Bushworld Security

Is It Safe?

The Kurds
So apparently Turkey has gone from invading Northern Iraq on foot to bombing it.

We're doing nothing to stop them of course.

Source: Raw Story

The Colombians
Our proxy state in South America looks to have ignited a possible three-way land war, as Venezuela and Ecuador are both unhappy about their cross-border incursion. Venezuela is moving tanks to the border now.

Source: Raw Story

Rad
Remember Democrats saying that securing our ports would be a nice first priority for national security, as opposed to blowing up Middle Eastern countries?

That would have been nice. Instead we get this.

Department of Homeland Security tests of new radiation detection machines last year did not show whether the costly devices performed well enough to be used as planned at ports and borders to protect the country against nuclear attacks or dirty bombs, according to a new report about the process.

The performance tests were organized by the department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which has been trying to deploy the machines along the borders and at ports in a $1.2 billion project, despite allegations from government auditors that the office misled Congress about their effectiveness and later conducted flawed tests to show they worked well.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had said the development and purchase of the machines was a "vital priority" for the department. Officials from the nuclear detection office had asserted the tests -- mandated by Congress before the project was allowed to move forward -- showed they worked well.

But Chertoff called for an independent team to review the program last summer after a Washington Post article spelled out questions about the project. Last fall, Chertoff put the project on hold, conceding that the machines were not ready for wide use.

Ahh, all that taxpayer money gone.

I've never been too sure how this was supposed to work anyway. If you want to transport nuclear material and live, you have to shield it anyway, and if it's shielded, it can't be detected. These devices are essentially big geiger counters. If the uranium or what not is either wrapped in lead or already in a bomb, they wouldn't detect a damn thing.

Source: The Washington Post

Come ON, China!
Yet more wonderful products from our Sino-Industrial Overlords.

A blood thinner tied to the deaths of at least 19 people in the U.S. has a "possibly counterfeit ingredient," a federal agency revealed.

Raw components of the drug, heparin, are produced in China, reports The New York Times in a story set to appear on their Thursday front page.

"Routine tests failed to distinguish the contaminant from [heparin]," write Gardiner Harris and Walt Bogdanich for the Times. "Only sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging tests uncovered that as much as 20 percent of the product's active ingredient was a heparin mimic blended in with the real thing."

Naturally, the Bush administration fell down on the job here too.

A series of independent assessments, including one by the agency’s own Science Board, have found that the F.D.A. is increasingly overwhelmed by its many responsibilities and is incapable of protecting the public from unsafe drugs, medical devices and food — particularly from China. The Government Accountability Office recently discovered, for example, that over a six-year period, the F.D.A. inspected just 64 of the nearly 700 medical device plants registered in China. Medical devices can include items like stents and spinal screws.

Well, I hope you like being poisoned. It's the status quo, now.

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

But Fascinating

Tilda Swinton
Oh so delightfully creepy. She may be, as Colbert puts it, 'from a Future Earth where the sun has been extinguished and albino people live deep underground, with the only source of energy being charged particles emitted by their iridescent hair', but, I like her a lot.

She carried Constantine (the movie obviously) all on her own, and she's a wonderfully creepy White Witch, aka Satan, in the Narnia movies (aka, C.S. Lewis Proves Muslims Worship the Devil).

I didn't realize it was her in Michael Clayton, which I need to see now. She's also slated for an upcoming return as the White Witch in Prince Caspian, and she's going to star in Marilyn Manson's pic about Lewis Caroll.

This is too awesome.

Source: IMDB

Garfield Minus Garfield
What do you get when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic?

Well, a much better comic for one thing. A fascinating look at the descent into madness of one Jon Arbuckle.

Source: Garfield Minus Garfield

Mary Worth Farked
A Fark photoshop thread dedicated to eternal meddler Mary Worth.

Very much not safe for work.

Source: Fark.com

Dark Matter Goliath
So astronomy boffins have now found the largest object in the universe.

Feb. 22, 2008 -- The most colossal structures in the universe have been detected by astronomers who tuned into how the structures subtly bend galactic light.

The newfound filaments and sheets of dark matter form a gigantic features stretching across more than 270 million light-years of space--three times larger than any other known structure and 2,000 times the size of our own galaxy.

...

"If we were able to see the dark matter from Earth it would be a very complex network of filaments and sheets," Van Waerbeke told Discovery News.

That sort of cobwebby structure matches computer models which predict that the visible matter in the universe--clusters and super clusters of galaxies--are just the small lights in much vaster clusters of dark matter. All of it is expanding and in some places still connected by filaments of dark matter--rather like very stringy Mozzarella cheese pulled from a hot pizza.

"They're picking up these really large filaments," said astronomer Bhuvnesh Jain of the University of Pennsylvania. The filaments are 10 to a 100 times less dense than the clusters where filaments meet and things like galaxies collect, he explained.

THE UNIVERSE IS A MELTY PIZZA

RUN!

Source: Discovery Channel

Un-Blinded Me With Science
So an Irish man who lost his sight in an accident has, via surgery involving a donated tooth, regained his vision.

Yes, you read that correctly.

An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday.

Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.

"I thought that I was going to be blind for the rest of my life," McNichol told RTE state radio.

After doctors in Ireland said there was nothing more they could do, McNichol heard about a miracle operation called Osteo-Odonto-Keratoprosthesis (OOKP) being performed by Dr Christopher Liu at the Sussex Eye Hospital in Brighton in England.

The technique, pioneered in Italy in the 1960s, involves creating a support for an artificial cornea from the patient's own tooth and the surrounding bone.

The procedure used on McNichol involved his son Robert, 23, donating a tooth, its root and part of the jaw.

McNichol's right eye socket was rebuilt, part of the tooth inserted and a lens inserted in a hole drilled in the tooth.

Mwahahaha. They said he was mad! MAD! But who's mad now?!

"Now I have enough sight for me to get around and I can watch television. I have come out from complete darkness to be able to do simple things," McNichol said.

There's a website up with some pictures. They're a bit gruesome. http://www.city.ac.uk/avrc/groups/cpo/example17.html

Source: Raw Story

More Random News

Let me show you..

..how much I care.

Polite Society Means Not Discussing Politics At Dinner
Even if you're the President, it seems.

President Bush followed up a mild lecture about expanding democracy among the Mideast's comfortable dynasties with an opulent picnic at the desert playground of one of the region's wealthy leaders.

Bush traded his suit for a casual jacket and took a helicopter as close as he could get to this remote encampment where Abu Dhabi's crown prince, Sheik Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, raises horses and prize falcons.

...

Bush has avoided any direct criticism of human rights or political freedoms in the governments hosting him in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the Arab world, although U.S. allies surely knew who he meant when he decried the treatment of opposition political candidates and dissidents in the region.

Yeah, he meant 'Those people that you can round up and shoot for all I care, so long as there's seconds on that tasty lamb.'

Source: Raw Story

Drug Resistance Spreads
While Bush dines at his rich oil patrons' expense, we have some rather serious emerging problems here at home that a less anti-science administration might be tempted to deal with.

First, a new, tougher and quite nastily contagious strain of MRSA, or Multiply Resistant Staphyloococcus, has emerged, centered on the gay community in San Francisco. So expect to hear a lot more of that special right-wing gay bashing rhetoric we get with regard to AIDS (you know, the 'gay plague' stuff).

Source: BBC News

Meanwhile, a much more dangerous and agressive form of an Adenovirus, the wimpy little common cold bugs, has broken out, hitting the military community amongst others. It causes a nasty form of pnuemonia, and has led to a few deaths already. Since adenoviruses are normally so non-threatening, there really isn't anything medicine can do to treat it if it gets out of hand. We're not talking Captain Trips here, of course... but, you know, two serious disease outbreaks might prompt attention from a slightly more competent government. Instead, we have Bush trying to appoint a rabidly anti-gay minister as the Surgeon General. So it goes.

Source: CNN.com

The War on Terror Never Comes Home
So we're committed to fighting terrorists, world-wide, whenever they rear their ugly heads, right El Presidente?

Unless of course, they're Cuban terrorists plotting to overthrow Castro.

Tristam Korten and Kirk Nielsen, writing for Salon.com, profile a group of Cuban exiles who are believed to have plotted attacks against Cuba and continue to operate in Florida with virtual impunity.

"[O]ther than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country's government," they write.

"In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora, Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups -- Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana -- are so common they've taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons."

Ahh, Miami. What a cesspit.

The article also brings up the long-running outrage that is the U.S. giving sanctuary to an anti-Castro terrorist by the name of Posada Carriles, who is wanted for a series of hotel bombings and the downing of a plane in 1976 that killed 76 people. He's also implicated in an assassination attempt in Panama, and was tied up with our gun running in Central America during Iran-Contra. He recently fled into this country to avoid prosecution, and the Americans fudged Venezuela's extradition request so that he can stay here, indefinitely. He won't even be prosecuted for that pesky illegal immigration.

Border fence? Only for the dirty Mexicans, not bloodthirsty bombers.

Source: Raw Story (from a Salon article)

Thin is In
So Apple has a new laptop in the works that is about three quarters of an inch thick at the thickest point. It's absurdly slim, weighs 3 lbs, and costs about 2 grand.

Think of it as the extremely high-priced cousin of the EEE PC from Asus, or, alternately, the laptop so thin you have to worry about breaking it in half all day long.

Either or.

Source: Macworld

Ahh Fox, Is There Any Corporation Not Your Master?
Except for GE of course, because they let that mean old Olbermann on the air.

This time it's Fox Noise berating John Edwards, Nurses, and humanity in general for being too hard on Cigna, who denied a woman the liver transplant she needed and her doctors wanted, until of course, she died.

I'd wonder how they sleep at night, but I suspect they don't get much rest, as they're all on day-leave from Hell.

Source: Raw Story

Artificial Heart, Artificial War, Artificial News

Science Run Amok
Well, perhaps not AMOK

Heartbeat
Scientists have for the first time created a beating heart from stem cells.

Seriously. They made a beating heart in a dish.

This obviously represents a big step forward toward custom-made, rejection free organ transplants. The scenario being, you need an organ, they take some of your own stem cells and grow it for you, then replace the old one. Considering the shortage of organs today and the terrible side effects of rejection, and the drugs that control it, having your own tissue to transplant into the body would be enormously advantageous.

Not an easy task, but a lot closer now. Great job guys.

Of course, if people like Bush have their way, we will never see medicine or science derived from stem cell work like this. After all, if some zygote somewhere dies, it's the world's greatest tragedy and we must all weep and mourn for a thousand years. Won't someone please think of the snowflake babies?

Sigh. Anyway...
Source: The Times Online

Ham Radio + Jackass == World War III
Remember the 'threatening' behavior the Iranian navy supposedly displayed toward our ships in the Strait of Hormuz? Complete with supervillainish threats?

It turns out that the threatening voice on the radio may well have been a prank call.

Threatening comments heard at the end of a Pentagon-released audio recording designed to prove harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a local heckler known as the "Filipino Monkey," The Navy Times reported.

...

The Times said Friday the voice in the audio sounded different from the one belonging to an Iranian officer shown speaking to the cruiser Port Royal over a radio from a small boat in the video released by Iranian authorities.

That is why several Navy experts interviewed by The Times are raising the possibility that a heckler known in the region as the "Filipino Monkey," or an imitator, could be behind the threats.

"Filipino Monkey," who is likely more than one person, listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and vile epithets, the report said.

US Navy women who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment, the paper said.

So not only was the voice not credible, but they've been suffering these pranks for some time now and are well aware of their non-governmental origin... yet they were willing to let the Bush administration push for war with Iran, based on the jerk behavior of some loser with nothing better to do than harass passing ships over the airwaves.

I'll never understand why the military of this country does so much to cover for a man who does so little for them in return.

Source: Raw Story

Strikefest 2008
So the grueling battle over future media revenue streams seems to have killed the last half of this year's tv lineup, and now next year's batch of inanity is about to die stillborn as well.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Four major studios have canceled dozens of writers' contracts in a possible concession that the current television season cannot be saved, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

The move means the two-month old writers strike may also endanger next season's new shows, the Times said.

January is usually the beginning of pilot season, when networks order new scripted shows. But the strike leaves networks without a pool of comedy and drama scripts from which to choose.

At this rate, Americans might actually have to read something to pass the time. Truly it is the end of the world as we know it.

Source: CNNMoney.com

New Media, Old Problems
Maybe The Register wasn't being too hard on them after all..

So it seems that Wikipedia, a registered charity, had running the finances of its parent corporation a convicted theft, larcenist, check kiter and habitual drunk driver. Seriously.

For more than six months, beginning in January of this year, Wikipedia's million-dollar check book was balanced by a convicted felon.

When Carolyn Bothwell Doran was hired as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Florida-based Wikimedia Foundation, she had a criminal record in three other states - Virginia, Maryland, and Texas - and she was still on parole for a DUI (driving under the influence of alcohol) hit and run.

Her record also included convictions for passing bad checks, theft, petty larceny, additional DUIs, and unlawfully wounding her boyfriend with a gun shot to the chest.

Haven't these morons ever heard of a background check? At all? Or would that be too anti-democratic?

Source: The Register

Wireless Missile System and Wired Sushi
No, not for the Army -- for your office.

Sadly, without a wireless webcam attached, aiming is going to be tricky. I suppose you could buy your own and put it on the base though. This has definite possibilities.

Source: The Register (Hardware)

This on the other hand is just silly. A USB plug that looks like a piece of sushi.

Hmm, now I want sushi.

Wait though... here's a tomato that looks like the Bat-Signal!

Just like finding Jesus in a slice of toast! Amazing!

Browser Cleanup and Work-Ahead

Stories to Pique the Interest and Cleanse the Palate

OK, some of them are just weird.

Free Prostitutes!
No, seriously.

If you want to watch Nick having sex with a prostitute, he's happy to let you.

The 36-year-old bank-security technician drove eight hours from his home in Metz, France, to Big Sister, a Prague brothel where customers peruse a touch-screen menu of blondes, brunettes and redheads available for free. The catch is clients have to let their exploits be filmed and posted on the Internet.

Doing your part for Praque tourism, eh, ladies?

Source: AZCentral (probably a Nidoking link originally)

California Scheming
So California is considering mandating the installation, in new homes, of thermostats they can remote control to turn down your AC during peak useage, ostensibly to prevent blackouts.

Without your consent.

On the one hand, yeah, it's better than a blackout; but who decides who gets to roast, and how? What about people who need the cool? The sick, the elderly, or just a poor schmoe who works nights and desperately needs his sleep?

The potential for abuse is ENORMOUS.

Look folks; you live in one of the sunniest states in the nation. It's called Solar Power. It just so happens to produce energy best at times when you want to use your AC most.

Look into it.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Pundit Class Perpetually Wrong
Jon Stewart ripped into the pundit class on their New Hampshire predictions, and subsequent near-meltdown, on an episode of The...err, A Daily Show that I missed (the name has been changed for the strike, I dunno why).

There's a video of the skit but I'm waiting to watch it with the roomie.

Source: Raw Story

Atrocious Headline
This is a story about how apparently some sugar free gums are made with sorbitol, a sugar subsitute... that is also a laxative.

Who thought that would be a good idea? MORONS!

But the headline takes the cake here.

On the run: Chewing gum blamed for chronic diarrhoea

What the hell is that? That's not even remotely funny.

Of course, neither is this.

In an unusual case study reported by next Saturday's British Medical Journal (BMJ), gastro-entorologists at Berlin's Charite hospital describe how they investigated two patients who had persistent diarrhoea.

One was a 21-year-old woman who had been experiencing diarrhoea and diffuse abdominal pain for eight months and had lost 11 kilos (24.2 pounds) of her 51.8-kilo (114-pound) body weight.

The other was a 46-year-old man with flatulence, abdominal bloating and diarrhoea so bad that he had lost 22 kilos (48 pounds), or a fifth of his body weight, over the past year.

Once again, I ask: What idiot thought this was a good idea? The headline OR the damn gum?

Source: Raw Story

Promising Research
So there's some promising AIDS research out now, in part due to the Human Genone Project. Basically now that we have the genome mapped, researchers can produce little snippets of RNA to selectively turn off any individual gene and see what happens.

Some researchers working on AIDS did this with all 21,000 genes that the human body uses to code for protein, to see which of them the virus needed to work. They found a couple hundred nobody knew it used, that we could mess with to fight the disease.

This is outstanding, and proof that science is awesome.

Source: The Washington Post

Autism Conspiracy Freaks: Shut the Fuck Up

So for the longest time, desperately searching for someone, anyone, to blame, a lot of parents of autistic children have been blaming the mercury based preservative thimersol for childhood autism.

Nevermind that every reputable, scientific study on the subject has said there is no link; nevermind that when the preservative was phased out in Europe, autism rates went UP, not down. Still they wail, they gnash their teeth, they moan, it MUST be the mercury.

Color me cynical, but perhaps this is a guilt crazed buck pass sort of deal, since the predominant theory in the medical community is that autism is a genetic disorder with an unknown environmental trigger or triggers. People never want to think it's THEM, because then it's their fault, even though in this case that's a bit silly too.

Well, thimerosol has been phased out in the US too, and the results are in from California: autism rates here, too, went UP.

Researchers from the state Department of Public Health found the autism rate in children rose continuously during the 12-year study period from 1995 to 2007. The preservative thimerosal hasn't been used in childhood vaccines since 2001, but is used in some flu shots.

Doctors say the latest study adds to existing evidence refuting a link between thimerosal exposure and autism risk and should reassure parents that the disorder is not caused by vaccinations. If there was a risk, they said, autism rates should have dropped between 2004 and 2007.

So all the crazy conspiracy nuts who claimed that it was a massive coverup by the CDC, that there was no doubt that it was thimersol, despite the fact that you get a far larger dose of mercury from coal power plants and seafood? Will they be apologizing soon, for their decade long crusade of insanity and threats against legitimate researchers?

Of course not. These doctors must be in on it too. They must be in with THEM.

Once again: I Hate Americans.

Source: Raw Story

Eve of Apocalypse News

It may be World War III in the near future, but for now, on with the news!

Progress on Paralysis
So some researchers have discovered that the spinal cord, at least in mice, can reroute around blocks in the nerves that transmit the ability to control limbs and such, and are now looking into ways to trigger this repair in people. Apparently the mice were able to get the ability to walk back, but not entirely as well as before.

From the article, I guess the spine consists of outer layers of very long nerves that hook the brain directly to areas to be controlled, and a core of shorter connections. These shorter connections can be repurposed to route around cuts or damage to the very long nerves, it seems. The scientists describe it as being like a traffic detour.

Interesting, and hopefully they can continue their research after we pull ourselves out of the rubble.

Source: Reuters

GM Stands for General Morons
So, I guess GM is desperate to generate any news other than its plummeting market share and growing irrelevance, thanks to companies like Toyota with their silly ideas about actually delivering fuel-efficient cars to the end consumer instead of jerking our collective chain with hydrogen cars and guaranteed-to-never-make-it-to-market-electric auto show prototypes.

This has led to them promoting the idea of, in the near future... automated cars. Yes, GM may not be able to figure out a working hybrid engine, but they think you should trust them to make a car that drives itself!

As the somewhat poorly written article notes, DARPA has an annual contest to produce a car that can drive itself; the military thinks that having convoys that don't require drivers to be human targets is a good idea.

Stopped clocks and all that rot.

At any rate, how does the state of the art DARPA contest fare on automated cars?

The Defense Department contest, which initially involved 35 teams, showed the technology isn't ready for prime time. One team was eliminated after its vehicle nearly charged into a building, while another vehicle mysteriously pulled into a house's carport and parked itself.

Oh yeah. That sounds swell.

If GM was serious about this they could of course attempt to win the annual contest and get a big, fat military contract to pad their bottom line. They're obviously not, though.

He said the company plans to test driverless car technology by 2015 and have cars on the road around 2018.

Ahh, the future is... never going to arrive. As usual.

Source: CNN.com

Kenya Crisis
So there's a big story in Africa, which means you're not going to see much about it on the nightly news. Kenya's latest elections degenerated into an orgy of chaos and violence as the opposition party leader accused the winner of the election of vote fraud. In response the country is flying apart on tribal lines, with the entrenched police brutally targeting tribal groups seen as allying with the oppo leader, and rioting groups forming in response, in some cases arming themselves.

The police are apparently particularly worthy of blame, shooting innocent people, burning children alive and the like.

Noor Adam begged police to spare his children as he lay bleeding from a bullet wound in front of his shop but they set fire to his store anyway, burning to death his 7-year-old daughter and teenage son inside.

...



Adam, a member of the Luhya tribe who have largely backed opposition leader Odinga, said he was sleeping in his shop with his daughter Saida and his 17-year-old son, Rashid, when the police from a different tribe arrived on Dec. 29.

"When I showed my ID, they said, 'He's from the Luhya community ... Shoot him,'" Adam said.

The police shot him in the leg, then turned their attention to his shop.

"I saw the police set the shop on fire. I told them I had children inside," said Adam who was being treated Saturday for an infected bullet wound at the Makina clinic in Nairobi's Kibera slum.

He said he couldn't bear to go back home to sift through the ashes for the bones of his children.

"I can never go back. I want to leave this country," he said, weeping. "They (police) are supposed to protect us."

Ahh, Democracy.

Don't expect to see a lot of coverage on your teevee, of course. This is occuring in one of those dark colored countries without oil. Instead, perhaps you'll get another series on the Evil Muslims Who Have All That Tasty Crude Oil That We Must Liberate For Purely Humanitarian Reasons.

Uggh.

Source: AP/Raw Story

They'll Do It Every Ye-Olde Time
Amusing.

Disney Does Something Right; Hell Freezes Over
So Disney World in Florida, it seems, has 98 separate full service restaurants. Only one of them is a formalwear required, five star joint, specializing in seven-course three hour meals starting at 125 bucks a pop.

People still, in spite of the dress code, tried to bring kids from time to time, so Disney has banned the anklebiters from the ultra formal restaurant.

They're getting some outrage over this from the lunatic fringe, of course.

Why is it a radical proposition to ban children from places they have no business being? Why must I put up with kids everywhere I go? In my movie theatre, at a play, at a nice restaurant, screaming, wailing, running and jumping around -- it's infuriating!

Many thanks to Disney for taking a stand.

Source: AZCentral
Hat Tip to Nidoking's own daily news.

I've Got Those Sunday Morning News Blues

My baby left me... something about a train..... 

Let's make this rapid-fire so I can clear out my Opera tabs, shall we?

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way To Do Almost Anything
El Presidente sends out Christmas cards with a staunch religious message and an extensive bible quote.

Asks Walters: "Does this also go to agnostics, and atheists, and Muslims?"

"Don't you think it's a little interesting," Walters also asks, "that the president of all the people is sending out a religious Christmas card?"

I think it's a little offensive that the President sends out Christmas cards through the White House, actually. I don't care if he wants to do it as a private individual, but since when is it the place of government to tell us about Jesus?

There are, of course, alternatives, if you want to do something more fun and less preachy.

Sources: Raw Story
Slashfilm.com

Al Sharpton, Legal Eagle
So it turns out there's an FBI tape from 2003 where Al Sharpton asks for $50,000 to be donated to his political campaign with the promise that he'll land the donor a cushy contract if he does so.

Sharpton claims that this is not illegal, because he was only a candidate for office, not an elected official. If he's right and that loophole exists, then... just wow. Amazing.

Source: Philly.com

Mackris v. O'Reilly
Turns out that an enterprising soul has made an opera out of the sexual harassment case against Bill O'Reilly, he of War on Christmas fame. A sample has been posted to Youtube, and it is astonishingly funny.

Source: Jesus' General

Department of I Can't Help But Gawk
I really don't want to be the guy who slows down at a car accident to see the carnage, here (leave that for the esteemed Mr. Carlin), but you really have to see some things to believe them. You might have read or seen an article about the little girl in India born with four extra limbs, thought by some to be an incarnation of an eight-limbed Hindu goddess of wealth. Well, they performed a successful surgery to remove the extra appendages and she's apparently doing well. The reason I link this particular article is most of the way down the page, they include an x-ray of the girl pre-surgery.

Wowsa.

Apparently she didn't so much have extra limbs as a headless, torso-less conjoined twin growing out of her pelvis. Those were its arms and legs, not hers, that they cut out.

Ewww.

Here's hoping she does well in the future.

Source: BBC News

Department of Another Bad Idea
So it seems there's not actually any law governing how much money a charity has to spend out of what it collects on, you know, charity.

Seriously.

This has led, in turn, to a raft of less than scrupulous 'charity' organizations that take in money, supposedly for Iraq war veterans, and then siphon huge amounts off the top. Things like half-million a year salaries, for instance.

Lovely.

On the other hand, you have charities like Fisher House, which spend 90% of what they take in directly on charitable work. They don't do much in the way of advertising, so they rely on word of mouth and so forth to get the dollars. Jeffrey Rowland of Overcompensating and Wigu had a shirt on sale to benefit them for a while but unfortunately that option is no longer available. The roommate has one and I shall have to post a picture sometime. At any rate, if you're going to give money, make sure you check out who it's going to.

And if you want to give to vets, the Fisher House people are apparently a good place to send the checks.

Sources: Fisher House
The Washington Post

RIP, Julia Carson
Finally on a sad note, Julia Carson, long-time public servant and Indiana congresswoman, just died from complications of a long fight with lung cancer. Carson was a remarkable figure in Indiana politics, a black woman hated with visceral fury by the Republicans and the right wing, who used people power as a political machine and created a small Democratic empire out of the city of Indianapolis. By all accounts honest, hard working, ingenious and dedicated, she spent her life helping other people and fighting the sort of entitled idiots who have driven this country to the brink of self-destruction. She will be missed.

My own most vivid memory about Carson was the vicious campaign against her one election year when I was still a kid growing up half-time on the south side. The Republicans thought that doctoring up a photograph of Carson, using the old Nazi propaganda techniques (lighting from below, high contrasts, etc) so that she looked like a crack addict would play well in their advertising. It was one of the most baldly racist, ugly things I've ever seen in a political campaign, and a real harbinger of events to come, where in future elections Republicans would insinuate that black candidates were out to get your white women, or that Max Cleland, who lost 3 limbs serving his country, was in league with Osama Bin Laden.

Carson won the election, handily as usual. It takes guts to stand up to abuse like that. I always admired her for it.

Source: IndyStar.com