“The New York Times tried to find out whether U.S. mobile phone carriers have similar data about their subscribers, but it said “[t]he major American cellphone providers declined to explain what exactly they collect and what they use it for.”

“You bought it. You eat it. It wasn’t met with much resistance. The revolt wouldn’t come until much, much later… after the damage had already been done.”
– Lydia Lunch and Clint Ruin, Meltdown Oratio (1987)

I was apprehensive about my recent flight to New York. Not because I was afraid of being blown to smithereens by some terrorist, but because I was worried about the backscatter machines. I was actually more fearful of opting out, which is what I planned to do from the moment the machines were introduced. Will my name go on some list somewhere? I wonder if it did. The risk assessment balances the radiation exposure against other means of radiation exposure. This line stands out to me: “[These statistics] rely on the correct installation, operation and maintenance of the unit. Significantly higher doses may occur if these criteria are not satisfied.” Do you trust your TSA agent to know how to properly operate one of these and to know when something’s gone wrong, then take the appropriate steps to ensure your well being?

There is no evidence to suggest that any of the additional security screening measures travelers are now forced to endure do anything to ensure our safety. My bags are rifled through, and I can choose between what amounts to a nude photo of myself, or a rather intimate “pat down” (that’s a lot more like a rub down) from a complete stranger. Slow and sure erosion of our civil liberties and our right to privacy… it all goes down smoother with a spoonful of fear.

It seems that your right to privacy doesn’t exist when you’re trying to get from point A to point B. On that note, what happened to anonymous passage within your own country?

There are 2,308 surveillance cameras trained on public space in the streets of Manhattan.

Your Metrocard, New Yorkers, and its west coast counterpart, the Clipper card, when purchased with a credit or debit card, are associated with your identity in a database. Every use of that card records your location, the date and time. We sacrifice privacy for convenience.

Next up, we’re likely to be saddled with a National ID Card. What could go wrong? Plenty – have you ever lost your wallet? Had your identity stolen? Just imagine if your right to be in this country hinged upon a flimsy piece of plastic, and the most personal details of your life were stored in a central database behind some quite probably flimsy security hacked together by a disgruntled, underpaid government employee.

This all reads like some Philip K. Dick nightmare. I wanna wake up.

Data modeling and ER diagramming can be very time consuming when working with large databases. Here’s a way to make that a little bit less awful.

You need an oven, a food processor, lemon, flatbread, a bunch basil, a head of garlic, aluminum foil, olive oil, Parmesan.

I set up a file server at home so that I can access my files from any computer in the house. I put new files on the box all the time, and don’t always remember what’s new when I want to grab new songs or put photos online, so I wrote this thing in ruby to run through the files on the drive and make a list of new ones. A cron job runs it once a week. Next on the agenda, I’ll make it email me the list and copy all the new files to my backup drive.

It gives you a total new file count at the end, and some spiffy output to look at while it runs. It also skips those dot files that OS X leaves all over the place. Read on for the script.

Vegan. Give yourself about two hours if you have two people working on it. It’s totally worth it. You need an avocado, a red onion, two 15 oz. cans of black beans, 2 15 oz. cans of vegetable broth, a white onion, a green pepper, fresh cilantro, a plum tomato, a cup of chickpea flour, a cup of white flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, salt and pepper, olive oil, 4 cloves of garlic and a cup of white rice.

Easy vegetarian pasta. This takes about an hour. You need mascarpone, Parmesan, pasta, a bulb of garlic, two cups fresh spinach, a red bell pepper, a small onion, a bunch of fresh parsley, a head of broccoli, salt, and, well, water. Read more for the instructions.

The second DIY presenter was Bre Pettis (Founder, NYC Resistor ) on “Commonist Objects” and Rapid Prototyping Technology.

We have access to a wealth of information on the internet. Instructions for building machines, buildings (I think that’s the weirdest word for an inhabitable structure), furniture, you name it. We can even build machines that can make parts for themselves, like the RepRap . We don’t have to buy objects that were mass-manufactured in some far away country… With what we can find on the internet, we can make just about anything ourselves.

Bre’s Reprap printed mint tin (photo by Chris Casciano)

Bre’s presentation was fantastic. It’s great to see someone who’s really excited about what they’re doing talk about it. He showed a handful of videos about different methods of fabrication – from machines that read punched tape to carve an object out of some material to high powered water jet machines that do the same. He also demo’d a vector graphics program called Inkscape which can be used to create a model for use with many fabrication machines.

Wanna try to do it yourself? Check out Instructables and Thingiverse – you can download designs created by others and fabricate them out of whatever materials you choose. I think that the planetary gear card is pretty neat. You don’t need access to anything special to make it, depending on your choice of material. A razor and some card stock will suffice.

Check out this portion of Bre’s presentation: http://vimeo.com/2955562