Archive for April, 2011
Amazon’s $23,698,655.93 Textbook About Flies
New copies are still going for around a grand. Interesting story: Michael Eisen writes on it is NOT Junk:
A few weeks ago a postdoc in my lab logged on to Amazon to buy the lab an extra copy of Peter Lawrence’s The Making of a Fly — a classic work in developmental biology that we – and most other Drosophila developmental biologists — consult regularly. The book, published in 1992, is out of print. But Amazon listed 17 copies for sale: 15 used from $35.54, and 2 new from $1,730,045.91 (+$3.99 shipping).
I sent a screen capture to the author — who was appropriate amused and intrigued. But I doubt even he would argue the book is worth THAT much.
At first I thought it was a joke — a graduate student with too much time on their hands. But there were TWO new copies for sale, each be offered for well over…
Jury Awards $82,000 To Oregon Woman Arrested For Asking Police for a Business Card
Aimee Green writes in the Oregonian:
A Multnomah County jury awarded a 33-year-old woman $82,000 Thursday, saying they wanted to send Portland police a message: Hand over a business card the next time a citizen asks for one.
Several jurors who spoke to The Oregonian after the verdict in Multnomah County Circuit Court said police weren’t dealing with an urgent or dangerous situation on the evening of Feb. 13, 2009 — when Shei’Meka Newmann questioned what she thought was an unnecessarily rough arrest of a fellow MAX rider. It would have taken only a few seconds for an officer to hand Newmann a card, jurors said.
“I think that police need to be reminded that it’s part of their job to de-escalate and defuse situations,” said juror Chris Bolles. Instead, jurors say police overreacted to Newmann’s queries.
The ‘Passion of the Christ’ Whipping Scene (Video)
In case you were wondering what this “holiday” is all about. (BTW, Mel Gibson makes really good movies):
U.S. Predator Drones To Carry Out Missions In Libya
Via BBC News:
Armed US Predator drones are set to carry out missions in Libya, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said.
Mr Gates said their use had been authorised by President Barack Obama and would give “precision capability” to the military operation.
US drones are already used to target militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Libyan rebels have been battling Col Gaddafi’s troops since February but have recently made little headway. “President Obama has said that where we have some unique capabilities, he is willing to use those,” Mr Gates told a news conference.
He said two armed, unmanned Predators were being made available to Nato as needed.
Mr Gates denied that the drone deployment was evidence of “mission creep” in Libya and said there was no plan to put US “boots on the ground” in Libya.
The Young Nazi Who Grew Up To Become A Jew
Via BBC News:
As a child, Theo Haser was a loyal member of the Hitler Youth. But decades later, haunted by the horror of the Holocaust, he converted to Judaism.
As a young boy, growing up amid the nationalist frenzy of Nazi Germany, Theo Haser idolised Hitler.
When the fuehrer came to his hometown of Munich to visit, Theo and his father were at the front of the crowd reaching out to touch his hand.
“I know if I was able to shake his hand I probably wouldn’t have washed for a few months,” he recalls.
Seventy years later, in a bid to come to terms with his Nazi past, Theo has become a Jew.
“I wanted to be part of a community, this was something I had never felt in my life,” he says. “I wasn’t running away from something, I was joining something entirely new.”
US, UK Nuclear Submarine Secrets Accidentally Published Online
The original is no longer available, but the redacted PDF is here. Via Yahoo News:
A “technical error” has caused Britain’s Ministry of Defense to inadvertently publish classified sections of a report containing sensitive information about US Navy and British military nuclear submarines, the BBC reports.
Sensitive information in the report, which was published to Parliament’s website after a Freedom of Information request by anti-nuclear campaigners, includes how much structural damage British subs can take before a full meltdown takes place, as well as US vessels’ abilities to handle nuclear core failure.
The “schoolboy error,” as the MoD has called it, was due to improper redaction in the PDF document. As British tabloid the Daily Star Sunday, which first reported the gargantuan slip-up, points out, “anyone wanting to read the censored sections just had to copy the text.” This was most likely because whomever attempted to redact the document did so with the…
Open-Sourced Blueprints for Civilization (Video)
Via TED:
Using wikis and digital fabrication tools, TED Fellow Marcin Jakubowski is open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that’s only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000).
Confessions Of A Thug
Victoriangothic.org reviews the classic novel which first popularized the Thuggee cult, a darkly psychological adventure story with a murderous anti-hero, Ameer Ali:
Philip Meadows Taylor’s 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug captured the imagination of 19th-century Britain with its chilling depiction of an organized death cult preying upon the hapless travelers of India’s wild and desolate roads. Based upon real accounts Taylor gathered during his work suppressing the Thuggee cult for the Nizam of Hyderabad, the book is ominously introduced as an authoritative exposé in which true events have been faithfully woven into a fictionalized narrative.
Group of Thugs c. 1864.
As portrayed by Taylor, the Thugs are the votaries of Bhowanee (Kali); the destructive aspect of the Supreme Being. Endowed with superior intelligence and cunning, they are sent forth to make “sacrifices” on her behalf. The reward for their piety is the plunder they gather from their victims. In so far as they observe her omens and obey…
What Does God Need With A Starship? (Video)
I don’t ask myself this enough. Thanks Jim. Happy Easter!
Republican Gary Johnson Running For President In 2012
The Raw Story reports:
Former Gov. Gary Johnson (R-NM) announced Thursday morning that he’s running for president in 2012, adding a fresh libertarian perspective to a field of candidates touting their social conservative credentials.
The ex-governor is perhaps best known in recent years as an outspoken opponent of the drug war who believes marijuana should be legalized. He’s in favor of same sex marriage, saying it would reflect America’s commitment to “freedom” and “liberty.” And he wants to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Johnson, a long-shot at best for the GOP nomination, first made the announcement on Twitter, following it with a series of tweets previewing his campaign platform.
“Ready for smaller government? More liberty and personal freedom,” he tweeted. “Right now, we need to fix the fiscal mess. The writing of a financial collapse is on the wall. Balance the federal budget tomorrow.”
Scottish Schoolchildren Hit By Rain Of Worms
A bizarre incident in Scotland as a school briefly was trapped beneath deluge of worms falling from the sky. The Scotsman reports:
A PE class had to run for cover as it started raining worms.
Teacher David Crichton was leading a group of pupils playing football at Galashiels Academy when dozens of the invertebrates began plummeting from the sky. The 22 second-year boys had to abandon their lesson.Mr. Crichton said the children had just completed their warm-up when they began to hear “soft thudding” on the ground. The class then looked to the cloudless sky – and saw worms falling on to them.
The teacher scooped up handfuls of the worms that had fallen from the sky as proof they had landed on his class. Mr. Crichton said he and his colleagues eventually found about 120 worms after checking the artificial football pitch and tennis courts.
Showers of worms falling from the heavens have been…
9/11 First Responders To Be Screened By FBI Against Terrorist List
One of the many air sampling locations set up around the site of the World Trade Center.
This is really just the cherry on top of the icing on the cake in terms of how ailing 9/11 heroes have been treated. Michael McAuliff writes in the Huffington Post:
A provision in the new 9/11 health bill may be adding insult to injury for people who fell sick after their service in the aftermath of the 2001 Al Qaeda attacks, The Huffington Post has learned.
The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list, according to a letter obtained by HuffPost.
Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment…
How ‘Enemy-Creep’ Is Guantanamo-izing America
Via Guernica, Karen Greenberg sounds the warning on what she terms “enemy creep.” Treatments once reserved for foreign terror suspects will be applied to the U.S. populace, as the definition of the “enemy” continually expands.
It has been a persistent worry of civil libertarians that violations of the rights of non-citizens would eventually contaminate the ways citizens are treated, too; that a process of “enemy creep” would, in the end, result in the Guantanamo-ization of American terrorism suspects.
When rights were first denied to captives at Guantanamo Bay, the Bush administration argued that a prison in Cuba should not be considered subject to the constitutional principles that apply to Americans everywhere or to anyone within the territorial boundaries of the U.S. It is, however, quite another matter, as in the King hearings, to single out Muslims or others in our midst as potential terrorists and then to argue that when arrested—even if…
James Frey’s Final Testament Of The Holy Bible
VICE invites in Oprah’s favorite author James Frey to talk about his new book (The Final Testament of the Holy Bible). It features a modern-day Messiah who advocates sex with men and women, drugs, and doing whatever makes one happy.
The interview includes cranks calls, ideas on the end of the world, the cowardly publishing industry and how Frey is bypassing it, art, and the last time he prayed:
Pesticide Use Tied To Lower IQ In Children
Who could have guessed that drenching our food and homes in brain-ravaging toxins would have dire consequences? Wired Science reports that pesticides have been strongly linked to decreased memory and a seven-point drop in IQ in exposed children:
Children exposed in the womb to substantial levels of neurotoxic pesticides have somewhat lower IQs by the time they enter school than do kids with virtually no exposure. A trio of studies screened women for compounds in blood or urine that mark exposure to organophosphate pesticides such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon and malathion.
These bug killers, which can cross the human placenta, work by inhibiting brain-signaling compounds. Although the pesticides’ residential use was phased out in 2000, spraying on farm fields remains legal.
The three new studies began in the late 1990s and followed children through age 7. Pesticide exposures stem from farm work in more than 300 low-income Mexican-American families in California, researchers from the University…
‘Three-Parent’ IVF Babies On Their Way
Oocyte with surrounding granulosa cells.
Jessica Hamzelou writes for New Scientist:
A review of technologies that create three-parent embryos to avoid mitochondrial disease has found no evidence that the methods are unsafe, calling for further research. Medical charities have followed up the report with a call to the UK’s health secretary to prepare to regulate the technology in clinics.
A fertilised egg has 98 per cent of its DNA held in its nucleus. Half of this will be from the mother and half from the father. The remaining 2 per cent is what’s known as mitochondrial DNA – DNA in the cells’ “powerhouses” that are found outside of the egg’s nucleus, and are inherited solely from the mother.
Gene mutations in a woman’s mitochondrial DNA can cause mitochondrial disease in her children. The effects can range from mild, almost symptomless disease to serious and often fatal conditions. Researchers are aiming to avoid these serious…
It’s Earth Day – Did You Notice?
It’s a special day around the world today, April 22. Can you say why that is? If you are a Christian maybe you’ll say that it’s Good Friday.
True, but for all seven billion of us around the world, it’s Earth Day, a day intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s natural environment.
Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. It was focused on the U.S., but has since gone global with the support of the United Nations; it is now coordinated by the Earth Day Network.
Unfortunately, not too many people seem to care. Stephanie Pappas, a LiveScience Senior Writer, suggests that doesn’t matter in an article entitled “Why You Won’t Read This Earth Day Article (And Why That Doesn’t Matter).” Is she right?
Earth Day turns 41 this year, but in some ways, environmentalism seems to be…
Michigan Police Device Can Reveal Drivers’ Phone Data, Texts and Pictures
Photo: Cellebrite
CNET reports:
The Michigan State Police have a handful of portable machines called “extraction devices” that have the potential to download personal information from motorists they pull over, and the ACLU would like to know more about them.
The devices, sold by a company called Cellebrite, can download text messages, photos, video, and even GPS data from most brands of cell phones. The handheld machines have various interfaces to work with different models and can even bypass security passwords and access some information.
The problem, as the ACLU sees it, is that accessing a citizen’s private phone information when there’s no probable cause could create a violation of the Constitution’s 4th Amendment, which protects us against unreasonable searches and seizures.
To that end, it’s petitioning the MSP to turn over information about its use of the devices under the Freedom of Information Act. The MSP said it’s happy to comply, that is, if the ACLU…
If America Is On The Wrong Track, We Derailed Our Own Democracy
Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
A recent McClatchy-Marist poll, written up in Talking Points Memo, says 64% of Americans believe that “the country is on the wrong track.” The article however, does not delve into exactly why the 64% surveyed believe America is on the road to ruin or what “wrong track” we’re on. The poll results give a little bit of speculative clarity, but not enough to take away anything really meaningful about the wants and needs of Americans – just an overall sense that things aren’t going so well and we’re still confused as to what to do about it.
Considering the economy still swims in the toilet, we’re still embroiled in two major wars and several small conflicts throughout the globe and the political bluster permeating the airwaves, it’s not too hard to believe that most Americans think we’re driving on the wrong side of the road. The questioning…
