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“A documentary film by Jack Oatmon ( http://twitter.com/jackoatmon ).

A look into the hardware hacking community in Montreal, including the Foulab collective. Why are more and more hobbyists experimenting with hacks and circuit bends? What relationship does this imply about consumer society and technological advancement? Is this a real-world analog of ‘user generated content’?

Check out the lab: http://foulab.org/

Check out more music by XC3N: http://www.last.fm/music/XC3N“

Related posts:

1. New York City Hackers ...


2. Chariots Of The Gods, Classic 1970 Documentary Based On Von Daniken’s Book Of The Same Name ** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ...


3. The Joseph Newman ‘Energy Machine’, Turning Matter Into Energy ...

Barack Obama's radical cousin Prime Minister Raila Odinga of Kenya held meetings with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this weekend.

Capital News reported:

Kenya and Iran have agreed to establish Specialised Working Groups to accelerate the implementation of signed agreements and memoranda of understanding between the two countries.

These include Economic, Trade and Banking Co-operation, Agricultural and Educational Cooperation, Energy, Oil and Industry Cooperation; and Political, Cultural, Health and Housing Cooperation.

The two countries also underscored the importance of expanding economic, political, cultural and international ties and welcomed the exchange of high-ranking delegations.

The resolutions are part of a joint communiqu� signed by Kenya and Iran to further consolidate and strengthen relations between the two countries. The first vice-president Dr Parviz Davoudi signed on behalf of Iran while Prime Minister Raila Odinga committed Kenya.

Mr Odinga concluded his two-day official visit in Tehran by holding talks with the President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In the meeting, Odinga referred to Ahmadinejad's recent visit to Kenya in February, terming it a new chapter in the two countries' relations.

In 2006 Barack Obama took a trip to Kenya at US taxpayer's expense.
While visiting Kenya as a guest of the government Obama campaigned with opposition leader socialist Raila Odinga, who also happens to be his cousin (says Odinga):

Odinga's party lost the 2007 election in Kenya.
His party claimed the election was rigged in favour of President Mwai Kibaki.

Odinga's thugs then went on a rampage killing hundreds of Kenyans and burning churches. At least 600 people died in rioting after the election and 250,000 were displaced. Odinga was accused of ethnic cleansing during the clashes.

Atlas has more on Odinga's trip.

So John Cole has pretty much addressed this, but last week Jonathan Chait criticized me and others for referring to Jeffrey Rosen's piece on Sonia Sotomayor as "gossip".

"Gossip" is an effective label for those who wish to denigrate Rosen's reporting or the reputation of TNR, but it's an inaccurate one. Gossip is unverified information. Gossip is something you hear all the time--say, Senator X mistreats his staff. No serious publication can pass off gossip as reporting. However, if you actually speak with the principals firsthand--you interview staffers for Senator X who report that he mistreats them--then what you have is reporting. That's what Jeff did. He spoke first-hand with several of Sotomayor's former clerks, who provided a mixed picture. Unsurprisingly, they declined to put their names on the record, but that's utterly standard for people who are speaking in unflattering terms about people they worked with or for.

Chait is one of my favorite writers on the interwebs, but this is less than persuasive. A big publication printing gossip doesn't change the definition of gossip. The issue isn't that the information was "unverified" as in, no one told Rosen these things, it's that it was objectively unverifiable, as in, assertions about Sotomayor's intelligence are unprovable. Rosen, as a well-respected legal expert, could have made that argument himself in some form, but he didn't, possibly because he wanted to present it as an "unbiased" observation. But since the source is anonymous, there's no way to judge the individual's motivations or perspective. There's reason to give people anonymity under certain circumstances to relay unpleasant information about a colleague or a superior, but not when that information can't be verified. Anonymous, unverifiable information is gossip.

Most oddly, Chait suggests I, along with others have some sort of agenda against the New Republic. I can only speak for myself, but in my many posts on Sotomayor and Rosen, I didn't say anything about the New Republic except that to identify the publication Rosen had been writing in.�

-- A. Serwer