credentialism" and plagued by under-employment.

Credentialism!  This is what you get when people are assumed to be incompetent morons unless proven otherwise.  Doesn't matter a damn if you can DO the job, you have to have the right paperwork. 

Kids are preparing for the workplace the best way they can.  They sleep through the indoctrination, browbeat the gatekeepers into punching the damn ticket and get the hell out ASAP.  That they don't know anything and can't do anything is irrelevant so long as they got the ticket!  If they schmooze well they can parlay their incompetence into a pretty decent sinecure in one of the many layers of public or corporate bureaucracy modern life is infested with.  Kids learn early that the system rewards popularity, not ability.

Problem is this credential madness leads to poor performance in corporations and government.   Guys have the ticket, they look good in the suit and they can bafflegab with the best of 'em, but they can't do the friggin' job.  Leading to countries like China eating our lunch.

That'd be the bad smell from kicking truth under the table too much.

The Smelly Phantom

Blasting the myths

Dear Ms. Marsden,

I was surprised to read your article "Blasting the Myths" in the Sun today.  Equating nukes with handguns is the kind of rhetorical trick I usually expect from a Liberal.

Do you know why Palestinian terrorists use suicide bombs?  The Palestinians discovered 20 years ago that when their death squads tried to stage a massacre in some school or store or theater, they'd get killed  before they could empty a magazine.  Whoever was in the crowd would immediately return fire, long before the IDF showed up with heavy weapons.  Mr. Terrorist would whip an AK out, and some old grandma would blast him.

Bystanders.  Killing terrorists.  With handguns!  In Israeli cities.

But it can't happen here because people like you, Rachel Marsden, hold your fellow Canadians in contempt.  You trust the increasingly corrupt and incompetent Federal government apparatus more than the average Joe.  That's not Conservatism.  That's the same mentality that drives our high tax rates, runaway regulations, the cult of PC victim hood and absurdities like Kyoto.  People are too stupid, venal, wasteful and bigoted to be allowed freedom. They must be controlled by the gentle but firm hand of their betters. 

That's gun control Ms. Marsden.  You want that for our country, you need to join your intellectual brothers and sisters in the Liberal party.

You also need to learn a little about guns before you start raving on about pistols.  The Virginia Tech killer had to shoot his victims multiple times to kill them because he used a handgun.  Had he been using a common deer rifle or shotgun, one round each would have sufficed.  Rifles are considerably more destructive than pistols.  We do not want the nut cases switching to rifles.

If you want to opine on these issues and not appear uninformed and indeed silly, do some homework eh?

The Phantom
http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/

New clot finder prototype tested in India.

On a day in which we are being inundated with bad news from Virginia Tech, I thought I'd look at something good instead.  Just to be contrary.

So here it is, a portable device that they claim can image CVAs.

The device, called an "infrascanner", can spot blood clots on the surface of the brain known as haematomas, which can lead to death or disability if left untreated.

It is being tested in India, but if successful it could have benefits for patients anywhere.

<snipola>

The infrascanner uses harmless "near-infra-red" light - like that in a TV remote control.

The light beam penetrates the skull up to three centimetres.

A blood clot absorbs near-infra-red light differently to normal brain tissue and the signal is bounced back to the scanner.

The tech then views the results on a computer or even a PDA.  There's a picture of the whole lash up in the article.  Looks like a really sweet piece of kit, particularly for ambulances, emergency rooms and old folks homes.

The nice part is it'll be cheap enough to become wide spread in use, just like the portable defibrillator.  This will hopefully allow lots of clots to get diagnosed early enough for those miracle clot-buster drugs to have a shot at fixing up the patient.

So there you go, some good news on a bad day.

The Clot Bustin' Contrary Phantom

Fun with Photons

I confess.  I'm a tool guy.  If there's a tool I don't have, I want one.  If there's a tool I do have, I'm dying for a chance to use it.  Welders, chisels, makes no difference I love them all.

When I hear about a new tool to do something completely nuts, I love that too.  NIST just posted a few kewl things on Eureka Alert.  This one's a beauty.

In a significant improvement on previous designs, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a system that delivers such pairs with great efficiency over a wide range of energy, and with very little noise from extraneous photons.

While it doesn't reveal new properties of quantum entanglement itself, it does provide lots of entangled photons, cheap.  Awesome.

How about quantum dot lasers?

Quantum dots are nanoscale regions in a crystal structure that can trap electrons and “holes,” the charge carriers that transport current in a semiconductor. When a trapped electron-hole pair recombines, light of a specific frequency is emitted. Quantum-dot lasers have attracted attention as possible embedded communications devices not only for their small size, but because they switch on with far less power then even the solid-state lasers used in DVD players.

In recent experiments*, the NIST-Stanford-Northwestern team made “microdisk” lasers by layering indium arsenide on top of gallium arsenide. The mismatch between the different-sized atomic lattices forms indium arsenide islands, about 25 nanometers across, that act as quantum dots. The physicists then etched out disks, 1.8 micrometers across and containing about 130 quantum dots, sitting atop gallium arsenide pillars.

Intel processors right now are made on a 65 nanometer lithographic process.  They will be going to 45 nanometers pretty soon.  That's high production commercial kit.  25 nanometer feature size isn't too long away.  Kewl!

The Photonic Phantom

Sunspots at 1000 year high.

Notwithstanding Algore, Dr. Fruitfly Suzuki and the Global Warming Host, there seems to be an under-reported issue in the present climate.  Sunspots!

Dr Solanki is presenting a paper on the reconstruction of past solar activity at Cool Stars, Stellar Systems And The Sun, a conference in Hamburg, Germany.

He says that the reconstruction shows the Maunder Minimum and the other minima that are known in the past thousand years.

But the most striking feature, he says, is that looking at the past 1,150 years the Sun has never been as active as it has been during the past 60 years.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

The data suggests that changing solar activity is influencing in some way the global climate causing the world to get warmer.

Over the past 20 years, however, the number of sunspots has remained roughly constant, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to increase.

This is put down to a human-produced greenhouse effect caused by the combustion of fossil fuels.

This latest analysis shows that the Sun has had a considerable indirect influence on the global climate in the past, causing the Earth to warm or chill, and that mankind is amplifying the Sun's latest attempt to warm the Earth.

They had to stick that line in there about human greenhouse effect, but conveniently ignore the measurements of Mars' warming over the last few years.  As I've mentioned here before, that by itself is more than enough to account for the 1/2 degree C increase over the last 20 years we've seen.  The .5C is the only measurement the global warming propagandists have.  Everything else is computer models.

Rage on Algore, I'm going to keep driving my truck.

The Phantom

Vimy Ridge 90th memorial

To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, I thought I'd post this link to Google Maps, give you all a view of Vimy from the air.  In the center is the wooded park, which has some trenches etc. restored.  If you zoom in you can see lots of evidence of the craters and trenches of 90 years ago.

Here's a link to a good overview of the battle in the Globe and Mail.

The Phantom

Daylight saving change saves no fuel.

This is why we need less government.

As it turns out, the US Department of Energy (and almost everyone else except members of Congress) was correct when they predicted that there would be little energy savings. This echoed concerns voiced after a similar experiment was attempted in Australia. Critics pointed out a basic fact: the gains in the morning will be offset by the losses at night, and vice-versa, at both ends of the switch. That appears to be exactly what happened.

Reuters spoke with Jason Cuevas, spokesman for Southern Co. power, who said it plainly: "We haven't seen any measurable impact." New Jersey's Public Service Enterprise Group said the same thing: "no impact" on their business.

So while the US government pats itself on the back for at least looking busy, know that the main goal—energy conservation—has not been met. We can still argue over other supposed benefits, like the supposed reduction in crime (which returns in November?) and the fact that many people seem to simply like the change. As far as the purpose of the move is concerned, that appears to be a total flop.

What's really scary here is this is just the Kyoto Accord on a smaller scale.  You want to see what will happen if carbon credits are fully implemented, just take the costs incurred by this little piece of waste motion and add six or seven zeros.  Total impact on The Environment (caps to indicate an actual entity, like The Church) will be zero, but by George those socialists will look like they Really
Care (TM).

People in government Being Seen Doing Something, on my dime.  Tax cut now please!  Twenty percent per year for ten years will be a good start.

The Phantom

new stroke treatment technique

Ah, finally some GOOD news for a change.   Clever lads and lassies at MIT have come up with a robotic assist for stroke patients.

The wearable, portable, lightweight robotic brace slides onto the arm. By sensing the patient's electrical muscle activity through electromyography (EMG)--which detects muscle cells' electrical activity when they contract--and sending that data to a motor, it allows stroke patients to control their affected limbs.

When used under the supervision of an occupational or physical therapist, the device can be used to help patients progress from basic motor training, such as lifting boxes or reaching for a light switch, to more complex tasks such as carrying a laundry basket or flipping a light on and off while holding an object with the unaffected limb.

According to the study researchers--Dr. Joel Stein, Kathryn Krebs and Richard Hughes of Harvard Medical School and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and MIT graduates Kailas Narendran and John McBean--even people who have experienced a stroke years ago may be able to use the device to regain mobility.

In my experience, and more importantly according to previous studies of NDT assisted movement techniques, this should work really, really well.  The problem with NDT and all the other manual therapies for stroke is not that they don't work.  The problem is expense.  You need a highly trained therapist doing the treatment, whose time is worth about $100 bucks an hour.  This device can continue the treatment when the therapist is not there, at a huge cost reduction to the patient.

Friggin awesome.  I want one!

The Phantom

No, you are NOT paranoid enough.

My last two missives relate to sneaky things you can do with computers that amount to tech toys for boys.  Here's what the Big Kids have been doing.

Quite a few people have by now read about AOL’s new Skyhook “Near Me” buddy plugin. That’s the plug-in for the service which lets you know if any of your buddies are geographically near to you, and puts them in a “Near Me” buddies group.

But what far fewer people realize is exactly how it works. How does it know when you are geographically near one of your buddies?

The answer may surprise - and concern - you.

The underlying technology is provided by Skyhook Wireless. According to news sources, Skyhook has spent the past several years “driving a fleet of 200 trucks up and down the streets of 2,500 cities and towns across the United States and Canada,” mapping every single wireless router. Not just commercial hotspot routers. They openly admit that their trucks “scan for the pulse given off at least once a second by every home wireless router or commercial hotspot, recording the unique identifying code for that piece of Wi-Fi equipment.”

Then, that code - of your home wireless router “is correlated with the exact physical location where it was captured using GPS in the trucks, which cruise the streets at 15 to 50 miles (24 to 80 kilometers) per hour as they collect this information.”

Yes my friends, these guys have done something that even the East German Stazi couldn't dream up.  They made a map of every wi-fi router in North America.  Yes, including yours.  But not including mine.  Being the nasty suspicious type that I am, I don't use one.  I don't like the idea of a router that broadcasts to the great outdoors.  Looks like I was right to be a little concerned.

This isn't even the government, its just a small private company.  I can't imagine what the real Big Brother guys are doing.

The Phantom

Fighting Little Brother on the cheap.

We saw in the previous post that Big Brother's annoying sibling is getting pretty capable.  But all is not lost, kids!  Uncle Phantom found some keen-o neat-o Linux stuff you can run on that cheapo wireless router collecting dust in the back of your closet.

Check out the OpenWRT project. OpenWRT is a Linux distribution for embedded devices, and it brings a lot of exciting possibilities to your humble wireless router. Although still in its release candidate stage (currently at RC6), OpenWRT is very usable and feature-rich right out of the box. Be warned, you could void your manufacturer warranty by installing OpenWRT on your wireless routers.

So what can you do with an embedded Linux device running on limited RAM and very small storage? As it turns out, quite a lot actually. You can install asterisk, and have your personal, customizable PBX (private branch exchange). If you already have a SIP phone or some kind of VoIP phone interface (such as the Cisco ATA 186 adapter), you can have your very own VoIP system at home, all running out of your low power-consumption embedded hardware.

Put your router/firewall on steroids by installing packages like nmap (network security scanner), snort (intrusion detection), and tcpdump (packet sniffer). Together with iptables (which comes with the Linux kernel), you can turn your OpenWRT box into a powerful security tool. Install openvpn, and you have a very affordable VPN device. And if it strikes your fancy, you can install quagga and turn your dusty little Linksys into an OSPF and BGP-capable router.

Want to provide your own wireless hotspot? No problem. Install chillispot, and you are ready to go. You can even install FreeRADIUS on the OpenWRT for the authentication back-end, and WPA (wifi protected access) for the added security.

You can turn it into an all purpose office server by installing DHCP, cups (print server), lighthttpd (web server), NTP (time server) and OpenSSH or dropbear (secure remote administration). If your router has a USB port, you can also turn it into a file server by hooking it up with a USB hard drive and installing NFS.

And don’t forget that this is a wireless router. It has a wireless card, so take advantage of it! Install kismet on it, and you have a wireless sniffer. This can prove to be invaluable if you ever need to analyze the airwaves at a remote location, but don’t want to leave your expensive laptop on-site. Drop in place a $50 OpenWRT box loaded with kismet instead.

You can use this stuff to secure your home network like Fort Knox.  It won't keep Big Brother out (because he will kick in your front door at 3AM if he REALLY wants something), but it will certainly make Little Brother's life difficult.

The Phantom

How secure is your Bluetooth gizmo?

How secure is your Bluetooth enabled whatchamacallit?  Good question eh?  That Bluetooth phone has lots of stuff in it, so does your PDA, laptop, all kindsa stuff.

The answer, unfortunately, is not very.  Nope, not at all really.

The above links are to an article that describes how some kids built a Bluetooth "sniper rifle" style sniffer that can detect, and fiddle with, Bluetooth devices at a mile or more away.  The guts of it is a large antenna (which one could make pretty quick out of a wok) and a Gumstix computer the size of a pack of, you guessed it, gum.  Stir in some solder and a bit of time and shazam! you've got a big ear on the world.  Did I mention these are kids?

We've been aware for quite a while now that Big Brother is listening and watching ever closer.  There's nothing the government can't crack or find out about on line, given time.  If its on a computer, its theirs.  Big Brother sees all.

This thing here is different.  This is what I'm going to call Little Brother.  Big Brother's annoying younger sibling.  Little Brother is getting pretty sneaky these days, so just take care what you put on your wireless devices.

The Phantom