The city s policy to use the method, which calls for the injection of a drug into a person, came as a total surprise to people most would expect to know all about it.

For almost two years, Metro police have had the option of calling for a needle loaded with a strong sedative to control the most unruly people they encounter on the street.

Why not just get them stoned? If we're going to resort to using drugs to fight crime, why not let the criminals drug themselves and let the cops find something real to do for a living?

I-Team: Injection Used To Subdue Prisoners - Nashville News Story - WSMV Nashville

It's a scientific fact: Pets can't be trusted. Oh sure, they look like little angels, but they're just buttering you up so you'll feed them. It's time you found out what they aren't telling you! We suggest you try the Pet's-Eye-View Digital Camera. This lightweight, water-resistant, digital camera snaps photos every 1, 5, or 15 minutes and will give you an idea what your four-legged friend has been up to while you were at work. Don't just wonder if your dog has been digging up the lawn. Find out with this awesome device!

Who wants a pack of spy-dogs?

Pet Eye View Digital Camera - Uncle Milton - Science - Educational Toys at Entertainment Earth

ABC News highlights a predictable effect of supply shortages: gas thieves. Even before the price at the pump escalated significantly this year, gas thefts accounted for more than $130 million in losses for station owners — almost entirely family-owned businesses, with only 2% of stations in the US owned and operated by the oil companies. Thefts range from a few gallons to covert operations involving thousands of gallons, as ABC helpfully demonstrates in its report:

Maybe it would have been better to leave out the how-to on getting free gas from the pumps.

All we need is biker gangs and a toecutter.

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Video: Gasoline thieves

Google has just launched Lively, a new social network built around the concept of each user creating an avatar and a personal virtual room that can be embedded anywhere on the Web. In essence, Google is looking to create a massive distributed virtual world, where every Google account can have its own avatar that can be used wherever a Lively virtual room is present – for example, on a blog, a social networking profile, or a Web page.

Here’s a closer look at what Google is launching, how it works, and how it might fit into Google’s larger social networking plans:

Getting Started

To use Lively, you do need to sign up using a Google account and download a browser plug-in. From there, you are able to create your own avatar – starting from a “template” character which then has customizable attributes like skin tone, hair color, and eye colors. You can also dress your character with clothing and accessories. In turn, you’re now ready to use Lively wherever you encounter a room on the Web by signing into it with your virtual account.

Google Launches Lively to Create a Virtual World Across Social Networks

WASHINGTON, June 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. military is looking for a contractor to patrol cyberspace, watching for warning signs of forthcoming terrorist attacks or other hostile activity on the Web.

...

"The purpose of the services will be to identify and assess stated and implied threat, antipathy, unrest and other contextual data relating to selected Internet domains," says the solicitation.

...

The solicitation says the successful contractor will "analyze various Web pages, chat rooms, blogs and other Internet domains to aggregate and assess data of interest," adding, "The contractor will prioritize foreign-language domains that relate to specific areas of concern … (and) will also identify new Internet domains" that might relate to "specific local requirements" of the command.

Officials were keen to stress the contract covered only information that could be found by anyone with a computer and Internet connection.

Analysis: U.S. military to patrol Internet - UPI.com

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Viacom wants the data to prove that infringing material is more popular than user-created videos, which could be used to increase Google's liability if it is found guilty of contributory infringement.

Although Google argued that turning over the data would invade its users' privacy, the judge's ruling (.pdf) described that argument as "speculative" and ordered Google to turn over the logs on a set of four tera-byte hard drives.

The judge also turned Google's own defense of its data retention policies -- that IP addresses of computers aren't personally revealing in and of themselves, against it to justify the log dump.

Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom | Threat Level from Wired.com

And the questions keep coming. How did Mr. Jakob wander into town and apparently leave the mayor, the aldermen and pretty much everyone else he met thinking that he was a federal agent delivered from Washington to help barrel into peoples’ homes and clean up Gerald’s drug problem? And why would anyone — receiving no pay and with no known connection to little Gerald, 70 miles from St. Louis and not even a county seat — want to carry off such a time-consuming ruse in the first place?

haha... Nice to see how the slant toward authoritarian rule is keeping us safe.

Con-artist convinces town he's a super Fed who doesn't need search warrants - Boing Boing

WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender civil rights organization, today participated in the first-ever Congressional hearing exclusively on the issue of workplace discrimination against transgender Americans. The hearing, held by the House Education and Labor’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, was titled "An Examination of Discrimination Against Transgender Americans." Coordinated by Congressional allies, including Subcommittee Chairman Rob Andrews (D-NJ), Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), as well as a coalition of GLBT groups, the hearing was intended to send a strong message to Congress about the need for fully-inclusive federal workplace protections.

Frank hasn't exactly proven himself to be an ally, but I'll let that go.

HRC Business Council Member Diego Sanchez:

"It’s an injustice that we are ever evaluated for employment based on other people’s comfort with our existence… I am before you today to affirm that transgender and transsexual people, including me, are equally human and deserve to be treated like other people."

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese:

The transgender community, too long marginalized in American society and even within the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, has made enormous strides in recent years. There are many reasons to hope that the future holds even greater acceptance and understanding, including full equality under the law. But hope alone will not protect the transgender woman in Topeka, Kansas who loses her job and health insurance when co-workers learn that she is transitioning or the transgender man in Shreveport, Louisiana who, despite an advanced engineering degree, must work in a fast food restaurant. It is critical that Congress act to protect these, our transgender friends and family, colleagues and neighbors."

Historic Congressional Hearing on Workplace Protections for Transgender Americans

After questioning former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan during a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee Friday, a Democratic congressman called for impeachment proceedings to be initiated.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL) said that he believed McClellan's testimony implicated both Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush as the only two administration sources who could have leaked the identity of former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame-Wilson.

"The president and vice president have denied ordering this illegal leak, but logic and the chain of command dictates that it must have been one of them,” said Wexler. "Mr. McClellan, in your book, you state that you cannot believe President Bush authorized the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a covert agent. ... Who does that leave us? The vice president."

The Raw Story | Dem Rep. calls for impeachment at McClellan testimony: video

WASHINGTON - An infamous atomic smuggler may have had blueprints for a compact, sophisticated nuclear warhead, and that could mean that the world's proliferation problem is even worse than many experts had thought.

US officials have long declared the nuclear technology ring run by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan to be shattered. But revelations that a digitized bomb design turned up on the computer of an associate of Mr. Khan's show that US and UN investigators may not yet know everything Khan did, despite the fact that he has been under house arrest in Pakistan for years.

Did rogue network leak nuclear bomb design? | csmonitor.com