Archive for January, 2009
Our World May Be a Giant Hologram
For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation.
In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time — the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.
If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I…
Russians Go Crazy For Putin’s Art
ABC News reports on the madness:
Vladimir Putin is a man of many talents. Russia’s prime minister has a black belt in judo, goes fly-fishing shirtless and has sedated a wild Siberian tiger. Now he can add artist to his growing list of accomplishments, after a picture he painted sold for 37 million rubles ($1.1 million) at an auction this weekend. It fetched the highest price at the event.
Putin’s painting, “Pattern,” depicts a frosty window framed by simple white curtains, typical of a Russian dacha, or country house. It was picked up by Natalya Kurnikova, an art collector and owner of the elegant Kurnikova Gallery.
ABC News asked Russians what they thought of their leader’s artistic efforts; Svetlana, a cleaning lady from Moscow, paused for some time as she looked over the painting. “Well, everyone has their own tastes. How can I say? I like it because Putin painted it.”
Bush-Era Spying Targeted Journalists
Russell Tice, the former National Security Agency insider turned whistleblower who initially broke the story of the NSA’s illegal wiretapping to the New York Times in 2005, appeared on MSNBC this week to reveal that the Bush administration’s warrant-less spying targeted journalists and American news agencies.
Tice says that during his time at the agency, much of the NSA’s efforts went into eavesdropping on phone calls and computer activity not of terrorists, but of American reporters, members of the media, and ordinary citizens.
Old Nazi News Makes Headlines in Germany
“We got a fresh delivery in this morning, but it sold out in just a few hours. You won’t have any luck elsewhere either … Somehow everybody seems to want a copy. “
The newspaper seller at Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse station is bemused. After all, the publication selling like hot cakes hardly contains hot news.
Its issue date is January 30, not 2009, but 1933. REICH CHANCELLOR HITLER! trumpets a banner headline.
In any other country, facsimile editions of old newspapers would be unlikely to cause much of a stir.
In Germany, where “anti-constitutional” symbols such as the swastika and the straight-armed Nazi salute have been illegal since 1945, this is a new and controversial phenomenon.
Scientists Plan To Exhume Galileo For DNA Tests
Italian and British scientists want to exhume the body of 16th century astronomer Galileo for DNA tests to determine if his severe vision problems may have affected some of his findings.
The scientists told Reuters on Thursday that DNA tests would help answer some unresolved questions about the health of the man known as the father of astronomy, whom the Vatican condemned for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.
“If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope,” said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence, the city where Galileo is buried.
Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, is known to have had intermittent eye problems for the second half of his life and was totally blind for his last two years.
Mexico On Path To Becoming Bigger Security Threat Than Iraq
MEXICO CITY — Indiscriminate kidnappings. Nearly daily beheadings. Gangs that mock and kill government agents. This isn’t Iraq or Pakistan. It’s Mexico, which the U.S. government and a growing number of experts say is becoming one of the world’s biggest security risks.
The prospect that America’s southern neighbor could melt into lawlessness provides an unexpected challenge to Barack Obama’s new government. In its latest report anticipating possible global security risks, the U.S. Joint Forces Command lumps Mexico and Pakistan together as being at risk of a “rapid and sudden collapse.”
“The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels,” the command said in the report published Nov. 25.
“How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state.” Retiring CIA…
Obama Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post:
“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes.
The team members found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing.
Obama Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post:
“It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari,” Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes.
The team members found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing.
UPS Delivers 30-Pound Brick of Marijuana to Wrong Address
I don’t know what the lead story is here. UPS delivers pot; or UPS delivers pot to wrong address?
UPS delivers, but not always to the right address, a Denton man discovered Monday when he found a lot of green inside a package dropped on his porch by the men in brown. The man took the package to Denton police later that night, police spokesman Officer Ryan Grelle said. It contained a 30-pound brick of compressed marijuana with a street value of $10,500.
UPS mistakenly delivered it to the Denton house about 8 p.m., Grelle said. The resident was not at home at the time and opened it when he returned. “He was expecting tools that he had ordered from Sears,” Grelle said. “He opened it up and thought, ‘Oh my.’ He loaded it up and brought it to the police department.”
Sigh. Nobody ever mistakenly delivers a 30-pound brick of pot to…
A Gallery of Medical Marijuana
Positions on the medical use of marijuana vary, but thousands of patients suffering from cancer, AIDS, and other diseases claim marijuana provides them relief from devastating symptoms such as intractable nausea, vomiting.
In a 1997 article for the the New England Journal of Medicine, Jerome P. Kassirer, M.D., wrote that physicians who prohibit prescribing marijuana for seriously ill patient are misguided, heavy-handed, and inhumane.
Check out the incredible buds and how much they cost!
Daniel Sunjata Speaks Out on 9/11 on ‘Rescue Me’
This is a really good one and you get it in 2 minutes and eight seconds. Daniel Sunjata tells the truth about 9/11 on the show Rescue Me to Catherine Zeta Jones. It’s funny how they will let certain things be said on TV shows or in movies but often times will not let the same be said in an interview on CNN.
Is it because they can always say well that was on TV or that was in the movies come on it’s make believe it’s “Hollywood” that’s there quick out which most people who are literally unconscious will say yea that’s right.
Obama’s ‘Honey Do’ List January 22
In the weeks leading to the inauguration, many people agitated for their pet projects be at the top of the Presidential “honey do” list. Obviously, most of them aren’t, and can’t, be there so Obama will need to balance his rhetoric and pragmatism.
Obama Signs Order to Shut Guantanamo Prison
WASHINGTON — On Day Two of his administration, President Barack Obama began overhauling U.S. treatment of terror suspects, signing orders to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, review military trials of suspects and ban the harshest interrogation methods.
With three executive orders and a presidential directive signed in the Oval Office, Obama started reshaping how the United States prosecutes and questions al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters who pose a threat to Americans.
Human Spaceflight Should Drive Evolution
Plans for human exploration of the solar system and beyond often polarize opinions among the public and scientific communities.
Some believe that humanity should progress outwards one stage at a time, while others insist that greater scientific returns are to be had by launching bolder missions, with humans exploring the planets sooner rather than later. Dr. Kai Multhaup, a physicist working at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster in Germany, is firmly in the “one step at a time” camp, as he recently explained at Europlanet’s Planetary Science Congress.
“Human spaceflight is not just about science, I see it as a driver for evolution. We are an exploratory species, and when we have the technology to go somewhere, we do. It’s about culture and the human desire to evolve and expand, and to protect ourselves against catastrophes which can erase life on planets and end civilizations.”
Man Loses Family, Job, and $150,000 In Nigerian Email Scam
22-year-old John Rempel of Leamington, Ontario lost $150,000 over the course of a year as he was hoodwinked by Nigerian email scammers. Believing he was due $12.8 million from the death of a distant wealthy relative, Rempel borrowed money from friends and family to make countless payments (for necessary “tranfer fees,” “bank deposits,” “plane tickets,” etc.). He ended up quitting his job as truck driver, traveling to Mexico (to borrow money from his uncle), and eventually driving with his parents to New York City, where they searched the airport in vain for the men who had promised the money, before returning home and calling the police. “I really thought in my heart this was true,” says Rempel of the sad saga; he could use a copy of Scamorama.
President Obama Says He Liked
Brand new U.S. President Barack Obama, shown standing in the above photo with 9/11: Press For Truth executive producer Kyle F. Hence, told Hence that he has in fact watched the movie and “liked it.”
The story begins in early 2007 when Hence first presented then-Senator Obama with a DVD of the movie as part of an effort by the filmmakers to get copies to every member of the U.S. Congress.
Months later, in June 2007, Hence was in Seattle, Washington, to attend the movie’s showing as an official selection of the Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) when he learned that Obama would be attending a photo op event at the nearby Westin Hotel. Though the event was supposed to be the privilege of big time donors who had given the maximum donation of $2,300, Hence slipped by anyway, apparently mistaken for a member of Obama’s staff, into a small room where…
President Obama Says He Liked “9/11 Press For Truth” Documentary
Brand new U.S. President Barack Obama, shown standing in the above photo with 9/11:Press For Truth executive producer Kyle F. Hence, told Hence that he has in fact watched the movie and “liked it.”
The story begins in early 2007 when Hence first presented then-Senator Obama with a DVD of the movie as part of an effort by the filmmakers to get copies to every member of the U.S. Congress.
Months later, in June 2007, Hence was in Seattle, Washington, to attend the movie’s showing as an official selection of the Seattle True Independent Film Festival (STIFF) when he learned that Obama would be attending a photo op event at the nearby Westin Hotel. Though the event was supposed to be the privilege of big time donors who had given the maximum donation of $2,300, Hence slipped by anyway, apparently mistaken for a member of Obama’s staff, into a small room where he…
Finding Maps In Everyday Life
The blog Strange Maps examines the odd condition of “cartocacoethes”–a compulsion to see maps everywhere.
The tendency is part of a larger category of strange mental behaviors called pareidolia– perceiving significance in stimuli that have none. Common examples would be Rorschach (inkblot) testing, and religious believers’ reports of seeing an image of Jesus on a pancake or piece of toast.
Apparently the Çatalhöyük map, which dates from around 6,200 BC and is famous as “the oldest map in the world,” might not be a map after all (and thus a prime example of the condition in question). Below, Africa appears mysteriously on a dinner plate!
Mengele’s South American Legacy: ‘Twin Town’ in Brazil
Nazi angel of death Josef Mengele evidently continued his experiments in creating an Aryan master race while on the lam in South America in the sixties.
“For years scientists have failed to discover why as many as one in five pregnancies in a small Brazilian town have resulted in twins &mdashl most of them blond haired and blue eyed.
But residents of Candido Godoi now claim that Mengele made repeated visits there in the early 1960s, posing at first as a vet but then offering medical treatment to the women of the town.”
