Hulleye Comes By!

Since the beginning of time, people have created myths to explain things that we can not understand. Modern psychology now explains a phenomenon where our brain will even create its own images, theories and even memories to fill in blanks and complete a ’story’ in our mind.

There is a scene in the Wizard of Oz (when Dorothy and Scarecrow meet the Tin Man in the apple woods just before they all set off towards the emerald city) whereby a shadow is seen below one of the trees. Myth holds that a munchkin committed suicide on set and the original filming captured this. MGM have always maintained the shadow seen in the frame was a bird. Over time, the quality of the film had deteriorated such that the shadow is no longer visible on most dvd/vhs copies sold in the past few decades.

However, the legend of the munchkin suicide has persisted, most recently highlighted by Irvine Welsh in a play called Babylon Heights which tells the ’story’ of the dwarves who played the munchkins - it follows the main story of unrequited love but also the victimisation the dwarves felt at the hands of the remaining crew. The play is very much in the theme of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked which retells the story of the witches in the movie.

The munchkins were dwarves recruited from various worldwide casting agencies but Judy garland herself was reported to have said the small stature actors were billeted away from the rest of the cast due to their indulgences in “sex orgies, drunken behaviour and general dwarf debauchery.” Despite this, it is generally accepted that the myth was exactly that, a myth. Possibly the cast in their mystification of the dwarves created the myth. Logically any suicide would surely have been spoken of by other crew members. Rumour has it, CSI might make a visit to archives to uncover the story. Then again, rumour has it the whole hype was resurrected to coincide with the 50^th anniversary video release of the movie in 1989.

Next week sees the general re-release of the Wizard of Oz in its restored format. Each frame has been “cleaned” pretty much as one would take a layer of varnish off a master. Only people who saw the original cinematic release in 1939 will have seen the film as intended by the director, in all its colourful glory. As for the shadow scene… yes you can see it much more clearly but it does look more like a bird, a plane or even a UFO! Not a hanging munchkin…

I’ve just come back from a special screening and as someone who has seen this film more times than I can possibly count, I guarantee you, that until you have seen this version, you have not seen The Wizard of Oz.

view the so called scene - watch the middle of the screen and look into the woods. please comment - and if you see the re-release, do let me know what you thought!!

i love the wizard of oz :)

Since the beginning of time, people have created myths to explain things that we can not understand. Modern psychology now explains a phenomenon where our brain will even create its own images, theories and even memories to fill in blanks and complete a ’story’ in our mind.

There is a scene in the Wizard of Oz (when Dorothy and Scarecrow meet the Tin Man in the apple woods just before they all set off towards the emerald city) whereby a shadow is seen below one of the trees. Myth holds that a munchkin committed suicide on set and the original filming captured this. MGM have always maintained the shadow seen in the frame was a bird. Over time, the quality of the film had deteriorated such that the shadow is no longer visible on most dvd/vhs copies sold in the past few decades.

However, the legend of the munchkin suicide has persisted, most recently highlighted by Irvine Welsh in a play called Babylon Heights which tells the ’story’ of the dwarves who played the munchkins - it follows the main story of unrequited love but also the victimisation the dwarves felt at the hands of the remaining crew. The play is very much in the theme of Gregory Maguire’s Wicked which retells the story of the witches in the movie.

The munchkins were dwarves recruited from various worldwide casting agencies but Judy garland herself was reported to have said the small stature actors were billeted away from the rest of the cast due to their indulgences in “sex orgies, drunken behaviour and general dwarf debauchery.” Despite this, it is generally accepted that the myth was exactly that, a myth. Possibly the cast in their mystification of the dwarves created the myth. Logically any suicide would surely have been spoken of by other crew members. Rumour has it, CSI might make a visit to archives to uncover the story. Then again, rumour has it the whole hype was resurrected to coincide with the 50^th anniversary video release of the movie in 1989.

Next week sees the general re-release of the Wizard of Oz in its restored format. Each frame has been “cleaned” pretty much as one would take a layer of varnish off a master. Only people who saw the original cinematic release in 1939 will have seen the film as intended by the director, in all its colourful glory. As for the shadow scene… yes you can see it much more clearly but it does look more like a bird, a plane or even a UFO! Not a hanging munchkin…

I’ve just come back from a special screening and as someone who has seen this film more times than I can possibly count, I guarantee you, that until you have seen this version, you have not seen The Wizard of Oz.

view the so called scene - watch the middle of the screen and look into the woods. please comment - and if you see the re-release, do let me know what you thought!!

i love the wizard of oz :)

A Polish exchange student spent six months with a fundamentalist Christian family in the US and didn’t have such a good time.

“When I got out of the plane in Greensboro in the US state of North Carolina, I would never have expected my host family to welcome me at the airport, wielding a Bible, and saying, ‘Child, our Lord sent you half-way around the world to bring you to us.’ At that moment I just wanted to turn round and run back to the plane.

Things began to go wrong as soon as I arrived in my new home in Winston-Salem, where I was to spend my year abroad. For example, every Monday my host family would gather around the kitchen table to talk about sex. My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.

 Keep reading. It gets better.

Also known as ferroelectric ice. From Physorg:

Various forms of ice have been found in many locations within the frigid reaches of our galaxy, from interstellar clouds to comets, moons, and planets. But a particularly intriguing and rare type, “ferroelectric” ice – ice crystallized so perfectly that it can sustain a giant electric field – has never been detected by astronomers.

A recent study, however, has produced evidence that ferroelectric ice, also known as ice XI, likely does exist out there. Performed by a team of scientists from the U.S. and Japan, the study revealed a very narrow range of temperatures in which “normal” ice can transform into ice XI in nature. The research was led by Hiroshi Fukazawa, a scientist at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.

Normal ice, which forms all natural snow and ice on Earth, is known to scientists as “ice Ih,” where the ‘h’ stands for hexagonal, the shape of the molecular crystal. In ice Ih, the bonds between the hydrogen and oxygen atoms are oriented randomly, resulting in a crystal that looks fairly messy. At very low temperatures, however, the bonds begin to line up and point in the same direction; high pressure enhances this ordering effect. As a result, the tiny electric fields naturally carried by each water molecule add up to produce one large field…

The United States is one of the few countries in the world whose currency isn’t distinguishable by blind people. Most other nations use raised text, different-sized bills, or other methods to assist blind people in spending their money. If a recent decision by a federal court in D.C. survives appeal, however, that will soon change. Under Sec. 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, federal programs cannot deny ‘meaningful access’ to people with disabilities. Because blind people are unable to distinguish U.S. currency without assistance, the court held that they are denied meaningful access to their own money. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with ways for the blind to tell bills apart. He said he wouldn’t tell officials how to fix the problem, but he ordered them to begin working on it.”

via /.

The first five episodes of Arrested Development are now streaming for free on MSN.com, with the rest of the series being added over the next 12 months. I highly recommend watching it.  Tost gave it to me as a wedding present. One of the best gifts I got.

A blind man suffering déjà vu. It sounds like a contradiction in terms – but the first case study of its kind has turned the whole theory of déjà vu on its head. Traditionally it was thought images from one eye were delayed, arriving in the brain microseconds after images from the other eye – causing a sensation that something was being seen for the second time. But University of Leeds researchers report for the first time the case of a blind person experiencing déjà vu through smell, hearing and touch.

read more

a long time ago i mentioned space elevators. i guess they’re back in the news. unfortunately though, the reason is humans might not survive space-elevator travel thanks to the whopping dose of ionising radiation they would receive travelling through the core of the Van Allen radiation belts around Earth. the first floor might just prove a bit too deadly.

They would die on the way through the radiation belts if they were unshielded,” says Anders Jorgensen, author of a new study on the subject and a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico, US.

Space elevators had been planned to be anchored on an ocean platform near the equator, with the other end tied to a counterweight in space.

At the equator, the most dangerous part of the radiation belts extends from about 1000 to 20,000 kilometres in altitude. The region did not hurt the Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s because their rockets delivered them swiftly through it.

For a space elevator travelling at the current proposed speed of 200 kilometres per hour, however, passengers might spend half a week in the belts. That would hit them with 200 times the radiation experienced by the Apollo astronauts.

In a world where people are trying to blow up airplanes using tampons and KY jelly; where donkeys and elephants continue to dance on the head of a pin; and where every crackpot dictator wants his own personal ‘nucular’ device, it’s becoming almost pro forma to call Battlestar Galactica the most topical series on television.

It remains unabashedly unafraid of wading waste deep into the often depraved psyche of our collective humanity.
And the wading continues. Eight episodes into Season Three it’s clear that there’s no let-up in sight. The constant assault on one’s sensibilities; the bombardment of the senses by way of situations few humans can imagine, nor would wish to; the oppressive relentlessness of the Cylon pursuit—it all adds up to nine hours of riveting, yet often exhausting, television. It’s difficult not to tune in to see exactly who will be dropped in the meat-grinder next, and how.

This is not intended as a flippant remark, for the results almost always yield unexpected consequences—unexpected for the audience, anyway. For the series doesn’t just put us behind the camera using its well-publicized cinema vérité style, it often swings that camera towards the mirror, so to speak, and forces us to take a an unvarnished look at ourselves, too, challenging the audience to confront its own convictions and dogmas. It’s a task that the news, no matter how gruesome, is often bereft of accomplishing. With our own beliefs often mercilessly sacrificed on the alter of forced introspection, Battlestar Galactica doesn’t take sides or preach philosophies, rather it shatters preconceptions and leaves a slack-jawed audience to pick up the pieces. Very clever, those Galactica writers.

Keep reading.

Meet Anshe Chung, a real-estate tycoon in the online game Second Life, and the first virtual millionaire (her holdings in the game are legally convertible into $1 million in real US currency!)

In Second Life, subscribers get a tool kit that enables them to build and create an avatar (a character in the world). They also get a small quantity of Linden dollars to start out with, enabling the participant to buy additional tools and objects within the world itself. Linden Lab converts currency at a floating rate that, at the moment, is about 257 Linden dollars per U.S. dollar.

Though you can buy additional Linden dollars from Linden Lab by paying U.S. currency, Chung says she has made all her additional Linden dollars via in-world buying, building, trading, and selling. The lion’s share of it, she says, has been made by buying, developing, and then renting or reselling “land”–i.e., control over the virtual real estate simulated by Linden’s servers. Each of Linden Lab’s servers simulates about 16 acres of in-world property. At the time I wrote my article in November 2005, Chung was developing private islands and setting up communities restricted to, for instance, East Asian, Victorian, or Gothic architecture, or to French-speakers, or to gays and lesbians, or to fuzzy avatars known as “furries.” Because Linden Lab has added simulation servers more slowly than it has accumulated subscribers, virtual property values have soared.

From The National Geographic:

With its conspicuous blue eyes and shiny orange claws, this colorful crab seems hard to miss. But it’s one of many species that had likely never been seen until scientists went exploring in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument this fall.

An international team of biologists made the discoveries in October during a three-week survey of a remote coral atoll called French Frigate Shoals.

More here.

it is the ten year death anniversary of the only Pakistani Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Abdus Salam. It really is too bad he wasn’t considered a Pakistani nor does the state acknowledge any Pakistani to have one a Nobel. The Pakistaniat covers in depth the life and contributions of the Doctor. Also cited is the Daily Times entry which truly explains what a sad state of affairs the country is at this point, that we have to outcast our own citizens. It is a sham, a lie and a farce all at the same time.

The tragedy of our treatment of Dr Abdus Salam

Dr Abdus Salam (1926-1996) died ten years ago. He was the first Pakistani to get a Nobel Prize in 1979. But he might be the last if we continue to allow our state to evolve in a way that frightens the rest of the world. Our collective psyche runs more to accepted ‘wisdom’ than to scientific inquiry; and even if we were to display an uncharacteristic outcropping of individual genius the world may be so frightened of it that it might not give us our deserts.

We are scared of honouring Dr Salam because of our constitution which we have amended to declare his community as ‘non-Muslim’. When Dr Salam died in 1996 he had to be buried in Pakistan because he refused to give up his Pakistani nationality and acquire another that respected him more. But the Pakistani state was afraid of touching his dead body. He was therefore buried in Rabwa, the home town of his Ahmedi community whose name is also unacceptable to us and has been changed to Chenab Nagar by a state proclamation. But that was not the end of the story. After he was buried, the pious, law-abiding and constitution-loving people of Jhang, which is nearby, went over to Chenab Nagar to see if all had been done according to the constitutional provisions regarding the Ahmedi community to which he belonged.

Click here for more.

Over at Filmcritic.com, Christopher Null has undertaken the grave and important task of ranking the top ten cinematic spaceships. It’s hard to argue with a list that includes the Millenium Falcon, Heart of Gold from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the Nostromo from Alien. But including both the Klingon Bird of Prey AND the USS Enterprise? C’mon. And the Apollo 13? Plus, no mention of Serenity! Still, who doesn’t like to recall the glory of the Gunstar from The Last Starfighter?

via Wired.

also in addition to the previous story, here’s a round up of this week’s other TSA incidents.

• Innocent passenger arrested for trying to bring a rubber-band ball onto an airplane.
• Woman passes out on plane after her drugs are confiscated.
• San Francisco International Airport screeners were warned in advance of undercover test.

why are people so ignorant? it’s because of moron’s like glenn beck who are allowed to be on television and radio all goddamn day and night long spouting propaganda bullshit.

six imam’s were forcibly removed yesterday from a minneapolis flight because they were seen saying their prayers. their freedom of religion and expression as a constitutional right allegedly means nothing in an airport. only reason they were removed, because some ignorant whitey say their bearded prostrating positions.

why did the ignorant whitey speak up? because he’s ignorant. why is he ignorant? because he’s hearing this man on tv all goddamn day long. this asswipe is on tv more than CSI. i don’t understand why he is allowed to be.

you know what beck said when keith ellison was democratically elected into congress…the gall of this man…”prove that you’re not working with our enemies.”

pitiful that this farce of a person is allowed in such a giant media outlet allowing others to remain ignorant.

Hitachi’s new neuroimaging technique allows its operator to switch a train set on and off by thought alone, and the Japanese company aims to commercialize it within five years.

Mind-machine interfacing isn’t unheard of: just weeks ago, a young patient was given a chance to play Space Invaders through the power of thought. And this all comes hot on the heels of a revolution in microsurgery, allowing artificial limbs to be wired to the brain by reusing existing nerves.

Keep reading at Wired for more.

i wonder if nat can hook this shit up in his garage.

thiago olson created his own nuclear fusion device in his parents basement using deuterium and 40,000 Volts. impressive. knowledge in the fact that fusion is a sustainable, viable option to alternate energy may mean that it becomes more accessible in the future.

so a very jerry mcguirish type email has leaked out on the web from brad garlinghouse, a senior VP at Yahoo!. he’s written up something that’s been termed the peanut butter memo and it is somehow managed to roam around the web and show up in my feeds. techcrunch has the low down.

The document is a lighting rod, and Garlinghouse must have known of the high risk of it being made public. However, the document is so critical of current leadership at Yahoo that it was clearly not written to be voluntarily leaked. This is Yahoo’s dirty laundry spread all over the world for everyone to see, and it voices a frustration that suggests CEO Terry Semel’s chief lieutenants are restless and frustrated.

I am fortunate to have been a part of dramatic change for the Company. And our successes speak for themselves. More users than ever, more engaging than ever and more profitable than ever!

I proudly bleed purple and, yellow everyday! And like so many people here, I love this company

But all is not well. Last Thursday’s NY Times article was a blessing in the disguise of a painful public flogging. While it lacked accurate details, its conclusions rang true, and thus was a much needed wake up call. But also a call to action. A clear statement with which I, and far too many Yahoo’s, agreed. And thankfully a reminder. A reminder that the measure of any person is not in how many times he or she falls down - but rather the spirit and resolve used to get back up. The same is now true of our Company.

It’s time for us to get back up.

click here to read the whole thing in it’s entirety. must’ve taken balls to write up.

watch this.

he kicked ass previously too.

so i know a punk called sasha in england. she’ll be writing here once in a while. you can read her first post on gestalt here. she joins the other contributing author on this blog, superchode and you can hope to read some fun stuff from them soon.

Cricketing legend and Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan along with a large number of party’s workers left Lahore in a motorcade for Shahiwal for the opening salvo of a movement against Musharraf’s government.

According to media reports, the Shahiwal administration has refused permission to him for holding a public meeting or taking out a procession in the open ground fearing law and order situation. They have advised him to address the gathering anywhere within the boundary walls or at any of the marriage halls, but without the use of loudspeakers.

Prior to departing for Shahiwal, Imran Khan reportedly told media, “Our movement is peaceful, therefore, the government should not put hurdles in its way, otherwise, all the responsibility for the situation will lie on the administration.” Khan also said the other opposition parties should also resign from the assemblies, following MMA. Friday evening, an Indian TV channel aired a program in which Imran Khan discussed cricket, politics and personal life with the Indian audience.

In an NDTV program ‘India kare sawal’ (India ask question with Imran) the former cricket captain, Imran Ahmad Khan Niyazi, replying to a question was frank enough to say that he feared bowling to West Indian batsman Viv Richards. When asked about Brian Lara and Tendulkar, Imran told that bowling to a left hander was easiest for him and Lara is a left hander. Khan also said that Lara or Tendulkar never destroyed any pace attack - rather they milked the pace attack while Richards tore apart the best ever fast attack in the history of Cricket.

Talking about the role of coach, he supported those who have some experience of International cricket and he also said that it is better if a coach has been a captain.

Imran Khan wondered as what Bob Woolmer does with his laptop, what does he see in the laptop which cannot be seen otherwise. The cause of Pakistan defeat in the Champions trophy was the lack of aggressive approach from the Pakistan team, he said.

Imran Khan once again supported the inclusion of genuine fast bowler Mohammed Sami and criticized his exclusion from the team. He also said that Australians won the tournament because of their attacking cricketing style.

On the return of democracy in Pakistan Imran said that Pakistan is on the path of recovery and no power could now stop Pakistan from enjoying the fruits of democracy. He also said that democracy is the only way or government which is acceptable and successful throughout the world.

Replying to a question on veil (burqa) he said that one should be allowed to veil if one is allowed to unveil or strip off. He particularly emphasized over the freedom of choice. On Pakistan-India relation he said that when you cannot change your neighbors it is important to learn to live together and sort out all the problems politically.

In the end he said that cricket is a past for him and he never looks back to past but for one reason and that it is learn from the past. Imran Khan was hopeful of the younger generation of the subcontinent who will make the life better and nation happier, he said. Replying to a personal question he said that he wants his son Sulaiman to become a good human being.

via despardes

Omniscience. Now that would be the epitome of perfection! To be within it all; encompassed; surrounded and surrounding. A gestalt approach to existence. You are the cage; you are the sand; you are the cat; you are the mouse. You are the camera; you are, potentially, human.

The gestalt approach is most often used in dream therapy and calls for the dreamer to role play and identify with each part of the dreamscape. i skipped gestalt 101 but its not rocket science and its quite easy to grasp. We understand that a cage is an object designed only to confine and reluctantly free; that sand is illusionary and slips too easily between loosened fingers - from one end of the hourglass of love to the other end of loss or hate. We understand that every story has two polar opposites; lovers and haters; friends and enemies - protagonists and antagonists.

On a not so complete tangent: photography is the selfish craft of capturing your perspective and pawning it off as omniscient objectivity. To force another to believe in the reality of the contents of the frame. The shot will invariably land in albums, web-galleries, blogs etc and because it is deemed an actual image and not an artist’s painted perspective, everyone will believe and accept whole-heartedly, unreservedly, religiously even, that the images and words neatly printed and bound are reality.

Personify the sand; be each grain filling a blank canvas, coating its emptiness with deceptive intentions. You are the prey flying behind the hunter; you are the shifting ground the prey spins upon; you are absorbing the blood of food chain victory. This has become survival of the fittest. The cat is caged, a hunter confined. Yet, this creature is proud, sleek. she is confident and dominating while maintaining a natural state of relaxation. Every movement of bone beneath skin is revealed without care. The predator usually wins - any deviance from this lends to madness. Once established that death is eminent, acceptance should naturally ensue. The mouse’s cage is delicately placed in an opposing corner; the latch is removed and the victim is released from this detention chamber. You refuse to role play this underdog; it is not a positively calculated risk; mathematics and science do not enter this equation. A hopeless predicament bound to the constraints of history and the rigid and unmoving laws of nature’s wilderness. Thus, the only option available is to run in panicked frenzy from the hunter’s thirst for blood.

Voyeurism, in mainstream society, is often frowned upon as an immoral act of cowardice. Yet the camera is a part of this human, merged into the body as if this very machine was a new and currently unidentified limb eagerly waiting for nature to appear in the artificial; waiting for the prey to be gloriously defeated without challenge. The mouse runs, the cat chases; a primal re-enactment of conflict at its most crude and basic moment.

Anything chased will inevitably run away. So don’t chase the scene; let the scene chase you, reveal itself to you; your anticipating eyes open wide watching as the cat approaches its prize. Watching as the mouse turns, spinning above the uneven ground, tiny claws out, teeth exposed. The mouse screeches, refusing to be taken without some resistance.

Click. Flash. The moment is captured like perfection before the sacrifice to more powerful beings, happily ingested. The image returns, birthed as nature obscures the artificial. The sand is now real; the cat is real; the camera is real; omniscience is real.

Humanity is artificial.

so for all you ali_g and borat fans out there, indextube has pretty much every clip of his floating around the internats.well most of them anyway. i just saw one of cohen’s appearances on the daily show, and i think it’s the first time i ever seen him give an interview as himself. must have been a really old clip.

weirdly enough, he’s got a cousin named simon baron-cohen who is one of the world’s leading voices of autism research. he is also one of the dozens of scientists who have forecasted science for the next fifty years in today’s edition of scientific american magazine.

It looks like a four-armed starfish, but so far it’s unaware of its own shape. After flailing its arms for a while, however, the robot gets a sense of its design and begins to walk. The real feat comes when engineers remove a part of its leg: The robot senses a change in its structure and begins walking in a different way to compensate. The demonstration is the first proof that a robot can generate a conception of itself and then adapt to damage, a handy skill to have in unpredictable environments.

thanks s.

i just saw this website by mistake in IE. ick. it looks like shit. instead of me trying to fix the damn site for you, why don’t you use some sense and use opera or firefox you idjut!

eWEEK reports that Bill Gates told PBS talk show host Charlie Rose and a Stanford University audience at TechNet Wednesday that ‘We’re at the beginning of something important again’ in the development of technology — just as in the 1980s with the advent of the PC. He also discussed the growing Microsoft-Google competition, world health issues, how to give lots of money away to the benefit of mankind, and whether he’ll return to Harvard to finish his studies.” From the article: “On whether there’s another idea today that is as powerful as the idea of the personal computer in the 1970s: ‘If I knew medicine like I do computers, I would like to be able to control the [human] immune system, to fight against the onset of disease on a world level … but I think the idea of the PC still would have topped that.

via slashdot.

The U.S. government has entrusted billions of dollars in Iraqi reconstruction funds to outside contractors. But how is all that money actually being spent? In this week’s List, Foreign Policy mag takes a look at some of the major missteps made by private firms in Iraq.

Bechtel

An engineering and construction firm based in San Francisco, California
What it’s doing: Repairing key components of Iraq’s infrastructure, including the power grid, water system, schools, healthcare clinics, bridges, and telephone service

Value of contracts in Iraq: $2.3 billion, including its undisclosed profit

Major missteps: Before pulling out of Iraq last month, Bechtel failed to complete several tasks it had agreed to take on. Its biggest failure? Not completing the construction of a new children’s hospital in Basra. The hospital, which was trumpeted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush, fell a year behind schedule and overran its original budget by as much as 150 percent.

Bechtel’s take: The company claims security was the biggest obstacle to its operations in Iraq, pointing to 52 company casualties (47 of whom were Iraqi nationals). As to why the company failed to finish building the children’s hospital, Bechtel also points to difficult soil conditions in the area.

CACI
Information technology contractor based in Arlington, Virginia

What it’s doing: Interrogation services and intelligence gathering

Value of contracts in Iraq: More than $66 million

Major missteps: More than 30 CACI interrogators have operated alongside U.S. Army counterparts in Iraq, and at least one was implicated in the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison that was uncovered in 2004. The abuse scandal led to private lawsuits accusing the company of torture. CACI responded in September 2005 by announcing it would no longer perform interrogations in Iraq.

CACI’s take: None of the company’s employees was ever charged for the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the company continues to assert that its employees met the requirements stipulated by its contract with the U.S. military.

KBR
The major engineering and construction arm of Houston, Texas-based Halliburton.

What it’s doing: Reconstruction of Iraq’s oil industry, as well as providing logistical support and services to the U.S. military

Value of contracts in Iraq: More than $10 billion

Major missteps: U.S. government auditors have slammed Halliburton for weak cost controls, mismanagement, and overbilling. Overhead costs accounted for 55 percent, or $163 million, of its contract to restore Iraq’s oil industry to working order. It also billed the government for work it didn’t do and overpriced gasoline it imported into the beleaguered country.

Halliburton’s take: The company blames the high overhead costs on poor planning by the U.S. government, including requiring the company to prepare for work that did not begin for nearly a year.

Parsons Corp
A Pasadena, California, engineering and construction company

What it’s doing: Rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, including healthcare and security facilities and water and sewage systems

Value of contracts in Iraq: More than $5 billion

Major missteps: The Pentagon terminated one of its contracts with Parsons when only six of the 142 health clinics the company was contracted to build were completed after more than two years. The company also cut corners on a $75 million police academy, leaving bathrooms that leak into student barracks.

Parsons’ take: The contractor cites a lack of security in Iraq when explaining its construction shortcomings. The company’s executives also blame subcontractors for the mess.

i’ve written up another rant over at metroblogging on transit issues and how it relates to other cities on a global level. check it out and drop some feedback if you got a minute.

so one of the rarest things happens. a star wars virgin sits through a 14 hour marathon and watches all six episodes as lucas had actually intended them to be seen. he meticulously documents the sessions here. i’m not saying that there aren’t very many star wars virgins out there. there just aren’t that many who would get out and voluntarily watch all six films in one setting. and then document them.

For me, the biggest problem with seeing these films in their intended order is that Episodes IV-VI offered little surprises. I know who Luke’s father is; I know that the little creature is Yoda. I have to sit through that uncomfortable kiss between Luke and Leia knowing that they are indeed brother and sister. Most of the mysteries and questions that drive the plots of the later episodes are nullified by having seen the first three. I almost envied those who saw them in original order, so I too could have enjoyed the shock and surprise of some of the plot’s twists and turns. Luckily I was never a fan of bellbottoms, so I will indeed stick with the intended order.

Seeing the movies the way Lucas intended us to see them also lets us see how his power and clout in Hollywood have changed over the years. The scripts in the earlier movies are significantly stronger. The dialogue is more mature and smart. They had to be, if he was going to get the funding to continue his saga. For the newer Episodes, you can practically see George sitting at his Mac on top of his pile of money and giggling as he types lines line ”Whoa, that’s tense” and ”How rude!” I looked it up and he was never a writer for Full House, which means he came up with those ditties all on his own. It could be the 4 o’clock in the morning talking, but it’s almost as if he didn’t have anyone proofreading his scripts. And did he even hire a casting director?