techyum ::

US Navy photo of the Ashland by Paul Farley. Public domain image of the Rack Rackham pirate flag from Wikipedia.

Today, November 29, marks the first sentencing for the crime of piracy in Norfolk, Virginia, in 150 years.

The incident occurred off the coast of Djibouti on April 10 of this year. The ship involved was the USS Ashland, a 610-foot, 11,000-ton Whidbey Island-class Dock Landing Ship of the United States Navy. She carries two Mark 38 25-millimeter autocannons, two 20-mm Gatling close-in-weapons-system (CIWS) Phalanx mounts to take down anti-ship missiles, a RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile System, and six fifty-caliber M2 Browning machine guns. It was part of the task force of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier.

The pirates were seven Somalis in a skiff, firing small arms.

How does a Somali pirate skiff find itself attacking a heavily-armed US warship? See…that’s the moral of the story. Bad intel. Read more…

Creative Commons photo by El Waka.

Here in the U.S., we’re finally through the stuff-your-face holiday — and you know what that means. The dark gods of Capitalism get to haul out their blackjack and lay it across our collective faces a few dozen times. That’s right: it’s Christmas, friends. Time to start consuming.

You know who else wants to consume this holiday season?

Nackles.

Who is Nackles, you ask? As described by crime author Donald E. Westlake writing under his occasional pseudonym Curt Clark in his 1964 short story of the same name:

Nackles is to Santa Claus what Satan is to God, what Ahriman is to Ahura Mazda, what the North Wind is to the South Wind.  Nackles is the new Evil.

…And what does Nackles do?  Nackles lives on the flesh of little boys and girls…Nackles roams back and forth under the earth, in his dark tunnels darker than subway tunnels, pulled by the eight dead-white goats, and he searches for little boys and girls to stuff into his big black sack and carry away and eat.  But Santa Claus won’t let him have good boys and girls.  Santa Claus is stronger than Nackles, and keeps a protective shield around little children, so Nackles can’t get at them.

But when little children are bad, it hurts Santa Claus, and weakens the shield Santa Claus has placed around them, and if they keep on being bad pretty soon there’s n shield left at all, and on Christmas Eve instead of Santa Claus coming down out of the sky with his bag of presents Nackles comes up out of the ground with his bag of emptiness, and stuffs the bad children in, and whisks them away to his dark tunnels and the eight dead-white goats.

Nackles is so evil, in fact, that he got writer Harlan Ellison into one of his most famous Hollywood bar brawls. In the mid-1980s, Ellison adapted Westlake’s story into a spooky-as-hell racially-charged script for a Christmas Special of the Twilight Zone reboot, on which Ellison was to make his directorial debut. The network freaked: “Santa Claus can’t have an evil twin!” Ellison freaked: “I’m Ellison!” Merry Christmas.

But more importantly in these trying times of a brisk Black Friday and budget-crisis caterwauling — as Westlake put it:

“Did God create Men, or does Man create gods?…In the old days, Santa Claus would treat children a bit more scornfully, leaving a lump of coal in their stockings in lieu of presents, but I suppose the Depression helped to change that.  There are times and situations when a lump of coal is nothing to sneer at.”

In such times, Westlake implies, far more brutal methods are required to keep the populace in line: methods involving dead-white goats and a big bag of Empty.

Is this one of those times?

Nackles knows.

You can read the whole text of Westlake’s classic Christmas story at Nackles.com, but before you click that link, you should know that I have no idea if that site is authorized by the Westlake estate. That text could be pirated.

And reading pirated texts is very, very naughty. Don’t be naughty.

You don’t want a visit from Nackles, do you?

When zombies want brains, they go to the Apple store. On the go for a quick snack, they look for MacBook Pros. The above vinyl decal goes on any laptop and shows just how tasty your brains really are, though advertising this to a pack of hungry undead is at your own risk. Zombies Attack is on Etsy for $8.99. Zombies Want Braains is new and creepy.

In fact all of Macertera’s laptop vinyl is to die for; look for cool CCTV, Star Wars, ravens and Totoro designs.

Before the Fat Daddy in red finishes making his list and checking it twice, you know you need to get your ass in gear to start loading up your wish list at Rave Ready.

Come on: do you really wanna be standing there wearing jodhpurs, riding boots and a top hat with clocks, waving your howdah pistol like a douchebag and spouting By Jove‘s and Full Steam Ahead‘s when Doctor Who shows up to jack your ass back to Christmas, 1992 to help him score some wicked E without that speedy 1996 edge to it?

I mean, forget this let’s-just-slingshot-around-the-sun shit; this is real time travel. By the time you’ve strapped on the Cryoflesh UV Tube Monocle, you’ll already be conducting covert surveillance on your ear, from what I can tell. It doesn’t seem to come with a schematic, so I’m meeting the manufacturer more than halfway, here.

Once you know what your pesky ear has been up to, of course, you just might start your own chain reaction that, sooner or later, spells Total Disintegration of the MyndStreams, you know what I’m saying?

I think it’s supposed to mean you’re a Borg or a cyber pyrate or some guy named Field Marshall Von Hack or something. It’s not that it’s not a practical sort of monocle. It’s just that its use hasn’t been invented yet. Other than looking fabulous, of course.

And once you start huffing the nightmare in the CryoFlesh Chemi-Kill Cyber Circuitry Mask, that won’t just be Vick’s Vapo-Rub you’re smelling. It’s the ripe scent of your own flavorful intestinal gas, all tangled up with the lingering scent of Pintos & Cheese, Hold the Cheese, from last night’s midnight Taco Bell run after you closed down the Smart Bar at Der Screamm Parrtie while hacking the Pentagon mainframe and dodging bullets…or was that just a comic book you saw projected on the floor as you sweated and undulated all over a glostick-dappled UC Merced girl in a safety-orange unitard, plaid cat ears and clear plastic platform boots?

But wait. This one goes “ZabbaZabba!”:

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. What, are there no stylish options for Clinton-era females who want to fuzzy-pixie sexy-walk into a past-future retro-filled with candy-colored Thorazine rainbows and Niacin-gobbling bio-fueled mind expansion? What do you think, genius?

"Mine tastes like bowel resection!" MTCoffinz Glow in the Dark Binary Code Red Crossed Syringe Surgical Mask. You heard me.

"Is it getting hot in here?" Adjamiba Swizzle Pink and Purple Leg Warmers with matching Fluffies. (Fluffies?) Yes, I said "Fluffies," now STFU. And yes, it's getting hot in here. Or maybe that's just the meth in your Smart Water.

Oh God. Oh my God. Oh my God, Christ in Heaven, where the fuck did I put that blue pill...

By the way, those leg warmers and “Fluffies,” RaveReady tells us, “are imported from the UK and made of the highest quality materials,” which as far as I can figure means they’re made from actual free-range Martian ostrich-tribbles, rather than the crap those other companies will sell you — leg warmers made from Martian ostrich-tribbles raised unethically and unsustainably on a Martian ostrich-tribble farm. Be responsible consumers, people. Martian ostrich-tribbles have feelings too, and plus they’re psychic and can transmit TMJ through their ostrichy mind-control rays if you don’t wear the special anti-mind-control pendant RaveReady provides.

But wait — check out this handsome gent, whose stylish mask “Matches the Circuit Puncture line of clothing perfectly.” However, “Like all fine clothing,” you should “only dry clean or wash in cold water and line dry, or tumble on NO heat…Do not iron the vinyl!”

Don't get excited: No matter how many times you smack your palm on the "Minus" symbol, this guy won't minimize. Sorry. You're just going to have to sleep with him.

Soyuz TMA-18 launching from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in April, 2010. Public domain NASA image.

As you probably know, the US Space Shuttle program will call it quits next summer with STS-135, planned for June, 2011. However, the US space program isn’t calling it quits at that time; NASA plans to continue sending astronauts and materiel to the International Space Station using commercial carriers. The ISS is expected to remain in operation until at least 2015 and probably 2020; NASA plans to save US taxpayers about a gajillion dollars using private contractors, which is roughly the amount Dick Cheney planned to save by using Blackwater to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wait, did I say that out loud? Sorry, sorry, let me take off my snarky left wing fart-sniffer acey-deucey off and don my credulous space-nerd propeller beanie that celebrates all things post-terrestrial.

There; that’s so much better. What I meant to say, of course, is that NASA is privatizing its journeys to the ISS because that’s the best way to encourage scientific and engineering innovation.

The problem? Those commercial carriers don’t exist yet. Until they do, NASA’s going to have to keep sending Americans skyward on Russian Soyuz rockets. That costs tens of millions of dollars per person. Today’s AP article on this matter quotes Sierra Nevada Corporation‘s Mark Sirangelo as saying, “The Russian price goes up every year, and they have a monopoly.” Sierra Nevada, through its wholly-owned subsidiary SpaceDev, is developing DreamChaser, a mini-shuttle planned to carry six to eight people to low Earth orbit. The DreamChaser is built on a shuttle model, launching vertically but landing on a runway.

The same article quotes Space Explorations Technologies Corporation founder and CEO Elon Musk as saying “We’re at the point now where it’s either commercial human spaceflight or no human spaceflight in the U.S.” His company, also known as SpaceX and based in California, is vying for contracts to deliver to the ISS. SpaceX’s vehicle is the Dragon, which is built on a ballistic capsule model. According to Musk, the Dragon’s heat shield is designed to survive reentry from the velocities required to return not just from Earth orbit, but from from the Moon or from Mars. Check out this artist’s rendition of the Dragon docking with the ISS: Read more…

Creative Commons image by Adam Koford.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has sent out a warning about an increase in “smishing.”

No, that’s not a kind of group grope by mobs of roving asexual, polyamorous and predatory cuddle-furries yiffing on your groovie fursona. It’s the text-message equivalent of phishing, which is called “smishing” not “tishing” because of “SMS text.” “SMS” stands, of course, for “short message service,” though only mobile phone ads and fine print and, apparently, the FBI, ever use the SMS part.

“Smishing” is when someone pulls a phishing scam by text — that is to say, texting you to helpfully let you know that there’s been a problem with your bank account and could you please call in and give us your ATM card number, PIN, expiration date, mother’s maiden name, bra size and the badge number of the last TSA agent who groped you. The information is then used (you saw this coming, didn’t you?) to dollarjack the green for your adorable rugrats’ Santa Barbie right out of your account, and teaching us all a valuable lesson about consumerism.

According to the FBI, these scams are growing because “a growing number of Americans own mobile phones,” which is helpful of them to point out. They also warn about “vishing” scams, which are the same gig using automated voice calls.

Here’s our boys and girls in charcoal-grey again:

Other holiday cyber scams to watch out for, according to IC3, include:

* Phishing schemes using e-mails that direct victims to spoofed merchant websites misleading them into providing personal information.

* Online auction and classified ad fraud, where Internet criminals post products they don’t have but charge the consumer’s credit card anyway and pocket the money.

* Delivery fraud, where online criminals posing as legitimate delivery services offer reduced or free shipping labels for a fee. When the customer tries to ship a package using a phony label, the legitimate delivery service flags it and requests payment from the customer.

[Link.]

Of these three scams that the Feds warn us about, I’m shamed as a crime wonk to say I’ve only heard of two, which is why you’re even reading about this. The spoofed merchant labels is a new one to me. It seems awfully far-fetched — not that it wouldn’t work with some cats, teaching us all a valuable lesson about the crazed bargain-hunting some of you are already revving your engines for.

Arrhh, picture the scene now.

It’s Christmas Eve and you be straight pimp chillin’ in da crib with the hotties and the shorties. Like any fine-standing gangster of achievement, your pour yourself a Hennessy XO, and lean against your mantelpiece above your fireplace. You light a blunt and take in the festive scene. But hold up! What’s that noise on the roof? You must be trippin’ player, it’s too early in the evening for Santa!

As the noise moves down the chimney you suddenly realize it ain’t Kris Kringle coming by to pop some presents under your tree but the Cripps coming by to pop a cap in yo’ ass! (that link proves ‘if you can think of it, there’s stock photography of it’)

But don’t worry. You’ve got your shit locked down, with LA Police Gear’s Tactical Holster Christmas Stocking hanging above your fireplace – which features “two magazine pouches, a flashlight pouch, and a universal holster that will fit the majority of handguns.”

Before anyone has time to readjust their mouth grille, you’ve removed lil’ bang bang from the hostler, loaded a clip, and dispatched your foe without breaking a sweat… or spilling your cognac. Boom Shakalaka!

Serious players will want to check out the Elite Tactical Christmas Stocking which LA Police Gear claim, and I quote, “works well with 40mm projectile rounds”… Presumably for when only armor piercing capabilities will suffice.

Here at TechYum we love LA Police Gear which, when they’re not blowing shit up or contributing to America’s global diplomacy efforts, sell some really quite awesome stuff.

Our favorite is probably their 5.11 Select Carry Sling Bag which looks like an ordinary messenger bag that can be flipped around to provide easy access to your concealed MP5 or other sub-machine gun. Last time I checked there was no option for that on your Timbuk2 messenger bag!

Only this promotional video does complete justice to its awesomeness:

As I’m sure you’ll agree, every self-respecting gangster needs one.

[Via @EdRabbit and LA Police Gear's email]

Daniel Solove at Concurring Opinions has a hilarious comic about the recent TSA screening uproar. It’s a follow-up to his post five years ago about the Playmobil Airline Screening Playset, which you can buy for your very own at Amazon.com. Maybe if we all get together and buy a lot of them, Playmobil will be inspired to expand that product line. I, for one, would love to spend hours playing with the Fallujah Checkpoint Playlist, the Kabul Suicide Bomber Interdiction Kit, the Blackwater Maritime Security Somali Piracy Prevention Gunboat, and of course DEA Humbolt: Midnight Helicopter Raid!

The comments at Amazon are so bizarre and uproarious that I’m left utterly convinced that the Playset is a hoax. And yet? There it is, manipulated by Daniel into illustrative cautionary tales about the dangers of unchecked government.

At the Amazon page, though, the LOLZ begin before you even get to the comments, as this little screencap demonstrates:

“Black Friday,” of course, is not just the day that the marketing managers of every consumer business in the United States have panic attacks waiting for their revenue figures and the mainstream media tells us (yet again!) that the American way of life is over because retail revenues are down by 8% over last year, and as a result there won’t be a Christmas this year, or any more Christmases, EVER. “Black Friday” is also a name used for the 1993 terrorist bombings in Bombay, India, by the Islamic organized syndicate of Dawood Ibrahim, in retaliation for the Muslim casualties in the Muslim-Hindu riots of December-January 1992-1993, and the title for a book and a movie about them. Isn’t politics fun?

“Black Friday” was also used in the old days to refer to Friday the 13th, and its negative connotations in the West come, of course, from the fact that Jesus was crucified on Friday.

Oh, but back to the Airline Screening Playset, which had me grooving on the manufacturer’s description: Read more…

Meet the new Sex.com! Same as the old Sex.com!

So, you remember that whole thing about Sex.com, the URL fraudulently obtained by forged documents and used to generate briefcases of lettuce then invested in “a Mexican shrimp farm, a Tijuana strip club called the Bolero, and a Napster-like file-sharing site operating out of the Gaza Strip?”

I bet you do! I’m not even hinting at the sleaze this URL attracted; it is the shit magnet to shit on all shit magnets. The case has not one but two books written about it. One is Kieren McCarthy‘s Sex.com; the other is The Sex.com Chronicles by lawyer Charles Carreon.

Well, anyway, this sticky (or is that slimy?) URL got sold again. In March of this year the company owning it was forced into involuntary Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.

The New York Daily News says the frosty $13 million sale price is a record; plenty of other sources say the price the last time it changed hands was $14 million, back in ought-six. Reuters and The Register say it was $14 million in The Six. NYDN says the 2006 price (to Escom LLC) was $11.5 million. Turns out the $14 million price, which was widely reported as the highest price paid for a domain, was erroneous — this according to the company that completed this auction. In a massaged release yesterday, they said the 2006 price was the $11.5 million figure, not $14 million.

I mean, it’s all pink by candlelight, if you catch my meaning, but, you know, a million here, a million there…sooner or later you have to hit the ATM for some Dot Com Industry Food Stamps, right? Am I right?

Regardless, this year’s buyer was Clover Holdings, a company registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a country generally regarded as one of the more controversial tax havens — though Wikipedia is curiously silent on that subject. I’m just glad this highly respectable URL is back on the straight and narrow and into the hands of a respectable company that I can’t seem to find on the internet.

Before I say a word about how hot, built, sweet and kinda sensitive the Gentleman from Texas is, let me tell you that Ron Paul is a right-wing nut. If you’re a right-wing nut, feel free to love him; I don’t give a damn, and I will admit that those conservatives among you who dig Ron Paul are certainly less likely to be be on what I consider the wrong side of absolutely every political debate than, say, you mopes who love his son.

However, because I sweep my business left of center, I wish to address my fellow step-to-the-lefters.

If you’re one of the many liberals who fawn over this irredeemably conservative Congressman because you think he’s a cranky old bastard, you should know that he’s staunchly anti-Abortion, supported the building of a fence between the US and Mexico, believes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should never have been passed and advocates the scaling-back of American military interventionism by having the White House issue Letters of Marque against terrorists.

Yes, that’s right, Letters of Marque. Does that sound anything to you like handing a guy named Vinnie Fingers an envelope full of $100 bills and saying, “Now, if this deadbeat just happen to get dismembered slowly before you blow his brains out, the Godfather would be very pleased…” That’s the sort of “protection of private property by private individuals” Ron Paul means when he says it. That, and keeping an AK-47 where you can get it if someone tries to jack your flat-screen TV in the middle of the night, I tell ya what.

Oh, and did I mention the new Wonder-Bubba of the Bush-Cheney apologists and the White Guys Who Pay Too Much In Taxes, Rand Paul, the son of the irascible whirlwind? In case you kitten-loving Kumbaya Commandos were planning on dusting off all the nice things you said about John McCain any day soon, the younger Paul’s “Tea Party” Dubya-Zombie views bear no resemblance either to his father’s politics or any flavor of rebellion from the mainstream of the GOP. Like virtually all Tea Partiers, he is a garden-variety Republican embarrassed because Republicans keep getting caught doing nasty-ass things like starting foreign wars and taxing the living bejeezus out of all of us to pay for them — even the rich.

Those echoes you hear, those are cries of “But he’s a Maverick!” echoing down through the time stream from 2012 in Bizzarro World, when you liberals will be tempted to vote for either Paul, and I’ll slap you into next century. Thank God it’s just Bizzarrro World. I haven’t got that many slaps left in me, people.

Anyway, here’s the “hot, sweet, built, well-dressed and kinda sensitive” part. The elder Paul is, in my opinion, plain-spoken and eloquent in many cases when he’s not letting wackos write his newsletter. He’s also dead right on a significant number of civil rights issues.

He’s right on this one, and Democrats didn’t introduce it: the American Traveler Dignity Act.

His views on currency, incidentally, make my brain hurt. It’s some Austrian mojo. Whatever. I’ll work on that part.