Google Street View Peeping?
I found this article on AOL, but it is from the New York Times originally.
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some
By MIGUEL HELFT, The New York Times
The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. (June 2) – For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.
Google said it takes privacy seriously and considered the implications of its service before it was introduced. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” it said.
Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.
“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”
Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”
Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the “Best Urban Images” that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, “Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?”
Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” the company said. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
You can read the rest of the article on AOL MOney News by clicking here.
My comment: I am a huge fan of transparency, so you might think this new ability wouldn’t bother me. But the transparency I favor is transparency of business and government transactions, not people taking in my behavior in my own house! I am also a huge fan of personal privacy, and while a street view that just shows my cat in the window wouldn’t be alarming, it tells me that photos shot at night, which would show the interior of my residence, are also possible, and that thought troubles me very much.
Our homes are our castles! If my husband wants to walk around in his underwear (or less 😉 ) and I want to wear my nightgown all day when I am working on a special project, honestly, it is not YOUR business, nor anyone else on the internet! Do you want photos published, taken of you unaware in your own house? This capability is terrifying!
Rare Case of Lying
In today’s Kuwait Times is an article I found utterly hilarious – WHAT WAS HE THINKING????
Exam Fraud Discovered
Kuwait: The director of a secondary school in Khaitan discovered a first of a kind cheating case wehre an unidentified young man sat for a Quran exam instead of one of the school students, reported Alam Alyawm, noting that being unable to identify the young man and suspecting him, the director requested an ID to verify his true identity.
Sources said that the examined young man confusingly showed a driving license belonging to the student he had substituted. Realizing his fraud had been discovered, the young man fled the school leaving his exam paper and driving license behind.
Upon contacting the real student, he told the police that his driving license had been missing and that he had lodged a report with the police in this regard. Further investigations are in progress.
Uh . . . yeh, I bet they are. 🙂
I am sorry, this just gives me such a giggle. Cheating on a Quran exam? ? ?
Before I wrote the above, I had to do a lot of thinking . . . like the bible, our book, does not say “thou shalt not lie” as one of the 10 commandments, neither is it one of the two great commandments in our New Testament (love the one true God before all others, love your neighbor as yourself), so what does the bible say about lying? Fortuntately for us, there is Google, and the internet, and you can click on What the Bible has to say about lying if you want the specifics. It reminded me that Satan is called “The Father of All Lies.” *shiver* That’s good enough for me.
There are several places in the bible, however, when even good people lie, like because they are scared or because they don’t want to face the wrath of God. One is Sarah, when the messengers tell her she is going to have a baby and she is something like 80 or 100 years old and she laughs, she can’t help it, Sarah laughs. And God says “Sarah! Are you laughing at me! I can do anything!” and Sarah lies and says “oh no, Lord, I wasn’t laughing.”
Since the Bible and the Quran spring from the same spiritual source, I am willing to bet the Quran also has a few things to say about lying and dishonesty, and fraud, and how you can’t fool Allah or cheat him.
Anyone out there willing to step up and educate us?
Al Qaeda Fed Up With Ground Zero Construction Delays
If I knew how to embed video replays in my blog, I wouldn’t have to make you click on Al Qaeda Fed Up with Ground Zero Construction Delay to watch a video interview with two critics of the Ground Zero construction so far, saying almost identical things, but with a twist, oh what a twist.
The video interview is hysterically funny. Give yourself a grin for the day. It’s from one of my favorite websites: The Onion.
Cat Meat Rumors Refuted (Ho ho ho ho ho)
Front page of todays Kuwait Times is this article:
KUWAIT: A ministry of Commerce official denied rumors that a local restaurant has been closed for selling cat meat. According to Ali Baghli, assistant undersecretary for commercial supervision affairs at the Ministry of Commerce, no violation has been registered against the Arabic restaurant in the Jahra governate as of yet. . . .
My comment – So here is what we know for sure:
A ministry official says the restaurant has not been closed for selling cat meat.
He says no violations has been registered AS YET.
He does not say the restaurant was not selling cat meat; he is saying the restaurant was not closed for selling cat meat.
What was interesting, is that both the Kuwait Times and Arab Times, when they reported this cat meat restaurant closing, said that because of connections in the government, this restaurant was unlikely to stay closed.
It is not unlike Make This Case Go Away where two youths are caught with a maid they have abducted and raped, they fight the arresting officer and bite him on the hand, they confess to what they have done . . . and no violation is registered, because the police officer is pressured by his superiors to drop the case.
It’s not like your next schwarma is guaranteed not to contain fresh cat meat. It’s only guaranteed not prosecuted.
If I sound angry, I am. Police and law enforcement officials are supposed to protect the public – that’s you and me. When the system is broken so badly that laws are not enforced against the transgressors, and worse, when courageous policement are punished for doing their job, it is a very very sorry state of affairs.
And I am convinced that God has a very special place in hell for those who abuse the trust the public places in them.
I sure wouldn’t eat any schwarma in Jahra.
Who’s Checking Kuwait’s Toothpaste?
US checks toothpaste for toxins
Toothpaste is the latest Chinese export to raise safety concerns
Health officials in the United States say they are checking all shipments of toothpaste imported from China for contamination with toxic chemicals.
Panama and the Dominican Republic have reported finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in engine coolants, in toothpaste from China.
The toothpaste scare is the latest involving products from China.
Earlier this year, contaminated pet food ingredients killed a number of cats and dogs in North America.
The toxic chemical, melamine, was found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands.
The tainted wheat gluten was even thought to have made its way into livestock feed.
Low-cost substitute
Cough syrup containing containing diethylene glycol originating from China killed more than 50 people in Panama last year.
The New York Times said a Chinese chemical maker had sold the industrial-grade chemical as glycerine, which is often used as a moistener in products from toothpaste to soap and cosmetics.
CHINESE FOOD SCARES
May 2007 China probes reports that contaminated toothpaste was sent to Central America
March 2007 Melamine is found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands
Nov 2006 A dye farmers fed to ducks to make their eggs look fresher is found to contain cancer-causing properties and 5,000 ducks are culled
August 2006 About 40 people in Beijing contract meningitis after eating partially cooked snails at a chain of restaurants
Diethylene glycol is sometimes used as a low-cost substitute for glycerine and Chinese toothpaste makers have said small amounts of the chemical are harmless in toothpaste.
“We are going to be sampling and testing all shipments of toothpaste that come from China,” said Doug Arbesfeld, a spokesman for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the US after Canada.
Food safety investigators in Panama said two brands of toothpaste were imported illegally from China through a free-trade zone.
Chinese officials say they are investigating the claims.
The Dominican Republic and Panama have pulled thousands of tubes of Chinese toothpaste brands Excel and Mr Cool from store shelves.
Beijing recently pledged to clean up its tainted food and drug industry after the series of safety scares. The subject was raised by the US in bilateral trade talks this week.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration is facing trial, accused of taking large bribes to approve untested medicines.
From today’s BBC News.
Life Unfair? Also bad for you
If you think life is unfair to you, just the perception could mean you are at higher risk of heart disease and stroke.
Unfairness ‘increases heart risk’
Unfair treatment outside the office could increase risks of heart disease
People who feel they are treated unfairly, including in the home and community, may have a higher risk of developing heart disease, a study says.
University College London researchers studied 8,000 people, says the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
They found those with a profound sense of injustice had a 55% higher chance of suffering serious heart disease.
Experts believe a sense of unfairness engenders negative emotions which may prompt biochemical changes in the body.
This is from BBC Health News, yesterday, and you can read the rest by clicking here.
Hats off to Saudi Women
Last week in the May 10th Kuwait Times, Dr. Sami Alrabaa wrote a fascinating article on Saudi Women, Saudi Arabia and some shifts in press coverage in Saudi Arabia.
This is how the article starts:
Anti-Woman Culture
More and more Saudi women are speaking out against preachers in their country. Fatma Al-Faqih, a columnist at the daily Saudi Al-Watan accuses preachers (April 17) of “denigrating women” and “inciting discrimination against women.” “Day in day out, our preachers flood us with accusations against women and beg men to defend the virtues of society that women corrupt,” Al-Faqih writes. This “anti-woman culture”, Al-Faqih continues, causes women to feel mentally and psychologically inferior, “like a quarrelsome child who must be constantly supervised, intimidated, and punished into performing her duties.”
It is also unprecedented that the Saudi print media are allowing women to air their indignation and frustration. Al-Faqih also writes, “Women are good Muslims as men are. But our preachers insist on producing a distorted picture of women, which has nothing to do with true Islam. The Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) never discriminated against women. He respected them. He valued their opinions and occasionally sought their advice. He treated them as full-fledged human beings. Our preachers however, depict women as spoilt minors who have got to be constantly instructed to behave themselves. They cannot be trusted.”
Al-Faqih also wonders, “Where is it written in the holy Quran and Hadeeth that women are not allowed to drive their own cars? Where is it stated that women are forbidden to travel alone, leave their houses, or travel alone with the family’s chauffeur? Where is it stated that women are forbidden to have a passport without permission from their male closest relatives, forbidden to go to school or university without permission, forbidden to take a job without permission, forbidden to open a bank account without permission, forbidden to name their own children without their men’s approval?”
Further, Al-Faqih complains, “Where is that divine law which does not allow women to sue their husbands for divorce? Where is it written that women’s voice is a sexual organ and hence she is not allowed to speak in public and express her concerns? Where is that sacred law that does not allow women to keep their own children after divorce? Where is it written in Islam that women are not allowed to vote or run for office?”
Al-Faqih concludes, “Are we in Saudi Arabia a special brand of Muslims? In other Muslim countries, women have become presidents (in Bangladesh for example), prime ministers (in Turkey and Pakistan), ministers in Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Kuwait and other Arab countries. In all Muslim countries, women have the right to vote and run for office. No, we are not a special brand of Muslims. It is our preachers who interpret Islam their own way.”
You can read the rest of the article by clicking HERE.
My comment: When I lived in Saudi Arabia, my eyes were opened. My Saudi Arabian women friends were SO smart, and they really knew their Quran. They also knew hadith, and they knew the weight of each hadith, which were strong and which were weak. They didn’t just memorize suura; they thought about them, they discussed them and analyzed them.
Through them, I understoon Islam in a whole new way, and understood the revolutionary thinking of the Prophet, who was kind to women, took council from women, and treated women fairly. In an age when female babies were routinely killed, he stood against the tide of tradition, and forbid the killing of female babies, and insisted on rights of inheiritance for females (and this in the 7th century).
And no one found it more ironic than the Saudi women that Saudi Arabia has become a worldwide symbol for repression of female rights. My Saudi sisters claim that in the birthplace of Islam, Islam has become distorted, a weapon used against women.
My Saudi women friends often told me I was not required to wear a scarf. My embassy told me the same thing, that it was a voluntary sign of submission to Islam. The embassy also told me to carry a scarf, and if accosted by the mutawa,(religious police, the “The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Defense Against Vice” or something like that) to put it on until he was out of view, and then to take it off again, that the scarf was not mandatory. The mutawa felt differently, and would boom out in loud, offended voices: “MADAME, COVER YOUR HAIR!”
I would comply. But the unfairness never failed to rouse my ire. Excuse me? My hair might cause YOU to have a lustful thought? You control YOURSELF and your thoughts, and let ME worry about my morality.
So my scarf – errr hat – is off to these Saudi women who have the bravery to write these well thought out position papers to the Saudi papers.
The interesting thing to me is that the Saudi press is printing the women’s complaints now. . . perhaps, insh’allah, some changes are in the air.
And a muse – So when a Saudi woman comes to Kuwait, for example, or to France – is she allowed to drive? We know it is illegal for her to drive in Saudi Arabia, but is it also immoral for her to drive in Saudi Arabia? Or is it immoral for her to drive anywhere? So like is it immoral for all us women to be driving anywhere?
Kuwait Times?
I heard today – on Global Voices Online: Kuwait that the Minister of Information has rescinded the restrictions on publications.
Either my Kuwait Times was stolen this morning, or it never came. I have tried to reach the Kuwait Times online, but get only blanks. Is there something going on?
Government limits freedom of expression
In the United States, news that people want buried comes out on Saturday night, when people are busy with other things and not paying a lot of attention. Does that happen in Kuwait?
I watched for anyone blogging on this yesterday, but saw nothing. I showed the newspaper to my Kuwaiti friends, who were shocked, and hadn’t heard anything about this. Some of it, I get. I am flummoxed by the forbidding of any mention of veterinary medicine!
From yesterday’s Kuwait Times.
KUWAIT: All newspapers, magazines, publishing houses and printing presses in Kuwait were yesterday issued a list by the government of the types of articles, advertisements and banners that can no longer be printed or published without official approval. Following is the list of the banned topics and the ministry concerned:
Interior Ministry:
1. Publication or display of slogans that glorify some countries against others.
2. Displaying pictures that glorify some political personalities or religious figures of countries where political or religious conflicts exist.
3. Publications or displaying slogans that glorify or support some political or religious parties outside Kuwait.
4. Publication of personal interviews with citizens who support or oppose a certain policy which may place the state at war with other countries.
5. Publication or displaying slogans that glorify or support some religious or political parties in Kuwait.
6. Announcement of seminars that may probe tribal or sectarian conflicts.
7. Sale of books on sorcery and magic.
8. Spiritual healing (without a licence).
9. Sorcery and ability to heal.
10. Massage without a licence (because those activities are subject to Law No. 15/1960 dealing with commercial companies).
11. Sale and trade of weapons by commercial companies, individual establishments and individuals (swords, sabers, daggers, spears, knives, arrows and arrowheads, pointy rods, spiked clubs, knives, brass knuckles, electric sticks), because licenses from the Interior Ministry to import these.
12. Sale of airguns without a licence from the Interior Ministry.
13. Fireworks and explosives.
14. Sale of surveillance cameras and listening devices (bugs) of all types without obtaining a licence from the concerned authority.
Education Ministry:
1. Publication of ads for private tuitions.
2. Publication of supplementary school notes.
3. Ads of private institutes and universities that are not accredited by the Ministry of Education.
Ministry of Health:
1. Conventional and veterinary medicine.
2. Botanic, animal or chemical formulae.
3. Foods that have health-enhancing effect, claimed to be prepared for treatment.
4. Preparations that claim to provide energy or reduce or increase weight.
5. Change of structures of body parts. (It is a must that a license be obtained from the licenses committee on advertisements related to health and nutrition).
Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor:
1. Donation and blood money ads.
2. Charity homes’ advertisements.
3. Ads for lectures, cultural and religious gatherings (unless a permission is obtained from the ministry).
The order was signed by Fahd Sayyah Al-Ajmi, Director of Local Press Affairs at the Ministry of Information.
Tornado Before and After
Imagery provided in Ogle Earth of the recent tornado damage in Greensburg, Kansas on May 4th.
If you go to Ogle Earth, you can see the before and after shots. The destruction is unbelievable. The immediacy with which the damage could be assessed with the help of these shots helps emergency workers and insurance assessors do their job more quickly.
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