Sunday 30 November 2003

GREG WEIHER on The United States and the Bogeyman

"american foreign policy seems to be founded on the bogeyman fallacy. All we have to do is get rid of the evildoers--Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Fedayeen, Yasser Arafat--and everything will be OK.

It's not the modern history of the Middle East, during which the great powers redrew national boundaries and toppled popular regimes to suit their own economic and political purposes, that's causing our problems--it's Saddam Hussein.

It's not the barbaric treatment of the Palestinians, glossed over so that we could assuage our consciences about the holocaust, or the grinding hopelessness of everyday life in the occupied territories that destabilize the region--it's Yasser Arafat.

It's not the decade of sanctions, the bumbling stupidity of our occupation, and our knee-jerk dependence upon indiscriminate firepower that causes Iraqis to hate and kill American soldiers--it's those sore losers, the Saddam loyalists.

the worst thing that could ever happen to Bush and the prevari-cons would be to actually catch Saddam and Osama--because once those guys were out of circulation, and nothing at all changed in the Middle East, they'd have to start talking about policies instead of personalities. Unless, of course, they could find a couple of new bogeymen."

Saturday 29 November 2003

the american terror-and-protection racket

critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, argue that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But General Tommy Franks is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution, "this grand experiment that we call democracy”, could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government ....for our own good. Citing the blanket-spectre of "terrorist threats," he reasoned that the U.S. would need to come under lockdown and Total Control via the U.S. military

or as ian goddard says "A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their govt and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get."
THE 1970s

the next time you're throwing a 70s theme party, try to remind your guests that there was more to the 70s than glitter, flared trousers and amusing john travolta/olivia newton john dance routines.

to begin with why not welcome guests with a glass of gasoline to drink and then set your guests on fire, adding a 70s mexican twist to the occaission.

a declassified document which surfaced during a probe into disappearances of hundreds of mexican leftist activists in the 60s and 70s, shows that soldiers tortured suspected rebel prisoners during the 70s, sometimes forcing them to drink gasoline and then setting them afire. In 2001, the National Human Rights Commission documented the disappearance of at least 275 suspected rebels.

in these modern times when capitalism has become the king of that's-just-the-way-it-is, its important to remember that in the 70s people were uplifted by more than just the words to 'dancing queen'. try introducing communiques from 70s populist terrorist groups such as the uk's very own the angry brigade, or germany's red army faction (baader meinhof gang). back in the 1970s, you were either on the side of the RAF or you were on the side of the state, they were the world's first celebrity terrorists and the true embodiment of the term "radical chic".

remember these golden oldies?:

"We attack property not people."

"The urban guerrilla's aim is to attack the state's apparatus of control at certain points and put them out of action, to destroy the myth of the system's omnipresence and invulnerability."

"Let the class struggle unfold!  Let the proletariat organize!  Let the armed resistance begin!"

we all know that slade wished it could be christmas everyday, but in 1972 the civilian population of north vietnam certainly didn't. not when Richard Nixon ordered carpet bombing of civilian areas in North Vietnam during the Christmas holidays.

if your throwing your party on a sunday why not invite soldiers from the British Army's 1st Parachute Regimen along to shoot dead a number of your unarmed guests, just like on bloody sunday in derry ireland january 30th 1972.

and why not organise a game of chilean hide and seek, in which your guests hide somewhere and then they're never found again. in 1973 the american backed coup that brought pinochet to power resulted in the disappearance of 3,000 people.

and finally if your tiny basement flat just isn't big enough for the kind of party you have in mind, you could always hi-jack a plane. hijacking and blowing up planes was really big in the 70s.

further party theme suggestions:

a 50s theme? organise the army to escort your black guests to the party and arm your white guests with rocks to throw at them as they arrive.

in 1957: Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus calls out the state's National Guard to prevent nine black students from integrating Little Rock's Central High School. President Dwight Eisenhower responds by sending the U.S. Army to escort the teen-agers into the school.

or an 80s night? forget serving food to your guests but instead why not instigate hunger strikes, just like the ira hungerstrikers that were allowed to die in the hands of thatcher's government.

Friday 28 November 2003

SHAPESHIFTING

Most things we encounter are made up of parts called molecules

Most solids have less empty space between their molecular parts than their liquid or gaseous forms.

almost 97 percent of our bodies is made up of the big four molecules- carbon 19.4%, hydrogen 9.3%, nitrogen 5.1%, and most of all, oxygen with 62.8%.

Atoms cannot be created or destroyed (except in nuclear reactions, which don't occur in biology). So all the matter (physical material) of the bodies of all living things comes from shuffling atoms around between living things (as when we eat) or from interactions with the environment (as when we breathe).

The nutrients we get from eating foods provide the necessary molecules our bodies need to grow and function properly.

There is a gulf between inanimate matter and living things. A piece of granite is very different to a plant. A granite rock fragment was formed three billion years ago. Today its modification requires concerted effort and significant expenditure of energy. A plant, composed of carbon dioxide, water and sunlight, can trace its history to a seed or cutting planted in rather recent times. In a year a potted plant on the window ledge will have changed dramatically. Its leaves will have exchanged large volumes of gas with the atmosphere, and if the plant has been cared for, it will have absorbed several gallons of water. The granite fragment will be exactly as it was just after it was formed. Yet the same forces which keep the rock constant permit the living things to change and evolve.

Humans shed and regrow outer skin cells about every 27 days; that is almost 1,000 new skins in a lifetime.

cellular Shapeshifting: an interview With John Perkins
"Separateness is just an illusion."

"It's hard for people coming from other cultural and educational backgrounds to accept the fact that people can become jaguars or trees."

"yet in another sense it is very easy for us to accept the fact that we have an incredible cellular shapeshifting capacity."

"When I first started bringing people with cancer to the shaman for healing, the shaman would look inside them as they do using what they call pentsak, which is a technique for actually looking inside a person's body. They would look inside these North Americans' bodies and see these outrageous growths that they'd never seen anything like before. Now cancer is a very strong cellular shapeshift."

"cancer and spontaneous healings are actually forms of shapeshifting on the physical level in the body"

"And we pretty readily accept that. We have a much more difficult time accepting that people can shapeshift into a jaguar. The Shuar in the Amazon is a tribe that I work with a lot. From one perspective, it is very hard for them to understand how a person can get a cancer and E. coli for example. But it is very easy for them to accept how a person can shapeshift into a tree or animal. It is a matter of what tradition we are brought up in and both are very possible."

"I felt like I was beginning to slip from within my own body, that my shape had become fluid"

the inherent ramifications of the shape-shifting phenomena alert us that we have invested the entirety of our stock-in-trade in the "absolute" "nature" of human identity! If nothing else, we have built a game and fashioned its rules without even taking into consideration the possibility of exceptions to those rules, a fatal error we have made time and time again. Inevitably, doing so also puts us at serious risk of having virtually backed ourselves into a corner.

What would happen if we were to come to the realization that shape-shifting is the actualization of some of our most important goals in biology and medicine?
CORPOREAL

gelatine brain mould
chocolate brain
chocolate heart
gelatine hand mould
molar tooth mug

the guardian's flash guide to face transplants

body modification
deep piercing, foot
surface weave
pocketing
nape pocket
arm pocketing
pocketing

Phrenology
Franz-Joseph Gall (1758-1828) proposed that the external form of the cranium reflects the internal form of the brain, and that the relative development of the brain's faculties caused changes of form in the skull, which could be used to diagnose the particular mental faculties and character of a given individual.

photogenic mask

lip augmentation.com

eyes

archives:
body parts
THE BODY FOR BEGINNERS
human
LibertyThink Quiz: Who said:

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation, We must take steps to insure our domestic security and protect our homeland."

was it a) George W. Bush?
or b) Adolf Hitler?

Hint: it was the same person who said: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."

yes its answer 'b'.
Video of the Police State on Overdrive (Miami)

Amnesty International called today for a full and independent inquiry into allegations of excessive use of force by police during demonstrations in Miami on 20th November. The organization has also received dozens of reports of ill-treatment of those detained during the demonstration.

Police are reported to have fired rubber bullets and used batons, pepper spray, tear gas canisters and concussion grenades on crowds demonstrating against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) negotiations, leaving some people hospitalized and dozens more treated for injuries. Scores of people, including journalists and observers, were arrested during the demonstration, some reportedly subjected to ill-treatment in detention.

Other reports suggest that detainees have been beaten and sprayed with pepper gas and high-powered water hoses inside Dade County Jail. Independent sources told Libertythink that aside from broken bones, there were also lost eyes from rubber bullets, and of the 273 that were arrested, 5 were raped in jail by cops.
(via the hive)
Fuad Moussa, a 27-year-old gay palestinian man is in imminent danger due to two "crimes": in Palestine he is persecuted due to his sexual orientation, and in Israel he is persecuted because he chose to live in Jerusalem with his Jewish partner, Ezra, even though he does not have a permit to be in Israel. read more at counterpunch
British charity silenced on Iraq

Save the Children UK came under enormous pressure after it accused coalition forces of breaching the Geneva convention by blocking humanitarian aid.

Senior figures at Save the Children US, based in Westport, Connecticut, demanded the withdrawal of the criticism and an effective veto on any future statements blaming the invasion for the plight of Iraqi civilians suffering malnourishment and shortages of medical supplies.

Uncovered documents expose tensions within an alliance that describes itself as "the world's largest independent global organisation for children" but which is heavily reliant on governments and big business for cash.

Accounts published by Save the Children US highlight its vulnerability to political pressure from a Republican White House with "government grants and contracts" generating some 60%, nearly £71m, of its £119m operating support and revenue. The proportion is also high in the UK, where £60.1m - 49% - of the organisation's income is "grants and gifts in kind from institutional donors", including the government.
Tobacco Plants Produce Spider Silk

Russian researchers have inserted a gene, similar to one that enables spiders to produce their webs, into tobacco plants. The Transgenic tobacco plants then produced the spider silk protein, called spidroin, a development that could allow industrial-scale production of synthetic spider silk that's as strong as the real stuff.

Spider silk is so desirable that scientists have spent decades trying to find a way to synthesize it. Five times stronger than steel and more elastic than Kevlar, spider silk could be used for a variety of applications, from medical sutures to space stations.

Previously, the researchers tried to produce spidroin from bacteria. other Current projects to create spider silk include efforts by Nexia Biotechnologies in Vaudreuil-Dorion, Quebec to genetically modify goats to produce milk rich with spider silk proteins that can be spun into fiber.
Blinks Replace Clicks in Eye-controlled Computing

A system that enables control of a computer through eye movements has opened computing to people whose disabilities prevent them from using a mouse.

The system, called IRISCOM, substitutes the mouse used in Windows applications for a unique assistive technology device known as Quick Glance.

Quick Glance uses a camera mounted on a computer monitor to determine where a user is looking. It then places the cursor at this gaze point. To select or "click" on items, users close one eye or both for half a second.
A theoretical physicist contemplates the plausibility of time travel, Interview with Michio Kaku.

"about 10 years ago, if you were a serious physicist talking about time travel, you'd be laughed out of the scientific establishment. People would snicker behind your back, your scientific career would be ruined, and you wouldn't get tenure. In the last decade or so, there's been a sea change with regards to the scientific attitude toward time travel. Originally, the burden of proof was on physicists to prove that time travel was possible. Now the burden of proof is on physicists to prove there must be a law forbidding time travel."
a pair of specs dubbed the memory glasses. The specs have a tiny television screen embedded into one of the lenses and are hooked up to a PDA.

The PDA can be programmed to send messages or images to the screen. Each prompt is geared to jog the wearer's memory -- whether it is an image of a soccer ball, the day's calendar or the name of the guy who just said hello.

And all of these messages are flashed before the eye at 1/180 of a second, so the wearer isn't even conscious that they have been sent.

"The thing that's unique about my work on the memory glasses is the use of subliminal messages," said Richard DeVaul, the glasses' inventor and a doctoral student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

So rather than producing a barrage of distracting pop-up messages, the system provides a noninvasive wealth of information and memory cues. And for those awkward chance meetings when you are completely at a loss as to whom you are talking to, the system can flash a name or an image of the last meeting you had with the mystery person to help jog your memory. The system can find these matches by using voice- or face-recognition technologies.
an employee alcohol-monitoring skin patch is being developed by SpectRx. The wireless patch is placed over four tiny holes made in the employee's skin, through which small samples of fluid are continuously tested. The test results are then transmitted to a receiver.
Watch what we tell you

In the days when Spain was ruled by General Francisco Franco, you could watch surprisingly blatant ridicule of his dictatorship on the stages of Madrid and Barcelona.

Franco's censors didn't care about theatres and cabarets, because they were attended, for the most part, by sophisticated, urban, middle-class Spaniards who were already a lost cause to the regime. The mass audience watched state-owned Television Espanola and that was strictly controlled to ensure there was never a breath of criticism.

in nearby modern day italy Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, has a comprehensive grip on what his voters watch on television. Silvio Berlusconi owns all three of the biggest private channels.

and events this week brought into the open the way in which the italian prime minister's followers and employees can now limit what is shown on the other big, state-owned channels. His TV group Mediaset announced it wanted 20 million euros in damages from Italy's public broadcaster, RAI, and the producers of a satirical programme featuring a comedienne, Sabina Guzzanti.

Just the threat of a writ from mighty Mediaset was enough to persuade the director-general of RAI, Flavio Cataneo, to scrap Ms Guzzanti's show.

RAI's executives are in an impossible position. Parliament, to which they are ultimately responsible, is dominated by followers of the man who owns their direct competitor and who, as head of the government, is in a position to have laws framed that favour his own group's interests at the expense of the public broadcaster.
Radio Havana Interviews Chomsky

"The fact that the United States can label other countries as terrorist states itself is quite remarkable because it not a secret that the United States is incontrovertibly a terrorist state."

"The US is the only country in the world that has been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism. The words they used were: “unlawful use of force” in their war against Nicaragua. That’s international terrorism. There were two Security Council resolutions supporting that judgement. The US of course vetoed them. And that was no small terrorist war. It practically destroyed the country.

"US terrorism against Cuba has been going on since 1959 and the fact that the US can label Cuba a terrorist state when it has been carrying out a major terrorist campaign against Cuba since 1959, picking up heavily in the’60s and peaking in the ‘70s in fact, that’s pretty astonishing."

"the Kennedy administration intensified the on-going terrorist operations (against Cuba) and pressed them to such a point that they almost led to a terminal nuclear war."

"if you look at the scholarly literature on terrorism by people like Walter Laqueur and other respected scholars, and take a look at the index, you find Cuba mentioned often and if you look at the page references, what is mentioned is suspicions that Cuba may have been involved in some terrorist actions, but what you will not find is a reference to the very well documented US terrorist operations against Cuba."

"And that is not controversial. We have reams of declassified government documents on it. There is extensive scholarship on it, but it cannot enter into public discourse. It’s a pretty remarkable achievement, not just of the media but of the intellectual community altogether.

The mass media, the business world, and the intellectual community in general, tend to line up in support of concentrated power - which in the US is state and corporate power.

in the declassified records, you find descriptions by the CIA and the intelligence agencies of how the problem with Cuba is what they call its successful defiance of US policies going back a hundred and fifty years. That’s a reference to the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine, which the US was not powerful enough to implement at the time, stated that the US would become the dominant force in this hemisphere and Cuba is not submitting to that. ...... They are not worried about Cuban aggression or even subversion or anything. They are worried about Cuba’s successful defiance and that’s not just Cuban. That’s common.

When the US overthrew the government of Guatemala in 1954 - again we have that rich record of declassified documents - what they explain is that the threat of Guatemala was that its the first democratic government that had enormous popular support. It was mobilising the peasantry, instituting social reforms and this was likely to appeal to surrounding countries that might want to do the same thing. And that couldn’t be tolerated or else the whole framework of US domination of the hemisphere would collapse."
(Z-net via memes.org)

Tuesday 25 November 2003

free speech, use it or lose it
america's real goal in Iraq
"the war is not really about Iraq. It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions.

This war is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman."


on Monday President Bush signed a record $401.3 billion defense bill on Monday

US hawk Richard Perle admits invasion was illegal
"international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone" he said.

Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year, said "They're just not interested in international law, are they? It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."

according to Rabinder Singh QC, who represented CND, Mr Perle's remarks bear little resemblance to official justifications for war. Certainly the British government, he said, "has never advanced the suggestion that it is entitled to act, or right to act, contrary to international law in relation to Iraq".

MI6 ran 'dubious' Iraq campaign
Former UN chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter said that British intelligence ran a campaign designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. the disinformation drive, 'Operation Mass Appeal', in the late 1990s was designed to shift public opinion.

he stated that the intelligence was ""single source data of dubious quality" ..."They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages."

"The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports, continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs."


Another TV station banned in 'democratic' Iraq

Army retracts mutilation statement
U.S. military officials retracted their statement Monday that the bodies of two soldiers were mutilated after an attack in the northern city of Mosul.

The New York Times reported an unidentified military official said the two soldiers died from bullet wounds to their heads. He said Iraqis had pulled the bodies from the soldiers' car and had stolen personal belongings.

The military official said contrary to initial Army reports, the men had not been beaten by rocks nor had their throats been slashed.

Amnesty Warns US Over Collective Punishment In Iraq
Amnesty International said Friday, November 21, U.S. forces appeared to be destroying houses in Iraq as a form of collective punishment for attacks on U.S. troops and warned that the practice would violate the Geneva Conventions.

The human rights group said it had sent a letter to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding clarification whether the demolitions as a form of collective punishment or deterrence was officially permitted, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP)

"If such proved to be the case, it would constitute a clear violation of international humanitarian law," the group said in the letter.

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said "what we are doing here is attacking the terrorist infrastructure (blah blah blah)."

Leaked memo shows FBI scrutinizes us antiwar rallies
american civil rights advocates and legal scholars said the monitoring program could signal a return to the abuses of the 1960's and 1970's, when J. Edgar Hoover was the F.B.I. director and agents routinely spied on political protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover."

Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has written about F.B.I. history, said "As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We're going to ferret out information on demonstrations,' that deters people. People don't want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files."

The abuses of the Hoover era led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities. Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."

The F.B.I. memorandum appears to offer the first corroboration of a coordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding demonstrations.
( via news insider)

the 14 defining characteristics of fascism
Faces of the Fallen

At the Washington Post: Photos and brief bios of all U.S. fatalities in Iraq, arranged by date of death. Not all of them are combat-related.
Personhood

In common English usage, the word "person" is a synonym for "human." In philosophy, however, there have been debates over the precise meaning and correct usage of the word and over the criteria for personhood.

The debate about personhood is nowhere close to being resolved, but rather will likely become more complicated with the introduction of advanced robots and artificial intelligences that some argue merit personhood status.
eyes

Fixed eyes are effective in simple organisms, but impose a significant impediment to survival for animals that must contend with the challenge of predators or agile prey. The development of eyes able to move within an eye socket marked a significant improvement and demanded, in turn, a lubricant able to bathe delicate optical equipment and ease the friction of motion.

The lubricant itself needed special properties, low viscosity so as not to entrap debris, low production cost so as not to consume too large a portion of the organisms food intake, and low opacity so as not to interfere with systems original visual purpose.

High on the list of requirements too was the necessity that the lubricant should not harbor bacteria. Tears therefore contain a specific agent that attacks just bacteria, destroying their cell walls.

The agent which nature developed for this purpose is lysozyme. It does not affect the delicate membranes of the eye or the eye socket. Instead, it is able to recognize at the molecular level a component of a bacterium's cell wall and, having keyed onto this element, break down the wall destroying the foreign organism.
transubstantiation

The Eastern Orthodox Church, like the Catholic Church, teaches that the bread and wine truly become the body and blood of Christ.

Some Roman Catholic theologians interpreted transubstantiation as a change of meaning rather than a change of substance, however in 1965 Pope Paul VI mandated the retention of the original dogma of the twelth century.
chemical scarification, foot

skin removal scarification
skin removal scarification
genitals
straitjacket
Image is everything today. And image begins with fashion. Few items in today's wardrobe are as fashionable and as versatile as the straitjacket.
(via Geisha asobi blog)
Wim Delvoye
x ray sex photos
(via fleshbot)
egg and spoons

SPERM MOTILITY

embryo

Monday 24 November 2003

Plastic Sling Props Up Droopy Necks

A plastic sling has been developed that stops age-related neck droop. Surgeons attach the plastic sling—a strip of polytetrafluoroethylene—under the skin, running it below the jaw and chin from behind one earlobe to behind the other.
website screenplays

have you ever stopped to think how much better your favourite blogs and web sites would be if Hollywood scriptwriters got ahold of them?
(via The Snakepit of Bweezy's Mind)
Create your own Bayeux Tapestry

Drag and drop characters from The Bayeux Tapestry to make your own stories.
the victorian internet
Walking robot carries a person

a walking robot capable of carrying a human was unveiled on Friday in Tokyo, Japan.

Its creators at Waseda University in Tokyo and the Japanese robotics company tmsuk hope their two-legged creation will one day enable wheel-chair users to climb up and down stairs and assist the movement of heavy goods over uneven terrain.

plus Anthropomorphic Flutist Robot
(via slashdot)

and JFK Medical Center this week formally unveils its new, five-foot, $1.35 million surgical robot the FDA approved in July 2000 - the da Vinci - made by Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG) of Sunnyside, Calif.

Dr. Ross Cohen, director of JFK's robotic surgery program, said he has already used the da Vinci to perform four radical laparoscopic prostatectomies (removal of the prostate).

plus ROBOT does the work of a pharmacist in record time

and a new biotechnology robot that can hunt for new drugs 30,000 times a day has been unveiled in Melbourne.
Dead Men Can Become Fathers in Israel

Israeli women have been given permission to harvest a dead husband's sperm for posthumous fertility treatments without his prior consent.

The permission was granted in a directive from Attorney-General Eliyakim Rubinstein that makes Israel the only country in the world authorizing such a childbearing practice. The directive affects married and common law wives.
"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time." ....Tyler Durden
belief in God is not sufficient to guarantee morality
"If you ain't angry, you ain't paying attention." -Mumia Abu-Jamal
"its easy to be an american, but is it easy to live on a planet with americans?"
(video: "justifying terrorism" via no dogs and no philosophers allowed)
"You can fool some of the people all of the time--and those are the ones you have to concentrate on!" ---George W. Bush (NY Times)
(quotes by and about bush and co)
there was a Colorado high school girl on a past edition of ABC's 20/20, which was about yet another threatened school slaughter in Middle America. a male friend confided to her that he was thinking of shooting some of their classmates, but she told no one about it.

It was only after he began to talk about killing her along with others that she informed on him, which led to his arrest and judicial confinement at his parents' home.

Asked by 20/20's Connie Chung why she had initially remained silent about a possible massacre of her fellow students, she replied: "I didn't like them. I didn't care if he killed them."
Narrator: "When people think you're dying, man . . . they really, really listen to you, instead of just . . . ."

Marla Singer: "Instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.
(fight club via useless movie quotes)
social entropy
"Tradition is the illusion of permanence."
(deconstructing harry via useless movie quotes.com)

Friday 21 November 2003

"The senator described to me her vision of society. We're on a train, she said. A runaway train steaming furiously toward a collision with a concrete wall and all she wanted to do was to put on the brakes before it was too late."

"I say it's already too late. I say if we want to survive, forget about the brakes and stoke the boilers. Let's get up enough speed now so that no lousy wall of concrete can dictate our doom. Enough speed to thrust this train right through the wall. We all know that a straw, driven by a tornado, can pierce a fence post. We have to ride that tornado. We have to ride that train. We have to find out if there is life on the other side of the wall, because if we give up now we are going to crash. Only audacity and nerve can serve us now."
(Linda Nagata, Tech Heaven)
Germany Touts High-Security Phone
open source brazil

Sergio Amadeu, appointed to head Brazil's National Information Technology Institute, wants to transform his country into a tech-savvy nation where everyone from schoolchildren to government bureaucrats uses open-source software instead of costly Windows products.

Paying software licensing fees to companies like Microsoft is simply "unsustainable economically" when applications that run on the open-source Linux operating system are much cheaper, Amadeu said. Under his guidance, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's administration is encouraging all sectors of government to move toward open-source programs, whose basic code is public and freely available.
DNA used to create self-assembling nano transistor

To get the transistors to self assemble, the Technion research team attached a carbon nanotube -- known for its extraordinary electronic properties -- onto a specific site on a DNA strand, and then made metal nanowires out of DNA molecules at each end of the nanotube. The device is a transistor that can be switched on and off by applying voltage to it.

Though transistors made from carbon nanotubes have already been built, those required labor-intensive fabrication. The goal is to have these nanocircuits self-assemble, enabling large-scale manufacturing of nanoscale electronics.

according to Erez Braun, lead scientist on the project and associate professor in the Faculty Physics at the Technion, DNA is a natural place to look for a tool to create these circuits. "But while DNA by itself is a very good self-assembling building block, it doesn’t conduct electrical current," he noted.
Roboten hittar rätt på enkelt sätt

A major problem for a household robot is how to get around in an unknown environment. A chair that has been moved or a person standing in the way can easily confuse a robot. Several earlier attempts have involved programming an enormous amount of map data about the environment, but this is not an efficient way to go, since the amount of data grows exponentially with the surface the robot is to navigate. The more data there is, the more the robot has to think, and the slower it moves.

Philipp Althaus has approached the problem from another angle and posed the question: what does the robot need to know?

By reducing the map to a few set positions and by having the robot feel its way around on its own between these positions, a great deal of computing power can be saved. Obstacles the robot encounters on the way can be “forgotten” immediately afterward. The point is to clear the brain of the robot from unnecessarily detailed information. The robot makes its way around using ultrasound and lasers.
Tiny robot helicopter

Seiko Epson believes its Micro Flying Robot is the world's lightest and smallest robot helicopter.

Weighing only 8.9 grams, the four-legged mini-copter is equipped with four micro actuators to drive two rotors and stabilising units that make it fly and balance in the air.

The prototype version unveiled at the International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo relies on an external power source but flies by remote control.
HeartMate II

A device that helps the heart pump by sensing when to increase and decrease blood flow has been implanted for the first time in the US.

it uses a rotary pump to produce a continuous flow of blood, rather than mimicking the heart's pumping mechanism. the device automatically alters blood flow while most others require manual intervention. The control system, developed by University of Pittsburgh researchers, uses a patented algorithm to allow the device to respond based on activity level. it is implanted just below the diaphragm and attached between the left ventricle and the aorta, the body's main artery. it weighs 12 ounces and is about the size of a D-cell battery. It can pump up to 10 liters of blood per minute, for example, to help users climb stairs.

plus:
Artificial Muscle Boosts Weak Hearts
Cheap Artificial Heart Molded from Silicone
(via better humans)
Artificial Protein

Using sophisticated computer algorithms running on standard desktop computers, researchers have designed and constructed a novel functional protein that is not found in nature. its a 93-amino acid protein structure they called Top7.
(via transhuman institute)

Thursday 20 November 2003

a cold embrace

yet more meaningless dribble from a tv news commentator who stated that the terrorists embraced death "just as we in the west embrace life."

embrace life?

don't confuse mediocre consumer existence as a sign of embracing life.

don't confuse an obsession with the pampered lives of the rich and famous as a sign that we embrace life.

In america the Centers for Disease Control reports that more people die from suicide than from homicide. Overall, suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all Americans, and is the third leading cause of death for young people aged 15-24.

In the last 45 years worldwide suicide rates have increased by 60%. rates among young people have been increasing to such an extent that they are now the group at highest risk in a third of all countries.

the World Health Organisation declared that depression has reached epidemic proportions.

Five million in the uk each year have some sort of depressive illness that would justify medical intervention. That's not much less than a tenth of the population. A third of those who go to the GP have underlying depression.

there are 50,000 children taking antidepressants

in america in 1998 there were 3,000 prozac prescriptions to infants

in the uk 12.9 million people live in poverty, with 3.9 million children living in households below the low income threshold.

Theres a prison population in england and wales of 74,023

American prisons and jails have exceeded 2 million. while ethnic minorities, the mentally ill, the poor and the badly defended end up on death row in disproportionately high numbers.

and then theres guantanamo bay, where life is degraded to the point of being caged indefinitely without trial.

embracing life my arse.
WHO BENEFITS THE MOST FROM TODAY'S DEATHS IN TURKEY?

its undeniably convenient as a means for diminishing the fact that during bush's visit between 100,000 and 200,000 anti-bush protesters gathered today in london. probably the biggest demonstration held on a working week day ever. (while in america they hoped that the orchestration of an arrest warrant for micheal jackson would be a sufficient news distraction.)

it justifies the actions and vapid speeches of bush and blair and draws another simplistic smoke screen over the fact that before the war no link existed between iraq and emmanuel goldstein al qaeda.

it perpetuates the high state of alert within which police can get away with using special powers under the uk terrorist act 2000. recently used against ordinairy demonstrators at Europe’s largest arms fair, held in London’s Docklands in September.

it fulfills orwell's observation that "The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way."..... "It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist."

archives:
General Lyman Lemnitzer, OPERATION NORTHWOODS
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM by Emmanuel Goldstein
notes and thoughts from "BRAVE NEW WORLD", aldous huxley 1932
groovy popular terrorism

Wednesday 19 November 2003

BIGGER CAGES, LONGER CHAINS....

The US president joked that demonstrations to mark his visit showed freedom of speech was alive in London.

and as tv news bites over the past few days persistently show: when you shove a camera and microphone in front of the prozac-man in the street or the stepford-wife, they undoubtedly agree with him.

i'm baffled by exactly what this concept of freedom means. because ALL I SEE ARE PROTESTERS CORRALED BY POLICE. AND THAT IS NO FUCKING FREEDOM. no fucking freedom at all.

Benjamin Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

but more fittingly Bertrand_de_Jouvenel said "A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Erwin Wurm
One Minute Sculptures

Monday 17 November 2003

Let them sing it for you

type in your lyrics

and let the stars give voice to it.

meanwhile: FIVE major record companies now control the pop music market.

After years of buy-outs and consolidation of independent labels, subsidiaries, and distributors, there are five mega-corportations: EMI Records, Sony, Universal Music Group, Time Warner, and BMG.

Sony and BMG are in talks over a music merger and EMI is negotiating to buy Time Warner's music division. Within these super-sized organizations, we can find almost any print or label in the music world. Such monopoly leads to suffocating homogenization and stagnation of music.
"The meek shall inherit the Earth and the wise keep moving on."
section 28

From midnight tonight, a pernicious piece of thatcherite legislation will be repealed.

Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 prohibited local authorities from "promoting" homosexuality or gay "pretended family relationships", and prevented councils spending money on any educational materials and projects perceived to promote a gay lifestyle.

It is not going without a fight, though. Tory-led Kent county council has chosen to maintain the spirit of the legislation by being the only authority in Britain to fashion it into the curriculum of its 600 schools.

Michael Howard, the new leader of the Conservatives, has refused to condemn Kent for keeping elements of the controversial clause, which was introduced by Margaret Thatcher.

Mr Howard, whose Folkestone and Hythe constituency is in Kent, was local government minister when Section 28 was introduced and in March voted against its abolition.

Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, leader of Kent's council, denied he was keeping Section 28, adding that there had been "misrepresentation" about the council's position. "In July 2000 Kent county council agreed a policy ... which said, 'KCC shall not publish, purchase or distribute material with the intention of promoting homosexuality'. This in no way was a statement against homosexuality, and it certainly was in no way against school sex education including an understanding of homosexuality. It was against the 'intentional promotion', which is very different. This is particularly important in primary schools and has widespread support among parents. I have, however, said repeatedly that ... what two adults do is entirely up to them."

However, on the Kent Conservatives' website, a page topped with Sir Sandy's picture quotes him as saying: "We must protect our children as they grow up. We believe that Section 28 is right in prohibiting the intentional promotion of homosexuality in our schools.

"The Section 28 debate is one of those defining moments in politics when the vast majority of ordinary people have risen to say enough is enough. They are leaving politicians in no doubt that to take away this safeguard would be a move too far away from traditional, deep-rooted family values. I took legal advice in December [1999] and we are determined to continue in Kent the spirit and commitment of Section 28, irrespective of the government's intentions."

Section 28 did not directly legislate for schools, but it prompted staff self-censorship. Teachers were confused about what they could and could not say and do, and were unsure whether they could act when pupils faced homophobic bullying.

A recent Stonewall survey of 300 secondary schools found that 82% of teachers were aware of verbal incidents linked to homophobia, and 26% knew of physical attacks. Only 6% of schools had anti-bullying policies designed to combat homophobia.

'Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.' – Charlotte Bronte
"they just keep coming, coming, coming."

young soldiers wounded in the war in Iraq.

In 2002, after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, Congress allocated $13 million to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center to establish what the hospital calls the Amputee Center of Excellence. The unit was up and running just in time. These days, its prosthetics lab is busy scanning stumps of limbs using digital laser technology, then using computerized machines to fashion sockets to fit over them.

The new armored vests that soldiers are wearing in this war protect the human torso and have saved countless lives, but often at a terrible price. One day last week, all but 20 of the 250 beds at the center were taken up with casualties of the war. Fifty of them have lost limbs, often more than one. Dozens more suffer burns and shrapnel wounds that begin where their armored vests ended. On average, they are 23 years old.

Since April, when the first casualties began arriving, more than 1,875 have been treated at Walter Reed, an average of about 10 a day, 300 a month.
Homo technicus

Why would we choose to remain simply carbon-based creatures?

Homo technicus will be a fusion of biology and technology at the atomic level. Its living and non-living materials will be indistinguishable.

While research on cloning, embryonic stem cells and genetic engineering has grabbed the headlines, bioengineering has slipped under most people's radar

"Bioethicists are disastrously underestimating the trajectory of this technology," says Professor Alan Goldstein. As a bioengineer, he spends most of his time designing new materials for the medical devices of the future, by working out how to bind biological substances like proteins, DNA and enzymes to inanimate substances such as glass, plastic and metal.

"If I tell people, 'I'm going to my laboratory to conduct experiments to fully integrate living and non-living materials at a molecular level', they just say, 'That sounds marvellous - really high tech."'
(via modified meat)
"Does it really make so much difference if our children are made of
silicon and steel?"

(-Hal Finney)

Sunday 16 November 2003

vampire f.a.q.
"I do not care much for humans. At best, I find them annoying. The longer I live, and the more I am forced to co-exist with them, the more I find myself in agreement with the attitude of many Pales that humans should be cattle - -"
Apotemnophilia
in which sexuerotic arousal and facilitation or attainment of orgasm is dependent upon oneself being an amputee. An apotemnophile becomes fixated on carrying out a self-contrived amputation, or obtaining one in a hospital.
Can we buy a piece of you?
"I could give 5g of hair, 5g of nails, a pint of blood and 20g of bone marrow every six months for about £50,000 I reckon. I'm willing to give whatever you are willing to take."
Contemporary Blood Letting
by Jason Oliver
"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans.
I am rooting for the machines."

(--Claude Shannon)

Saturday 15 November 2003

World's greatest android projects
Face transplants 'now possible'

Surgeons in France and the United States say they are now ready to graft the face of a dead person on to someone who has been facially disfigured.
MORE PRISONS FOR IRAQ

Remember the evil Iraq prison system used by evil Saddam to evilly imprison billions, nay, trillions of Iraqis? Well, the cabal wants to make it bigger.

The US wants to spend $400 million to INCREASE the capacity of the Iraqi prison system. Currently at 23,700, this money would add room for 4,000 more prisoners at a mere $10,000 per prisoner. Why America thinks it will be imprisoning more people than Saddam did makes for some intriguing speculation.

To put it in perspective, that $400 million is more than the US wants to spend on highways, railroads, hospitals, or education. Granted, anyone from Texas wouldn’t see anything strange about that, but for the rest of the world, it’s a weird set of priorities.
the Office of Strategic Influence
Gar Smith has written a four-part series explicating the Sam Gardiner report suggesting that the bush cabal has made up or distorted over 50 war stories. Sam Gardiner speculates that various stories in the media orignated in what was to be called the Office of Strategic Influence.

A Strategy of Lies
Transforming Language to Market the 'Big Lie'
Targeting Critics, Spreading Lies, and PSYOPS
Black Programs and the Future of Propaganda
(via ethel the blog)
the church sign generator
(via linkmachinego)
Playlistism

Playlistism is discrimination based not on race, sex or religion, but on someone's terrible taste in music, as revealed by their iTunes music library.

Thanks to the ability of Apple's iTunes to share music collections over local networks, it is now possible to judge someone's taste in music -- or lack of it -- in a way that previously required a certain level of intimacy.

an iTunes music library tells a lot more about people than the clothes they wear or the books they carry.
(via my analog life)
Virus Genome Built from Scratch
Researchers have built the genome of a tiny virus from scratch in a feat they say will improve the speed and accuracy of constructing synthetic organisms.
US war casualties in Iraq exceed early Vietnam years
(via news insider)
Vehicle of the Week: EMBRIO

The single wheel Embrio uses gyroscope technology to balance riders and is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell.
tomato
3d tube map
HOMOgenised

"I think we've all had enough now of that newest of grotesque gay stereotypes archetypes - that of the girl's-best-friend, sexless, happy, home-keeping, stylish queer. I might actually bloody vomit if I see it one more time on television.....

.....It's not because it's an unpleasant image of homosexual individuals, and it's not because there aren't any gay men that are all smiley and pastel in the world (because there are, and they're lovely). It's just because I'm sick to death with being "understood" by people I meet as a "good-natured, slightly-dim, fashion-obssessed hysterical best-friend-in-times-of-need" kind of guy on the basis of the representation of 'my kind' in a few shit films and TV shows."
tom coates on 'queer eye for the straight guy'
SECOND RATE DYSTOPIA

UK on second highest terror alert
The warning comes as police plan an "unprecedented" security operation for US President Bush's state visit to the UK next week. "but it is not connected to that." said BBC home affairs correspondent Margaret Gilmore.

On November 30, civil rights campaigners lost their appeal to the High Court against Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens and Blunkett for employing special powers to stop and search under the Terrorism Act 2000 against peaceful demonstrators at Europe’s largest arms fair, held at the ExCel Centre in London’s Docklands in September. predictably the court found that “The exercise and use of the power was proportionate to the gravity of the [terrorism] risk.”

Testimony to the hearing revealed that London has been operating under an undisclosed state of emergency for the past two years, with the police granted the necessary special powers. Authorisations under the Terrorism Act have been in force for the greater London area continuously since February 19, 2001, allowing random searches of buildings and people under Section 44 of the act for a period of up to 28 days with the agreement of the home secretary. No one could say how many other counties were presently covered by the extraordinary police powers.

'More research needed' on ID card

Most Labour backbenchers want further research on the benefits of ID cards before they are introduced, a poll for the BBC suggests.

While people would not be compelled to carry their ID, Mr Blunkett has indicated mobile technology is on the way which could allow police on streets to check people's ID by checking their fingerprints or eye scans.

The home secretary claims the scheme will be vital in fighting benefit fraud, abuse of the immigration system and terrorism.

"An ID card is not a luxury or a whim - it is a necessity," he said.

Mr Blunkett has claimed independent research shows eight out of 10 members of the public back ID cards. A consultation on the issue ended in January 2003, and after months of procrastinating the Home Office eventually revealed that nearly 5,000 people had registered their opposition to the introduction of ID cards -- or entitlement cards, as those in authority called them at the time.

This volume of negative responses was more then enough to tip the balance of the consultation against ID cards. The government then controversially took the decision to treat these opposing views as a mere petition, on the grounds that organisations such as Stand.org and Privacy International had created Web pages that encouraged people to consider the issue and take part in the consultation.

Summer camp plan for all children

Every child could be offered a place at a US-style summer camp under a new government scheme.

Friday 14 November 2003

Facility 1391: Israel's secret prison

"It has been removed from maps and airbrushed from aerial photographs. But Facility 1391 certainly exists - you just have to ask the Palestinians and Lebanese who have been imprisoned and tortured there."

"I was barefoot in my pyjamas when they arrested me and it was really cold," says Sameer Jadala, a Palestinian school bus driver. "When I got to that place, they told me to strip and gave me a blue uniform. Then they gave me a black sack. They told me: 'This is your sack. You need to keep it with you. Any time someone comes to your cell, you must put it on your head. Any time they deliver the food, you must put it on your head. You must never see the soldiers' faces. You do not want to know what will happen if you take it off.' Sometimes I thought I would die in that place and no one would ever know."

Unlike any other Israeli prison, the International Red Cross, lawyers and members of the Israeli parliament have been refused access.

One former inmate has filed a lawsuit alleging that he was raped twice - once by a man and once with a stick - during questioning.

Ahmed Ali Banjek told a military court that a confession made at 1391 had been extracted under torture, including being forced to sit on a stick until it penetrated his anus.

But most of those who emerge say the real torture is the psychological impact of solitary confinement in filthy, blackened cells so poorly lit that inmates can barely see their own hands, and with no idea where they are or, in many cases, why they are there.

Thursday 13 November 2003

coolest inventions 2003
(via my analog life)
art porn by huber
(via fleshbot)
the hole

"theres a video going around, and after you watch it the phone rings..... and a voice says 'in 7 days you will become gay' ..... and 7 days later you become totally gay."
(via fleshbot)

Tuesday 11 November 2003

FREE IRAQ

American soldiers handcuffed and firmly wrapped masking tape around an Iraqi man's mouth as they arrested him for speaking out against occupation troops.

Asked why the man had been arrested on Tuesday and put into the back of a Humvee vehicle on Tahrir Square, the commanding officer told Reuters at the scene: "This man has been detained for making anti-coalition statements."

Monday 10 November 2003

the bush regime

"Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything."says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years.

Mr McGovern worked near the very top of his profession, giving direct advice to Henry Kissinger during the Nixon era and preparing the President's daily security brief for Ronald Reagan.

What the Bush White House has done, he believes, is far worse than the FALSE PREMISE that dragged the United States into the Vietnam War - a reported second attack on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin which later turned out not to have taken place. "The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant."

documentary film: "Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War " - by Robert Greenwald
"There was never a clear and present danger. There was never an imminent threat. Iraq - and we have very good intelligence on this - was never part of the picture of terrorism," says Mel Goodman, a veteran CIA analyst who now teaches at the National War College.

An unprecedented array of US intelligence professionals, diplomats and former Pentagon officials have gone on record to lambast the Bush administration for its distortion of the case for war against Iraq.

plus: video: bush election
video: 9.11 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
U.S. torture by proxy

the use of offshore torture for political ends is not new for Washington. but after Sept. 11, the number of people shipped to offshore locations to extract information by means that are banned in the U.S. ("rendition" as it is known in American intelligence circles) appears to have increased, and is now common practice, although the secrecy surrounding the practice has prevented rights organizations from monitoring exact figures.

The most frequently used offshore torture depots are Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Morocco, human rights groups say.

Syria, according to the latest report, commonly uses such methods as "pulling out fingernails, forcing objects into the rectum, using a chair that bends backwards to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine."

In Egypt, meanwhile, the State Department noted that suspects are "stripped and blindfolded, suspended from a ceiling or door frame with feet just touching the floor, beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, subjected to electric shocks."

In Morocco, an Amnesty International report released this week cites testimony of victims who were "strung up and beaten with metal poles or wooden rods to extract confessions ..."

While there are numerous reports of suspects transported and tortured in Mideastern countries, there are also allegations of severe mistreatment of Al Qaeda suspects at the American detention centre of Guantanamo Bay.
(via news insider)

World Organisation Against Torture

Sunday 9 November 2003

vore
A vorarephile is someone who has intense interest in or is sexually aroused by one creature eating another.
vore clips
vore.net
voraphile.com
embroidery
Karen Reimer's embroideries are laboriously produced copies of pieces of text taken from sources ranging from great books to candy wrappers.

plus lollies by Meredith Allen
judith scott
Judith Scott, a fifty-five year old woman with Down's syndrome, has spent the last ten years producing a series of sculptural objects. As well as her learning disability, Judith cannot hear or speak, and she has little concept of language.  There is no way of asking her what she is doing.
animation: G.I. Joe mashups
Eric Fensler has remixed and overdubbed old G.I. Joe public service announcements to create some strange and funny short films.
(via my analog life)
  'Corrective rape makes you an African woman'

Lesbians are being raped, assaulted and victimised "every day" in the townships, in an attempt to force a change in their sexual orientation. Since January this year, 33 black lesbians have come forward with their stories of rape, assault, sexual assault and verbal abuse to organisations fighting hate crimes in Johannesburg townships.
(via jaded)

Saturday 8 November 2003

Robot Personal Space
Software that gives robots personal space has been developed to prevent them from smacking into objects and people.

Simple bumper systems that stop robots when they hit something are insufficient because they don't account for the movement of surrounding objects.

While Sony's AIBO and other existing mobile robots aren't going to hurt anyone, larger robots are poised to soon be working in everything from fast food joints to nursing homes, and must be more aware of their surroundings.
Nanoscale Bumps Make Better Artificial Body Parts
Traditional titanium alloys used in hip and knee replacements are relatively smooth, unlike natural bone and other tissues that have rougher surfaces.

The body reacts to the smooth artificial parts by covering them with a fibrous tissue intended to remove unwanted material.

This tissue interferes with prosthetic devices and damaged body parts, preventing prostheses from making adequate contact with body parts in which they are implanted and consequently interfering with proper functioning.

The discovery that bone cells attach better to metals that have nanometer-scale bumps could lead to longer lasting artificial joints.
Sony's Micro Vault with Fingerprint Access, a device the length of a key and width of a highlighter pen, has 128MB of storage capacity and a sensor for reading fingerprints.

The product can store ID and password information for a number of Web sites. When attached to a PC, and when a user goes to one of the sites, a touch of the sensor will provide access, according to Sony. There is also a screen saver "lock" that protects against unauthorized computer access, the company said.
Wounded soldier
U.S. Army Pvt. 1st Class Tristan Wyatt, 21, was hit by a light anti-tank weapon in Fallujah, west of Baghdad. the weapon had enough power to pierce the 4-inch armor of his combat engineering squad's armored personnel carrier and sever his leg and the legs of two of his squad members.

His new artificial limb attaches with a powerful suction system that, once the residual leg is healed and toughened from use, will allow him to walk normally and do many other things that would have been impossible in the past, he said.

Computer analysis of his left leg's motion was fed to a computer housed in the artificial leg's knee. The prosthetic leg mimics that motion.

As of Nov 2nd, 20 to 30 wounded soldiers were arriving each day at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C from both Iraq and Afghanistan, Pvt. Wyatt said.
nutrigenomics
Tailoring diets to people's genetic makeup could improve health and social equity, ethicists say In a report entitled "Nutrition and Genes: Science, Society and the Supermarket."
New finger and toe joints have been successfully grown in people who have rheumatoid arthritis, an approach that could reduce immobility and pain associated with the disease.
cloning
The United Nations has blocked moves to impose a global ban on research into
all forms of human cloning.
Unbreakable Quantum Encryption
Relying on the laws of quantum physics, quantum cryptography uses photons to send secret encryption keys. The advantage over traditional key exchange methods is that by encoding the encryption key photon by photon it is impossible for anyone to eavesdrop on a key exchange without being detected.
Brain-machine Interface
A US company has announced plans to test a device that would allow paralyzed people to control a computer directly with their brain.

Genetically Altered Skin Implant Pumps Medicine
A drug delivery system called a Biopump that uses a person's genetically altered skin to deliver therapeutic proteins is entering clinical trials for the treatment of anemia.
Heston Blumenthal

Crab risotto with crab ice cream. Veal sweetbread cooked with hay and pollen and roasted in a salt crust. Foie gras with smoked eel and jasmine and mead jelly. And smoked bacon ice cream with pain perdu, caramelised tomato and puree of cep. For dessert.

"If I called my crab ice cream frozen crab bisque no one would bat an eyelid," he says.

Blumenthal believes that the way the palate interprets flavours is more strongly linked to the brain than people realise. The palate is trained from birth. One in eight people can't taste truffles properly, if at all; a bit like some people can't hear dog-whistles.

"I had an idea," announces Blumenthal grandly. "Savoury candyfloss."

The Fat Duck restaurant
xmas buses
alternative oxford street xmas lights by Birds Portchmouth Russum Architects

Friday 7 November 2003

THE HETERODICTATORSHIP

The royal biographer Penny Junor told Sky News she thought it was "quite sensible" that prince charles has attempted to quash the story that he likes to take it up the arse.

she said: "The allegations are so vile ... I find them offensive and extraordinary and I think it was right somebody put something into the public arena saying this is not true."

no ms. junor, whats vile is is your use of extraordinairy negative language to describe same gender sexuality. it isn't slanderous to say someone is gay, in the same way that it isn't slander to say someone is left-handed. whether the story is true or not, and i tend to believe it is true, its not claiming he's a cannabalistic paedophile, (though i'm sure there are a number of those among the ruling classes). it merely claims he may be gay, bisexual or bi-curious, and that when diana said there were 3 people in that marriage she might not have been referring to camilla.

to call it vile is similar in attitude to recent magazine articles about the soap opera 'coronation street' and its new ratings grabbing storylines. such articles always casually clump together in the same sentence a brief boy-on-boy kiss with a seperate serial killer story line, as though they were kindred spirits. the lazy underlying homophobia is plain to see.

and on the subject of fuckwitted tv, there was a recent tv listings magazine article on that tiresome old sitcom 'are you being served'. the writers of the series state that camp mr. humphreys never talked about such things as boyfriends, "audiences in those days didn't want to be confronted with that sort of detail."

no you stupid cunts. apart from the obvious fact that a percentage of that audience were themselves gay (or related to someone gay), it also meant that every gay man or gay teen growing up in the seventies had to put up with wankers shouting mr. humphreys intolerable catchphrase, "i'm free", at them. just before getting a kicking in a vicious attack driven by undiluted hatred and ignorance.

its the continuing perpetuation of murderous hatred which is vile, penny my dear. not the fact that some toff might have been caught with his trousers down (yet again).

the most ludicrous thing in the charles news coverage is the notion that people who know charles believe they are in a position to rubbish the story. almost nobody in anybody's life really knows another persons deepest sexual desires. and certainly there are few people in charles' circle who might really know him. except maybe his boyfriend.

Wednesday 5 November 2003

"GUY FAWKES and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

Why did he do it
and what else was happening at the time."

"England had undergone a Reformation. Under Henry VIII, it had separated the English Church from the Pope and formed the Church of England, under the King. All subjects were obliged to swear oaths affirming the King's Supremacy as head of the Church and those who did not were imprisoned."

"when Elizabeth I came to power in 1558, the following 48 years drove Catholics further and further underground."

"During the period from 1563, successive legislation, starting with the (second) Act of Supremacy, required an oath from all subjects that the monarch was Supreme Governor of the Church and any refusal was punishable by death."

"Between 1587 and 1593 more Acts were passed,
Fines were levied on those who absented themselves from Church services at 20 shillings (a huge sum) a month. Only the rich could possibly afford such fines and it was an effective (and profitable) way to ensure conformity of the vast majority of the people"

"We know no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot."

Tuesday 4 November 2003

naked protest

Megan Vogt and Connie Durkee don't think Adidas should be making soccer shoes out of kangaroo leather.

So when the women's World Cup soccer matches came to Portland earlier this month, the two middle-aged women decided to draw attention to their animal rights cause by stripping off their clothes and running naked in front of more than 27,000 spectators at PGE Park during the Oct. 5 semifinal between the American and German teams.

Vogt, 40, and Durkee, 48, say they are not exhibitionists. But they agreed that streaking during the soccer match was the best way to get their message across. "It seemed like the only way we could get people to pay any attention to us," Durkee said.

Theresa Reed, who organised an anti-war naked protest in march, said "By using our nude bodies in peaceful protest, we hoped to remind ourselves and others and the world that we are all equal in our fragility, vulnerability, morality and humanity."

NAKED PROTEST links
Israel Imposes Security Checks on Media

Israel will force journalists to undergo stringent checks by its Shin Bet security service as a requirement for accreditation, the head of the Government Press Office said Monday.

Israeli and foreign journalists criticized the decision as an attempt to inhibit freedom of the press.
(via news insider)

Israel to deploy robot bulldozers
George Monbiot on The persecution of Gypsies

Between a quarter and half a million Gypsies were killed during the Holocaust: in many parts of Europe, the Nazis almost succeeded in eliminating them.

Throughout eastern Europe, the Roma are still denied employment, herded into ghettoes and beaten to death by skinheads.

In Britain, some 67% of traditional travellers' sites were closed between 1986 and 1993. In 1994, the government released local authorities from the duty to provide sites for travellers and introduced new laws penalising people who stopped without permission.

We fear people whose mobility makes them hard for our settled systems of government to control. But we also appear to hate them for something we perceive them to possess: freedom.

Monday 3 November 2003

teaser trailer: alien versus predator
"whoever wins, we lose." (.....just like 'democracy').
us, uk and their pal Uzbekistan

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment.

far from seeking to isolate this regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Uzbekistan. Last year, it received $500m (£300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture.

Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

All the principal enemies of the US today were fostered by the US or its allies in the past.

and in the uk the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has repeatedly criticised Karimov's crushing of democracy movements and his use of torture to silence his opponents. Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to move anyone who cares about human rights.

Tony Blair has been moved enough to do everything he could to silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack, investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some time, like many of Karimov's critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a senior government source, was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10".
neuticles

the revolutionary prosthetic testicular implant procedure for neutered pets.

Sunday 2 November 2003

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think." adolf hitler
hitler's nazi influence in america

"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator," said Adolf Hitler.

"God told me to strike at Al Qa'ida and I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. With the might of God on our side we will triumph," said George Bush.

It is no surprise to find Hitler's ghost in the offices of Senator Trent Lott who said of white supremacist Senator Strom Thurmond -an opponent of integration and civil rights in the 1960's- "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

And in the Pentagon, Hitler's ideology has a friend in the form of US Marine Corps Lieutenant General William Boykin, who believes that "God supports the US military because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian [...]. Our spiritual enemies will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."

Nazi minions, Arthur Rudolph and Werner Von Braun, provided the know-how to put American astronauts on the moon and nuclear warheads into space.

from 1939 to 1942, Ford Motor Company produced thousands of combat vehicles for the Nazis at its Cologne, Germany production facility. During the height of WWII, Ford shipped raw materials from America to the Cologne plant to ensure that production would not be interrupted by Allied bombing and that Hitler would remain a happy customer. According to Ken Silverstein, Ford vehicles were crucial to the revolutionary Nazi military strategy of blitzkrieg. Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army as of 1942, roughly one-third were Ford products

IBM received lucrative contracts from the Nazis. Profits from those efforts, like Ford's were sent home to America to perform research and development for new profit-making technologies. It's the same story for General Motors, Kodak, Dupont, and General Electric (owner of NBC news).

and not forgetting of course that grandpa Prescott Bush, along with partner E. Ronald Harriman, supplied financial aid and raw materials to Hitler's Third Reich.

flash: "Bush is not a Nazi so stop saying that"
Web Conspiranoids.pdf
the 14 defining characteristics of fascism

archive: AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AND THE LEGACY OF KISSINGER

plus: French neo-Nazis formed an alliance with extremist Jewish groups on the Internet to publish a torrent of hate messages directed against Arabs and Muslims. 26 websites, traced to right-wing and Jewish extremists groups in France, operated from the same server in the United States between 1999 and March this year. source

"When an opponent declares, 'I will not come over to your side, 'I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already...What are you? You will pass on. Your decendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing but this new community." adolf hitler
post office strike

Managers have been told to identify ringleaders and eavesdrop on conversations between employees, noting in diaries exact times, dates, names and what is said.

All activists should be under permanent observation and will be challenged at the first rumour of a possible walkout.

if a strike starts, managers have been ordered to film, video and photograph picket lines. They have been urged to buy disposable cameras if necessary and use CCTV cameras to back up witness statements.
tory leader

tom watson reminds us about the foul-smelling, mean-spirited monstrosity that is Michael Howard (though any labour mp criticising the tories is a case of pot, kettle, and black). the reminder includes:

As Home Secretary, howard believed that the answer to crime was simply to lock more people up: "an increase in the number of criminals in prison leads to a large fall in crime" (POLITICS, MORALITY AND THE NATION STATE lecture, ST. MICHAEL CHURCH, CORNHILL, CITY OF LONDON, 10 January 2003)

Howard attacked Labour for defending the rights of trade unionists at GCHQ (in 1979 and 1981)

Howard was the Minister who brought in Clause 28 of the Local Government Act banning the "promotion" of homosexuality (March 1988), and voted against equal rights for homosexuals by opposing lowering the homosexual age of consent to 16

Howard voted in favour of anti-abortion campaigner David Alton's Bill to reduce access to abortion (January 1988)

As Environment Secretary, Howard allowed power generators to keep their pollution levels secret (Nov 1992)

Howard criticised Jack Straw's decision to detain General Pinochet and actively campaigned for his release: "We think this has gone on far too long. We think he should be sent back to Chile." (BBC Interview, 26 November 1998)

Howard opposed the introduction of the Human Rights Act.
age of consent

Miranda Sawyer says it would be better for everyone if we lowered the age of sexual consent to 12.