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.

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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:

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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.

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.

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.

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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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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RIP George Carlin - Religion is bullshit.

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.

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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.

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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.

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"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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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