From the Heartland Institute comes this outrageous story:
PETA Pans Breakthrough in Breast Cancer Treatment
Studies published in the October 20, 2005 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine indicate Herceptin, a drug already shown to prolong survival in patients with advanced breast cancer, can also cut in half the recurrence of a common form of breast cancer when detected in its early stage.
The development in treating breast cancer is being hailed by experts as “stunning” and “very exciting,” but a major animal rights group is criticizing the breakthrough because animals were used in the testing process.
In the studies, Herceptin, developed and manufactured by the biotech research company Genentech, was used with other chemotherapy after cancer surgery for women with breast cancer linked to a protein called HER2, detected in abnormal amounts in about 25 percent of breast cancer cases in the United States.
“The results are simply stunning,’ Gabriel Hortobagyi, a breast cancer specialist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, wrote in an editorial in that issue of the Journal. The tests “show highly significant reductions in the risk of recurrence, of a magnitude seldom observed,” Hortobagyi noted.
…
One group not enthusiastic about the news is People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), because Genentech uses animals in its drug testing, a requirement for FDA approval. (No human tests of a drug are allowed until it passes animal tests ruling out toxicity.)On its “caring consumer” Web site, PETA notes, “October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and breast cancer advocacy groups will be stepping up their efforts to gain supporters.
“Caring people wouldn’t think of offering up their beloved companion animals for hideous experiments,” the PETA site continues, recommending people make donations to organizations that “support cutting-edge non-animal studies” and not those “which fall back on cruel, archaic and unreliable animal tests.”
“The U.S. drug testing system is antiquated,” PETA Media Liaison Jen McClure said. “The FDA statistics on drug approval in this country tell the story. Of all drugs tested safe and effective on animals, 92 percent fail in human trials.”
…
David Martosko, director of research at the nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom, replied, “Human life is more precious than animal life. PETA needs to get a grip.“PETA’s leaders won’t come right out and say it, but they care more about lab rats than sick people,” Martosko said. “If PETA activists are really convinced of their position, the next one who falls gravely ill should decline life-saving treatments that were tested on animals. But that’s not going to happen.
“Without animal testing, we wouldn’t have AIDS therapies, antibiotics, organ transplants, cancer drugs, flu vaccines, X-rays, or hundreds of other medical advances that we all take for granted,” Martosko said. [Emphasis mine.]
PETA’s hypocrisy on this is unbelievable! They complain loudly because experimental treatments for human ailments have to be tested on lab animals, then it turns out that PETA kills animals by the thousand, out of convenience!
From July 1998 through the end of 2004, PETA killed over 12,400 dogs, cats, and other “companion animals” – at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That’s more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 85 percent of the animals it took in during 2003 alone.
…
PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts “for the animals.” But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn’t ethical. It’s hypocritical – with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren’t their own doing.
(Source: PetaKillsAnimals.com).
I created this poster as a parody of the one PETA did for their Fur-is-Dead campaign to show what I think of the cruel and inhumane treatment they’ve inflicted on the animals in their care. Click here or click the image to see the full-size version.
02:24:03 am, Categories: Science & Tech, Daily blather, Global warming, Junk science, Idiotarians & Idiots, Global warming headlines
It’s that time again, so without further adieu, here’s just a smattering of the 8,000 plus global warming headlines found on Google News:
Note: These headlines were all published in December.
Tags: global warming | climate change | politics | economics | blog | weblog
01:21:49 am, Categories: Daily blather
From Breitbart.com comes two strange stories of a police officer ambushed by angry chihuahuas and a woman who reported that an intruder broke into her home and added pornography to her computer.
A police officer in Fremont, Calif. was attacked and nipped by a pack of crazed Chihuahuas.
The officer suffered minor injuries including bites to his ankle on Thursday when the five Chihuahuas escaped the 17-year-old boy’s home and rushed the officer in the doorway, said Fremont detective Bill Veteran.
The teenager had been detained after the traffic incident, Veteran said.
The officer was treated at a local hospital and returned to work less than two hours later, Veteran said.
Earlier that same day, a homeowner had called police to report a break-in.
The woman said she woke up and was startled to see a stranger typing away on her computer. The intruder fled, but left behind an altered screen saver that featured images of “erotic Indian art,” Veteran said.
Nothing was reported stolen, and neither the woman nor her nine-year- old daughter was hurt, he said.
Tags: humor | california | chihuahuas | police | blog | weblog
01:05:00 pm, Categories: Science & Tech, Daily blather, Global warming, Junk science, Environmentalism, Countup to Meltdown
I’m adding a new feature to the blog called the Countup to Meltdown™. Once a month we’ll see how many headlines were published that mentioned Global Warming or Climate Change and compare the numbers against tallies from previous months. I’ll also compare those numbers against the headlines that mention Proof or Evidence along with Global Warming or Climate Change to determine if there’s any actual confirmation that Man is responsible for global warming.
Data will be compiled by searching the news.google.com site. The Advanced News Search criteria will be set to search for news headlines published during the month. The search strings will include the following terms:
My assumption going into this is that the media is hyping global warming. There’s no solid evidence that humans are responsible for climate changes, yet it seems as though the media is publishing more stories each month that blame the United States, President Bush, and Western Civilization for causing it. Most of the journalists who write those articles are liberal and probably sympathize with the environmentalists and politicians promoting the climate change “crisis,” so they’re quite willing to provide a constant barrage of doomsday reporting.
What I expect to see in the following months is that the media will publish even more stories, no matter how flimsy or contradictory the facts they contain may be (case in point: the forests help fight global warming and forests make global warming worse stories published in November) until the public’s interest dwindles. If the stats I collect show that the headline count is leveling off or dropping, it’s a sure sign that the media was unable to keep people interested and have moved on to some other topic du jour.
Of course, if something changes the routine, like a researcher actually proving that humans are making the planet warmer, there’ll finally be a basis for the media’s hysteria and then thousands of headlines will trumpet the news. So while the Countup to Meltdown is intended for entertainment, there are a lot of ways the numbers could go and we could spot some subtle trends.
08:18:27 am, Categories: Daily blather
Evan Esar’s adage seems particularly apt when you consider this snippet from The Boston Herald:
Mass. ranks No. 1 in biz study
Things don’t look so good for the state economically speaking. Job growth has been slow and some of the best and brightest minds are fleeing for cheaper housing.
Still, Massachusetts ranks No. 1 in the country in terms of economic competitiveness, according to a Beacon Hill Institute study to be released today.
Why the rosy outlook when times look tough?
“I would agree that the current low job growth is a matter of concern, but this index is aimed at the long run,” said David G. Tuerck, the institute’s executive director. “Massachusetts was hit particularly hard by the last recession, but it also means we’re poised for a strong recovery.”
The group’s economic index looks at a wide variety of factors such as crime rate, cost of living, tax rates, academic achievement and venture capital. The Bay State leads in several categories.
“It means we’re doing a lot of things right and that, in some respects, we’re fortunate and taking advantage of our good fortune,” Tuerck said. “We are avoiding some mistakes. Even though our taxes are high, we haven’t let them go out of control as have some others.”
Wow! Who’d they compare Massachusetts to, Bosnia? Well let’s see what we can do with statistics. Here’s just a sampling of what the web has to say about the “economic competitiveness” of Massachusetts and Boston (the driver of the Massachusetts economy):
The report found that last year, a family of four living in the Boston area needed $64,656 to cover its basic needs. This was $6,000 more than in New York City, and about $7,000 more than in San Francisco. Living expenses, which include healthcare, child care, and other basic needs, were $44,000 or less in Austin, Texas; Chicago; Miami; and Raleigh, N.C. (Source: Boston.com.)
‘’We have known for a number of years that drug use rates in the state are some of the highest in the country,” said Michael Botticelli, assistant commissioner for substance abuse services at the state Department of Public Health. ‘’This survey allows us to target our resources and look at areas of the Commonwealth with a concentrated effort.” (Source: Boston.com.)
Boston’s low dating rating may stem from their love of marijuana, a known libido killer.
After all that, who would want to live in Massachusetts, let alone run a business there?
[Edit] This is rich: Newsday.com also put out an article on the Mass. is No. 1 competitiveness study. I didn’t mention it in my original posting, but the Beacon Hill Institute is located in Boston and they decided Massachusetts was best in spite of:
Those negatives (along with the cockroaches, dust mites, and high auto insurance rates!) wouldn’t seem to justify a #1 position. But Beacon Hill Institute is based in Boston…nope, nooooo conflict of interest here…
Tags: boston | politics | economics | massachusetts | blog | weblog
The December 26, 2005 - January 1, 2006 issue of The East African has an article about scientists who are trying to convince Uganda’s Ministry of Health to resume the use of DDT in their campaign to rid the African continent of malaria.
The recommendation follows a study carried out in Kihihi subcounty of Kanungu district in western Uganda, where the World Health Organisation (WHO) malaria control team sprayed two grammes of DDT per square metre in households and kraals 45 years ago.
Dr Gabriel Bimenya, the head of the Pathology Department at the university, said that traces of DDT were found in urine, soil and foodstuffs such as beans, fish, bananas, cassava, and Irish potatoes.
Dr Bimenya said that after conducting the study, researchers at Makerere were recommending application of DDT through indoor residual spraying to avoid a spill-over to the environment as it may affect exporters of agricultural produce.
He said that DDT is used by many European and American airlines to prevent malaria infections among travellers, which underlined the fact that the chemical was not a health hazard to humans.
“In June last year, a number of European ministers were found to have DDT in their blood and the concentration was three times higher than that found in Ugandans in the just concluded research,” Dr Bimenya said, adding that it has not been reported anywhere that Europeans or Americans are medically affected or disadvantaged by the presence of DDT in their bodies.
Freedom House has published their annual freedom survey.
According to the survey, 89 countries are Free, the same as the previous year. These countries’ nearly 3 billion inhabitants (46 percent of the world’s population) enjoy open political competition, a climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. Another 58 countries representing 1.2 billion people (18 percent) are considered Partly Free. Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in these countries, in which the norm may be corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife, and a setting in which a single political party enjoys dominance. The survey finds that 45 counies are Not Free. The 2.3 billion inhabitants (35 percent) of these countries are widely and systematically denied basic civil liberties and basic political rights are absent.
Aside from the Middle East, countries in the former Soviet Union were most notable for improvements in freedom during 2005. In addition to Ukraine, improvements were noted in Kyrgyzstan, whose rating improved from Not Free to Partly Free, and Georgia. Positive change was also noted in Latvia and Lithuania, two states where democratic freedoms had already been consolidated.
Among the study’s other findings:
- The number of electoral democracies increased by three, from 119 to 122. This represents 64 percent of the world’s countries-the highest number in the survey’s 33-year history.
- Of the four countries that registered an outright decline in status, the most significant was the Philippines. The decision to downgrade this country from Free to Partly Free was based on credible allegations of massive electoral fraud, corruption, and the government’s intimidation of elements in the political opposition. The period since September 11, 2001, has witnessed steady progress in majority Muslim countries in regions beyond the Middle East.
- The steady record of progress observed represents a powerful argument against the proposition that Islam is incompatible with democracy or is an impediment to the spread of freedom. Indeed, there has been a striking improvement in the level of freedom in majority Muslim countries over the past ten years. In 1995, 1 majority Muslim country was Free, 13 were Partly Free, and 32, or 70 percent, were Not Free. For 2005, the figures are 3 Free countries, 20 Partly Free, and 23 Not Free.
Read the whole article.
According to an article from the Associated Press, the Renewable Environmental Solutions pilot plant–located in Carthage, Missouri–which produces crude oil from garbage such as turkey offal, has been closed for making a stink.
At the Carthage Deli and Ice Cream on the courthouse square, regulars welcomed news that Gov. Matt Blunt had ordered a foul-smelling plant that converts turkey byproducts into fuel oil closed until the odor problem is fixed.
“It smells like something dead. It ought be out of town. We can smell it in here sometimes,” retiree Jesse Jeffries said.
Hop Flanigan, drinking coffee with Jeffries, said there was no getting used to the smell that many say wafts across town several times a week from the Renewable Environmental Solutions Inc. plant, less than a mile north of the Jasper County courthouse.
“If it was an old-time toilet and you put your head in it, would you get used to it?” Flanigan said.
On Wednesday, the governor told the Department of Natural Resources to shut down the plant until the operator can fix the problem.
The DNR issued an order to the company Thursday revoking its air permit and barring operations for 60 days.
“While the state is not prone to rash action in shutting a company down, we have got to do something to improve the quality of life for citizens in the Carthage area,” DNR Director Doyle Childers said in a written statement.
…
City Administrator Tom Short said the governor’s action underscored that the odors were a significant problem that needs to be fixed.“It’s putrid. Some people have said they’ve gotten sick because of it. It’s made them throw up,” Short said.
The plant produces 100 to 200 barrels of fuel oil a day from byproducts from a nearby ConAgra Foods turkey processing facility.
Employees were at the plant Thursday but there were no strong smells in the area. A plant manager declined to comment and referred calls to a company spokeswoman, who said there was nothing to add to Wednesday’s statement.
DNR’s Childers said he believed the plant had not processed any waste since the weekend.
The company’s Web site said it has plans for additional plants in the U.S. and Europe, including Colorado, Alabama, Nevada, Ireland and Italy.
Renewable Environmental Solutions is a joint venture of ConAgra Foods Inc. and Changing World Technologies Inc. It was established in 2000 to use a technology called Thermal Conversion Process to turn agricultural waste into fuel.
The Carthage plant has produced up to 400 barrels per day of crude oil. This oil is being refined as No. 2 (a standard grade oil which is used for diesel and gasoline) and No. 4 (a lower grade oil used in industrial heating).
From a United Press International news story:
Researchers say they are close to understanding all the various forms of cancer by fighting it at the genetic level, a report said Tuesday.
So-called microarrays, or chips coated with all known human genes, let scientists know what parts of genes are deleted or changed by cancer, The New York Times reported.
In addition, RNA interference allows any gene to be turned off while new DNA sequencing makes it feasible to determine genetic changes.
Add to that a pilot project by the National Cancer Institute and National Human Genome Research Institute to map cancer cells’ genetic changes, which Oregon researcher Brian Druker said is “the first step to identifying all the Achilles’ heels in cancers.”
Scientists say finding specific gene changes that drugs can target is the next step.
“We’re close to being able to put our arms around the whole cancer problem,” Robert Weinberg of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the newspaper.
“We’ve completed the list of all cancer cells needed to create a malignancy. And I wouldn’t have said that five years ago,” he said.
Suddenly, there’s all kinds of good news in the fight against cancer:
09:28:37 pm, Categories: Daily blather
With companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX getting everyone excited about commercial spaceflight, it was only a matter of time until some enterprising capitalist came up with a way to make easy money by relying on people’s gullibility.
ZeroG Aerospace has announced:
ZeroG Aerospace Launches Affordable Space Tourism for the Masses
Holiday Shoppers Can Reserve Their Spot and Send Personal Items to Space and Back on March 27th Maiden Voyage for Only $49
From their website:
With ZeroG Aerospace, you become a pioneer in the new space tourism movement by participating on ZGS-1, the first commercial space tourism option for the rest of us!
If you’ve dreamed of participating in space travel, but don’t have millions of dollars to spend, or are afraid for your life, then ZeroG Aerospace is for you.
Let us send Your Personal Item into space and permanently enter your name in the International Space Registry as a pioneer who has accessed space - a registry dedicated to preserving a list of those who participated in the creation of the new frontier - space travel!
Next March, for $49 bucks, you can send a business card or “Space Ring” in the ZGS-1 rocket for a trip that’ll take your trinket 70 miles up–where it’ll be in space and weightless for several minutes! Or you can buy a “Space Box,” a 1x1x0.75-inch box that you can pack with anything you wish, as long as it doesn’t weigh more than a tin of Rosebud Strawberry Lip Balm (0.8 ounces).
ZeroG is partnering with UP Aerospace, who makes the SpaceLoft XL rocket that ZeroG is calling the ZGS-1. ZeroG doesn’t specify what the ZGS-1’s payload capacity is, but the SpaceLoft XL can carry 110 lbs, which is a lot of business cards! Hmmm, let’s see, a box of 500 business cards weighs about 2 pounds, so that’s 50 boxes x 500 cards/box x $49 per card and you’ve got a $1.2-million-buck payday baby!
Not bad for a 15-minute flight.
But wait, there’s more! When your “space item” returns, it gets entered into ZeroG’s International Space Registry:
The International Space Registry is a unique, one-of-a-kind memorial web site that lists all those persons who have successfully delivered items to space! The Registry will prominently display important information about the launch, the vehicle and the owner. The Registry forever memorializes you as a true “space pioneer” for all the world to see, in a searchable, easy-to-read format!
Check out their website and see if it reminds you of something….Like maybe a certain company that let’s you name a star after someone? Since 1979, the International Star Registry guys have been making a bundle off the easily fleeced. In fact, they had another advertising blitz on AM radio during the run-up to Christmas, so obviously there’s no shortage of suckers.
While you’re at ZeroG’s website, make sure you read their FAQ, it’s entertaining:
Well … what happens if the rocket is destroyed or does not reach space?
If your items are damaged in the flight they will have more ‘character’ and they will be returned to you in accordance with the ZeroG Terms of Use. If your item (s) are lost or destroyed, ZeroG will provide you with first availability on another launch within one year, where you can send another item of exact size and weight to space. Please refer to the Terms of Use for specifics.
Due to the expense of insurance for the standard items flown to space, ZeroG cannot provide insurance as a standard practice as it can dramatically increase the cost. Should you wish to purchase insurance, you should contact ZeroG directly to discuss your needs.
What if the rocket explodes?
If the rocket explodes it will make a very dramatic fireball in the sky and parts will rain down on the flight range for several minutes. Even so, it is likely that the ZGS-1 capsule will be recovered in tact, and you will not be killed, maimed or even injured.
Heinlein’s DD Harriman had nothing on these guys!
Tags: zeroG | spaceflight | rocketry
12:31:13 am, Categories: Daily blather
From a story at the Anchorage Daily News:
[Edit: Try this link if the other one has expired.]More than 16 feet tall, the giant snowman towering above homes on once-sleepy Columbine Street is drawing hundreds of locals and tourists and scoring airtime and headlines across the nation – and even the world.
“I guess they like snowmen in Russia, because they had a news team from Moscow here yesterday,” said Billy Powers, Snowzilla’s creator. “We get a traffic jam here at least once an hour. It must be people are just tired of hearing about Iraq or something.”
…
Powers and his kids decided to make a snowman. This was earlier this month, when Anchorage had new snow. So far, so normal, right?Then it got bigger. And bigger. Darrell Estes, who lives across the street, decided to get in on the action. Looked like fun, he said. The neighborhood kids thought so, too. They tugged sleds loaded with buckets of snow to Powers’ front yard.
And they just kept packing it on.
It took Powers, Estes and their free-labor child work force an estimated 40-hours of work. Powers’ 11-year old daughter, Brook, sewed the puffy red gloves, bright carrot-shaped nose, the draping plaid scarf and the shiny red band for the black top hat.
Brook had just two words to sum up the Snowzilla spectacle:
Read the whole article.
In Robert A. Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers,” the mobile infantry wore armored suits that used feedback to monitor and amplify a wearer’s movements. A soldier in a suit could leap over tall buildings, carry heavy weapons, crush steel, and yet pick up an egg without obliterating it. Since Heinlein first wrote about them, similar powered suits have appeared in Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War,” dozens of Japanese anime, and the movie Aliens. Now, according to MachineDesign, DARPA has invested $50 million in research to develop an exoskeleton that will enable a soldier to carry 200 lbs in a backpack over rough terrain.
…One recipient, a design team at the University of California, Berkeley, is under the lead of Mechanical Engineering Prof. H. Kazerooni. They’ve completed work on their first prototype, Bleex 1 (for Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton) and are working on Bleex 2.
Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions.
…
Key to controlling Bleex 1 is the lack of operator controls. Instead, Berkeley researchers clinically analyzed the human gait and programmed the robotic legs to follow that pattern. The wearer simply moves his limbs, and the suit detects that movement and powers the suit to follow. The backpack load is almost entirely supported by Bleex. But because the device is so sensitive to inputs, it is almost unstable, says Kazerooni. The operator is needed to provide balance.“The pilot is not ‘driving’ the exoskeleton,” says Kazerooni. “Instead, the control algorithms in the computer constantly calculate how to move the exoskeleton so that it moves in concert with the human.”
…
The next-generation device, Bleex 2, should be unveiled soon. The biggest change, and challenge, is devising a new power source. For example, it could use a hybrid power source instead of just a gas engine, which might cut down on weight and noise. Weight reduction is a major goal of the team and Bleex 2 should tip the scales at half the weight of Bleex 1. In tests, Bleex 2 let operators carry 200-lb loads and run faster than 6 fps. The Berkeley team is also working on extending the range, flexibility, and agility of the system.
Read the whole article.
Technorati tag: bleex
02:41:48 pm, Categories: Announcements [A]
From a Telegraph News story:
Josie Caven, who was born deaf, will be able to hear Christmas carols for the first time after having cochlear implants in both ears.
Josie, 12, was previously able to distinguish only a few sounds through hearing aids which she has worn from the age of two.
She beamed with delight as she listened to Jingle Bells on the radio for the first time.
“It is so nice to hear music, especially Christmas carols,” she said.
“I have asked mum and dad for an iPod so I can listen to the Black Eyed Peas.”
Josie, who lives with her father Richard, 43, mother Teresa, 37, sister Olivia, 10, and brother Anthony, four, suffers wide vestibular aqueduct syndrome.
The condition, which Olivia also has, causes deafness through allowing an exchange of fluids that damages the inner ear. Mrs Caven, who runs the Old Station Inn, at Birstwith, near Harrogate, North Yorks, with her husband, said: “I have never seen Josie so happy.
“She heard Jingle Bells on the radio and when she looked up her face was a picture as she realised what she was listening to.
“She wants an iPod for Christmas. There is a wire which can go directly to the implants, so it will be like having her favourite music inside her head.”
Read the whole article.
Except for President Lincoln who shepherded our country through the Civil War, no other president has had to deal with the troubles that President Bush has endured.
He’s successfully prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism, a magnificent achievement, especially when you consider he’s had to do it while being second-guessed and obstructed by the “loyal opposition” in the Democratic party. Then there’s the mainstream media, ever willing to publish false or misleading stories in hopes that someday one of them will bring down the administration. All this while living with the threat of assasination as the most hated enemy of radical Islamic extremists.
Certainly he’s made mistakes this year, particularly with the Harriet Miers fiasco, but he made up for that with the Alito nomination. So on balance, President Bush has done very well for the United States and he should get a lot of appreciation….
Well what do we have here! Instant gratification in the form of new polling data from Rasmussen Reports stating that:
Fifty percent (50%) of American adults approve of the way George W. Bush is performing his role as President. That’s up six points since the President’s speech on Sunday night.
It’s also the first time since July that the President’s Job Approval has reached the 50% mark. He earns approval from 81% of Republicans, 23% of Democrats, and 42% of those not affiliated with either major political party.
(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)
Also from Rasmussen comes this news:
Friday December 23, 2005–America’s economic confidence is nearing the highest levels of the post-9-11 era.
The Rasmussen Consumer Index gained two points on Thursday to reach its highest level since February–119.2. The Index, measures the economic confidence of American consumers on a daily basis, is within two points of its high for 2005. The last time the Index reached the 120 mark was on February 9.
The Rasmussen Investor Index added almost three points to reach its highest level in in seventeen months–145.9. That figure is also within five points of its highest level ever. The all-time high was recorded in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s capture. The bounce following Hussein’s capture lasted a few weeks until a disappointing jobs report was issued.
And consumer confidence is up:
U.S. consumer confidence rose in December to the highest since July as lower gasoline prices gave Americans more money to spend for the holidays, a private survey showed.
The University of Michigan’s final index of consumer sentiment rose to 91.5 from November’s 81.6 and compares with a preliminary December reading of 88.7 two weeks ago. The jump from November was the biggest since January 2004.
So thanks a lot Mr. President and Merry Christmas!
Technorati tags: merry christmas | bush | president | president bush
This article comes from NewScientistSpace:
Life’s ingredients circle Sun-like star
The first evidence that some of the basic organic building blocks of life can exist in an Earth-like orbit around a young Sun-like star has been provided by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
Spitzer took infrared spectrograms of 100 very young stars in a nearby stellar nursery, a huge cloud of dust and gas 375 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. And one of those stars showed signs of the organic molecules, acetylene and hydrogen cyanide.
These gases, when combined with water, can form several different amino acids. These are needed to form proteins, as well as one of the four chemical letters, or bases, in DNA, called adenine.
The organic molecules were detected in a ring of dust and gas circling a young star called IRS 46. Such dust rings, found around all of the young stars that were examined by the Spitzer telescope, are believed to be the raw material for planetary systems.
Read the whole article.
From ScienceDaily comes this news item:
Astronomers Use Laser To Take Clearest Images Of The Center Of The Milky Way
UCLA astronomers and colleagues have taken the first clear picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, including the area surrounding the supermassive black hole, using a new laser virtual star at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii.
“Everything is much clearer now,” said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, who headed the research team. “We used a laser to improve the telescope’s vision – a spectacular breakthrough that will help us understand the black hole’s environment and physics. It’s like getting Lasik surgery for the eyes, and will revolutionize what we can do in astronomy.”
Astronomers are used to working with images that are blurred by the Earth’s atmosphere. However, a laser virtual star, launched from the Keck telescope, can be used to correct the atmosphere’s distortions and clear up the picture. This new technology, called Laser Guide Star adaptive optics, will lead to important advances for the study of planets in our solar system and outside of our solar system, as well as galaxies, black holes, and how the universe formed and evolved, Ghez said.
“We have worked for years on techniques for ‘beating the distortions in the atmosphere’ and producing high-resolution images,” she said. “We are pleased to report the first Laser Guide Star adaptive optics observations of the center of our galaxy.”
Ghez and her colleagues took “snapshots” of the center of the galaxy, targeting the supermassive black hole 26,000 light years away, at different wavelengths. This approach allowed them to study the infrared light emanating from very hot material just outside the black hole’s “event horizon,” about to be pulled through.
“We are learning the conditions of the infalling material and whether this plays a role in the growth of the supermassive black hole,” Ghez said. “The infrared light varies dramatically from week to week, day to day and even within a single hour.”
The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, will be published Dec. 20 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Read the whole article.
You can get more details on the project at UCLA’s Galactic Center Group webpage.
Even as movie ticket sales have dropped again for the third year in a row, the Hollywood Left continue to show their contempt for America by producing pro-terrorist propaganda:
Hollywood is showing a new side of terrorism.
And it’s a human one.
To the dismay of some critics, several films are offering humanizing portraits of extremists, including suicide bombers:
- Paradise Now tells the story of two men recruited for a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv. The film, which opened in October, received a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign picture and has taken in about $1 million domestically.
- Syriana, the George Clooney political drama that opened Nov. 23, paints a sympathetic portrait of a young man recruited into a radical Islamic group planning an attack on a U.S. oil firm. The movie has taken in about $23 million and earned two Golden Globe nominations.
- Sleeper Cell, a 10-hour Showtime miniseries that began Dec. 4, is about an al-Qaeda-like group planning an attack in Los Angeles.
- Munich, which opens Friday, is Steven Spielberg’s examination of the 1972 Olympics massacre and offers the perspective of both Israeli soldiers and members of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Clooney, who produced Syriana, says the trend stems largely from growing American displeasure with the Iraq war.
“I’ve been called a traitor for questioning the war,” he says. “But more people are beginning to look critically at what our government is doing, who we’re fighting. And that’s the most patriotic thing you can do.”
Syriana, for example, “simply doesn’t want to paint things in black and white, because the world isn’t that way,” Clooney says. “The world is complicated, and good movies try to show that.”
But some film observers, including critic Michael Medved, say the films are less concerned with artistic integrity than with demonstrating Hollywood liberalism.
“The entertainment industry very clearly tilts to the left,” he says. “And the left has been skeptical of the current war on terror.”
Randy Roberts, a professor of history at Purdue University, says the motivations could be simpler. Studios may be trying to capitalize on anti-war sentiment.
“Hollywood is a business,” he says. “They are good at gauging when the luster is off. Maybe they … want to try to do something new to make more money.”
Hey, Hollywood! Here’s something new you could do: Make a film about the War on Terror that isn’t a left-wing screed against our military or way of life!
Since the war began, there hasn’t been one movie released that depicts the nature of the enemy we’re fighting or the magnificent accomplishments of our military. As for George Clooney being “patriotic,” I think this sign says it best.
From PajamasMedia comes this good news:
The U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in 1 1/2 years in the summer as booming auto sales offset the adverse effects of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. But the year is expected to end with much slower growth.
The U.S. Commerce Department reported Wednesday that the gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, grew at a 4.1 per cent annual rate from July through September.
That was down from a 4.3 per cent estimate made a month ago but it was still the fastest pace since early 2004. The gain was even more remarkable considering that the country was hit by devastating hurricanes and gasoline prices that topped $3 US per gallon.
“The bottom line is that we had a very strong quarter of growth,” said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York.
Wyss said he believed the hurricanes had shaved about a half-percentage point from growth in the third quarter, having less of an impact than economists had originally feared.
The Bush administration, which has been trying to highlight the economy’s strengths as a way to bolster the president’s approval ratings, said the 4.1 per cent GDP growth rate was evidence of a vibrant economy.
“The economy demonstrated its resilience in the last several months,” said Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez.
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 28.18 points to close at 10,833.73.
This news, along with other entries I’ve posted on falling consumer prices, continued high employment rates and record housing sales give us plenty of reasons to give thanks for a very good year.
Of course, MSM reports of good economic data always come with warnings that bad times are just around the corner (and eventually they’ll be correct as all economic cycles have ups and downs). But for now at least, let’s enjoy the upside!
And here’s something else to warm your heart: Men are catching up to women in life expectancy.
From Reuters comes this news:
As the first of the 75 million baby boomers touch 60 in January, there’s good news for the men: They are catching up to women in life expectancy.
A new “Longevity Index” by Credit Suisse First Boston shows that while women still live four years longer on average, men are gaining twice as fast in the age race.
Medical experts say women are working harder, smoking more and undergoing more stress, which leads to the No. 1 killer – heart disease.
“We are getting equality in ways we may not want,” said Dr. Sharon Brangman, a board member of the American Geriatrics Society.
The Longevity Index is designed to help insurance companies and pension funds hedge their risk as both men and women live longer – and cost more – in pension payments and lifetime annuity payments.
Women can now expect an average 82.6 years of life, the index shows, while men can look forward to 78.1 years.
But over the last 10 years, the average annual rate of improvement for men has been 2 percent; for women, it’s slightly less than 1 percent, the index shows.
For the 22 years covered by the index, the expected average lifetime for men has gone up by 3.7 years; women’s climbed only 1.7 years.
NASA’s New Horizons mission to explore Pluto, its moon Charon, and the Kuiper belt, scheduled for launch on January 11, 2006, has been postponed until at least January 17.
When it is launched, the probe will swing past Jupiter for a gravity boost and to perform scientific studies early in 2007. It is expected to reach Pluto and its moon, Charon, by July 2015. Then the spacecraft continue into the Kuiper belt to study the icy mini-worlds in that vast region, at least a billion miles beyond Neptune’s orbit. Mission planners are anxious to intercept the outermost planet while it is still in the near-perihelion part of its orbit; at greater distances from the Sun, its atmosphere will freeze and any surface activity, such as ice geysers, become less frequent. The launch window will remain open until February 14.
From M&C Science & Nature:
The 480-kilogramme craft - about the size of a grand piano - is slated to cross the entire solar system for nine years before flying by Pluto and its moon Charon in mid-2015, getting the closest look yet at the system’s smallest planet.
The launch delay will allow time for an extra inspection of the Atlas rocket after its maker, Lockheed Martin, reported problems on a propellant tank similar to the one being used in the New Horizons mission, NASA said.
Seven science instruments aboard New Horizons are designed to give clues to Pluto’s surface properties, interior makeup and atmospheres in a mission NASA hopes will unlock some of the solar system’s last secrets.
…
No spacecraft has visited Pluto, and not even the Hubble Space Telescope can spot details on its rocky, icy surface, NASA says.
Read the whole article.
Technorati tags: nasa | spaceflight | new horizons
Unless you’ve been following along closely, you may not be aware that there are other commercial firms competing with Virgin Galactic to privatize spaceflight.
One of the most promising has been SpaceX, developer of the Falcon family of two-stage launch vehicles fueled by liquid oxygen and purified kerosene.
SpaceX already has several customers lined up including DARPA, the Swedish Space Corp., the U.S. Air Force, and others, and plans to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
All they need now is a successful test launch.
Yet, according to an article at Aero-News.net, SpaceX, for the second time, has had to cancel a scheduled launch, and it will be 2006 before another attempt is made.
Here is how SpaceX describes what happened to the Falcon 1 to cause the delay:
Due to high winds, we placed the countdown on hold and began draining the fuel tank. As we drained fuel from the 1st stage tank, a faulty pressurization valve caused a vacuum condition in the tank. This caused a fuel tank barrel section to deform and suck inward. It is important to note that the root cause is an electrical fault with a valve, not structural design.
…
Launch is scrubbed until early next year, as there is a structural issue with the 1st stage fuel tank that will require repair.
By the way, if you’re interested in shipping freight on a Falcon once they’re flying, you can send 27 tons of cargo into low Earth orbit for a paltry $78 million.
Technorati tags: spaceflight | spacex
From BBC News:
The scientist behind the British Beagle 2 mission to the Red Planet says the craft may have been found in pictures of the Martian surface.
Colin Pillinger says the images suggest the mission very nearly worked, but Beagle somehow failed to contact Earth.
He thinks the craft may have hit the ground too hard - as the atmosphere was thinner than usual because of dust storms in that region of Mars.
This may have damaged onboard instruments, preventing the call home.
The Beagle 2 lead scientist has been painstakingly studying images of the landing site in search of his spacecraft ever since it was lost on Christmas Day two years ago.
Now, he says, specially processed pictures from the camera on the US space agency’s (Nasa) Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft show that it came down in a crater close to the planned landing site.
…
The robotic laboratory was designed to search Mars for signs of past or present life. The last contact was an image of Beagle taken by its mothership, the Mars Express orbiter, on 19 December 2003.
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Professor Pillinger accepts the sceptics will say Beagle 2 is too small to be seen from space.And when taken in isolation, each of the “objects” in the crater bowl could be explained by other phenomena. But, he argues, it is unlikely to be mere coincidence that so many unusual features are to be found “within 20m of each other".
“We’ve had the pessimists round saying ‘we’ve already seen something like that’. But they haven’t seen them all together,” he told the BBC.
…
Based on the features found in the crater, members of the Beagle 2 team have reconstructed what might have happened to Beagle as it touched down on the Red Planet.“There is a lot of disturbance in this crater, particularly a big patch on the north crater wall which we think is the primary impact site,” Professor Pillinger explains.
“There are then other features around the crater consistent with the airbags bouncing around and finally falling down into the middle. Then, when you cut the lace, the airbags fall apart giving three very symmetrical triangles.”
Four roughly circular features to the right of the ‘airbags’ could conceivably be Beagle’s unfolded solar panels.
Read the whole article.
In a related story, NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft has been in operation for more than eight years, making it the oldest spacecraft currently in operation at Mars. The craft has been providing a continuous record of martian weather since 1996 and its laser altimeter has created the most accurate global topographic map of any planet in the solar system, giving scientists elevation maps precise to within about 30 centimeters (1 foot) in the vertical dimension.
Recently, the Global Surveyor has snapped the first pictures of a spacecraft orbiting Mars ever taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars, and has even managed to capture images of the tracks made by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit.
Technorati tags: nasa | spaceflight | mars rover | beagle
A UCLA-led study, believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly, provides proof that the media is biased against conservatives. This article at LifeSite.com has the details.
All Major U.S. Media Lean Left Except Fox News and Washington Times, UCLA Study Finds
While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper’s news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left.
These are just a few of the findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly.
Of the 20 major media outlets studied, 18 scored left of center, with CBS’ Evening News, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times ranking second, third and fourth most liberal behind the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Only Fox News’ Special Report With Brit Hume and The Washington Times scored right of the average U.S. voter.
“I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican,” said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study’s lead author. “But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are.” [Emphasis mine.]
The results will be published this month in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
From the Wall Street Journal comes this story:
Our Friends the Pakistanis - Support for the U.S. is surging in some parts of the Muslim world.
So much for the popularly peddled view that anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is so pervasive and deep-rooted it might take generations to alter. A new poll from Pakistan, a critical front-line in the war on terror, paints a very different picture–by revealing a sea-change in public opinion in recent months.
Long a stronghold for Islamic extremists and the world’s second-most populous Muslim nation, Pakistanis now hold a more favorable opinion of the U.S. than at any time since 9/11, while support for al Qaeda in its home base has dropped to its lowest level since then. The direct cause for this dramatic shift in Muslim opinion is clear: American humanitarian assistance for Pakistani victims of the Oct. 8 earthquake that killed 87,000. The U.S. pledged $510 million for earthquake relief in Pakistan and American soldiers are playing a prominent role in rescuing victims from remote mountainous villages.
Released today, the poll commissioned by the nonprofit organization Terror Free Tomorrow and conducted by Pakistan’s foremost pollsters ACNielsen Pakistan shows that the number of Pakistanis with a favorable opinion of the U.S. doubled to more than 46% at the end of November from 23% in May 2005. Those with very unfavorable views declined to 28% from 48% over the same period. Nor is this swing in public opinion confined to Pakistan. A similar picture is evident in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation. Again that’s largely because of American generosity in the wake of a natural disaster. A February 2005 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow showed that 65% of Indonesians had a more favorable opinion of the U.S. as a result of American relief to the victims of last December’s tsunami. If these changes in Pakistan and Indonesia influence thinking in other countries, then we could be looking at a broader shift in public sentiment across the Muslim world. [Edit: See also this poll taken in Afghanistan which also shows improving opinions of the United States.]
While support for the U.S. has surged, there’s also been a dramatic drop in support for Osama bin Laden and terrorism. Since May, the percentage of Pakistanis who feel terrorist attacks against civilians are never justified has more than doubled to 73% from less than half, while the minority who still support terrorist attacks has also shrunk significantly. There’s been a similar increase in the number of Pakistanis disapproving of bin Laden, which rose to 41% in November up from only 23% in May.
Read the whole article.
From an Associated Press story:
Senator John McCain is suggesting that harsh treatment of a terrorism suspect who knows of an imminent attack would not violate international standards.
The Arizona Republican had pushed the White House to support a ban on torture. He says legislation before Congress would establish in U-S law the international standard banning any treatment of prisoners that “shocks the conscience.”
McCain was asked on A-B-C’s “This Week” whether harsh treatment of a terrorism suspect in order to stop a terrorist operation would shock the conscience. McCain said it would not.
Said McCain: “In that million-to-one situation, then the president of the United States would authorize it and take responsibility for it.” [Emphasis mine.]
Yet just last week, McCain had this to say about torture (via BBC News):
We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear - whether it is true or false - if he believes it will relieve his suffering. [Emphasis mine.]
McCain’s statements reek of political posturing. Either torture is effective or it isn’t. If the information you get from treating a prisoner roughly can’t be relied on generally, then it’s equally unreliable in a “million-to-one” situation.
When interrogators are trying to find out vital information from enemies who have no desire to cooperate, our options are:
Those are the choices and, according to the U.N., the second and third are already illegal. Now McCain wants to make them doubly illegal. If he succeeds, the next time there’s a major terrorist attack (say a suitcase nuke is about to go off in Los Angeles) and we are holding a terrorist who knows the location of the bomb, we’ll have to rely on the interrogator being willing to break international and federal laws in order to torture the information out of the prisoner. But what torture should the interrogator use if he decides to take the risk? If he’s too brutal, there may be no exoneration even if he saves the city. Faced with that dilemma, the interrogator may be unwilling to take the chance, in which case, scratch one city.
We should recognize that there are times during war when it is necessary to extract information from prisoners, but we should use methods that are as humane and effective as possible. That means using the rough interrogation techniques under proper supervision and with a clear set of guidelines to follow. That’s what Senator McCain should be promoting.
Steve Fossett, the first to fly nonstop and without refueling around the globe, is about to undertake an even longer 26,000-mile, 80-hour trip that will take him across the Atlantic Ocean twice before landing in London. (Source: HeraldToday.com.)
This NASA news release has more details:
NASA Facility Serves as Launch Site for Record-Setting Flight
NASA announced Friday the agency’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., will be the takeoff site for an attempt to set the record for the longest flight of an aircraft or balloon.
NASA and Virgin Atlantic Airways’ agreement to use Kennedy’s Space Shuttle Landing Facility is the result of a pilot program to expand access to the shuttle’s runway for non-NASA activities.
An exact takeoff date for Virgin Atlantic’s GlobalFlyer aircraft has not been determined and is contingent on weather. The flight is expected to take place in February. Steve Fossett will attempt to fly solo around the world, non-stop without refueling, in the aircraft designed by Burt Rutan. It is scheduled to arrive at Kennedy for preflight preparations on Jan. 6, 2006.
…
The GlobalFlyer, built by Scaled Composites, Inc., is a single pilot, ultra light aircraft designed for non-stop global circumnavigation. The plane will fly mostly at 45,000 feet at speeds faster than 285 mph.
Via the VirginAtlantic GlobalFlyer webpage:
The current record for the FAI (Federation Aeronautics Internationale) Absolute World Record for Distance Without Landing is held by the Voyager aircraft (also designed by Burt Rutan) which flew for 24,987 miles (40,212 km) in 1986. The longest flight by a balloon is held by Breitling Orbiter 3 which flew for 25,361 miles (40,814 km) in 1999….
The 23rd Solvay Conference in Physics in Brussels, Belgium finished up yesterday with Nobel laureate David Gross’s sobering conclusion about string theory: “We don’t know what we are talking about.”
According to an article at NewScientist.com:
Gross - who received a Nobel for his work on the strong nuclear force, bringing physics closer to a theory of everything - has been a strong advocate of string theory, which also aims to explain dark energy. “Many of us believed that string theory was a very dramatic break with our previous notions of quantum theory,” he said. “But now we learn that string theory, well, is not that much of a break.”
…
He compared the state of physics today to that during the first Solvay conference in 1911. Then, physicists were mystified by the discovery of radioactivity…."They were missing something absolutely fundamental,” he said. “We are missing perhaps something as profound as they were back then.”
NewScientist also has an interview with Leonard Susskind, the man who invented the string theory. Susskind now believes that the string theory’s “description of multiple universes, each with different constants of nature and laws of physics, could reveal why the cosmological constant appears improbably fine-tuned to enable life to exist.”
Congress has made a start at securing our borders, according to an article at Richmond Times-Dispatch. The House of Representatives voted on Friday to erect 700 miles of fencing in five areas along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico.
“Will this wall, will this fence make America absolutely safe, absolutely secure, and will it stop every illegal alien?” [Republican Virgil H. Goode Jr.] asked during floor debate.
“No, it will not, but it will make us more secure. It will make us safer, and it will surely cut down the horrific numbers that flood into this country.”
The provision also would direct a study of erecting barriers along the border with Canada….
This article from UPI has more details:
The amended plan calls for five fences to block the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the United States.
The measure would require construction of the fences along stretches of land in California, New Mexico, Texas and Arizona deemed among the most porous corridors of the border, the New York Times said.
…
Construction of the barriers is to include two layers of reinforced fencing, cameras, lighting and sensors near Tecate and Calexico on the California border; Columbus, N.M.; and El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo and Brownsville in Texas.
It’s very likely that such a wall along our southern border will greatly reduce illegal immigration. Israel has been building a similar security fence along its eastern and western borders, and as a result, the number of terrorist attacks emanating from the protected areas has fallen 90%.
12:40:11 am, Categories: News
From an article in The Washington Post:
Consumer Prices Plunge in November
Consumer prices plunged last month at the steepest rate in 56 years because of a sharp decline in oil and gasoline prices, the government reported today, adding to other signs that the national economy has largely rebounded from the effects of the recent hurricanes.
The consumer price index, a widely followed measure of inflation, fell 0.6 percent in November -- the largest drop since July 1949 -- primarily because of an 8 percent drop in energy costs, the Labor Department said.
Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” currently includes close to 4 million entries and is the 37th most visited site on the Internet. With that growth in popularity has come concerns about the accuracy of those articles.
Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors’ work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.
Nature.com has an article comparing science entries in Wikipedia and in Encyclopedia Brittanica.
The results were surprising.
The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.
Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.
Wikipedia’s accuracy may be even better than Nature states. Two Wikipedia editors compared article lengths and found that Wikipedia entries on average 2.6 times as long as those in Brittanica, so when errors are counted based on article length, Wikipedia’s error rate is far lower than Encyclopedia Brittanica’s.
Encyclopedia Britannica officials declined to comment on the findings because they haven’t seen the data. But spokesman Tom Panelas said such comparisons, assuming they’re conducted correctly, are valuable “because they tell us things you wouldn’t know otherwise.”
Science Journal provides more details.
While some Britannica officials have publicly criticized Wikipedia’s quality in the past, Panelas praised the free service for having the speed and breadth to keep up on topics such as “extreme ironing.” The sport, in which competitors iron clothing in remote locations, is not covered in Britannica.
Britannica researchers plan to review the Nature study and correct any errors discovered, Panelas said.
Unlike Britannica, which charges for its content and pays a staff of experts to research and write its articles, Wikipedia gives away its content for free and allows anyone — amateur or professional, expert or novice — to submit and edit entries.
Harder to pin down are accusations that Wikipedia articles on politics suffer from liberal bias. Blogger La Shawn Barber, who has experienced the anti-conservative bias first-hand had this to say about Wikipedia: “Their reference entries for things like the Star Wars movies and the Harry Potter series are great; their entries on political subjects are atrocious.”
In short, if your teacher gives you an assignment to research solar eclipses, seek out Wikipedia. But if you want to learn about conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, go ahead and check out Wikipedia, just make sure you get a second opinion.
We’ve already got cars that run on gasoline, soybean oil, electricity, and hydrogen (to name a few), so it was only a matter of time until someone decided to give steam another try.
Originally used to power the first automobiles in 1769, steam engines were replaced by gasoline and diesel motors because they were more efficient and weighed much less.
But BMW is betting that they’ve got a winning combination in their new turbosteamer concept, according to an article in Gizmag.
A large percentage of the energy released when petroleum is burned disappears out the exhaust system as heat. This has always been the case but the amount of energy released looks set to be cut by more than 80% thanks to a new system devised by BMW. BMW’s announcement of the new technology is somewhat of a technological bombshell as it adds yet another form of hybrid automobile – a turbosteamer. The concept uses energy from the exhaust gases of the traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to power a steam engine which also contributes power to the automobile – an overall 15 per cent improvement for the combined drive system. Even bigger news is that the drive has been designed so that it can be installed in existing model series – meaning that every model in the BMW range could become 15% more efficient overnight if the company chose to make the reduced consumption accessible to as many people as possible.
Read the whole article.
There was a priceless moment on Special Report with Brit Hume last night: They were doing a piece on Iraqis in America voting in advance of Thursday’s parliamentary election and 77-year-old Betty Dawisha “spoke truth to power:”
(via The Political Pit Bull)“Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done, and President Bush, let them go to hell!”
Who would you rather chat with over coffee? Feisty Betty Dawisha or addled Jane Fonda, whose latest psychotic break seems to have swerved her into hating the U.S. military again (hat tip: Michelle Malkin):
Starting with the Vietnam War we began training soldiers differently. In my book I talk about secret meetings I had with military psychologists who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel. ‘We’re turning them into killing machines,’ one of them said to me.
…[It’s] critical that we understand that the soldiers are not to blame. How they were trained, how their officers either gave the green light or turned a blind eye to what was happening on the ground is what matters. When you put young people into an atrocity-producing situation where enemy and civilian are commingled, where the ‘other side’ is dehumanized, we cannot be surprised by what these men report in the film.”
…We have not learned the lessons of Vietnam. The returned veterans tried valiantly to tell us what the lessons were, [but] most of us turned our backs. . . . Today the returning antiwar Iraq vets are being called ‘unpatriotic.’ We must listen to what they have to say. [Emphasis mine.]
Unthinking, atrocity loving, killing machines. Just like this guy and this guy (via chantel-lee.com).
According to a news item at Breitbart.com, Virgin Galactic and New Mexico announced an agreement Tuesday for the state to build a $225 million spaceport.
Virgin Galactic also revealed that up to 38,000 people from 126 countries have paid a deposit for a seat on one of its manned commercial flights, including a core group of 100 “founders” who have paid the initial $200,000 cost of a flight upfront. Virgin Galactic is planning to begin flights in late 2008 or early 2009.
New Mexico Economic Development Secretary Rick Homans said construction of the spaceport, to be built largely underground in the south of the state near the White Sands Missile Range, could begin in early 2007, depending on approval from environmental and aviation authorities.
Virgin will have a 20-year lease on the facility, with annual payments of $1 million for the first five years and rising to cover the cost of the project by the end of the lease.
…
The spaceport, to be located some 25 miles south of the town of Truth or Consequences, will be constructed 90 percent underground, with just the runway and supporting structures above ground.
…
Virgin Galactic plans to operate its initial flights from the Mojave, Calif. base ahead of the projected opening of the New Mexico spaceport in late 2009 or early 2010.
[Update] Discovery.com has more details on the story:
…The Spaceship Co. is building a fleet of five vehicles, each capable of carrying six or seven passengers and two pilots, [Virgin Galactic president Will Whitehorn] said in a recent interview.
The fleet is modeled after the Rutan-designed SpaceShipOne, which last year clinched the $10-million Ansari X Prize for a pair of suborbital flights that took place within a span of six days. SpaceShipOne now hangs in the National Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Virgin Galactic already has collected more than $10 million in deposits from aspiring astronauts who plan to fork over about $200,000 each for a sampling of life beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Another 38,000 adventurous souls have made reservations, Whitehorn said.
The trip won’t last long. Like its predecessor, SpaceShipTwo, which will be about the size of a Gulfstream 5 business jet, will be carried aloft atop a specially designed jet and released before firing its rocket engines to reach a suborbital altitude. After four to five minutes of weightlessness, the ship will re-enter the atmosphere and glide to a runway landing.
They also mention that the new spaceport, called the Southwestern Regional Spaceport, needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees commercial spaceflight in the United States.
The agency already has licensed five sites for space launches, including California Spaceport and Mojave Airport in California, Florida Spaceport at Cape Canaveral, the Virginia Space Flight Center on Wallops Island and the Kodiak Launch Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.
From ABC News International:
Brazil City Council Votes to Require Separate Bathrooms for Transvestites
For most, it’s a choice of the men’s room or the women’s. A Brazilian city is trying to give an option to those who don’t fit easily into either category.
A bill passed by the Nova Iguacu city council on Tuesday would require night clubs, shopping malls, movie theaters and large restaurants to provide a third type of bathroom for transvestites. Mayor Lindberg Farias will decide whether to make it a law.
“A lot of lawmakers didn’t want to deal with this issue, but it’s a serious problem in society,” said city Councilman Carlos Eduardo Moreira. “It’s a way to put an end to prejudice.”
Moreira, a 32-year-old policeman on leave from the force, said he got the idea when dozens of transvestites showed up for a local samba show.
“It was a real problem. The women didn’t feel comfortable having them in the ladies’ room, and the men didn’t want them in their bathroom either,” said Moreira, who is married and the father of two children. “I’m not doing this for my own benefit.”
He said the “alternative bathrooms” could also be used by men or women who didn’t mind sharing space with transvestites.
Moreira said there are nearly 28,000 transvestites in Nova Iguacu, a poor city of about 800,000 on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Moreira said many transvestites are reluctant to go out because there’s no bathroom for them….
I just want to see what they come up with for the sign to the transvestite’s restroom.
Read the whole article.
JAXA, Japan’s space agency will delay until 2010 the return of the luckless Hayabusa probe.
Sent to the Itokawa asteroid–which is located about 180 million miles from Earth–and orginally intended to return in 2007, JAXA has experienced a series of problems with Hayabusa since the probe neared its destination.
…Launched in May 2003, the probe’s mission was to land on Itokawa and collect samples to bring back to Earth.
However, JAXA lost contact with the probe during a faulty touchdown last month and did not even realize the probe had landed until days later — long after it lifted off the asteroid.
Hayabusa made a second landing days later, but experienced trouble with its thruster after takeoff, forcing JAXA to shut down the ship’s engines.
If JAXA is able to reestablish contact with the probe, they will command it to begin its return in 2007, arriving about June 2010. If that occurs, it would be the first successful mission to return asteroid samples to Earth.
Read the whole article.
According to an article at Engaget, Quanta has announced that they will be producing the OLPC $100 laptop intended for children in developing nations.
Quanta, who inked another deal with MIT earlier this year, says they’re aiming for a 5 - 15 million unit launch by Q4 2006…with a million or more units destined for Argentina, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Nigeria, and Thailand.
Engaget also has photos of the OLPC (or One Laptop Per Child) which is being designed at MIT. The laptop is expected to include:
…A 500 MHz processor, 1GB memory, four USB ports and a dual-mode display usable in full-color or in black-and-white, sunlight-readable mode. Power will be provided either via conventional electric current, batteries, or via a windup crank attached to the side of the notebook for usage in remote regions without a power grid. The systems will be WiFi-enabled and able to connect via cellular networks, as well as including built-in mesh networking allowing multiple machines to share a single internet connection. [Nicholas Negroponte] is working with MIT and five companies (Google, AMD, News Corp., Red Hat and BrightStar) to develop an ambitious 5 to 15 million test systems within the year, to be purchased at $100 a pop by governments in Brazil, China, Thailand, Egypt and South Africa and distributed for free to students.
The Engaget article shows the OLPC being used as a laptop computer, eBook reader, and video game player.
From an article in The Royal Gazette:
‘Sex rage’ couple facing $34,000 bill
A couple who forced a plane to land in Bermuda after they attacked cabin crew who stopped them having sex are facing a $34,000 bill for their pleasure.
And they run the risk of national shame back in England after UK tabloid The Sun ran the story with an appeal for the public to name and shame them.
It said stunned passengers watched in horror as the randy couple attacked cabin crew after being told to return to their seats.
They shouted abuse and spat as they grappled with the British Airways staff who forced them back into their business class seats.
And despite being restrained with plastic handcuffs, the pilot decided he had no choice but to divert the 777 jet to Bermuda.
The “sex rage” incident, as The Sun described it, began when they started drinking heavily on the ten-hour flight from Gatwick to Kingston, Jamaica on Monday.
They joined the “mile-high club” in one of the loos. But after their noisy passion was overheard by flight staff they were ordered out – and went berserk.
Read the whole article.
From the Associated Press comes this article suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, are no longer able to control Al Qaida.
Osama bin Laden may no longer have operational control of his terrorist network, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan said Monday. Ryan Crocker said bin Laden cannot communicate with his followers because he likely is hiding in a remote area, Pakistan’s Geo Television and state-run PTV reported after the ambassador met with local journalists.
…Geo, Crocker also doubted suggestions that bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had effective control of al-Qaida, saying the fact that he issues occasional video and audio taped statements does not prove anything.
The al-Qaida No. 2 was last heard from on a tape that surfaced Sunday, urging all Muslims to take up arms and saying a refusal to join the fight against Jews and Christians would lead to the defeat of militant Islam.
He said the global Islamic community had “no hope for victory” until all Muslims signed on to the al-Qaida-led jihad. His comments were contained in a 48-minute tape entitled “Impediments to Jihad.”
…
Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding in the mountainous area between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though there has been no hard evidence of their whereabouts for years.Bin Laden has long been considered by intelligence officials and terrorism experts to be more of an inspirational figure and financial backer for al-Qaida, with day-to-day operations falling to underlings, including al-Zawahri.
…
In October, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, retired Vice Adm. Scott Redd, said bin Laden cannot communicate with his followers the way he had in the past because “the more you communicate … the more vulnerable you are.”More evidence that America and our allies are winning the Global War on Terror.
Voting in Iraq’s second parliamentary elections began today. Iraq The Model is blogging the day’s events with pictures and comments.
Here are some Iraqi voters proudly displaying the ink-stained finger that proves they voted.
A Frenchman who drove down the wrong lane on a highway for 11 miles and ended up crashing into five cars, killing an adult and injuring two children.
From a Reuters “news” article:
The 66-year-old man continued driving after his first two collisions Sunday in the hope of finding an exit off the A35 in eastern France, a police spokesman in the city of Strasbourg said.
…
The retired motorist, driving with his wife, only came to a halt when he collided head-on with another car, killing an adult and seriously injuring two children aboard. Police said the victims were among a family of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.Police said alcohol tests on the driver proved negative and he could not explain why he had turned the wrong way onto the motorway. He was in shock but he and his wife were otherwise unhurt.
Like to try extreme macro photography but don’t want to shell out for the specialized lens? Well, Photocritic.org has posted a do-it-yourself article that, with the help of an empty Pringles can, an inexpensive lens like the Canon 50mm f/1.8 MKII, some spare lens covers, epoxy, black felt, and (of course) duct tape, will produce results that are amazing considering the source.
The Miami Herald/El Universal Online reports on the controversy arising from a telescope being constructed jointly by the U.S. and Mexico.
The Large Millimeter Telescope, which is being assembled on the 15,000-foot Sierra Negra, a dormant volcano in the state of Pueblahas, is causing debate because “some Mexicans believe its military link teeters on the edge of unacceptable territory for a nation that prides itself on staying non-aggressive on the world stage.”
Philip Coyle, who as U.S. assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration was director of operational testing and evaluation at the Pentagon, said officials wouldn´t fund a project unless it had strong potential military value, in this case against hostile satellites or missiles.
“It is a very high-powered, focused radar beam that could be used to find an enemy object out in space and, having found it, zero in on it,” Coyle said.
The radio telescope, designed to be the largest of its kind in the world, has faced a host of construction challenges.
But it appears closer to completion after an antenna dish as big as a baseball infield was successfully hoisted and welded to the 17-story structure last month.
…“It seems to be violating the traditions we have in this country, that the research we produce is for the good of humanity, not to combat a few groups or sectors of the world population,” [Rosa María Aviléz Nájera, a federal congresswoman for the leftist Democratic Revolution Party (PRD)] said.
“If we know they are using this to benefit humanity, we have no worries,” Aviléz said. “But due to history, we know that for many U.S. governments, democracy means doing exactly as they say.”
The office of President Vicente Fox, who has been advocating for the telescope, declined to comment.
Fox has called it the most important scientific project in Mexican history.
The cost so far has been US$100 million and is climbing, and Mexico has come up with about 60 percent of it.
The rest has come from the United States, with the bulk from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, an arm of the Pentagon, which kicked in US$33 million.
The agency, known as DARPA, that invented computer networking and built the first version of the internet, had no comment, although congressional documents show long-term military interest.
“The design could greatly improve capabilities for acquisition and recognition of targets in space, as well as demonstrate the feasibility of long-range energy directed devices,” states a document from the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1997, the year construction began.
The telescope is a rare joint U.S.-Mexico scientific effort, spearheaded by the University of Massachusetts and the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics.
It would enable scientists to look about 13 billion years into the past to explore the universe´s birth.
Read the whole article.
From Reuters:
Iraqi insurgents urge Sunnis to vote, warn Zarqawi
Saddam Hussein loyalists who violently opposed January elections have made an about-face as Thursday’s polls near, urging fellow Sunni Arabs to vote and warning al Qaeda militants not to attack.
In a move unthinkable in the bloody run-up to the last election, guerrillas in the western insurgent heartland of Anbar province say they are even prepared to protect voting stations from fighters loyal to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Graffiti calling for holy war is now hard to find
…Saddam loyalists have turned against Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant whose fighters travel to Iraq from across the Arab world to blow themselves up in a bid to spark sectarian civil war.
“Zarqawi is an American, Israeli and Iranian agent who is trying to keep our country unstable so that the Sunnis will keep facing occupation,” said a Baathist insurgent leader who would give his name only as Abu Abdullah.
Read the whole article.
In light of such improvement in the Iraq situation, I wonder if Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean is ready to rethink this comment:
“You can say that it’s great that Saddam is gone and I’m sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone,” said the former Vermont governor, an unflinching critic of the war against Iraq. “But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before.”
or this comment:
[The] idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong.
From an article at Times Online:
Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.
Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.
The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.
...
Since Israel destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, “it has been understood that the lesson is, don’t have one site, have 50 sites”, a White House source said.If a military operation is approved, Israel will use air and ground forces against several nuclear targets in the hope of stalling Tehran’s nuclear programme for years, according to Israeli military sources.
It is believed Israel would call on its top special forces brigade, Unit 262 — the equivalent of the SAS — and the F-15I strategic 69 Squadron, which can strike Iran and return to Israel without refuelling.
“If we opt for the military strike,” said a source, “it must be not less than 100% successful. It will resemble the destruction of the Egyptian air force in three hours in June 1967.”
Aharon Zeevi Farkash, the Israeli military intelligence chief, stepped up the pressure on Iran this month when he warned Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, that “if by the end of March the international community is unable to refer the Iranian issue to the United Nations security council, then we can say the international effort has run its course”.The March deadline set for military readiness also stems from fears that Iran is improving its own intelligence-gathering capability. In October it launched its first satellite, the Sinah-1, which was carried by a Russian space launcher.
“The Iranians’ space programme is a matter of deep concern to us,” said an Israeli defence source. “If and when we launch an attack on several Iranian targets, the last thing we need is Iranian early warning received by satellite.”
Israel can't allow Iran to possess nuclear weapons. Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been quoted as saying that Israel is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." With atomic bombs, he could actually accomplish that.
If Israel can't destroy the facilities where the weapons are being built, they may opt to use their own nukes to take out President Ahmadinejad and his regime in Teheran. Better the loss of a single city than the deaths of millions and the total destruction of Iran and Israel that would follow a general exchange of nukes.
In an interview with WOIA radio in San Antonio, Texas, Howard Dean, Democratic National Chairman said that the “idea that we’re going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong,” and that the conflict resembled the protracted Vietnam war. (via The News Today
[He] said the roughly 80,000 US National Guard and Reserve ought to come home immediately, that 20,000 soldiers ought to be sent to Afghanistan, and that the United States must keep a force in the region.
…
“We need to figure out how to leave,”
…
“I’ve seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, ‘just another year, just stay the course, we’ll have a victory,’” said Dean. “Well, we didn’t have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening,” he said.
Dean’s words echo those of Al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri:
Iraq is a catastrophe for America and Americans will leave, it will only be a matter of time. “I say to Bush: you entered Iraq with lies, you will lose Iraq and lie about it and you will leave with the pretext that you have completed your mission … America only has to decide on the number of (troops) it wishes to lose before withdrawing.
From a Reuters “news” article comes an episode of Love, Istanbul Style:
A Turkish villager who ran away with his friend’s wife has offered his own wife in exchange….
Farm laborer Cengiz Esme said Gulhan, his wife of 18 years, disappeared a month ago after leaving their village to go shopping in the southern Turkish town of Tarsus.
The 36-year-old said his village friend Mehmet Yaksi had telephoned him the next day and said: “I’ve run off with your wife …. You take my wife,” the Radikal daily reported.
Esme pleaded for Gulhan to return and said he was ready to forgive her and make a fresh start elsewhere. The reports said Yaksi’s wife, a mother of three, declined to comment on the situation.
In spite of the terrorist attacks on 9-11, a Global War on Terror, major hurricanes, and spiraling energy costs, U.S. economy growth is “galloping” according to this BusinessWeek article.
U.S.: Why Economic Growth Is Galloping
The economy is proving as unstoppable as the 11-0 Indianapolis Colts. Consumers have kept spending even in the wake of sharply higher energy prices and after their confidence was pummeled by this summer’s hurricanes. And despite initial worries over demand generated by the storms and oil hikes, businesses continue to invest in new equipment and add to their payrolls.
The economy’s resilience is especially evident in the latest update on growth from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The BEA’s second look at third-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy grew by a robust 4.3% annual rate, even with the business shutdowns caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And real GDP in the fourth quarter appears to be increasing at a healthy pace of greater than 3%. For all of 2005, real GDP is on track to expand by 3.7%.
That’s a bit higher than the 3.5% projected by the economists surveyed by BusinessWeek at the end of 2004. But what’s more revealing is that the consensus forecast was predicated on oil prices slipping back to $39 per barrel by now and the Federal Reserve hiking its target for the federal funds rate to only 3.4% by yearend. Instead, oil remains well above $55 and fed funds have already reached 4%, with more hikes on the way.
…
The GDP revisions show real consumer spending increased at an annual rate of 4.2% in the third quarter. That’s better than the 3.9% pace previously estimated, and it occurred during a quarter when gasoline prices hit more than $3 per gallon.
…
Consumers aren’t carrying this economy alone, though. Businesses are also contributing more to growth than they did in previous years. According to the new GDP data, inventories fell by the biggest amount since the 2001 recession. Rebuilding stockpiles will require more gains in production in coming months. And business investment in plant and equipment remains strong.
…
But the really interesting feature of last quarter’s earnings is the way profit margins held up despite the hurricanes and surging energy costs. Profits of nonfinancial corporations remained at an exceptionally high 13.2% of the sector’s GDP. That was down only slightly from the record 13.3% hit in the second quarter, and it continues to surpass the previous record reached back in 1997.
The good news keeps on coming:
From an article at MSNBC:
Disease sends bone marrow cells to prepare new tumor sites, study finds
Scientists have discovered how cancer spreads from a primary site to other places in the body in a finding that could open doors for new ways of treating and preventing advanced disease.
Instead of a cell just breaking off from a tumor and traveling through the bloodstream to another organ where it forms a secondary tumour, or metastasis, researchers in the United States have shown that the cancer sends out envoys to prepare the new site.
Intercepting those envoys, or blocking their action with drugs, might help to prevent the spread of cancer or to treat it in patients in which it has already occurred.
Read the whole article.
From BBC News comes this tidbit:
The term podcast–defined as a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player–has been declared Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.
“Podcast was considered for inclusion last year, but we found that not enough people were using it, or were even familiar with the concept,” said Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary.
“This year it’s a completely different story. The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon.”
Words that didn’t make the cut:
[Lifehack], which refers to a more efficient way of completing an everyday task.
[Rootkit], defined as software installed on a computer by someone other than the owner, intended to conceal other programs or processes, files or system data.
The term hit the headlines when Sony was found to have included a rootkit as part of the copy protection system on some of its music CDs.
Other words that did not make it include bird flu, sudoku, and trans fat.
ABC News has published this poll:
(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)Four Years After the Fall of the Taliban, Afghans Optimistic About the Future
Four years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghans express both vast support for the changes that have shaken their country and remarkable optimism for the future, despite the deep challenges they face in economic opportunity, security and basic services alike.
An ABC News poll in Afghanistan — the first national survey there sponsored by a news organization — underscores those challenges in a unique portrait of the lives of ordinary Afghans. Poverty is deep, medical care and other basic services lacking, and infrastructure minimal. Nearly six in 10 have no electricity in their homes, and just 3 percent have it around the clock. Seven in 10 Afghan adults have no more than an elementary education; half have no schooling whatsoever. Half have household incomes under $500 a year.
Yet despite these and other deprivations, 77 percent of Afghans say their country is headed in the right direction — compared with 30 percent in the vastly better-off United States. Ninety-one percent prefer the current Afghan government to the Taliban regime, and 87 percent call the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban good for their country. Osama bin Laden, for his part, is as unpopular as the Taliban; nine in 10 view him unfavorably. [Emphasis mine.]
I guess we can stop worrying about about an uprising against us in Afghanistan, but if I were Osama, I wouldn’t sit with my back to any doors.
In an update to this and this posting, the Associated Press reports that the Hayabusa probe may not have landed on an asteroid last month.
Data from the Hayabusa probe, now hovering several miles from the Itokawa asteroid, did not indicate that the vessel had fired a metal projectile onto the asteroid’s surface during its landing as previously thought, said Seiji Oyama of Japan’s space agency, JAXA.
“Now we just won’t know till Hayabusa comes back to Earth, and we open it up,” Oyama said.
…
The landing on the asteroid about 180 million miles from Earth was Hayabusa’s second, following a faulty touchdown in mid-November. JAXA lost contact with the probe during that attempt and didn’t even realize the probe had landed until days later — long after it had lifted off.Still, there was a “slight possibility” the impact of Hayabusa’s two landings released enough particles for the probe to collect, according to Oyama.
The probe, launched in May 2003, is due to land in the Australian Outback in June 2007. But a technical glitch could delay its arrival.
…
ayabusa experienced trouble with its thruster after taking off from Itokawa the second time, forcing JAXA to shut down the ship’s engines.The agency has until December 10 to fix the problem, before Hayabusa must start its journey back to Earth. Any delay would make a return by June 2007 unlikely, because the probe’s orbit around the sun would take it away from Earth for two years.
Read the whole article.
According to a news item at socalTECH, customers of Virgin Atlantic airways will soon be able to use their frequent flyer miles to pay for a tour in outer space:
Cash Frequent Flyer Miles For A Space Trip
According to the company, frequent flyer miles will be able to be traded in for seats on Virgin Galactic, [Richard] Branson’s new space tourism startup. Virgin Atlantic said that its Flying Club members will need to earn two million miles on its flights to earn a trip to space, including a three day training session before the flight. Seats on the new space line start at $200,000. Virgin Galactic is expecting to start flights in 2008. The company is developing a service based on Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, the first commercial spaceship to make it to outer space. Mojave-based Mojave Aerospace Ventures and aerospace designer Burt Rutan developed SpaceShipOne in a project funded by Microsoft’s Paul Allen. [Emphasis mine.]
In a related story, according to The Mercury News, New Mexico state officials are expected to announce next week that Virgin Galactic has agreed to launch flights from a spaceport that will be constructed near Upham, off Interstate 25 north of Las Cruces. Two private companies, Starchaser and UP Aerospace, have also announced plans to launch science experiments from the spaceport.
11:34:59 pm, Categories: Science & Tech, Daily blather, Global warming, Junk science, Environmentalism, Global warming headlines
From an Associated Press article:
Record Low Temps Seen in Parts of U.S.
Bitterly cold air poured southward across the nation’s midsection Wednesday, dropping temperatures to record lows from Montana to Illinois.
The mercury dived to a record 45 below at West Yellowstone, Mont., the frequently cold spot at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park, the National Weather Service said. The old record for Dec. 7 was 39 below, set in 1927.
The cold even extended south to the Texas Panhandle, where Lubbock shivered at a record low 6 above zero, the weather service said.
That reminds me! It’s time to do another in the series of climate change headline roundups, so let’s check Google News for the latest from the global warming crowd.
Note: These headlines were all published in the first two weeks of December.
The first blunder: “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” and the second:“Never believe that Americans have lost the will to fight.”
Sixty-four years ago today, the Japanese military attacked the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor and other military bases on Oahu. The surprise attack, which began at 7:55 a.m., lasted two hours during which nearly 2,400 people were killed, 21 U.S. ships were heavily damaged, and 323 aircraft damaged or destroyed.
The Japanese military, knowing that many Americans did not want to fight a war against Japan, had calculated that if it suddenly destroyed the U.S. fleet, America would simply give up and allow Japan to consolidate its grasp on East Asia. Instead, the American public was enraged and the U.S. quickly declared war.
Japan had many early successes in the war against the U.S. and Britain, but the U.S. victory at Midway Island in June 1942 led to the steady encirclement of the Japanese islands, cutting them off from needed supplies of raw materials. The Japanese navy was destroyed. When this was followed by massive bombardment from the air and the final blow of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese invincibility was proven to be a myth. At the end of the war, the Japanese nation was not only starving and devastated by the bombing, but bewildered and shocked by the defeat. (Source: Columbia University, East Asian Curriculum Project, Japan and the United States at War: Pearl Harbor, August 1941.)
All because they underestimated the American will to fight.
CBS News has an excellent article on the discovery that the Titanic broke into at least three large pieces as she was sinking, so the stern portion would have gone to the bottom in about five minutes (not the 20 minutes previously thought).
The newly found hull sections, located about a third of a mile from the stern of the wreck, were examined during an expedition in August sponsored by The History Channel. On Monday, Titanic experts met at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to discuss their analysis of the find for a documentary to be aired on the cable channel on Feb. 26.
Robert Ballard, the explorer who found the Titanic in 1985, was not impressed however:
“They found a fragment, big deal,” he said. “Am I surprised? No. When you go down there, there’s stuff all over the place. It hit an iceberg and it sank. Get over it.”
On her maiden voyage, the R.M.S. Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912. More than 1,500 people died in the tragedy.
I was glad to see this story because it reminded me to check the web to see if anyone had come up with an answer to a question that’s nagged me for some time: Why didn’t the ship’s crew transport the passengers to the iceberg? This time I found a page where that question was posed and answered pretty well.
09:48:54 pm, Categories: Daily blather
I noticed something funny while looking for tomorrow’s “Pic of the Day.” I’d found this Associated Press photo of a sunset on Mars in a Yahoo! slideshow (click here if the other link now points to a different image–I hate it when they do that!).
Pretty nice image, right? Well, the AP caption said the image was photographed by the Spirit Rover last May, so I went looking and found the NASA original below (click thumbnail for full size).
Notice anything odd? Well of course, the original image was much darker! By itself, that’s not so bad, for as we learned from USA Today back during the Condoleezza Rice “demonized” eyes retouching scandal:
Photos published online are routinely cropped for size and adjusted for brightness and sharpness to optimize their appearance.
So AP’s artists probably adjusted the color levels in Photoshop to both brighten and enhance the colors in the image. It’s nothing to gripe about, particularly since NASA states that the original image was a “false color image” (meaning they used different filters to achieve the colors a human might see if he was on Mars).
Again, no problem, but it did make me take a closer look at both images and I noticed something else: they also narrowed the image by 10% (click for comparison showing the unchanged original vs. the AP version).
This comparison between the AP version and the original that I narrowed in Photoshop proves what they did.
Why did they do it? Probably because the modified image fit their size constraints better and they thought nobody would notice.
You may be thinking “It’s only 10%, no big deal!” But it’s inexcusable for a news organization to modify photos in this way. Especially the first photo of a sunset on Mars!
Besides, a 10% change is a lot bigger than you might think as this photo and this graphic demonstrate.
So I’m reading MacBytes.com for the latest Apple news and I come across this headline: Rob Glasser of RealNetworks calls Apple “Pig Headed”. Knowing how similar articles never seem to live up to their headlines, I decided not to RTFA and ambled instead over to the MacRumors forums to see what comments there were. Therein always lies the entertainment.
To sum up the gist of the long and short of it, here’s what I learned: Rob Glasser of RealNetworks (perpetual thorn in Steve Jobs’s pinkie finger) complained at a tradeshow that Apple’s refusal to license their FairPlay software amounts to “pigheadedness.” (FairPlay is how Apple prevents the music it sells from being copied or otherwise ripped off. Vendors using digital-rights management (DRM) schemes other than FairPlay can’t get their tunes loaded onto iPods, which means they’re locked out of 80% of the MP3 player market.)
Glasser’s gibes are fighting words to Mac zealots and commenter liketom responds:
Comment #6
who’s Rob (BUFFERING) Glaser calling pig headed
Celebrity death match needed on this one
To which Blue Velvet replies:
Comment #7
OK. Here you go.
Our man, every time
Folks, the site he references is Google Fight, a wonderful time-waster! You set up deathmatches between contestants and the winner is decided by who has the most hits in a Google search. So, for example, Steve Jobs kicks Rob Glasser’s fundament but loses to God, go figure.
Not surprisingly Jobs also lays the smackdown on Bill Gates. It’s only in the real world that he can’t seem to lay a glove on Bill.
Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch’s brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans.
From Science Dailycomes this article on a microbe that consumes carbon monoxide and gives off hydrogen as waste:
Poison + Water = Hydrogen. New Microbial Genome Shows How
As the world increasingly considers hydrogen as a potential biofuel, technology could benefit from having the genomes of such microbes. “C. hydrogenoformans is one of the fastest-growing microbes that can convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen,” remarks TIGR evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, senior author of the PLoS Genetics study. “So if you’re interested in making clean fuels, this microbe makes an excellent starting point.”
In sequencing the microbe’s genome, Eisen and his collaborators discovered why C. hydrogenoformans grows more rapidly on carbon monoxide than other species: The bug boasts at least five different forms of a protein machine, dubbed carbon monoxide deyhydrogenase, that is able to manipulate the poisonous gas. Each form of the machine appears to allow the organism to use carbon monoxide in a different way. Most other organisms that live on carbon monoxide have only one form of this machine. In other words, while other organisms may have the equivalent of a modest mixing bowl to process their supper of carbon monoxide, this species has a veritable food processor, letting it gorge on a hot spring buffet all day.
Our definition of where life can exist keeps being rewritten as microbes are found in the most inhospitable conditions:
Called extremophiles because they grow best in extreme conditions, these biological factories may someday help solve our most pressing problems such as producing limitless hydrogen gas for clean fuels.
07:15:41 pm, Categories: Announcements [A]
Referral spamming has been eating up my bandwidth, so I’ve installed the latest version of the b2evolution blogging tool. It’s got a passel of anti-spam tools for blocking referral spam (if you don’t know, referral spam is when a spammer links to your site and uses phony info–so you don’t know he’s hawking pr0n or knock-off Rolexes–to drive up his traffic) and comment spam.
Unfortunately, the previous version’s files that controlled how the blog looks are not compatible with the new version, so I’ll be making tweaks over the next few days to restore everything.
Mike Treder has an interesting post at the Responsible Nanotechnology blog:
Nanotech Today vs. Nanotech Tomorrow
How do today’s nanoscale technologies differ from tomorrow’s advanced nanotechnology, sometimes called molecular manufacturing?
Here is one way to explain it: today’s nanotechnologies use big machines to make small products – by contrast, molecular manufacturing will use small machines to make big products. That sounds simple, but it is really a profound distinction.
Due to scaling laws, these intricately constructed nanoscale and microscale machines will work much faster, using bottom-up, atomically precise manufacturing to build revolutionary products. This will impact nearly every industry and all areas of society, from local to national to global.
Read the whole article, then read Chris Phoenix’s essay Notes on Nanofactories. He explains how “nanofactories combine nanoscale components into large integrated products; the reason why a nanofactory will probably take about an hour to make its weight in product; and how to cool a nanofactory effectively at such high production rates.”
You know that no creatures could be as cute, and cuddly, and fuzzy, and chipper as squirrels appear to be, it’s just not natural! So they must have an ulterior motive. . .maybe they’ve been softening us up, preparing for the “Night of the Long Incisors” when they can teach us monkeyboys a lesson.
Well the mask is off now, because, according to a BBC News story, they’ve attacked and eaten a dog in Lazo, Russia:
Passers-by were reportedly too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.
They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.
…
A “big” stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
If the squirrels are making their move against us, can killer rabbits be far behind?
To see some disturbing photos of what we may soon be up against, check out this website.
From Engadget, comes this story on the ButterWizard, the perfect Christmas gift for those too impatient to allow butter to soften naturally.
We have nothing against butter — or Brits — but put the two of them together, and it’s a recipe for culinary (and arterial) chaos. Think about it; you go to a sandwich shop in the UK, and they put butter on everything. Ask them to skip it, and they look at you like you’ve got three heads. Leave it to the Brits to come up with the ButterWizard, a £34.95 ($60) device that’s designed to keep butter at an “optimal spreadable temperature” of 65.3 degrees.
I’d never buy it because that would mean admitting I can’t get my microwave to soften a stick of butter without volatilizing it. (It’s the opposite of the old “watched pot never boils” proverb that microwave ovens made obsolete, now it’s “a watched stick of butter in the microwave won’t melt until you blink, then it puddles.")
In an update to this posting, the Associated Press reports that the Hayabusa probe appears to have landed briefly on an asteroid located about 180 million miles from Earth. After touching down on the Itokawa asteroid, the probe fired two metal projectiles into its surface, collected the dust that was kicked up and lifted off. It was the probe’s second successful landing on the asteroid, according to Japan’s space agency, JAXA.
Hayabusa was launched in May 2003. In addition to recovering samples from the asteroid, it is testing a new type of ion engine that uses an electric field to accelerate positive ions to a high velocity.
The probe swung by Earth to use gravity to accelerate toward the asteroid.
The Hayabusa mission is part of Japan’s efforts to expand its space exploration program after setbacks in recent years in its efforts to explore the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, JAXA said it would send its first astronauts into space and establish a moon base by 2025.
However, the agency said the Hayabusa has had trouble with its thruster system. That was the latest setback in Japan’s attempt to complete the world’s first two-way trip to an asteroid, following earlier problems with the probe’s gyroscopes and two botched practice landings.
Read the whole article.
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