Archive for March, 2009
Alaskan Volcano Mount Redoubt Erupts
An Alaskan volcano 100 miles (160km) south-west of the state’s largest city, Anchorage, erupted overnight, sending a plume of smoke up to 15,000 metres (50,000ft) into the air.
Mount Redoubt experienced four large explosions late on Sunday and early today, according to geologists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
The observatory has issued a red alert, meaning eruption is imminent or under way, with significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere likely.
The current wind patterns are taking the ash cloud away from Anchorage and instead heading toward Willow and Talkneetna, two communities near Mount McKinley, North America’s largest mountain in Denali national park.
Real “True Blood” Planned In UK
Scientists in Britain plan to become the first in the world to produce unlimited amounts of synthetic human blood from embryonic stem cells for emergency infection-free transfusions.
A major research project is to be announced this week that will culminate in three years with the first transfusions into human volunteers of “synthetic” blood made from the stem cells of spare IVF embryos. It could help to save the lives of anyone from victims of traffic accidents to soldiers on a battlefield by revolutionising the vital blood transfusion services, which have to rely on a network of human donors to provide a constant supply of fresh blood.
The multimillion-pound deal involving NHS Blood and Transplant, the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and the Wellcome Trust, the world’s biggest medical research charity, means Britain will take centre stage in the global race to develop blood made from embryonic stem cells. The researchers will test…
60,000 British Civilians Being Trained to Spot Terrorists
Matthew Hickley, Daily Mail: Sixty thousand civilians are being trained to spot terrorists, Gordon Brown revealed yesterday. In the latest Labour anti-terror initiative, huge numbers of staff on rail networks, at airports, shopping centres, public buildings and sports venues have been picked out by MI5 and the police to be taught how to watch for ’suspicious behaviour’ and respond swiftly in the event of an atrocity.
The Home Office plans are likely to raise questions over the effectiveness of an army of amateur ‘terrorist-watchers’. There are fears they will swamp the police and security services with spurious alerts or single out law-abiding British Muslims, which could also inflame religious tensions.
Citing security grounds, the Home Office would not provide details of the training, which MI5 helped to draw up, beyond that it centred on improved vigilance and response to terrorist attacks, including evacuation and crowd-control procedures.
Writing in a Sunday newspaper, the Prime…
Pirate Bay Documentarian Looks Forward to Film Getting Pirated
Kerstin Sjoden, WIRED: Swedish filmmaker Simon Klose is making a documentary about the piracy movement in Sweden, centered on the sensational trial of the guys behind The Pirate Bay torrent tracking service. He expects his film to be pirated. Is fine with that. Thinks it’ll be good for business, in fact.
“I don’t mind. This process involves me too, and my struggle to survive as a filmmaker,” says the 34-year-old Klose in a phone interview from Malmo, Sweden. “The industry has to find new business models.”
The Pirate Bay trial ended March 3 and the judge is expected to issue a verdict on April 17. Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundström each face up to two years in prison and $180,000 in fines for alleged “contributory copyright infringement” by running a piracy site that claims 22 million users.
Like the music industry, the film industry is experiencing a dramatic,…
Anger Can Make Us Stronger
Joel Kotkin | NEWSWEEK:
The notion of a populist outburst raises an archaic vision of soot-covered industrial workers waving placards. Yet populism is far from dead, and represents a force that could shape our political future in unpredictable ways.
People have reasons to be mad, from declining real incomes to mythic levels of greed and excess among the financial elite. Confidence in political and economic institutions remains at low levels, as does belief in the future.
The critical issue facing the new administration is finding useful ways to channel this disenchantment. We know popular anger can also be channeled in unproductive ways. It can serve to further a narrow political agenda — for example, Karl Rove’s cynical exploitation of the “culture wars” — or stir up a witch hunt against both real and perceived “threats,” as occurred during the McCarthy era. If this were Russia, there would be show trials and executions. We…
Science Can Read Your Mind
Steve Connor, Independent: Having the ability to read someone’s mind with a “thought machine” has come a step closer after scientists showed that they could guess a person’s memory simply by looking at the electrical activity of their brain.
Scientists have found that spatial memories can be “read” by a brain scanner so that it is possible to predict automatically where someone imagines themselves to be (the exact location in a maze, for instance) without actually asking them.
“It’s also a small step toward the idea of mind reading, because just by looking at neural activity, we are able to say what someone is thinking,” said Demis Hassabis of University College London.
It may one day be possible to do the same with other types of memories and thoughts, although the possibility of using a mind-reading machine to solve crimes or to fight terrorism is still a distant prospect, Dr Hassabis said.
“It’s at…
SittingNow Podcast talks Reality with Jim Elvidge
This week we chat with author Jim Elvidge about our assumptions of reality. Jim is the author of the excellent ‘The Universe Solved’. In this weeks episode we discuss alternate realities, living in a programmed reality, Quantum and String theories, the probablilty of simulated existance and over-clocking time and space.
Is ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Better than ‘The Wire’?
Richard Vine, Guardian: Yes, it is set in the future. Yes, humans are battling it out with robots. But don’t dismiss Battlestar Galactica just because it’s sci-fi. As the series draws to a close, Richard Vine celebrates a groundbreaking piece of TV.
You’ve finished The Wire box set? You’d like something else that is just as good as “the greatest show ever in the history of television” (© all Guardian journalists) but you’re not quite sure where to go next? How about a series that’s as passionate and intelligent as The West Wing when debating war and terrorism, or as emotionally articulate about death, loss and love as Six Feet Under, or as trippy, mystical and deliciously baffling as Twin Peaks? A series that’s not afraid to take you on an epic, existential journey during which you’ll grow to love characters who are wrangling with metaphysical issues such as the nature of humanity and…
How To Smoke Smarties
Beth Snyder Bulik, AdAge: What happens when people use your brand in unconventional ways? Sometimes you end up with the Diet Coke and Mentos experiments. Sometimes you get “How to Smoke Smarties.”
In the latest example of a social-media world where any 10-year-old with a half-baked idea, your product and a cheap webcam can seek his or her 15 minutes of online fame, dozens of YouTubers — mostly junior-high-school kids, it seems — are posting videos of themselves and their friends crushing up the cellophane-wrapped, pressed-sugar candies, sucking the candy dust out and puffing it into the air in mock-smoking style.
It’s not a new fad. Most of the videos are fairly old, including one that goes back at least two years. The big hit so far — this week’s runaway “How to Smoke Smarties” video filmed by YouTube youngster “baller4life,” aka Titus — was created in December 2007.
But suddenly the fad…
21 Years Until Armageddon
Graeme McMillan, io9.com: The good news? The world isn’t going to end in 2012, according to British professor John Beddington. The bad news? 2030 will see “the perfect storm” of disasters that’ll make you wish otherwise, he claims.
Beddington, the chief scientific advisor to the British Government, spoke about our oncoming societal crash at this week’s Sustainable Development UK conference, pointing out that future scarcity of food and water, as well as insufficient energy resources, will cause disaster sooner than we may think. He told the Guardian:
If we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages … There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected. You can’t think about dealing with one without considering the others. We must…
Have Humans Created a New Epoch in the Planet’s History?
The Daily Galaxy: No one can realistically argue that humans haven’t dramatically transformed the face of the planet. But now scientists propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that that we have brought about an end to one epoch and entered a new age. They suggest humans have so changed the Earth that it’s time the Holocene epoch was officially ended. The new epoch of Earth’s history is being called the Anthropocene, meaning “man-made”.
Geologists from the University of Leicester, Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams, and their colleagues on the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London say that humankind has entered a phase where we are so rapidly transforming the planet that a new era has started. Duke University soil scientist Daniel Richter agrees. He says the dirt under our feet is being so changed by humans that it is now appropriate to call this epoch the Anthropocene…
Religious People Less Anxious, Brain Activity Shows
Ewen Callaway, New Scientist: If the deeply devout seem less self-doubting than others, perhaps it’s because religion helps them shrug off mistakes. So say researchers who found religious people exhibit lower activity than non-believers in a brain region linked to anxiety when erring on a simple test.
“Religion offers an interpretative framework to understand the world. It lets you know when to act, how to act, and what to do in specific situation,” says Michael Inzlicht, a neuroscientist at the University of Toronto, Scarborough, who led the new study. “It provides a kind of blueprint on how to interact with the world.”
Religion – and perhaps other strongly held belief systems – buffer against second-guessing decisions, he says.
Inzlicht’s team tested 50 university students from diverse religious and cultural backgrounds. Christians made up most participants, but his team also tested Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists.
With a technique that gauges brain activity via dozens…
The Case for a Domestic Marijuana Industry
Aaron Houston, Foreign Policy: Violence in Mexico is getting worse by the day. There are reports of beheadings, killings in the several thousands, and an environment of fear that makes it impossible for Mexican officials to do their work. The country’s very stability may be threatened.
It’s time to put an end to U.S. policies that subsidize these murderous drug gangs. The first step, as a growing chorus of voices is arguing, is to end the quixotic policy of prohibition, a proven failure. But the United States can do even better; by empowering a domestic marijuana industry, the United States would squeeze Mexican cartels’ profits, cutting off the financial lifeline that sustains organized narcocrime.
According to U.S. and Mexican officials, some 60 percent of the profits that fuel Mexican narcotrafficking come from just one drug: marijuana. Although such estimates are inherently imprecise, there is no doubt that marijuana is the cash cow…
Understanding the Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Case in Oregon
On March 19th, the day after ruling in favor of the Oregon-based Santo Daime group Church of the Holy Light of the Queen, district court Judge Owen Panner set out the terms of a permanent injunction allowing the CHLQ to import and use Daime in its religious rituals.
The injunction is based on the temporary order that has structured UDV use of ayahuasca for the last few years, which itself is grounded in the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) regulations for importers of controlled substances.
Thousands March Against Mafia
More than 100,000 people marched in Naples on Saturday in one of the biggest anti-mafia rallies in recent years to commemorate the victims of organized crime and demand an end to its stranglehold on southern Italy.
Italy’s intelligence services said this month the global downturn was giving mobsters the chance to tighten their grip on the economy as they use proceeds from their illegal activities to buy stakes in the retail, tourism and real estate sectors.
Obama Sorry For Special Olympics Bowling Joke
After making an ill-advised joke about the Special Olympics on a US talk show, President Obama began a damage limitation exercise before the programme even aired, it has emerged.
Mr Obama called the chairman of the special needs sporting movement to say he had not intended to insult people with learning disabilities when he compared his ten-pin bowling flop to a performance from the Special Olympics.
Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Gaza Killings
The Israeli army is at the centre of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days.
The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques.
The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israeli Army T-Shirts Mock Killing Palestinian Women And Children
The Israeli army is at the centre of a second controversy over the moral conduct of its soldiers in as many days.
The printed t-shirts were discovered by an Israeli newspaper (Pic: courtesy of Yanai Yechiel)
The revelations centre on t-shirt designs made for soldiers that make light of shooting pregnant Palestinian mothers and children and include images of dead babies and destroyed mosques.
The t-shirts were printed for Israeli soldiers at the end of periods of deployment or training courses and were discovered by Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Need A Lift? Debut Flight of First Flying Car
Eddie Wrenn, Daily Mail: Since man first found himself trapped in traffic jams, we have dreamed of finding a way to leave the gridlock behind.
Well dream no longer, for the world’s ‘first flying car’ has made its debut flight, soaring over the skies of the U.S.A. before touching down and — at the touch of a button — folds its wings away and hits the highway.
The Terrafugia Transition can cruise at 115mph before driving ‘at highway speeds’ on the roads — and it can be safely stored in the garage.
