Archive for August, 2011
Gadhafi’s Secret Scrapbook Of Condoleezza Rice Pictures
Sometimes world leaders are like the rest of us and have a crush on a girl they figure would never like them. Via MSNBC:
The Libyan rebels’ ransacking of Moammar Gadhafi’s compound is turning up some bizarre loot. The latest discovery is a photo album filled with page after page of pictures of Condoleezza Rice.
The former U.S. Secretary of State paid a visit to Tripoli in 2008 during a brief interlude that saw Gadhafi begin to be welcomed back into the international fold. As Jason Ukman of the Washington Post wrote on Wednesday, “it was only three short years ago that Rice shared a late-night dinner with Gaddafi to break the Ramadan fast, three short years ago that the United States and Libya were celebrating what was to be a new chapter in their relations.”
In a 2007 interview with al-Jazeera television, Gadhafi spoke of Rice in glowing terms. “I support my…
Dick Cheney Had Secret Resignation Letter
Other than his health, what were some other things he was concerned about that prompted him to pre-write his resignation? One of many ’secrets’ revealed in Cheney’s new book, In My Time, set to be released at the end of the month. Via Reuters:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney signed a secret resignation letter shortly after taking office in 2001 and kept it in a safe, according to an excerpt of an NBC interview released on Wednesday.
Cheney, who has a long history of heart disease, said concern about a possible health crisis was one of the main reasons he kept the letter. Former President George W. Bush knew about it and so did a Cheney staff member.
“I did it because I was concerned … for a couple of reasons,” Cheney said.
“One was my own health situation. The possibility that I might have a heart attack or a stroke that would be incapacitating.…
Antibiotic Use Tied To Obesity, Diabetes, Allergies And Asthma
Karen Kaplan reports for the Los Angeles Times:
We’ve all heard that the overuse of antibiotics is making them less effective and fueling the rise of dangerous drug-resistant bacteria. But did you know it may also be fueling the rise of obesity, diabetes, allergies and asthma?
So says Dr. Martin Blaser, microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at New York University Langone Medical Center who studies the myriad bacteria that live on and in our bodies. He explains his theory in a commentary published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.
In recent years, scientists have developed a growing appreciation for the “microbiome,” the collection of mostly useful bacteria that help us digest food, metabolize key nutrients and ward off invading pathogens. Investigators have cataloged thousands of these organisms through the National Institutes of Health’s Human Microbiome Project, begun in 2008.
Blaser is interested in why so many bacteria have colonized the human body for so long – the simple fact that they…
Alec Baldwin: 9/11 Truther?
New York Magazine’s Daily Intel asks why Alec Baldwin is alluding to 9/11 conspiracy theories on Twitter:
The actor and potential mayoral hopeful had a late Twitter session overnight, as he’s been known to do, in which he answered questions from followers. At the end, he went on a particularly uncomfortable tangent. “Do you think Bin Laden was behind 9-11?” he wrote, followed by two messages about the counter-terrorist exercise Amalgam Virgo, a favorite talking point of the truther movement. When Baldwin was asked if it was “a little late to make that accusation” by a follower, he replied, “what ‘accusation?’” and concluded: “9-11 …….. what have we learned?”
For one, we’ve learned that people are not generally thrilled when September 11 is invoked with doubt as to its perpetrators, whether it’s a joke or not. Baldwin, who’s hosting a public forum next month about 9/11, is a noted provocateur and a master with the press, so it’s possible that he’s poking fun at the truther…
The CIA And NYPD Join Forces To Violate Your Civil Rights
Huffington Post’s Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman reveal the dubious activities that the NYPD has been engaging in, with CIA help, in the never-ending “war on terror”:
In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.
The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.
From that apartment, about an hour outside the department’s jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.
Since…
Using A 30-Year-Old Computer For Today’s Functions
In PCWorld, Benj Edwards explains how he booted up a dusty 1981 IBM 5150 and attempted to perform typical 21st century computing duties on it. The 5150 fared pretty well at most essential tasks, including lolcat browsing (below left) and Twitter (below right). The lesson being, perhaps, that we should try to do more with less? And that today’s consumer-market computers can’t hold a candle to classic models in regards to appearance and style. The old ones even have ports for hooking up cassette tape players:
Despite the malfunctioning RAM, the machine seemed to work well. The 5150 contains, as the Apple II did, a full version of BASIC in ROM that loads right up if you don’t boot from a disk.
Targeted mostly at computers without floppy drives (the lowest-priced 5150 sold with 16KB of RAM and no drives), this version of BASIC could save programs only to cassette tapes.
…
Cell Phones Could Soon Be Powered By Walking
Photo: csaila (CC)
Katia Moskvitch reports for BBC:
Taking a stroll may soon be enough to re-charge your mobile phone, after US researchers developed a way to generate electricity from human motion.
Placed in a shoe, the device captures the energy of moving micro droplets and converts it into electrical current.
Kinetic charging is already used in some low power devices such as watches and sensors.
The University of Wisconsin team published its study in the journal Nature Communications.
“Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines,” said Professor Tom Krupenkin from the university’s mechanical engineering department.
“While sprinting, a person can produce as much as a kilowatt of power.”
That, according to the scientists, is more than enough to power a standard mobile phone.
[Continues at BBC News]
Mass Fainting Epidemics Strike Cambodian Factories
A subtle form of protest? A mysterious ailment? Workers keep spontaneously fainting en masse at Cambodian clothing factories (where, if you were wondering, they are paid 30 cents an hour to sew clothing for global brands). The Phnom Penh Post reports:
Another mass fainting incident struck a garment factory yesterday, this time in the provincial capital of Kampong Chhnang where more than 100 workers at M&V factory collapsed, company and union representatives said yesterday. Staff began falling to the factory floor at about 9:00am. A factory supplying sportswear giant Puma was hit by fainting twice this year: at the end of last month and in April.
“We don’t know why they fainted.” Company representative Un Chhan Teak said there was no connection between the mass fainting and working conditions, and that the fainting was a result of shock. After one or two women collapsed, the others panicked and followed suit, he explained.
Union leaders have…
U.S. Has Provided $360 Million To Taliban To Fight U.S.
Granted, Afghanistan is very corrupt, and $360 million that flowed to criminals and the Taliban is a mere one percent out of the total reconstruction contracts reviewed. Also, consider this a marked improvement from our 1980s policy of giving billions of dollars to Afghanistan’s jihadist forces on purpose. Via Washington Post:
After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals, and power brokers with ties to both. The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan.
Number Of Species On Earth Estimated At 8.7 Million
Ever wonder how many species are sharing this Earth? Apparently it’s 8.7 million, give or take a few. This takes into account the few thousand plant or marine species we haven’t discovered yet or documented. Via Physorg:
That is a new, estimated total number of species on Earth — the most precise calculation ever offered — with 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million (about 25 percent of the total) dwelling in the ocean depths.
Announced today by Census of Marine Life scientists, the figure is based on an innovative, validated analytical technique that dramatically narrows the range of previous estimates. Until now, the number of species on Earth was said to fall somewhere between 3 million and 100 million.
Furthermore, the study, published today by PLoS Biology, says a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and…
Symbolic? Washington Monument Cracks in Quake
Jennifer Epstein writes in the Politico:
The earthquake didn’t cause widespread damages or injuries, but it did put a crack in the Washington Monument. After unconfirmed reports suggested the monument was tilting, park officials said Tuesday night that the 550-foot obelisk suffered a crack in the 5.8-magnitude rumble centered in Mineral, Va., near Charlottesville.
Inspections conducted by helicopter found a crack “at the very, very top” of the monument, park service spokesman Bill Line told The Washington Post, and the monument and plaza surrounding the structure will be closed indefinitely as it is examined.
Though it suffered damage, the monument isn’t leaning, the Park Service said. The Park Service has also temporarily closed the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial pending further inspection, while other landmarks — including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial set to be officially unveiled this weekend — remain open.
Dirty Girls Ministries’ Crusade Against Female Masturbation
Blaire Briody, from Bust, reports on this fight against evil for Utne Reader:
In a small, plainly decorated room in Lenexa, Kansas, 26-year-old Crystal Renaud logs on to a free video-chat site. She sits at her desk and peers over her black-rimmed glasses, which reflect the dull blue glare of the computer monitor. Meanwhile, in homes scattered around the United States, five other women are staring into their webcams as well. As their faces pop up around Renaud on all their screens, they begin the 6th week of a 12-week pornography addiction recovery group for women called No Stones.
“Does anyone want to share a story where they felt they had some sort of personality disorder? Or something related?” Renaud asks, before her voice temporarily cuts out and the screen freezes. The group is having technical issues tonight. “For me, I found myself really clinging to certain personality types, those opposite of…
Algorithms Control The World
A graphical expression on Euclid's algorithm using example with 1599 and 650. Source: Swfung8 (CC)
Jane Wakefield explains for BBC News:
If you were expecting some kind warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.
There will be no soothing HAL 9000-type voice informing us that our human services are now surplus to requirements.
In reality, our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.
Their weapon of choice – the algorithm.
Behind every smart web service is some even smarter web code. From the web retailers – calculating what books and films we might be interested in, to Facebook’s friend finding and image tagging services, to the search engines that guide us around the net.
It is these invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world.
At last month’s TEDGlobal conference, algorithm expert Kevin…
NY Vintner Produces 9/11 Memorial Wines
How will you commemorate September 11 this year? You could buy 9/11 wine for $9.11 or a bottle of 9/11 Memorial wine. Each bottle bought is a donation towards supporting families and organizations still recovering from the 9/11 attacks. Via NY Daily News:
Stomach Bacteria Influences Your Mood And Behavior
These little guys may be doing the thinking for you. Science Daily reports:
For the first time, researchers have conclusive evidence that bacteria residing in the gut influence brain chemistry and behavior.
The findings are important because several common types of gastrointestinal disease, including irritable bowel syndrome, are frequently associated with anxiety or depression. In addition there has been speculation that some psychiatric disorders, such as late onset autism, may be associated with an abnormal bacterial content in the gut.
For each person, the gut is home to about 1,000 trillion vital bacteria with which we live in harmony. Any disruption can result in life-threatening conditions, such as antibiotic-induced colitis.
Working with healthy adult mice, the researchers showed that disrupting the normal bacterial content of the gut with antibiotics produced changes in behavior; the mice became less cautious or anxious. This change was accompanied by an increase in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which has been…
Experimental Animation Pioneer Robert Breer Dies
His style was followed by everyone from Monty Python to MTV, but for sheer optical pleasure, Robert Breer’s short avant-garde animations can’t be beaten. The New York Times eulogizes:
Robert Breer, an animator whose use of novel techniques opened up a new language for film, died on Aug. 11 at his home in Tucson. He was 84. Mr. Breer, a painter by training, early on saw the potential for breaking with the narrative sequences and anthropomorphic forms that defined the medium [of animation].
Viewers were bombarded with wiggling lines, letters, abstract shapes and live-action images that jumped and flashed, zoomed and receded. “He was a seminal figure in the new American cinema and the American avant-garde beginning in the 1950s and continuing right up to the present,” said Andrew Lampert of the Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan.
The Infinite Jest Eschaton Game Video
For all the David Foster Wallace fans out there, a preview of what the Infinite Jest movie may look like comes in the form of a music video by The Decemberists. The book’s movie rights have been acquired by Michael Schur, who directed the video for the band’s “Calamity Song,” incorporating the game “Eschaton” described by Foster Wallace:
A Continent Made Of Plastics
Taken from a 1940 issue of Fortune, a rendering of a map of an imaginary future continent, ‘Synthetica’, composed of synthetic materials and plastic debris. This is our magical future. Via Strange Maps:
“On this broad but synthetic continent of plastics, the countries march right out of the natural world – that wild area of firs and rubber plantations, upper left – into the illimitable world of the molecule. It’s a world boxed only by the cardinal points of the chemical compass – carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen. Rayon is a plastic island off the Cellulose coast, with a glittering night life.”
Norway Wants Ship Back 80 Years After Sinking In Canadian Arctic
Photo: Ansgar Walk (CC)
Via Discovery News:
Eighty years after it sank in the Canadian Arctic, explorer Roald Amundsen’s three-mast ship Maud may once again sail across the Atlantic to become the centerpiece of a new museum in Norway.
Canada, however, must still agree to the repatriation plan hatched by Norwegian investors, amid strong opposition from locals in the Canadian territory of Nunavut who want the ship to stay for tourists to admire from shore.
The wreck now sits at the bottom of Cambridge Bay in Nunavut, but its hulk is partly visible above the frigid waters that preserved it for decades.
“The incredibly strong-built oak ship has been helped by the Arctic cold and clean water to be kept in a reasonably good shape,” said Jan Wanggaard, a Norwegian who recently visited the wreck to sort out technical problems with raising the ship as well as to survey the views from locals and officials.
[Continues…
