Iran in the 1970s before the Islamic Revolution

http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/iran-in-1970s-before-islamic-revolution.html

To be fair there is a girl wearing a cape.  If the theocracy prevented that, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Australia Air Travelers' Laptops To Be Searched For Porn

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/20/1313213/Australia-Air-Travelers-Laptops-To-Be-Searched-For-Porn?art_pos=5

"Australian customs officers have been given the power to search incoming travelers' laptops and mobile phones for porn. Passengers must declare whether they are carrying pornography on their Incoming Passenger Card. The Australian government is also planning to implement an Internet filter. Once these powers are in places, who knows how they will be used."

EFF Says Forget Cookies, Your Browser Has Fingerprints

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/18/1225250/EFF-Says-Forget-Cookies-Your-Browser-Has-Fingerprints?art_pos=17

"Even without cookies, popular browsers such as Internet Explorer and Firefox give websites enough information to get a unique picture of their visitors about 94 percent of the time, according to research compiled over the past few months by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. [The Research] puts quantitative assessment on something that security gurus have known about for years, said Peter Eckersley, the EFF senior staff technologist who did the research. He found that configuration information — data on the type of browser, operating system, plugins, and even fonts installed — can be compiled by websites to create a unique portrait of most visitors. This means that most Internet users are a lot less anonymous than they believe, Eckersley said. 'Even if you turn off cookies and you use a proxy to hide your IP address, you could still be tracked,' he said."

US Supreme Court Upholds Indefinite Confinement

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/17/2238248/US-Supreme-Court-Upholds-Indefinite-Confinement

An anonymous reader points out the news that the US Supreme Court today upheld a law that allows the federal government to keep prison inmates behind bars beyond the end of their sentences, if officials determine they may be "sexually dangerous" in the future. The case involves one Graydon Comstock, who was certified as "dangerous" six days before his 37-month federal prison term for processing child pornography was to end. The vote was 7 to 2. Three of the justices who concurred with the decision raised an objection to the broadness of the language used in the majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy.

ACLU Sues To Protect Your Right To Swear

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/17/1526252/ACLU-Sues-To-Protect-Your-Right-To-Swear?art_pos=6

The ACLU is suing the police in Pennsylvania for issuing tickets to people who swear. They argue that it is every American's constitutional right to drop an F-bomb. From the article: "'Unfortunately, many police departments in the commonwealth do not seem to be getting the message that swearing is not a crime,' said Marieke Tuthill of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. 'The courts have repeatedly found that profanity, unlike obscenity, is protected speech.'" This is a big f*cking deal.

Best Albums

Went through my playback statistics and made a table of the top 100 albums by plays per track.  Some notes on the data.  First, I replaced something like 40 Mountain Goats albums with two entries to give other bands a chance.  Second, I removed a few entries that had only a single song (and weren't really an album).  Next, I have them sorted by band then by plays/tracks.  I prefer this to just sorting by plays/tracks.  The data only ranges a little over a year.  So, that affects things greatly by promoting more recently discovered bands.  Lastly the CDs I have in my car are greatly underrepresented.

Band	Album	Plays	Tracks	Plays/Track
3 Inches of Blood	Fire Up The Blades	154	13	11.85
3 Inches of Blood	Here Waits Thy Doom	118	11	10.73
Against Me!	The Disco Before The Breakdown	72	3	24.00
Against Me!	New Wave	138	10	13.80
Against Me!	White People For Peace	25	2	12.50
Against Me!	Sink, Florida, Sink & Unsubstantiated Rumors	20	2	10.00
Against Me!	Searching for a Former Clarity	136	14	9.71
Against Me!	Against Me! Is Reinventing Axl Rose	104	11	9.45
Atom And His Package	Hamburgers	66	5	13.20
Atom And His Package	Redefining Music	186	15	12.40
Atom And His Package	Atom & His Package	244	20	12.20
Atom And His Package	A Society of People Named Elihu	234	20	11.70
boysetsfire	In Chrysalis	52	5	10.40
Dale Swanson Project	Ring Tailed Lemur	49	5	9.80
David Bowie	Random Songs	19	2	9.50
Defiance, Ohio	The Fear, The Fear, The Fear	140	10	14.00
Defiance, Ohio	Ghost Mice/Defiance, Ohio Split CD	48	5	9.60
Every Time I Die	The Big Dirty	264	12	22.00
Every Time I Die	Gutter Phenonmenon	201	11	18.27
Every Time I Die	New Junk Aesthetic	155	13	11.92
Every Time I Die	Hot Damn!	114	10	11.40
Genghis Tron	Board Up the House	165	11	15.00
Genghis Tron	Dead Mountain Mouth	124	10	12.40
Genghis Tron	Cape Of Hate	82	8	10.25
Gentle Giant	Three Friends	87	6	14.50
Gentle Giant	Out Of The Woods The BBC Sessions	195	14	13.93
Gentle Giant	Giant for a Day!	122	10	12.20
Gentle Giant	Acquiring the Taste	96	8	12.00
Gentle Giant	Octopus	89	8	11.13
Gentle Giant	Gentle Giant	74	7	10.57
Gentle Giant	Free Hand	80	8	10.00
Gentle Giant	The Power And The Glory	88	9	9.78
Hatebreed	Supremacy	161	13	12.38
Hatebreed	The Rise Of Brutality	144	13	11.08
HORSE the Band	Pizza	189	5	37.80
HORSE the Band	Desperate Living	251	12	20.92
HORSE the Band	A Natural Death	331	19	17.42
HORSE the Band	Secret Rhythm Of The Universe	110	10	11.00
HORSE The Band	The Mechanical Hand	141	13	10.85
HORSE the Band	Beautiful Songs By Men EP	66	7	9.43
Hot Hot Heat	Elevator	141	13	10.85
Hot Water Music	BYO Split Series, Vol. 1	30	2	15.00
Hot Water Music	Moonpies for Misfits	50	4	12.50
Hot Water Music	Fuel for the Hate Game	135	11	12.27
Hot Water Music	A Flight and a Crash	166	14	11.86
Hot Water Music	Never Ender	137	12	11.42
Hot Water Music	No Division	112	11	10.18
Led Zeppelin	Presence	166	7	23.71
Led Zeppelin	Houses Of The Holy	143	8	17.88
Led Zeppelin	Physical Graffiti	266	15	17.73
Led Zeppelin	Led Zeppelin IV	85	8	10.63
Led Zeppelin	Led Zeppelin III	101	10	10.10
Led Zeppelin	Coda	119	12	9.92
Led Zeppelin	In Through The Out Door	67	7	9.57
Man Man	Rabbit Habits	353	13	27.15
Man Man	Six Demon Bag	256	13	19.69
Man Man	The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face	139	11	12.64
Manowar	The Kingdom of Steel: The Very Best of Manowar	178	16	11.13
Math The Band	Imaginary Everything	385	30	12.83
Math The Band	Banned the Math	253	21	12.05
Math The Band	All Good Things, All In Good Time	254	26	9.77
Minor Threat	Minor Threat: Complete Discography	272	26	10.46
Misfits	12 Hits From Hell	238	13	18.31
Misfits	Static Age	317	18	17.61
Misfits	Legacy Of Brutality	218	13	16.77
Misfits	Earth A.D.	198	12	16.50
Misfits	Misfits	209	13	16.08
Misfits	Collection II	155	10	15.50
Misfits	Demos	423	29	14.59
Misfits	Famous Monsters	231	18	12.83
Misfits	American Psycho	212	19	11.16
Misfits	Walk Among Us	135	13	10.38
Most Precious Blood	Merciless	170	13	13.08
Most Precious Blood	Our Lady of Annihilation	112	11	10.18
Murder City Devils	Murder City Devils	120	10	12.00
Rush	The Spirit Of Radio: Greatest Hits 1974-1987	169	15	11.27
Sound Tribe Sector 9	Peaceblaster	142	15	9.47
The Blood Brothers	Young Machetes	308	15	20.53
The Blood Brothers	Crimes	232	13	17.85
The Blood Brothers	Burn Piano Island, Burn	174	12	14.50
The Blood Brothers	March on Electric Children	114	9	12.67
The Blood Brothers	This Adultery Is Ripe	113	10	11.30
The Dillinger Escape Plan	Ire Works	133	13	10.23
The Emotron	In The Decemberwrist	194	19	10.21
The Fiery Furnaces	Gallowsbird's Bark	329	16	20.56
The Fiery Furnaces	Blueberry Boat	216	13	16.62
The Fiery Furnaces	Bitter Tea	173	15	11.53
The Fiery Furnaces	Widow City	333	16	20.81
The Fiery Furnaces	The Fiery Furnaces EP	146	10	14.60
The Mountain Goats	Studio Stuff	9392	456	20.60
The Mountain Goats	Live Stuff	2997	254	11.80
The Postal Service	Give Up	106	10	10.60
Tom Gabel	Heart Burns	199	9	22.11
Van Der Graaf Generator	Pawn Hearts	71	3	23.67
Van Der Graaf Generator	The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other	138	6	23.00
Van Der Graaf Generator	The Aerosol Grey Machine	244	11	22.18
Van Der Graaf Generator	H to He, Who Am the Only One	109	5	21.80
Van Der Graaf Generator	Still Life	100	5	20.00
Van Der Graaf Generator	Godbluff	49	4	12.25
Yes	Close To The Edge (Remastered)	29	3	10.73

LimeWire Likely To Shut Down Soon

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/16/1932218/LimeWire-Likely-To-Shut-Down-Soon?art_pos=1

"A federal court judge has likely dealt a death blow to LimeWire, one of the most popular and oldest file-sharing systems, according to legal experts. On Wednesday... US District Judge Kimba Wood granted summary judgment in favor of the... [RIAA], which filed a copyright lawsuit against LimeWire in 2006. In her decision, Wood ruled Lime Group, parent of LimeWire software maker Lime Wire, and founder Mark Gorton committed copyright infringement, induced copyright infringement, and engaged in unfair competition. 'It is obviously a fairly fatal decision for them,' said [an industry defense lawyer]. 'If they don't shut down, the other side will likely make a request for an injunction and there's nothing left but to go on to calculating damages.'" The article notes that LimeWire is used by nearly 60 percent of the people who download songs.

Protip: If you have Limewire installed on your PC, you are lost in the sauce.  Or to sum it up nicley one of the first comments:
"But if they shutdown Limewire, where will my sister get all her Windows viruses from?" - eldavojohn

Statistics Blogs

Because the kids demanded them:

http://montclairsoci.blogspot.com/
- "This is the blog of the Montclair State University sociology department -- what we've been thinking, reading, seeing, or doing."

http://contexts.org/socimages/
- "Sociological Images: Seeing is Believing is designed to encourage all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination by presenting brief sociological discussions of compelling and timely imagery that spans the breadth of sociological inquiry."

The first one seems to be largely based on pointing out misleading statistics.  The second one examines images and looks into the story behind them.

Electric Beetle Vs Tesla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmQp_tKAHFU

The beetle does a 11.76 1/4 mile and is virtually silent.

Stop being scared of science

http://dvice.com/archives/2010/04/are-you-afraid.php

Would you eat something if you knew it was genetically engineered? Do you think you can get more sick from a vaccine than you will if you do nothing? Can science really solve the world's energy and medical woes? The New Yorker's Michael Specter, speaking at this year's TED conference (video posted yesterday), says yes, yes science can. He even went so far as to christen this age "the greatest time there's ever been on this planet."