Archive for May, 2009
‘Terminator’ Inspires Real Military Robots — And Terrorists Can Build Their Own!
You can build your own version of the Raven drone, which is a widely used military drone, for about $1,000 dollars,” says Peter Singer, author of the new book Wired for War.
He warns that ultimately robot warfare may even expand beyond the military, and besides 43 countries now working on military robots, there’s “non-state actors ranging from Hezbollah to this militia group in Arizona to a bunch of college kids at Swarthmore … One person’s hobby — such as the hobbyist who flew a homemade drone from North America to Great Britain — can be another person’s terrorist strike option.”
But one of the most fascinating insights is how ‘Terminator’ fed the growth of real war robots “One scientist talked about how the military came to him and said, ‘Oh, we’d like you to design the hunter-killer drone from the Terminator movies’…. [I]f it’s effective for SkyNet, their thinking is: “Well, it…
Moderate Cannabis Use Improves Health for Opiates Dependency
According to clinical research at the Department of Psychiatry of Columbia University in New York moderate cannabis use improved retention in naltrexone treatment of patients suffering from dependency on opiates such as heroin.
63 opioid dependent patients, admitted for inpatient detoxification and induction onto oral naltrexone accompanied by six months of behavioural therapy were classified into three levels of cannabis use during treatment based on biweekly urine toxicology: abstinent (0 per cent cannabis positive urine samples); intermittent use (1 to 79 per cent cannabis positive samples); and consistent use (80 per cent or greater cannabis positive samples). Naltrexone is an opioid receptor antagonist used primarily in the management of alcohol dependence and opioid dependence. Intermittent cannabis users showed superior retention in naltrexone treatment (median days retained = 133), compared to abstinent (median = 35 days) or regular users (median = 35 days).
Intermittent cannabis use was also associated with greater adherence to…
Remembering the Victims of War Profiteers: Remembering That ‘War is a Racket’ on Memorial Day
How unfortunate that we have a need for such a day, especially since “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” So stated Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, the most decorated Marine in US history.
Today, and every day, we should remember why we have sent our children to die, and to kill. We should remember that war is meant to consolidate assets for the oligarchy. We should also remember that the majority of casualties of every War have been civilians. That not only soldiers, but countless innocents have been caught in the line of fire between warring corporations to increase the wealth of the privileged few.
…
The Science Of Voodoo: When Mind Attacks Body
Sam Shoeman was diagnosed with end-stage liver cancer in the 1970s and given just months to live. Shoeman duly died in the allotted time frame — yet the autopsy revealed that his doctors had got it wrong.
The tumour was tiny and had not spread. “He didn’t die from cancer, but from believing he was dying of cancer,” says Meador. “If everyone treats you as if you are dying, you buy into it. Everything in your whole being becomes about dying.”
Cases such as Shoeman’s may be extreme examples of a far more widespread phenomenon. Many patients who suffer harmful side effects, for instance, may do so only because they have been told to expect them.
What’s more, people who believe they have a high risk of certain diseases are more likely to get them than people with the same risk factors who believe they have a low risk. It seems modern witch…
The Coming Superbrain
It’s summertime and the Terminator is back. A sci-fi movie thrill ride, “Terminator Salvation” comes complete with a malevolent artificial intelligence dubbed Skynet, a military R.&D. project that gained self-awareness and concluded that humans were an irritant — perhaps a bit like athlete’s foot — to be dispatched forthwith.
The notion that a self-aware computing system would emerge spontaneously from the interconnections of billions of computers and computer networks goes back in science fiction at least as far as Arthur C. Clarke’s “Dial F for Frankenstein.” A prescient short story that appeared in 1961, it foretold an ever-more-interconnected telephone network that spontaneously acts like a newborn baby and leads to global chaos as it takes over financial, transportation and military systems.
Today, artificial intelligence, once the preserve of science fiction writers and eccentric computer prodigies, is back in fashion and getting serious attention from NASA and from Silicon Valley companies like Google…
Scientology Trial Due In France
The Church of Scientology is set to go on trial in France, accused of organised fraud. The case centres on a complaint by a woman who says she was pressured into paying large sums of money after being offered a free personality test.
France regards the organisation as a sect, and correspondents say it could be banned if it loses the case.
Passer-By Pushes Suicide Jumper in South China
Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.
Chen fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.
The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.
“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to…
Pro-Copyright Propaganda Enters U.S. Classrooms
Ernesto, TorrentFreak: Pro-copyright lobbyists and anti-piracy outfits have a clear idea of what is needed to manipulate the minds of the younger generations. The MPAA most famously handed out a “merit patch in respecting copyright” to LA Boy Scouts, and now the Copyright Alliance has entered U.S. classrooms in an attempt to educate today’s youth about the benefits of copyright.
The Copyright Alliance describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan educational organization dedicated to promoting the value of copyright as a means to make money. The more restrictions, the more money can be made is their credo, and they go to extremes to prove their point.
One of the key research documents listed on their website is a highly critical review of Professor Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture. According to the review, Lessig is a “hypocritical demagogue” whose book imposes a “quasi-socialist
utopianism” while “demonizing” copyright.
U.S. Doctors’ Association Calls for Moratorium on GMO Foods
The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has just issued a call for an immediate moratorium on Genetically Manipulated (GMO) Foods. In a just-released position paper on GMO foods, the AAEM states that ‘GM foods pose a serious health risk’ and calls for a moratorium on GMO foods. Citing several animal studies, the AAEM concludes ‘there is more than a casual association between GMO foods and adverse health effects’ and that ‘GM foods pose a serious health risk in the areas of toxicology, allergy and immune function, reproductive health, and metabolic, physiologic and genetic health.’
The report is a devastating blow to the multibillion dollar international agribusiness industry, most especially to Monsanto Corporation, the world’s leading purveyor of GMO seeds and related herbicides.
In a press release dated May 19, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine, which describes itself as ‘an international association of physicians and other professionals dedicated to addressing the…
Note to U.S. Drug War: Netherlands to Close Prisons for Lack of Criminals
NRC Handelsblad: The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.
During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.
The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry’s research department expects to continue for some time. Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred…
Nigerian Military Kills Thousands Of Civilians
BBC News: The military in Nigeria has been accused of killing 1,000 civilians during an upsurge in operations against militants in the oil-rich Niger Delta. “They … bombard entire communities from the air, sea and land,” said the Ijaw National Congress which represents the region’s largest ethnic group.
A Nigerian military spokesman dismissed the allegations as unfounded. A BBC correspondent says the claims are impossible to verify and reflect the people unaccounted for.
The army has freed 17 hostages, mostly foreigners, held by militants fighting for a greater share of oil revenues. But the military action has “resulted in over a thousand deaths, because we dared to ask for our rights,” said Victor Burubo, spokesman for the Ijaw National Congress.
He called on the United Nations to intervene in a BBC interview. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) declared “all-out war” on the Nigerian government after an attack on…
Ballardolution
The majority of people who recognise the name of JG Ballard, I imagine will do so because of the Spielberg film ‘Empire Of the Sun’ which was adapted from his semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, or for the controversy that surrounded the film ‘Crash’, another adaptation. Although many recognise his talent, he was always a somewhat peripheral writer, politely feral and unashamed. What I consider to be some Ballard’s finest work is his exegetic meta-novel, which began with the seemingly depraved, narcissistic indulgences of the super-solvent in ‘Cocaine Nights’ (in retrospection I have come to realise it started before that in the work of ‘High Rise’ with its claustrophobic atavistic tribalism), and concluded with the darkly populist frustrations of ‘Kingdom Come’. This corpus of work was intended to lead the reader through the writer’s preoccupations with the pathologies and irrationalities of neo-bourgeois existence.
Blundering Blindly
It has always been tempting for thinkers and historical observationalists to overlay a narrative onto to what they have known of the world; humans have a long and colourful history in the denial of contingency, in the art of myth, and of fevered teleological dreams. There is nothing in essence wrong with such a play so long as a humble agnosticism is maintained, and the myth building doesn’t spill into hubris. More promising has been the increasing acknowledgement and embracement of the value of uncertainty and the denial of universal absolutism.
Obama Detention Plan Tests U.S. Legal Tradition Concept of Preventive Detention is at the Very Bound
President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.
There are, to be sure, already some legal tools that allow for the detention of those who pose danger: quarantine laws as well as court precedents permitting the confinement of sexual predators and the dangerous mentally ill. Every day in America, people are denied bail and locked up because they are found to be a hazard to their communities, though they have yet to be convicted of anything.
Still, the concept of preventive detention is at the very boundary of American law, and legal experts say any new plan for the imprisonment of terrorism suspects without trial would seem…
Twitphilia & Twitanoia: Controlling Technology
An in-depth analysis of Twitter from a radical perspective.
Nihilo Zero: I created a Twitter account during the planning phase of the protest surrounding the 2008 Republican Nation Convention. I had heard about it’s text-to-phone cababilities and thought it might be useful to help organize the protesters and provide them with up-to-the-minute logistics while they were in the streets. This still seems like a potentially viable use of the system (capable of bringing flashmobs to a whole new level), but I had neither the time nor the technical understanding before the protest to make a serious push in this direction. I simply posted a prescient “tee hee” tweet and abandoned the endeavor.
Since then I have learned more about Twitter.com and I have revived my account in an effort to increase my web presence and spur discussion about radical politics. I continue to network with other radicals and enjoy sharing and spreading…
Man-Made Star to Unlock Cosmic Secrets
Jonathan Fildes, BBC News: When the world’s most powerful laser facility flicks the switch on its first full-scale experiments later this month, a tiny star will be born on Earth.
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California aims to demonstrate the feasibility of nuclear fusion, the reaction at the heart of the Sun and a potentially abundant, clean energy source for the planet.
But whilst many eyes at the facility will be locked on the goal of satisfying humanity’s energy demands, many scientists hope to answer other fundamental questions for mankind. “In recreating the process of fusion it was always understood that we could pursue three areas of interest and value,” explained Dr Erik Storm of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the home of NIF.
First and foremost, NIF has been built for national security purposes, to study the conditions that exist in nuclear explosions and the way that nuclear weapons perform.…
Six Weird Ways to Turn Poop Into Electricity
Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones: More than half of the 15 trillion gallons of sewage Americans flush annually is processed into sludge that gets spread on farmland, lawns, and home vegetable gardens. In theory, recycling poop is the perfect solution to the one truly unavoidable byproduct of human civilization.
But sludge-based as fertilizer can contain anything that goes down the drain — from Prozac flushed down toilets to motor oil hosed from factory floors. That’s why an increasing number of cities have begun to explore
an alternative way to dispose of sludge: advanced poop-to-power plants. By one estimate, a single American’s daily sludge output can generate enough electricity to light a 60-watt bulb for more than nine hours. Here
are the six most innovative ways that human waste is being converted to watts.
McCain on Cheney’s Torture Speech: ‘I Just Don’t See Where It Helps.’
ThinkProgress: Vice President Cheney’s speech on national security has been received positively by several Republican senators. In an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg yesterday, however, Sen. John McCain (R–AZ) said that Cheney’s full-throated defense of torture isn’t helpful:
“When you have a majority of Americans, seventy-something percent, saying we shouldn’t torture, then I’m not sure it helps for the Vice President to go out and continue to espouse that position,” he said. “But look, he’s free to talk. He’s a former Vice President of the United States. I just don’t see where it helps.”
And then he got acerbic: Cheney, he says, “believes that waterboarding doesn’t fall under the Geneva Conventions and that it’s not a form of torture. But you know, it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition.” On Fox News, McCain reiterated that waterboarding is “not a new technique, and it is certainly torture.” “You hear it from al…
FCC Says It Can Search Homes Without A Warrant
Ryan Singel, Wired: You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect it.
That’s the upshot of the rules the agency has followed for years to monitor licensed television and radio stations, and to crack down on pirate radio broadcasters. And the commission maintains the same policy applies to any licensed or unlicensed radio-frequency device.
“Anything using RF energy — we have the right to inspect it to make sure it is not causing interference,” says FCC spokesman David Fiske. That includes devices like Wi-Fi routers that use unlicensed spectrum, Fiske says.
The FCC claims it derives its warrantless search power from the Communications Act of 1934, though the constitutionality of the claim…
