April 19, 2007

Experts: Force increases may not be enough - "“If the United States is going to have a significant component of its ground forces in Iraq over the next five, 10, 15 or 30 years, then the responsible course is for the president and those supporting this open-ended and escalated presence in Iraq to call for reinstating the draft.” -- You read that correctly. And this is from the Marine Corps Times.

Murtha: President's Iraq war plan requires draft - "Rep. John Murtha, a veteran of the U.S. Marines who served in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, said that President George W. Bush cannot continue to carry out his current war plans in Iraq without starting a draft." -- To reinstate the draft, an "event" will be necessary to rally the country.

McCain visits Murrells Inlet - "McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song. “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann. “Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel.”"

Iraq may hold twice as much oil - "Iraq could hold almost twice as much oil in its reserves as had been thought, according to the most comprehensive independent study of its resources since the US-led invasion in 2003."

Russia Plans World's Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska - "Russia plans to build the world's longest tunnel, a transport and pipeline link under the Bering Strait to Alaska, as part of a $65 billion project to supply the U.S. with oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia."

Cho's Image Leaves Indelible Mark - "All the cheap rage, all the macho posturing of a demented boy is condensed in that image. A young man holds out his arms, at eye level, each hand covered in a dark glove, each holding a gun. He wears a vest that looks vaguely military, and his eyes are set in a steely rage. A black cap, turned backwards, covers a shaved head, as if he meant to doubly annihilate his personality. The young people fortunate enough to survive and tell the tale of Monday's horrific murder rampage at Virginia Tech described that face -- expressionless, determined -- and those eyes -- devoid of feeling, or mercy."

Are You On The Antidepressant database? - "Some news accounts have suggested that Cho had a history of antidepressant use, but senior federal officials tell ABC News that they can find no record of such medication in the government's files. This does not completely rule out prescription drug use, including samples from a physician, drugs obtained through illegal Internet sources, or a gap in the federal database, but the sources say theirs is a reasonably complete search." -- Interesting.

Why does the Bush administration have a list of everyone who has ever used anti-depressants? - "We don't even have a list of gun owners, and we have a list of everyone who has been prescribed anti-depressants? And in fact, the article suggests that this isn't just a database of patients who use anti-depressants, it's a federal database of every prescription drug you've ever bought."

Administration pursued aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout - "For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates."

Climate change skeptics say it's hard to get heard - "Skeptics of the seriousness of global warming complained on Wednesday of not being heard by the public or policy makers while warning governments to take a second look at the scientific consensus on climate change."

Scientist: Warming not caused by humans - ""We see something change in our climate and we blame ourselves," Spencer told the Republican Women of Madison during a lunch meeting Wednesday. Spencer contends there is not yet enough known about the Earth's atmosphere to understand exactly what occurs naturally to stabilize the earth's climate. "I don't think we understand what happens. We can watch it happen on the (climate) models, we know it happens, but we don't know for sure how it happens," Spencer said."

Chinese make first artificial snowfall - "China claimed yesterday to have caused a snowfall for the first time as part of its increasingly ambitious attempts to control the weather."

No joke! 'Daily Show' substantive as network news - "A new study by Indiana University concludes that the popular comedy program, "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart, is just as substantive as "serious" primetime network news broadcasts." -- Duh.

Top EU official criticizes extension of U.S. barriers along border with Mexico - "“A wall that separates one country from another is not something that I like or that the European Union members like,” Solana said at a news conference in Mexico City. “We don't think walls are reasonable instruments to stop people from crossing into a country.” The EU believes immigrants should be treated “like people, not like criminals,” he said."

Tagging plan for vulnerable OAPs - "Charities today gave a guarded welcome to a proposal by the science minister, Malcolm Wicks, that vulnerable older people could be tracked via satellite-monitored tags."

Parents who spank being made criminals - "Democrats on a legislative committee in California have advanced a plan that would make criminals of any parent who uses "a stick, a rod, [or] a switch" to discipline their misbehaving child, and parents rights' organizations are up in arms."

Angry soccer mom ditches daughter, gets ticket - "The 42-year-old Lincoln mom was miffed about her daughter's poor play on Saturday."

Flatland: The Movie -- That's right! Flatland: The Movie! Check out the trailer.

Has Tarantino been flushed away? - "How, pundits asked, can a moronic sword’n’sandals romp such as 300 make $400 million at the box office, while a smart cine-literate action parody such as Grindhouse completely dies? The New York Times suggested that this wasn’t the end for the Weinsteins, just a bump in the road. But Business Week announced that it should be a lesson for Hollywood, and that dumb audience-friendly movies such as 300 and Ghost Rider were the way of the future." -- Now that's just depressing.

Does Radio Contest For Breast Implants Go Too Far? - "Is a local radio stunt going too far? The prize is a breast augmentation for women who can show how hard they can party for 30 hours, all while live on the Internet."

Is the pen still mighty in the computer age? - "Your grandchildren may use a stylus on a tablet PC instead of a Bic on tablet paper, but they will continue to write. That's because even in an era when elementary school students are adept at mousing and teenagers are fiends at text-messaging, some experts say that writing with a pen is still the backbone for teaching people how to read and learn facts. The difference will be in how the characters are made."

Crook wins damages for injury during theft - "A Canadian man who admitted shoplifting C$106 in razor blades has been awarded C$12,000 ($10,645) for injuries he suffered when he was tackled by store security guards." -- This is our world.

Survey Reveals Most Satisfying Jobs - "“The most satisfying jobs are mostly professions, especially those involving caring for, teaching and protecting others and creative pursuits.""

Why Are Americans Afraid of Being Naked? - "In the Netherlands people can be naked in their gardens, the beach and recently the gym. But in America, even chocolate sculptures can't be without clothes. What gives?"

Rolling Stone's Top 25 Songs With a Secret - "These are tracks the meanings of which have inspired lots of debate. Let the debate continue!"




Quote of the Day
"My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel."
~ Cindy Sheehan

April 18, 2007

Bombings in Baghdad kill scores - "Insurgent bombers launched a series of attacks across Baghdad on Wednesday and killed at least 164 people and wounded scores -- a particularly violent day in a bloody capital city enduring sectarian warfare and an aggressive government crackdown against insurgents."

The Iraq Money Trail - "This war is going to bankrupt the US. ... The only people who are benefiting from Bush's war on terror are members of the Military Industrial Complex. Since 9/11, the pay for the CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors in the US has doubled, according to the August 2006 report, "Executive Excess 2006," by the Institute for Policy Studies, and the United for a Fair Economy. The bill is rising so fast because the level of war profiteering is unprecedented. The Excess Report lists George David, CEO of United Technologies, as the top earner, making more than $200 million since 9/11, despite investigations into the poor quality of the firm's Black Hawk helicopters. Halliburton CEO David Lesar made $26.6 million in 2005, and nearly $50 million since 9/11, an amount that even beats the $24 million that Dick Cheney received in exchange for the guarantee that Halliburton would be the number one military contractor during the Bush administration."

Convention plan includes preparing for 3,000 arrests - "About $550,000 for a possible open-air, fenced detention facility to hold protesters next to the Ramsey County Workhouse; $1.7 million for overtime, and $62,000 for biohazard decontamination equipment. These are among the items included in a $4.4 million budget proposal by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who was told by St. Paul police to plan for 3,000 arrests during the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul."

When Bad People Kill - "The tragic murders of Virginia Tech students, apparently by an insane person, will prompt new attempts to ban private ownership of guns. Once guns are banned, crime will explode. Households and vulnerable members of society will lose the ability to defend, which will invite more intrusions and attacks. Knife crimes will rise as they have in Great Britain. Gun prohibition will create a new industry for criminals--gun running and black market sales. Police will conduct stings by posing as black market gun dealers and entrap innocent citizens driven by fear and threat to secure means of personal protection."

U.S. Gun Laws Draw Heat After Massacre - "The Virginia Tech shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia—one of America's closest allies—declared that America's gun culture was costing lives."

Court Backs Ban on Abortion Procedure - "The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion."

Bush: Sudan has last chance to avoid U.S. sanctions - "President George W. Bush warned Sudan's president on Wednesday that he has one last chance to stop violence in Darfur or else the United States will impose sanctions and consider other punitive options."

EU aims to criminalise Holocaust denial - "Laws that make denying or trivialising the Holocaust a criminal offence punishable by jail sentences will be introduced across the European Union, according to a proposal expecting to win backing from ministers Thursday. Offenders will face up to three years in jail under the proposed legislation, which will also apply to inciting violence against ethnic, religious or national groups." -- Three years because you don't believe the "official" version of something and then voice that opinion?

Welcome to the no man's land of the 'North Americanist' - "Some call it 'regionalization', population of which will come to be known as the "North Americanists". Some call it North American Union, NAU for short, or the benign sounding North American Community. Few call the coming end of the sovereignty of three nations globalization, but rarely what it really is, the persistent encroachment of One World Government."

Religious Web Sites Ape MySpace, YouTube - "In the name of MySpace, YouTube and the holy Internet, amen. A number of religious Web sites are aping the names and styles of some of the Web's most popular sites. Chief among them are GodTube.com, a video-sharing site for Christians, and MyChurch.org, a social networking realm."

Muslim cabbies face license loss for refusing fares with alcohol - "The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will begin suspending licenses of Muslim taxi drivers who refuse for religious reasons to provide service to passengers transporting alcohol."

Central America bans 'the Antichrist' - "THREE Central American governments have banned a man claiming to be the Antichrist from entering their countries, outraged by his inflammatory preaching against the Catholic Church and organised religion."

Super-rich population surges in 2006: survey - "The number of U.S. households with a net worth of more than $5 million, excluding their primary residence, surged 23 percent to surpass one million for the first time in 2006, according to a survey released on Tuesday."

House hears of mortgage fixes; foreclosures inevitable for many - "Housing finance agencies told legislators yesterday they are trying to arrange safe mortgages for millions of people who could lose their homes because of ballooning loan payments, but legal constraints may prevent them from stopping foreclosure on many homes."

Inmates vs. Animals: U.S. Fails the Test of Civilization - "Unlike prisoners of ancient Rome, convicts at the annual Angola and Oklahoma State rodeos aren't physically forced to compete in the games, or even executed after their performance. Instead, they're paid handsomely -- upwards of $200 for winning "Convict Poker," or $100 for successfully grabbing the chip in "Money the Hard Way." A tour guide clarifies the basic economics: "Since $100 is worth about four months' pay to these hardened criminals, be ready for one hell of a scrap for that c-note." There are of course some ethical concerns. When "someone raises a question about the propriety of the rodeo," a Washington Post article explains, the focus remains on the abuse of bulls and broncos, like the pleas of the animal rights group PETA to cancel the rodeo on animal cruelty grounds. An official from In Defense of Animals writes elsewhere that the event provides inmates with "the right to torment and abuse frightened animals in front of a cheering audience." Moral questions don't arise about the propriety of cheering while bulls pummel convicts. Prison rodeos may be rare, but it shouldn't be surprising that the mainstream toleration they receive stems from the willingness of the United States to incarcerate 2.2 million of its people. While less than one out of every 20 humans lives in the United States, almost one quarter of the world's prisoners sit in American jails. The U.S. criminal justice system has no parallel in the contemporary world. History, however, reveals the origins of the system's scope, in addition to the national obsession of denying criminal offenders the decency and rights normally afforded to other humans."

The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body - "Thinness and beauty are prerequisites for perfection, which to today's young women appears to be the only road to happiness. Under that logic, women's bodies have become places where that drive for perfection -- however self-destructive -- gets played out."

Why the search is on to find alternative to internet - "With crises like this tarnishing the reputation of the system, even Vinton Cerf, one of the internet's founding fathers, has come out in support of the "clean slate" pioneers. He says a replacement for the internet is now needed because current technology cannot "satisfy all needs". Researchers in the US believe a new network could run parallel with the current internet and perhaps even one day replace it. However, experts from Scottish universities suggested last night a more likely scenario was "an evolution, rather than a revolution" of the internet."

Study finds weak participation on Web 2.0 sites - "Web 2.0, a catchphrase for the latest generation of Web sites where users contribute their own text, pictures and video content, is far less participatory than commonly assumed, a study showed on Tuesday."

The Segregated Blogosphere - "People of color make up 40 percent of bloggers, but only 26 percent of Internet users. ... For bloggers of color who reveal their racial identity and whose blogs tackle race and cultural politics, this has meant contending with hate mail."

Intelligence drugs could be 'common as coffee' - "It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: a new generation of drugs that make people more intelligent. But they are precisely the kind of mind-altering substances that students and businessman could be taking in the future to pass exams and boost work performance. ... They are already being bought illegally over the internet in the US by people who think they will enhance their performance in the classroom and in the office. ... Within two hours of taking the drug, healthy volunteers were better at remembering strings of numbers, were less impulsive and had a better short-term memory."

U.S. OKs 1st bird flu vaccine for humans - "A bird flu vaccine won federal approval for the first time Tuesday as a stopgap measure against a potential pandemic until more effective vaccines can be developed."

Argentine cow clones to produce insulin in milk - "Argentine scientists said on Tuesday they had created four cloned and genetically modified calves capable of producing human insulin in their milk, a step they said could cut the cost of treating diabetes."

Crematoriums order bigger furnaces as waistlines grow - "The spread of obesity is causing a problem for funeral directors and crematorium managers, it has been disclosed. Their clients are now often so large that their coffins will not fit into the furnaces, town hall chiefs said."

Adult circumcision a tough sell, even for a lower HIV risk - "Now that three clinical trials in Africa have shown that circumcision helps protect men against contracting HIV and the World Health Organization has endorsed it, public health doctors elsewhere - including in New York City - are contemplating whether to recommend it. Then comes the difficult part - how to sell the idea. Unfortunately, the data from Africa does not translate well. Those trials were of heterosexual men in countries where the virus is everywhere, education about safe sex is practically nonexistent, and condoms get in the way of the need to father children."

'Penthouse' no longer porn, Shell announces - "Shell Oil Co. has determined "Playboy" and "Penthouse" no longer are pornography, but instead are "adult sophisticates," according to a company statement." -- Good for them. I like the definition change.




Quote of the Day
"Gun-control advocates face something of a dilemma: If guns are the problem, why was it that when guns were really accessible, even inside schools by students, we didn't have the mass school shootings and other problems that plague us now?"
~ John R. Lott

April 17, 2007

Gunman Identified as Massacre at Virginia Tech Enters Second Day - "We now know the identity of the killer at Virginia Tech. He is Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old resident alien of the United States, as first reported by ABC News."

Questions remain after worst U.S. shooting rampage - "Police and university officials faced pressure on Tuesday to explain how a gunman evaded detection between killing two people and going on to kill 30 others two hours later in the United States' worst shooting rampage."


Israeli professor killed in US attack - "The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, "but all the students lived - because of him," Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio. Several of Librescu's other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, said Librescu's son, Joe."


Blaming Charlton Heston - "With a view to Monday's deadly shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, European newspapers are blaming the lack of gun control measures in the United States and implying that Charlton Heston is indirectly responsible for the scope of the killings." -- Idiots.

"A Tragedy... of Monumental Proportions." - "The first question, appropriately, is: Why did this happen? The second question, equally appropriately, is: What should we do about it? There is is a simple answer to Question No. 1: America is a violent country. Unfortunately, simple answers lead to simplistic responses. If America can do nothing about its violent streak, the NRA will argue, it is silly to place limits on gun ownership. Better to arm everyone, the argument goes. Or better to allow the "concealed carry" of weapons. Or, well, you get the point -- anything to avoid taking a piece out of the profits of the corporations that manufacture and sell deadly weapons. By the same token, the notion that banning those weapons will end the violence has become a a tougher sell. Shocking and horrible rampages occur in countries with stricter gun laws than the U.S. No, they do not happen as frequently. But they do happen. Conversely, in some countries where gun ownership is relatively high, incidents like at Virginia Tech are far less common. We ought to wrestle with these contradictions and complexities."

Needed: More Americans with guns - "First, it is not a tragedy. Tragedies are sad things that occur naturally. A friend dying of cancer is a tragedy. This, instead, is an act of evil and of infamy. It is an act of terror and sabotage. The murders at Virginia Tech are willful malevolence, but they are not tragedy. ... The idea that Americans should be hearing from the White House is: "The right to keep and bear arms provides for concealed-carry laws, which could have prevented this situation. We do not know why there were not more law-abiding citizens carrying firearms in the vicinity so that this madman could have been stopped. The vulnerability of our population to terrorism needs to be addressed, and the Second Amendment to the Constitution provides a starting point. The president intends to do everything he can to see more lawful people armed as a bulwark against terror.""

Virginia Tech Shooting -- Gun Bans Are The Problem, Not The Solution - "Isn't it interesting that Utah and Oregon are the only two states that allows faculty to carry guns on campus. And isn't it interesting that you haven't read about any school or university shootings in Utah or Oregon? Why not? Because criminals don't like having their victims shoot back at them," Pratt said. "That's why the American people want an end to this ineffective gun ban."

Gun Control Law Helped Campus Killer - "In January 2002, a student at the Virginia Appalachian School of Law, Peter Odighizuwa, shot three people dead before other students were able to retrieve guns from their cars and put an end to the carnage before there was more bloodshed. Over thirty victims at VA Tech yesterday were denied that right as a result of a campus gun control law that helped the shooter pick off his targets at will."

Gun-control argument builds in background - "Monday's deadly rampage at Virginia Tech might have lit the fuse for another round in the long- running debate over gun control, but this time the response was largely one-sided. Gun-control advocates pointed to the shootings as dramatic evidence of the need for tougher laws, while supporters of gun rights generally kept their heads down." -- As I said before, if just one student/victim had had a gun then this might have ended differently.

Campus killings may restart gun violence debate - "The killings at Virginia Tech university on Monday will stir fresh U.S. debate over gun control and what drives people to go on shooting rampages through schools and colleges."

Rate of U.S. losses in Iraq is highest yet - "In the past six months, the rate of Americans killed in Iraq has reached its highest level ever, despite four years of fighting." -- Stay focused people.

Nuclear weapons worthless to Iranians - "Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki had underlined that Iran's rich culture makes acquiring nuclear weaponry 'pointless' and 'unnecessary'." -- Unnecessary unless you want your country to be taken seriously on the world stage.

New threat to skilled U.S. workers - "Blinder was taken aback when, sitting in at the business summit in Davos, Switzerland, he heard U.S. executives talk enthusiastically about all the professional jobs they could outsource to lower-wage countries. And he's a free trader."

Cost of gasoline rises for 11th straight week - "Over the past 11 weeks, the national average price has surged 71.1 cents, or 33 percent, from $2.165 on Jan. 29."

Denial in the Desert - "But the Arctic is not the only theater of spectacular and unequivocal climate change, nor are the polar bears the only heralds of a new age of chaos."

British doctors oppose abortions on ethical grounds - "It says there is evidence of a 'slow but growing problem' of young doctors opting out of abortion training on moral grounds."

Bill would ban site names mimicking U.S. agencies - "House to vote on bill to clarify 1994 law that bars "any" use of the name of the Treasury and the IRS to solicit business."

Days numbered for tax-free Net sales - "The halcyon days of tax-free Internet shopping may be about to end."

Docs Point to E-Voting Bug in Contested Race - "Additionally, the documents -- obtained through public records requests by Wired News and the Florida Coalition for Fair Elections -- show the problems also appeared on a smaller scale during the primary election in Sarasota County two months earlier. This contradicts statements by Sarasota supervisor of elections Kathy Dent, who told Wired News last month that no such problems happened during the primary, and that she only learned voters were having problems with the touch screens after the November election was over and votes were counted. Seven voting machines had touch problems in the September primary, five of which later clocked in an unusually high number of "under votes" in the now-contested race for the U.S. House of Representative's 13th Congressional District."

Internet radio broadcasters dealt setback - "Internet radio broadcasters were dealt a setback Monday when a panel of copyright judges threw out requests to reconsider a ruling that hiked the royalties they must pay to record companies and artists." -- It's all about control.

Local TV stations face Net threat - "Some attendees of the National Association of Broadcasters conference this week are worried that local television affiliates will be the next business species to be endangered by the Internet."

BANNED FROM THE PROM - "Two dozen girls, their dresses deemed too revealing, kept out."

Chocolate gives people more of a buzz than passionate kisses: study - "British researchers said Monday they were stunned to discover that people get more of a buzz from eating chocolate than passionately kissing their lovers."

Men, Women Look At Sexual Pictures Differently - "Researchers hypothesized women would look at faces and men at genitals, but, surprisingly, they found men are more likely than women to first look at a woman's face before other parts of the body, and women focused longer on photographs of men performing sexual acts with women than did the males, the study found."

Einstein was right, probe shows - "Early results from a Nasa mission designed to test two key predictions of Albert Einstein show the great man was right about at least one of them. ... In a similar way, the Earth drags local space and time around with it - ever so slightly - as it rotates."

What's Happening to Our Lovely Cult? - "I'm sure the decision to delay a major update to OS X and shift engineering staff to the iPhone instead makes lots of business sense, but it signals loud and clear Apple’s shift from computers to consumer electronics. As further evidence, go hang out at your local Apple Store."

Quote of the Day

"All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming it."

~ Helen Keller

April 16, 2007 (Page 2)

Gunman Kills 32 in Virginia Tech Rampage - "A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students. The bloodbath ended with the gunman committing suicide, bringing the death toll to 33 and stamping the campus in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains with unspeakable tragedy, perhaps forever."

McCain Backs Gun Rights After Shootings - "Sen. John McCain says the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech does not change his view that the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to carry a weapon." -- Seems if just one student/victim would have had a gun then this might have ended differently. Instead, this will get spun as another reason guns (all guns) should be outlawed. Then, sadly, more tragedies like this will occur.

Campus Gun Ban Disarmed Virginia Victims - "A gun ban recently enforced by Virginia Tech campus prevented over thirty victims of today's mass shooting from defending themselves against the killer, and yet gun control advocates are already politicizing this morning's tragic events to pull the lever for mass gun control."

State quashed bill allowing handguns on campuses - "College spokesman celebrated 2006 defeat because it would help make campus safe." -- Um, yeah. Safe? Obviously you're an idiot.

Tied-up Columbia student left to die used fire set by creep to free herself - "The 23-year-old woman, identified by sources as a student at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, endured 19 hours of rape and torture at the hands of a sick creep in her Hamilton Heights apartment Friday night. In what Kelly called a "particularly vicious" assault, the fiend tied his victim to a bed, cut her, raped her, burned her with scalding water and chemicals - and then set the woman's futon on fire to cover up the crime, police said. He was so brutal he slit her eyelids, Kelly said."

45 dead as bombs rock Iraqi capital - "And in another day of bloodshed:" -- Stay focused people.

The nightmare Bush dreads most - "What must worry Washington more than the massive size of the demonstration on April 9 was its mixed Shi'ite-Sunni composition and nationalistic ambience. The prospect of Muqtada's appeal extending to a section of the Sunni community, with the tacit support of Sistani, is the nightmare scenario that the Bush administration most dreads. Yet it may come to pass."

Obamas' 2006 Income Put at $991,296 - "The annual income for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and his wife dropped about $680,000 in 2006 from the nearly $1.7 million they took in the prior year, according to documents released Monday." -- Oh, yeah, he understands us lowly commoners.

Drudge Promotes Imus Pravda Hoax - "In what seems to be a deliberate ploy to link disgraced talk show host Don Imus with Rosie O'Donnell and the 9/11 Truth Movement, Matt Drudge is promulgating a now confirmed hoax which suggested that Imus was fired because he was about to expose secrets about the 9/11 attacks."

Republican '08 options disappoint evangelicals - "Evangelical Christians have long been a key constituency for the Republican Party, but leading religious conservatives are expressing dissatisfaction with the party's current crop of presidential candidates."

Mortgage defaults in California near decade high - "Mortgage lenders filed 46,760 notices of default from January through March, marking an increase of 23.1 percent from the previous quarter and 148 percent from the year-earlier period, according to a report by DataQuick Information Systems, a real estate information service."

IRS warns of online tax filing scams - "The scams lure taxpayers to Web sites that purport to offer free online tax filing services, but instead are set up to steal refunds, the agency said on its Web site late Friday."

Journalists look to bloggers for Virginia Tech story - "The media interest generated by the blog entry illustrated a very Web 2.0 dynamic--that of bloggers and others posting personal experiences to their own sites and others like Flickr, Digg and YouTube, and having those postings or videos be not only a primary source of news, but one that journalists turn to as a way to get the story, and get it now."

Global warming may put U.S. in hot water - "As the world warms, water — either too little or too much of it — is going to be the major problem for the United States, scientists and military experts said Monday. It will be a domestic problem, with states clashing over controls of rivers, and a national security problem as water shortages and floods worsen conflicts and terrorism elsewhere in the world, they said."

Schmidt says YouTube 'very close' to filtering system - "Google is very near enacting a filtering service that would prevent copyright content from being uploaded to video-sharing site YouTube, CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday."

New Robot Eyes Humans with Human-Like Eyes - "MIT researchers recently demonstrated the capabilities of such a robot, named Domo, which, like the robot in a recent General Motors ad, can transcend mass-production's repetition. It is designed to interact with humans and adapt to its environment in ways previously only imagined in science fiction."

Many parents admit they bribe their kids - "Call it a reward, or just "bribery." Whichever it is, many parents today readily admit to buying off their children, who get goodies for anything from behaving in a restaurant to sleeping all night in their own beds. Often, the rewards are for behaviors their own parents would have simply expected, just because they said so."

April 16, 2007

Bush Administration: Breakdown - "Congressional oversight committees and reporters covering the U.S. attorneys firing scandal waited with bated breath Thursday night for yet another huge document drop revealing more details in the Bush administration's plan to fire eight U.S. attorneys. They waited, and waited. But the documents weren't delivered to the House and Senate Judiciary committees until this morning because -- no joke -- the Justice Department's copy machine broke. As if the broken copier weren't enough, something even worse happened: the DOJ's computer server went down this morning just as agency officials were trying to email around 2,000 pages worth of documents to Capitol Hill. But wait, that's not all! After the server went down, the car transporting hard copies of the documents to the Hill got a flat tire." -- And we continue to let them get away with shit like this.

Poll: Most Say Politics Motivated U.S. Attorney Firings - "Two thirds of Americans, including a narrow majority of Republicans, see political motivations behind last year's firings of eight chief federal prosecutors. But the nation is deeply divided along partisan lines about whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales should lose his job over the scandal." -- Face it, America is deeply divided on every issue.

Torture, Secrecy, and the Bush Administration - "Secrecy has reemerged just as torture has made its comeback, being justified on the public stage, by government officials for the first time since the famous gathering at the Inns of Court in 1629 at which the judges declared “upon their and their nation's honor” that torture was not permitted by the common law. The two fit together, hand in glove: torture and secrecy. Torture and secrecy. Where one is used, the other is indispensable. Torture is no longer a tool of statecraft. Today it is a tool of criminals, though sometimes of criminals purporting to conduct the affairs of state. Having resorted to these “dark arts,” to quote Dick Cheney, the torturers now have the dilemma faced so frequently by criminals. They seek to cover it up. And so the path flows from torture to secrecy, the twin dark stars of the tyrannical state."

Bush asks Congress to alter 1978 eavesdropping law - "The Bush administration asked Congress on Friday to expand the number of people it can subject to electronic surveillance in the United States." -- The number of dissenters must be increasing.

"Sorry We Shot Your Kid, But Here's $500" - "The most revealing new information on Iraq -- guaranteed to make readers sad or angry, or both -- is found not in any press dispatch but in a collection of several hundred PDFs posted on the Web this week." -- Oh, this should piss you off.

Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites - "Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind. Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers."

Knowledge Unchanged by News Outlets - "Americans' knowledge of national and international affairs has changed little in two decades despite the emergence of 24-hour cable news and the Internet as major news sources." -- Only 69% know Dick Cheney is Vice President. Depressing.

The Ongoing Trials of Mordechai Vanunu - "On April 30, 2007, the verdict in Vanunu's freedom of speech case will be rendered. Although the case is being tried in the lowest tier in the Israeli court system and the maximum sentence that could be imposed if he is found guilty is six months, Vanunu's Attorney, Avigdor Feldman has said that this historic case is one of the most significant he has ever defended "because it involves important issues about the Israeli government producing weapons of mass destruction and Vanunu's right to let the people know about that." What this reporter finds most significant, is that Israel is a nuclear power that America supports politically and economically while our media remains mute about a democracy that denies the inalienable right of free speech and thought."

NY Times op-ed: 'Why the Imus-Coulter disparity?' - "However, Wright wonders, "Do African-Americans get more protection than Muslim Americans?" "In a speech last year before the Conservative Political Action Conference, Coulter used the word 'raghead,'" Wright continues. "This is a dual-use slur, applied to both Arabs and Muslims, but she was talking about an Iranian, so presumably she was focusing on the religious dimension (consistent with her post-9/11 advice that we 'invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.') The word raghead -- whose only function is to denigrate -- seems as legitimately offensive to Muslims as Imus' utterance was to blacks. The difference is that Coulter didn't apologize.""

American radio icon Don Imus disgraced, fired after threat to reveal 9/11 secrets - "In a clear sign of its intent to reign in dissident American media personalities, and their growing influence in American culture, US War Leaders this past week launched an unprecedented attack upon one of their most politically 'connected', and legendary, radio hosts named Don Imus after his threats to release information relating to the September 11, 2001 attacks upon that country."

The Establishment Rethinks Globalization - "The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther. An unlikely dissenter has come forward with a revised understanding of globalization that argues for thorough reformation. This man knows the global trading system from the inside because he is a respected veteran of multinational business. His ideas contain an explosive message: that what established authorities teach Americans about global trade is simply wrong--disastrously wrong for the United States."

Congressional junkets picking up steam - "Congress is keeping Andrews Air Force base plenty busy this year ferrying lawmakers all over the globe at taxpayers’ expense. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi took his wife, nine Democrats and two Republicans - Reps. Dan Lungren of California and Mike Rogers of Alabama - on a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean last week. After stops in Honduras and Mexico, they stopped in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the delegation stayed at the five-star Caneel Bay resort. In a separate trip to the Caribbean last week, Rep. Eliot Engel of New York squired his wife and four Democratic members to Grenada and Trinidad. All told, the military flew at least 13 congressional delegations to various destinations during the Easter recess -- at an estimated rate of $10,000 or more per flying hour. The congressional delegation trips, known as CODELs, are paid for by taxpayers. They are supposed to be directly related to members’ official duties, and House guidelines also stipulate that delegations include members of both parties to qualify for military planes -- a requirement that Speaker Nancy Pelosi waived for Engel’s group and two other delegations."

A Watch List Is Born - "Prior to the airline hijackings on Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration's "no-fly list" contained 11 names."

UK: No more 'war on terror' - "The British government has stopped using the phrase "war on terror" to refer to the struggle against political and religious violence, according to a Cabinet minister's prepared remarks for a Monday speech."

Wal-Mart dethrones Exxon on Fortune 500 - "Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has reclaimed its position as the largest corporation in the U.S. among the Fortune 500, pushing Exxon Mobil down to number two."

The Religious Right Has Had Its Day? Fat Chance - "If the Religious Right is dead, someone forgot to tell that to many leading political figures. The unusually early start to the 2008 campaign season has been marked by a number of aspiring Republican presidential hopefuls contorting themselves to please Religious Right honchos."

The Apostles of Deception - "It appears to me that the majority of the American people are followers who willingly bow down to that which they perceive as authority. The people want to be lead. They have a deep seated desire to be directed, to be told not only what to do, but how to live. Millions of them are waiting for a messiah to appear who will lead them to the Promised Land—a messiah that requires nothing from them before the judgment day. They only have to profess their faith and to follow—to do as they are told by the religious hierarchy, and wait. Of course, followers require leaders, and that makes them vulnerable to charlatans and frauds. The trouble with leaders and followers is that leaders often mislead and followers obediently trail them to the very gates of hell. During the course of the journey, superstition and ignorance gradually replace rationality and knowledge. Truth gets lost in the shuffle or is cast into the flames of desire. Thus we find ourselves standing at the brink of an old and familiar abyss, the onslaught of a new age of darkness and fear. Lies supplant truth, darkness replaces light. War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength. The lessons of history remain unlearned and endlessly repeat themselves in rhythmic cycles of human comedy and tragedy."

Fundamentalist secularists and the religion of atheism - "“But naturalism (atheism) by definition does not premise such belief. Any view of the world that does not premise the existence of something supernatural is a philosophy, or a theory, or at worst an ideology. If it is either of the two first, at its best it proportions what it accepts to the evidence for accepting it, knows what would refute it, and stands ready to revise itself in the light of new evidence. This is the essence of science. It comes as no surprise that no wars have been fought, pogroms carried out, or burnings conducted at the stake, over rival theories in biology or astrophysics. “And one can grant that the word ‘fundamental’ does after all apply to this: in the phrase ‘fundamentally sensible’.”"

Crucifixion makes God seem like a psychopath, says cleric - "One of the country's most controversial clerics was at the centre of a new controversy yesterday after saying that traditional teaching about the Crucifixion was "repulsive" and made God seem like a "psychopath"."

Lawyers: Bush OK to eject protesters - "Lawyers in Denver are arguing that President Bush has the right to remove from an audience people who disagree with him."

How a PR Firm Helped Establish America's Cigarette Century - "How the tobacco industry-hired Hill & Knowlton to develop many of the propaganda techniques against science used today to attack climate change and evolution."

The Feminine Mistake - "Naively, I assumed that once women were offered more accurate information, they would be eager to get it. After all, women aren't stupid; it's true that they've been deserting the labor force in record numbers, but surely the problem was just that unfortunate information gap. Wouldn't they want to protect their own interests by educating themselves about the dangers that lie ahead -- and to plan accordingly? The first warning that I had misjudged the situation popped up on my computer screen as a Google alert, months before my book was published. I was thrilled to see that bloggers were already talking about The Feminine Mistake -- until I saw what they were saying."

Proposed NYC Public School Causes Stir - "This city has dozens of small public schools that focus on themes - sports careers, the arts and social justice. Few generate controversy. Then, someone decided to start a Middle Eastern-themed school."

Third of Israeli youth fears second Holocaust - "On the eve of 2007's Holocaust Memorial Day, a poll showed that 37 percent of Israel's youth feel another Holocaust is possible."

I.R.S. Audits Middle Class More Often, More Quickly - "Middle-class Americans, listen up: the I.R.S. is much more likely to audit you this year. Those caught cheating can expect to pay about $4,100 more on average in income taxes. ... Audits of these middle-class taxpayers rose to nearly 436,000 last year, up from about 147,000 returns in 2000. For these 61 million individuals and married couples, who make up nearly half of all taxpayers, the odds of being audited rose from 1 in 377 to 1 in 140."

WHO HIRED THE PENTAGON & WHAT DO THEY WANT DONE? - "On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that the Pentagon had lost, by the estimate he chose to use for his speech, $2.3 trillion dollars. Many of you good readers know about this and are asking where the money went? That's a good question, but what really intrigues me is: Where did it come from?"

$1bn 'don't have sex' campaign a flop as research shows teenagers ignore lessons - "It's been a central plank of George Bush's social policy: to stop teenagers having sex. More than $1bn of federal money has been spent on promoting abstinence since 1998 - posters printed, television adverts broadcast and entire education programmes devised for hundreds of thousands of girls and boys. The trouble is, new research suggests that it hasn't worked. At all." -- And that's because humans are naturally supposed to start having sex as teenagers. Otherwise, they would not have been "designed" to have those urges during their teenage years. This is not brain surgery here.

Distant Planets Could Have Plants of "Alien" Colors - "Scientists may be able to determine the color of extraterrestrial plant life while studying distant planets, according to a pair of new studies."




Quote of the Day
"When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the unjust less on the same amount of income."
~ Plato

April 14, 2007

White House: Millions of e-mails may be missing - ""I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," Perino told reporters." -- Bullshit.

Lawyer: Rove Didn't Mean to Delete Email - "Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails from a Republican-sponsored server, saying Rove believed the communications were being preserved in accordance with the law." -- Mmm hmm.

GOP eyes success on war funding - "Senate Republicans yesterday said Democrats are weakening in the war-funding standoff with the White House, citing party infighting and the capitulation of its leaders to meet next week with President Bush."

Japan Lower House Passes Constitutional Revision Rules Bill - " The legislation is the first step in realizing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's goal of revising the constitution to allow Japan to assert itself militarily for the first time since the end of World War II. The document, written by U.S. occupation forces after Japan's defeat in 1945, renounces war as a sovereign right and forbids military forces."

Mexico moves to legalise euthanasia - "Mexico's Senate began discussing the legalisation of euthanasia on Thursday, adding to a spate of liberal moves in the country that includes the sanctioning of gay civil unions and abortion."

Net reaches out to final frontier - "The Department of Defense's Iris project will put an internet router in space by the start of 2009."

There is climate change censorship - and it's the deniers who dish it out - "This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the rightwing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky world of the climate conspiracists no explanations are required. The world's most conservative scientific body has somehow been transformed into a conspiracy of screaming demagogues."

Pope's New Book Criticizes Capitalism - "Pope Benedict XVI offers a personal meditation on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ in his first book as pontiff, criticizing the "cruelty" of capitalism's exploitation of the poor but also decrying the absence of God in Marxism."

Minorities are the emerging face of the subprime crisis - "How did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000? The answer, say the experts, lies in a lending industry that got too innovative for its own good."

Subprime bailout? $120 billion - "Want to pick up the check for every homeowner who got saddled with a risky mortgage? It's a big one - on the order of $120 billion. Lawmakers and consumer groups in recent weeks have been calling for assistance for those at risk of defaulting on their mortgage. ... But economists and industry experts say the cost of a bailout would be significantly more than that."

Violence against guardians an 'alarming trend' - "Many times the victims are bruised in a fight or shoved down stairs. Others are stabbed with scissors. Last November, one was beaten to death with a hammer. And the suspects, in more than 1,800 cases documented in Harris County over a recent 2½-year period, were their children."

Study: Flying the biggest source of trip trouble - "Asked to cite their "most problematic" trip experiences, 40 percent of those surveyed cited flight delays and 21 percent said airport security. Only 15 percent said hotel amenities and cleanliness, while 9 percent cited rental cars."

Selling stuff online? Here comes the IRS - "Americans who sell items through Internet auction sites could be in for an unpleasant surprise at tax time next year, thanks to an IRS proposal designed to identify taxpayers who don't report income from those sales."

Researchers explore scrapping Internet - "Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over." -- With more "control" passed off as "better security".

School Sex Tape Causes Furor in Chicago - "A principal and a teacher at a suburban elementary school quit amid allegations they were caught on video having sex in the principal's office, authorities say. In keeping with Cook County's reputation for bare-knuckle politics, the scandal broke after copies of the sex tape were mailed anonymously to parents this week, just days before a contested school board election. The case has also created something of a mystery: Who planted the camera that recorded the action?"

Abstinence education doesn't deter youths - "In all four test sites, youths in the abstinence-education program and youths who received regular school services were not different in their sexual behavior four to six years later." -- That's because humans are supposed to have sex. Say it. Humans are supposed to have sex.

Hollywood's Smoke Alarm - "Today cigarettes are more common onscreen than at any other time since midcentury: 75% of all Hollywood films--including 36% of those rated G or PG--show tobacco use, according to a 2006 survey by the University of California, San Francisco."

Frozen sea may harbour Mars life - "A frozen sea found on Mars is one of the most promising places to look for life on the Red Planet, scientists say."




Quote of the Day
"I'd love to change the world. But I don't know what to do. So I leave it up to you."
~ Ten Years After

April 13, 2007

We cannot look from the sides as we are led towards crisis over Iran - "As hysteria is again fabricated, for Iraq, read Iran. According to the former US treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, the Bush cabal decided to attack Iraq on "day one" of Bush's administration, long before 9/11 - and it beggars belief that Blair did not know that. The main reason was oil. O'Neill was shown a Pentagon document entitled Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts, which outlined the carve-up of Iraq's oilfields among the major Anglo-American companies. Under a law written by American and British officials, the Iraqi puppet regime is about to hand over the extraction of the largest concentration of oil on earth to Anglo-American companies."

Egypt torture centre, report says - "Human rights group Amnesty International has released a highly critical report on Egypt's record on torture and illegal detention. The issue was recently highlighted by the emergence of mobile phone film of policemen raping a man with a stick. The report says Egypt has become an international centre for interrogation and torture on behalf of other states as part of the "war on terror"."

A Scandal Bigger than Walter Reed – The Rape, Assault and Harassment of Women in the Military - "Women are facing widespread sexual harassment and even rape by their male comrades in the military. The threat of sexual violence against female soldiers by their male colleagues is so great that women are warned not to out to the bathroom alone at night. This has resulted in women stopping drinking fluids at 3:00 in the afternoon and has even led to deaths due to dehydration."

White House Can't Say If Lost E-Mails Include Firings - "A presidential spokesman acknowledged that some lost White House e-mails might pertain to the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, as Congress stepped up demands the Bush administration preserve electronic records."

Leahy Doubts Bush Aides on Lost E-Mails - ""They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!'' Leahy shouted from the Senate floor. "You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers,'' said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary.''"

Rove E-Mail Sought by Congress May Be Missing - "A lawyer for the Republican National Committee told congressional staff members yesterday that the RNC is missing at least four years' worth of e-mail from White House senior adviser Karl Rove that is being sought as part of investigations into the Bush administration, according to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee." -- Sure it is.

Pressure grows on Wolfowitz to resign - "Paul Wolfowitz was under pressure to resign as president of the World Bank on Thursday after admitting he was personally involved in securing a large pay rise and promotion for a Bank official with whom he was romantically involved. The Bank president issued a public apology, saying: “I made a mistake for which I am sorry”." -- Mistake my ass. You knew what you were doing.

War on Terror looks like a fraud - "And new evidence is piling up around us, arguably strong enough to declare the whole War on Terror an undeniable fraud. Virtually ignored by mainstream media, the Americans showed their hand this year with the new Iraqi oil law, now making its way through Iraq's parliament. The law -- which tens of thousands of Iraqis marched peacefully against on Monday when they called for the immediate expulsion of U.S. forces -- would transfer control of one of the largest oil reserves on the planet from Baghdad to Big Oil, delivering "the prize" at last that Vice-President Dick Cheney famously talked about in 1999 when he was CEO of Halliburton."

Homeland Security Developing ‘Hostile Intent’ Technology - "The United States Department of Homeland Security announced in April that it is developing human factors technology able to screen people at borders for hostile intent. The tool will help screeners identify people who should not be allowed to enter the country. The novel program, named “Hostile Intent,” is geared towards detecting and gauging physiological and behavioral indications of deception and bad intentions. These include signs of nervousness, such as body head, perspiration and certain facial movements."

Ann Coulter Makes Fun of Darfur Genocide - "Yes, we realize we should really stop paying Ann Coulter any mind. Yes, we realize she's only looking for attention at this point, and yes, it does make us feel vaguely dirty to give it to her. But her latest column was just so over-the-top awful that we couldn't help ourselves." -- But Imus gets fired.

'It's not just Imus,' warn talk-radio headhunters - "Next in the crosshairs for alleged expressions of "bigotry and hate speech targeting, among other characteristics, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity" are, according to Media Matters for America, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz, John Gibson and Michael Smerconish."

Former Bush Speechwriter Hints at 9/11 Inside Job - "Says Neo-Cons would have created a false flag to justify war had it not been for WTC attack, questions official story."

Should George Bush Go Now? - "Laura, as is reported, has demanded a four-week trial separation from her husband of 29 years. “Laura’s had it!” says a source. “It looks as if their marriage has reached the bitter end and they are headed for divorce.”"

Media Finally Discovers Army of Pat Robertson Acolytes in Bush Administration - "When Monica Goodling's name erupted into the news last week, the mainstream press discovered suddenly that Pat Robertson's Regent University exists. Not only that, the press learned that it has made a deep footprint in George W. Bush's Washington."

Pending Election Reform in Congress Doesn't Give Citizens Right to Sue - "Should citizens explicitly be allowed to sue if they can prove their votes have been stolen or miscounted by electronic voting machines? As election integrity activists focus their attention on pressuring the House Committee on Administration to ban electronic voting machines when Congress reconvenes next week, the question of whether voters can individually sue -- known as a private cause of action -- has received scant public attention. But that legal right, which was a cornerstone of the federal Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, is not in the panel's bill, H.R. 811. Instead, the bill says citizens can sue under other preexisting laws."

Mankind 'can't influence' climate - "MANKIND is naive to think it can influence climate change, according to a prize-winning Australian geologist. ... “I think we really are a little bit naive to think we can change astronomical and solar processes.”" -- Naive? More like arrogant.

More Trees, Less Global Warming, Right? -- Not Exactly - "In fact, according to this model, by the year 2100, if all the forests were cut and left to rot, the annual global mean temperature would decrease by more than 0.5 degree Fahrenheit."

Bush: Resist 'temptation to manipulate life' - ""In our day there is a temptation to manipulate life in ways that do not respect the humanity of the person," Bush said Friday. "When that happens, the most vulnerable among us can be valued for their utility to others instead of their own inherent worth."" -- Kind of like when waging war.

Pope puts his faith in the Book of Genesis, not Darwin - "Pope Benedict XVI has stepped into the debate over Darwinism with remarks that will be seen as an endorsement of “intelligent design”. The Pope did not explicitly back intelligent design or creationism. He praised scientific progress but said that the Darwinian theory of evolution was “not finally provable” because: “We cannot haul 10,000 generations into the laboratory.” ... Last November the Pope suggested that the “cosmos” was an “intelligent project” and criticised those who said that creation was without direction or order. In his latest intervention, the Pope appears to dissociate himself from remarks made in 1996 by John Paul II, who said that although creation was the work of God evolution was “more than a hypothesis”."

U.S. Navy shows off terror-fighting dolphins - "Animal rights activists are resisting Navy plans to ship the dolphins and sea lions to Washington state. They worry that waters in the region, which are about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) cooler than in San Diego Harbor, could put stress on the animals. They also are concerned diseases could be transmitted to the area's native orca population."

Sex and Nudity Aren't Good Reasons to Fire Someone - "Is it really asking too much to suggest that employers stop worrying about how we perform in adult spaces and concentrate on how we perform our jobs instead? Apparently it is, for the nonce. ... I am so sick of the priggishness. Tired of people making assumptions about a person based on their perceptions of the other's sexuality -- especially when they base those assumptions on the single dimension of online expression. Flabbergasted at the assumption that if you participate in adult activity online, you must lack judgment, integrity or reliability. Getting naked on the internet is an international pastime, not the whim of a handful of sex addicts. Flashing your booty or treating yourself to an orgasm is hardly a sign that you are incapable of doing your job well, nor does it grant permission for others to dismiss your professional competence or authority. And millions of sane, healthy, normal folks cannot resist the special lure of the internet, where you can be voyeur and exhibitionist at the same time. ... If you are following a person's digital trail and you learn that they spend Saturdays submitting to a dominatrix and Sundays blogging about the relationship and posting photos of the interplay, what assumptions can you draw about that person's professional skills? None. It's quite possible that a day of submission each week releases all the stress from the office and makes them an effective and productive employee. It's also quite possible that they are excellent cooks, loving parents, sensible drivers and terrible project managers. ... If you don't want to see someone you know naked or sexually engaged, stay out of the adult areas of the internet. If you're there, what right do you have to punish others for their participation? People have sex. Some people have kinkier sex than others, depending on how you define "kinky." Some people like to share their sex lives with others in various ways and the internet is an effective platform for doing so."

The prospect of all-female conception - "Creating sperm from women would mean they would only be able to produce daughters because the Y chromosome of male sperm would still be needed to produce sons. The latest research brings the prospect of female-only conception a step closer."

'Fat' gene found by scientists - "The findings provide the first robust link between a common gene and obesity, and could eventually lead to new ways of tackling one of the most significant causes of ill health in the developed world."

U.S. CDC alarmed at rise of drug-resistant gonorrhea - "Gonorrhea in the United States is now resistant to all but one class of antibiotic drugs, threatening doctors' ability to treat the common sexually transmitted disease, officials said on Thursday."

People Claim Nasal Spray Causes Loss Of Taste, Smell - "On Friday, Matrixx agreed to pay $12 million in settlement awards and other charges to the 300 people who were part of a class-action lawsuit. Matrixx said that will cover about 90 percent of the outstanding claims. "

Bug hunters face online-apps dilemma - "Security holes in online applications may go unfixed because well-intended hackers are afraid to report bugs. Web applications pose a dilemma for bug hunters: how to test the security without going to jail? If hackers probe traditional software such as Windows or Word, they can do so on their own PCs. That isn't true for Web applications, which run on servers operated by others. Testing the security there is likely illegal and could lead to prosecution."

Apple puts a leash on its Leopard - "In the push to get the iPhone out on time, Apple has been forced to delay the release of the next version of Mac OS X until October."

Revolutionary dog food could see poop scoops consigned to bin - "Jos van der Linden, and his partner Nanette Waldorp invented the revolutionary food and claim it reduces the amount of times a dog needs to defecate from up to three times a day to just once a week."

High-tech tools link T. rex to chickens - "The findings, being published in two articles in Science magazine today, shattered the long-held assumption that protein and other basic materials of life could not possibly survive in detectable amounts for more than a few hundred thousand years. The research also raised the possibility that scientists might eventually recover DNA from prehistoric beasts, allowing for an even more sophisticated analysis of ancient organisms and the processes of evolution."




Quote of the Day
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper."
~ Robert Frost

April 12, 2007

Iacocca: Where Have All the Leaders Gone? - "Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for."

US forces to 'wall off Baghdad streets' - "US FORCES in Baghdad are planning to seal off vast areas of the city with barricades, effectively imprisoning the inhabitants of neighbourhoods, according to The Independent." -- How does this mean that things are going well?

Officials' e-mail may be missing, White House says - "The White House said Wednesday that it may have lost what could amount to thousands of messages sent through a private e-mail system used by political guru Karl Rove and at least 50 other top officials, an admission that stirred anger and dismay among congressional investigators. The e-mails were considered potentially crucial evidence in congressional inquiries launched by Democrats into the role partisan politics may have played in such policy decisions as the firing of eight U.S. attorneys."

Neocon Lieutenant Colonel Blames Iraq’s Victims - "“Once again, the Arab people, within Iraq and without, have failed themselves horribly,” Peters tells Kengor. “Their pettiness, their embrace of corruption, their social structures and their taste for internecine feuds and religious intolerance all have led them to make a hash of this unprecedented opportunity to build one rule-of-law democracy in the Arab world. Arabs have an ineradicable genius for failing themselves.” In other words, the Iraqis have only themselves to blame for more than a decade of crippling and deadly sanctions in the wake of Bush Senior’s invasion, an illegal and immoral adventure that targeted water and sewage plants, civilian infrastructure, hospitals and homes. Even before Bush the Junior’s invasion, at least 500 children a day in Iraq died from disease, mostly cancer from depleted uranium." -- Idiot.

Presidential Candidate: U.S. In Danger of Dictatorship - "Presidential candidate Ron Paul has warned that the US is now at a crisis point because the people have been so neglectful of protecting their liberties and big government has been so effective in eroding them. He warned that the elite are prepared to concoct events to scare the American people and asserted that the 2008 Presidential election is a contest between the people who care about their freedoms and those who are willing to succumb to the temptations of dictatorship."

Spy chief wants expanded powers - "President Bush’s spy chief is pushing to expand the government’s surveillance authority at the same time the administration is under attack for stretching its domestic eavesdropping powers."

Blair blames spate of murders on black culture - "Tony Blair yesterday claimed the spate of knife and gun murders in London was not being caused by poverty, but a distinctive black culture. His remarks angered community leaders, who accused him of ignorance and failing to provide support for black-led efforts to tackle the problem."

The Imus Fallout: Who Can Say What? - "But we also live in a culture in which racially and sexually edgy material is often—legitimately—considered brilliant comment, even art. Last year's most critically praised comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, won Sacha Baron Cohen a Golden Globe for playing a Kazakh journalist who calls Alan Keyes a "genuine chocolate face" and asks a gun-shop owner to suggest a good piece for killing a Jew. Quentin Tarantino has made a career borrowing tropes from blaxploitation movies. In the critics-favorite sitcom The Sarah Silverman Program, the star sleeps with God, who is African American and who she assumes is "God's black friend." And the current season of South Park opened with an episode about a Michael Richards-esque controversy erupting when a character blurts the word niggers on Wheel of Fortune. (He answers a puzzle—N-GGERS—for which the clue is "People who annoy you"; the correct answer is "naggers.")"

'Imus Treatment' Ignored for Catholic Bashers - "Weighing in on the Don Imus controversy, Catholic League President Bill Donohue commented Wednesday on the way Catholic bashers are treated compared to the morning radio talk-show host."

Doomsday for the Greenback - "The American people are in La-la land. If they had any idea of what the Federal Reserve was up to they’d be out on the streets waving fists and pitchforks. Instead, we go our business like nothing is wrong. Are we really that stupid? What is it that people don’t understand about the trade deficit? It’s not rocket science. The Current Account Deficit is over $800 billion a year. That means that we are spending more than we are making and savaging the dollar in the process. Presently, we need more than $2 billion of foreign investment per day just to keep the wheels from coming off the cart."

Breaking the Army - ""My bottom line is that the Army is unraveling, and if we don't expend significant national energy to reverse that trend, sometime in the next two years we will break the Army just like we did during Vietnam," he added."

West Point grads exit service at high rate - "Recent graduates of the US Military Academy at West Point are choosing to leave active duty at the highest rate in more than three decades, a sign to many military specialists that repeated tours in Iraq are prematurely driving out some of the Army's top young officers."

History Will Vindicate Lt. Ehren Watada - "I cannot address all of the issues around the Watada case in a single letter. But I am especially concerned about Army attempts to suppress the right of our soldiers to speak in public, to participate in the political process. Originally "conduct unbecoming" referred to offenses like drunken behavior, rape, adultery. Now the Army seeks to make political speech a crime. Of course our troops are expected to follow legal orders in lawful wars. But when they agree to serve their country, they do not forfeit their political rights. The military has jurisdiction over military matters, not over political ideology of our soldiers."

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Dies at Age 84 - "Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday." -- R.I.P.

Fuzzy Climate Math - "In a campaign without peacetime precedent, the media-entertainment-environmental complex is warning about global warming. Never, other than during the two world wars, has there been such a concerted effort by opinion-forming institutions to indoctrinate Americans, 83 percent of whom now call global warming a "serious problem." Indoctrination is supposed to be a predicate for action commensurate with professions of seriousness."

Turkey to block 'insulting' Web sites - "A parliamentary commission approved a proposal Thursday allowing Turkey to block Web sites that are deemed insulting to the founder of modern Turkey, weeks after a Turkish court temporarily barred access to YouTube."

Registry would treat gun owners like criminals - "If someone told you he had been forced to provide the Pennsylvania State Police with their fingerprints, photograph, Social Security number and a host of other personal information, you'd probably assume they were arrested and charged with a crime. Well, that kind of police ''booking'' process could be in store for Pennsylvania's roughly 3 million firearms owners if gun-control advocates in Harrisburg have their way."

Robobugs set to spy for Pentagon - "The Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency has sanctioned work on four 'robobugs' weighing less than 10g (0.3oz) each, and with a 7.5cm (3in) wingspan. It is hoped to have prototypes flying in 2008. The aim is for the bugs to carry tiny spy cameras. The bugs should be far more manoeuvrable than micro-sized conventional aircraft."

Gene mutations behind fidgety kids: German scientists - "Scientists in Germany said Thursday they have found compelling evidence of a genetic link to hyperactivity in children, identifying three mutations prevalent in fidgety youngsters."

Revolution in cancer treatment - "Cancer treatment could be on the brink of a revolution following a study showing that it may be possible significantly to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs without causing side effects."

Study: Cell phones are hazardous waste - " U.S. scientists have determined cellular telephones consumers discard by the millions each year qualify as hazardous waste."

Vista DRM could hide malware - "A security researcher has released a proof-of-concept program that hackers could use to exploit Windows Vista digital rights management processes to hide malware."

Windows XP to be phased out by year's end despite customer demand - "Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite consumer resistance to Vista and its compatibility problems. By early 2008, Microsoft's contracts with computer makers will require companies to only sell Vista-loaded machines. "The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January," said Frank Luburic, senior ThinkPad product manager for Lenovo. "At that point, they'll have no choice.""

Spirit-Crushing 'McJobs' Are Putting an End to Upward Mobility - "If we want to save the middle class, it's time to focus on what's happening in the low-wage labor market."

Study reveals "Robin Hood impulse" in human nature - ""In essence, what we found is that our taste for equality is one of the important reasons why we cooperate with each other, much more so than, say, other species of primates," Fowler said in a telephone interview." -- It seems some of us didn't get that gene.

Writers, Directors Fear 'Sci-Fi' Label Like an Attack From Mars - "Even when clearly appropriate, film studios and publishers avoid the phrase "science fiction." So do the novelists, film directors and editors in their employ. McCarthy's book, which is about to become a blockbuster -- Oprah Winfrey will tout it on an upcoming TV show as part of her book club -- is just another example of how the powers that be dodge the term, especially when it applies to "serious" fiction or cinema."




Quote of the Day
"So I am a man without a country."
~ Kurt Vonnegut