Archive for December, 2009
Brave New World? Alcohol Substitute That Avoids Drunkenness and Hangovers
Sounds a little too “Brave New World” for my book … Paul Rodgers and Richard Alleyne writes in the Telegraph:
An alcohol substitute that mimics its pleasant buzz without leading to drunkenness and hangovers is being developed by scientists. The new substance could have the added bonus of being “switched off” instantaneously with a pill, to allow drinkers to drive home or return to work.
The synthetic alcohol, being developed from chemicals related to Valium, works like alcohol on nerves in the brain that provide a feeling of wellbeing and relaxation. But unlike alcohol its does not affect other parts of the brain that control mood swings and lead to addiction. It is also much easier to flush out of the body. Finally because it is much more focused in its effects, it can also be switched off with an antidote, leaving the drinker immediately sober.
The new alcohol is being developed by…
Finally A Truly “World” Wide Web: Non-Latin Web Addresses Debut in 2010
Tom Simonite writes in New Scientist:
Imagine what browsing the web would be like if you had to type out addresses in characters you don’t recognise, from a language you don’t speak. It’s a nightmare that will end for hundreds of millions of people in 2010, when the first web addresses written entirely in non-Latin characters come online.
Net regulator ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — conceded in October that more than half of the 1.6 billion people online use languages with scripts not fully compatible with the Latin alphabet. It is now accepting applications for the first non-Latin top level domains (TLDs) – the part of an address after the final “dot”. The first national domains, counterparts of .uk or .au, should go live in early 2010. So far, 12 nations, using six different scripts, have applied and some have proudly revealed their desired TLD and…
William S. Burroughs: A Man Within (Documentary)
Via www.burroughsthemovie.com:
The film investigates the life of legendary beat author and American icon, William S. Burroughs. Born the heir of the Burroughs’ adding machine estate, he struggled throughout his life with addiction, control systems and self. He was forced to deal with the tragedy of killing his wife and the repercussions of neglecting his son. His novel, Naked Lunch, was one of the last books to be banned by the U.S. government. Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer testified on behalf of the book. The courts eventually overturned their decision in 1966, ruling that the book had important social value. It remains one of the most recognized literary works of the 20th century.
William Burroughs was one of the first to cross the dangerous boundaries of queer and drug culture in the 1950s, and write about his experiences. Eventually he was hailed the godfather of the beat generation and influenced artists for generations to come. However, his friends were left wondering, did William ever find happiness? This extremely personal documentary breaks the surface of the troubled and brilliant world of one of the greatest authors of all time.
TSA To Save Print Media? No Electronics On International Flights? What A Joke.
I wholeheartedly agree with MG Siegler’s comments at Techcrunch:
Before I begin, let me just state that TSA has yet to confirm any of this on its website, so the details aren’t entirely clear at the moment. That said, there are several indications that orders have been issued to cease the use of electronics during international flights. Yes, that means no laptops, no iPods, no Kindles, no CD players, no portable DVD players, no Nintendo DSes — nothing that requires any sort of power on these flights. If this is true, it’s absolutely awful news.
Obviously, this is all in reaction to the Nigerian man who attempted to bring down a plane coming into the U.S. And the TSA is going to do whatever it thinks is necessary to prevent further attacks of a similar nature. But the simple fact is that if the TSA was really this seriously worried about electronic devices, they could have banned…
Bernie Madoff Seriously Injured After Falling Out of Prison Bed
Reported by ABC News:
DURHAM, NC — A source tells ABC11 Eyewitness News that disgraced financier Bernie Madoff is being treated for serious injuries after he fell out of his prison bed.
ABC11 Eyewitness News first reported that Madoff had injuries consistent with an assault. Now, the source says Madoff was not attacked in prison, but that he fell off a bed onto his face. The source said there was a lot of facial bleeding.
Sources also confirmed Madoff was treated at Duke University Medical Center in Durham last Friday and discharged earlier this week. He is serving a life sentence at the federal prison in Butner after admitting to cheating investors out of billions of dollars.
According to the sources, Madoff came to Duke with facial fractures, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
Voyager Unveils the Mystery of the Interstellar Fluff from Hell
Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:
For years, astronomers have been puzzled by the fact that our solar system is crossing a cloud of interstellar hell. One that shouldn’t be there at all. Intergalactic plot to keep us isolated or cosmic event? Voyager got the answer:
Using data from Voyager, we have discovered a strong magnetic field just outside the solar system. This magnetic field holds the interstellar cloud together — “The Fluff” — and solves the long-standing puzzle of how it can exist at all.
The Fluff is much more strongly magnetized than anyone had previously suspected. This magnetic field can provide the extra pressure required to resist destruction.
The Voyagers are not actually inside the Local Fluff. But they are getting close and can sense what the cloud is like as they approach it.
At least, that’s what NASA’s Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University Merav Opher says in the December 24 issue…
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010
The top story’s no surprise, check them all out on Project Censored:
1. U.S. Congress Sells Out to Wall Street
2. U.S. Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s
3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
The Obameter: Tracking Obama’s Campaign Promises
Via Politfact.com:
PolitiFact has compiled more than 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter.
We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.
The report card at right provides an up-to-the-minute tally of all the promises.
Santa Bank Robbery
Authorities in Nashville are reporting that a man dressed as Santa Claus committed a gunpoint bank robbery on Christmas Eve. A witness says that Santa was “actually jovial, which was scary. He explained that he was robbing the bank because Santa had to pay his elves.”
There have been a number of infamous crimes in U.S. history involving Santa Claus; perhaps the worst occurred when a “Santa” shot dead six people during a bank robbery in Texas in 1927.
‘Star Trek’ Leads List of Most Pirated Movies 2009
Peter Lauria writing in the New York Post:
Poor Paramount.
Online pirates pinched more than 20 million copies of “Star Trek” and the sequel to “Transformers,” giving those two Paramount Pictures releases the dubious distinction of being the most ripped-off films of the year, according to a report released by file-sharing tracking service TorrentFreak.
Though the “Transformers” sequel bested “Star Trek” at the box office, Trekkie faves Kirk and Spock were more popular than morphing car-robots among digital thieves.
TorrentFreak reported that “Star Trek” was illegally downloaded just under 11 million times, while 10.6 million copies of “Transformers” were lifted.
While precise data is hard to come by, the pirated copies certainly seem to have cost the studio. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, worldwide revenue at the Viacom-owned studio fell $535 million, or 13 percent, to $3.7 billion.
“Transformers” still ranks as 2009’s highest-grossing film at the domestic box office, raking in $402 million,…
Pakistan’s Turmoil Endangers Its Archaeological Treasures
Christopher Allbritton reports for Time:
In the mountains and valleys of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, palace ruins and crumbling Buddhist monasteries dot the hills above war-torn locations such as Mingora, Peshawar and the Swat Valley. These magnificent ruins are all that’s left of the Gandhara kingdom, which flourished from the 6th century B.C. to the 11th century A.D. It vanished under the pressure of war and conquest, re-emerging only in 1848 when relics and ruins were re-discovered by the British archaeologist, Sir Alexander Cunningham.
Now, Gandhara is in danger of vanishing a second time from the same old threats. Just as the Afghan Taliban destroyed the 1,500-year-old statues of the Buddha in Bamiyan, Afghanistan in 2001, militants in Pakistan have attacked the Buddhist heritage in Pakistan, driving away foreign research teams and tourists, forcing the closure of museums and threatening the integrity of valuable digs. “Militants are the enemies of culture,” says…
The Nigerian Man Who Tried To Ignite Plane Bomb Has Al-Qaeda Links
From Reuters:
A Nigerian man believed to be linked to al Qaeda militants was in custody on Saturday after he tried to ignite an explosive device on a U.S. passenger plane as it approached Detroit, U.S. officials said.
The suspect, who suffered extensive burns, was overpowered by passengers and crew on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam. The passengers, two of whom suffered minor injuries, disembarked safely from the Delta Air Lines plane.
“We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism,” a White House official told Reuters.
The flight had left Amsterdam on Friday and Dutch counter-terrorism authorities said they were trying to figure out where the suspect had come from, how he had been screened and how he had managed to board the flight.
Representative Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said the explosive device was “fairly sophisticated,” and the suspect was a…
MPAA Rates Pot Smoking Meryl Streep & Steve Martin Movie ‘R’
From the New York Times:
The romantic comedy “It’s Complicated” arrived at the multiplex on Friday complete with an R rating, ranking it in the same category as “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Basic Instinct” in the eyes of the Motion Picture Association of America.
But there is no violence in “It’s Complicated,” and the bedroom scenes are decidedly tame by contemporary standards. Instead, the R rating — which experts say could limit the box-office potential of the Universal Pictures film — comes largely from a sequence in which Steve Martin and Meryl Streep smoke marijuana.
Giggles ensue.
The rating has kicked up dust in Hollywood, with movie bloggers starting blistering attacks on the M.P.A.A. for being out of touch. The marijuana lobby is equally miffed. “This is an absurd ruling rooted in old cultural thinking,” said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Universal and…
The Man Who Conned The Pentagon
Playboy doing what it does best: publishing stories that more respectable publications won’t touch:
The weeks before Christmas brought no hint of terror. But by the afternoon of December 21, 2003, police stood guard in heavy assault gear on the streets of Manhattan. Fighter jets patrolled the skies. When a gift box was left on Fifth Avenue, it was labeled a suspicious package and 5,000 people in the Metropolitan Museum of Art were herded into the cold.
It was Code Orange. Americans first heard of it at a Sunday press conference in Washington, D.C. Weekend assignment editors sent their crews up Nebraska Avenue to the new Homeland Security offices, where DHS secretary Tom Ridge announced the terror alert. “There’s continued discussion,” he told reporters, “these are from credible sources—about near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experienced on September 11.” The New York Times reported that intelligence sources warned “about…
Lawmaker Urges NATO to Consider Arms for Georgia
DESMOND BUTLER writes in the Associated Press:
A senior Republican senator is urging the Obama administration and European allies to consider rearming Georgia, an action that would inevitably upset Russia.
The recommendation comes from Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, a lawmaker who has long cultivated cooperation with Russia. Lugar has been a key ally for President Barack Obama on his pursuit of an arms control deal with Russia…
Read More on the Associated Press
Only a Game: The Joy of Swik
Via Only A Game:
Among the many Winter Festivals that are practised, none is stranger than the Discordian festival of Swik, pronounced ’swik’ or ‘christmas’ — although not to be confused with the Christian festival with the same pronunciation and dates. An ancient Discordian tradition, dating back at least twenty years, states “the joy of Swik is Getting, Shouting, and Passing out”, but it is widely recognised that Swik is a festival to be endured rather than enjoyed (much like a Klingon rite of passage). One does not have to be a Discordian to be participating in Swik … most people are simply trapped in the festival through no fault of their own.
No-one is really sure when Swik piggybacked onto Christmas, although it happened a long time after Christmas piggybacked onto the Pagan Solstice celebrations, which also fall at this time each year. Perhaps it was the Victorians who began to…
Woman Knocks Down Pope at Christmas Eve Mass
ARIEL DAVID writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
VATICAN CITY — A woman jumped the barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he walked down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass on Thursday.
The 82-year-old pope quickly got up and was unhurt, said a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini. Footage aired on Italy’s RAI state TV showed a woman dressed in a red jumper vaulting over the wooden barriers and rushing the pope before being swarmed by bodyguards.
The commotion occurred as the pope’s procession was making its way toward the main altar and shocked gasps rang out through the public that packed the basilica. The procession came to a halt and security rushed to the trouble spot.
Benedettini said the woman who pushed the pope appeared to be mentally unstable and had been arrested by Vatican police. He said she also knocked down Cardinal Roger…
DARPA Seeks Means to Manipulate Lightning
Clay Dillow writes on Popular Science:
Lightning Mother Nature has it. DARPA wants it.
China and Russia try to control rain clouds and the Dutch use technology to keep low-lying inland areas from flooding, so why shouldn’t the United States be able to manipulate lightning? In an attempt to better understand one of nature’s most powerful processes, DARPA issued a broad agency announcement yesterday asking for ideas on how to best protect American personnel and resources from dangers and costs associated with lightning strikes. To wit:
Lightning causes more than $1B/year in direct damages to property in addition to the loss of lives, disruption of activities (for example, postponement of satellite launches) and their corresponding costs. A better understanding of the physics underlying lightning discharge, associated emissions, and related processes (for example, tribocharging in the clouds) may lead to revolutionary advances in the state of the art of lightning protection.
Specifically, DARPA seeks validated…
The Reality of The Economic Crisis
The reality is this. The housing market crashed because a house is built so that people can live in it. Not so that real estate tycoons can buy and sell them like stocks and bonds pushing their ‘value’ into the stratosphere. A home is a tangible structure which at one time was priced according to what working people could afford. It was. Until, like everything else in our society, they became merely another pawn in the profit game, and all the humanity was squeezed mercilessly out of the house.
They stopped being homes, and started being ‘the housing market.’
