Archive for March, 2010
Ex-Pfizer Worker Cites Genetically Engineered Virus In Lawsuit Over Firing
By Edmund H. Mahoney for the Hartford Courant:
Medical experts will be watching closely Monday when a scientist who says she has been intermittently paralyzed by a virus designed at the Pfizer laboratory where she worked in Groton opens a much anticipated trial that could raise questions about safety practices in the dynamic field of genetic engineering.
Organizations involved in workplace safety and responsible genetic research already have seized on the federal lawsuit by molecular biologist Becky McClain as an example of what they claim is evidence that risks caused by cutting-edge genetic manipulation have outstripped more slowly evolving government regulation of laboratories.
McClain, of Deep River, suspects she was inadvertently exposed, through work by a former Pfizer colleague in 2002 or 2003, to an engineered form of the lentivirus, a virus similar to the one that can lead to acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. Medical experts working for McClain believe the…
Sentient Phones? “Massive” AI Research Sparked By Mobile Phone Wars
“You can ask your cell phone what it’s thinking about now, and the answer is that it isn’t. But in 50 years it will be. And it won’t be a companion of yours, you might be a companion of it.”
He’s serious. The CTO of D-Wave Systems says “massive amounts of money” are now going into artificial intelligence research, because “Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies all want to dominate the mobile space, and to do that you need compelling applications… All of that requires better AI.”
D-Wave Systems worked with Google on the “Google Goggles” mobile phone app for augmented reality, using their systems to “teach” a neural network how to recognize objects like automobiles, and then transferring those algorithms to the mobile app. And to do it they used subatomic “quantum computing” – a crucial stepping stone to human-level artificial intelligence.
“I’m very excited by the possibility of building very effective…
On Satan’s Trail
Richard Owen joins Father Gabriele Amorth on the hunt for Satan and survives to tell the tale, in the Times:
“Are you afraid of the Devil?” The world’s most famous exorcist levels his gaze at me and then smiles.
“No, it is he who is afraid of me. I work in the name of the Lord. Poor Satan.”
Poor Satan?
“Oh yes. The Evil One shouts and makes noises, but we are made in God’s image, we have the Holy Trinity on our side. There is no need to be afraid of the Devil unless we give in to his temptations.”
We are in the infirmary of the Society of St Paul, the order of Father Gabriele Amorth, in the shadow of St Paul’s Basilica, Rome. The Vatican’s chief exorcist was taken to hospital last autumn with a blood infection and is now convalescing — “they found nothing serious”. Perhaps it was the Devil who…
Your Hands’ Germs Can Identify You
Another reason to whip out the Purell? AFP reports:
Forensic scientists could soon use hand germs to help identify criminals and victims, a study said Monday.
Researchers led by Noah Fierer of the University of Colorado at Boulder swabbed individual keys on three personal computer keyboards, extracted bacterial DNA from the swabs and compared the results with bacteria on the fingertips of the keyboards’ users.
They also lifted germs from an unspecified number of other private and public computer keyboards that the three individuals did not use to see if there was a cross-over between the bacteria on an individual’s hands and bacteria on keyboards that had never been touched by that individual.
The bacteria on each person’s fingers were “personal” and gave a much closer match to the germs on the keyboard they used than to bacteria found on keyboards they had never touched, the researchers said.
The researchers also swabbed nine personal computer mice…
Lead Poisoning Lurks in Spices
Photo: warriorgrrl (CC)
By Alice Park for Time:
Most parents have already cleared their children’s toy boxes of playthings containing lead-laden plastics or paint. But according to a new study published on Monday in Pediatrics, the toxic heavy metal may continue to lurk in other, less expected sources in the home — like in the kitchen pantry.
After several reports of lead poisoning in Indian children in the Boston area were linked to consumption of Indian spices, researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and the Harvard School of Public Health decided to measure the amount of lead in the seasonings as well as in ceremonial powders commonly used to mark newborn Indian infants for religious and cultural purposes.
The team visited 15 Indian specialty stores in the Boston area and purchased 71 cultural powders and 86 spices and food products. About 25% of the food items, including spices such as cardamom, fenugreek and chili powder,…
NASA Close to (Dis)Proving the Existence of a ‘Death Star’ in our Solar System
Charlie Jane Anders has a fun post on io9.com about the Nemesis theory, which the WISE telescope will prove or disprove, hopefully, soon.
The reason I say “fun” post is it’s very unlikely a Nemesis star does exist, as we have been able to figure out masses and orbits in the solar system with a high degree of accuracy for quite some time. Meaning if an object this massive was this close — Nemesis is thought to be a red dwarf star or brown dwarf — we’d have to account for it in the astronomy.
In any event, I do expect Nibiru devotees to disagree with this opinion, or if/when WISE doesn’t find it.
Charlie’s post refers to an article in Astrobiology Magazine, which is sponsored by NASA. Check out what they have to say, Leslie Mullen writes:
Is our Sun part of a binary star system? An unseen companion star, nicknamed “Nemesis,” may be sending comets…
Texas Board of Education Says Thomas Jefferson Didn’t Contribute Much to America’s Intellectual Origins
The Texas Board of Education is seeking to rewrite certain portions of their state’s history books with their version of conservatism.
Among the proposed changes are reducing the scope of Latino history and culture, removing hip hop music from a list of important cultural movements, portraying Joseph McCarthy in a more positive light, and downplaying Thomas Jefferson’s influence in the intellectual origins of America.
Yes, Thomas Jefferson.
In his place, they want to highlight St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone.
Read more about it on Yahoo News.
Exposed: Chevron’s Cover-up of Gross Environmental Abuses in Ecuador
From Alternet:
What is a lost culture? Is it just some intangible time before? Is it an economy? Can you inventory a lost culture in the number of lives lost or rivers polluted?
Those questions haunt the lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian indigenous groups against the U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for environmental destruction it allegedly wrought as Texaco in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. On paper, the suit asks Chevron (which acquired Texaco in 2001) to pay for the environmental cleanup of an area three times the size of Manhattan, pocked with open oil pits and steeped in 18 billion gallons of dumped industrial wastewater. The damages in the case — calculated by a court-appointed expert at a record $27 billion — would also establish a health fund to pay for the estimated 1,400 cases of cancer caused by the pollution — a number that will likely continue to grow until the…
Dutch Nurses Union: Care Does Not Include Sex
From Reuters:
A union representing Dutch nurses will launch a national campaign Friday against demands for sexual services by patients who claim it should be part of their standard care.
The union, NU’91, is calling the campaign “I Draw The Line Here,” with an advert that features a young woman covering her face with crossed hands.
The union said in a statement Thursday that the campaign follows a complaint it had received in the last week from a 24-year-old woman who said a 42-year-old disabled man asked her to provide sexual services as part of his care at home.
Sizing Up Sperm: The Most Extreme Race on Earth (Video)
Wow, I had no idea that sperm have to fight Morlocks along the way! National Geographic presents Sizing Up Sperm:
Each of us was the grand prize in an ultimate reality competition, the amazing race a sperm makes on the road to fertilization.
Millions of sperm compete while overcoming armies of antibodies, treacherous terrain and impossible odds to reach their single-minded goal.
To illustrate the full weight of the challenge, Sizing Up Sperm uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg.
People In Power Make Better Liars
By Eve Tahmincioglu for MSNBC:
New York Gov. David Paterson is embroiled in a scandal over whether he used his power and influence to intimidate a woman pursuing a domestic violence case against one of his top aides. As a result, the governor said last month that he would not seek a second term, and his communications director quit earlier this month citing “integrity” issues.
Former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling, who went to prison after the spectacular collapse of the company, is appealing to the Supreme Court his 2006 conviction on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying. His lawyers argue that he didn’t get a fair trial and that Skilling’s conduct, “even if wrongful in some way,” was not illegal because he was not looking out for his personal interests “apart from his normal compensation incentives.”
The issue of integrity is at the heart of the predicaments these powerful…
United Nations Wants To Take Guns Away From Americans
I’m not sure who made this video but it’s quite an effective piece of anti-UN, pro-guns propaganda (no editorial slant intended – let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree with the filmmaker):
Georgia TV Station Creates Panic With Spoof Documentary Claiming Russian Invasion
From Variety:
A pro-government Georgian television station sparked widespread panic in the Caucasian country when it ran a spoof documentary claiming the Russians had invaded again. The half-hour show — which aired Saturday night — brought chaos to the country after it claimed Russian troops were already in the capital Tbilisi and aired “unconfirmed reports” that pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili had been assassinated.
Mobile telephone networks crashed, cinemas emptied as parents called their children home and people spilled out on to the street of towns and cities across the country to seek safety. But the report on Imedi-TV — once Georgia’s leading independent station until Saakashvili took it off air following the death of its owner, opposition figure Badri Patarkatsishvili in 2008 — was nothing but a hoax, apparently aired by a pro-government station in an attempt to discredit the opposition before key municipal elections in May.
Georgia Media Production Holdings, which now…
Did the CIA Test LSD in the NYC Subway?
This has go to be the worst place on Earth to take a “trip,” via Gothamist:
The author of a new book about the CIA’s hallucinogenic drug tests during the Cold War says there’s evidence the agency used NYC commuters as their experimental subjects. He found documentation of the subway tests — which allegedly occurred in 1950 — while researching his nonfiction account. “The experiment was pretty shocking — shocking that the CIA and the Army would release LSD like that, among innocent unwitting folks,” H.P. Albarelli told the Post.
One piece of evidence cited in A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments is a declassified FBI report from Aug. 25, 1950. “The BW [biological weapon] experiments to be conducted by representatives of the Department of the Army in the New York Subway System in September 1950, have been indefinitely postponed,” it says. Dr. Henry Eigelsbach, a former CIA research scientist, says that the aerosol LSD tests did in fact happen, though little is known about their scale and results.
Homegrown Right-Wing-Extremist Terrorism: A Recent History
The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a jaw-dropping overview of about seventy terrorist attempts on American soil by right-wing extremists over the past fifteen years; a lot happened between Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing and the recent plane attack on an IRS building in Austin. Take the 1999 attack by Buford Furrow, for example:
Buford Furrow, a former member of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations who has been living with the widow of slain terrorist leader Bob Mathews, strides into a Jewish community center near Los Angeles and fires more than 70 bullets, wounding three boys, a teenage girl and a woman. He then drives into the San Fernando Valley and murders Filipino-American mailman Joseph Ileto. The next day, Furrow turns himself in, saying he intended to send “a wake-up call to America to kill Jews.”
Ten Years From Now: The CD Revival
Pitchfork’s Tom Ewing writes a convincing imagining of a future in which the compact disc makes a comeback as a music format. Much as is happening with tape cassette culture right now…
Back in London, wiping strawberry jam from a CD, Reece Maclay agrees. “All the music I’ve ever known I got free, and I didn’t know what owning or paying for music was all about– not that most CD labels charge anything but voluntary fees anyway. But all this isn’t just about trying to turn the clock back ’cause we liked mix CDs when we were kids. CDs started to die when people stopped wanting to pay for a product, and then social media and music streams came along and let people stop paying for it all legally, and the product vanished. But when you can’t see what the product is and someone’s still making money, then the product is you.”
…
Watkins Books Lives
As a quick and happy update to my recent post about London’s legendary esoteric book shop, Watkins, closing, Publishers Weekly now reports that a buyer has been found:
Just two weeks before it was to be liquidated American entrepreneur Etan Ilfeld stepped forward and purchased the 113-year old institution, which stocks crystals, jewelry, and statues as well as books.
Ilfeld, who owns a nearby art gallery, Tenderpixel, plans to maintain Watkins’s identity as an independent esoteric bookstore. “It’s not everyday that you have the opportunity to save a century-old business,” said Ilfeld. “I don’t believe that spirituality in London is dead and will do my best to ensure that Watkins Books will be sustainable and survive the 21st century.”
Tea Party Not For You? Try The Coffee Party
You might think that headline is a joke, but it’s not, as Jessica Ravitz reports for CNN:
In one chair sits a rural retiree, his financial security shot in the slump, a humble Southerner who’s never thought much about politics. In another seat is a born Northerner, an inner-city native, a relative of a civil rights giant. And nearby, circling a table, are an economist, an artist, a onetime John McCain supporter and a long-haired guy who’s rich in Woodstock memories.
Meet these members of the Coffee Party Movement, an organically grown, freshly brewed push that’s marking its official kickoff Saturday…
The Woman Who Wants To Be World’s Fattest Closes In On 1,000 lb
To counterbalance the articles on this site bemoaning the increasing rates of obesity, here’s one from the Daily Mail (where else?) about Donna Simpson, the New Jersey woman who is already gargantuan and wants to become even fatter to set a new world record:
Donna Simpson already weighs 43st, but she is determined to nearly double her size to become the world’s fattest woman. The 42-year-old from New Jersey, U.S, is set on reaching the 1,000lb mark (71st) in just two years. Remarkably she insists she is healthy, despite now needing a mobility scooter when she goes shopping.
Donna Simpson already weighs 43 stone but is consuming an astonishing 12,000 calories a day in a quest to become the world’s fattest woman. ‘My favourite food is sushi, but unlike others I can sit and eat 70 big pieces of sushi in one go,’ she said. ‘I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are…
