Butler Affair
[I tihnk I wrote in yesterday’s post that Wolfowitz was going to the IMF, I meant to write World Bank.]
RECALLING THE THOMAS BUTLER AFFAIR
Thomas C. Butler is the distinguished expert on infectious diseases
who was aggressively prosecuted by the government and convicted for
improperly shipping plague samples and for contract violations.
Credited with helping to save literally millions of lives through
his medical research, Butler is now serving a two year jail term.
The Butler case should be studied in government sponsored public
workshops in order to "illustrate how rules and norms have been
changed," Gansler and Lucyshyn suggest in their new University of
Maryland study (p. 42).
But many scientists and other observers reject the idea that the
Butler case constitutes a new norm. Rather, they say, it is a
miscarriage of justice that should be repudiated.
In an open letter, Butler's supporters argue that "Incarcerating
Dr. Butler has and will continue to adversely impact the national
security."
"Knowing that even a technical violation or disputing a university's
claim to funds can result in criminal charges, [scientists] will
decline to work on research critical to national security, such as
plague or anthrax."
"One author of this letter has already destroyed all plague samples
held in his lab for exactly this reason."
The letter calls for new efforts to free Butler on appeal. See a
copy here:
“>http://www.fas.org/butler/letter0305.pdf
SPACE STATION TANGLED UP IN IRAN NONPROLIFERATION ACT
The Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, intended in part to curb the
transfer of sensitive technologies from Russia to Iran, is now
poised to jeopardize U.S.-Russian cooperation on the International
Space Station.
The 2000 statute has the "potential to stop the space-station program
dead in its tracks," said David Goldston of the House Science
Committee in an interview with the Economist, which reported the
story in its March 12 issue.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service provides
background on the Act and its largely unintended impact on the
International Space Station.
See "The Iran Nonproliferation Act and the International Space
Station: Issues and Options," March 2, here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/space/RS22072.pdf
SIHANOUK, KING OF BLOGS
His Peculiar Majesty Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia has joined the
blogosphere, opining regularly on current events on his own web
site.
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the Central
Intelligence Agency "first observed the blog in late February...,"
according to a FBIS report.
"Since then it has evolved into a daily report on a range of current
issues, including some with political content. So far, most of the
postings appear without comment while others contain subtle wording,
or use question and exclamation marks, to convey Sihanouk's views--
frequently as veiled tangents-- on given issues."
See "Sihanouk Launches 'News From Cambodia' Blog," FBIS Report, March
10, which gives several examples of the King's contributions:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/03/sihanouk.html
The blog itself, which is mostly in French, may be found here (see
"Royal Messages 2005"):
http://www.norodomsihanouk.info/
A build-up of stress on faults in Sumatra following the Indonesian earthquake is likely to trigger another large quake and perhaps a tsunami.
That is the claim made in Nature by a team from the University of Ulster, UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4354217.stm
Lawyers for the family of an airman who died following a nerve gas test say they are to meet with a government legal team to discuss compensation.
Ronald Maddison, from County Durham, died in 1953 after being exposed to sarin at Porton Down in Wiltshire.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4357561.stm
ZEUS uses a pair of lasers to sizzle its targets, according to Sparta, Inc., the vehicle's maker. A joystick-controlled green Nd:YAG laser is used to designate the target. One it's locked, an invisible high-power Nd:YAG laser swerves around, to heat the sucker up
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001437.html
Tor Anderson built a flying lawnmower from instructions and drawings he received from the United States.
Anderson said he worked on the contraption for two weeks before its maiden flight at Haugesund Airport.
The lawnmower took off and circled before landing.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/4291480/detail.html
James Allan Donalson, 59, acknowledged removing his mother's pacemaker after she died in January, saying he wanted to keep it as part of long-running a dispute with a medical supplier.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-03-17T142901Z_01_N16563378_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-PACEMAKER-DC.XML
The European Commission has rejected Microsoft's proposed server interoperability licence, saying that it contained a number of serious flaws including unjustifiably high royalty fees and the exclusion of open source vendors.
A spokesman for the antitrust commissioner told ZDNet UK on Friday that after consulting the industry the EC has decided the licence is unsatisfactory. If Microsoft is unable to resolve these issues it could be fined very heavily by the Commission.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39191837,00.htm
The potential for devastating tsunamis in the northern Caribbean is high, say marine scientists, based on their analysis of historical data since the arrival of Columbus.
Several natural phenomena could trigger giant tsunamis, they say, with effects felt in the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and along the east and Gulf coasts of the United States.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tectonics-05zi.html
His Duke laboratory stumbled onto few-walled nanotubes during a failed attempt to make single-walled carbon nanotubes. When the researchers tried growing the single-walled variety in a heated glass tube within a stream of alcohol and hydrogen under the influence of metal catalysts, they grew few-walled nanotubes instead.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-05za.html
[I will tell you what I think about Sirius and Xm these satellite radio companies. I think they are a good buy for stocks, particularly the smaller one, which is Sirius I believe.
These two companies are making this market of basically non-FCC regulated satellite radio broadcasting.
So what is going to happen in a few years is that one of the media heavy weights is going to see what they are doing and want to get in on it.
So what will happen is that either they will try to buy their way into the market, which will probably mean trying to snap up Sirius or else they will announce they are starting a new service from scratch.
If that happens there will be a “Defensive” merger between XM and Sirius, or else XM will try to buy out Sirius in order to compete with the new giant on the block.
Either way I think Sirius stock is bound to go up.]
"Sirius is already the 'de facto' standard for satellite radio content in the boating industry, and we intend to extend this market position to include a wide array of marine specific services," said Larry Pesce, Senior Vice President of Sirius Services.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/weather-05m.html
Here is the bad news: the last eruption occurred about 700,000 years ago - and the two before that likewise were separated by 700,000 years.
"The current thinking has not changed for several years," said John Valley, professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There has historically been a clear recurrence interval at the Yellowstone hotspot."
It is not unreasonable to think another gigantic eruption may happen within the next 100,000 years, and perhaps sooner, he said.
"That's the blink of an eye geologically, but it's not going affect anyone's decision to buy a house," Valley told UPI's Blue Planet.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tectonics-05zh.html
[The solar sail is kind of an elegant design. They were talking seriously about trying them out like 15 years ago, so I am kind of disappointed to see them taking this long to actually get around to it. But on the other hand at least they are getting around to it.
I see this article doesn’t say what they are.
Basically the idea is like a wind sail, except in space. What they want to do is make a sail out of very light weight reflective material and put it up in outer space. Then what happens is that photons from the Sun hit the sail. Since photons have mass, very small mass, when they hit the sail they impart some momentum to the sail via the “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” thing. The force of each hit is very small, but since ther eis essentially no resistance in outer space the accumulated momentum from billions or trillions of little photon hits against the sail supposedly can make it go pretty fast.
The beauty of the system is that you don’t have to carry any fuel, as long as oyu have aline of sight to the Sun you are all set. So it is just like real sailing ships.
There is also a souped up version of the same system where someone shoots a laser at the sail. This is the same as the Sun hitting it only more concentrated and more energy, so it can go faster or accelerate more qiuckly.]
A solar-sail spacecraft is undergoing pre-flight testing, Russian media reported Thursday.
The unmanned spacecraft with eight triangular sail blades, each 16.5 yards long, is to be launched in April aboard a Volna rocket.
The launch will occur from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea, Lidia Avdeeva, spokeswoman for the Lavochkin production and science association, told the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency.
Scientists will study the possibility of using a solar sail as a traction system and as a way to control the spacecraft during its orbit flight, she said.
"Technical solutions used in the probe can be a basis for future interplanetary expeditions," she said
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/solarsails-05b.html
[Legal or illegal, you better be prepared to see them go whizzing by your bedroom window.]
Ukraine has sold nuclear-capable cruise missiles to both China and Iran, the prosecutor-general's office said Friday, but stressed that the deals were illegal and under criminal investigation.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050319020208.leyzw42g.html
[I wonder what effect abdominal surgery has on this.]
The gut's brain and the head's brain act the same way when they are deprived of input from the outside world. Dr. Wingate said. During sleep, the head's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave sleep punctuated by periods of rapid eye movement sleep in which dreams occur. During the night, when it has no food, the gut's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave muscle contractions punctuated by short bursts of rapid muscle movements, Dr. Wingate said.
The two brains may influence each other while in this state. Dr. Wingate said. Patients with bowel problems have been shown to have abnormal REM sleep. This finding is not inconsistent with the folk wisdom that indigestion can produce nightmare.
As light is shed on the circuitry between the two brains, researchers are beginning to understand why people act and feel the way they do. When the central brain encounters a frightening situation, it releases stress hormones that prepare the body to fight or flee. Dr. Gershon said. The stomach contains many sensory nerves that are stimulated by this chemical surge - hence the "butterflies". On the battlefield, the higher brain tells the gut brain to shut down. Dr. Gershon said. "A frightened, running animal does not stop to defecate", he said.
...
The "brain in the gut" takes the form of two networks of neural connections in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, called the myenteric plexus and the subrnucosal plexus. The nerves are highly interconnected and have direct influence on things like the speed of digestion, the movement and secretions of the finger-like mucosa that line the intestines and the contractions of the different kinds of muscle in the gut wall
http://nlp-plus.com/members/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=61
[This is true. But it has been going on for a while. I remember way back when the President of China was at Harvard. I went up there to protest him as the top guy in the oppresive Communist Chinese regime they have over there.
Well you ould not have known you were in America. He brought the whole Red Chinese clamp down system along with him, or so I thought at the time. Actually it turned out it ws the Red American clamp down system, but it’s really all the same system.
There was a little protest zone far far away from where Jiang Zemin was. The pro-Red China “protesters” had been brought in from who knows where on chartered busses with little special banners printed up just for the day. All the pro-China people had pre-printed banners expressing support for the Chinese Communist Party and for China and bla bla bla.
And also, despite the fact that there were no signs or anything, it developed that you could not even walk down the public sidewalks anywhere in the vicinity of where the President of China was if you didn’t have a special little plastic badge they had printed up for the authorized guests and well-wishers and whoever else.
Later on, when he went into Boston proper, I had on a t-shirt I bought form someone that said something like “Leave Taiwan alone”. The Boston police stopped me on a sidewalk like a block away form the hotel Jiang was in and told me I couldn’t walk down the public sidewalk, which was not even near where the persident of China was, because I had on a t-shirt that could be perceived as anti-China.
I think that was a pioneering day leading up to what GWB practices today.
Yes here in America our our president behaves like the visiting head of state of a Communist dictatorship.]
Anyone who still considers this the cradle of freedom might try standing within sight of George W. Bush with a critical placard, as one South Carolina man did. Because he refused to be restricted to the shrinking “free-speech” zones defined by Bush’s goon squads, that protester will probably spend six months in prison when all his appeals run out. There was a time when the entire breadth and depth of the United States consisted of a free-speech zone, where citizens had the right to criticize any of their leaders face-to-face, but that time has evidently passed. Now, the crime of offering an unpopular opinion to a Republican president elicits about the same amount of jail time as a Republican Party official in New Hampshire recently received for helping to subvert the election that put John Sununu in the U.S. Senate.
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1036
[Will they try to claim this srtain also came from Africa, even though Africa has virtually no access to anti-viral drugs, which would make it extremely difficult for a drug resistant version of AIDS to develop there?]
Doctors in America have identified a new and virulent strain of the Aids virus that is both resistant to drugs and can develop into full-blown Aids in only four months.
A report published in The Lancet today says that a man in his 40s from New York who had unprotected sex with many male partners, showed multi-resistance to the anti-retroviral drugs that have been used successfully in the treatment of HIV.
http://www.rense.com/general63/resist.htm
[Recall the link from yesterday that not one person who has been held at Guantanamo has been convicted or even charged with ANYTHING. Given the number of things that are against the law this is practically unbelievable.
They didn’t litter, or jaywalk, or spit on the sidewalk, or file their taxes incorrectly, or resist arrest, or drive with a burned out headlight, or ANYTHING? NOTHING?
These are the “terrorists” they are torturing?]
"Terrorists brought the war to our soil," he said. "We have taken the war to them. Sometimes this requires what we euphemistically call a kinetic solution on foreign soil. We have to be able to use all the tools at our disposal and understand the consequences of how we use them."
http://www.rense.com/general63/deny.htm
[I have said this before. they say something like 50% or more of children today are overweight, and something like that percentage of the whole population as well. And some part of that is obese, some growing part of that number.
Now suppose you are some enemy of the US in 20 years, and we want to get up an army and go fight you. What are we going to do?
If we refrain from taking in people with diabetes and other weight related problems, that will basically mean a draft of the few healthy people left in the country. Then we will take those healthy people and turn them into human train wrecks via a combination of unsafe vaccines, exposure to our own toxic, radiological weapons, and enemy attack on top of that.
Meanwhile on the homefront you are going to have everyone taking turns giving each other dialysis every dya of the week. The country would grind ot a halt.
Or suppose you do let the obese and the diabetic into the military in the same percentages as their presence in the general population. Then all the enemy has to do is get between a squad and its insulin wagon or mobile dialysis truck and wait. After a few days the squad will drop dead all by itself.
If we don’t do something and not one other bad thing happens, we will still be screwed just by this one thing.]
Obese people are up to 80 times more likely to develop diabetes than those of a healthy weight, a charity warned today.
http://www.rense.com/general63/ob.htm
[It doesn’t say one way or the other here, but I wanted to take this opportunity to just point out again that if they try to claim this based solely on computer evidence, I don’t tihnk thatis right.
I have said before that I don’t think you can convict someone based solely on what is on their computer, because how do you know what is there?
How do viruses get on your computer? Did you deliberately put them there? What about spam or pop-up windows?
One time I typed into a search engine “crime southeast asia”, and I got some hits. One of them looked perfectly reasonable, so I clicked on it.
The next thing I knew the screen was covered with pornographic pop-ups and the main page was some kind of weirdo Vietnamese pron site or something.
Now if I was a Joe Blow computer user, I would have closed the window and never knownt hat a lot of those images I just saw were still sitting around on my computer in the broswer cahce and probably in other places as well.
So what if they sit there for a long time and then someone finds them? Maybe one of them looks like an underage girl or boy. Does that make you a pedophile and a criminal?
If you are in court the proescution cna honestly say that there the files were right ther eon your computer. How could it be more clear cut?
But is it?]
Agents with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force arrested a Christian radio station personality as part of a child pornography investigation.
http://www.wsmv.com/global/story.asp?s=3096477&
Yesterday, however, Italian newspapers carried a “clarification” from Signor Berlusconi’s office stating that after a “long and cordial” conversation with President Bush the Italian leader wished to make it clear that there was “no fixed date” for withdrawal, which could only take place “in consultation with our allies”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1530313,00.html
[You can sue gun makers for making guns that can kill people. You can sue tobacco companies for making cigarrettes that kill people. You can even sue McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on yourself.
Whys houldn’t you be able to sue Caterpillar for knowingly selling bulldozers to Israel which uses them as machines of war if your daughter is killed by one of them?
She’s as dead as she would be if she had been shot or died of lung cancer.]
Bulldozers don't kill people. People do.
Such thinking is why a federal lawsuit filed this week by the family of Rachel Corrie against a bulldozer manufacturer misses the mark.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/216564_robert18.html
[This is the Republican wonder boy. Rally round your man. rally round his cover-up of Clinton’s crooked pardon of Marc Rich.]
The Bush administration blacked out almost all the information in hundreds of documents before releasing them to a conservative organization looking into President Clinton (news - web sites)'s controversial pardons four years ago on his last day in office.
The only items not deleted from the material are the names of the person who wrote the document and the person it was sent to.
The government accountability group Judicial Watch said Friday that it received the Justice Department (news - web sites) documents following a court battle that featured a Republican administration fighting to keep secret documents generated by its Democratic predecessor.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050318/ap_on_go_pr_wh/clinton_pardons
[I think people don’t take me seriously when I tell them I want to pay my car off before gas hits $5/gallon. Believe it.]
Malibu gas station already charging more than $3 a gallon
http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=3095350&ClientType=Printable
[What right does the government have to control your actions when you are not in the US? There is nothing in the Constitution about you having to wear a government leash with you wherever in the world you go.]
Iceland's parliament said on Friday it would grant fugitive chess master Bobby Fischer citizenship to allow him to travel to Reykjavik from Japan, where he is in detention fighting a U.S. deportation order.
The 62-year-old American is wanted in the United States for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there in 1992. He was arrested in Japan last July for traveling on an invalid U.S. passport.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050318/people_nm/iceland_fischer_dc
[So that is the solution to the previous post about the Pentagon post office.
I ask again, why is a real live, real bio-terrorism attack accorded such low priority? Does anyone even remember it by now?
And what about the ricin attack.
This whole so-called “War on Terror” is a sham. It’s all “Osama bin Who-din?” and “Anthrax? Ricin? Is that some kind of heavy metal summer tour?” and “Look out for Iraq! Look out for Iran! Look out for Syria!”]
Nearly three and half years after deadly anthrax powder killed five, sickened 17 and terrorized an already stunned nation following the Sept. 11 hijackings, federal investigators remain stumped.
The initial positive tests Monday showing anthrax in postal facilities for the Pentagon brought back memories of the chaos of October 2001 and the lingering mystery of who sent anthrax in letters to senators in Washington, a tabloid newspaper in Florida and news anchors in New York.
Although the final tests turned out to be negative, concerns that terrorists could spray anthrax spores to kill thousands - a scenario posed in a confidential report made public yesterday - adds urgency to the solving of the 2001 anthrax attacks.
...
The FBI still has not solved the question of who sent another potentially deadly powder, ricin, to the office of Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in February 2004.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usinv174178549mar17,0,1514363.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines
[I don’t agree with this so-called “fat liberation” movement. I read this article some woman was complaining that her doctor had “labelled” her “morbidly obese” and she wasn’t going to stand still for that kind of pejorative remark.
But mordbidly obese is a diagnosis, it’s not just some kind of insult.
Her is the Merriam-Webster definition of morbid:
“One entry found for morbid.
Main Entry: mor·bid
Pronunciation: 'mor-b&d
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin morbidus diseased, from morbus disease
1 a : of, relating to, or characteristic of disease b : affected with or induced by disease [a morbid condition] c : productive of disease [morbid substances]”
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=morbid
Morbid means disease. If you are morbidly obese it means your weight has become like a disease.
This is true, I see it at the hospital all the time. Someone comes in who is grossly overweight and they what should be a minor procedure, but instead they wind up almost dropping dead. It is because when you are morbidly obese you are already sick, so anything else that comes along is on top of that. So you can come in to get your tonsils out and next thing you know you are on a vent in the intensive care unit.
I tihnk fat pride is probably worse than stupid pride. It’s dangerous. Don’t be proud of having a dangerous and avoidable disease.]
Nimoy, who played Spock in the hit sci-fi series said: "The women are interested in fat liberation. Their self-esteem is strong.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1322931.html?menu=news.quirkies
Maybe they should investigate ALL federal airport screeners. Is there anything at all in place to prevent them from stealing from passengers?]
A Transportation Security Administration official said yesterday that federal agencies are investigating whether four federal airport screeners stole money and valuables from luggage at Honolulu International Airport over a two-year period.
The TSA screeners have been suspended indefinitely, said Nico Melendez, a TSA spokesman in San Francisco. Melendez declined to comment further about the case, referring questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Mar/17/ln/ln03p.html
[Don’t any of you fools out there think this is a good idea or some kind of sign of the “End Times”. Beware all ye who wait for the Messiah, for he has come already. If you can’t be bothered to follow him now, you shouldn’t be in a hurry to find out what he is going to do for you the next time he passes through town. You won’t like it.]
Jewish extremists are plotting to take over the Temple Mount in an attempt to thwart Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, an Israeli TV station has reported.
Channel Two showed a video of the plotters, including rabbis and far-right extremists, in a meeting to discuss ways to occupy the holy site.
The Temple Mount is known as the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims.
The meeting took place at a secret location in the Old City of Jerusalem, the TV station said.
It involved representatives from 30 different groups.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4357719.stm
Israeli police believe many suspects in a plot to steal 229 million pounds from the London branch of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui are in Israel.
The burglary attempt via the Internet took place in October 2004, and was uncovered by the British police's technology crimes unit.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/553775.html
RECALLING THE THOMAS BUTLER AFFAIR
Thomas C. Butler is the distinguished expert on infectious diseases
who was aggressively prosecuted by the government and convicted for
improperly shipping plague samples and for contract violations.
Credited with helping to save literally millions of lives through
his medical research, Butler is now serving a two year jail term.
The Butler case should be studied in government sponsored public
workshops in order to "illustrate how rules and norms have been
changed," Gansler and Lucyshyn suggest in their new University of
Maryland study (p. 42).
But many scientists and other observers reject the idea that the
Butler case constitutes a new norm. Rather, they say, it is a
miscarriage of justice that should be repudiated.
In an open letter, Butler's supporters argue that "Incarcerating
Dr. Butler has and will continue to adversely impact the national
security."
"Knowing that even a technical violation or disputing a university's
claim to funds can result in criminal charges, [scientists] will
decline to work on research critical to national security, such as
plague or anthrax."
"One author of this letter has already destroyed all plague samples
held in his lab for exactly this reason."
The letter calls for new efforts to free Butler on appeal. See a
copy here:
“>http://www.fas.org/butler/letter0305.pdf
SPACE STATION TANGLED UP IN IRAN NONPROLIFERATION ACT
The Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000, intended in part to curb the
transfer of sensitive technologies from Russia to Iran, is now
poised to jeopardize U.S.-Russian cooperation on the International
Space Station.
The 2000 statute has the "potential to stop the space-station program
dead in its tracks," said David Goldston of the House Science
Committee in an interview with the Economist, which reported the
story in its March 12 issue.
A new report from the Congressional Research Service provides
background on the Act and its largely unintended impact on the
International Space Station.
See "The Iran Nonproliferation Act and the International Space
Station: Issues and Options," March 2, here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/space/RS22072.pdf
SIHANOUK, KING OF BLOGS
His Peculiar Majesty Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia has joined the
blogosphere, opining regularly on current events on his own web
site.
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) of the Central
Intelligence Agency "first observed the blog in late February...,"
according to a FBIS report.
"Since then it has evolved into a daily report on a range of current
issues, including some with political content. So far, most of the
postings appear without comment while others contain subtle wording,
or use question and exclamation marks, to convey Sihanouk's views--
frequently as veiled tangents-- on given issues."
See "Sihanouk Launches 'News From Cambodia' Blog," FBIS Report, March
10, which gives several examples of the King's contributions:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/03/sihanouk.html
The blog itself, which is mostly in French, may be found here (see
"Royal Messages 2005"):
http://www.norodomsihanouk.info/
A build-up of stress on faults in Sumatra following the Indonesian earthquake is likely to trigger another large quake and perhaps a tsunami.
That is the claim made in Nature by a team from the University of Ulster, UK.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4354217.stm
Lawyers for the family of an airman who died following a nerve gas test say they are to meet with a government legal team to discuss compensation.
Ronald Maddison, from County Durham, died in 1953 after being exposed to sarin at Porton Down in Wiltshire.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4357561.stm
ZEUS uses a pair of lasers to sizzle its targets, according to Sparta, Inc., the vehicle's maker. A joystick-controlled green Nd:YAG laser is used to designate the target. One it's locked, an invisible high-power Nd:YAG laser swerves around, to heat the sucker up
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001437.html
Tor Anderson built a flying lawnmower from instructions and drawings he received from the United States.
Anderson said he worked on the contraption for two weeks before its maiden flight at Haugesund Airport.
The lawnmower took off and circled before landing.
http://www.nbc4.com/news/4291480/detail.html
James Allan Donalson, 59, acknowledged removing his mother's pacemaker after she died in January, saying he wanted to keep it as part of long-running a dispute with a medical supplier.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=2005-03-17T142901Z_01_N16563378_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-PACEMAKER-DC.XML
The European Commission has rejected Microsoft's proposed server interoperability licence, saying that it contained a number of serious flaws including unjustifiably high royalty fees and the exclusion of open source vendors.
A spokesman for the antitrust commissioner told ZDNet UK on Friday that after consulting the industry the EC has decided the licence is unsatisfactory. If Microsoft is unable to resolve these issues it could be fined very heavily by the Commission.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39191837,00.htm
The potential for devastating tsunamis in the northern Caribbean is high, say marine scientists, based on their analysis of historical data since the arrival of Columbus.
Several natural phenomena could trigger giant tsunamis, they say, with effects felt in the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles and along the east and Gulf coasts of the United States.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tectonics-05zi.html
His Duke laboratory stumbled onto few-walled nanotubes during a failed attempt to make single-walled carbon nanotubes. When the researchers tried growing the single-walled variety in a heated glass tube within a stream of alcohol and hydrogen under the influence of metal catalysts, they grew few-walled nanotubes instead.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-05za.html
[I will tell you what I think about Sirius and Xm these satellite radio companies. I think they are a good buy for stocks, particularly the smaller one, which is Sirius I believe.
These two companies are making this market of basically non-FCC regulated satellite radio broadcasting.
So what is going to happen in a few years is that one of the media heavy weights is going to see what they are doing and want to get in on it.
So what will happen is that either they will try to buy their way into the market, which will probably mean trying to snap up Sirius or else they will announce they are starting a new service from scratch.
If that happens there will be a “Defensive” merger between XM and Sirius, or else XM will try to buy out Sirius in order to compete with the new giant on the block.
Either way I think Sirius stock is bound to go up.]
"Sirius is already the 'de facto' standard for satellite radio content in the boating industry, and we intend to extend this market position to include a wide array of marine specific services," said Larry Pesce, Senior Vice President of Sirius Services.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/weather-05m.html
Here is the bad news: the last eruption occurred about 700,000 years ago - and the two before that likewise were separated by 700,000 years.
"The current thinking has not changed for several years," said John Valley, professor of geology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There has historically been a clear recurrence interval at the Yellowstone hotspot."
It is not unreasonable to think another gigantic eruption may happen within the next 100,000 years, and perhaps sooner, he said.
"That's the blink of an eye geologically, but it's not going affect anyone's decision to buy a house," Valley told UPI's Blue Planet.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/tectonics-05zh.html
[The solar sail is kind of an elegant design. They were talking seriously about trying them out like 15 years ago, so I am kind of disappointed to see them taking this long to actually get around to it. But on the other hand at least they are getting around to it.
I see this article doesn’t say what they are.
Basically the idea is like a wind sail, except in space. What they want to do is make a sail out of very light weight reflective material and put it up in outer space. Then what happens is that photons from the Sun hit the sail. Since photons have mass, very small mass, when they hit the sail they impart some momentum to the sail via the “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” thing. The force of each hit is very small, but since ther eis essentially no resistance in outer space the accumulated momentum from billions or trillions of little photon hits against the sail supposedly can make it go pretty fast.
The beauty of the system is that you don’t have to carry any fuel, as long as oyu have aline of sight to the Sun you are all set. So it is just like real sailing ships.
There is also a souped up version of the same system where someone shoots a laser at the sail. This is the same as the Sun hitting it only more concentrated and more energy, so it can go faster or accelerate more qiuckly.]
A solar-sail spacecraft is undergoing pre-flight testing, Russian media reported Thursday.
The unmanned spacecraft with eight triangular sail blades, each 16.5 yards long, is to be launched in April aboard a Volna rocket.
The launch will occur from a Russian submarine in the Barents Sea, Lidia Avdeeva, spokeswoman for the Lavochkin production and science association, told the Russian ITAR-TASS news agency.
Scientists will study the possibility of using a solar sail as a traction system and as a way to control the spacecraft during its orbit flight, she said.
"Technical solutions used in the probe can be a basis for future interplanetary expeditions," she said
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/solarsails-05b.html
[Legal or illegal, you better be prepared to see them go whizzing by your bedroom window.]
Ukraine has sold nuclear-capable cruise missiles to both China and Iran, the prosecutor-general's office said Friday, but stressed that the deals were illegal and under criminal investigation.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050319020208.leyzw42g.html
[I wonder what effect abdominal surgery has on this.]
The gut's brain and the head's brain act the same way when they are deprived of input from the outside world. Dr. Wingate said. During sleep, the head's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave sleep punctuated by periods of rapid eye movement sleep in which dreams occur. During the night, when it has no food, the gut's brain produces 90-minute cycles of slow wave muscle contractions punctuated by short bursts of rapid muscle movements, Dr. Wingate said.
The two brains may influence each other while in this state. Dr. Wingate said. Patients with bowel problems have been shown to have abnormal REM sleep. This finding is not inconsistent with the folk wisdom that indigestion can produce nightmare.
As light is shed on the circuitry between the two brains, researchers are beginning to understand why people act and feel the way they do. When the central brain encounters a frightening situation, it releases stress hormones that prepare the body to fight or flee. Dr. Gershon said. The stomach contains many sensory nerves that are stimulated by this chemical surge - hence the "butterflies". On the battlefield, the higher brain tells the gut brain to shut down. Dr. Gershon said. "A frightened, running animal does not stop to defecate", he said.
...
The "brain in the gut" takes the form of two networks of neural connections in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract, called the myenteric plexus and the subrnucosal plexus. The nerves are highly interconnected and have direct influence on things like the speed of digestion, the movement and secretions of the finger-like mucosa that line the intestines and the contractions of the different kinds of muscle in the gut wall
http://nlp-plus.com/members/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=61
[This is true. But it has been going on for a while. I remember way back when the President of China was at Harvard. I went up there to protest him as the top guy in the oppresive Communist Chinese regime they have over there.
Well you ould not have known you were in America. He brought the whole Red Chinese clamp down system along with him, or so I thought at the time. Actually it turned out it ws the Red American clamp down system, but it’s really all the same system.
There was a little protest zone far far away from where Jiang Zemin was. The pro-Red China “protesters” had been brought in from who knows where on chartered busses with little special banners printed up just for the day. All the pro-China people had pre-printed banners expressing support for the Chinese Communist Party and for China and bla bla bla.
And also, despite the fact that there were no signs or anything, it developed that you could not even walk down the public sidewalks anywhere in the vicinity of where the President of China was if you didn’t have a special little plastic badge they had printed up for the authorized guests and well-wishers and whoever else.
Later on, when he went into Boston proper, I had on a t-shirt I bought form someone that said something like “Leave Taiwan alone”. The Boston police stopped me on a sidewalk like a block away form the hotel Jiang was in and told me I couldn’t walk down the public sidewalk, which was not even near where the persident of China was, because I had on a t-shirt that could be perceived as anti-China.
I think that was a pioneering day leading up to what GWB practices today.
Yes here in America our our president behaves like the visiting head of state of a Communist dictatorship.]
Anyone who still considers this the cradle of freedom might try standing within sight of George W. Bush with a critical placard, as one South Carolina man did. Because he refused to be restricted to the shrinking “free-speech” zones defined by Bush’s goon squads, that protester will probably spend six months in prison when all his appeals run out. There was a time when the entire breadth and depth of the United States consisted of a free-speech zone, where citizens had the right to criticize any of their leaders face-to-face, but that time has evidently passed. Now, the crime of offering an unpopular opinion to a Republican president elicits about the same amount of jail time as a Republican Party official in New Hampshire recently received for helping to subvert the election that put John Sununu in the U.S. Senate.
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1036
[Will they try to claim this srtain also came from Africa, even though Africa has virtually no access to anti-viral drugs, which would make it extremely difficult for a drug resistant version of AIDS to develop there?]
Doctors in America have identified a new and virulent strain of the Aids virus that is both resistant to drugs and can develop into full-blown Aids in only four months.
A report published in The Lancet today says that a man in his 40s from New York who had unprotected sex with many male partners, showed multi-resistance to the anti-retroviral drugs that have been used successfully in the treatment of HIV.
http://www.rense.com/general63/resist.htm
[Recall the link from yesterday that not one person who has been held at Guantanamo has been convicted or even charged with ANYTHING. Given the number of things that are against the law this is practically unbelievable.
They didn’t litter, or jaywalk, or spit on the sidewalk, or file their taxes incorrectly, or resist arrest, or drive with a burned out headlight, or ANYTHING? NOTHING?
These are the “terrorists” they are torturing?]
"Terrorists brought the war to our soil," he said. "We have taken the war to them. Sometimes this requires what we euphemistically call a kinetic solution on foreign soil. We have to be able to use all the tools at our disposal and understand the consequences of how we use them."
http://www.rense.com/general63/deny.htm
[I have said this before. they say something like 50% or more of children today are overweight, and something like that percentage of the whole population as well. And some part of that is obese, some growing part of that number.
Now suppose you are some enemy of the US in 20 years, and we want to get up an army and go fight you. What are we going to do?
If we refrain from taking in people with diabetes and other weight related problems, that will basically mean a draft of the few healthy people left in the country. Then we will take those healthy people and turn them into human train wrecks via a combination of unsafe vaccines, exposure to our own toxic, radiological weapons, and enemy attack on top of that.
Meanwhile on the homefront you are going to have everyone taking turns giving each other dialysis every dya of the week. The country would grind ot a halt.
Or suppose you do let the obese and the diabetic into the military in the same percentages as their presence in the general population. Then all the enemy has to do is get between a squad and its insulin wagon or mobile dialysis truck and wait. After a few days the squad will drop dead all by itself.
If we don’t do something and not one other bad thing happens, we will still be screwed just by this one thing.]
Obese people are up to 80 times more likely to develop diabetes than those of a healthy weight, a charity warned today.
http://www.rense.com/general63/ob.htm
[It doesn’t say one way or the other here, but I wanted to take this opportunity to just point out again that if they try to claim this based solely on computer evidence, I don’t tihnk thatis right.
I have said before that I don’t think you can convict someone based solely on what is on their computer, because how do you know what is there?
How do viruses get on your computer? Did you deliberately put them there? What about spam or pop-up windows?
One time I typed into a search engine “crime southeast asia”, and I got some hits. One of them looked perfectly reasonable, so I clicked on it.
The next thing I knew the screen was covered with pornographic pop-ups and the main page was some kind of weirdo Vietnamese pron site or something.
Now if I was a Joe Blow computer user, I would have closed the window and never knownt hat a lot of those images I just saw were still sitting around on my computer in the broswer cahce and probably in other places as well.
So what if they sit there for a long time and then someone finds them? Maybe one of them looks like an underage girl or boy. Does that make you a pedophile and a criminal?
If you are in court the proescution cna honestly say that there the files were right ther eon your computer. How could it be more clear cut?
But is it?]
Agents with the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force arrested a Christian radio station personality as part of a child pornography investigation.
http://www.wsmv.com/global/story.asp?s=3096477&
Yesterday, however, Italian newspapers carried a “clarification” from Signor Berlusconi’s office stating that after a “long and cordial” conversation with President Bush the Italian leader wished to make it clear that there was “no fixed date” for withdrawal, which could only take place “in consultation with our allies”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1530313,00.html
[You can sue gun makers for making guns that can kill people. You can sue tobacco companies for making cigarrettes that kill people. You can even sue McDonalds for spilling hot coffee on yourself.
Whys houldn’t you be able to sue Caterpillar for knowingly selling bulldozers to Israel which uses them as machines of war if your daughter is killed by one of them?
She’s as dead as she would be if she had been shot or died of lung cancer.]
Bulldozers don't kill people. People do.
Such thinking is why a federal lawsuit filed this week by the family of Rachel Corrie against a bulldozer manufacturer misses the mark.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/216564_robert18.html
[This is the Republican wonder boy. Rally round your man. rally round his cover-up of Clinton’s crooked pardon of Marc Rich.]
The Bush administration blacked out almost all the information in hundreds of documents before releasing them to a conservative organization looking into President Clinton (news - web sites)'s controversial pardons four years ago on his last day in office.
The only items not deleted from the material are the names of the person who wrote the document and the person it was sent to.
The government accountability group Judicial Watch said Friday that it received the Justice Department (news - web sites) documents following a court battle that featured a Republican administration fighting to keep secret documents generated by its Democratic predecessor.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050318/ap_on_go_pr_wh/clinton_pardons
[I think people don’t take me seriously when I tell them I want to pay my car off before gas hits $5/gallon. Believe it.]
Malibu gas station already charging more than $3 a gallon
http://www.kesq.com/global/story.asp?s=3095350&ClientType=Printable
[What right does the government have to control your actions when you are not in the US? There is nothing in the Constitution about you having to wear a government leash with you wherever in the world you go.]
Iceland's parliament said on Friday it would grant fugitive chess master Bobby Fischer citizenship to allow him to travel to Reykjavik from Japan, where he is in detention fighting a U.S. deportation order.
The 62-year-old American is wanted in the United States for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia by playing a chess match there in 1992. He was arrested in Japan last July for traveling on an invalid U.S. passport.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050318/people_nm/iceland_fischer_dc
[So that is the solution to the previous post about the Pentagon post office.
I ask again, why is a real live, real bio-terrorism attack accorded such low priority? Does anyone even remember it by now?
And what about the ricin attack.
This whole so-called “War on Terror” is a sham. It’s all “Osama bin Who-din?” and “Anthrax? Ricin? Is that some kind of heavy metal summer tour?” and “Look out for Iraq! Look out for Iran! Look out for Syria!”]
Nearly three and half years after deadly anthrax powder killed five, sickened 17 and terrorized an already stunned nation following the Sept. 11 hijackings, federal investigators remain stumped.
The initial positive tests Monday showing anthrax in postal facilities for the Pentagon brought back memories of the chaos of October 2001 and the lingering mystery of who sent anthrax in letters to senators in Washington, a tabloid newspaper in Florida and news anchors in New York.
Although the final tests turned out to be negative, concerns that terrorists could spray anthrax spores to kill thousands - a scenario posed in a confidential report made public yesterday - adds urgency to the solving of the 2001 anthrax attacks.
...
The FBI still has not solved the question of who sent another potentially deadly powder, ricin, to the office of Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) in February 2004.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usinv174178549mar17,0,1514363.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines
[I don’t agree with this so-called “fat liberation” movement. I read this article some woman was complaining that her doctor had “labelled” her “morbidly obese” and she wasn’t going to stand still for that kind of pejorative remark.
But mordbidly obese is a diagnosis, it’s not just some kind of insult.
Her is the Merriam-Webster definition of morbid:
“One entry found for morbid.
Main Entry: mor·bid
Pronunciation: 'mor-b&d
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin morbidus diseased, from morbus disease
1 a : of, relating to, or characteristic of disease
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=morbid
Morbid means disease. If you are morbidly obese it means your weight has become like a disease.
This is true, I see it at the hospital all the time. Someone comes in who is grossly overweight and they what should be a minor procedure, but instead they wind up almost dropping dead. It is because when you are morbidly obese you are already sick, so anything else that comes along is on top of that. So you can come in to get your tonsils out and next thing you know you are on a vent in the intensive care unit.
I tihnk fat pride is probably worse than stupid pride. It’s dangerous. Don’t be proud of having a dangerous and avoidable disease.]
Nimoy, who played Spock in the hit sci-fi series said: "The women are interested in fat liberation. Their self-esteem is strong.
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1322931.html?menu=news.quirkies
Maybe they should investigate ALL federal airport screeners. Is there anything at all in place to prevent them from stealing from passengers?]
A Transportation Security Administration official said yesterday that federal agencies are investigating whether four federal airport screeners stole money and valuables from luggage at Honolulu International Airport over a two-year period.
The TSA screeners have been suspended indefinitely, said Nico Melendez, a TSA spokesman in San Francisco. Melendez declined to comment further about the case, referring questions to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2005/Mar/17/ln/ln03p.html
[Don’t any of you fools out there think this is a good idea or some kind of sign of the “End Times”. Beware all ye who wait for the Messiah, for he has come already. If you can’t be bothered to follow him now, you shouldn’t be in a hurry to find out what he is going to do for you the next time he passes through town. You won’t like it.]
Jewish extremists are plotting to take over the Temple Mount in an attempt to thwart Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, an Israeli TV station has reported.
Channel Two showed a video of the plotters, including rabbis and far-right extremists, in a meeting to discuss ways to occupy the holy site.
The Temple Mount is known as the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims.
The meeting took place at a secret location in the Old City of Jerusalem, the TV station said.
It involved representatives from 30 different groups.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4357719.stm
Israeli police believe many suspects in a plot to steal 229 million pounds from the London branch of Japanese bank Sumitomo Mitsui are in Israel.
The burglary attempt via the Internet took place in October 2004, and was uncovered by the British police's technology crimes unit.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/553775.html
posted by abu nakba at 3/19/2005 09:41:00 AM
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