...will he ever win?

[Discuss the First Kernel Triage Summit on the Forum]

Originally posted here by Jeremy Foshee on September 3rd 2010

September 05, 2010 02:33 AM

After months of pressure from state attorneys general, Craigslist pulled its adult services listings offline over the Labor Day weekend. Visitors to the site were greeted with a black bar with the word "censored" in white text (as seen to the right) where the link to the adult services listings would normally be.

The adult services listings have been a perpetual source of concern for law enforcement, including numerous state attorneys general, who have said that listings facilitate prostitution and that children are often victimized by the ads. Craigslist originally had an Erotic Services section, but shut it down in May 2009 in response to pressure from law enforcement. The company had previously attempted to stave off criticism by verifying listings over the phone and working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, but decided that having an entire section of the site devoted to the sex trade was a bad idea. Shortly after the erotic services section was yanked, it was replaced with the adult services section.

The new section, which required credit card payments for listings that were reviewed by moderators before going live, failed to mollify critics. The attorney general of Connecticut and 37 of his colleagues across the country subpoenaed the classified site over what they described as its brothel business. In late August, Kansas attorney general Steve Six called on Craigslist once again to shut down adult services, saying that the site had not done enough to fight "illegal sexual activity on the Internet."

At this time, it's not clear whether craigslist is going to get out of the adult services business altogether. The classifieds giant has remained silent so far, not offering any rationale for its move. If this does indeed mark the end of the line for the adult services section on Craigslist, it doesn't mean that all adult services ads will magically vanish; they're likely to migrate to other parts of the site. That said, the attorneys general will no doubt view the apparent shutdown of the adult services section as a victory in their war against the online sex trade.

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September 04, 2010 10:30 PM

[Images: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters].

Reestablishing myself here on a desktop computer that had been sitting inside a storage unit for the past 15 months, I've been having a good time going through old bookmarks: rediscovering what I saved way back in 2008 and 2009, and seeing whether or not I'm still interested in the stories. Articles about mining the ocean floor, about the state of California selling landmarks to raise cash, and about design competitions that came and went sit beside pages for various architecture offices and now-outdated technology reviews.

Among these old links, though, is a house I still absolutely adore, and one that many of you will probably have already seen on other blogs, but is still worth posting: the Casa Kike, a private residence in Costa Rica by Gianni Botsford Architects, seen here in photographs by Christian Richters.

[Image: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters].

The house is an "intimate double pavilion for a writer in Costa Rica," with a budget that topped out at just over $100,000. From the architect's own description:

A main studio space, with library, writing desk and grand piano, is the writer’s daytime space. The pavilion’s wooden structure, sourced from local timber, sits on a simple foundation of wooden stilts on small concrete pad foundations. Roof beams of up to 10 m long and 355 mm deep allow for an interior with no vertical columns. The mono-pitched roof elevates towards the sea shore, while the interior is through ventilated via a completely louvred glazed end façade.

There is then a second pavilion: "set at a short distance along a raised walkway," we read, it "contains sleeping quarters and a bathroom."

[Images: Casa Kike by Gianni Botsford Architects, photographed by Christian Richters].

I'm basically just posting these images without comment—other than to say it's a gorgeous project, and I'm glad I rediscovered it in my bookmarks from 2008.

September 04, 2010 09:10 PM

The Associated Press didn't need any help from a bunch of unshowered bloggers pecking away at their keyboards from the basement offices in which they play "reporter," thank you very much. Now it knows better.

At the AP's 2009 annual meeting, Chairman Dean Singleton reminded his audience (read the speech) that the AP and its members "are the source of most of the news content being created in the world today." The collective remains "the gold standard of newsgathering and reporting throughout the world." And with 62 journalists killed, beaten, or detained in 2008, journalism "is not a profession for the fainthearted, or those who work in their pajamas."

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September 04, 2010 08:17 PM

[Image: Sellafield; photo courtesy of Wikimedia/Visit Cumbria].

For some reason I woke up this morning thinking of a story from nearly two years ago: that LLWR, new owners of the English nuclear facility at Sellafield, had arrived at their new property to find so little paperwork about where nuclear waste had been stored—and by whom, and how—that they had to put an ad in the local newspaper asking if anyone else remembered where the nuclear waste was dumped.

"We need your help," the ad began.

Did you work at Sellafield in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s? Were you by chance in the job of disposing of radioactive material? If so, the owners of Britain's nuclear waste dump would very much like to hear from you: they want you to tell them what you dumped—and where you put it.

In turn, having just moved back to LA last week, I've been thinking of a story from this past spring, when part of the the Los Angeles neighborhood of Carson was discovered to be built above a 50-acre sea of contaminated soil. "In March," the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, "the water quality board told residents not to eat fruit or vegetables grown in their backyards. Shell Oil Co., which once stored millions of gallons of crude oil in giant tanks where the houses now stand, sent letters to more than 20 homeowners recommending they minimize contact with 'exposed soil in your yard.'" In one case, a local resident—and avid gardener—"watched investigators pull dark, wet soil from her backyard that smelled like oil."

[Image: A circulation diagram of the underground nuclear waste repository at Onkalo, Finland, from Containing Uncertainty by smudge studio, exhibited as part of Landscapes of Quarantine at New York's Storefront for Art and Architecture. "Deep geologic repositories are difficult spaces to imagine," the artists write. "They exist below us, hundreds of feet into the earth. Their spaces are not easily accessed by the public, if at all. The most challenging thing to imagine about a deep geologic repository is invisible to human eyes: its relationship to geologic time."].

Dealing with the toxic after-effects of an earlier industry—or an earlier civilization altogether—especially if that contaminated geography remains insufficiently marked, is also the topic of a remarkable film released last spring by director Michael Madsen. Called Into Eternity, that film explores the philosophical and technical challenges involved with safely storing nuclear waste underground for a minimum period of 100,000 years. As Madsen explained to NPR, however, in slightly broken English:

100,000 years from now would most likely, in my mind, also mean another kind of human beings. It's perhaps 100,000 years that we left Africa, the human, the Homo sapiens species; 40,000 years ago in Europe there were Neanderthals, a different kind of human species. So in 100,000 years from now, I think that we humans will be something different from today, and when you're building something to last for that time span and to be safe under all circumstances, I thought that these people, they must have some considerations about the scenarios that might arise in the future and how to counteract upon these scenarios.

Put another way, how on earth might a transformed human inhabitant of the earth, 100,000 years from now, put out an ad in the local newspaper asking if someone whose ancestors once worked at Sellafield—or Onkalo, the repository explored by Madsen's film, or even the coastal waters of Somalia or San Francisco—could remember if there were any life-threatening toxins buried in the ground nearby? Even if those nameless predecessors have left signs?

Or will future myths of this planet consist not of Mediterranean scenes of sun-blessed fertility—a world like none other—but lamentations of deformity and radioactive clouds, its rivers chemical weapons, its kings plagued by amnesia? Demeter replaced by Moros—forever?

[Image: The entryway to Onkalo's moribund underworld, from Michael Madsen's Into Eternity].

In any case, perhaps my favorite scene in Madsen's film—or, at least, one of the most thought-provoking—comes when the engineers in charge of blasting down through the Scandinavian bedrock to create vast artificial caverns in which copper barrels of nuclear waste will be stored, joke that they sometimes half-expect to reach the proper depths required for disposal... only to dig up a collection of copper canisters buried there 100,000 years ago by a forgotten civilization, one that otherwise left no marks, no archaeology, no traces or remnants of paperwork describing its health-threatening (mis)deeds.

(Thanks to Nicola Twilley for the Sellafield link. Related: One Million Years of Isolation: An Interview with Abraham van Luik).

September 04, 2010 07:50 PM

An Apple event means lots of new announcements. Almost the entire iPod line got updated, Apple TV got a serious makeover, and iTunes 10 got... something. But we also covered a patent suit, some lessons learned from Delicious Library 2, and a rumor about an iPhone revision. Read on for the roundup:

Microsoft cofounder drops patent bomb on Apple, Google, Facebook: Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen has filed a lawsuit against 11 tech companies for violations of his current company's patents that cover basic Internet concepts. The list includes Google, Facebook, and Apple... but not Microsoft.

Hands-on photos, observations of new iPods, Apple TV: Following the fall Apple media event, Ars got some hands-on time with the new iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, and Apple TV. We have some up-close and personal photos to share with you, as well as extra product details that we got out of the Apple representatives.

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September 04, 2010 07:00 PM

Microsoft has revealed the next stage in the development of its Arc Mouse, the Arc Touch. As the name implies, the company has incorporated some touch sensitivity into its upper surface and also designed it to flatten out at the touch of a finger, for convenient transport while not in use. Its wireless USB transceiver also fits snuggly in the peripheral's underside to help ensure that everything you need is in one place when you're on the road... Continue Reading Microsoft makes Arc Touch mouse official

Tags: Microsoft, Mouse, Touch-technology

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September 04, 2010 06:44 PM

Researchers at the University of Michigan are developing laser systems for protecting military helicopters from heat-seeking missiles. The lasers wouldn’t shoot down the missiles, but would instead jam their sensors, essentially blinding them. This isn’t the first time that laser systems have been used for this purpose, but the creators of this system claim that it is better suited to helicopters than anything that has come before. .. Continue Reading UM develops lasers to defend helicopters against missile attacks

Tags: DARPA, Helicopters, Infrared, Laser, Military, Missile Defense, University of Michigan

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September 04, 2010 06:36 PM

With its retro good looks and smooth lines, the SmarSofa from Gorenje wouldn’t look out of place on an Austin Powers movie set. On display at IFA 2010, the SmarSofa is not just a convertible lounge. It includes a fully integrated fridge which contains remote-controlled, rotating cooling platters. At the touch of a button the platters containing ready-to-eat dishes can be lifted and lowered to the desired height. How’s that for groovy?.. Continue Reading Gorenje introduces the new SmarSofa at IFA 2010

Tags: Furniture, Gorenje, Home decor, IFA 2010, Refrigeration

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September 04, 2010 06:28 PM