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Why can’t the police be accountable to the community?

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The popularity of the below youtube video resulted in the suspension of a Baltimore cop yesterday (Monday). The video shows Salvatore Rivieri, a officer with 17 years at the Baltimore Police Department, busting up a 14 year old kid (Eric Bush) for riding a skate board in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor (a massive mall for tourists that sucks money away from the city’s social services).

In case you missed it, this video was posted on Saturday Feb 9 2008, but it records events that transpired last summer. A Baltimore Sun reporter brought the video to the attention of the Baltimore Police on Sunday when the reporter called to asked for the department’s comments.

We all know the power of video to show police brutality–who can forget Rodney King?

But why do folks need to record violent police actions? (more…)

Hillary Clinton supporters have highlighted Clinton’s missing youth vote in this video endorsing her candidacy:

CubbyChaser on the Indecision 2008 blog points out the video’s key advantage over Obama’s popular “Yes, We Can” video: it “illuminat[es] what would happen if the Jackson 5 and a late-stage Alzheimer’s patient collaborated on a campaign song for your candidate.”

Researchers at George Institute of Technology are using nanotechnology to produce electricity from movement (the piezoelectric effect).

They hope to develop a shirt that can harness the energy of the wearer’s movement and convert it to electricity to power small electronic devices. When your body’s movement applies mechanical stress to these new shirts, their Kevlar fibers that are surrounded zinc oxide nano-wires produce electricity.

One square meter of fabric can theoretically generate as much as 80 milliwatts of power, according to the researchers. That’s actually not very much. In contrast, an average iPod, mp3 player, or cell phone uses at least few hundred milliwatts. But it could power pedometers and other such devices.
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