Archive for September, 2009
The DNA Mystery: Scientists Stumped By ‘Telepathic’ Abilities
Posted by Rebecca Sato, Daily Galaxy:
DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn’t be able to. Explanation: None, at least not yet.
Scientists are reporting evidence that contrary to our current beliefs about what is possible, intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance. Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
Even so, research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between…
Swedish dad tries to breast-feed
When mom is away, most dads offer a crying newborn a bottle of milk, a pacifier, a pinkie finger. But a Swedish dad is embarking on an experiment that he hopes will allow him to soothe a baby with his own milk-filled breasts.
The Third Man Factor
Here’s the official blurb, but do yourself a favor, buy it and read it! Highly recommended.
The Third Man Factor is a biography of an extraordinary idea: That people at the very edge of death, often adventurers or explorers, experience a sense of an incorporeal being beside them who encourages them to make one final effort to survive.
If only a handful of people had ever experienced the Third Man, it might be dismissed as an unusual delusion shared by a few overstressed minds. But the amazing thing is this: over the years, the experience has occurred again and again, to 9/11 survivors, mountaineers, divers, polar explorers, prisoners of war, solo sailors, aviators and astronauts. All have escaped traumatic events only…
Yes Men Honcho Sprung from Clink
Andy Bichlbaum, co-founder of activist group the Yes Men, emerged after 26 hours in New York City’s central lockup with all charges against him dismissed.[1]
“The judge just laughed,” said Bichlbaum. “The police had a less well-developed sense of humor – and, it turned out, much less regard for the law. But all in all, I’m ecstatic that they arrested me.”
At 10am Tuesday, Bichlbaum was arrested and charged with trespassing, after he and 21 “Survivaballs” [2] gathered on New York City’s East River and announced they were to going to “take the UN by storm” from the water, since all the land approaches were sealed. Once at the UN, they would supposedly use the Survivaballs to blockade the negotiations and refuse to let world leaders leave the room until they’d agreed on sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has demanded.[3]
The event was a “scenic and mediagenic way…
Apocalyptic Films Explore 2012 End of World Prediction
The iPhone application Twenty12 counts down the moments until the world’s destruction — just three years, 89 days, 13 hours and 15 minutes until Dec. 21, 2012.
That’s the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar marked as the end of a 5,126-year era, resetting the date to 0 and signaling the end of humanity.
But today, as that date nears, doomsday chatter echoes across the Internet. The search term “Dec. 21, 2012″ produces 3,650,000 results on Google.
One Web site, december212012.com, declares itself “official” and is selling t-shirts announcing the end of the world is nigh.
And they aren’t the only ones cashing in. In November, two apocalypse-themed films open — “2012,” starring John Cusack and “The Road,” with Charlize Theron.
A whirlwind of interest in eschatology — the study of the end of times — has been escalating since the advent of the 21st century, according to Robert Thompson, professor of media and popular…
Newly Declassified Files Detail Massive FBI Data-Mining Project
Ryan Singel, Wired: A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store, declassified documents obtained by Wired.com show.
Headquartered in Crystal City, Virginia, just outside Washington, the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) maintains a hodgepodge of data sets packed with more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records about citizens and foreigners, the documents show, bringing the government closer than ever to implementing the “Total Information Awareness” system first dreamed up by the Pentagon in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Such a system, if successful, would correlate data from scores of different sources to automatically identify terrorists and other threats before they could strike. The FBI is seeking to quadruple the…
Where Will Synthetic Biology Lead Us?
Michael Specter, The New Yorker:The first time Jay Keasling remembers hearing the word “artemisinin,” about a decade ago, he had no idea what it meant. “Not a clue,” Keasling, a professor of biochemical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, recalled. Although artemisinin has become the world’s most important malaria medicine, Keasling wasn’t an expert on infectious diseases. But he happened to be in the process of creating a new discipline, synthetic biology, which—by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science, and molecular biology—seeks to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world.
Scientists have been manipulating genes for decades; inserting, deleting, and changing them in various microbes has become a routine function in thousands of labs. Keasling and a rapidly growing number of colleagues around the world have something more radical in mind. By using gene-sequence information and synthetic DNA, they are attempting to reconfigure the metabolic…
OpenSecrets.Org: Top Contributors to Barack Obama
Oh look! Goldman Sachs is Obama’s NUMBER ONE private contributor. Good luck there on reforming Wall Street, Mr. President…
Credit-Default Swaps Are Back En Vogue As Market ‘Confidence’ Returns … Is This Change You Can Believe In?
HuffPo: Credit-default swaps — the financial instrument that helped bring down AIG and played a key role in causing the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s mdash; are, a year after the fall of Lehman Brothers, back en vogue on Wall Street, Bloomberg reports. Instead of being viewed as tools of financial disaster, CDSs are said to be contributing to the credit market’s renewed confidence.
Here’s why, according to Bloomberg:
The cost to protect against a failure by New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp., and 12 of the other biggest derivatives dealers dropped 66 percent in the past six months, according to an index of swaps compiled by Credit Derivatives Research LLC. While the U.S. struggles with the slowest recovery since 1945, the market where investors protect themselves from default and speculate on corporate debt shows confidence is the highest since June 2008.
For those who…
Water on the Moon!
Space scientists have found the strongest evidence yet that water exists on the moon, a discovery that helps complete a picture of a water-rich solar system and that could make colonizing our nearest neighbor in space much easier than previously thought.
Using data from three spacecraft that have made close flybys of the moon in recent years, research teams in the United States have found proof that a thin film of water coats the surface of the soil in at least some places on the moon.
“Within the context of lunar science, this is a major discovery,” said Paul G. Lucey, a planetary scientist with the University of Hawaii, who was not involved in the current research. “There was zero accepted evidence that there was any water at the lunar surface, [but] now it is shown to be easily detectable, though by extremely sensitive methods. As a lunar scientist, when I read…
Stephen Colbert Interviews ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ Author Jon Ronson
The Colbert Report: Jon Ronson explains why the U.S. military trained soldiers to use sparkly eyes on the enemy and kill goats with their minds.
Searching for Whitopia
Rich Benjamin: Between 2007 and 2009, I packed my bags and embarked on a 26,909-mile journey throughout the heart of white America — some of the fastest-growing and whitest locales in our nation.
A prediction that made headlines across the United States ten years ago is fast becoming a reality: By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. A related, less reported trend is that as people of color, especially immigrant populations, increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are living in small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white.
Call these places White Meccas. Or White Wonderlands. Or Caucasian Arcadias. Or Blanched Bunker Communities. Or White Archipelagos.
I call them Whitopia.
Muammar Gaddafi’s Speech to the UN General Assembly
Tom Leonard writes in the Telegraph:
Gordon Brown and other political leaders scheduled to speak in a tight schedule were forced to wait in the wings as the famously eccentric Col Gaddafi delivered a sustained rant against the UN Security Council that ran to an hour and 36 minutes.
The Libyan leader has not visited the UN since he took power in 1969 and clearly wanted to make up for it by giving his views on the past four decades of history.
Reading from a sheaf of handwritten notes, he touched not only on Israel and the Taliban but also on swine flu and the US invasion of Grenada.
He called for a UN inquiry into the investigation of John F Kennedy’s assassination, castigated the organisation for failing to stop 65 wars since 1945 and suggested the Security Council be renamed the “terror council”.
Although Col Gaddafi, the president of the African Union, praised Barack…
Ray Kurzweil Claims Humans Could Become Immortal In As Little As 20 Years’ Time
Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years’ time through nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works.
The 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: “I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
“Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells…
Empty the Prisons
WIRED: From the death penalty to “three strikes” laws, Americans love tough responses to crime—but not necessarily smart ones. Nils Christie has a better idea: Stop treating lawbreakers like criminals.
“I don’t like the term crime—it’s such a big, fat, imprecise word,” says the renowned University of Oslo criminologist. “There are only unwanted acts. How we perceive them depends on our relationship with those who carry them out.” If a teenager swipes a wallet, we call it a crime. If he snakes a twenty from his dad, it’s a family issue. Locking up the pickpocket only sets him up to learn worse tricks from hardened thugs. Better, Christie says, to treat him like a badly behaved son. Send him to counseling and require that he compensate his victim.
Similarly, drug abuse should be considered a matter of public health, not criminal justice. Give addicts treatment instead of incarceration and you’ll cure more…
Pizza Workers Strike Over Porn!
Workers at a pizza-making plant in the Republic of Ireland are set to step up a strike after being sacked for allegedly viewing porn.
Staff at Green Isle Foods in Co Kildare have won cross-union support for their protest.
The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has granted their union, the Technical, Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU), permission for an all-out picket at the factory in Naas.
The plant may face serious disruption today if other union members, including suppliers and An Post workers, refuse to pass the picket.
The company said three workers lost their jobs after viewing “adult material” and breaching the company’s internet policy. But their union claims they are being scapegoated.
“One of our members received an email from outside the plant and was essentially dismissed for receiving an email,” said TEEU general secretary designate, Eamon Devoy.
Over 40 workers went on strike last month after the workers lost their jobs. The TEEU…
David Byrne: Big Wheel Keeps on Turning
Hugo Lindgren, New York Magazine: If David Byrne were a young man today, there is no telling what weirdness he might get into. When he and his band Talking Heads were loosed upon the world in 1974, even the mythic CBGB’s punk scene had its limits. Sure, you could scream and turn the guitars up as loud as they’d go, but if you had any art-school predispositions, as Byrne did, you buried them in the feedback. Which couldn’t be further from New York’s music scene today. “There’s no fear now about doing what, in my day, would have been considered incredibly pretentious arty stuff,” says Byrne, easing back into a metal office chair in the Soho loft that serves as his office and art studio. “The Dirty Projectors did a record a few years ago that was called The Getty Address, which had something to do with Lincoln and Don…
U.S. Army Accidentally Grows Marijuana
U.S. Army officials at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal outside of Denver, Colo. discovered recently that the “weed-free” mulch they were using to re-seed ground cover was actually quite full of weed.
The Army discovered it was inadvertently growing marijuana on the property in June. Since then, they have picked about 100 low-grade marijuana plants. Called “ditch weed” or “feral hemp,” the plant grows wild in some places, including Kansas where the mulch supplier is located.
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was used by the Army as a chemical weapons manufacturing facility during World War II and the Cold War. As part of a clean-up effort, the Army had been reseeding in some areas. But when the seeds started to grow, they noticed they were reseeding the area with marijuana.
Charlie Scharmin is in charge of the cleanup. He said he was quite surprised when he was told what was growing at the arsenal. “It’s…
Mysterious Ruins May Explain Mayan Vollapse
Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces “frozen in time” that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team.
Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico’s Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
“The people just walked away and left everything in place,” says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. “Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it’s a frozen moment in time.”
The ancient, or “classic” Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. They headed for the…
