Air-Powered Car Coming to U.S. in 2009 to 2010 at Sub-$18,000, Could Hit 1000-Mile Range

And while ZPM is also licensed to build MDI’s two-seater OneCAT economy
model (the one headed for India) and three-seat MiniCAT (like a
SmartForTwo without the gas), the New Paltz, N.Y., startup is aiming
bigger: Company officials want to make the first air-powered car to hit
U.S. roads a $17,800, 75-hp equivalent, six-seat modified version of
MDI’s CityCAT (pictured above) that, thanks to an even more radical
engine, is said to travel as far as 1000 miles at up to 96 mph with
each tiny fill-up.

Read more.

DNA study supports African origin of man

A new genetic analysis of people from around the world adds further confirmation to the African origin of humans. The study of genetic details from 938 individuals from 51 populations provides evidence of how people are related and different, researchers led by Richard M. Myers of Stanford University report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Read more.

Google to Store Patients' Health Records

Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that's likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.

Read more.

Rule by fear or rule by law?

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

It gets worse:

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

And worse:

A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

All this and more in the San Francisco Chronicle.

U.S. to turn up heat on tax protesters

The Justice Department, on the heels of a split verdict in its tax evasion prosecution of actor Wesley Snipes, is planning a crackdown on the so-called tax protester movement.

"We're getting your money to pay for our wars!"

Read more.

Experts fear debris isn't the only fallout from satellite shoot-down

"I don't see how other nations don't see this as an anti-satellite test," said Theresa Hitchens, the director of the Washington D.C.-based Center for Defense Information, a centrist national security policy institute. "They'll see it as the weaponization of space."

China, which last year came under harsh U.S. criticism for using a missile to destroy an aged weather satellite hundreds of miles in space, was the first to react.

Do as we say, not as we do!

Read more.

Arizona 'Virtual Fence' to Get Final OK

A 28-mile "virtual fence" that will use radars and surveillance cameras to try to catch people entering the country illegally has gotten final government approval.

Read more.

Police concerned about order to stop screening

Security details at Barack Obama's rally Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

Dallas Deputy Police Chief T.W. Lawrence, head of the Police Department's homeland security and special operations divisions, said the order -- apparently made by the U.S. Secret Service -- was meant to speed up the long lines outside and fill the arena's vacant seats before Obama came on.

So, the SS's function is to make sure that every seat in the house gets filled?

Read more.

Tortured logic of terror trials will not be going away

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has just
been given a cudgel, gift-wrapped by the Bush administration, to thump
his Democratic rival.

For years the six suspected 9/11
conspirators have been in the custody of the CIA and military, held
without charge. Yet now, just as the 2008 presidential race heats up,
capital charges have been filed against the men, with a military trial
to follow.

How convenient that public attention will be
redirected to the actions of these alleged mass murderers over the
coming months, giving fear-mongering - one of the Republican winning
strategies - a boost at just the right moment.

Read more.

Fears of Internet predators unfounded, study finds

A lot of parental worries about Internet sex predators are unjustified, according to new research by a leading center that studies crimes against children.

Read more.

Mysterious Creatures Found in Antarctica

Scientists investigating the icy waters of Antarctica said Tuesday they have collected mysterious creatures including giant sea spiders and huge worms in the murky depths.

Read more.

Remains of giant frog discovered in Madagascar

A team of researchers, led by Stony Brook University palaeontologist David Krause, Ph.D., has discovered in Madagascar the remains of what may be the largest frog ever to exist. Moreover, the 16-inch, 10-pound ancient frog, scientifically named Beelzebufo, or devil frog, links a group of frogs that lived 65 to 70 million years ago to some types living today in South America.

Read more.

Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?

But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening:
anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a
dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such
things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly
insidious way.

Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and
cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.

Depressing.

Read more.

Machines 'to match man by 2029'

Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see tiny
robots implanted in people's brains to make them more intelligent said
engineer Ray Kurzweil.

Read more.

Fossils of new meat-eating dinos found

The creatures lived at a time when land bridges connected Africa to India and even Antarctica, which was then a temperate home to dinosaurs. But Africa later became isolated and its dinosaurs followed unique evolutionary paths scientists have just begun to uncover.

...

Sereno's group found the new species during a 2000 expedition to the Niger desert. They found bones from about a dozen new species, and stumbled across one of the richest archaeological sites that's been found in the region.

"We have not released even half of all that we found there," Sereno said.

Well, that's cool.

Read more.

7 dead in N. Illinois U. hall shooting

Investigators and school officials did not immediately know why the man indiscriminately fired into the crowd with a shotgun and two handguns Thursday, wounding 15 people and sending panicked students fleeing for the exits before killing himself.

Read more.

Scalia says 'so-called torture' may not be unconstitutional

Scalia argued that "so-called torture" may not necessarily be prohibited by the US constitution, as he said the Eighth Amendment bar against "cruel and unusual punishment" was only intended to apply to criminal punishments:

Scalia just looks like a thug.

Apparently, he thinks like one too.

Read more.

U.S. says 82 youths have died in "choking game"

At least 82 U.S. youths have died since 1995 engaging in "the choking game" in which they try to experience a fleeting "high" by cutting off the oxygen supply to the brain, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

An unknown number of youths, mostly boys, are taking part in the practice in which they strangle themselves with their hands or a noose or have someone else strangle them, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report.

Read more.

Are your politics rooted in your genes?

This doesn't mean, these scientists say, genes dictate how we think; environment clearly plays a huge role. Nor does it mean there's a Republican gene or a Democrat gene. Scientists who espouse the genetics-politics connection say that probably hundreds of genes influence how we think and how we see the world.

Read more.

Ritual of Dealing With Demons Undergoes a Revival

Exorcism -- the church rite of expelling evil spirits from tortured souls -- is making a comeback in Catholic regions of Europe.

Jesus.

"This is a service which is sorely needed," said Jankowski, who holds a doctorate in spiritual theology. "The number of people who need help is intensifying right now."

Jankowski cited the case of a woman who asked for a divorce days after renewing her wedding vows as part of a marriage counseling program. What was suspicious, he said, was how the wife suddenly developed a passionate hatred for her husband.

"According to what I could perceive, the devil was present and acting in an obvious way," he said. "How else can you explain how a wife, in the space of a couple of weeks, could come to hate her own husband, a man who is a good person?"

Jankowski said that an archbishop granted him the authority last October to perform exorcisms and that he's been busy ever since. As for the afflicted wife? "We're still working with her," he said.

Hey, Jankowski. Shut up and leave that lady alone.

They were going to marriage counseling, so they already had trouble in their marriage. She didn't just "suddenly" wake up and develop a "passionate hatred for her husband." All that had been building over time. And how do you know her husband is a "good person"?

Read more if you must.

'Adultery' sisters to be stoned to death in Iran

The two sisters were found guilty of adultery - a capital crime in Iran - after the husband of one of the pair presented a video showing them in the company of other men while he was away.

...

The Etemad newspaper quoted Jabbar Solati, their lawyer, as saying that the sisters had initially been tried for "illegal relations" and had received 99 lashes. However, they were convicted of "adultery" in a second trial for the same incident.

The pair admitted they were in the video but argued there was no adultery as no scene on the video showed them engaged in a sexual act.

The world we live in.

Read more.

Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women

The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.

...

"There are many motives for these crimes and parties involved in killing women, by strangling, beheading, chopping off their hands, legs, heads."

"When I came to Basra a year ago," he says, "two women were killed in front of their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6-year-old son, another in front of her 11-year-old child, and yet another who was pregnant."

The killers enforcing their own version of Islamic justice are rarely caught, while women live in fear.

...

After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sawsan says, the situation was "the best." But now, she says, it's "the worst."

"We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror."

Things are so much better in Iraq.

Read the rest.

Waterboarding is legal, White House says

The surprise assertion from the Bush administration reopened a debate that many in Washington had considered closed. Two laws passed by Congress in recent years -- as well as a Supreme Court ruling on the treatment of detainees -- were widely interpreted to have banned the CIA's use of the extreme interrogation method.

But in remarks that were greeted with disbelief by some members of Congress and human rights groups, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that waterboarding was a legal technique that could be employed again "under certain circumstances."

Read more.

Sen. Rockefeller Lets Slip the Spying Truth: Drift Nets To Be Legalized

Rockefeller makes clear that the impending changes to the law aren't about making it easier for the National Security Agency to listen in on a particular terrorism suspect's phone calls. Instead, the changes are about letting the nation's spooks secretly and unilaterally install filters inside America's phone and internet infrastructure.

Read more.

RIAA Plans to Cut Artist Royalties

The rather loathed RIAA, most recently infamous for pressuring Congress to pass the PRO-IP Act, has now turned its unwanted attention upon the very people the group ostensibly exists to protect. According to The Hollywood Reporter, The RIAA is now pressing to lower the royalty payments made to musicians and artists for music tracks sold via digital distribution. Though the actual artists who make the music are presently entitled to just 13% of wholesale, the RIAA thinks they should receive only 9%.

Read more.

Georgians want access to Tenn. water

But behind the amusement is a serious issue that has bedeviled the Southeast: access to water. If the border is redrawn, the new state line would fall across Nickajack Reservoir. That would allow parched Georgians to tap into the waters of the dammed Tennessee River.

Read more.

Afghan Senate withdraws demand for death sentence

In a dramatic volte-face, the Afghan Senate has withdrawn its confirmation of a death sentence on Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student convicted of blasphemy for downloading a report on women's rights from the internet.

So, without the bad publicity, would there have been an "about face"?

I doubt it.

Read more.

Sentenced to death: Afghan who dared to read about women's rights

A young man, a student of journalism, is sentenced to death by an Islamic court for downloading a report from the internet. The sentence is then upheld by the country's rulers. This is Afghanistan – not in Taliban times but six years after "liberation" and under the democratic rule of the West's ally Hamid Karzai.

The fate of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has led to domestic and international protests, and deepening concern about erosion of civil liberties in Afghanistan. He was accused of blasphemy after he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed.

Things are so much better there now then they were before.

Read more.

Kids who kill offer little warning

Slayings of relatives by teenagers "are usually spontaneous sorts of things," Schlesinger said. "With the brooding, depressive male adult, it's not spontaneous, it's much more thought through, with obsessive rumination prior to it. With a teenager, it's almost always impulsive, spontaneous, and there happens to be a loaded gun around."

Read more.

Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse

If your spouse already bugs you now, the future is bleak. New research suggests couples view one another as even more irritating and demanding the longer they are together.

Read more.

Fat People Cheaper to Treat, Study Says

Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

...

The researchers found that from age 20 to 56, obese people racked up the most expensive health costs. But because both the smokers and the obese people died sooner than the healthy group, it cost less to treat them in the long run.

So, soon we'll hear "get fat, smoke more, die young".

Read more.

With tech, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide

While Orwell was correct in foreseeing evaporating individual privacy, the enemy of privacy is not necessarily government. Indeed, we may only have ourselves to blame for the destruction of privacy that we hold so dear.

...

Thus, whenever something catches someone's attention, even if that something is someone else's intimate moment, it can be captured on the spot by way of video or photos. From there, it is practically no effort to post the video or photos on the Internet for worldwide viewing.

While we enjoy the many features provided on our handheld devices, is this the direction we want to be heading in terms of the annihilation of privacy? I think not.

...

To buy the argument that all private conduct must take place behind closed doors is to force everyone underground in their private dealings with others. Should we live in a world where the expectation is that we can and will be filmed for worldwide viewing at any possible moment? No!

Read more.

Religious minorities face Real ID crackdown

More than two decades after the Quaring case, approximately a dozen states now offer religious exceptions when issuing driver's licenses. But because of a federal law called the Real ID Act that takes effect on May 11, residents of those states who have pictureless licenses could expect problems flying on commercial airliners and entering federal buildings, including some Social Security and Veterans Affairs offices.

Read more.

U.S. Troops Asked If They Would Shoot American Citizens

Scott writes that his company hired a soldier who had recently returned from Iraq, who told him that U.S. troops were being quizzed on whether or not they would be prepared to shoot their own friends and family members during a national state of emergency in America.

Read more.

New Weapon Against Terror: A Flashlight?

It looks like a normal
flashlight, but Homeland Security has paid close to a million dollars
for it. It can stop you right in your tracks.

Law enforcement is already calling it "controversial."

The
point of this device is to disorient you, so we modified the video when
we showed it on air. If you wish to see the unmodified footage of the
device in action, you can click here -- but be warned, you may find the experience uncomfortable.

Read more.

New Way to Kill Viruses: Shake Them to Death

Scientists may one day be able to destroy viruses in the same way that opera singers presumably shatter wine glasses. New research mathematically determined the frequencies at which simple viruses could be shaken to death.

Read more.

Double dipping? 'Seinfeld' was right

Last year the food microbiologist's undergraduate students examined the effects of double dipping using volunteers, wheat crackers and several sample dips. They found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from an eater's mouth to the remaining dip sample.

...

"I like to say it's like kissing everybody at the party — if you're double dipping, you're putting some of your bacteria in that dip," Dawson said.

But 'kissing everybody at the party' is fun!

Read more.

Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority [58%] reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

How sad.

Read more.

Want Better Music? Don't Stiff the Songwriters

On the other side of the argument, record labels and webcasters -- who squared off during last year's battle over performance royalties -- have teamed up this time around, saying songwriters and publishers are making too much money and stunting the music industry's growth.

...

Record labels also think songwriters and publishers are getting too much of the pie.

...

Why should you care? Because music is bad enough already. Cutting songwriters out of the equation not only means that manufactured bands that rely on them will sound worse. It also means bands that do their own songwriting will have a tougher time surviving.

Read more.

Lonely people more likely to believe in God

All three groups were also asked to rate their belief in ghosts, angels, the devil, miracles, curses, and God, and again, those in the loneliness group reported stronger belief in these supernatural agents.

Read more.

Math + religion = Trouble

The New York Times reported recently that mathematicians believe in God at a rate 2 1/2 times that of biologists, quoting a survey of the National Academy of Sciences. Admittedly, that's not saying much: Only 14.6 per cent of mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis, versus 5.5 per cent of biologists (versus some 80 per cent of Canadians who believe in a supreme being).

...

Even as Paulos works to refute the classical arguments for God's existence, he does something too few of his mindset do: Chide non-believers for unsportsmanlike conduct.

"It's repellent for atheists or agnostics," he admonishes, "to personally and aggressively question others' faith or pejoratively label it as benighted flapdoodle or something worse. Those who do are rightfully seen as arrogant and overbearing."

That doesn't prevent him from doffing the gloves.

...

His arguments notwithstanding, Paulos concedes that there's "no way to conclusively disprove the existence of God."

The reason, he notes, is a consequence of basic logic, but not one "from which theists can take much heart."

As for the problem of good and evil, he defers to fellow atheist, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg: "With or without religion, good people will do good, and evil people will do evil. But for good people to do evil, that takes religion."

Another book to read.

Read more.

Clinton Won't Commet to Renew Constitution

Illinois Senator Barack Obama has finally signed the American Freedom Pledge, joining his fellow Democratic presidential candidates in encouraging the restoration of basic Constitutional principles after the battering they have taken during the Bush-Cheney era.

All the Democrats, that is, except New York Senator Hillary Clinton.

Read more.

Putting clocks forward has ‘enormous impact’ on health

According to researchers, the one-hour time jump that takes place in the spring - when clocks are put forward one hour- can result in people's natural circadian rhythms being disturbed for nearly a fifth of the year.

And they argued this could be having an "enormous" impact on health by interfering with the body's "seasonal" defences to viruses.

Read more.

Sperm cells created from female embryo

Sperm cells have been created from a female human embryo in a remarkable breakthrough that suggests it may be possible for lesbian couples to have their own biological children.

Read more.

Navy Tests Incredible Sci-Fi Weapon

The U.S. Navy yesterday test fired an incredibly powerful new big gun designed to replace conventional weaponry aboard ships. Sci-fi fans will recognize its awesome power and futuristic technology.

The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.

Read more.

Bush asserts authority to bypass defense act

President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

Read more.

Pope says some science shatters human dignity

Pope Benedict said on Thursday that embryonic stem cell research, artificial insemination and the prospect of human cloning had "shattered" human dignity.

Whatever.

Read more.

Professor: Fractions should be scrapped

"Fractions have had their day, being useful for by-hand calculation," DeTurck said as part of a 60-second lecture series. "But in this digital age, they're as obsolete as Roman numerals are."

...

DeTurck does not want to abolish the teaching of fractions and long division altogether. He believes fractions are important for high-level mathematics and scientific research. But it could be that the study of fractions should be delayed until it can be understood, perhaps after a student learns calculus, he said. Long division has its uses, too, but maybe it doesn't need to be taught as intensely.

...

"Math is hard. The idea that somehow we're going to make math just fun is just a dream."

Read more.

McCain: 'There will be other wars'

Presidential candidate John McCain shocked observers on Sunday when he told a crowd
of supporters, "There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell
you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there
will be other wars."

People, McCain is not a good choice for President. Haven't you been paying attention?

Read more.

Bush orders NSA to snoop on US agencies

Not content with spying on other countries, the NSA (National Security Agency) will now turn on the US's own government agencies thanks to a fresh directive from president George Bush.

Under the new guidelines, the NSA and other intelligence agencies can bore into the internet networks of all their peers. The Bush administration pulled off this spy expansion by pointing to an increase in the number of cyber attacks directed against the US, possibly from foreign nations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will spearhead the effort around identifying the source of these attacks, while the Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon will concentrate on retaliation.

Read more.

McDonald's dishes up diplomas to go

McDonald's employees trained in skills needed to run outlets for the fast-food chain can get credit toward high school diplomas, the British government announced Monday.

...

It is the first time the government has granted national recognition to corporate training schemes. But universities and colleges will have to decide whether to accept the corporate qualifications as grounds for admission.

Read more.

Target tells a blogger to go away

Early this month, the blog's founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern--the retailer's emblem--with the bull's-eye at her crotch.

"Targeting crotches with a bull's-eye is not the message we should be putting out there," she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

"Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets," a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

Not a good move, Target.

Read more.

imagination is more important than knowledge

From explodingdog.com

Must We Fear Adolescent Sexuality?

But if the American data appear to confirm conventional wisdom that raging hormones and peer
pressures put teenagers at risk of making unwise sexual decisions, public health data from other
countries challenge this commonly held knowledge. International comparison demonstrates that
developed countries vary dramatically in the degree to which the sexual maturation of teenagers
leads to adverse outcomes. No country forms a more stark contrast for comparison with the United
States than does the Netherlands: Dutch teenagers are far less likely to either become pregnant or
contract an STD than are their American peers.

A fascinating article and well worth the read.

Read more (PDF version).

Or html version.

Same-Sex Couples Just as Committed as Heterosexual Counterparts

Same-sex couples are as committed and happy in their romantic relationships as heterosexual couples, find two studies in the January issue of the journalDevelopmental Psychology.

The authors of the studies say their findings challenge the stereotype that same-sex relationships aren't as healthy or secure as heterosexual pairings.

I know quite a few heterosexual pairing that are not healthy or secure.

Read more.

Spouses Who Fight Live Longer

Preliminary results from a survey of married couples suggest that disputing husbands and wives who hold in their anger die earlier than expressive couples.

...

"The key matter is, when the conflict happens, how do you resolve it?" Harburg said. "When you don't, if you bury your anger, and you brood on it and you resent the other person or the attacker, and you don't try to resolve the problem, then you're in trouble."

The findings add to past research showing that the release of anger can be healthy.

Read more.

Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA stats?

John Heidemann was skeptical about what the movie industry was saying about campus piracy.

A researcher in the Information and Science Institute at the University of Southern California, Heidemann had heard the film studios' claim that college students downloading movies on campus were responsible for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses to piracy.

...

So, working with a team of researchers last summer--the famous Hollywood sign on the mountain clearly visible from his workplace--Heidemann and the group came up with a way to track file-sharing use on USC's network. Following a 14-hour monitoring of the system, the team concluded that between 3 and 13 percent of those on the school's network were using peer-sharing technology and accounted for between 21 and 33 percent of overall traffic, he said.

There was no way for Heidemann to discern whether the information being transferred was pirated. But even in a worst case scenario, 13 percent indicated that only a small minority of USC students were engaged in illegal file sharing. The MPAA's claims "did not hold in our analysis," he said.

This was an example of a university not relying on the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to tell it what was happening on its network. But USC is the exception rather than the rule.

Read more.

Truth was first US casualty in Iraq war: study

US President George W. Bush and his top officials ran roughshod over the truth in the run-up to the Iraq war lying a total of 935 times, a study released Wednesday found.

Read more.

Senate delays eavesdropping vote

The Senate on Thursday signaled support for granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government conduct warrantless eavesdropping, a sign that the contentious provision may be headed for approval next week.

And we let them get away with doing this.

Read more.

US scientists close to creating artificial life: study

The move, which comes after five years of research, is seen as the penultimate stage in the endeavour to create an artificial life form based entirely on a man-made DNA genome -- something which has tantalised scientists and sci-fi writers for years.

Read more.

Teen sex advice podcast gains popularity

The 28-year-old mother of three speaks from experience, and her video podcast, the Midwest Teen Sex Show, is attracting thousands of viewers.

Read more.

Fulton to pay students in after-school program

Forty students from Creekside High and Bear Creek Middle schools in Fairburn will be the first to try the "Learn & Earn" program, where students will get paid to attend after-school tutoring programs.

Students will make approximately $8 an hour, and be eligible for bonuses if their grades improve, said Kirk Wilks, district spokesman. The initial students are in the eighth and 11th grades.

I don't have a good feeling about this.

Read more.

Forced annulment keeps couple apart

It was the police, delivering news that a judge had annulled their marriage in absentia after some of Fatima's relatives sought the divorce on grounds she had married beneath her.

...

Fatima's case underscores shortcomings in the kingdom's Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.

...

Saudi lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, who used to represent the couple, said local interpretations of Islamic law hold that relatives of a married couple have the right to seek an annulment if they feel the marriage lowers the extended family's status.

Now this is completely fucked up.

Read more.

Should AT&T police the Internet?

A decade after the government said that AT&T and other service providers don't have to police their networks for pirated content, the telecommunications giant is voluntarily looking for ways to play traffic cop.

Read more.

Anti-war group says war crimes are "encouraged"

Iraq war veteran Jon Turner said it was almost expected of him to pull the trigger on people who didn't need to die. So he did.

...

"The killing of innocent civilians is policy," veteran Mike Blake said. "It's unit policy and it's Army policy. It's not official policy, but it's what's happens on the ground everyday. It's what unit commanders individually encourage."

And we let them get away with this shit.

Read more.

Bacteria race ahead of drugs

Yet the problem goes far beyond one bug and a handful of drugs. Entire classes of mainstay antibiotics are being threatened with obsolescence, and bugs far more dangerous than staph are evolving in ominous ways.

Read more.

World not running out of oil, say experts

A landmark study of more than 800 oilfields by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) has concluded that rates of decline are only 4.5 per cent a year, almost half the rate previously believed, leading the consultancy to conclude that oil output will continue to rise over the next decade.

...

The optimistic view of the world's oil resource was also given support by BP's chief economist, Peter Davies, who dismissed theories of “Peak Oil” as fallacious. Instead, he gave warning that world oil production would peak as demand weakened, because of political constraints, including taxation and government efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Read more.

White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

Give me a break.

The White House wants to read your emails, but eliminates their own.

And we let them get away with this shit.

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Don't miss lessons Radiohead, Reznor offer

In October, Reznor, the leader of the band Nine Inch Nails, and Radiohead attempted to promote and distribute albums online without the help of a major record label. Both offered fans the opportunity to obtain the music for free. Both saw some success.

But they also illustrated that the music business is probably better left in the hands of businessmen. Musicians are not the new labels. Artists need someone to provide financial support and business acumen. If we end up ridding the world of labels, we'll only have to re-create them--in some other, probably more nimble form.

That's discouraging.

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Mystery Disease Gives Sensation Of 'Bugs Eating Skin'

An unexplained disease that sufferers say cause overwhelming sensations of bugs crawling, biting and stinging their skin and mystery lesions that never heal is being investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The illness is called Morgellons and Florida, Texas and California are states with apparent hot spots for the condition, Local 6 reported.

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Humans Crave Violence Just Like Sex

In fact, the researcher say, humans seem to crave violence just like they do sex, food or drugs.

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The new study, detailed online this week in the journal Psychopharmacology, reveals the same clusters of brain cells involved in other rewards are also behind the craving for violence.

Thus, we're screwed.

Whether you believe in "intelligent design" or that humans evolved naturally, either way, to crave violence is definitely a design flaw.

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US insists cluster bombs not bad if used right

Cluster bombs, which nearly 100 countries are seeking to ban, should not be considered bad as long as states involved in conflicts use them responsibly, a senior United States official said on Wednesday.

Can you believe that shit?

States involved in conflict should be able to settle their differences without bombing the shit out of one another.

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Giant rat that once roamed the earth

The fossilised skull of a rat the size of a car has been unearthed. The creature lived about four million years ago, weighed about a tonne and ate mostly soft vegetation. It was so big that it probably spent much of its life semi-submerged in water, like a hippo, to reduce the stresses caused by its size.

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Twenty and thirtysomethings aren't as healthy as their parents

They should be in the prime of their lives. But instead, those in their twenties and thirties are in worse health than their parents, a survey has found.

Binge drinking, ready meals and a lack of exercise all take their toll.

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Time Warner Links Web Prices With Usage

Time Warner Cable will experiment with a new pricing structure for high-speed Internet access later this year, charging customers based on how much data they download, a company spokesman said Wednesday.

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Animal-human embryo research is approved

Experiments to create Britain’s first embryos that combine human and animal material will begin within months after a government watchdog gave its approval yesterday to two research teams to carry out the controversial work.

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NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven, Top Spy Says

The nation's top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon! is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens' Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst.

Can you believe this shit?

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Microsoft seeks patent for office 'spy' software

Microsoft is developing Big Brother-style software capable of remotely monitoring a worker’s productivity, physical wellbeing and competence.

The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

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Girls age three hitting puberty

Shocked doctors blame hormones in food and water for some British toddlers showing signs of breast growth.

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Hopes of custom-built organs as scientists create beating heart

SCIENTISTS have created a beating heart in the laboratory in a breakthrough that could allow doctors one day to make a range of organs for transplant almost from scratch.

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California wants to control home thermostats

Next year in California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device that will be required in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages.

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Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War

The DoD is flirting with the idea of medicating soldiers to desensitize them to combat trauma -- will an army of unfeeling monsters result?

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Though both, at least in theory, sound entirely reasonable, even desirable, in the wrong hands, under the wrong leadership, they could make the sci-fi fantasies of Blade Runner seem prescient.

And we don't know what the future holds.

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Iraq to reinstate Saddam party followers

Iraq's parliament adopted legislation Saturday on the reinstatement of thousands of former supporters of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to government jobs, a key benchmark sought by the United States as a step toward easing sectarian tensions.

WTF?

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U.S. appeals court dismisses Guantanamo torture suit

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday that four former Guantanamo prisoners, all British citizens, have no right to sue top Pentagon officials and military officers for torture, abuse and violations of their religious rights.

Which really means they have no rights whatsoever.

You may think that's fine that they have no rights, but who's to say that you will not be in a similar situation in the future. Imprisoned for whatever the crime-of-the-moment is at that time, with little understanding of the offense. Then subjected to torture because you are an enemy of the state.

You may think that will never happen, but history tells a different story. We just do not know what the future holds.

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Why 10 is too young for your first Brazilian

Last year Nair, makers of hair-removal products, released their Pretty range, aimed at 10 to 15-year-olds, or, as they call them, "first-time hair removers". Yes, you heard right. Ten-year-olds. Girls — children — in grades 5 and 6, encouraged to wax and chemically remove hair from their barely pubescent bodies. As online site Gawker put it, what's next: Baby Brazilians?

Well, it seems that someone heard that throwaway phrase and spied a business opportunity, because Australian website girl.com.au is now promoting a feature about Brazilian waxes, otherwise known as a torture device in which all the hair in a woman's nether regions is ripped off with a combination of hot wax and a high pain threshold. The website, which appears to be mostly read by girls in the nine to 14 age bracket, says of the Brazilian: "Nobody really likes hair in their private regions and it has a childlike appeal."

10?

The things businesses do to try and make more money.

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Astronomers describe violent universe

Now this is cool!

The deeper astronomers gaze into the cosmos, the more they find it's a bizarre and violent universe.

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In the past few days, scientists have unveiled plenty to ooh and aah over:

Read the rest. The spiral galaxy mentioned is just too freakin' cool!

A Drug to End Drug Addiction

What if science made a pill to protect us from addiction — keeping us from smoking cigarettes, getting fat or abusing drugs and alcohol? According to encouraging results from several lines of study, it seems that day may be closer than we thought.

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China blogger beaten to death

When Wei took out his cell phone to record the protest, more than 50 municipal inspectors turned on him, attacking him for five minutes, Xinhua said. Wei was dead on arrival at a Tianmen hospital, the report said.

The world we live in.

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RIAA shreds Washington Post story in debate

National Public Radio hosted in on-air debate between Marc Fisher, the Post columnist, and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The way I saw it, Fisher was ill advised to debate. What was exposed was a reporter who doesn't want to admit to making a mistake and has dug his heels in. Meanwhile, according to Sherman, Fisher has misled consumers.

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Microsoft readies Hal 9000

Judging from a recent patent application, Microsoft hopes to build some sort of "activity monitoring system" that keeps an eye on worker productivity using various "physiological or environmental sensors." These sensors would track everything from heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, facial expressions, and blood pressure to brain signals and galvanic skin response.

Yes, galvanic skin response is what drives a lie detector.

Redmond sees this system as a way for companies and, um, governments to monitor "group activities." "In particular, the system can monitor user activity, detect when users need assistance with their specific activities, and identify at least one other user that can assist them," the patent application reads, in classic patent speak. "Assistance can be in the form of answering questions, providing guidance to the user as the user completes the activity, or completing the activity such as in the case of taking on an assigned activity."

In other words: If you don't do your duty, the system will make sure your duties are assigned to someone else.

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Plus, all this personal information is safely stored away for future use. According to Microsoft, that's a good thing.

Read the rest.

Breathalyzer Tests Now The Law At N.J. High School

When it comes to keeping our teenagers safe and sober, one New Jersey school district is taking the lead by employing the use of a Breathalyzer test.

And as CBS 2 HD found out, it's become such a successful deterrent, students are passing with flying colors.

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"I'm all for it because if your child isn't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to hide," parent Barbara Fede said.

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Washington Post sticks by RIAA story despite evidence it goofed

Marc Fisher, a Post columnist, wrote on Sunday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asserted in a legal brief that anyone who copies music from a CD onto their computer is a thief. The document, filed last month, was part of the RIAA's copyright suit against Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona resident accused of illegal file sharing.

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The problem with Fisher's story is that nowhere in the RIAA's brief does the group call someone a criminal for simply copying music to a computer. Throughout the 21-page brief, the recording industry defines what it considers to be illegal behavior and it boils down to this: creating digital recordings from CDs and then uploading them to file-sharing networks.

And THAT I would agree with!

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Can Atheists Be Parents?

After six years of childless marriage, John and Cynthia Burke of Newark decided to adopt a baby boy through a state agency. Since the Burkes were young, scandal-free and solvent, they had no trouble with the New Jersey Bureau of Children's Services—until investigators came to the line on the application that asked for the couple's religious affiliation.

John Burke, an atheist, and his wife, a pantheist, had left the line blank. As a result, the bureau denied the Burkes' application.

Read the rest. A judge gets involved. It's complete bullshit.

Programmed for love

If you're younger than 35, you'll probably live long enough to put David Levy's prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we'll be creating robots so lifelike, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we'll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good.

Whether or not "it will all be good" is still to be determined, but one thing is for sure, humanity will have to deal with these situations in the future.

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UK Couple banned for life from shopping centre and branded 'terrorists' - for taking photos of their grandchildren

They were thrown out of the centre after they took out a camera to snap the look on the youngsters' faces when they turned up unexpectedly.

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Pope says family key to peace

Pope Benedict ushered in the New Year on Tuesday by criticizing policies that undermine the traditional family, saying they eroded one of the most important foundations for peace in the world.

The Pontiff, delivering a traditional New Year prayer for peace, appeared to take a swipe at efforts in several countries to grant legal recognition to gay and unwed couples -- although he did not single out any policies by name.

He said the traditional family led by a husband and wife instilled values that promote peace, and added it was an "irreplaceable" institution.

"Those who are hostile, even unknowingly, to the institution of the family ... make peace fragile for the entire national and international community," the Pope told crowds gathered in a sunny St. Peter's Square.

Really, is there anything I can say to this? I mean to use world peace to further your agenda against gay people seems like a low blow.

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Scotland: Sex lessons must start at age five

SEX education lessons should be given to schoolchildren as young as five as part of a bid to combat soaring levels of teenage pregnancy and sexual disease, Scotland's most senior public health doctor said last night.

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2008: The year a new superpower is born

Here comes the world's newest superpower. The rest of the world is gloomily contemplating economic slowdown and even recession. Not in Beijing. China is set to make 2008 the year it asserts its status as a global colossus by flexing frightening economic muscle on international markets, enjoying unprecedented levels of domestic consumption and showcasing itself to a watching world with a glittering £20bn Olympic Games.

The world's most populous nation will mark the next 12 months with a coming-of-age party that will confirm its transformation in three decades from one of the poorest countries of the 20th century into the globe's third-largest economy, its hungriest (and most polluting) consumer and the engine room of economic growth.

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Couples Outsource Pregnancies to India

More than 50 women in this city are now pregnant with the children of couples from the United States, Taiwan, Britain and beyond. The women earn more than many would make in 15 years. But the program raises a host of uncomfortable questions that touch on morals and modern science, exploitation and globalization, and that most natural of desires: to have a family.

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Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The RIAA is desperate to hang on to its antiquated business model because it was so easy for the big record companies to make a shitload of money. However, that old model no longer works. In fact, it is dead and the RIAA is just trying to use its muscle to garner as much money as it possibly can through lawsuits instead of trying to devise a business model for the 21st century.

Seems all those years people were making mixed tapes just never happened because no lawsuits were filed during those days and mixed tapes were everywhere. They even made movies where mixed tapes played important roles in the story. Yet, today, if you transfer your legally purchased compact discs onto your computer you have cheated the record companies out of some money?

Um, no. I don't think so.

I feel cheated for having to purchase, for example, Pink Foyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and The Eagle's Greatest Hits 1971-1975 multiple times. Not only because I wore the LP's out, but because I also had to buy the cassette tape, then I had to buy the CD. I mean how many times should we have to buy the same freakin' album?

And that's the issue, isn't?

With today's technology, we only have to buy an album/song once. Then we'll have multiple backups in case a hard drive dies or whatnot. And if one does, we'll still have the album/songs we legally purchased and will not have to purchase them again.

That has to disturb the powers that be at the RIAA. They can't make their easy money any more.

Compound that with today's youth who believe music should be free, and the RIAA is in a world of hurt.

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," Beckerman says. "Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started."

And they are too stupid to see that.

Hey big record companies, keep treating your good customers like this and soon you won't matter.

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