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gkuchera posted a photo:

Milwaukee Road 261 Steam Train Inaugural run from Minneapolis to Duluth

She became an internally displaced refugee, living in the mountains for nearly ten years as Army troops raped, murdered, and destroyed villages throughout the Ixil region in the early 1980s. Like many around the world, she was stunned by the Guatemalan Constitutional Court's decision to annul the trial and throw out the verdict and sentence for former US-backed dictator Rios Montt.

Reuters correspondent Mike McDonald reports from Guatemala City today.

Ms. Caba, 51, is one of the women behind this wonderful book project, "Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul."     

Vineeth Mekkat posted a photo:

View from the Indian Mounds Park. Nikon D7000 @ ISO 100. Tamron 17-50mm at 42mm, f/13 for 10s. Press 'L' for large. Thanks for looking!

Among the most recent video posts you will find on our video archive page:

• Controversial banana-touching.
• NASA solar flare video with Lars Leonhard music.
• HOWTO make a "Swiss Army knife" key ring.
• Museum home of Oddities' Ryan Matthew Cohn.
• The Life of astronaut Sally Ride.
• Ray Manzarek, founding member of The Doors, has died.
• HOWTO survive an elephant charge.

Boing Boing: Video archives    

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Fibonacci Blue posted a photo:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

May 21, 2013

Around 20 protesters rallied outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. They called for more accountability in the banking industry, demanded the Obama administration prosecute bankers for their role in the financial crisis of 2008 and called for relief for families and communities devastated by foreclosures. This event was in solidarity with Wall Street Accountability Week of Action in Washington, D.C., May 18-23.

2013-05-21 This is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Give attribution for: Fibonacci Blue

Here'a an excellent piece on the promise and peril of "smart cities," which could be part of a system to make cities fairer and more transparent, or could form the basis for an authoritarian lockdown. As Adam Greenfield says, "[the centralized model of the smart city is] disturbingly consonant with the exercise of authoritarianism." The author mentions Greenfield's upcoming book "The City is Here for You to Use" (a very promising-looking read) as well as Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, which is out in the fall.

These critics are advocating not that cities shun technology, but that they foster a more open debate about how best to adopt it—and a public airing of the questions cities need to ask. One question is how deeply cities rely on private companies to set up and maintain the systems they run on. Smart-city projects rely on sophisticated infrastructure that municipal governments aren’t capable of creating themselves, Townsend points out, arguing that the more they rely on software, the more cities are increasingly shunting important civic functions and information into private hands. In recent talks and in his upcoming book, “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia,” Townsend portrays companies as rushing to become the indispensable middlemen without which the city cannot function.

Cities can easily lose leverage to private companies their citizens rely on, as the persistent battles of political leaders against telecom companies over price increases show. And private-sector software can operate behind a veil: Townsend says that while cities have made lots of data freely available online, there’s less concern about opening up the proprietary tools used to analyze that data—software that might help a city official decide who is eligible for services, or which neighborhoods are crime hotspots. “It’s the algorithms in government that need to be brought out to the light of day, not the data,” he says. “What I worry about are the de facto laws that are being coded in software without public scrutiny.”

Another concern is what will be done to protect the huge amount of data cities can gather about their citizens. The wealth of video at the Boston Marathon bombings, though it came from private cameras, showed how useful surveillance footage can be—and also how pervasive. Cameras, sensors, and tracking technologies like the Mass Pike’s EZPass can reveal a great deal about your life: where you live and travel, what you buy, even what time you take a shower. Smart grid utility-metering systems, for instance, collect and transmit detailed energy consumption information, which help consumers understand and curb their energy use but can also reveal their habits. As such, they have come under fire for threatening privacy and civil liberties, and several states have adopted legislation governing what kind of data can be shared with third parties and how customers can opt out. In Massachusetts, automated license plate recognition technology used by police cruisers has raised concerns about authorities tracking the whereabouts of citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has been pushing for a License Plate Privacy Act that would limit law enforcement’s ability to retain and use the information.

The too-smart city [Courtney Humphries/Boston Globe]

(via Beyond the Beyond)     

A teacher in Florida has been disciplined for reportedly touching a female student inappropriately in the head and neck area with a banana. Jonathan Hampton was suspended for three days without pay from his teaching job at North Marion High School after the student's parents complained, roughly three months after the incident.

According to his discipline letter dated May 13, 2013, a student said Hampton "rubbed a student's head and neck area with a banana" during a lecture about "cylinder objects, phalluses and/or sex symbols."

Sometimes a banana is just a banana. Not this time, apparently. Just look at it.

More: clickorlando.com. There's video, too, below. (thanks, Tara McGinley, via Arbroath)

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