If you’re a diabetes sufferer who takes insulin, here’s some good news: Exubera, a dry powder insulin that is inhaled rather than injected will soon be available in Britain according to an EDP Business article:
Hank McKinnell, Pfizer chairman and chief executive officer, said: “Exubera is a major, first-of-its-kind, medical breakthrough that marks another critical step forward in the treatment of diabetes, a disease that has taken an enormous human and economic toll worldwide.”
Simon O’Neill, director of care at the charity Diabetes UK, said: “Being able to replace some of the daily insulin injections with an inhaler will be a great breakthrough for some people with type one and type two diabetes. It could prove to be one of the biggest steps forward since the discovery of insulin in 1922.
“We are pleased that after a thorough investigation of the safety and efficacy information available, the EMEA has said that the product can be marketed.
“We hope that when the National Institute of Clinical Excellence comes to review inhaled insulin, it takes into account the potential benefits to people’s quality of life.”
Pfizer and Bespak are also hoping to gain approval for the drug in the United States, another huge market.
A decision is expected soon, with an advisory committee last September recommending the US Food and Drug Administration should approve it.
According to the World Health Organization, diabetes affects about 48 million people in Europe, including two million people in Britain.
…
Exubera, which is inhaled before meals, mimics the normal physiological insulin response to eating. It is absorbed into the blood quickly and reduces meal-related spikes in glucose levels in people with diabetes.
Also in the news comes a report that scientists at Dundee University in Scotland have:
[Developed] patches of tissue to mend damaged hearts, which could prevent heart attack victims from having to spend the rest of their lives on medication. A team from Dundee University have successfully grown a tube of heart tissue using cells from newborn rats. The tube beat like a heart, pulsed faster when adrenaline was applied and responded to medicine like a normal organ.
[Source: Scotsman.com News]
Here’s a bit more info on the story from the Pakistan Daily Times:
Dr Keith Baar said he hoped the development could transform the lives of thousands of people left crippled by cardiac arrests. Covering a cardiac patient’s damaged section of heart with a patch grown from their own cells would prove an efficient alternative to putting them on a waiting list for a heart transplant.
Tags: drugs | health | news | personal | medicine | blog | weblog | pharma | healthcare | exubera | diabetes | heart surgery | medical breakthroughs
The Veridicator, a device invented by science fiction author H. Beam Piper, was a combination polygraph and brain scanner that could infallibly prove whether a person was lying.
Testimony under a veridicator was so reliable that the only legal strategy for the guilty was to avoid being tested. Upon being convicted of a crime, punishment was carried out quickly (conviction for a capital crime resulted in execution within hours of a guilty verdict, for instance). And why not? There was no possibility of mistake.
Something like the veridicator would vastly improve our justice system, and it may be coming. According to this BREITBART article, Massachusetts company No Lie MRI, Inc. will soon be offering brain-scanning services that are said to be 90% accurate at detecting lies.
The process uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine whether a suspect is lying by scanning his brain.
…[fMRI] is a standard tool for studying the brain, but research into using it to detect lies is still in early stages. Nobody really knows yet whether it will prove more accurate than polygraphs, which measure things like blood pressure and breathing rate to look for emotional signals of lying.
But advocates for fMRI say it has the potential to be more accurate, because it zeros in on the source of lying, the brain, rather than using indirect measures. So it may someday provide lawyers with something polygraphs can’t: legal evidence of truth-telling that’s widely admissible in court. (Courts generally regard polygraph results as unreliable, and either prohibit such evidence or allow it only if both sides in a case agree to let it in.)
…[The] idea of using fMRI to detect lies has started a buzz among scientists, legal experts and ethicists. Many worry about rushing too quickly from the lab to real-world use. Some caution that it may not work as well in the real world as the early lab results suggest.
And others worry that it might.
Unlike perusing your mail or tapping your phone, this is “looking inside your brain,” Hank Greely, a law professor who directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, told me a few days before my scan.
It “does seem to me to be a significant change in our ability … to invade what has been the last untouchable sanctuary, the contents of your own mind,” Greely said. “It should make us stop and think to what extent we should allow this to be done.”
But Dr. Mark George, the genial neurologist and psychiatrist who let me lie in his scanner and be grilled by his computer, said he doesn’t see a privacy problem with the technology.
That’s because it’s impossible to test people without their consent, he said. Subjects have to cooperate so fully _ holding the head still, and reading and responding to the questions, for example _ that they have to agree to the scan.
“It really doesn’t read your mind if you don’t want your mind to be read,” he said. “If I were wrongly accused and this were available, I’d want my defense lawyer to help me get this.”
So maybe the technology is better termed a “truth confirmer” than lie detector, he said.
Whatever you call it, the technology has produced some eyebrow-raising results. George and his colleagues recently reported that using fMRI data, a computer was able to spot lies in 28 out of 31 volunteers.
Truth confirmer now, sure. Use it to get the falsely accused and convicted released. But maybe in five to ten years, when they’ve shrunk an fMRI scanner from the size of a small storage shed to a helmet that fits on your head, it’ll be a lie detecting veridicator.
When that happens, criminals will receive swift and sure justice, society in general will be more honest, and we’ll all be safer. Plus there’ll be a lot of unhappy lawyers – Bonus!
Tags: death penalty | blog | weblog | execution | crime | polygraph | technology | science fiction | scifi | sci-fi | beam piper | mri
Every weekday as I commute the twenty-five miles down I-270 to my day job, I pass by the Chosen Ones getting into the HOV lanes. And even though I’m exiting the highway just as the HOV lanes are beginning, I can’t help indulging in my second-favorite highway fantasy (the most favorite involves driving a supercar armed with heat-seeking missiles and extendible spiked hubcaps like the chariots in Ben Hur had…but I digress).
My second-favorite fantasy: How cool it would be to use the HOV lanes with a mannequin at my side.
You see – or maybe not if you don’t live in a congested traffic nightmare like we have in the DC Metro area – HOV lanes are set aside for high-occupancy vehicles carrying two or more people. During rush hour traffic, while the drivers in the other lanes are creeping along at the rate continents drift, the HOV drivers get to rocket along down their own private speedway. So I’ve often wondered if a dummy in the passenger seat would fool the cops who cruise the HOV lanes. They’re there looking for scofflaws who are crashing (no pun intended) the HOV party.
Short answer: No it wouldn’t fool them for long.
From a Denver Post article:
Westminister police have ticketed a commuter who placed a mannequin alongside him as he drove in the high-occupancy vehicle lane.
Greg Allen Pringle, 53, was stopped this morning as he drove on Highway 36 between Sheridan and Zuni.
Officer Mark Watters with Westminster police, who was patrolling the stretch of highway, had spotted Pringle’s car before, and thought the passenger looked strange.
When he saw Pringle’s car this morning, he pulled it over, and found the mannequin dressed in a baseball cap and a grey sweatshirt.
Pringle was ticketed for driving an unauthorized vehicle in the HOV lane.
It’s a non-moving violation with a $115 fine.
The mannequin was confiscated as evidence.
Ouch!
A couple of weeks ago, I posted this entry about research into a warp or hyperspace drive. The hypothetical hyperdrive would use a massive magnetic field to squeeze a craft out of our dimension into one where faster than light travel is possible. After reaching its destination the drive would be shut off, popping the craft back into our reality. Of course, the main stumbling block to this theory is that there isn’t any indication that other dimensions exist.
Well, UPI has an article on scientists who are attempting to prove whether there are extra dimensions:
Other dimensions might soon be detected
Northeastern University and University of California scientists say they might soon have evidence of extra dimensions and other exotic predictions.
Early results from a neutrino detector at the South Pole called AMANDA suggest ghostlike particles from space could serve as probes to a world beyond our familiar three dimensions, the research team says. The evidence, they say, would come from how neutrinos interact with other forms of matter on Earth.
No more than a dozen high-energy neutrinos have been detected so far. However, the current detection rate and energy range indicate AMANDA’s larger successor, called IceCube, now under construction, could provide the first evidence for string theory and other theories that attempt to build upon our current understanding of the universe.
An article describing this work appears in the current issue of Physical Review Letters.
Tags: physics | science | space travel | technology | blog | weblog | neutrino | news
From a Reuters story:
Rafael Vargas of Barranquilla, Colombia wanted to cure his nephew, 21-year-old David Galvan, of the hiccups, so he decided to try scaring him. Vargas, who worked as a security guard, pulled his pistol and aimed it at Galvan (they’d both been drinking and it probably seemed like a good idea at the time). The gun accidentally fired, hitting Galvan in the neck and mortally wounding him. A distraught Vargas then turned the gun on himself, committing suicide.
I’m trying to imagine the moments leading up to the shootings. The two men are drinking with neighbors when Galvan begins hiccuping. Vargas sets his glass on the table and, while saying to Galvan something along the lines of “I’ll fix you up,” pulls his pistol, points it at his nephew and shouts “Bang!". The rest we know.
Tags: humor | darwin award | evolution | blog | weblog
According to an article at PhysOrg.com, scientists have built a molecular motor powered solely by sunlight.
By acting like pistons that move back and forth, these motors, which are only nanometers or billionths of meters across, could help read out data as ones and zeroes “for molecular photonics and electronics, two rapidly growing fields aimed at the construction of chemical computers,” said researcher Vincenzo Balzani, a chemist at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Such motors could also operate nanovalves covering the surfaces of porous silica-based nanoparticles. Scientists could then use light to fill and empty the pores of these nanoparticles with molecules such as anti-cancer drugs. After doctors target cancers with these nanoparticles, “then light is used to trigger the release of the drug,” said researcher J. Fraser Stoddart, a nanochemist at the University of California at Los Angeles.
The motor was designed and built over six years by researchers at the University of Bologna and UCLA. It essentially resembles a dumbbell roughly 6 nanometers long that threads a ring about 1.3 nanometers wide. The ring can move up and down the rod of the dumbbell but cannot go past the bulky stoppers at its ends.
A 6-nanometer length is about as long as a chain of 60 water molecules. These nanomotors are actually tinier than hemoglobin molecules (the substance that gives blood its red color). Still can’t grasp how small that is? Try this: If you stretched 13,000 of the nanomotors end-to-end, that chain would be the width of a human hair!
Noteworthy is the fact that this molecular motor does not require a chemical fuel to operate,” said Devens Gust, a chemist at Arizona State University in Tempe who did not participate in this study. “Previous motors require fuel, including biological motors. The power for this system comes directly from light, with no need to move fuels around, consume them, and generate waste products. The analogy would be a solar-powered car vs. one fueled by a gasoline engine.”
Read the whole article.
Tags: technology | science | news | nanotechnology | nano | blog | weblog
BBC News has announced results from a survey measuring which countries have the most optimistic people when it comes to their economic future.
Surprise! Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries that recently suffered wars and are hosting U.S. and allied forces, are among the most optimistic!
Afghanistan, with 57 percent saying their country’s economy is improving and 70 percent saying their own circumstances are improving, and Iraq, where 56 percent say their country’s economy is improving and 65 percent saying their own conditions are getting better. It may be that war creates a “year zero” experience of collectively starting over, that has a positive core.
Can we just once give credit to the United States for how it treats defeated countries? Iraq was freed from Baathist tyranny, Afghanistan from the Taliban. Now both countries have the first democratically elected governments in their history. It’s no wonder that Iraqis and Afghanis look to the future with optimism.
World opinion on the media was also polled. No surprises here:
No country was more negative about the news media than the United States. Sixty-four percent of Americans felt the media was a negative influence; only 28 percent saw it as positive.
Hat tip: InstaPundit for the original link.
Tags: war on terror | polling | news | war | politics | blog | weblog | iraq war | iraq | afghanistan | economics | media
On January 23, 1984, a mouse was something that ate cheese and scared excitable women in early sixties sitcoms, a GUI was a sticky something on the soles of your shoes, the Internet was science fiction, and Bill Gates was sure that nobody would ever need more than 640K of memory.
Then on January 24, Apple ran a Super Bowl commercial that announced “On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
Tags: computers | news | weblog | blog | mac | apple | technology
Cybercast News Service published a story today that says Al Qaeda may have acquired Russian SA-18 missile systems along with cyanide and other toxins from Chechnya, an acquisition that some analysts think may be linked to Osama bin Laden’s recent threat against the United States.
On Oct. 29, 2005, French counter-terrorism officials reported that a group called the “Chechen network,” had smuggled Russian-made surface-to-air missiles into Europe as part of a plot to strike down French airplanes. Adnan Muhammad Sadik, alias Abu Atiya, a captured al Qaeda suspect, said during an interrogation by French authorities that the group procured Russian-made man-portable SA-18 Igla missiles from Chechnya along with botulin, ricin, cyanide and other toxins. The weapons were never found. [Adnan Muhammad Sadik, alias Abu Atiya, a captured al Qaeda suspect Atiya is currently in Jordanian custody.
…
Earlier this month, Hudson Institute research analyst Christopher L. Brown told Cybercast News Service that after analyzing available al Qaeda communications, he was “99 percent” certain al Qaeda was planning an imminent attack, and that the U.S. was the likeliest target. He also said it was possible the missing weapons from the “Chechen network” had been smuggled into the U.S.
…
But other experts have suggested that the “Chechen network” information may not be that significant. Despite the fact that French anti-terrorism expert Judge Jean-Louis Brugiere warned that members of the “Chechen network” were experts in chemical warfare, analyst Dr. Andrew McGregor insisted that it was all a myth developed for political ends.In December of 2004, McGregor, director of Aberfoyle International Security Analysis in Toronto, Canada, wrote a report published by the Jamestown Foundation, accusing the media of repeating “every unproven allegation from unnamed intelligence sources.”
…
However, on Jan. 14, French reporter Jean Chichizola of Le Figaro reported on the contents of the Atiya file prepared by French anti-terrorism judges, and said the original information about the missile threat was confirmed. He also reported that Atiya claimed to have convinced those involved to use the missiles against the U.S. rather than France, although the latter could not be confirmed.Olivier Guitta, an international terrorism financing expert, told Cybercast News Service that the Jan. 12 speech by French President Jacques Chirac was related to the missile threat. Chirac warned that France would consider a nuclear response to any state-sponsored terrorist attack on its soil. Guitta said that French anti-terrorism agents believe a major terrorist attack in Paris is imminent and that it is being sponsored by Iran. “They have been on high alert since October,” said Guitta, “working non-stop to prevent whatever is coming. They were very scared.” Guitta also said that it is believed Iran would use a proxy group such as Hezbollah to launch the attack.
Read the whole article.
Alarming news, but we’ve been reading these kinds of stories for years now:
One factor in the third general terror alert raised in the United States since September 11 relates, according to US media, to intelligence information indicating that the former Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden has gained possession of a so-called dirty or radiological bomb.
Alarmed by growing hints of al Qaeda’s progress toward obtaining a nuclear or radiological weapon, the Bush administration has deployed hundreds of sophisticated sensors since November to U.S. borders, overseas facilities and choke points around Washington. It has placed the Delta Force, the nation’s elite commando unit, on a new standby alert to seize control of nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.
The consensus government view is now that al Qaeda probably has acquired the lower-level radionuclides strontium 90 and cesium 137, many thefts of which have been documented in recent years. These materials cannot produce a nuclear detonation, but they are radioactive contaminants. Conventional explosives could scatter them in what is known as a radiological dispersion device, colloquially called a “dirty bomb.”
While America relies on economic optimism to keep going, bin Laden relies on terrorist optimism. Exactly what is he planning? In 1999 terrorism expert Yossef Bodanksy quoted a senior Arab intelligence official as saying, “Osama bin Laden has acquired tactical nuclear weapons from the Islamic republics of Central Asia established after the collapse of the Soviet Union.” Recent postings on Islamist Internet sites, intercepted by intelligence experts, suggest that Islamic nuclear weapons may have been smuggled into the United States. A journalist who watches America’s borders recently dropped me a note: ”The fact something is about to go down is palpable. Many of my sources have gone into hibernation. It’s been consistent that when that happens, something is going on.”
According to Bodansky, “Bin Laden’s emissaries paid the Chechins $30 million in cash and gave them two tons of Afghan heroin [approximately $600 million street value]” in exchange for nuclear weapons back in the 1990s. In his 1999 book, Bin Laden, the Man Who Declared War on America, Bodanksy wrote: “Evidence of the number of nuclear weapons purchased by the Chechens for bin Laden varies between ‘a few’ (Russian intelligence) to ‘more than twenty’ (conservative Arab intelligence services).”
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir, Osama bin Laden’s biographer and occasional rediff.com columnist, has claimed in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation television network that Al Qaeda has bought ready-made nuclear weapons from Central Asia’s thriving black market.
The claim confirms what American intelligence agencies have known all along – that Al Qaeda was trying to acquire nuclear weapons on the black market.
Al Qaeda had progressed much further toward developing a particular biological weapon before the Sept. 11 attacks than the United States realized, the presidential commission investigating intelligence on weapons of mass destruction found.
The intelligence community was surprised by al Qaeda’s advances in a virulent strain in the disease, identified by the commission only as “Agent X” to prevent al Qaeda from knowing what the U.S. government has learned.
Each story by itself is alarming, but since none of the feared WMD attacks has happened, how seriously should we take this current threat? Not very, is my guess.
It’s been four years since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. During that time, if Osama bin Laden had had WMDs, surely he would have fulfilled his fatwa on the mass killing of Americans: “The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies – civilian and military – is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it…. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty God [who said], ‘fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,’ and ‘fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.’”
I think we haven’t been hit again for two reasons: George Bush’s Global War on Terrorism and M.A.D.
Our military took the fight to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing many of their leaders and decimating the ranks. At the same time, our intelligence and law enforcement people have been catching terrorists in the U.S. before they can do us harm. But though the GWoT has been very successful in going after Al Qaeda, there’s another, equally important reason why we haven’t been attacked by WMDs: not even our most committed enemies will let the terrorists have them for fear of the consequences.
After all, it wouldn’t be that difficult for terrorists as well prepared as those who took part in the 9-11 attacks to smuggle WMDs across our woefully porous borders. Having done that, there would have been many opportunities – the 2004 elections, the Presidential inauguration, New Year’s Eve celebrations, State of The Union Addresses – when using the weapons would have crippled us at home, thereby taking the heat off their brethren fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But no attacks have occurred, so based on that negative evidence, I’m inferring that Al Qaeda doesn’t have WMDs.
The reason they don’t have them, in spite of trying very hard for years now, is most likely connected to the GWoT and our “cowboy” President. If the War on Terror had left us “quagmired” in Afghanistan, if President Bush’s resolve had shown signs of weakening, or if Al Qaeda had been able to pull off more demoralizing terror attacks in the U.S., they might have acheived enough momentum that some radical Islamic regime would have considered giving them WMDs. But now, no government is going to risk the massive retaliation that would come from supplying such weapons to terrorists (yes I’m looking at you North Korea and you too Iran!).
Al Qaeda may praise the suicidal in their ranks, but no tinpot dictator (Islamic or otherwise) wants to find out what it’s like being inside the Sun.
Tags: war on terror | terrorism | news | war | politics | blog | weblog | nuclear | terror | al qaeda | religion
Orlistat, a lipase inhibitor or fat-blocker, which is currently available in prescription form as Xenical, has been recommended for over-the-counter sale. An FDA panel of doctors and scientists voted 11-3 to recommend approval late Monday following a daylong hearing, according to this Associated Press story.
Currently, the FDA has not approved any nonprescription weight-loss drugs for sale.
In six-month clinical trials, obese people who took orlistat lost on average 5.3 pounds to 6.2 pounds more than did those who were given dummy pills. Glaxo wants people to use it for only six months at a time, but as an over-the-counter item, its use could not be policed.
However, the pill’s effect ends once its use is stopped, said Dr. Julie Golden, a medical officer in the FDA’s division of metabolism and endocrinology products. A previous study showed a progressive weight gain in patients after they discontinued use of orlistat, Golden said.
According to this FDA Talk Paper:
The effects of orlistat on weight loss, weight maintenance, and weight regain and on a number of obesity-related illnesses were assessed in seven long-term multicenter, clinical trials. These studies included about 2800 patients treated with orlistat and 1400 patients treated with placebo. A well-balanced, reduced- calorie diet was recommended for all patient in the weight-loss and weight-maintenance study periods. The diet was intended to decrease caloric intake by 20 percent and to provide 30 percent of calories from fat. In addition, all patients were offered nutritional counseling.
Of the patients who completed one year of treatment, 57 percent of the patients treated with orlistat and 31 percent of the placebo-treated patients lost at least 5 percent of their baseline body weight.
The recommended dose of orlistat is one capsule with each main meal that includes fat. During treatment, the patient should be on a nutritionally balanced, reduced-calorie diet that contains no more than 30 percent of calories from fat. Orlistat is indicated for obese patients with a body mass index (BMI, a measure of weight in relation to height), of 30 or more, or for patients with a BMI of 27 or more who also have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes. A person who is 5’5” in height and weighs 180 pounds would have a BMI of 30.
Because orlistat reduces the absorption of some fat-soluble vitamins and beta carotene, patients should take a supplement that contains fat soluble (A, D, E, and K) vitamins and beta carotene. The most common side effects of orlistat are oily spotting, gas with discharge, fecal urgency, fatty/oily stools and frequent bowel movements.
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and predict that, with six in ten being overweight in this country, the new drug will be a huge success – assuming there aren’t any dangerous side effects (and doesn’t it seem that there are always serious side effects with these weight loss drugs). Human nature being what it is, I also expect a huge jump in junk food sales. Net result: 60% will still be overweight, but they’ll be eating more fatty food.
Tags: drugs | health | news | personal | medicine | blog | weblog | pharma | healthcare | xenical | diet
In a follow-up to this story, the Odessa American Online reports that three Middle Eastern men who were detained last month by the FBI after they tried to buy an unusually large amount of disposable cell phones from a Midland, Texas Wal-Mart, were not linked to terrorism.
Not terrorists as such, but detainee Salina Tariz (Pakistani) will be deported because of immigration violations, Mohammad Riad Alhoutari (Iraqi citizen born in Kuwait) was detained on an INS hold and picked up on Dec. 19, and Tariq Nabil Suleiman (born in Jordan, now a U.S. citizen) was charged with a misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana.
Everybody that’s in this country from the Middle East can’t be violating immigration laws, right? Then what are the odds that these guys (two of whom are likely to be deported for unspecified violations) would try to buy a bunch of terrorist-friendly cell phones days after the NY Times blabbed that the NSA was listening to international phone calls of suspected terrorists?
Somehow I’m not reassured by the FBI’s passing The Wal-Mart Three off as immigration scofflaws. After all, Mohamed Atta, leader of the 9/11 terrorists, was detained in Florida for driving without a license. Look at these stats from the Center for Immigration Studies report “Moving Beyond – The 9/11 Staff report on Terrorist Travel” on the immigration histories of 94 terrorists who operated in the United States between the early 1990s and 2004:
- Of the 94 foreign-born terrorists who operated in the United States, the study found that about two-thirds (59) committed immigration fraud prior to or in conjunction with taking part in terrorist activity.
- Of the 59 terrorists who violated the law, many committed multiple immigration violations – 79 instances in all.
- In 47 instances, immigration benefits sought or acquired prior to 9/11 enabled the terrorists to stay in the United States after 9/11 and continue their terrorist activities. In at least two instances, terrorists were still able to acquire immigration benefits after 9/11.
- Temporary visas were a common means of entering; 18 terrorists had student visas and another four had applications approved to study in the United States. At least 17 terrorists used a visitor visa – either tourist (B2) or business (B1).
- There were 11 instances of passport fraud and 10 instances of visa fraud; in total 34 individuals were charged with making false statements to an immigration official.
- In at least 13 instances, terrorists overstayed their temporary visas.
- In 17 instances, terrorists claimed to lack proper travel documents and applied for asylum, often at a port of entry.
- Fraud was used not only to gain entry into the United States, but also to remain, or “embed,” in the country.
- Seven terrorists were indicted for acquiring or using various forms of fake identification, including driver’s licenses, birth certificates, Social Security cards, and immigration arrival records.
- Once in the United States, 16 of 23 terrorists became legal permanent residents, often by marrying an American. There were at least nine sham marriages.
- In total, 20 of 21 foreign terrorists became naturalized U.S. citizens.
I sure hope the FBI knows what it’s doing.
Tags: war | war on terror | politics | terrorism | news | blog | weblog
10:37:53 pm, Categories: News, Science & Tech, Daily blather, Cloning, Junk science, Scandals, Idiotarians & Idiots
According to a Reuters story, Hwang Woo-suk, erstwhile science superstar who was disgraced when his pioneering stem cell research was unmasked as a hoax, has been offered a job. Unfortunately for him, the offer comes from a UFO cult that says it has produced six human clones.
Good one, God.
The company, Clonaid (which has links to the Raëlians, a group that believes humans were cloned from prehistoric alien visitors to Earth), said it had offered him a post in one of its laboratories.
The firm has never provided proof of the six clones it says it has produced and does not reveal where the laboratories it says its has are located.
Hwang quit his post at Seoul National University in December after his claim to have cloned human embryonic stem cells, which could be used to treat diseases such as Parkinson’s, was shown to have been faked.
“We at Clonaid believe that Dr Hwang has cloned human embryos and has the knowledge to develop stem cell lines,” the company said in a message posted on its website on Sunday.
Whether or not Hwang Woo-suk joins with Clonaid, the world should find out this month if they’ve really cloned a human. Last week, according to a BBC report, Clonaid was ordered by a U.S. court to reveal the whereabouts of a supposedly cloned baby girl and her mother.
An executive with the company, Clonaid, was also summoned to appear in court in Florida, after lawyers demanded that the state authorities appoint a guardian for the child.
…
The witness subpoena and summons were approved at the request of attorney Bernard Siegel, who has filed a lawsuit demanding a guardian for baby Eve.[Clonaid’s vice president Thomas Kaenzig] must appear in court or risks to be held in contempt
The papers were delivered to Clonaid’s vice president Thomas Kaenzig before his public speech in Fort Lauderdale, Mr Siegel told the Associated Press news agency.
Mr Kaenzig - who must appear at the hearing in January - did not make an immediate comment on the papers.
Tags: cloning | science | junk science | genetics | news | blog | weblog
09:07:08 pm, Categories: Daily blather
…I’d put out a burning building with a shovel and dirt
And not even worry about getting hurt
Ain’t that tuff enuff
Ain’t that tuff enuff
Ain’t that tuff enuff
Ain’t that tuff enuff
– From Tuff Enuff by The Fabulous Thunderbirds
Mild-mannered firefighter Beda Kent, aka Superwoman, gave birth to 7 1/2 -pound daughter Brina Sue in a Houston hospital last Tuesday at 9 pm.
Twelve hours later, after popping a couple of Motrin tablets, she was sitting at a table at the George R. Brown Convention Center taking the Fire Department promotion test for captain.
From the chron.com article:
It wasn’t her idea to jam so many accomplishments into so little time, however. She ran up against the impregnable wall of civil service regulations.
If she had missed Wednesday’s test, it would have been at least two years before the next promotion examination was offered.
“Generally, there’s not a test announced until there is a vacancy,” Kent said. “I really needed to take it.”
…Kent lost her room at the hospital when she checked out to take the promotion test. Her baby had to remain in the nursery for the standard 48-hour observation period.
“I don’t like that at all. It was hard to leave her,” Kent said.
When she’s a little older, Brina Sue will learn about her mother’s whirlwind few days after the birth.
“She is definitely going to hear about this,” Kent said.
At least 360 firefighters took the test. Beda scored 104 out of 110 on the test and, although the official tally won’t be known until the examination is certified, she was told she was ranked No. 15 on the list.
Ain’t that tuff enuff?
Tags: firefighting | fire | superwoman | firefighter | news | blog | weblog
From the Times Online comes this article:
A woman who hired a hitman to kill her has been awarded £2,000 because she is still alive
A contract is a contract, even if it is a contract to kill.
Break it, and if the mob don’t get you, Maidstone Crown Court will.
Kevin Reeves, 40, was jailed for 15 months and ordered to pay £2,000 compensation after accepting £20,000 from a friend so depressed that she asked him to find a hitman to murder her. He even offered to do it himself, but got no further than pocketing the money.
There could be no prosecution for murder or manslaughter because nothing ever happened. But the intended victim, clearly annoyed at being still alive, filed a complaint for breach of contract. A jury found Reeves guilty of deception at the end of a case that even the prosecution conceded was bizarre.
Christine Ryder, 53, met Reeves when both were being treated for mental health problems at Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent, in 2003. Mrs Ryder, from nearby Strood, had been admitted after attempting suicide. She formed a friendship with Reeves and told him that she was depressed and desperate to end her life. Could he find her a hitman? Reeves, from Snodland, near Rochester, made a telephone call and told her that he could get a professional killer for £2,500.
Nothing happened.
After they left hospital she contacted Reeves and repeated her request. The price, Reeves told her, had gone up to £5,000. She wrote him a cheque.
Reeves cashed the cheque and promised to have a hitman kill Mrs. Ryder in a drive-by shooting on June 11, 2003. When that deadline passed, Reeves told her he had killed the hitman (no reason given) and paid the money to the killer’s widow.
Reeves then convinced Mrs. Ryder to cough up an additional £10,000 with the promise that he would kill her on November 28.
Needless to say, he didn’t kill her and she became increasingly distraught.
Ever more frustrated at being still alive, Mrs Ryder contacted Reeves’s wife, who said that her husband had told her that his windfall had come from a lottery scratch card, a maturing insurance policy and an Isa. “He simply had the money for his own purpose and had no intention of using it for the purpose she directed: to have her killed or kill her himself,” Ms Moore-Graham told the jury.
Steven Hadley, for the defence, conceded: “It is a mean offence, preying on somebody who is vulnerable.”
Judge Veronica Hammerton told Reeves: “This was a calculated deception, repeated three times. While it is clear you had no intention of arranging for someone to kill Mrs Ryder and didn’t propose to yourself, you deceived her into believing it would happen. It resulted in a substantial sum being paid to you; none of the money was repaid. In all the circumstances, these offences are so serious that a custodial sentence is unavoidable.” She ordered Reeves to hand over as compensation the £2,000 he had saved up to repay Mrs Ryder.
Had Reeves been as good as his word he would have found himself facing far more serious charges. Or, in 1920s Chicago, sleeping with the fishes in concrete boots.
Tags: humor | news | blog | weblog
Here’s to Benjamin Franklin: “The only President of the United States who was never President of the United States.”
–From the Firesign Theatre’s “Everything You Know is Wrong“
Oh sure, you knew Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod, daylight saving time, the Franklin furnace stove, and bifocals, but did you also know that he created the glass armonica and swim fins?
From MSNBC:
The glass armonica
Franklin loved music, playing and composing it himself. On one of many trips he would take to England he saw a performer play a tune by stroking the rims of water glasses, each a different size and filled with varying amounts of liquid. Intrigued by the concept, Franklin set about creating a more structured version of the rim trick. With a glassmaker’s help, the armonica was born. A wooden stand propped up 37 glass hemispheres on a rotating rod, which Franklin ran moistened fingers along to produce a variety of notes depending on the thickness of the glass. Both Mozart and Beethoven would eventually compose classical pieces specifically intended for the instrument.Swim fins
An avid swimmer, Franklin was drawn to water at a young age and consistently promoted the healthy benefits of the exercise in his later writings. At the ripe old age of 11 he invented a pair of fins that, unlike today’s modern flippers, were strapped to the swimmer’s hands to help make each stroke more efficient. His contributions to the sport led to his posthumous induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Ben lived a very busy life. Of the founding fathers, he was the only one to sign The Declaration of Independence, The Treaty of Alliance with France, The Treaty of Paris, and The Constitution of the United States – documents that helped free the colonies from British rule and establish the United States as an independent nation.
In September 1787, the Constitution was completed, but many delegates were disgruntled. Franklin wrote an impassioned speech, in which he used his persuasive powers to urge all delegates to sign the Constitution. Franklin admitted that it was an imperfect document but probably the best they could expect. Following the speech, the Constitution was signed. To Franklin’s disappointment, some delegates still refused to sign.
As the representatives signed the Constitution, Franklin watched. The president’s chair was at the front of the hall, and a sun was painted on the back of the chair. Franklin told some of the members near him that it was always difficult for painters to show the difference between the rising sun and the setting sun. He said that during the convention he had often looked at the painted sun and wondered “…whether it was rising or setting. But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.” (Source: Citizen Ben.)
He ran his own newspaper – The Pennsylvania Gazette – and published Poor Richard’s Almanack. He’s also the only man to have two Presidents of the United States named after him: Franklin Pierce and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Franklin invented many practical gadgets like the odometer, a rocking chair with a built-in fan (it cooled you as you rocked), and a chair that transformed into a stepladder, yet he never patented anything, believing instead that ideas should be used to benefit all people.
Maintaining his zest for living until the end, the ever-curious Franklin took an interest in everything, whether it was founding America’s first magazine, fire department, and post office; studying the phenomenon of lightning; gaining independence for America; or flirting with the French madamoiselles. His outlook on life could be summed up as dum vivimus, vivamus (while we live, let us live!).
Happy Birthday Ben! I know if you were alive today we’d all be reading Poor Richard’s Blog!
Tags: history | politics | news | blog | weblog
In a follow-up to this entry on biased reporting, Roger Coleman’s DNA test results are in and they reaffirm that he raped and murdered his sister-in-law. A crime for which he was justly, if belatedly, executed in 1992.
I put off posting this entry because I was waiting for The Telegraph’s Harry Mount to redeem his earlier biased reporting. Giving him a chance to write an article praising the error-free capital punishment system we have in the United States. Surprisingly, there’s been no such article. [Irony mode now disengaged]
So the KiloCon score stands at 1,000 executed murderers, which leaves 493,729 murder victims since 1976 who haven’t received justice.
Other than proving that Harry Mount is an agenda-driven newsie, what else have we learned from the spate of recent articles on death row convicts?
That it’s not unusual for a guilty condemned man to maintain his innocence until the switch is flipped or the plunger is pressed (what have they got to lose by lying?). That the liberal media hates capital punishment and won’t provide fair and balanced coverage. And that the media will slant a story if it’ll keep a killer from being executed, even if it means abusing victims of those same murderers.
Tags: media | capital punishment | death penalty | politics | news | journalism | blog | weblog
We find today’s Darwin Award winners in this Buffalo News story. That’s right, winners, read the article and see why I couldn’t give just one award:
Burger King trainee charged in robbery
A Burger King cashier told deputies that she almost fainted when she turned around and saw, working next to her behind the counter, a man she recognized as the person who had robbed this same Grand Island restaurant last week.
The man was starting his first day on the job Wednesday at the Burger King on Grand Island Boulevard, which had been robbed on Jan. 6, according to the Erie County Sheriff’s Department.
The cashier had been handed a note by a well-dressed bandit, wearing a white winter coat, shirt and tie, demanding all the money in her cash drawer.
He made off with $231.
Adam Ruiz, 29, of Staley Road, Grand Island, was arrested without incident at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Burger King, where he was going through training for employment.
Ruiz was arraigned in Grand Island Town Court on armed robbery charges on Thursday.
Deputies said he was also being sought by Amherst authorities on a drug warrant.
So who would deserve the award more, the crook or the fools who hired him?
Tags: humor | darwin award | evolution | blog | weblog
08:09:22 pm, Categories: News, Science & Tech, Daily blather, Space travel, Gadgets, Historic events, Astronomy
On Wednesday – 2 days, 17 hours, 13 minutes, and 20 seconds from now according to the countdown clock – if all goes as planned, the United States will launch the New Horizons spacecraft toward Pluto at a speed of 10 miles per second, the highest velocity any space mission has ever been rocketed from Earth.
An article in TCV news helps put that speed in perspective:
How fast is 10 miles per second? At that speed of 36,000 mph, the probe will pass the Moon in only 9 hours, and would be able to cross the entire U.S. in just 4 minutes.
The velocity is about 27 times faster than the Concorde supersonic transport and 10,000 mph faster than most previous spacecraft departing Earth for the Moon or planets. It will also be fast enough for New Horizons to pass by Jupiter within 13 months – a several year trip for most previous spacecraft.
Jupiter’s gravity will further accelerate New Horizons to 47,000 mph, fast enough for it to reach Pluto 3 billion miles from Earth as early as 2015, after a nearly ten year transit.
No previous space mission has ever studied up close the 1,470 mi. diameter Pluto and relatively nearby 50 mile wide Kuiper Belt objects. They are believed to be debris left over from formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago.
At its top speed, the New Horizons probe will be going nearly 20 times faster than a rifle bullet, but really, how fast is 47,000 mph in cosmic terms?
So if the New Horizons probe was aimed at Alpha Centauri, our fastest spacecraft ever would still take 61,261 years to get there. Hmmm, 60,000 years ago, our ancestors were hunting Wooly Mammoths in the last ice age, and the invention of writing was still some 55,000 years in the future.
We really need hyperdrive!
Tags: space travel | news | blog | weblog | science | new horizons | spaceflight | nasa
The day after announcing a “‘Clean House Team’ to Address Republican Culture of Corruption,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and five other Democrats arrived in Jamaica to “discuss security and trade issues while visiting tourist sites” according to a spokeswoman for the Jamaican Embassy in Washington D.C.
The trip comes as Republicans and Democrats in Congress consider new restrictions on members’ travel following lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s guilty plea on felony charges involving influence-peddling in Washington.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
Tags: politics | news | blog | weblog | hypocrite | hypocrisy
On December 16, The New York Times announced to the world that President Bush had “secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.”
President Bush called the disclosure of the surveillance program “shameful:”
Bush, earlier in his news conference Monday, defended the program as important in being able to stop future attacks and suggested it was harmed by being publicly known.
“My personal opinion is, it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. That fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” Bush said.
He said that in the 1990s the United States was monitoring a phone used by al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. When that information was leaked and reported, bin Laden changed phone systems.
Well it looks like somebody has been tipped off by the Times and is changing phone systems again, because ABC News is reporting (hat tip: Drudge Report):
Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.
The phones — which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card — have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists. [Emphasis mine.]
So it would appear that terrorists read the Times.
The FBI is closely monitoring the potentially dangerous development, which came to light following recent large-quantity purchases in California and Texas, officials confirmed.
In one New Year’s Eve transaction at a Target store in Hemet, Calif., 150 disposable tracfones were purchased. Suspicious store employees notified police, who called in the FBI, law enforcement sources said.
In an earlier incident, at a Wal-mart store in Midland, Texas, on December 18, six individuals attempted to buy about 60 of the phones until store clerks became suspicious and notified the police. A Wal-mart spokesperson confirmed the incident. [Emphasis mine.]
Notice the dates? Within days of the Times publishing their exposé, the surge in tracfone purchases began!
Russell Tice, a former NSA employee until he was dismissed because of “psychological concerns,” admitted in an interview with ABC News that he was a source for the Times article. During the interview he also let slip this insight into the Bush Administration’s attitude toward pursuing Al Qaeda:
The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them…
Evidently the New York Times doesn’t think Al Qaeda is that great a threat because they published the eavedropping story even though President Bush asked them not to. They ignored him and disregarded all other considerations in their desire to wound the Administration.
Now that terrorists appear to be buying traceless phones as a result of that article, it’ll be even harder to protect the United States, so tell me, how is President Bush supposed to fight the Global War on Terror when our news media is the enemy’s best weapon?
[Update 1.13 8:35 AM EST] This story reminded me of something and I just remembered what it was:
Back during World War II, U.S. Congressman Andrew Jackson May (Democrat, of course), a member of the House Military Affairs Committee, visited the Pacific theater where he received many intelligence and operational briefings. “On his return, May held a press conference and stated that American submarines had a high survivability because Japanese depth charges were fused to explode at too shallow a depth.”
That he would blab this information was bad enough, but the papers published it!
“Soon enemy depth charges were rearmed to explode at a more effective depth of 250 feet. Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood, commander of the U.S. submarine fleet in the Pacific, later estimated that May’s revelation cost the navy as many as ten submarines and 800 crewmen” – From Senseless Secrets by LtCol (ret) Michael Lee Lanning. (Source: World War II in the Pacific)
[Update 1.14 9:33 PM EST] Michelle Malkin has a long list of links of other sites besides mine that reported on this story. She also has a link to the Midland Police Department police report of the incident that ABC News has posted, which states that members of the group attempting to buy cell phones were “linked to suspected terrorist cells stationed within the Metroplex.”
[Update 1.14 11:33 PM EST] According to a KLTV 7 story, the FBI says no link has been found between terrorists and people who tried to buy a large number of prepaid cell phones from a Midland, Texas Wal-Mart store, even though the Midland Police thought there was one when they filled out the police report:
Upon the arrival of special agents, and as a result of subsequent interviews, it was discovered that members of the group were linked to suspected terrorist cells stationed within the Metroplex. In addition, special agents reported that similar incidents centering on the large-scale purchases of “TracPhones” had been reported throughout the nation – identifying individuals of middle-eastern descent as the purchasers.
Also ABC 7 reports the FBI are saying the customer who tried to purchase 150 cell phones in Hemet, Calif., appears to be a legitimate cell phone dealer, but the investigation is ongoing.
Tags: war | terrorism | politics | blog | weblog | news
Scientists at the National Taiwan University have bred fluorescent green pigs for use in stem cell research. Normal pig embryos were injected with a genetically modified protein from jellyfish, resulting in pigs that look like refugees from The Emerald City.
“There are partially fluorescent green pigs elsewhere, but ours are the only ones in the world that are green from inside out. Even their hearts and internal organs are green,” [professor Wu Shinn-Chih] said on Thursday.
The transgenic pigs, commonly used to study human diseases, would help researchers monitor and trace changes of the tissues during the physical development, Wu said.
In 2003, a Taiwan company began selling the world’s first genetically engineered fish, sparking protests by environmentalists who said the fluorescent green fish posed a threat to the earth’s ecosystem.
Read the whole Reuters story.
Yep, green is definitely in fashion when it comes to designer genes!
From KENS 5 Eyewitness News comes the 51st way to leave your lover: Take Pics of Mom, Tom… (or in this case, James):
Man accused of taking nude photos of girlfriend’s mother.
A Southeast Side man was arrested Monday for allegedly taking inappropriate pictures of his girlfriend’s mother
James Aldrich was charged with improper photography.
Police said between Oct. 28 and Dec. 21, 2005, the 23-year-old man was taking nude pictures and videotaping a 47-year-old woman living in the 2300 block of Estate Gate as she got out of the shower, used the bathroom, and got dressed.
Aldrich knew the woman because it was his girlfriend’s mother, police said.
In fact, it was his girlfriend who discovered the photos just before Christmas as she was going through his e-mail — the same e-mail account she helped him set up.
The warrant said the mother and daughter printed the photos, which came out with Aldrich’s cell phone number on them.
Police said the girlfriend confronted Aldrich, who initially called the photos an accident. The warrant said he later confessed to videotaping and taking the photos out of curiosity.
Read the whole story.
Tags: humor | darwin award | evolution | blog | weblog
10:34:55 pm, Categories: Daily blather
From WTAE TV comes a cautionary tale that shows why keeping your house neat could save your life:
Wash. Woman Suffocates Under House Clutter
A Washington state woman who was reported missing was later found dead suffocated under a pile of debris in her home, police said.
Officers found the body of Marie Rose, 62, buried under clothes Thursday, reported KIRO-TV in Seattle.
Her husband reported her missing after he couldn’t find her early Thursday morning.
Officers found clothing, dishes and boxes crammed from floor to ceiling in every room of the couple’s house.
“In some areas, clothes and debris were piled 6 feet high,” said Police Chief Terry Davenport of the Shelton Police Department.
“Officers were having to climb over the top on their hands and knees. In some areas, their heads were touching the ceiling while they were standing on top of piles of debris.”
After 10 hours of searching, officers discovered the woman’s body. Investigators Friday said she was smothered under the clutter.
Read the whole article.
Some interesting stuff in the news this week on global warming. First off, read this Reuters article that reveals living plants are responsible for “10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.”
The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight.
“Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and detached leaves were observed … in the laboratory and in the field,” Dr Frank Keppler and his team said in a report in the journal Nature.
Methane, which is produced by city rubbish dumps, coal mining, flatulent animals, rice cultivation and peat bogs, is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in terms of its ability to trap heat.
Concentrations of the gas in the atmosphere have almost tripled in the last 150 years. About 600 million tonnes worldwide are produced annually.
The scientists said their finding is important for understanding the link between global warming and a rise in greenhouse gases.
It could also have implications for the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for developed countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
Keppler and his colleagues discovered that living plants emit 10 to 100 times more methane than dead plants.
Scientists had previously thought that plants could only emit methane in the absence of oxygen.
David Lowe, of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, said the findings are startling and controversial.
“Keppler and colleagues’ finding helps to account for observations from space of incredibly large plumes of methane above tropical forests,” he said in a commentary on the research.
But the study also poses questions, such as how such a potentially large source of methane could have been overlooked and how plants produced it. [Emphasis mine.]
Ah yes, how could global warming zealots–who have blithely assured us that their models are accurate enough to plan our economies around–have missed such an important source of greenhouse gases and what else are they missing?!
Mark Steyn has written an excellent opinion piece on the “Climate change myth” in The Australian:
…In environmental politics, the short-term interests of the eco-establishment count for more than the long-term health and welfare of ordinary Australians, or New Zealanders, or indeed Indians and Nigerians. They count for more than the long-term reputation of scientific institutions.
Hence, the famous “hockey stick” graph purporting to show climate over the past 1000 years, as a continuous, flat, millennium-long bungalow with a skyscraper tacked on for the 20th century. This graph was almost laughably fraudulent, not least because it used a formula that would generate a hockey stick shape no matter what data you input, even completely random, trendless, arbitrary computer-generated data. Yet such is the power of the eco-lobby that this fraud became the centrepiece of UN reports on global warming. If it’s happening, why is it necessary to lie about it?
…
Australia’s Environment Minister seems to have been spending way too much time snorting the ol’ CO2 at the eco-lobby parties. As Matt Price reported in these pages last year:“Emerging from a bushwalk through the Tarkine forest in northwest Tasmania, Environment Minister Ian Campbell told The Australian that argument about the causes and impact of global warming had effectively ended: ‘I think the Australian Government owes it to the public to tell it like it is."‘
Oh, dear. By “telling it like it is", he means telling it like we’ve been told for the past 30 years: “Australia and other industrialised nations need to take urgent action to avert environmental disaster.”
Really? You know, I don’t like to complain but maybe that Tarkine forest is part of the problem. Here’s a headline from the National Post of Canada last Friday: “Forests may contribute to global warming: study.” This was at Stanford University. They developed a model that covered most of the Northern Hemisphere in forest and found that global temperature increased three degrees, which is several times more than the alleged CO2 emissions. Heat-wise, a forest is like a woman in a black burka in the middle of the Iraqi desert. In my state of New Hampshire, we’ve got far more forest than we did a century or two ago. Could reforestation be causing more global warming than my 700m-per-litre Chevrolet Resource-Depleter? Clearly I need several million dollars to investigate further.
Finally, if you want to learn more about the “hockey stick” that’s causing the hysteria, read John Daly’s The ‘Hockey Stick’: A New Low in Climate Science.
Tags: global warming | climate change | science | junk science | blog | weblog | environmentalism
10:55:58 pm, Categories: Daily blather
Yes, according to this BBC News article, it’s National Voodoo Day in Benin!
Followers of the once-banned religion have been dancing, drumming, praying as animals are slaughtered in ceremonies.
Of Benin’s seven million citizens, 65% believe in Voodoo. The day has been a national holiday for a decade.
“There is little resembling the popular western imagination on show - no dolls with pins stuck in them and certainly no zombie-like creatures lumbering around,” described the BBC’s James Copnall, who is at the festival.
“Instead there were speeches praising the religion, emphasising the positive impact it has on people’s lives.”
…
“People have a negative image of voodoo because of some of the bad practices, a sort of a witchcraft, where you can put a bad spell on someone when you are jealous of that person.”Adding that, “That [bad practice] is totally different from Voodoo.”
Who knows? But if it’s true that voodoo can do those bad things, you might want to visit the California Astrology Association website where their “powerful voodoo dolls” and “authentic voodoo spells” could “bring you all that you desire” (and maybe a little protection).
Me, I’m interested in the All-Purpose Voodoo Doll (only $15.95 and it comes with easy-to follow instructions). So if you cut me off on I-270 tomorrow, beware!
According to this Associated Press article, Senator Kennedy has written a children’s book:
Meet the latest children’s author, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash, his co-protagonist in “My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C.”
…
“I am very excited about the opportunity to create a book for young readers and their families that will deepen their understanding of how our American government works,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday….
James Taranto’s Best of the Web had this to say about that:
What do the senior senator from Massachusetts and quadruple murderer Stanley “Tookie” Williams have in common? The Associated Press provides one answer:
Meet the latest children’s author, Sen. Ted Kennedy, and his Portuguese Water Dog, Splash, his co-protagonist in “My Senator and Me: A Dogs-Eye View of Washington, D.C.”
Scholastic Inc. will release the book in May.
So Ted Kennedy has a dog named Splash? How witty.
Mary Jo Kopechne’s children could not be reached for comment.
Tags: politics | kennedy | humor | scandal | news | blog | weblog
From The Australian comes this article on the upcoming deployment of electric reactive armor:
Britain’s sci-fi tanks to fend off attack with force-field
The British Army’s next class of armoured vehicles will be protected by a “force-field” of electrified armour that will vaporise rocket-propelled grenades.
Britain’s Ministry of Defence has signalled that the electric armour, invented at the ministry’s scientific research centre, will transform armoured warfare, enabling vehicles to be more lightly protected and more easily moved around the world.
It will also confound repeated claims from military experts that “the tank is dead” because it is too cumbersome for conflicts expected as part of the war on terror. The new armour will allow Western armed forces to regain the upper hand against terrorists and insurgents armed with the ubiquitous RPG7 rocket-propelled grenade, which can penetrate most current heavy armour.
The invention is just as effective against the “shaped charge” roadside bombs used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, using technology allegedly supplied by Iran.
The armour is also much lighter, with about two tonnes of it reckoned to provide protection equivalent to that of 20 tonnes of conventional armour.
The army’s Challenger 2 tank, which weighs 63 tonnes, and the 25-tonne Warrior armoured vehicle had to be ferried by sea to the Persian Gulf for the Iraq war – a complex process taking many weeks.
The new vehicles – which are expected to enter service early in the next decade – will be smaller and lighter, enabling them to be moved by C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft.
…
The British electric armour is made up of several layers, the first of which is an earthed bullet-proof outer skin.The second skin is live, although insulated, and has several thousand volts of electricity flowing through it, powered by the vehicle’s battery.
The third skin is the normal vehicle hull. When an RPG7 grenade hits a tank with standard armour, its conical warhead fires a jet of hot copper into the target at about 1600km/h.
This can penetrate more than 30cm of conventional solid steel armour.
On the electric armour, the grenade penetrates the insulation on the live second skin, creating a sudden surge in electricity that vaporises the copper stream in the same way that a surge burns out a fuse wire.
The effect is to leave the inner hull intact and the crew safe, with the vehicle capable of taking repeated hits.
Electric reactive armor should be more effective than explosive reactive armor because it can provide protection even if struck repeatedly in the same location. Explosive reactive armor can be pierced if it is struck by a tandem-charge weapon that has two or more stages of detonation.
Tags: military | weapons | technology | science | news | blog | weblog
Check out this piece of “even-handed journalism” from Harry Mount, writing for The Telegraph:
DNA test on man ‘wrongly executed’
An executed convict may be awarded a pardon beyond the grave because of DNA evidence, potentially dealing a dramatic blow to the death penalty in America.
I’ll be blunt: Harry Mount is a dishonest reporter and the Telegraph’s editors are either biased or incompetent. Because of the blatant slant on display in this article, I would never trust anything that bears Harry’s byline.
First there’s the headline’s claim in sneer quotes that a prisoner was ‘wrongly executed’. Nowhere in the article does Harry present any evidence that Roger Coleman, the convict, was wrongfully executed. It looks like Harry was unable to find a source who would claim a mistake had been made, so he just wrapped his own opinion in sneer quotes.
Then there’s the lead paragraph, where more honest reporters are expected to present the “who, what, when, and where” facts of a news story. Instead, Harry speculates: “An executed convict may be awarded a pardon beyond the grave because of DNA evidence.”
He may get a pardon. Of course he may also have been the real killer O.J. is seeking and the second shooter on the grassy knoll!
Continuing: “…potentially dealing a dramatic blow to the death penalty in America.” There you have it, in one paragraph, Harry’s carried us from the exoneration of Roger Coleman to the rescinding of capital punishment by popular outrage! And it’s the DNA test that’s made it all possible.
Except it isn’t until the fourth paragraph that we learn the DNA test results aren’t in and everything that came before was just Harry editorializing against capital punishment:
But if the tests, which are being conducted by Toronto scientists, exonerate Coleman, it is likely that the case will undermine the popular support the death sentence still enjoys in America.
So the headline and lead graph are deliberately misleading–Harry’s taking advantage of people’s tendency to read no more of an article than the headline and first paragraph. Skim that part of the article and you’d think the United States had, for the first time, executed an innocent man.
Of course, no anti-death-penalty propaganda would be complete without this milestone:
The 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1977 was carried out last month.
I call this milestone the KiloCon score. Keep the following in mind when you see that 1,000th execution statistic: Between 1976 and 2002, there were 494,729 muder victims in the United States, that’s nearly half a million murder victims over a 26-year period and we’re only just hitting 1,000 executions!
Tags: media | capital punishment | death penalty | politics | news | journalism | blog | weblog
It’s an all-science-fiction hat-trick at the blog tonight folks! I’ve got three articles on potentially amazing technologies, starting with this article from the Hunt Aviation website:
Fuel-less Gravity Powered Flight
The idea that an airplane can fly endlessly carrying heavy loads of passengers and cargo without burning any fuel, can stop and hover in place weightless at any time, and can takeoff and land vertically is a radical departure from accepted thought concerning aviation. This new reality that is made possible by the invention of Robert Hunt’s astounding new hybrid aircraft is Hunt Aviation’s vision of the future of aviation. Our aircraft is a rigid glider made of lightweight composite materials. The new hybrid “gravity-powered aircraft” is formed by merging the capabilities of the following devices into a single new aircraft apparatus: (1) an aircraft capable of aerostatic (lighter-than-air) lift to gain altitude; and, (2) a glider aircraft capable of aerodynamic lift, having a high glide ratio to accomplish long range gliding; and, (3) an innovative new extremely low drag vertical axis wind turbine that is capable of harnessing the force of the wind to generate power as the aircraft glides upward via positive buoyancy and glides downward via gravity acceleration.
Robert D. Hunt, the Chairman of Hunt Aviation, has filed for international patent protection for an innovative new phase change hybrid airship design powered by the thermal energy in the air. The energy to power gliding flight is obtained from the atmosphere itself. An efficient power cycle is created using the natural temperature difference from a low altitude to a higher altitude. Heat energy is taken from ambient temperature air at a lower altitude to power the GravityPlane and heat is rejected to colder air at high altitude to complete the power cycle. This Atmospheric power cycle can be repeated indefinitely to allow the craft to stay aloft virtually forever.
A proprietary low-boiling-point-liquid is vaporized into a low density lighter-than-air lifting gas using the heat in the air near the surface. This creates buoyancy that allows the buoyant aerostat to upward glide. The air becomes very cold when high altitude is reached and the lifting gas is cooled and changes phase to high density liquid that is heavier-than-air. Lift is lost and the aircraft glides back down toward the surface where the Atmospheric Power Cycle is repeated as the low altitude warmer air vaporizes the liquid back into a lifting gas to create lift again. Phase change is performed by heat exchangers that take in heat or reject heat to the atmosphere. The aircraft is insulated to prevent premature condensation or vaporization of the working fluid while climbing or descending.
Power is generated by wind turbines aboard the hybrid aerostat glider during both upward and downward gliding. A portion of the wind turbine generated power can be stored and brought back to earth for later use and may be used for propulsion during take-off and landing for example. In the alternative, power may be used while flying to produce hydrogen via electrolysis or to produce other valuable chemicals or goods. These products can be manufactured while traveling enroute to deliver the products to a purchaser. The GravityPlane can become a flying factory that can generate the power to run a manufacturing process from the atmosphere!
Sounds interesting, but it also sounds like perpetual motion….
Tags: aircraft | aviation | airplanes | technology | blog | weblog
Scotsman.com has an article on the possible development of a hyperspace or warp drive in our lifetimes.
All we need is a breakthrough in physics.
An extraordinary “hyperspace” engine that could make interstellar space travel a reality by flying into other dimensions is being investigated by the United States government.
The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today’s New Scientist magazine.
The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.
Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension.
The US air force has expressed an interest in the idea and scientists working for the American Department of Energy - which has a device known as the Z Machine that could generate the kind of magnetic fields required to drive the engine - say they may carry out a test if the theory withstands further scrutiny.
Professor Jochem Hauser, one of the scientists who put forward the idea, told The Scotsman that if everything went well a working engine could be tested in about five years.
However, Prof Hauser, a physicist at the Applied Sciences University in Salzgitter, Germany, and a former chief of aerodynamics at the European Space Agency, cautioned it was based on a highly controversial theory that would require a significant change in the current understanding of the laws of physics.
…
“It’s our job to prove we are right and we are working on that.”
Tags: physics | science | space travel | technology | blog | weblog
From a Space Review article by Taylor Dinerman:
America’s new ray guns
Few issues in military technology have been subject to as much confusion, disinformation, and ignorance as the subject of lasers and other directed energy weapons. For example, long after the Pentagon had abandoned work on it, opponents of the missile defense program would use the hydrogen bomb-powered x-ray laser concept, known as Excalibur, as an example of the kind of fantastic weapon that would never work. To ordinary Americans, the whole idea of beam weapons seems more like science fiction.
In fact, according to a new book by Doug Beason, The E Bomb: How America’s New Directed Energy Weapons Will Change The Way Future Wars Are Fought, published by Da Capo Press, such weapons are on the verge of being deployed (or, according to some sources, already have been.) Some of the better known weapons include the Air Force’s Airborne Laser (ABL), an anti-missile laser mounted inside a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down medium range ballistic missiles in the boost phase of their flight. Another even more controversial system is the Active Denial System (ADS), a non-lethal crowd control weapon that uses high-powered microwaves to inflict serious, but temporary pain, on anyone affected by the beam.
…Over the last few decades, there has been any number of military laser demonstration projects. The power and sophistication of these systems improved to the point that, by the early 1990s, the Department of Defense decided to go ahead with an operational anti-missile weapon, the ABL.
The ABL is a chemical oxygen-iodine laser mounted on a Boeing 747 and designed to shoot down Scud-type missiles in their initial boost phase at ranges of more than 100 kilometers. The US Air Force hopes to build seven of these aircraft so that a team of four could provide ongoing 24-hour-a-day coverage of an enemy launch area over a period of some weeks. The ABL program does not involve any major scientific or technological breakthroughs—it is the first of its kind and, as such, has run into the normal delays and difficulties.
The true potential for this weapons system can, so far, only be guessed at. As Beason points out, “The only problem is that no one knows for sure what other missions the ABL is capable of performing.” In one interesting scenario, the author speculates how it might be used against a terrorist cruise missile attack on a US city. Other possibilities might even include “tickling” space debris in low Earth orbit (LEO), in order to bring it down sooner than would otherwise be the case. Serious experimentation will begin no sooner than 2008. Only last month did the USAF review board give the go-ahead to actually install the laser mechanism in the prototype aircraft.
The ABL is not the only laser weapon the Defense Department is working on, though it is the most advanced. In the mid-1990s, after Israel’s pullout from southern Lebanon, the US and Israel began collaborating on a laser system that would shoot down small artillery and mortar shells as well as short range rockets of the Katyusha type. Referred to as the Mobile-Tactical High Energy Laser (M-THEL), an early, immobile, version has been in testing since the late 1990s. While the experiments have been successful, turning it into an operational system will be a long and expensive process. Israel would like to have such a weapon in the very near future for use against rocket attacks from Gaza and Lebanon.
Aside from lasers, high-powered microwaves (HPM) is the other type of directed energy weapons now coming into use. HPM systems originated with the Air Force’s Advanced Concepts group. They tried—and failed—to make artificial lightning bolts. In the 1970s and 1980s, researchers who were working on the charged particle beam concept found that HPMs could be generated and could in fact produce some, but not all, of what they had been hoping to achieve.
Read the whole article.
10:59:27 pm, Categories: Science & Tech, Daily blather, Gadgets, Biotech, Computing, Idiotarians & Idiots, Discoveries
BusinessWeek Online has an article on the blizzard of patents being awarded by the technologically clueless U.S. Patent Office. They describe a patent-everything-in-sight craze in which inventions are being patented that shouldn’t even be considered (because they’re obvious or there’s a lot of prior art) and it’s endangering innovation in the United States.
How to determine when an invention is “obvious” is one of the most critical and contentious issues in patent circles. Over the past two decades, critics say, the hurdle for passing the obviousness test has been steadily lowered, and the U.S. is now awash in a sea of junk patents. Some are just plain silly, such as a patent for “a method [of] exercising and entertaining cats” (basically teasing them with a laser pointer), or another for “an animal toy that a dog may carry in its mouth” (which not only sounds suspiciously like a stick but also looks like one in the patent drawings).
…
The tide shows no sign of turning. In 2004, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued 181,000 patents, up from 99,000 in 1990. New applications, meanwhile, are being filed at a rate of about 400,000 per year. If the Patent Office closed its doors today it would need two years just to clear the backlog.One reason for this explosion is the natural tendency of patents to track broad economic and technological trends. Just as the early 20th century saw the advent of large-scale patenting of chemicals, the past two decades have witnessed the spread of patents on computer software, business methods, and genes. Controversy often accompanies the expansion. For example, critics say many business method patents, for processes that perform operations, are often nothing more than combinations of age-old practices with a computer or the Internet.
In an article in The National Law Journal last month, New York attorney Barry Schindler expressed the current patent-everything-in-sight mentality. Seizing on a recent ruling by a Patent Office administrative board that said method patents don’t even need to make use of technology, he advised companies to “now seek U.S. patent rights for any unique business method covering every conceivable business operation, such as methods of billing clients, hiring employees, marketing products or service…or simply obtaining funding.”
The computer industry has seen plenty of questionable patents lately. Microsoft has received a patent for clicking a mouse button in various patterns, one of them being the double-click that computer users have been doing since Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984. Then there’s Frank Meyer, a lawyer who realized that nobody had thought to patent the addressing scheme that has been used to access websites and send e-mail on the World Wide Web since the early ’90s, so he patented it in 2003.
The biotech field is seeing similar poaching:
There are many more examples of patent abuse on the WWW (check out the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s Patent Busting Project for starters).
Tags: economics | computers | biotech | technology | blog | weblog
According to a Local6.com news item, while watching New Year’s Eve fireworks in Central Florida, Ruby Cintron was hit in the face by a stray bullet fired in celebration by some unthinking ass.
The bullet came from a .45 pistol that was fired into the air, the owner not knowing (or maybe not caring) that the bullet, after traveling up for nearly a mile, would still be lethal if it hit someone on the way down.
In this case, the bullet hit Ruby in the skull near the eye socket, ruining her eye, and remains lodged in her skull.
Ruby’s husband, Domingo, said he is waiting for his wife’s family to arrive from Ecuador before he tells her that a bullet struck her face. She believes she was hit by a firecracker.
Police hope the person who fired the shot will turn themselves in to authorities. [Emphasis mine.]
Similar tragedies happen every year, despite police warnings. In 2004, 18 people were injured and 1 killed by celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve in Puerto Rico.
10:43:52 pm, Categories: Daily blather
According to an Associated Press article, the World Aquarium in St. Louis is about to sell its prized two-headed albino snake. Initial asking price is $150K.
The 6 1/2-year-old snake came to the aquarium’s attention when its previous owner distributed a circular offering it for sale days after its birth. The aquarium paid $15,000 knowing most two-headed snakes don’t live more than a few months.
But We has survived and thrived. An inch thick and 4 feet long, she is a healthy size for a rat snake. Her body is white, but the heads have a reddish appearance.
We has survived because, unlike some two-headed animals, both mouths are connected to the same stomach, [Aquarium President Leonard Sonnenschein] said.
Why settle for a run-of-the-mill two-headed white snake when, for a limited time and for much less, I’ll sell you this amazing two-headed black snake…born with only one head!
(OK, so I stole that gag from The Simpsons.)
Pop quiz: You’re a Swedish burgler and you’ve just ransacked a house, stealing (among other things) a mobile phone. While cooly making your getaway in a taxi, the phone suddenly rings…
What do you do?
Swedish police caught a burglar after he answered a phone he had just stolen and did not hang up, letting them eavesdrop on his getaway ride in a taxi.
…
The police rang the stolen phone and heard him swearing about the late arrival of a taxi which he had ordered to take him to neighboring Kalix, 37 miles away.
…
“The thief answered the phone but then just put it away without turning it off,” said Overtornea policeman Kurt Paavola.
…
The police tracked down the taxi and arrested the man late Monday.
Read the whole story.
Tags: humor | darwin award | evolution | blog | weblog
From a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center news release:
Little Known DNA Repair Enzyme May be a Tumor Supressor Gene
The DNA in our cells is constantly being bombarded by environmental, chemical and cellular insults. Fortunately, our cells contain many enzymes devoted strictly to detecting and repairing any damage caused by these insults. In fact, failure of these enzymes to make needed repairs to genes can lead to the accumulation of mutations and, eventually, cell death or possibly cancer. However, it appears that the activity of some DNA repair enzymes is more critical than others, particularly in developing embryos.
University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the Jan. 1 edition of Cancer Research that a poorly understood enzyme, known as DNA polymerase zeta, or pol zeta, has the uncanny ability to give cells with even heavily damaged DNA a new lease on life. Furthermore, when the enzyme is absent in cells that already have growth control problems, the consequences to chromosomes are catastrophic and may lead to cancer.
“Pol zeta appears to be the only one of a group of specialized DNA polymerases that is critical for development in animals,” explained John P. Wittschieben, Ph.D., research instructor in the department of pharmacology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, and first author of the study. “Moreover, its loss in animal cells plays a significant role in the development of chromosomal instability, which is a hallmark of cancer. Therefore, we believe its function may be to suppress the development of tumors.”
Although DNA polymerases—enzymes responsible for copying, editing and repairing genes and surrounding DNA—generally have the ability to make completely accurate copies of strands of DNA, in certain situations damaged areas, called lesions, can bring this replication machinery to a complete halt. In the last few years, scientists have learned of the existence of a variety of so-called lesion-replicating polymerases that can overcome these replication “stop signs” and keep cells dividing that would otherwise be killed off by their own suicide mechanisms.
First discovered in budding yeast cells, and later in plants and animals, pol zeta has the remarkable ability, in the test tube, to efficiently extend DNA with lesions that stop most other DNA polymerases in their tracks. Other research has shown that inactivation of this lesion-replicating enzyme in yeast leads to a dramatic decrease in the frequency of mutations induced by a wide range of DNA damaging agents.
Read the release.
08:06:10 am, Categories: Daily blather
Things are looking up at the Christner household after a New Year’s Day holiday that was a downer. Last week our dog Sunny started acting like he’d had a stroke. He’d stumble when he tried to walk and had no strength in his hindlegs.
The vet said the problem was caused by arthritis (but Sunny’s only eight!) and prescribed some anti-inflammation pills and pain-killers for him. They assured me he’d be fine, we’d just have to limit his activity. But when we got Sunny home he was worse than before–he just lay on the floor, staring at the wall with his head between his paws. He couldn’t go outside to do his business unless I carried him, and since he weighs 80 pounds, my wife couldn’t help him if I wasn’t there.
The vet had given us steroids to see if that would fix him up, but by Sunday night there’d been no improvement and he’d stopped eating. We were worried that we’d have to euthanize him because it seemed the medicines weren’t working, he was miserable (you have to know Sunny to realize how poorly he’d have to be feeling to pass up on a meal!) and our only choice of keeping him indoors 10 hours a day while I was at work was impossible.
Meanwhile, I caught this nasty cold that, what with lugging Sunny around, had me laid out all of the weekend and Monday. Not a good way to begin the year.
But things are looking up! Sunny’s started walking again this morning, and although he looks like he’s drunk when he goes outside, he’s been able to climb a few steps, so we’re hoping the crisis is over. What a relief!
[Edit] If you want to see pics of Sunny taken when he was a mere sprat, visit my daughter’s old AOL webpage (actually, since we cancelled AOL service six years ago, I was surprised to see the page is still up).
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