Archive for December, 2010
Descendants Of ‘Lost Legion’ Of Roman Soldiers Found In China
Green- and blue-eyed villagers in a remote part of China may be the descendants of a fairy-tale-ish “lost legion” of ancient Roman soldiers, writes the Telegraph:
A local man, Cai Junnian, is nicknamed by his friends and relatives Cai Luoma, or Cai the Roman, and is one of many villagers convinced that he is descended from the lost legion.
Archeologists plan to conduct digs in the region, along the ancient Silk Route, to search for remains of forts or other structures built by the fabled army.
“We hope to prove the legend by digging and discovering more evidence of China’s early contacts with the Roman Empire,” Yuan Honggeng, the head of a newly-established Italian Studies Centre at Lanzhou University in Gansu province, told the China Daily newspaper.
The genetic tests have leant weight to the theory that Roman legionaries settled in the area in the first century BC after fleeing a disastrous battle.
The clash…
Apple Engineer Re-Creates 2,000 Year Old Greek Computer … With Legos
Andrew Carol, a software engineer for Apple, has re-created a 2,000 year old Greek computer, the Antikythera Mechanism, using Legos. Ancient Greeks created this device around 100 B.C. to predict astronomical events, such as eclipses.
Military Bans Disks And Other Forms Of Removable Data To Prevent Future Leaks
Via Wired’s Danger Room:
It’s too late to stop WikiLeaks from publishing thousands more classified documents, nabbed from the Pentagon’s secret network. But the U.S. military is telling its troops to stop using CDs, DVDs, thumb drives and every other form of removable media — or risk a court martial.
Maj. Gen. Richard Webber, commander of Air Force Network Operations, issued the Dec. 3 “Cyber Control Order” — obtained by Danger Room — which directs airmen to “immediately cease use of removable media on all systems, servers, and stand alone machines residing on SIPRNET,” the Defense Department’s secret network. Similar directives have gone out to the military’s other branches.
“Unauthorized data transfers routinely occur on classified networks using removable media and are a method the insider threat uses to exploit classified information. To mitigate the activity, all Air Force organizations must immediately suspend all SIPRNET data transfer activities on removable media,” the order…
UN Warns Of Cancer From Climate Change
Source: Global Warming Art Project (CC)
Scaremongering to create a worldwide carbon tax? Or is this a reality? From the Daily Mail:
Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, scientists say. The long-lasting chemicals get into the food chain and build up in people’s bodies – triggering tumours, heart disease and infertility.
The warning comes in a new international study into the links between climate change and a class of man-made toxins called persistent organic pollutants. The study – due to be published next month – says rising temperatures and more extreme weather are increasing human exposure to pollutants around the world, including in Britain.
Scientists are concerned about Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs, because they last decades in the environment and accumulate in body tissue. They include pesticides such as DDT and chemicals called PCBs used in electrical goods.
Donald Cooper, of the United Nations Environment Programme…
Christian Cult Bans USB As Satanic
Did you know that Satan has a presence in all of our homes? For a clue, just take a look at your computer’s USB port — it’s branded with devilish trident symbolism. Luckily, a Brazilian evangelical cult is spreading the warning, the Guardian reports:
The evangelical cult “Paz do Senhor Amado” (”Peace of the beloved Lord”) in the interior of Brazil forbids its followers to use any USB technology by contending that it uses a symbol that shows sympathy for the devil.
Its founder, the “Apostle” Welder Saldanha, says that this is just another symbol of Satan, which is always present in all Christian homes.
“The symbol of that name [a name which he doesn't even like to pronounce] is a trident, which is used to torture souls that go to hell. Use only a symbol of those shows that all users of that vile technology are actually worshipers of Satan,” explains the” Apostle.”
Measures…
Male Self-Loathing, Popular Music, and Passive-Aggressively Defusing Women’s Anger
James Blunt. Photo: Adam Ososki (CC)
Hugo Schwyzer wrote back in 2006:
I go back and forth between playing music while I write. When I blog from home, I just open our Itunes account and let the party shuffle bring out a gloriously random mix. When I need to do some serious writing, I turn down the sound to minimize the noise that goes into my head. But just before I sat down to write, two songs I’ve recently downloaded came on, back to back: James Blunt’s “Goodbye My Lover” and Blue October’s “Hate Me.” Both songs have been getting quite a bit of airplay, and they were catchy enough that I paid $.99 each for ‘em.
In both songs, the male singer seems to be cataloging his own shortcomings. As popular and over-played as his music is, there’s something seductive about Blunt’s material, and his “Goodbye My Lover” ends:
Goodbye my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You…
FAA Has Lost Track Of 119,000 Airplanes
Airplanes are not small, and although it might be easy to hide one or two, 119,000? AP reports:
The Federal Aviation Administration is missing key information on who owns one-third of the 357,000 private and commercial aircraft in the U.S. — a gap the agency fears could be exploited by terrorists and drug traffickers.
In Defense of WikiLeaks
Voices from all over, both predictable and unexpected … let’s hope they’re heard.
In defence of WikiLeaks (The Economist)
“Not such wicked leaks,” by Umberto Eco
Julian Assange and the Computer Conspiracy; “To destroy this invisible government”
Ron Paul Now Overseeing The Federal Reserve
Congressman Ron Paul has long been pressing the campaign to abolish privately-owned U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve. Now he’s heading a subcommittee of the House Financial Services committee that actually oversees the Fed. Here’s hoping for some fireworks (what’s the expression – fox in charge of the chicken coop?) He talks about it about 3:23 into the Fox News clip below. Added bonus towards the end of the clip: Congressman Paul discusses some of his colleagues’ attempts to restrict free speech (read WikiLeaks) on the Internet.
WikiLeaks Supporters ‘Operation Payback’ Wish To Be A Force for ‘Chaotic Good’
Anyone else seeing a clear Dungeons & Dragons reference the mainstream media will be oblivious to? Josh Halliday and Charles Arthur write in the Guardian:
A 22-year-old spokesman, who wished to be known only as “Coldblood”, told the Guardian that the group – which is about a thousand strong – is “quite a loose band of people who share the same kind of ideals” and wish to be a force for “chaotic good”.
There is no real command structure in the group, the London-based spokesman said, while most of its members are teenagers who are “trying to make an impact on what happens with the limited knowledge they have”. But others are parents, IT professionals and people who happen to have time – and resources – on their hands.
The U.S. Government Can’t Print Money Properly
Sounds weird given the Fed’s policies over the last decades, but read on. (Only in America.) Zachary Roth writes on Yahoo News:
As a metaphor for our troubled economic and financial era — and the government’s stumbling response — this one’s hard to beat. You can’t stimulate the economy via the money supply, after all, if you can’t print the money correctly.
Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them — more than 10 percent of all existing U.S. cash — in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, reports CNBC.
“There is something drastically wrong here,” one source told CNBC. “The frustration level is off the charts.”
Woman Strips Down to Her Lingerie, Gets TSA Pat Down Anyway (Video)
C’mon, it’s obvious why she was questioned … she’s a frakin’ Cylon! Jesus Diaz writes on Gizmodo:
This bombshell wearing just black lace, a pearl necklace and a white dog is Tammy Banovac, a retired surgeon in a wheelchair. She got down to her lingerie while going through airport security and still got a pat down. (Update: Turns out that Tammy Banovac posed naked for Playboy in 1997, when she was a dental surgeon in Oklahoma, under her maiden name Tammy Lynn Brewer.)
Dr. Banovac always refuses to go through the metal detector. She has to use a metal wheelchair and that means that she always gets a pat down no matter what. Lately, she says she feels violated because the pat downs have become increasingly invasive during the last few months. “If it happened anywhere else, it would have been sexual assault,” she declared to a local newspaper.
Cloned Cow Milk and Meat Approved For Sale In U.K.
The British equivalent of the FDA just announced that milk and beef from cloned cows is safe for consumption and may be sold without being labelled as such. The dairy and meat of the future has finally arrived…grab yourself a steaming hot cloneburger. The Telegraph reports:
The food safety watchdog said produce from the descendents of cloned pigs and cows is safe to eat and should not have to undergo any extra checks compared with other animals before going on sale.
Ministers are expected to rubber stamp the new guidelines, clearing the final hurdle for the meat and milk of cloned animals to be sold freely in Britain.
The FSA published new advice yesterday which stipulated that farmers must seek a license before selling meat or milk from cloned animals, but not their offspring.
The new guidance was prompted by a scare in the summer when it emerged that meat from the offspring of a…
This Must Be What Hell Sounds Like: All of Billy Joel’s Hits Played at the Same Time
Via Wonder-Tonic:
Nixon Library To Release 265 Hours Of White House Tapes
‘The cease-fire in Vietnam, the release of American prisoners of war, Watergate, U.S. policy in the Middle East, the assassination of two U.S. diplomats in Sudan by the Black September Organization …’ are just a few of the topics discussed on the tapes to be open on Thursday. CNN reports:
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library will open a trove of records at the facility and online Thursday, including 265 hours of White House tapes, officials said.
The library, in Yorba Linda, California, will also open more than 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75 hours of video oral histories, officials said. The library is part of the National Archives.
The White House tapes span February 1973 to March 1973 and include a few from early April 1973. There are no transcripts for these tapes, but the library has produced a detailed subject log for each conversation, National Archives officials said in a statement.
[Continues at…
What Many Bags of Cocaine Look Like Inside You
Listen up drug mules: please start looking for a new job if you can. This is a hell of a way to make a living. Via SF Gate:
A CT scan taken at the University of Bern’s Inselspital Hospital shows seven packets of swallowed cocaine as light-gray circular and oblong shapes in a smuggler’s stomach above a bright white snake-like portion of bowel.
The university’s Dr. Patricia Flach led a study that found that CT scans detected cocaine contraband better than X-rays.
Sarah Palin Under Cyber-Attack from WikiLeaks Supporters in ‘Operation Payback’
I wonder if this is even true or it’s just more media attention-seeking from former Half-Governor Palin. Jake Tapper writes on ABC News (Thanks to Dawn Reshen-Doty to for tipping Disinfo off to the story):
The website and personal credit card information of former Gov. Sarah Palin were cyber-attacked by Wikileaks supporters, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate tells ABC News in an email.
Hackers in London that the Palin team believe to be affiliated with “Operation Payback” — a group of supporters of Julian Assange and Wikileaks – have tried to shut down SarahPac and have disrupted Sarah and Todd Palin’s personal credit card accounts, SarahPAC aide Rebecca Mansour said.
“No wonder others are keeping silent about Assange’s antics,” Palin emailed ABC News. “This is what happens when you exercise the First Amendment and speak against his sick, un-American espionage efforts.”
Palin has criticized Wikileaks founder Assange, writing on Facebook that his “past posting…
Prosthetic Tentacle Arm
Lost a limb, but dissatisfied with the normal prosthetic options? Recent University of Washington industrial design graduate Kaylene Kau built a functioning prosthetic tentacle. Powered by an internal motor with control buttons, it allows the disabled, or anyone fed up with being “too humanoid,” to live a more serpentine existence.
Scientists Create Mice From Two Genetic Fathers
ViaScientists have created mice that are the genetic product of two fathers, the latest in a series of unusual experiments in mammalian reproduction.
Researchers at University of Texas MD. Anderson Cancer Center and elsewhere first engineered a female mouse whose eggs contained the DNA from a male. When the female was mated with another male, the offspring had genetic contributions entirely from two males. The study appears online in the peer-reviewed journal Biology of Reproduction.
While the achievement is technically intriguing, its practical benefits are far from clear. Any move to try the same experiment in people is certain to be more complicated and controversial.
The study describes the technique as “a new form of mammalian reproduction: that could potentially be used to improve livestock breeds or preserve endangered species. more provocatively, the authors argue that if certain technical hurdles can be overcome, “then some day two men could produce…
