Scientific

When Will I Get My Death Ray?

Epileptic Attack
So an attack on Epilepsy patients is being pinned on Anonymous members.

Or people posing as them.

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.

The nonprofit Epilepsy Foundation, which runs the forum, briefly closed the site Sunday to purge the offending messages and to boost security.

"We are seeing people affected," says Ken Lowenberg, senior director of web and print publishing at the Epilepsy Foundation. "It's fortunately only a handful. It's possible that people are just not reporting yet -- people affected by it may not be coming back to the forum so fast."

The incident, possibly the first computer attack to inflict physical harm on the victims, began Saturday, March 22, when attackers used a script to post hundreds of messages embedded with flashing animated gifs.

The attackers turned to a more effective tactic on Sunday, injecting JavaScript into some posts that redirected users' browsers to a page with a more complex image designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics.

RyAnne Fultz, a 33-year-old woman who suffers from pattern-sensitive epilepsy, says she clicked on a forum post with a legitimate-sounding title on Sunday. Her browser window resized to fill her screen, which was then taken over by a pattern of squares rapidly flashing in different colors.

Fultz says she "locked up."

"I don't fall over and convulse, but it hurts," says Fultz, an IT worker in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. "I was on the phone when it happened, and I couldn't move and couldn't speak."

After about 10 seconds, Fultz's 11-year-old son came over and drew her gaze away from the computer, then killed the browser process, she says.

"Everyone who logged on, it affected to some extent, whether by causing headaches or seizures," says Browen Mead, a 24-year-old epilepsy patient in Maine who says she suffered a daylong migraine after examining several of the offending posts. She'd lingered too long on the pages trying to determine who was responsible.

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread -- since deleted -- planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold.

When this Anonymous group started I said there'd be trouble with group discipline. How can you possibly keep people on topic, or avoid copycat groups posing as you, if you have no organizational structure? It's madness! Did they think the Scientologists wouldn't just pose as Anon people?

I don't know if this is the work of actual Anonymous people, posers, or people looking to slander them. It hardly matters at this point. When they set up their little internet conglom, they doomed themselves to precisely this kind of irrelevance, one way or another.

Source: Wired

Truly Epic Fail
Bush's moonbase to Mars plans continue to crash on the hard rocks of reality.

Cosmic rays are so dangerous and so poorly understood that people are unlikely to get to Mars or even back to the moon until better ways are found to protect astronauts, experts said on Monday.

And NASA is not properly funding the right experiments to find out how, the National Research Council committee said.

"One of the big issues is they have really cut funding for biology issues," retired space shuttle astronaut James van Hoften, who chaired the committee, said in a telephone interview.

"It is tough on them when they don't have any new money coming in. They are using old data," he added -- including research done on survivors of the nuclear bombings of Japan during World War Two.

"Given today's knowledge and today's understanding of radiation protection, to put someone out in that type of environment would violate the current requirements that NASA has."

The committee of experts agreed that NASA'S existing radiation safety standards can protect astronauts and they urged the U.S. space agency to keep them in place.

The Earth's bulk, atmosphere and magnetic field protect life from the solar radiation and the cosmic rays that travel through space. Astronauts have just a thin layer of shielding.

Van Hoften knows from personal experience.

"My introduction to space radiation came first-hand as a crew member aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in April 1984. 'What the heck was that?' I blurted out after seeing what looked like a white laser passing quickly through my eyes," van Hoften wrote in the introduction to the report.

"'Oh, that's just cosmic rays,' said Pinky Nelson, my spacewalking partner and space physicist. The thought of extremely high-energy particles originating from a distant cosmic event passing easily through the space shuttle and subsequently through my head made me think that this cannot be all that healthy. The truth of the matter is that it is not."

NOWHERE TO HIDE

The cosmic rays include galactic cosmic radiation or GCR and solar particles.

"You can put on very thick walls and they just won't protect you from that," van Hoften said. "The younger you are the worse it is," he added, because as with many types of radiation, it can take years for the damage to cause disease.

"It might be OK if you just send a bunch of old guys like me," he laughed.

Any mission to Mars using current technology would take three years, van Hoften said. That long in space would subject astronauts to too much radiation .

"It hasn't really gotten the airing that it needs. In the committee we stewed over this for a long time before we said anything," he added.

There is simply no way to shield people with current technology for a trip as long as the one to Mars. They would all end up dead. It's a suicide mission.

The moon of course you can do, because it's a couple days away. It's still a big risk; the wrong solar flare and everyone dies.

But if the only point of going back to the moon is to build a base (deep underground on the mooon to block radiation since the moon has no magnetic field) that will take you to Mars, and you can't go to Mars... what was the point again?

Source: ABC News

Opaque
A new technique has been created to scan insects trapped in opaque amber and create three dimensional scans, then models, of the creatures.

It is like a magic trick - at first there is nothing and then it appears: a tiny insect unseen by any eye for 100 million years.

We are with Paul Tafforeau who is scrolling through images on his computer.

His pictures have been produced by a colossal X-ray machine that can illuminate the insides of small lumps of clouded amber (fossil tree resin).

As he plays with the settings, what starts out as grey nothingness suddenly becomes the unmistakable outline of a "wee beastie".

Who knows? This little creature could once have buzzed a dinosaur. It's certainly the right age.

Tafforeau is a palaeontologist. But whilst others of his profession will be in the dirt with a rock hammer and trowel, you'll find him at the end of one of the most remarkable "cameras" in the world.

The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, produces an intense, high-energy light that can pierce just about any material, revealing its inner structure.

...


"Micro-tomography is based on radiography but instead of a single picture, we are taking pictures during rotation of the sample," explains Dr Tafforeau.

"For a complete rotation, we will take more than 1,000 radiographs - and from all these radiographs, we can reconstruct virtual slices; and after using a 3D processing tool, we 'extract' the specimen from the amber."

...

But here's the really neat part. All that electronic information can be fed to a 3D plastic printer to make a physical model. A bug that in reality is less than a millimetre long and hidden inside a resin block then becomes a 30cm-long facsimile you can hold in your hand.

Instant prehistoric toys!

That is amazingly neat. I love 3D printers. Someday I shall own one, oh yes.

Source: BBC News

Smoke Gene
More promising genomic research.

Three independent studies released Wednesday have identified a tiny variation in the human genome that make some people more vulnerable to lung cancer than others.

While they all finger the same culprit, however, the studies disagree on whether the genetic glitch -- shared by 50 percent of the population -- increases the risk of cancer by itself, or only in people who smoke.

Basically all three studies agree this gene variant makes you much more likely to die of lung cancer, but they disagree as to why.

One suggests that it makes smokers heavier smokers; one suggests that it makes smokers more susceptible to cancer; one suggests that anyone with the disease is more likely to get lung cancer.

Regardless, not a good gene to have.

Source: Raw Story

Eww
Kind of gross.

Fifty rivers in the Philippines have been destroyed because people are using them to dump their rubbish, leaving some ecologically dead, an official said Wednesday.

Of the country's 421 major rivers and 20 large river basins, 50 are "highly degraded because of man's abuse and neglect," Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Joselito Atienza said in a statement.

"History tells us that rivers have played an important role in the country's economic growth. Yet, we have disregarded this and continue to dirty our rivers and lakes by turning them into giant septic tanks and trash bins," he added.

One of the ecologically dead rivers is the Pasig which bisects Manila. The government has been relocating thousands of squatters from its banks, but those who remain "continue to throw their domestic waste into the river," he said.

Atienza said 53 percent of the pollution in Philippine rivers is due to domestic waste.

Oh well, not like anyone needed those rivers.

Geez. I'm not trying to pick on the developing world here, but.. ewww.

Source: Raw Story

Sun-Nami
NASA has captured video of a solar tsunami, which is much like the ones on Earth only far, far more exciting.

In a solar tsunami, a huge explosion near the Sun, such as a coronal mass ejection or flare, causes a pressure pulse to propagate outwards in a circular pattern.

Last year's solar tsunami, which took place on 19 May 2007, lasted for about 35 minutes, reaching peak speeds about 20 minutes after the initial blast.

Co-author David Long, from Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland, commented: "The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal; about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second.

...

Stereo's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) instruments monitor the Sun at four wavelengths, which allowed astronomers to see how the wave moved through the different layers of the solar atmosphere.

"We were able to show for the first time that this wave actually propagates almost all the way from the surface of the Sun to high up in the Sun's atmosphere," said Dr Gallagher.

The researchers even saw the pressure wave bouncing off irregular regions of the Sun’s atmosphere, generating reflections or diffraction patterns - exactly as tsunamis have been observed to do on Earth when they crash against land.

Nice special effects.

Source: BBC News

Tiny?
The smallest black hole known has been found.

NASA scientists have identified the smallest, lightest black hole yet found.


The new lightweight record-holder weighs in at about 3.8 times the mass of our sun and is only 15 miles (24 kilometers) in diameter.


"This black hole is really pushing the limits," said study team leader Nikolai Shaposhnikov of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "For many years astronomers have wanted to know the smallest possible size of a black hole, and this little guy is a big step toward answering that question."

It's almost four times the mass of our sun, but for a Black Hole, it's tiny.

This is why that idiot who wants to block the Large Hadron Collider being turned on is so silly. Black holes have to be utterly huge to survive more than an exceedingly brief time. This is the smallest one ever found in nature. A black hole the size of an atom would be gone almost instantaneously. It's nothing to worry about.

Source: Space.com

Vidiots
I don't know what's with videogame bashing but it really is tiresome.

Kotaku has, first, some excerpts of an angry crank writing in the Times Online.

I hate video games, on or offline. I hate the way they suck real people into fake worlds and hold on to them for decades at a time. I hate being made to feel hateful for saying so, and I hate being told to immerse myself in them before passing judgment, because it feels like being told to immerse myself in smack and teenage pregnancy before passing judgment on them.

First of all, smack and teenage pregnancy?

Smack I can almost see, but how is 'teenage pregnancy' a recreational activity?

Secondly, I seem to recall some crank who thought that it was best to judge activities where possible from experience. I wonder who that was...

In the first two chapters, Mill aims to precisely define what utilitarianism claims — in terms of the general moral principles that it uses to judge concrete actions, and in terms of the sort of evidence that is supposed to be given for those principles. In so doing, he hopes to do away with some common misunderstandings of utilitarianism, as well as defend it against philosophical criticisms, most notably Kant. In the first chapter, Mill distinguishes two broad schools of ethical theory: those whose principles are defended by appeals to intuition and those whose principles are defended by appeals to experience; and he identifies utilitarianism as one of the empirical theories of ethics. In the second chapter, he then formulates a single ethical principle, from which he says all utilitarian ethical principles are derived:

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

Most importantly, it is not the agent’s own greatest happiness that matters, “but the greatest amount of happiness altogether.” (ch2) Utilitarianism therefore can only attain its goal of greater happiness by cultivating the nobleness of individuals so that all can benefit from the honor of others. In fact, notes Mill, Utilitarianism is actually a "standard of morality" which uses happiness of the greater number of people as its ultimate goal.

Knowledge and education are fundamental to Mill's concept of the Greater Happiness, and in his famous words, “it is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied,” (260) Mill touts the importance of being well brought up and knowledgeably curious about the world, and understanding higher pleasures such as art and music, than to be uneducated and complacent. One need not be personally satisfied with his or her life to be able to contribute to the "total sum happiness" of a society.

Oh, right. It was John Stuart Mill.

Silly me. Well, me and all of modern society, being based on Utilitarianism and all.

Seriously though, videogames are a medium, not a message. There are trash books, trash paintings, and Cthulhu knows, bad tv shows. There are also great books, paintings, tv, etc. Pushing aside an entire form of expression as broad as videogames showcases only one's own ignorance.

I mean, seriously. You have everything from Grand Theft Auto III (each of which is an interesting take on gangster culture and movies, from Goodfellas to the Sopranos to Training Day) to Spore and Second Life, which are about as cerebral and non-violent as a seminar on Expressionist Painting.

Only a lot more fun. Well, Spore probably is. Second Life... feh.

Then we have Barack Obama, who seems to buy into the idea that tv and videogames and, well, indoor activities are bad for you.

In a race for the Democratic nomination, Obama hasn't made any passionate speeches about video games with the fervor he has addressed health care, the war in Iraq or Hillary Clinton, but he has continued making jabs at games with little concern. In a recent speech at Wilkes Hall in Pennsylvania, he urged the public, "...turn off the television, turn off the video games..." in a similar rhetoric to just last February when he urged the public, "...parent better, and turn off the television set, and put the video games away, and instill a sense of excellence in our children..."

How about people teach their kids to think for themselves and find their own entertainment?

Honestly. This from a guy who hung out with slumlords. Maybe he'd have been better off staying inside and playing a round of Street Fighter.

Source: Kotaku (crank)
Kotaku (obama)
Wikipedia (Mill's Utilitarianism)

Various News, Including Evil Tom Morris

Odd

The Evil Empire
So my friend Tom is up to no good, forging an evil radio empire.

After 10 years of uncertainty and hard work, "the time has come," said former Radiate FM General Manager Brennan Forsyth.

Radiate FM, the FIU student radio station, installed its translator on top of the Marine Biology building and began transmitting through its new signal, 96.9 FM on Feb. 28.

...

The translator, which sits 40 feet above the Marine Biology building, will broadcast within a 10 to 15 mile radius of BBC. Penton and the station's student engineer, Tom Morris, spent four days on top of the roof of the building, working in the rain and cold last week, and finished the transmitter on Feb. 28.

"We braved quite a wind chill up there. It was absolutely freezing by South Florida standards, anyone from up north would have laughed at us," Morris said.

...

Morris, who was heavily involved with installing the translator, is already looking to the future and even thinking about expanding the station more.

"If the FCC opened up translator applications again, I would love to get a translator up on the Pines Center," Morris said. If there's free spot on the dial, I'll do it."

From its inception 21 years ago, Morris' ambitious dream may not seem that far-fetched.

"Two years ago, we didn't even hear our radio station on either campus; now you can pick it up as far as the Key Largo," Jaross said.

We must stop this cancerous spread before it reaches actual civilization.

Tom Morris must DIE

Source: The Beacon (FIU Newspaper) Also, the URL for this site is WAY TOO LONG.

The Doors... Sorta
Actually a terrifying cover of Riders on the Storm. A very unfortunate cover.

Source: I Am TRex

Latin
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

"Whatever is said in Latin, sounds profound."

Source: The BBC (Other phrases available at this site too)

5 Dollar Gas
Granted, it's an anomaly. As yet.

James Willman seems to be a nice enough guy: polite, good-humored and hard-working, pumping gas seven days a week at the Amerigo Gas Station in the tiny Big Sur town of Gorda, about 35 miles north of Cambria.

But at least once a day, Willman said, someone pulls in and starts cursing him.

“They say all kinds of stuff—‘You ought to be shot,’ or ‘Where’s your mask?’ ” Willman said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, I just work here.’ ”

The reason for consumer hostility is that the station is serving up what might be the costliest gas in the land.

This week, as crude oil flirted with $110 a barrel and gasoline prices surged nationwide, a gallon of regular at Amerigo was going for $5.20.

See this is a tiny town with a tiny gas station that has to run a diesel generator all day for power, so they gouge. Party because they have to, partly because, well, they can.

It's the American way.

Source: San Luis Obispo County

Spidey in the Attic
Cool picture.

Turnip Bomb
I swear, Indiana exists as a cautionary tale.

Terror came to Fort Wayne, Indiana, late last week as a suspicious package arrived at the offices of a local law firm in a move that seemed to presage a deadly bomb outrage slaughter campaign.

After a tense operation by robot and human bomb-disposal operatives, however, it was discovered that the infernal device was in fact - in the judgement of the local bomb squad - a potentially exploding turnip.

The threatening vegetable was despatched in a "bluish gift bag" contained within a box slightly smaller than a baseball, according to Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette reporter Abby Slutsky.

...

"I'm now on constant alert against this and other rooted vegetables," said Fort Wayne lawyer Mark GiaQuinta, to whom the package was addressed.

He theorised that the explosive-esque yet nourishing gift had been sent to him by a disgruntled individual against whom GiaQuinta had acted in court. This person, described by the attorney as "volatile", had perhaps been trying to send the message "you can't get blood from a turnip".

The man thinks he's funny, but he called in the bomb squad because someone left him a gift.

He's a serious paranoid whacko.

Source: The Register

Speaking of Bombs
Here's a nifty page on the disarming of a bomb in the Falklands via the awesome sounding 'Double Baldrick' manuever.

Source: South Atlatic Remote Territories Media Association

Get Bent
This lady needs psychological help, badly.

ASHLAND, Ky. (WSAZ) -- A mother says the straws she bought for her three-year-old daughter were shaped like a male sex organ.

Andrea Bailey says she went shopping at the Ashland Wal-Mart on Thursday, February 28th, and bought a package of fun straws for her three 3-year-old daughter, Ashlynn.

Bailey says Ashlynn came in and used one shaped like a heart. A couple others in the package, though, were shaped like something different.

“There are two of them that are shaped like the male private area,” said Bailey. “I called Wal-Mart and they very rude with me about it. They acted like I was lying, like I was making it all up. You know, I would never make something up like that, especially about my little girl. But, that's just how they treated me and it’s just not right.”

Ahh, conservative, paranoid scolds.

Is there nothing they cannot ruin?

This woman probably gets upset at missiles, speedboats and launches of the space shuttle too.

Whaaaaaacko.

Source: WSAZ.com (check it out for yourself if you like)

Swastika Update
So once again, we have a controversy over a building whose wings form a swastika from the air.

Sigh.

DECATUR, Ala. (AP) -- From the ground, the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home looks like any other building. But fly over in an airplane, and the outline is unmistakable: It's one big swastika.

Prompted by complaints from a Jewish activist, the agency that owns the government-funded building is planning to alter its shape to disguise the Nazi symbol. The move comes just a few years after a $1 million design modification meant to quiet similar complaints from a U.S. senator.

Naturally, the shape of the building is the sole, overriding concern here.

"The difficulty is there are a limited number of options for fixing a building that has been there for some time," said Mike Giles, counsel for the Methodist Homes Corp. of Alabama and Northwest Florida. "We have to come up with a way to fix an appearance that we want solved and not hurt our residents."

Wesley Acres provides government-subsidized housing for 117 low-income people ages 62 and above. Most have no reason to suspect their hallways take on a sinister shape.

The one-story building, designed in the mid-1970s and completed in 1980, underwent a $1 million alteration in 2001 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development following complaints by Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin, who has since died. But the addition of two wings did little to hide the offensive shape, and in some ways accentuates it.

Options for the new renovations include the addition of covered porches or other outdoor areas.

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

It's the same guy? The same guy made the complaints?

Is this all he does?

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

Segol calls the Alabama retirement home a "sister swastika" to the building in California and says they were both part of a tangled, government-funded conspiracy to honor Nazis.

Segol claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after World War II and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.

Methodist Homes' Giles said Segol's conspiracy claims are ridiculous. The building was originally designed to be much larger, he said, and cutbacks resulted in a shape that resembled the four-armed swastika used as the symbol of German Nazis during World War II.

"It was certainly not intentional," Giles said.

IT IS! IT'S ALL HE DOES! He looks for reasons to get upset from Google Earth!

The shape of the retirement center is evident in satellite photos available on the Internet. But it is located in a residential section in a city with few tall buildings, and many in Decatur have no idea Wesley Acres resembles a swastika.

Giles said any changes to the building must be relatively inexpensive since the agency lacks money for an elaborate solution. Planners are considering modifications, he said, "so that from the air it takes your eye away from what was originally there."

Yes, the low-income housing people have to spend money that would otherwise be available to shelter poor old folks to install shrubbery because some idiot with a computer and time on his hands is all atwitter.

I hate conspiracy theorists.

Source: The Associated Press

So a Woman With a Grenade Walks Into a Police Station..
At least it wasn't in Indiana.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - The police department was briefly evacuated after a woman decided she should bring in a hand grenade she found.

The unidentified woman handed it to an officer Thursday after finding it while cleaning out a relative's belongings. The officer immediately took it outside the building and police cleared the building until the bomb squad took it away and detonated it about an hour later.

The grenade appeared to be live.

"When we countercharged it, it went boom," bomb squad supervisor Lt. James Brandon told the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.

Source: My Way News

I Hate Schools
They always have to make themselves look dumb.

A 15-year-old girl who stopped an out-of-control school bus she was riding on was handed a Saturday detention instead because she was skipping school.

Marina High School student Amanda Rouse was on a bus with 40 elementary school students Wednesday morning when the driver fell out of her seat after a turn and hit her head.

Rouse jumped up and applied the brakes, bringing the bus to a halt after striking two parked cars. No one was injured.

She said had asked the bus driver for a ride because she felt sick at school.

Of course, idiots like this don't help matters.

"She is in trouble with school because she made the wrong decision," said Rouse's grandmother, Sally Correll. "But I can't help but believe that she was where God wanted her to be."

Yes, God wanted her to play hooky to avoid an accident.

Why didn't he just make the bus driver better at their job?

Source: AZ Central

See My Vest
Well, ok, not mine.

Not yet.

A vest that enables video gamers to feel the impact when their characters are shot in-game is raising fears that young people are being desensitized to violence.

The 3rdSpace gaming vest, invented by a Seattle surgeon, includes eight air pistons over vital spots and may be the most sophisticated offering yet in a series of such devices that have been intended to enhance the sensory experience of gaming.

Gamers' reactions have ranged from mildly interested to highly enthusiastic, but anti-gun campaigners in Britain, where the device has recently become available, are alarmed. One activist told Channel 4 News that people keep asking her "Why are our kids out in the street killing each other on a weekly basis?" and warned that it's because "We feed them a diet of violence."

Please...please shut the hell up.

It.

Is.

A.

Toy.

You.

Whackjob.

I do sort of wonder about the long-term health effects of having air pistons hitting you in the chest though.

Source: Raw Story

Knowledge Brings Fear

Science Update

Neural Impulse Actuator
What a nifty name, eh?

Essentially this is a biofeedback device for gaming. Supposedly you can train your brain rhythms to control a game via this device. The more you train, the better you get.

In theory, it would give you better gaming reflexes, as you'd no longer have to communicate down the nerves to your hand.

In practice, if it works at all, it will probably just look frikkin awesome.

Plus I suppose there could be all sorts of medical uses for paralyzed people, but nobody seems to consider that in the article.

Source: Overclock 3D

HIV
New research isolating a gene that, if turned on, keeps HIV from replicating successfully.

Neat.

A cure for AIDS it probably isn't, though, because this gene is already *supposed* to be turned on by immune cells when they sense the virus. So HIV probably has a way around it.

Still, the researcher hopes to get drugs or what not to mimic the effect. Maybe the virus just moves too fast, and we can zap people better with gene therapy to turn it on, like a vaccine or preemptively.

Source: Express News

Spanking
A series of studies show that spanking children leads to violent behavior as adults.

New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Professor Murray Straus concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex.

Gee, what a surprise that physically dominating someone teaches them that they can physically dominate someone else.

Source: Raw Story

CERN Has Been Busy
So the last big piece of Europe's mega-supercollider has been put into place. They will soon fire the thing up and try to explore the early universe.

Of course there is a very, very slight chance they'll rip a hole in the vaccuum energy state of the universe and kill every living thing.

Very small.

GENEVA (Reuters) - A 100-tonne wheel, the last piece of an ambitious experiment that scientists hope will help unlock the secrets of the universe, was successfully lowered into an underground cavern on Friday.

It is the final major element in the ATLAS particle detector, the largest of four detectors being hooked up to the world's most powerful particle accelerator which the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hopes to start up around the middle of 2008.

"This last piece completes this gigantic puzzle," CERN said in a statement.

The wheel was lowered down a 100-metre shaft and aligned within a millimeter of other detectors at CERN, the world's leading centre for particle research located at a sprawling complex along the Swiss-French border.

The ATLAS detector will measure particles called muons expected to be produced in particle collisions in the accelerator, known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Take that, Muons!

Source: Raw Story

Reality TV Lies To Us?
So it turns out that your average internet sicko isn't the type to land on Dateline, but in fact, stupid teenagers are a large part of the problem. Also, MySpace isn't to blame.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The typical online sexual predator is not someone posing as a teen to lure unsuspecting victims into face-to-face meetings that result in violent rapes, U.S. researchers said on Monday.



Rather, they tend to be adults who make their intentions of a sexual encounter quite plain to vulnerable young teens who often believe they are in love with the predator, they said.

And contrary to the concerns of parents and state attorneys general, they found social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace do not appear to expose teens to greater risks.

...

Wolak said teens who engaged in risky online behaviors -- having buddy lists that included strangers, discussing sex online with strangers, being rude online -- were much more likely to be targeted.

"One of the big factors we found is that offenders target kids who are willing to talk to them online. Most kids are not," Wolak said.

U.S. state attorneys general have been working with privately held Facebook and NewsCorp's MySpace to protect users from registered sex offenders.

But Wolak said it is important for parents and children to have a clear picture of who these predators are.

"If everybody is looking for violent predators lurking in the bushes, kids who are involved in these relationships aren't going to be seeing what is happening to them as a crime," she said.

I can't believe the media would sensationalize an old, old issue (teenagers sleeping with adults) and turn it into a melodrama while blaming anything they can find on the interwebs!

Shocking!

I do have to wonder about the definition of 'being rude online', though. I've always been very rude online. What, was I not good enough to be targeted by some hillbilly with a modem?

*Sniff*

My glory days are behind me now. I feel so old.

Source: Raw Story

More Superbugs
So the UK is rapidly becoming ground zero for the superbacteria epidemic. This time there's a new culprit, a normally harmless stomach bacterium that goes berserk.

Deaths from the hospital superbug C. diff have soared to record levels in a damning indictment of hygiene levels in the Health Service.

The Clostridium difficile stomach bug killed or hastened the death of almost 6,500 patients in 2006 - a staggering 72 per cent rise on the previous year.

And since 1990 the number of people infected by the bug has risen almost 50-fold. It is a bigger killer than MRSA.

Patients' representatives and politicians said the figures highlighted the failure of numerous Government drives to halt the rise of the bug, which thrives in filthy conditions and can be combated with simple soap and water.

...

Infection experts say the soaring number of C. diff deaths is partly due to the emergence of a superdeadly strain which is particularly resistant to detergents. Since taking grip in the UK three years ago, it now accounts for more than half of cases.

C. diff exists naturally in the stomachs of many healthy adults, where it is kept under control by 'friendly bacteria'.

The problems start if the balance of bacteria is disturbed, perhaps by administering antibiotics for another infection.

Once the "friendly" bacteria are killed off, the C. diff are able to multiply and produce poisons which cause diarrhoea and, in the worst cases, a potentially fatal infection.

Well, that does indeed suck.

Maybe probiotics could help? They helped me out when I was recovering from a bad gut culture.

Source: The Daily Mail

More Proof That Florida Sucks
Why can't we just let them slide into the ocean?

(CNN) -- Preliminary results of an investigation show that Tuesday's massive power outage in Florida was caused by human error, Florida Power and Light President Armando Olivera said Friday.

A field engineer was diagnosing a switch that had malfunctioned at FPL's Flagami substation in west Miami.

Without authorization, the engineer disabled two levels of relay protection, Olivera said.

"This was done contrary to FPL's standard procedures and established practices," he said.

Standard procedures do not allow the simultaneous removal of both levels of protection.

"We don't know why the employee took it upon himself to disable both sets of relays," he added.

I suppose I should amend my earlier rant about Florida. It turns out that they do not, in fact, think it's a great idea to shut down power plants in response to overly high demand for power. Rather, they think it's a great idea to hire incompetent morons who cut the power to half a state by accident for unfathomable reasons.

Is that better? If so, how?

Source: CNN.com

Weird Update

Progress toward Madness

I Want One
So an engineer boffin has come up with an implantable screen to wear under your skin, powered by the glucose in your blood. He sees it as a future cell-phone/portable device interface, as it's even touch sensitive.

I WANT ONE NOW.

Jim Mielke's wireless blood-fueled display is a true merging of technology and body art. At the recent Greener Gadgets Design Competition, the engineer demonstrated a subcutaneously implanted touch-screen that operates as a cell phone display, with the potential for 3G video calls that are visible just underneath the skin.
The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.


On both the top and bottom surfaces of the display is a matching matrix of field-producing pixels. The top surface also enables touch-screen control through the skin. Instead of ink, the display uses tiny microscopic spheres, somewhat similar to tattoo ink. A field-sensitive material in the spheres changes their color from clear to black, aligned with the matrix fields.

Yeah yeah, it's gruesome. So what? Some people would say having your eye peeled like a grape then blasted with a UV laser is gruesome, but it gave me perfect vision and let me chuck my glasses. This would let me, err, freak people out and more easily get nagged by my mother.

Hmm.

I still want one.

Source: Physorg.com

Morbid Auction
Ok, here's something even more gross than the tattoo thing.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - It is billed as the best pop culture collection ever assembled -- ranging from the gun used to kill the assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to the Wicked Witch of the West's hat from "The Wizard of Oz."

...

He said the Colt Cobra revolver used by Jack Ruby to kill Oswald in 1963, just days after Oswald was arrested for assassinating Kennedy, could fetch several million dollars alone. The initials of detectives who handled the gun are scratched on it.

"The whole world saw that unfold live and here's the very gun and the hat that Jack Ruby was wearing," said Ettinger, adding that the tag tied to Oswald's toe to identify his corpse and a lock of his hair were also to be auctioned.

...

Other items to be auctioned include a Federal Bureau of Investigation badge that belonged to the bureau's founder J. Edgar Hoover, a wig worn by Elizabeth Taylor for "Cleopatra," and the leather jacket worn by actor Brandon Lee when he was accidentally shot and killed while filming "The Crow."

Ok, so, why isn't Ruby's gun in a museum? For that matter, who lifted the jacket off of Brandon Lee's cooling body?

This is sort of sick.

Source: Raw Story

World of Goo
Neat looking game where you build structures out of living blobs.

WANT IT WANT IT WANT IT

Source: 2dboy.com

Themes in Cuisine
Japan always innovates when it comes to the weirdest stuff imaginable.

TOKYO (Reuters) - At Edelstein boarding school, the schoolboys wear lip-gloss, the headmistress has a weakness for homoerotic comic books, and there is only one subject: how to serve female visitors.

Welcome to Tokyo's first schoolboy cafe, the latest in a flurry of eateries in Japan where customers and waiters role play themes from manga comics.

In keeping with the schoolboy theme, waiters with manicured hands and soft voices pretend to be teenage students, chatting and flirting with well-dressed Japanese women playing the roles of benefactresses visiting the school.

...

"I'm in the flower arrangement club," whispers one girlish, long-haired waiter at the cafe, looking up from the book of German poetry he is reading.

All's not sweetness and light, however.

Sakamaki, the schoolboy cafe manager who has tapped that market so successfully, is already onto her next idea: a cafe modeled along 1920s Japan. That would match another big trend among Japanese youth -- nostalgia for pre-war Japan.

If I was in South Korea, I'd be on the lookout for the new lip-gloss wearing vanguard of the Second Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Source: Reuters


Lost
Some nifty lost comic weirdness from Marvel over the years.

Source: Fish1000.Biz

Rapid Fire

Various Items of Note

Stewart and the Oscars
Some of Jon Stewart's Oscar night jokes. For example:

"Normally when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

"Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on happier fare - this year's slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies. Does this town need a hug? No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd,There Will Be Blood. All I can say is: thank God for teen pregnancy."

Source: The Times Online

Pesky Pakistan
So Pakistan ordered YouTube taken off the interwebs for 'blasphemy' or some such, and their ISP complied. Only they did it badly, and due to a flaw in the way the interweb works, the block propagated worldwide, resulting in Youtube getting taken offline.

On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No "sorry we're down" or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing. What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube's servers are into a "black hole" as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube would end up in Pakistan Telecom's black hole instead.

Is there anything religion in government can't ruin?

Source: Ars Technica

Photos
So a guy makes his living as a photographer and posts watermarked samples online. A magazine steals his work, crops out the watermarks, and uses them as stock photos. When questioned about it, they make up a nonexistent person, forge a receipt, and claim that person sold them the photos. They can not produce the person, the original files, or any evidence of any kind.

They chose... poorly.

Source: CGStock.com

Snoops
So the energy utility in Madison has a bit of a probably with nosy jerks in their employ.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers.

All worked for Wisconsin's largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.

Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.

Honestly, don't they realize how bad this makes them look? Put a stop to it. Fire the people responsible. It's not that hard.

Unless you really WANT some brutally draconian privacy laws passed, in which case, fine, make your bed. See if I care when you have to lay in it.

Source: The Associated Press

Milkshake
A discussion of the pop culture phrase 'I Drink Your Milkshake!' and its proper usage.

Source: New York Magazine

ID Thieves
So apparently an ID thief stole the identify of a seven-year old kid. They've been using it for six years for employment purposes, to duck paying taxes.

The IRS actually told the kid, or more likely his parents, that he owes 60,000 in back taxes. Apparently they're not too bright at the Revenue Service, failing to realize that, under US law, it would have been illegal for a 1 year old to be drawing such a paycheck to start with.

Yeesh. What the hell kind of background checks do these employers/IRS types run?

Source: Raw Story

They Have to Be Kidding
So it seems that the Director of National Intelligence's underlings are so happy with their performance eliminating terror from the real world using color coded charts that they're ready to move into the world of videogames.

Well, ok, to be a bit more fair, they think that you could use a social game environment to organize real world activities.

Or, you know, a chat room. Or email. Or web pages. Or pigeons with little paper messages tied to their legs.

Of course, if you really want to leave a billing trail and have all of your activities potentially monitored by the company running the game, by all means.

Source: Wired

Jack Thompson
So good old anti-videogame crusader and general nuisance Jack Thompson is in big legal trouble in Florida. It seems that the Florida Supreme Court is sick and tired of his 'frivolous and inappropriate filings' and is going ahead with a plan to essentially ban him from practicing law without another laqyer to vouch for him; sort of a set of legal training wheels.

This guy is non-stop hilarity. He actually thinks this is a good thing for him too.

Source: Daily Tech

Good Night, Ulysses
So NASA and the ESA have been operating a probe mission to study the sun's magnetic field for the last seventeen years. The probe is appropriately named Ulysses, after the Greek explorer.

WASHINGTON - The joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission to study the sun and its influence on surrounding space is likely to cease operations in the next few months. The venerable spacecraft, which has lasted more than 17 years or almost four times its expected mission lifetime, is succumbing to the harsh environment of space.

Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects.

"I remember when we got those first pictures of Ulysses floating out of the space shuttle Discovery's payload bay back in October of 1990 and thinking we had a great five years ahead of us," said Ed Massey, Ulysses project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "I never dared think that we would be receiving invaluable science data on a near continuous basis for more than 17 years. Ulysses has set the bar on solar science data collection quite high."

Science findings and discoveries from the mission were numerous and unprecedented. Examples include taking the first direct measurements of interstellar dust particles and interstellar helium atoms in the solar system and the discovery that the magnetic field leaving the sun is balanced across latitudes.

...

Since its Jupiter flyby in 1992, Ulysses has been in a six-year orbit around the sun. Its long path through space carries it out to Jupiter's orbit and back. The farther it ventures from the sun, the colder the spacecraft becomes. If it drops to 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit), the spacecraft's hydrazine fuel will freeze. This has not been a problem in the past because Ulysses carries heaters to maintain a workable onboard temperature.

The spacecraft is powered by the decay of a radioactive isotope. Over its 17-plus years, the power has been steadily dropping. The spacecraft no longer can run all of its communications, heating and scientific equipment simultaneously. "We expect certain parts of the spacecraft to reach 2 degrees Celsius pretty soon," said Richard Marsden, ESA project scientist and mission manager. This temperature drop will block the fuel pipes, making the spacecraft impossible to maneuver.

We'll see you around, little probe. Thanks for the hard work.

Source: NASA

P.S. Normally I'd make some sort of diatribe here against the luddites who don't want to use any probes in space that run off of radioactive decay, which would limit our scientific exploration to the inner solar system and so forth. Those people are complete morons, and Ulysses shows why; but this is not the place to mock their slope-foreheaded ignorance.

I'll save that for the next time.

Big Ideas, Little Foresight
So it seems that Haiti's deforestation problem is growing even worse, and may be completely beyond the point of no return.

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti (AP) - Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his 15-year-old son, Phillipe, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.

"There is no other way to get money," the father said, pushing his saw through splintering wood that will earn him as much as $12.50, depending on how many planks it produces.

Such raw economics explain the disappearance of Haiti's forests, a process that has led to erosion that has reduced scarce farm land and left the island vulnerable to deadly flooding.

Ahh, but surely the United States could intervene with a half-baked plan to save the natives from themselves, right?

U.N. experts say just 2 to 4 percent of forest cover remains in Haiti, down from 7 to 9 percent in 1981. And despite millions invested in reforestation, such efforts have mostly failed because of economic pressures and political turmoil.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant some 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.

Oops. The Quiet Americans strike again.

Meanwhile, smaller groups try to hold back the ocean with buckets, but that's not working either.

Compared to the USAID's failed plan, smaller programs have had more luck by focusing on fruit trees, which farmers are more likely to preserve to sell the fruit. And smaller organizations are able to work with individual farmers and tailor planting to the needs of specific areas.

"People aren't excited about, 'Hey let's go plant trees.' They're excited about, 'How can I feed my family? How can I make ends meet?'" said Scott Sabin, executive director of Floresta.

But many who are dedicated to restoring Haiti's forests have grown pessimistic. Despite small successes, prospects are grim for implementing such programs on a grand scale.

"Everything has been studied and all the solutions are already known," said Mousson Finnigan, the head of the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment. "But when it comes to implementation, it becomes a place where everybody's fighting for the money. They're not fighting for results."

So in the end, the tragedy of the commons plays out on a grand scale.

"In Haiti we destroy instead of produce," acknowledges LeClaire Bocage, 38, who sells 110-pound sacks for $6.25. "They're going to tell the poor to stop cutting down trees. But what will we do to make a living?"

Never fear, though, Haiti! We have another plan for you to help us out, err, help yourselves.

It may be too late to restore Haiti's lost forests, said John Horton, an environmental specialist who has overseen Haiti projects for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. He suggested planting crops that can stabilize the soil and be sold or used for bio-fuels. Others promote raising money through carbon credits from overseas firms emitting greenhouse gases elsewhere.

"They need cash crops, they need food, they need energy immediately," Horton said.

Yes, grow biofuels instead of food! Or plant trees to soak up our carbon (which other people will just burn down again).

Sigh. Man... I just... Yeah.

Source: My Way News

What to Do With Pesky Heathens
From the Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

2:8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
2:9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

That'll teach those heathens! Slavery and death!

Err, wait a second. That's not good...

Source: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

European Learning

Educational Issues

A pair of odd educational concepts from our European cousins across the pond.

Adopt the Dead
So President Sarkozy in France has been searching for issues to soften his image, after the country has gotten tired of him breaking off his marriage to sleep around with a supermodel instead of accomplishing anything in office.

You know you're doing a bad job when the French get picky about your mistresses; traditionally, the more the merrier, in Gallic politics.

At any rate, after tepid plans to curb urban poverty, improve mass transit and the like, Sarkozy has decided to move on to educational issues.

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing a tide of criticism over his call for schoolchildren to "adopt" Jewish child victims of the Holocaust, hit back on Friday saying France had to raise children "with open eyes".

In a speech praising faith that also drew fire from secularists, Sarkozy told France's Jewish community on Wednesday that every 10-year-old schoolchild should be "entrusted with the memory of a French child victim of the Holocaust".

The proposal unleashed a storm of protest from teachers, psychologists and his political foes who said it would unfairly burden children with the guilt of previous generations and some could be traumatized by identifying with a Holocaust victim.

More than 11,100 French Jewish children were deported from France to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in eastern Europe during the German World War Two occupation.

Hmm. Yeah.

Interesting idea, and it's certainly worth noting that so much of France bowed to Nazi rule with barely suppressed glee.

On the other hand, it's also worth noting that two separate resistance movements fought the Nazis to the bloody death, one in each half of divided France. It's particularly worth remembering in light of the 'Terrorism is Bad and an Enemy We can Beat' rhetoric in the recent past. You know, as the Resistance in the north of France used every sneaky terrorist trick in the book to spill fascist blood.

A cause heartily endorsed by yours truly, for what little that matters.

Anyway, I dunno. The idea isn't as whacko as it sounds, but I think 10 is a bit young. This is more of a junior-high thing at the least.

You could also have them adopt a resistance fighter, and give a report on how their subject killed German occupiers with bombs or what not. That'd be nice. Broaden horizons and all that.

Source: Reuters

Imagine
So there's this guy, Luc Bernard, who's got a slate of independent games coming out for Nintendo consoles. He does what can be called Dark Fantasy, usually with a platforming game element.

His first game, Eternity's Child, concerns an 11 year old orphan, genocide, global warming, the near-extinction of humankind, transgender issues for children, etc. Another game he's working on is about a cellist who kills anything she touches, and her traveling companion, a robotic bunny/children's entertainer who, failing at showbiz, had to turn to cross-dressing prostitution.

So the guy is already going to a pretty dark place with his games. Which is fine by me.

The next one is likely to offend quite a few people though.

Luc Bernard, the mind behind the upcoming Wii-Ware title Eternity's Child is already hard at work on a new and what is sure to be a very controversial game or the DS. Imagination Is The Only Escape is the story of a young Jewish boy living in France during the occupation by the Nazis in World War II. In order to escape the horrors around him, he imagines a fantasy land that becomes the basis of the game's world. The adventure platformer will attempt to educate players on the atrocities experienced by many children during the time of the Holocaust.
"The sad thing is that videogames are still considered toys and not art, I hope that this game can show that games can be just as important as films."

Sounds like a darker version of Pan's Labyrinth perhaps.

To be honest, all three of his games sound like "Dark" reimaginings of previous works; Eternity's Child is A.I. (which was already pretty heavy), the Cellist story reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, and this latest one, as I said, Pan's Labyrinth.

The art is all his and all original though. I'm willing to give EC a try when it hits the Wii.

That being said, I do hope he can get his project mostly intact onto a console. It's a daring concept; I'd like to see if he can make a good game out of it as well.

Source: Kotaku

Grab Bag

Neat Stuff

Warren Ellis, Free of Charge
Warren Ellis, the author behind Planetary, Black Summer, Transmetropolitan, The Authority and many others, has launched a new webcomic effort called FreakAngels.

It looks promising.

Source: FreakAngels

20 Bizarre Science Experiments
Bizarre and more than a little gruesome.

You may have heard of the famous Milgram Obedience Experiment, which showed that Americans are just as likely as Germans to commit atrocities based on dubious authority figures telling them to.

Did you know a followup was done with cute, fluffy puppies and live voltage?

How about the experiments involving grafting one dog's head to another dog, that helped lead to the successful development of the life support machines used during heart/lung transplants?

Fascinating stuff.

You might not want to read it before a meal though.

Or immediately afterward.

Source: Museum of Hoaxes (No, these weren't hoaxes, it's just the site)

Kirby + Snoop Dogg == K-Dogg?
Youtube mashup of Snoop Dogg and Kirby.

It works eerily well.

Source: Youtube

Bad Language
Warren Ellis was right, the English troops did curse a lot.

Also, you too kids can earn lasting fame by swearing!

Source: Wikipedia

Devil Feet
One of those great oddball historical moments, this time where a mysteeeeeeerious set of foot prints was blamed on Satan. Or a kangaroo. Or a weather balloon.

Source: Wikipedia

Guitar Heroes
So it seems that Aerosmith is making a band-specific Guitar Hero game.

I'm not sure what this means exactly, though it's good for Aerosmith fans, I suppose. Guitar Hero is the series that tends to use cover bands whereas Rock Band uses the original artists, so it's a switch. Of course, Aerosmith tried to make a videogame before... and the world still suffers.

Source: Reuters

Behold the Glory of Colbert
Witness it.

God Told Me This News

He also said your mother's a whore.

It's Pat!
Seriously, there's something very wrong with this man.

On Wednesday, Robertson, 77, implied that God informed him who will be elected president in November.

“He told me some things about the election, but I’m not going to say, because some old man on “60 Minutes” would make fun of me, so I’m not going to tell you who the winner’s going to be,” Robertson said, in apparent reference to CBS humorist Andy Rooney, who turns 89 on Jan. 14.

...

UPDATE: Robertson also said that this year, God told him China will become a Christian nation: “God’s going to give us China. And China will be the largest Christian nation on the face of the earth. They’re going to come to Jesus.”

Yeah. China, a Christian nation. Keep dreaming.

I guess to be fair, he never said for sure he was told who'd win, just that he was told 'some things'. By God.

That makes it all right.

Source: ThinkProgress

Toyota Beats Ford
So Toyota is now the #2 auto seller in the US. This is due in part to a sharp drop in Ford's fuel guzzler sales and a rise in sales of Priuses and so forth.

American automakers just refuse to learn.

Source: Raw Story

Dragging My Name Through the Mud
So Sears, the store, set up a customer portal, and then required that you download some nasty spyware that would watch everything your computer did for a week, and hid this fact as well as possible.

What an odd thing to do. Maybe they were just trying to collect a massive list of porn websites or something.

Source: Yahoo News


World Trade Center Invaders
So there's a new version of a flash game out that has you defend the WTC on September 11th, 2001 from an endless series of hijacked planes. Ala Missile Command, or Space Invaders.

The original version was received as a grim commentary on the day's feelings of helplessness and impotence; the new version of the exact same game, a few years later, is seen as crass. I'm not sure either label is really justified.

Tasteless or not, let the people make their game. It's not killing anyone. For some reason it's ok when the Left Behind game, which has you kill atheists and unbelievers to get into heaven, is sold in American stores, to kids no doubt, but this is not. Even though there you're teh killer, here you're the.. defender. Or whatever.

I can't really care too much about this nonsense.

Source: Raw Story

National Igloo
This video is great.

Source: Sadly No

Wipe Your Tears Away (News)

Blame Autovaughn for the lyrical title, if you like.

Harry Potter and the Search for More Money
So J.K. Rowling is now hinting that she might write another book in the Potter universe, though it wouldn't necessarily be about him.

I guess those new writing projects of hers aren't going so well, huh?

Source: The Daily Mail

Is There Anyplace Safe From These Annoying Fucktards?
So Ron Paul, endorsed by prominent US Nazis, fundraiser from Stormfront, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, he has the wacky supporters. True nutjobs.

His only real problem is that, outside of the ones who wear the armbands and pointy white hats, they're all internet people who never leave their homes. So where can he hold a rally?

World of Warcraft!

No, seriously. His supporters are going to have a march. In World of Warcraft.

Source: Raw Story

He Held His Breath Until Poor Kids Turned Blue
So I guess by stamping his feet and whining long enough, El Presidente forced the whimpering, useless tools that make up our Congress to send him the SCHIP bill that doesn't expand the program to cover additional poor kids.

What an ass.

Source: Raw Story

Out Damn Spot
So it seems that an hour after the Bhutto assassination, the government was already trying to wash away the evidence. Literally; they took a high pressure fire hose to the crime scene.

That's hardly suspicious at all.

Also, apparently, despite their claims that 'nobody asked', under Pakistani law autopsies are mandatory for criminal cases. So that turned out to be a rather transparent lie as well. The question is whether her family will exhume her at this point, I suppose.

Source: Raw Story

It Couldn't Be Another Corrupt Republican
So I think I've written about the very suspicious and obviously political prosecution of a guy named Siegelman, former governor of Alabama, who faces all sorts of bizarre legal hurdles and whose case is being absurdly manipulated by an unfriendly judge and a prosecution willing to free convicts so they can flee being witnesses in his appeal, and the like.

Turns out the guy he narrowly 'lost' to in the 2002 election (where apparently the victory was handed to the Republican when a few thousand votes 'suddenly' changed columns and the Republican secretary of state blocked a recount) is, err, corrupt. He's been caught taking illegal political contributions from corporations.

Republicans sure do project their sins on others, don't they?

Source: Raw Story

Protests Planned for Rose Parade
People are all upset that anti-Endless War activists and victims of China's, err, 'vigorous' approach to government are going to protest at the Rose Bowl. In particular, the Chinese Americans are upset by the huge float China has in the parade this year to promote the Olympics they're holding in lovely, smog-filled Beijing.

Oh Noes! Democracy might ruin our pretty flower parade!

Won't somebody think of the children?

Source: Raw Story

It's Long Past Time to Face Reality, Folks
Listen, Americans. Hamas may be a violent organization. But they're also the legitimate, fairly elected head of (half, anyway) the Palestinian state. They got where they are today in terms of popularity not so much by hating Israel (which in Palestinian politics is like going to Sunday church in American Presidential camapaigns), but by humanitarian outreach, things like feeding their starving people even as the Israeli government tries to bleed them out by denying fuel for hospital generators and the like.

So, yeah. It's time we dealt with this reality on the ground and stopped stamping our petulant feet over how not every election turns out the way we want.

Hence the good news to be found in a massive lawsuit against various Muslim charities being overturned. The suit operated on the grounds that, since an American was killed in Palestine, it must have been Hamas, and giving money to Hamas to feed starving people means you're in bed with the murder.

By that logic, when I pay my taxes, since the same body that collects those taxes pays Blackwater, I'm legally liable for the murder of Iraqi civilians.

Somebody sue me already.

(This is opposed to being MORALLY liable, of course)

Source: Raw Story

Fox-Hunting Continues; British Still Look Like Goits
So the fox-hunting people are all upset over not being able to use dogs to tear a fox into little bloody chunks anymore. Boo frickin hoo.

They consider the ban on siccing a pack of ravenous animals on a wild creature to be 'stupid' and 'prejudiced', and will continue to kill the foxes any legal way they can.

Geebus, what did the little fur coats ever do to these idiots?

Source: The Telegraph

By the way, Telegraph, nice job not having ONE opposing viewpoint in that article.

Comcast Sucks
So the same company that can't afford to get enough cable installers to actually make their appointments can afford to ink an agreement to pay their CEO's family five years of his salary if he dies on the job.

They literally put dead men ahead of customer service.

Lovely.

Source: Raw Story

Advertising Hijinks
So it seems McCain had an ad made a while back that attacks Romney for being a flip-flopper. Which he is. Said ad never aired, and the people who made it now work, ironicaly, for Romney. It has been conveniently leaked now, though.

Republicans are just odd.

Source: TPM EElection Central

Double Length Superspecial Interblag News of the Day

Not all politics, something for everybody this time.

So many interesting bits of weirdness around today, it's hard to get started, so I might as well hop into it.

Fuckwit College Editorials
Boy do we ever get a lot of these around here at IU, in our own paper, the Indiana Daily Student (or as it was always called in my undergraduate days, the Indiana Daily Stupid. Not the cleverest riposte, but incredibly accurate)

In this case, at the Daily Texan, we have a college age male actually trying to make the case that women wearing pants are evil, and that it would be best for all concerned for them to submit to his 'benevolent' domination.

Yeah...

Source: Feministe

Guitar Hero(ine)

While I can't agree with everything said in this article (like the claim that a guitar shaped like a woman's leg in fishnets is somehow an assault on the senses, a visceral attack), I have to admit, the skimpy outfits, heavy promotion of Axe bodyspray and its assorted floozies within the game, to the point that it interferes with gameplay.. that's not a good sign. Activision appears to think that, you know, they should toss away a good portion of the next-gen gaming market share, which includes women, families, and what you might term 'soft-core' or 'casual' games (I prefer soft-core myself just because a: it'll rile some oversensitive types up, and b: all consumer gaming is casual. Game testers and programmers do the non-casual gaming, and that's called WORK, boys and girls), in order to court the drunken frat boy market. It's worked before; look at the sports heavy initial lineup for the original Xbox.

But that doesn't mean it's a good idea in this day and age, when the Wii stalks the earth.

Source: TheCurvature.com

Apparently Rock Band, by the original creators of Guitar Hero, takes a much more balanced, and less commercially crass approach. You might want to stick with that one.

Source: Feministe

Crazy But (Mostly) Harmless Cult Alert:

So in Italy, it seems, for decades, a sort of loose cult of artisans crafted an incredibly elaborate series of cave/vault like churches underground, without permission from local authorities. They did this competently enough that the structures are sound, and due to their neglecting to pay taxes on it or inform the authorities or what not, they're now in possession of the government.

It really is amazing what nuts with time to spare can accomplish. The work they did is amazing. Yet the art itself is uninspired and tacky. It's like a children's playground for hackneyed neo-paganism.

Still worth a look-see.

Source: The Daily Mail

Torture in Lieu of Ticket:

As picked up by the excellent Digby, there is now a video floating around on Youtube of a cop torturing a man for refusing to sign a confession on a traffic ticket. You read that correctly.

I sort of expect that sort of behavior, really, but the idiot cop forgot he was on his dashboard camera the whole time. Needless to say, there's a major lawsuit forthcoming, and good on the taser victim for that. We now live in a country where if you fail to lick the boots of your traffic cop, they can torture you with high voltage. Bravo.

Source: Hullabaloo

Random Wikipedia Coolness of the Day
Birds that vocalize don't have a larynx, like we mammals, they have a syrinx. This structure lacks vocal cords but otherwise serves the same function, with a twist -- it's located farther down the throat, where the lungs branch off in the bronchial tubes. As a result, some birds can sing two sounds at once.

This is wicked cool.

Source: Wikipedia (duh)

Also, here's a Gobi fish that lives symbiotically with a shrimp. The shrimp is mostly blind, so it digs a burrow for both, and the fish acts as a lookout when they're above ground level. neat.

Source: Wikipedia

Finally, did you know that the Poinsettias you get at holiday time are produced using a deliberate infection by a little known category of bacteria called Phytoplasmas? See, without the infection, they produce a single stem, not the cute bushy arrangement full of flowers that people love. So they dose the plants with a disease to alter that. This is somewhat similar to the striped tulip thing the Dutch get mocked for. Apparently, striped tulips are now produced without the disease that originally caused so much adoration.

Sources: Wikipedia (Poinsettia: Cultivation), (Phytoplasma), (Tulip [Introduction to Western Europe])

Marilyn Manson, Perhaps Crazy After All:

Having most recently made the news for bottling his own brand of the highly overrated absinthe, Manson is now getting deeper embroiled in a lawsuit brought by his former bandmate (who operated under the equally cheerful name Madonna Wayne Gacy), for basically embezzling band funds.

To buy human remains. Lots of them.

Included in the list of alleged props: masks made from skin and the skeleton of a little Chinese girl.

Seriously.

Source: The Daily Mail

Science and Morality Watch:

A tragic story about a new baby that has a horrific degenerative disease that causes Alzheimer's like symptoms as young as five, and death before adulthood. It's your standard autosomal recessive genetic disorder, so both parents have to give you a faulty gene. There is a test to determine if you have the gene, it seems, and you're supposed to have the test done if your family has a history.

This woman didn't do what might be argued is due diligence and was unaware of a family member who had a child die of the same illness months before. Now she has a kid that will know nothing but a life of increasing suffering as his own cells die from a glut of cholesterol piling up like toilet paper in a clogged sewage line.

Why is it that people rush into breeding? Why can't they get a comprehensive DNA battery done before they do so? Why for that matter don't we test all fetuses in the womb, to see if we could spare them from, you know, this ghastly and unspeakable, untreatable hell? I know I'll get called a Eugenicist for saying that, but fuck. I'm not the one who is putting a child through five years of torture.

Source: The Daily Mail

Well, that's about it for the news today. Very little in the way of mainstream politics that caught my eye; the whole cell phone tracking scandal I already posted about, and the grind on the FISA bill and Congressional oversight continues apace.

Peace out, word to your mother.