December 29, 2008

Robert Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored

We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force.

Read more.

List of Troubled Banks

Ready to see where your bank stands?

Find the list here.

2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

Read more.

December 27, 2008

Internet sites could be given 'cinema-style age ratings'

The Cabinet minister describes the internet as “quite a dangerous place” and says he wants internet-service providers (ISPs) to offer parents “child-safe” web services.

It always starts as "protecting the children".

His plans to rein in the internet, and censor some websites, are likely to trigger a major row with online advocates who ferociously guard the freedom of the world wide web.

You think? Hmmm. I'm already in a "major row".

“There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it.”

Yep. Definitely in a "major row" now.

Mr Burnham admits that his plans may be interpreted by some as “heavy-handed” but says the new standards drive is “utterly crucial”. Mr Burnham also believes that the inauguration of Barack Obama, the President-Elect, presents an opportunity to implement the major changes necessary for the web.

Read the rest.

December 23, 2008

Pope Benedict criticizes homosexual behavior

Pope Benedict said Monday that saving humanity from homosexual or transsexual behaviour was just as important as saving the rainforest from destruction.

...

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound."

The pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman. He compared behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work."


Hmmm. Seems like "behavior beyond traditional heterosexual relations" might just be proof that you've been making up this "god" of yours.

He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected."

Sure, those of us that disagree with you can respect this "order" of yours. Too bad you can't seem to do the same for those that are different than how you think they should be.

Read more.

December 19, 2008

With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise

A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.

Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.

...

“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.


The "Haves" (Them) and the "Have Nots" (You).

Read more.

December 18, 2008

The Heaviest Element Known to Science

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet known to science.

The new element, Governmentium (Gv), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.


Read the rest. It's pretty damn funny.

October 21, 2008

And now the Manchurian microchip

The myth: Chinese intelligence services have concealed a microchip in every computer everywhere, programmed to "call home" if and when activated.

The reality: It may actually be true.

All computers on the market today -- be they Dell, Toshiba, Sony, Apple or especially IBM -- are assembled with components manufactured inside the PRC. Each component produced by the Chinese, according to a reliable source within the intelligence community, is secretly equipped with a hidden microchip that can be activated any time by China's military intelligence services, the PLA.

"It is there, deep inside your computer, if they decide to call it up," the security chief of a multinational corporation told The Investigator. "It is capable of providing Chinese intelligence with everything stored on your system -- on everyone's system -- from e-mail to documents. I call it Call Home Technology. It doesn't mean to say they're sucking data from everyone's computer today, it means the Chinese think ahead -- and they now have the potential to do it when it suits their purposes."


Read more.

October 5, 2008

'Intelligent' computers put to the test'

No machine has yet passed the test devised by Turing, who helped to crack German military codes during the Second World War. But at 9am next Sunday, six computer programs - 'artificial conversational entities' - will answer questions posed by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognised 'thinking' machine. If any program succeeds, it is likely to be hailed as the most significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence since the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. It could also raise profound questions about whether a computer has the potential to be 'conscious' - and if humans should have the 'right' to switch it off.

Read more.

September 30, 2008

Obama suggests expanding FDIC coverage to save bailout plan

"The majority of American families should rest assured that the deposits they have in our banks are safe," Obama said in a statement put out by his presidential campaign.

"That is why today, I am proposing that we also raise the FDIC limit to $250,000 as part of the economic rescue package — a step that would boost small businesses, make our banking system more secure, and help restore public confidence in our financial system."


Yes, because the everyday Joe has $250,000 in the bank.

Idiot.

This is smoke and mirrors being used to hide the fact that he's in the back pocket of big business and is trying to protect the wealthy.

Look, I don't want my tax dollars going to bail out banks that made risky loans and are now going under. Why protect stupidity? What incentive is there to not make risky loans if the government is just going to bail you out?

Read more.

Let Risk-Taking Financial Institutions Fail

Let the poorly managed, overly risk-taking financial institutions fail! Always remember that Wall Street and the real economy are not the same thing.

Read more.

September 29, 2008

Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.


Um, duh. Bravo to Congress today for rejecting the bailout.

Read the rest.

September 22, 2008

Mobile phone use 'raises children's risk of brain cancer fivefold'

Professor Hardell told the conference – held at the Royal Society by the Radiation Research Trust – that "people who started mobile phone use before the age of 20" had more than five-fold increase in glioma", a cancer of the glial cells that support the central nervous system. The extra risk to young people of contracting the disease from using the cordless phone found in many homes was almost as great, at more than four times higher.

Those who started using mobiles young, he added, were also five times more likely to get acoustic neuromas, benign but often disabling tumours of the auditory nerve, which usually cause deafness.

By contrast, people who were in their twenties before using handsets were only 50 per cent more likely to contract gliomas and just twice as likely to get acoustic neuromas.

Read more.

Europeans on left and right ridicule U.S. money meltdown

"Greenspan was considered a master," Tremonti declared. "Now we must ask ourselves whether he is not, after [Osama] bin Laden, the man who hurt America the most. . . . It is clear that what is happening is a disease. It is not the failure of a bank, but the failure of a system. Until a few days ago, very few were willing to realize the intensity and the dramatic nature of the crisis."

Read more.

September 18, 2008

Software spots the spin in political speeches

Skillicorn has been watching out for verbal "spin". He has developed an algorithm that evaluates word usage within the text of a conversation or speech to determine when a person "presents themselves or their content in a way that does not necessarily reflect what they know to be true".

Read more.

Biden calls paying higher taxes a patriotic act

Although Republican John McCain claims that Obama would raise taxes, the independent Tax Policy Center and other groups conclude that four out of five U.S. households would receive tax cuts under Obama's proposals.

That's because their plan targets those that make over $250,000 a year.

Read more.

September 12, 2008

Proposed new FBI rules draw civil liberties worries

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern the rewritten rules had been drafted in a way to allow the FBI to begin surveillance without factual evidence to back it up.

It said that under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.


Read more.

Saudi cleric says 'depraved' TV moguls may be killed

A senior Saudi cleric has issued a religious decree saying the owners of television networks broadcasting "depravation and debauchery" may be killed, Al-Arabiya television reported on Friday.

...

"It is lawful to kill ... the apostles of depravation... if their evil cannot be easily removed through simple sanctions," Luhaidan said, according to excerpt of the remarks broadcast on the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya.


Read more. Practice religion less.

September 8, 2008

How to Create the Perfect Fake Identity

Let me start off by saying that I'm making this whole thing up.

...

Call it "identity farming." You invent a handful of infants. You apply for Social Security numbers for them. Eventually, you open bank accounts for them, file tax returns for them, register them to vote, and apply for credit cards in their name. And now, 25 years later, you have a handful of identities ready and waiting for some real people to step into them.

...

Here's the real question: Do you actually have to show up for any part of your life?


Read more.

September 5, 2008

File Sharing Lawsuits at a Crossroads, After 5 Years of RIAA Litigation

Despite a fallow legal landscape, most defendants cannot afford attorneys and settle for a few thousand dollars rather than risk losing even more, Beckerman says. "There are still very few people fighting back as far as the litigation goes and they settle."

"It costs more to hire a lawyer to defend these cases than take the settlement," agrees Lory Lybeck, a Washington State attorney, who is leading a prospective class-action against the RIAA for engaging in what he says is "sham" litigation tactics. "That's an important part of what's going on. The recording industry is setting a price where you know they cannot hire lawyers. It's a pretty well-designed system whereby people are not allowed any effective participation in one of the three prongs in the federal government."

Settlement payments can be made on a website, where the funds are used to sue more defendants. None of the money is paid to artists.


Now, isn't that interesting? None of the settlement money goes to the artists. Zero. Zip. Nada. So, if none of that money is going to the artists (and remember, we're told that downloading songs only hurts the artists) does that mean that the RIAA is getting filthy rich off of other people's work? Oh, wait. Yes, it does. But you already knew that.

Nobody can credibly dispute that file sharing systems are a superhighway for pirated music. "There is no doubt that the volume of files on P2P is overwhelmingly infringing," says Eric Garland, president of Los Angeles research firm BigChampagne. But critics of the RIAA say it's time for the music industry to stop attacking fans, and start looking for alternatives. Fred von Lohmann, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the lawsuits are simply not reducing the number of people trading music online.

"If the goal is to reduce file sharing," he says, "it's a failure."


It's difficult to admit that your business model is outdated when mega-fortunes have been made off of it for decades.

Read more.

No Questions, Please. We'll Tell You What You Need To Know.

According to Nicole Wallace of the McCain campaign, the American people don't care whether Sarah Palin can answer specific questions about foreign and domestic policy. According to Wallace -- in an appearance I did with her this morning on Joe Scarborough's show -- the American people will learn all they need to know (and all they deserve to know) from Palin's scripted speeches and choreographed appearances on the campaign trail and in campaign ads. Here's the exchange:

Watch the video and read more.

Senator Biden Wrong: AIPAC Does Represent the Government of Israel

Accused of not backing AIPAC sponsored legislation, Biden told reporters, "They think they know the Senate better than I do. They don't know the Senate better than I do...AIPAC does not speak for the State of Israel."

The outspoken Senator Biden, often compared to president John F. Kennedy, is wrong. Newly declassified documents reveal that before his death, JFK's most pressing concerns were registering the Israel lobby as foreign government agents and inspections of the Israeli nuclear weapons program.

Read more.

September 2, 2008

DNA breakthrough can identify an individual in a public place

They have found a way of picking an individual’s DNA out of a mixed sample – even when that sample is contaminated by the DNA of up to 200 others. The method works even when the DNA of interest is only 0.1 per cent of the sample. At present, it is hard for forensic investigators to detect an individual’s DNA if it constitutes less than 10 per cent of a mixture, or if many other people’s DNA is present.

This means that it is almost impossible to identify a suspect’s DNA out of, for example, a collection of skin cells from the handrail of a public staircase. The new method could resolve this problem.


Read more.

Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century

The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.

The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity – which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.

Read more.

Gov. Sarah Palin - just another dirty politician

The top 10 things you should know about Sarah Palin:

I think we can add an 11th one: she was once a member of AIP (Alaskan Independence Party).

Check 'em out.

The Myth of Sarah Palin as Tax Cutter and Budget Cutter

During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%.

She inherited a city with zero debt, but, despite the increase in taxes,left it with indebtedness of over $22 million.


Read more.

Is McCain Getting Set to Dump Palin?

And the Palin mess is getting uglier by the minute. The NY Times Tuesday reports that, in addition to Palin's daughter being five months pregnant, she's hired a private lawyer to defend her in her abuse-of-power investigation; was a member of a political party seeking Alaska's secession from the Union; and that her husband Todd was arrested 22 years ago for drunken driving. Jeez, the Republicans sure have a distorted view of "family values," huh? With McCain's temper, we can only imagine how much yelling and screaming must be going on behind the scenes right now.

But McCain likely has only himself to blame. Word on the street is that no one in his vice presidential selection committee but him wanted Palin. He wanted his pal Sen. Joe Lieberman, but hastily switched plans last-minute in a likely act of desperation following Obama and the Dems Denver blowout. His move, purely political to seduce Sen. Hillary Clinton's disaffected women supporters, hardly is a "country first" strategy. If McCain was/is so concerned about country, he wouldn't be pushing to put it in the hands of the very inexperienced Palin in the event something were to happen to him. He'd give us someone like Sen. Joe Biden, the Dems' VP nominee.


Will the "token" fall?

Read more.

Will she even survive the week?

Oh, most likely. But the very fact that the question needs to be asked – and I'm not the only one asking it, believe me – indicates what a joke Sarah Palin has already become. Wednesday night, she'll speak before an audience that (mostly) loves her – delegates to a GOP convention tilt heavily toward the socially conservative. That will sustain her for the week. But whether she'll survive the month of September seems a genuinely serious question.

The "token" will speak.

Read more.

A Disappointing Finish for Americans at Education Olympics

The United States won the most medals of any country at the summer Olympic Games in Beijing, but it turned in a dismal performance at the Education Olympics. Americans took home only one medal from those games, for an embarrassing 20th-place finish, ahead of only Germany, Hungary, and Iceland. The top medal winners across all 58 education events were Finland (35 medals), Hong Kong (33 medals), and Singapore (16 medals).

...

The folks responsible for the first Education Olympics are the policy wonks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C. Michael Petrilli, who oversees national education research projects at the institute, apparently caught the Olympic bug and decided to see what would happen if, instead of competing in pole vaulting or in the 400-meter swim relay, Americans competed in academic challenges.

Read more.

Sarah Palin’s Preacher Problem. End Times Coming?

I did a drive-by of Palin’s church when I was traveling through Wasilla yesterday, not realizing the furor that would be churning the blogosphere less than 24-hours later about a speech Palin delivered there only three months ago. Here’s what she said regarding the war in Iraq.

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God.”


Jesus. I'm sure "God" gets tired of being used in such ways.

Read more.

Lieberman hails McCain's record, criticizes Obama

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democratic vice presidential pick eight years ago, on Tuesday criticized Barack Obama's national security record and hailed Republican candidate John McCain's, a clear boost to the GOP.

...

Although his vote in the Senate gives the Democrats a narrow majority, he has riled former party members again this year by criticizing Obama and endorsing his longtime friend McCain.

...

"He's going to be punished by the Democratic Party and he knows it. But he wants to do it because he thinks he's the best candidate for president," Kean said.


No he's doesn't. He's supporting his "longtime friend McCain." Which probably means if McCain gets elected, then Joe "I'll do anything" Leiberman will get appointed to a nice position.

Hey Joe (apologies to Jimi Hendrix there), I guess you'll do or say anything to try and make you believe that you are important. You are not.

Read more.

August 29, 2008

McCain's VP Wants Creationism Taught in School

In a 2006 gubernatorial debate, the soon-to-be governor of Alaska said of evolution and creation education, "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of education. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

...

"It's unfortunate McCain would pick someone who shares those particular anti-science views, but it's not a surprise," said Barbara Forrest, a Southeastern Lousiana University philosophy professor and prominent critic of creationist science. "She's a choice that pleases the religious right. And the religious right has been the chief force against teaching evolution."

...

According to Fordham Institute science education expert Lawrence Lerner, Palin's nomination is less worrisome in terms of education than the broad relationship of science and government.


It seems to me Sarah Palin was chosen for her looks. Let's face it, McCain is, well, "weathered," and I'm sure having a "trophy VP" will help change the view of his "attractiveness" to Joe Public.

Read more.

August 25, 2008

Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers' brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science -- and if it's not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

...

One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely, "How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? [...] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"

...

"I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides have figured out how to control brains, they'd rather not go there," he said. "Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we'll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it's too delicious to ignore."


Read more.

August 23, 2008

Joe Biden's pro-RIAA, pro-FBI tech voting record

That's probably okay with Barack Obama: Biden likely got the nod because of his foreign policy knowledge.

Read more.

August 21, 2008

New Guidelines Would Give F.B.I. Broader Powers

The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Read more.

McCain unsure how many houses he owns

The correct answer is at least four, located in Arizona, California and Virginia, according to his staff. Newsweek estimated this summer that the couple owns at least seven properties.

Yeah. He can relate to me and my needs. He has no idea what the needs of the average American family are.

Rich people should not lead. They rarely can fathom budgets, economic difficulty, or fiscal responsibility.

Read more.

August 13, 2008

Rep. Bachmann: Planet's Been Saved Already

“[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet,” Bachmann said. “We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that.”

They're both whacked.

Read more.

August 12, 2008

U.S. Broadband Speeds Too Darn Slow; Adoption Hits 7-Year Low

The bad news: Broadband adoption slipped to a seven-year low last quarter. The worse news: It could take a century for the United States to catch up to broadband speeds in Japan, given the rate at which services are improving here.

...

The trade group says the average U.S. internet speed was 2.3-megabits per second, up just .4 mbps from last year. Japan, by contrast, boasts average net speeds of roughly 63-mbps range.


Think about that. 63-mbps!

Read more.

Bigfoot Body Found Will Shock the World

DNA evidence and photo evidence of the creature will be presented in a press conference on Friday, August 15th from 12 Noon to 1:00pm at the Cabana Hotel-Palo Alto at 4290 El Camino Real in Palo Alto, California, 94306. The press conference will not be open to the public. It will only be open to credentialed members of the press.
Here are some of the vital statistics on the “Bigfoot” body:


Check out the stats and read the rest of the news release.

A big surprise on gas

But perception is not reality where gas prices are concerned. By June of this year, disposable income had risen by an average of $1,627 per person over last year's figures, according to the Department of Commerce, while the average person's real expenditures on gasoline increased by about $490. Our incomes are still outpacing gasoline price increases. The problem is that our incomes aren't outpacing the increase in gas prices lumped together with increases in everything else -- air conditioning, food, etc. Our homes, meanwhile, are losing value.

Read more.

August 10, 2008

Science close to unveiling invisible man

INVISIBILITY devices, long the realm of science fiction and fantasy, have moved closer after scientists engineered a material that can bend visible light around objects.

The breakthrough could lead to systems for rendering anything from people to large objects, such as tanks and ships, invisible to the eye – although this is still years off.


But it's coming...

Read more, and think about how this technology will be abused.

August 8, 2008

Fingerprint test tells much more than identity

With a new analytical technique, a fingerprint can reveal much more than the identity of a person. It can also identify what the person has been touching — drugs, explosives or poisons, for example.


...

As it becomes cheaper and more widely available, the Desi technology has potential ethical implications, Cooks said. Instead of drug tests, a company could surreptitiously check for illegal drug use of its employees by analyzing computer keyboards after the employees have gone home, for instance.


Ah, the future looks so bright, doesn't it? Just think how this can be abused.

Read more, and wear gloves more often.

August 2, 2008

Gary McKinnon: Hacking Away At Truth and the Failings of the Disclosure Community?

McKinnon not only found the odd gem of significant exopolitical data, he also found that the US’s military and intelligence electronic networks were, to understate it, vastly insecure.

...

It’s unfortunate that a UK citizen with [whatever your moral views on his activities] humanitarian intent should now be facing a 60 year jail term when possibly more threatening actors are still free behind their respective computer screens.

...

It’s worth remembering that McKinnon spent numerous hours online trawling these networks and finding mostly regular material – it was his obsessive nature on the embargoed UFO issue that pushed him onwards. By the time of his arrest, Gary had found two items that have been endlessly debated in the field ever since. First was a list of ‘non-terrestrial officers’ and second was a spreadsheet detailing ‘fleet-to-fleet transfers’.


Read more.

'Major discovery' from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

...

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world's energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet's energy needs for one year.


Read the rest.

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

You only think you're free.

Read more.

July 17, 2008

Ashcroft defends waterboarding before House panel

The controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding has served a "valuable" purpose and does not constitute torture, former Attorney General John Ashcroft told a House committee Thursday.

Waterboard him and let's see if he continues to say the same thing.

Read more.

Two genes may prevent HIV infection: Canadian research centre

Scientists have isolated two genes which may prevent people from contracting HIV or at least slow the rate at which they develop AIDS, a new study has found.

Read more.

July 15, 2008

At the uneasy intersection of bloggers and the law

This, of course, is a blogger's nightmare: enforced silence and the prospect of jail time. The district attorney eventually withdrew the subpoena and lifted the gag requirement after the bloggers threatened to sue. But the fact that the tactic was used at all raised alarm bells for some free-speech advocates.

Read more.

Study finds genetic link to violence, delinquency

"I don't want to say it is a crime gene, but 1 percent of people have it and scored very high in violence and delinquency," Guo said in a telephone interview.

Read more.

July 11, 2008

Five Signs the United States Is Withering Away

The United States has existed for only a little over two centuries, which is a paltry amount of time when you consider that many nations and city-states have lasted for thousands of years (hello, Rome). Now it's starting to look like this brief experiment with human government is going to fail, and soon. Science fiction writers from William Gibson to Lyda Morehouse have written about a future where the United States no longer exists, or has been so heavily reorganized that it isn't recognizable. And Stanford futurist Paul Saffo recently told the San Jose Mercury News, “The U.S. may not exist in any recognizable form in the middle of this century." Though he didn't offer a long list of reasons, we know exactly what he means. There are good reasons to believe that the U.S. is falling apart, and we've got five big ones for you to mull over as you watch this once-powerful twentieth century empire slowly drip down the drain.

Interesting read.

Read about the five signs here.

July 10, 2008

Monkeys Practice World's Oldest Profession

More evidence that other primates might not be so different from humans: after researchers taught seven capuchin monkeys to use currency, they soon paid for sex.

Read more.

Water Found on the Moon

Though the moon has many seas, scientists thought it was dry.

They were wrong.

In a study published today in Nature, researchers led by Brown University geologist Alberto Saal found evidence of water molecules in pebbles retrieved by NASA's Apollo missions.

The findings point to the existence of water deep beneath the moon's surface, transforming scientific understanding of our nearest neighbor's formation and, perhaps, our own. There may also be a more immediately practical application.


Read more.

July 9, 2008

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change

But never mind the poor boy, who became too terrified even to drink. What's scarier is that people in charge of our Government seem to suffer from this "climate change delusion", too.

...

Rudd hopes this pain will make you switch to expensive but less gassy alternatives, and -- hey presto -- the world's temperature will then fall, just like it's actually done since the day Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth.

But you'll have spotted already the big flaw in Rudd's mad plan -- one that confirms he and Garnaut really do have delusions.

The truth is Australia on its own emits less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide. Any savings we make will make no real difference, given that China (now the biggest emitter) and India (the fourth) are booming so fast that they alone will pump out 42 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases by 2030.


Stay scared people! Oh, yeah...and give us more money.

Read more.

July 8, 2008

Mysterious Dent in Nose of Plane Appears During Flight

The passenger asked the pilot if he thought he hit anything, and the pilot reportedly said, "I don't think I hit anything" while covering up his name tag.

Read more and check out the picture here.

AT&T Whistleblower: Spy Bill Creates 'Infrastructure for a Police State'

Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate's vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.

...

But the appeals court ruling will likely never see the light of day, since the Senate is set to vote on July 8 on the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which also largely legalizes Bush's warrantless wiretapping program by expanding how the government can wiretap from inside the United States without getting individualized court orders.

Let them watch you go here.

US wants sci-fi killer robots for terror fight

KILLER robots which can change their shape to squeeze under doors and through cracks in walls to track their prey are moving from the realms of science fiction to the front line in the fight against terrorism.

...

America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) and the Army Research Office has awarded the contract to iRobot, which has developed other robots for the military.

They want scientists to come up with a design for a tiny robot able to move under its own power and change shape so it can get through gaps less than half an inch wide.


Think of where this technology will lead us. Not a pretty sight.

Ah. The world we live in.

Read more.

Want some torture with your peanuts?

A senior government official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has expressed great interest in a so-called safety bracelet that would serve as a stun device, similar to that of a police Taser®. According to this promotional video found at the Lamperd Less Lethal website, the bracelet would be worn by all airline passengers.

This bracelet would:

• take the place of an airline boarding pass

• contain personal information about the traveler

• be able to monitor the whereabouts of each passenger and his/her luggage

• shock the wearer on command, completely immobilizing him/her for several minutes

The Electronic ID Bracelet, as it’s referred to as, would be worn by every traveler “until they disembark the flight at their destination.” Yes, you read that correctly. Every airline passenger would be tracked by a government-funded GPS, containing personal, private and confidential information, and that it would shock the customer worse than an electronic dog collar if he/she got out of line?


WTF?

No, really.

What The Fuck?

Read more.

July 7, 2008

Eating soy linked to memory loss

Researchers determined people who ate soy at least twice a day had 20 percent less memory function that those who ate it significantly less.

Read more.

New Cars in California Must Display Global Warming Score

The score will be displayed next to the already-required smog score, which also rates cars one to 10 for how many smog-forming emissions they emit. For both scores, an average vehicle will have a score of five.

Read more.

For Better or Worse, Sex in Space Is Inevitable

Weddings in space could be right around the corner, and experts figure the inevitable cosmic consummation will be just around the next corner.

Read more.

Prefer dogs to humans? You're not alone (or unbalanced)

The finding, Kurdek wrote, supports the idea that "people strongly attached to their pet dogs do not turn to pet dogs as substitutes for failed interactions with humans."

To Gavriele-Gold, the intensity of the relationship between people and their pets is unsurprising.

"Humans tend to be very disappointing - notice our divorce rate," Gavriele-Gold said. "Dogs are not hurtful and humans are. People are inconsistent and dogs are fairly consistent."


Read more.

July 6, 2008

'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights

Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won't eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.


Read the rest.

July 5, 2008

The antennas are coming

Why don’t more people know that low-level, non-heating electromagnetic waves can adversely affect people’s health and well-being? One reason is that citizens are prohibited by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 from speaking at public meetings about health effects when cell-phone antennas are proposed for their towns, a law written by lobbyists designed to keep information about health effects from the public. Another is the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Law of 1999, which gave cell phone companies total immunity from product liability. Unlike cigarettes, you will not read in your newspaper about any high-profile lawsuits claiming cell-phone use causes brain tumors or cancer. By law, there can be no lawsuits.

Read more.

Exclusive: secret film reveals how Mugabe stole an election

A film that graphically shows how Robert Mugabe's supporters rigged Zimbabwe's election has been smuggled out of the country by a prison officer. It is believed to be the first footage of actual ballot-rigging and comes as Zimbabwe's president faces growing international pressure.

Shepherd Yuda, 36, fled the country this week with his wife and children. He said that he hoped the film, which was made for the Guardian, would help draw further attention to the violence and corruption in Zimbabwe.

Read more and make sure to watch the film.

Big Oil's Iraq deals are the greatest stick-up in history

So what makes such lousy deals possible in Iraq, which has already suffered so much? Paradoxically, it is Iraq's suffering - its never-ending crisis - that is the rationale for an arrangement that threatens to drain Iraq's treasury of its main revenue source. The logic goes like this: Iraq's oil industry needs foreign expertise because years of punishing sanctions starved it of new technology, while the invasion and continuing violence degraded it further. And Iraq needs to start producing more oil urgently. Why? Also because of the war. The country is shattered and the billions handed out in no-bid contracts to western firms have failed to rebuild it.

...

Invading countries to seize their natural resources is illegal under the Geneva conventions. That means the huge task of rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure - including its oil infrastructure - is the financial responsibility of Iraq's invaders. They should be forced to pay reparations, just as Saddam Hussein's regime paid $9bn to Kuwait in reparations for its 1990 invasion. Instead, Iraq is being forced to sell 75% of its national patrimony to pay the bills for its own illegal invasion and occupation.


You always knew it was about the oil.

Read more.

FBI Could Investigate You

FBI Agents could soon be allowed to investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, according to the Justice Department.

Read more.


Are the ice caps melting?

The headlines last week brought us terrifying news: The North Pole will be ice-free this summer "for the first time in human history," wrote Steve Connor in The Independent. Or so the experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado predict. This sounds very frightening, so let's look at the facts about polar sea ice.

As usual, there are a couple of huge problems with the reports.


Read more.

Study: Most Americans say many religions can lead to eternal life

Most Americans say they are absolutely sure about standards of right and wrong – and are just as sure that no one religion holds an exclusive franchise on the truth.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they believe in God (or a "universal spirit"). But substantial majorities from all major religious categories also say they believe their religion is not the only path to eternal life, and that there's not just one correct version of their faith.

...

But a willingness to accept diverse views could be found even in members of many faith traditions known for strictly defined religious truths: More than 60 percent of those who said they were Southern Baptists said many religions can be right about how to get to the hereafter. And about eight in 10 Catholics said there was more than one true interpretation of their faith.

...

As other surveys have indicated, the Pew study indicates that America has drifted slightly more secular over the decades, but overwhelming majorities continue to say they believe in God (92 percent), heaven (74 percent), hell (59 percent), and angels and demons active in the world (68 percent).


Read more.

Obama Wants to Expand Role of Religious Groups

“Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square,” Mr. Obama intends to say. “But the fact is, leaders in both parties have recognized the value of a partnership between the White House and faith-based groups.”

Jesus.

Different wolf. Same sheep's clothing.

Read more.

July 3, 2008

The floating cities that could one day house climate change refugees

At first glance, they look like a couple of giant inflatable garden chairs that have washed out to sea

But they are, apparently, the ultimate solution to rapidly rising sea levels.

This computer-generated image shows two floating cities, each with enough room for 50,000 inhabitants.

Based on the design of a lilypad, they could be used as a permanent refuge for those whose homes have been covered in water. Major cities including London, New York and Tokyo are seen as being at huge risk from oceans which could rise by as much as 3ft by the end of this century.


Read more and check out the pic.

Bill Moyers: It Was Oil, All Along

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.

...

There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts - that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.

...

The meetings were secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq - and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.

Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days.


Read the rest.

New Computer Repair Law Could Affect Both Company Owners and Consumers

A new Texas law requires every computer repair technician to obtain a private investigator's license, according to a lawsuit filed in Austin. Violators can face a $4,000 fine and one year in jail, as well as a $10,000 civil penalty.

Unlicensed computer shops will have to close down until they obtain a private investigator's license.

A private investigator's license can be obtained by acquiring a criminal justice degree or by getting a three-year apprenticeship under a licensed private investigator.


Read more.

America's Shrinking Groceries

American supermarkets are epics of excess: it often seems like every item in the store comes in a "Jumbo" size or has "Bonus!" splashed across the label. But is it possible that the amount of food Americans are buying is, in fact... shrinking? Well, yes. Soaring commodity and fuel prices are driving up costs for manufacturers; faced with a choice between raising prices (which consumers would surely notice) or quietly putting fewer ounces in the bag, carton or cup (which they generally don't) manufacturers are choosing the latter.

Read more.

Source: Protective order will keep Viacom out of sensitive YouTube user data

Google has been ordered to turn over YouTube user data to Viacom. But Viacom will be guilty of contempt of court if it uses that data for anything other than specifically proving the prevalence of piracy on YouTube, a source close to Viacom told CNET News.com on Thursday.

That's serious business. Contempt of court is the sort of thing that can get a lawyer's license taken away.


Read more.

Judge Orders YouTube to Give All User Histories to Viacom

Google will have to turn over every record of every video watched by YouTube users, including users' names and IP addresses, to Viacom, which is suing Google for allowing clips of its copyright videos to appear on YouTube, a judge ruled Wednesday.

WTF?

Read the rest. It gets worse.

July 1, 2008

Why the sudden food crisis?

Few are ready to talk about the carrying capacity of Earth and whether we are exceeding it. Perhaps the time has come to realize that Earth is close to being stressed beyond its ability to support the people inhabiting it. It is not just the food we grow, but the damage we are causing to the land by over-farming, the addition of pollutants to the atmosphere bringing on rapid climate change, and the now-generation approach that we must have it all. We have not grasped the concept of sustainability.

Read more.

June 30, 2008

Soil on Mars 'good for asparagus'

There is still no answer to the old question of whether there has ever been life on Mars but apparently there could be vegetable life.

NASA scientists say the soil they have collected from the northern polar regions of the red planet would be good for growing asparagus and turnips, but probably not strawberries.


Read more.

5 Psychological Experiments That Prove Humanity is Doomed

Psychologists know you have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind because you're never sure what you'll find there. A number of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions about the subjects.

Oh, we're not talking about the occasional psychopath who turns up. No, we're talking about you. The experiments speak for themselves:

...

Think about that when you're walking around the mall: Eight out of ten of those people you see would torture the shit out of a puppy if a dude in a lab coat asked them to.


Hopeless.

Humans are hopeless.

Read all five.

June 27, 2008

Bypass Blocked Usenet

Large ISPs are blocking Usenet
for the possible availability of child pornography. However, the
underlying issue is really one of control -- ISPs can't control people
from using Usenet responsibly, and lack the manpower to police it
appropriately.

Luckily for those of us who are sensible, rational,
responsible, law-abiding adults who embrace Usenet as an invaluable
resource, there are ways to get around these internet restrictions.

Read more.

June 26, 2008

Oceans clearing greenhouse gases faster than expected

Greenhouse gases over the tropical Atlantic are disappearing faster than expected, according to the first comprehensive measurements taken in the region.

Read more.

Associated Press expects you to pay to license 5-word quotations (and reserves the right to terminate your license)

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

It gets worse:

If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP "reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher's reputation."

...

The New York Times, an AP member organization, refers to this as an “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt.” I suggest it’s better described as yet another attempt by a big media company to replace the established legal and social order with with a system of private law (the very definition of the word “privilege”) in which a few private organizations get to dictate to the rest of society what the rules will be.

...

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.


Read the rest.

The Shrinking Influence of the US Federal Reserve

Humiliation for Mr. Dollar: Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve Bank, faces a general investigation by the International Monetary Fund. Just one more example of the Fed losing its power.

...

For seven years, US President George W. Bush refused to allow the IMF to conduct its assessment. Even now, he has only given the IMF board his consent under one important condition. The review can begin in Bush's last year in office, but it may not be completed until he has left the White House. This is bad news for the Fed chairman.

When the final report on the risks of the US financial system is released in 2010 -- and it is likely to cause a stir internationally -- only one of the people in positions of responsiblity today will still be in office: Ben Bernanke.


Read more.

I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch

Microsoft is doing some of the most creative thinking along these lines, with something it's calling "Digital Manners Policies." According to its patent application, DMP-enabled devices would accept broadcast "orders" limiting capabilities. Cellphones could be remotely set to vibrate mode in restaurants and concert halls, and be turned off on airplanes and in hospitals. Cameras could be prohibited from taking pictures in locker rooms and museums, and recording equipment could be disabled in theaters. Professors finally could prevent students from texting one another during class.

The possibilities are endless, and very dangerous. Making this work involves building a nearly flawless hierarchical system of authority. That's a difficult security problem even in its simplest form. Distributing that system among a variety of different devices -- computers, phones, PDAs, cameras, recorders -- with different firmware and manufacturers, is even more difficult. Not to mention delegating different levels of authority to various agencies, enterprises, industries and individuals, and then enforcing the necessary safeguards.

Once we go down this path -- giving one device authority over other devices -- the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority? What prevents them from abusing that power? Do I get the ability to override their limitations? In what circumstances, and how? Can they override my override?


Oh, the roads we travel.

Read more.

Supreme Court says Americans have right to guns

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense in their homes, the justices' first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.

Read more.

June 25, 2008

All-Seeing Car Reads Road Signs For You

As cars become smarter than the people driving them and do more of the things humans should be doing for themselves — checking blind spots, watching for lane departures, anticipating collisions — it was only a matter of time before a car started reading road signs.

Read more.

Astronomers on Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

Just last week, astronomers announced they had discovered three super-Earths — worlds more massive than ours but small enough to most likely be rocky — orbiting a single star. And dozens of other worlds suspected of having masses in that same range were found around other stars.

"Being able to find three Earth-mass planets around a single star really makes the point that not only may many stars have one Earth, but they may very well have a couple of Earths," said Alan Boss, a planet formation theorist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Washington, D.C.�


The universe is teeming with life and our technology at this point is just too primitive to detect it. All in time people. All in time. I hope I'm around to see it.

Read more.

June 19, 2008

Pregnancy Boom at Gloucester High

But principal Joseph Sullivan knows at least part of the reason there's been such a spike in teen pregnancies in this Massachusetts fishing town. School officials started looking into the matter as early as October after an unusual number of girls began filing into the school clinic to find out if they were pregnant. By May, several students had returned multiple times to get pregnancy tests, and on hearing the results, "some girls seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were," Sullivan says. All it took was a few simple questions before nearly half the expecting students, none older than 16, confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. Then the story got worse. "We found out one of the fathers is a 24-year-old homeless guy," the principal says, shaking his head.

Read more.

June 16, 2008

Experts unveil 'cloak of silence'


Scientists have shown off the blueprint for an "acoustic cloak", which could make objects impervious to sound waves.


The technology, outlined in the New Journal of Physics, could be used
to build sound-proof homes, advanced concert halls or stealth warships.

Read more.

In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot

Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades. And they do not mean simply, mechanical sex.

...

"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship at all or a relationship with a robot."


Read more.

June 13, 2008

WTF!? Internet Addiction Nominated for Entry in the Manual of Mental Disorders

Block cites research from South Korea, where, he says, the affliction is considered a serious public health problem, and the government estimates that 168,000 children may require psychotropic medications.

Trying to get everyone on some type of medication?

Read more.

Christian Theologians Prepare for Extraterrestrial Life

Little green men might shock the secular public. But the Catholic Church would welcome them as brothers.

...

Since God created the universe, theologians say, he would have created aliens, too. And far from being weakened by contact, Christianity would adapt. Its doctrines would be interpreted anew, the aliens greeted with open -- and not necessarily Bible-bearing -- arms.


Read more.

Flooding grows in upper Midwest; storms pound Michigan

Officials estimated that 100 blocks were underwater in Cedar Rapids, where several days of preparation could not hold back the rain-swollen river.

Read more.

Mobile phone addiction: Clinic treats children

However, it may take a year to wean them off the "drug", said Dr Maite Utgès, director of the Child and Youth Mental Health Centre in Lleida, north-east Spain, where they have been treated for the past three months.

Read more.

June 11, 2008

Oral sex blamed for throat cancer rise

No one understands the precise reason for the increase, though experts suspect it's linked to changes in sexual practices that emerged in the 1960s and '70s. For example, oral sex is a known risk factor for HPV-related throat cancers, and studies have shown that people who have come of age since the 1950s are more likely to have engaged in oral sex than those who were born earlier.

What? I am going to have a hard time believing that humans rarely engaged in oral sex prior to the 1960's.

Read more.

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider

There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

...

Current estimates suggest there are 1,200 billion barrels of proven global reserves, but the industry's internal figures suggest this amounts to less than half of what actually exists.

The misconception has helped boost oil prices to an all-time high, sending jitters through the market and prompting calls for oil-producing nations to increase supply to push down costs.

...

However, mathematically it is more accurate to add the proven oil capacity of individual fields in a probabilistic manner based on the bell-shaped statistical curve used to estimate the proven, probable and possible reserves of each field. This way, the final capacity is typically more than twice that of simple, arithmetic addition, Dr Pike said. "The same also goes for natural gas because these fields are being estimated in much the same way. The world is understating the environmental challenge and appears unprepared for the difficult compromises that will have to be made."


Read more.

The West is becoming 'obsessed with Islam,' Vatican warns

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, said that the Church “has to have regard for all religions" and that the West's fascination with Islam was putting inter-faith dialogue at risk.

...

"I'm going to India next month and I want to give this message that all religions are equal.

"Sometimes there are priorities because of particular situations, but we mustn't get the impression there are first-class religions and second-class religions."


Read more.

Security scans will show sex organs

SECURITY scanners that can see through passengers' clothing and reveal details such as their sex organs, colostomy bags and breast size, are being installed in 10 US airports.

...

While it allows the security screeners - looking at the images in a separate room - to clearly see the passenger's sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger's face is blurred, TSA said.

The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.


Read more, then just go to the airport in your birthday suit.

Hate speech or free speech? What much of West bans is protected in U.S.

"In much of the developed world, one uses racial epithets at one's legal peril, one displays Nazi regalia and the other trappings of ethnic hatred at significant legal risk and one urges discrimination against religious minorities under threat of fine or imprisonment," Frederick Schauer, a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, wrote in a recent essay called "The Exceptional First Amendment."

"But in the United States," Schauer continued, "all such speech remains constitutionally protected."

Canada, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia and India all have laws or have signed international conventions banning hate speech. Israel and France forbid the sale of Nazi items like swastikas and flags. It is a crime to deny the Holocaust in Canada, Germany and France.


And we fight every day to keep our free speech.

Read more.

June 10, 2008

LA obscenity case nauseates some potential jurors

Ira Isaacs readily admits he produced and sold movies depicting
bestiality and sexual activity involving feces and urine. The judge
warned potential jurors that the hours of fetish videos included
violence against women, and many of them said they don't want to serve
because watching would make them sick to their stomachs.

...

"There's no question the stuff is disgusting," said Diamond, who has
spent much of his career representing pornographers. "The question is
should we throw people in jail for it?"


Um. No.

Read more.

June 9, 2008

Film content, editing, and directing style affect brain activity, NYU neuroscientists show

Using advanced functional imaging methods, New York University neuroscientists have found that certain motion pictures can exert considerable control over brain activity. Moreover, the impact of films varies according to movie content, editing, and directing style. Because the study, which appears in Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind, offers a quantitative neuroscientific assessment of the impact of different styles of filmmaking on viewers' brains, it may serve as a valuable method for the film industry to better assess its products and offer a new method for exploring how the brain works.

Read more.

Oil reserves 'will last decades'

The one thing that I did not expect to find in my investigation was that the proven reserves on some of the region's oldest fields are in fact rising.

The Forties Field, one of the biggest and most iconic, is still producing oil 33 years after the first oil was pumped ashore.


Read more.

Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

...

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

Read more.

June 6, 2008

Physicists have 'solved' mystery of levitation

Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.

Read more.

Army: Sun, Not Man, Is Causing Climate Change

The Army is weighing in on the global warming debate, claiming that climate change is not entirely man-made. Instead, Dr. Bruce West, with the Army Research Office, argues that "changes in the earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to ... the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles."

Read more.

Vote by Numbers

IT appears that Hillary Clinton is going to suspend her presidential campaign this weekend, at the urging of Democratic Party leaders and superdelegates. Before that happens, Mrs. Clinton and the superdelegates might want to know this: if the general election were held today, Barack Obama would lose to John McCain, while Mr. McCain would lose to Mrs. Clinton.

This conclusion comes not from wishful thinking but from a new method of analysis on the statistics of polls that has been accepted for publication in the journal Mathematical and Computer Modeling.


Read more.

Israeli minister says alternatives to attack on Iran running out

"If Iran continues its nuclear weapons programme, we will attack it," said Shaul Mofaz, who is also transportation minister.

Read more.

June 5, 2008

Drop 'middle-class' academic subjects says schools adviser

Children should no longer be taught traditional subjects at school because they are "middle-class" creations, a Government adviser will claim today.

Professor John White, who contributed to a controversial shake-up of the secondary curriculum, believes lessons should instead cover a series of personal skills.

Pupils would no longer study history, geography and science but learn skills such as energy- saving and civic responsibility through projects and themes.


Go away, you idiot.

Read more.

McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

Read more.

Teens' Nude Pics "Spread Like Wildfire"

Teenagers are increasingly snapping naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones, officials say, with the photos often falling into the wrong hands.

Sometimes the photos end up in everyone's hands, via the Internet.


Read more.

Lanier plans to seal off rough ’hoods in latest effort to stop wave of violence

D.C. police will seal off entire neighborhoods, set up checkpoints and kick out strangers under a new program that D.C. officials hope will help them rescue the city from its out-of-control violence.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.


Read more.

June 3, 2008

Website Lets You Send a Post-Rapture E-Mail to Friends 'Left Behind'

If millions of Christians suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth as the opening act for Armageddon, Threat Level thinks most nonbelievers will be too busy freaking the hell out to check their e-mail. But if they do log in, now they can be treated to some post-Rapture needling from their missing friends and loved ones, courtesy of web startup YouveBeenLeftBehind.com.

For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when -- according to Christian end times dogma -- Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist.


Christ on a cross.

Read more.

New rules for US make it tougher for travellers

New security measures requiring New Zealanders to register online before they go to the United States are expected to cause problems for last-minute business travellers and people flying there for funerals.

What bullshit.

From January next year, the US will require visitors from countries which now do not need a visa - including New Zealanders - to register online at least three days ahead.

No, really. What bullshit.

Read more.

New agreement lets US strike any country from inside Iraq

A proposed Iraqi-American security agreement will include permanent American bases in the country, and the right for the United States to strike, from within Iraqi territory, any country it considers a threat to its national security, Gulf News has learned.

...

Iraqi analysts said that the second item of the controversial agreement which permits American forces on Iraqi territories to launch military attacks against any country it considers a threat is addressed primarily to Iran and Syria.


Read more.

Dumbing down maths tests 'threat to economy'

David Laws, the Liberal Democrat spokesman on children, said: "This is a damning critique of maths education in this country. Our education system is too often failing to get the basics right, which risks damaging the national economy. There is a serious concern that political meddling has led to a dumbing down of maths education."

Read more.

Expect new drugs to treat aging, researchers say

Speaking on a panel of aging experts, Sinclair had the boldest predictions. He said scientists can greatly increase longevity and improve health in lab animals like mice, and that drugs to benefit people are on the way.

"It's not an if, but a when," said Sinclair, who co-founded Sirtris Pharmaceuticals to pursue such drugs.

...

Sinclair said treatments could be a few years or a decade away, but they're "really close. It's not something (from) science fiction and it's not something for the next generation."


Read more.

One in four don't believe in God, poll finds

Fewer than three-quarters of Canadians believe in a god, suggests a new Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey.

...

The poll found 72 per cent of respondents said they believed in a god, while 23 per cent said they did not believe in any god. Six per cent did not offer an opinion.

Polls have told a different story in the United States.


Read more.

MONTANA GOVERNOR IS SITTING ON AN OIL MINE

Here's some very good news about oil that the manipulators on Wall Street don't want you to know: there could be as much as 40 billion barrels of crude lying untouched in eastern Montana.

...

By comparison, Saudi Arabia has the largest known oil reserves at 260 billion barrels.

Read more.

Child Sex Tourism: Brazilian Teens Testify About Being Lured into Minor Prostitution for American Tourists

Imagine that you are a poor 13 year old Brazilian girl living with your poor family on your poor people’s land; the Indigenous Area AKA your reservation. A North American illegally enters the Indigenous Area, asking for your help on his tourist fishing boat, namely sweeping, laundry and cooking. You agree because your family needs the money. Your mother and step-father are scared because they have heard the stories about what has happened to “the others.” Against all hope, they wave and watch as you and nine other girls go off with this American stranger.

When you get to the boat, you learn that your real job is to drink whiskey and beer and have sex with the foreigners who are in your country on a fishing trip. After the foreigners have sex with you and go back home, you are left pregnant, not knowing who fathered your baby.


The world we live in.

Read more.

Pupils 'will soon be able to download lessons directly into their brains'

Children will learn by downloading information directly into their brains within 30 years, the head of Britain's top private schools organisation predicted today.

Chris Parry, the new chief executive of the Independent Schools Council, said "Matrix-style" technology would render traditional lessons obsolete.


He told the Times Educational Supplement: "It's a very short route from wireless technology to actually getting the electrical connections in your brain to absorb that knowledge."

Read more...no wait, just download it into your brain.

June 2, 2008

Nanowire 'Paper Towel' Designed to Clean Up Oil Spills

MIT researchers and colleagues say they have created a membrane that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil, and can be recycled many times for future use. The oil itself can also be recovered.

...

The new material appears to be completely impervious to water. “Our material can be left in water a month or two, and when you take it out it's still dry,” Stellacci said. “But at the same time, if that water contains some hydrophobic contaminants, they will get absorbed.”


Read more.

Five tips to ensure the TSA doesn't steal your stuff

Taking. Something. Always.

That's what TSA means to airline passengers ...

...

Thieving TSA? You might be forgiven for thinking so.

Since it was created in 2001, the agency has fired about 200 employees accused of stealing. Although the TSA has taken steps to discourage these government workers from helping themselves to our personal effects — including background checks on new hires, video cameras in screening areas and rules forbidding backpacks or lunchboxes at checkpoints — more and more passengers like Fleiss are coming forward to say they've been ripped off by the very people who are supposed to protect them.

...

You don't need a travel columnist to tell you this agency has a problem. The evidence speaks for itself.

But here's what you might not know. The stealing isn't as random as the TSA may want you to believe (www.tsa.gov/blog/2008/02/tsa-our-officers-public-and-theft.html). Fleiss visited an optometrist for a replacement pair of glasses, and learned that since the TSA was created seven years ago, he'd seen a "marked increase" in patients requesting receipts for insurance claims relating to security-related thefts. "He said there is a huge market for stolen designer eyewear frames in the New York area," he added. "You put it together."

One aviation insider I spoke with believes stealing is a systemic problem the federal agency is unable to control, particularly at problem airports like New York's LaGuardia Airport and Philadelphia International Airport. Not all of the screening areas in U.S. airports are under surveillance, and the TSA's rules have a big loophole that shifts liability for stolen baggage claims to the airline when luggage is delayed, he told me. In other words, there's little incentive for the stealing to stop. "It's the 800-pound gorilla no one wants to discuss at TSA," he says.

...

Bottom line: if you want to see your valuables again, don't let a TSA agent near them.


Read the rest.

June 1, 2008

Tissue of dead humans to be cloned


Scientists are to be permitted to use tissue from dead people to create cloned
human stem cells for research, under a legal change put forward by the
government.


Read more.

Scientists reveal dangers of older fathers

A mass study found that deaths of children fathered by over-45s occurred at almost twice the rate of those fathered by men aged between 25 and 30.

Scientists believe that children of older fathers are more likely to suffer particular congenital defects as well as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy. The study was the first of its kind of such magnitude in the West, and researchers believe the findings are linked to the declining quality of sperm as men age.


Read more.

May 31, 2008

Comcast Is Hiring an Internet Snoop for the Feds

Wanna tap e-mail, voice and Web traffic for the government? Well, here's your chance. Comcast, the country's second-largest Internet provider, is looking for an engineer to handle "reconnaissance" and "analysis" of "subscriber intelligence" for the company's "National Security Operations."

Read more.

Billboards That Look Back

In advertising these days, the brass ring goes to those who can measure everything — how many people see a particular advertisement, when they see it, who they are. All of that is easy on the Internet, and getting easier in television and print.

Billboards are a different story. For the most part, they are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.


Read more.

May 30, 2008

A Kinder, Gentler Torture

In American custody, Al-Ghizzawi was only beaten with chains; bound to chairs in excruciating positions for endless hours; threatened with death and with rape; stripped and subjected to body-cavity searches by non-medical personnel while men — and women — laughed and took pictures.

Among many other brutalities and indignities, Al-Ghizzawi was also posed naked with other prisoners; terrorized with dogs; forced to kneel on stones in the searing heat; left to stand or crouch for extended periods; deprived of sleep; subjected to extreme cold without clothes or covering; denied medical attention; and kept in isolation for years.

Again, as I said: a kinder, gentler torture.


Read more.

Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You?

Coming soon, from the folks who brought you the microwave -- Raytheon! After more than ten years in the making and at a cost of over 40 million dollars, 'Silent Guardian', or Active Denial System, (ADS, in it's formal mood), is almost ready for public release!

...

Transmitted at the speed of light over a 700 yard distance, the Pain Ray is a millimeter-wave beam that penetrates 1/64th of an inch beneath the skin, causing the water molecules there to bubble, producing an intense burning sensation, said to feel like being burnt by molten lava or a hot iron. Its delivery system attached to a Humvee and aimed right, the Pain Ray makes people run away -- fast.

...

Testing, conducted on human volunteers and animals by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate continues, and although it has not been proved that exposure to the ray can cause cancer, it has been ascertained that the corneas of Rhesus monkeys can be damaged.

...

"But what happens if the people faced with such a weapon can't just run away? What happens if they're trapped in a crowd, and the crowd can't move? How much pain must that crowd endure? How long can any member of the crowd be exposed to that weapon before his or her skin -- or their eyes -- simply cook off?

What happens if the devices are used deliberately in a manner designed to cause maximum harm -- say, by training the device on prisoners trapped in prison cells until they literally go mad with pain?

What happens if the system operator turns up the power? A little bit works well, why not try a lot?

What happens if the scientists didn't test the devices thoroughly, and they turn out to render anyone touched by them blind, or impotent, or sterile?"


Hmmm. If this is used once against a civilian crowd in America, then it's doubtful crowds would ever gather again for any reason, particularly for political reasons.

Hmmmm. Maybe that's the point.

Read more.