Ta much, dear Edosan!

Photographer Lalage Snow photographed and interviewed members of 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland before they were sent to Afghanistan, after three months' service, and days after they returned home. Their faces show the toll that fighting in Afghanistan takes on our troops.


Private Chris MacGregor, 24

11th March, Edinburgh: “Obviously I’ll miss family but other than that I am going to miss my dogs more than anything. They are my de-stressers and keep me sane. I think I’ll miss TV too though. I try not to think about the worst case scenario.”

19th June, Compound 19, Nad Ali, after an IED incident: “Most people get used to being away from home but I find it hard. It’s your fear that keeps you alive here. But I believe if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen and theres nothing you can do about it. If the big man upstairs could do anything, there’d be no dead soldiers. They’d all be alive. It still hurts when you hear about a soldier dying. You think about what their families are going through. You ask what they died for and what we are achieving here. I am not sure any more. That Afghan soldier losing his legs just now… I don’t know….”

28th August, Edinburgh, after being evacuated due to sustained knee injury from Iraq: “My legs just gave up. I think it was the weight – 135 pounds or something. I just had to accept, my body was telling me to give up as I had pushed it. I was telling it to go, it was telling me to stop. When squaddies come back they still have a lot of adrenaline and anger in them. I had to have anger management after Iraq. If I get like that now, I just go for a walk with the dogs. It is the best way to deal with it, instead of being all tense and ready to snap at folk. The first thing I did when I came back, appart from kissing and cuddling the misses and my bairn, was go for a massive walk with the dogs. I walked for miles and miles not caring where I stepped.”

(via We Are Not The Dead: soldiers' faces before, during and after serving in Afghanistan - Telegraph)

Hackers from the group Anonymous have broadcast a private conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard exposing details of an international cybercrime investigation, the FBI has confirmed.

The FBI and Scotland Yard admitted that the security of the call had been breached.

Investigators can be heard discussing their joint inquiry into a cybercrime investigation going through the British courts, and linked to investigations in New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and Ireland.

It is understood the breach occurred at the US end of the call. As the news broke, Anonymous began taunting the FBI, asking if it was curious about how the group could keep reading the bureau's internal communications.

Investigators can be heard on the broadcast talking about named individuals who have been charged in the UK with hacking into the website of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).

In one lengthy exchange, the British contingent can be heard discussing a 15-year-old hacker as a "wannabe" and a "pain in the bum". The 15-minute call has been broadcast on the internet, but the names of some of the individuals being sought have been bleeped out by the hackers. ...

Google is under fire for plans to collect data on individual users across all of its websites and merge the information into a single profile that can be used to alter the person's search results and target them with advertising and services.

Users will have no way to opt out of being tracked across the board when the search company unifies its privacy policy and terms of service for all its online offerings, including search, Gmail and Google+. The move is being criticised by privacy advocates and could attract greater scrutiny from anti-trust regulators.

"If you're signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services," Google's director of privacy, product and engineering, Alma Whitten, wrote in a blogpost.

After the new policy comes into effect, user information from most Google products – such as YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google+ and Android mobile – will be treated as a single trove of data, which the company could use for targeted advertising or other revenue-raising purposes.

An article in the Washington Post raised concerns about details of people's private meetings, health, politics and finances becoming part of their digital dossier kept by Google. Confidential discussions via Gmail of a meeting location might be transferred to Google Maps without the user's consent, for example. ...

Police say a car reported stolen from an Australian shopping center parking lot has been found more than two weeks later in the closed garage of a nearby home where it had apparently rolled unaided.

Police said in a statement Friday that the owner of the station wagon had reported it stolen from outside a shop in a suburb of Adelaide city on Dec. 18. The car was found parked in the home's garage Wednesday when the residents returned from vacation.

Police concluded that the car's owner had failed to leave its gear in park. The car then rolled across the parking lot, across a street and then down a driveway. It then bumped under the garage door by knocking it off its tracks. The door then closed behind it.

... At Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan wrote: "Potentially, all this means that Google will have to ban the Google Chrome download page over paid links. That would suck for Google, since it's busy running ads for Google Chrome, which will in turn prompt people to search for it. Right now, the page appears at the top of results for searches on 'google chrome'."

Andrew Girdwood, who has worked in the past with Unruly Media, said: "My hunch is that individual bloggers have written editorials for their sponsored video (which is just a CPA [cost per action] ad [where bloggers would get paid any time somebody watches the ad] – like so many others, just like any affiliate deal) and put a link naturally into that text … I doubt these posts were about links."

Scott Button, the chief executive of Unruly Media, told the Guardian: "A blogger, who we didn't ask to link to a Google Chrome page, linked to a Google Chrome page, and did so without using the nofollow attribute. Obviously they shouldn't do this in the context of a blog post that embeds one of our sponsored videos. As soon as we found out about it, we got it fixed. To be clear, we're not in the business of getting bloggers to write about products or link to advertisers' websites. We distrubute branded video content, and we pay bloggers (and big websites and app developers) when their audiences watch the videos. That's what Google paid us to do, and that's our business. The SEM [search engine marketing] angle is basically a red herring - it doesn't bear any relation to our business nor any relation to the objectives of the Google Chrome campaign." ...

MSiegel can always be relied upon for provision of high-quality O_o

WHY???!!!

Saudi women walk in Jeddah June 17, 2011. Saudi Arabia has no formal ban on women driving. REUTERS/Susan Baaghil

Allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia would cause rampant sex, porn and homosexuality, according to some of the country's scholars.

Academics at the country's highest religious council submitted a report to the legislative assembly warning of the dangers of letting women behind the wheel, reports the Daily Telegraph.

If the only country in the world that still bans women from driving were to change its rules, there would be "a surge in prostitution, pornography, homosexuality and divorce."

Within 10 years of the ban being lifted, the report claimed, there would be "no more virgins" in the country, according to the paper.

Currently, women caught driving in the kingdom may be lashed as punishment.



May those "scholars" reach complete and total enlightenment and on all levels, and quickly, for all our sakes.

Ta much, dear Glenn321

Adventurer Mark Moffett (how great is that job title?) was out adventuring on Little Barrier Island in New Zealand when he found this guy. The giant, cricket-like insect was recently declared the world's biggest and is so large that it eats full-sized carrots.

Ronbeast
3 string plywood bass.

I have some scraps of plywood just laying around so I decided I might as well use them for something. I’m not really looking for a bass with an awesome sound, I’m just gonna build a bass that I think would be fun to play and cheap to build.I got the design for the body after seeing a headless bass that my friend owns.
I was just wondering, where could I get a pickup for a 3-string bass at a decent price,or could I just use a soapbar style pickup with a very wide string spacing? Also has anyone ever built a bass out of plywood? I know its considered the worst quality wood you can use for a bass but I’m only using it because I’ve got so much laying around here that I might as well do something productive with it.

ponticat

Three Strings?
Do you have some BIG scraps?
Build a bass balalaika!

see more Historic LOL

This is most alarming............

The New York Times did what I was not allowed to do - tell you there has been a second diagnosis of Infectious Salmon Anemia virus in wild BC salmon, this time in the Fraser River itself, the biggest wild salmon river in the world. The fish the New York Times is talking about is one that a small group of us picked up, sampled and sent to the world reference lab for the ISA virus. It was a beautiful coho salmon, in first blush of spawning colours. The salmon had navigated the river as a tiny fry, entered the sea as a fat and sassy little smolt eating everything insight. It traveled north and west in search of the saltiness of the ocean and in doing so passed millions of European salmon in pens. Whether it got infected then or on the way home carrying the richness of a life at sea, her body shut down infected with a virus her ancestors had never had a chance to prepare her for. We found her drifting down stream passing Harrison Mills. We scooped her up took a sliver of her heart and gills and sent them to one of the world authorities on ISA virus.

We did this because we want to know how widespread the European ISA virus is, in BC waters and I don't see anyone else out there trying to map the damage. The lab never reported back to me, muzzled I suspect, but the truth got out. We now have two diagnoses, 600 km apart, in two different species, of two different generations.

I don't know how no one could see this coming. We are the buffalo racing for the cliff, even as we watch videos of buffalo falling off cliffs. EVERY COUNTRY WITH SALMON FARMS has taken this path. I am so exhausted with trying to explain this to Ministers, bureaucrats, streamkeepers, environmentalists, fishermen. People just don't want to believe it. It is easier to write me off than deal with this.

Look, it is simple. Salmon farms break the natural laws and viruses, bacteria and parasites are the beneficiaries of this behaviour. If you move diseases across the world and brew them among local pathogens, in an environment where predators are not allowed to remove the sick - you get pestilence. There is no other outcome. ...



Thanks much, Glenn321

The scale of the CIA's rendition programme has been laid bare in court documents that illustrate in minute detail how the US contracted out the secret transportation of suspects to a network of private American companies.

The manner in which American firms flew terrorism suspects to locations around the world, where they were often tortured, has emerged after one of the companies sued another in a dispute over fees. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, the mass of invoices, receipts, contracts and email correspondence – submitted as evidence to a court in upstate New York – provides a unique glimpse into a world in which the "war on terror" became just another charter opportunity for American businesses.

As a result of the case, the identities of some of the corporations involved in the rendition programme have been disclosed for the first time, along with the names of some of the executives who knew the purpose of the flights.

One unintended consequence may be that some of those corporations and individuals are now at risk of being sued in proceedings brought on behalf of the al-Qaida and Taliban suspects who were the victims of the programme.

The New York case concerns Sportsflight, an aircraft broker, and Richmor, an aircraft operator. Sportsflight entered into an arrangement to make a Gulfstream IV executive jet available at $4,900 an hour rather than the market rate of $5,450. A crew was available to fly at 12 hours' notice. The government wanted "the cheapest aircraft to fulfil a mission", Sportsflight's owner, Don Moss, told the court. But it was the early days of the rendition programme, and business was booming: the court heard that Sportsflight told Richmor: "The client says we're going to be very, very busy." ...



Makes me so proud to be Yankistani. /hurl

Ta much, dear MSiegel

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Fresh evidence has emerged of other voice messages allegedly hacked from the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's by the News of the World.

A report suggested that the former Sunday tabloid newspaper had details of more voicemails left on her mobile phone than originally thought.

The Wall Street Journal said it had obtained earlier print editions of the newspaper from 2002, which made reference to more messages on the missing teenager's phone.

It states that it undertook a review of the News International-owned newspaper and found that early versions on one day contained detailed quotes from three voicemails.

In the final edition, the article only contained one passing reference to a single voicemail.

On 14 April 2002, the News of the World published a story in its final edition about a woman allegedly pretending to be Milly who had applied for a job with a recruitment agency. It suggested that the hoaxer had given the agency Milly's real mobile number, which it used to contact her when a vacancy arose, leaving a message on her voicemail six days after she went missing.

The newspaper later informed the police about the voicemail that it is alleged to have intercepted.

However, the Wall Street Journal has now said that it has obtained earlier editions of the newspaper from the same day, which include an article that makes reference to two further messages left on the phone. ...

see more Hacked IRL - Truth in Sarcasm

see more Hacked IRL - Truth in Sarcasm

Record Report

Statement as of 04:25 PM EDT on July 21, 2011

Record high temperature set at Detroit, MI

A record high temperature of 100° was set at Detroit, MI today.
This breaks the old record of 97° which was set in 1926.

It’s 85.2°F + 77% humidity + 77°F dew point = 96°F heat index & the clock now says it’s 2.50 AM.

A heat advisory remains in effect until 8 am EDT Wednesday. An
excessive heat watch remains in effect from Wednesday morning
through Thursday evening.

Potential effects...

* a prolonged period or consecutive days of heat can cause a
cumulative effect of heat stress to segments of the
population.

* Those prone to heat stress may suffer, especially when shade
or air conditioning is not available.

* Strenuous outdoor activity may lead to heat injuries such as
heat stroke, heat exhaustion, or heat cramps.

Hazardous weather

* temperatures tonight are only expected to drop into the upper
60s and lower 70s.

* The hottest stretch of the heat wave is expected to affect
southeastern Michigan on Wednesday and Thursday. High
temperatures are expected to range between 95 and 100 degrees
on Wednesday, with temperatures potentially reaching 100
degrees on Thursday.

* A tropical airmass is in place across southeastern Michigan.
With limited airmass modification expected, surface
dewpoints will range in the upper 60s to lower 70s.

* The combination of high heat and humidity will cause heat index
values to climb to around 100 degrees on Wednesday and between
105 and 110 degrees on Thursday. ...




We'd been getting air quality alerts all along too, also. O_o

see more Historic LOL

Digging up Shakespeare's remains for drug testing?

David Pescovitz at 1:12 PM Tuesday, Jun 28, 2011

Did Shakespeare smoke weed? University of the Witwatersrand anthropologist Francis Thackeray thinks he did. He'd like a chance to prove that, and also learn more about the Bard's life and death, by digging up his body. (Maybe they'll also determine if Shakespeare was Shakespeare, but that's another story.) In 2001, Thackeray and his colleagues unearthed pipes in Shakespeare's garden that tested positive for marijuana, cocaine, and other substances....

Kindle Store awash with auto-generated crap 'books'
Bargain barrelscrape rubbish obscuring decent reads
By Tim Worstall
Posted in Music and Media, 17th June 2011

Tsk, kids of today, eh? Give them something free and they spam it, thus making it all entirely unusable for the rest of us. As Reuters reports, this is now happening with the Kindle Store.

Now that you can upload an e-book, price it and sell it, for free, hordes of wouldbe publishing millionaires are doing exactly that. Except they're not actually writing books - they're just lifting them from elsewhere and hoping to collect the royalties.

The lifting can be from a variety of sources: Private Label Rights (PLR) are tales specifically marketed to be resold in this manner, perhaps under a new title or cover. There are even software packages claiming to automate much of the process and allowing the production of 10 or 20 books in a day.

There have always been those re-publishing out-of-copyright books as e-books. A favoured source was Project Gutenberg at one time. These Amazon publishers are getting more aggressive though: at least one author has found their own work being marketed under a different name.

The concern is that with reams of these spam books (spooks? Sbooks? Sblooks?) now appearing in the Kindle Store that real readers looking for real books will be put off the whole idea.

The problem is really one of economics. When sending email became essentially free we were all spammed near to death. When blog comments gained Google juju, blogs were also spammed. When it's possible to “create” and sell a book for nothing but earn royalties from anyone you can fool into buying it, splooks there will be in ever-increasing volume. ...

Ta much, dear MSiegel

see more Historic LOL

Great moments in trolling history presents: The Civil Defense Test Operation!

On the morning of December 13, 1952, tens of thousands of residents of Westchester, New York, found this newspaper on their doorsteps. There was little to indicate at first glance that the lurid headlines dealt merely with a typical “civil defense test operation.”

Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

Talks on resolving the European debt crisis have been plunged into disarray after the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a maid in a New York hotel.

Strauss-Kahn, 62, was taken from the first class cabin of a Paris-bound Air France flight at JFK airport by plainclothes officers before Manhattan police formally arrested him on charges of a criminal sexual act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment.

The charges threatened to create a leadership vacuum at the IMF, overseer of the global economy, and threw open next year's French presidential election, ending the hopes of the French Socialist who was favourite to beat Nicolas Sarkozy.

The allegation is a major embarrassment to the IMF, which has authorised billions of dollars of lending to troubled countries and played a major role in the eurozone debt crisis. The arrest will cast a cloud over the IMF's role in addressing the rescues and is likely to have a major impact on stock markets as traders react to yet more uncertainty in Europe.

Strauss-Kahn had been flying to Europe to discuss the worsening European debt crisis. He had been scheduled to meet the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Sunday and European financial ministers on Monday and Tuesday. The IMF leader was to have discussed how best to tackle Greece's worsening debt crisis and finalise Portugal's €78bn bailout package.

A senior Greek government official said the arrest would not change the IMF's policy in Greece but could cause delays in the short term. The IMF-led bailout has become increasingly unpopular with other IMF members amid growing doubts about the Greek government's ability and resolve to meet the commitments of the international aid package. ...

... The allegations spread panic among the left at an extremely awkward time in the runup to the Socialist party's internal battle for a candidate to beat Nicolas Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn, seen as the biggest danger to Sarkozy, had already been accused of being a champagne socialist in what his allies said was a concerted campaign against him. When Moscovici recently warned against the use of "stink bombs" in the political campaign, many read between the lines that it was a warning about political opponents digging up aspects of Strauss-Kahn's private life and relationship with women.

The far-right politician Marine Le Pen said Strauss-Kahn's arrest in New York meant he could no longer run for president. "All of Paris – journalistic Paris, political Paris – has been abuzz for months about the rather pathological relationship that Mr Strauss-Kahn maintains towards women," she said. One rightwing MP from Sarkozy's ruling party compared Strauss-Kahn to JR in the soap opera Dallas.

The full implications of the shame raised by the allegations, on not just the Socialist party but the whole French political class, was apparent in New York's Daily News's headline: "Le Perv".

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and the man French Socialists hope will be the next occupant of the Elysée Palace, was arrested at JFK airport in New York on Saturday afternoon accused of a sex attack on a Times Square hotel maid earlier in the day.

He was taken off an Air France flight by officers from the Port Authority of New York and turned over to Manhattan police, according to a spokesman from the agency. Plainclothes officers boarded the flight at 4.45pm, moments before take-off, and took the 62-year-old out of the first-class cabin and into custody. He had been due to meet German chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday.

"It was 10 minutes before its scheduled departure," said John Kelly, a Port Authority spokesman.

Port Authority officers were acting on information from the New York Police Department, whose detectives had been investigating a brutal alleged attack on a woman employee at the Sofitel New York on West 44th Street in the heart of the city's theatre district.

The 32-year-old woman told police that she entered Strauss-Kahn's room at about 1pm on Saturday and he emerged from the bedroom naked, threw her down and tried to sexually assault her, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. She broke free and escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened who called the police.

When New York City police detectives arrived moments later, Strauss-Kahn had already left the hotel, leaving behind his mobile phone and other personal items. "It looked like he got out of there in a hurry," Browne added. ...

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Quite a head of hair, police mugshot shows
By Lester Haines
10th March 2011

The police photo of a Connecticut stabbing suspect has shown why it is a really bad idea to flee the scene of an afro braiding before your hair has been fully been brought under control.

The snap of 21-year-old David Davis has joined that of David Jonathan Winkelman in the internet hall of mugshot fame following the traditional rapid dissemination across cyberspace of the astounding haircut. ...

... Leonid Nikolayev and Oleg Vorotnikov, members of the radical art collective Voina, were freed from custody last week after nearly four months awaiting trial for overturning police cars in St Petersburg.

They held a press conference on Thursday to talk about their ordeal. On their way home, accompanied by Oleg's wife Natalia Sokol and his two-year-old son, Casper, they noticed they were being followed by seven men, who looked like "typical thugs".

When Natalia started taking pictures of the men, they tried to grab the camera. In the struggle she was pushed into a puddle and dragged by the hair, so violently that one of her braids was ripped out.

"They said they were from the Criminal Investigation department," she said when I eventually reached her by e-mail. "But if they really were police investigators they behaved pretty strangely."

Oleg added: "They waved their IDs, but we couldn't examine them. Then they attacked Leonid from behind and rained down blows on my back and my head."

The baby pram was given a violent push, knocking Casper's face hard against a wall.

St Petersburg police could not be reached for comment but a spokesman told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that "preliminary investigations" were under way. ...

A UK startup company offering details of farmers' markets has complained of being "crippled" after it was mistakenly labelled adult viewing on O2's mobile network.

Lovefre.sh, a location-based service for finding fresh food, discovered that it had been rated at "only suitable for over 18s" by a third-party company which provides content filtering for O2, and that users of its iPhone app – which has seen nearly 18,000 downloads from Apple's App Store since its launch – would only see a blank page.

Although O2 is the only network that has blocked Lovefresh, "the problem is that most iPhones in the UK are on O2," said Mark Spofforth, the company's co-founder and chief executive. "I'm despondent about it. It's just crippling."

A spokesperson for O2 said that it had been notified of the error and had moved to whitelist Lovefresh – but that the effect would not work through its network until early on Saturday morning.

But O2 has been criticised by its customers after it implemented the "age verification" system without warning on Thursday. Any of its 20m users who try to access a page that has been rated as 18+ will have to go through a verification page which demands a payment from a credit card.

The company insists that it has taken the step as a child protection measure. Previously it only implemented the block if the buyer or controller of a phone requested it, such as a parent buying for a child.

But the flip from the longstanding "opt-in" system to an "opt-out" system, where people have to make a payment on a credit card as an age verification measure – on the basis that credit cards are only available and accessible to over-18s – has annoyed users.

Users in its forums have worried that they are being scammed, and complained that O2 is "censoring" them. ...

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The strange story of a scientist killed by the Plague
Maggie Koerth-Baker at 8:31 AM Monday, Feb 28, 2011



On September 13, 2009, Malcolm Casadaban, a University of Chicago professor of genetics and cell biology, was taken by ambulance to a hospital and died just a few hours later. Cause of death: The Plague, with a capital P.

Casadaban had been working with Plague bacteria as part of his research, but, despite that fact, this wasn't an open-and-shut case. Casadaban's bacteria were genetically modified, weakened so they couldn't infect humans. Scientists have been handling this sort of wishy-washy Plague for decades, without much incident. Until Casdaban, no-one had ever been killed by lab-acquired Plague. In fact, 1959 was the last time lab Plague had even made anyone sick.

The Centers for Disease Control wanted to know what made Casadaban different. And this is where the story gets weird. Turns out, Casadaban had his own weakness—a genetic mutation, common in people of European descent. In fact, this particular mutation is common because it protects against naturally acquired strains of the Plague. If your ancestors lived through a Plague outbreak, you're more likely to carry it. But, the same mutation also seems to leave you particularly susceptible to weakened, laboratory Plague bacteria. ...


Ta much, dear Ar0cketman

O_o

I just discovered my BF is going to see (shudder) motorhead tonight, and I am frankly horrified.

I loathed that band on first hearing them, and subsequent listenings have not shifted that opinion a single micron. I swore a silent oath many years ago to never knowingly sleep with anyone who owns a motorhead t-shirt.

I actually feel kinda dirty.

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Ta much, dear MSiegel, I think.....

Jemma Benjamin, 18, was kissed by fellow university student Daniel Ross, 21, at his home after a night out together.

But Miss Benjamin suddenly slumped onto the sofa - and died in front of Mr Ross's eyes.

The inquest heard Jemma died from SADS, a rare heart condition which kills 500 people in Britain each year.

Mr Ross, who had known Miss Benjamin for three months, tried desperately to save her before paramedics arrived on the scene.

But the inquest heard nothing could have been done for Miss Benjamin, who was described as a "picture of health".

Mr Ross told police that he and Miss Benjamin had been friends for three months - but that was the first time they had kissed.

He said: "It was not a sexual relationship but we saw each other a couple of times a week.

"We were going to go to a bar for some food and went back to my house for a credit card which I had forgotten.

"We were talking and ended up kissing in the hallway by the front door.

"We went into the kitchen and then the living room and Jemma sat down on the sofa."

Mr Ross said that Miss Benjamin's eyelids "suddenly began to droop" and her mouth started to froth before she collapsed at his student flat in Treforest, Pontypridd, South Wales.

He said: "I rang her mother to see if she had epilepsy. She fell in and out of consciousness."

He rang 999 and was given CPR instructions on the phone by a Welsh Ambulance Service control operator but he was unable to revive her. ...

see more funny videos

[brilliant snooty English butler]Excuse me, Sir? A Mr Darwin has telephoned several times.[/brilliant snooty English butler]

see more funny videos

Ta much, dear MSiegel

The convictions of 20 environmental campaigners involved in a protest at Britain's second largest coal-fired power station are to be reviewed less than two weeks after they were sentenced.

The urgent investigation by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into the safety of the convictions was welcomed by one of the activists, Ben Stewart, a Greenpeace employee who branded the trial a miscarriage of justice.

The CPS decision follows revelations in the Guardian about the role of PC Mark Kennedy, allegedly at the centre of a £250,000-a-year undercover operationwithin the climate change movement. Under the name Mark Stone the former Metropolitan police officer infiltrated environmental groups across Europe.

The demonstrators were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass at the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire. ...

The whistleblower

A police officer and divorced mother of three, Kathyrn Bolkovac was looking for a fresh start when she signed up as a UN peacekeeper in Bosnia. But when she began to investigate the local trafficking of young girls into prostitution, all the evidence pointed to those she worked alongside

Kathyrn Bolkovac
Saturday 22 January 2011



Ta much, dear BrightKnight

Notice how I ride sidesaddle. It proves I'm a lady of quality. [ ⇐ Click de t'ing, Mon!]

Ta much, dear Edosan

The international row over undercover police officer Mark Kennedy escalated tonight after the full scope of his activities were revealed in a secret sitting at the German parliament.

Germany's federal police chief, Jörg Ziercke, was forced to admit to MPs at the Bundestag that not only had Kennedy had a long-term lover in Berlin – in direct violation of a law forbidding police officers to have sexual relationships while undercover – but that he had been invited to Germany by the authorities to infiltrate the anti-fascist movement.

Ziercke also revealed that Kennedy, the Metropolitan police officer at the centre of a controversy over the infiltration of peaceful environmental groups across Europe, worked for three German states during at least five visits to the country between 2004 and 2009.

He said the agent committed at least two crimes, but the cases against him were dropped at the behest of German authorities who knew Kennedy's true identity.

Kennedy first broke the law during protests at Heiligendamm, the town near Rostock where the G8 meetings took place in 2007. He later committed arson, Der Spiegel said, during a demonstration in Berlin at which he set fire to containers.

The revelations are published today in Der Spiegel, which says Kennedy's involvement in criminal activity during his time in Germany highlights concerns that he was working as an agent provocateur and not just an observer of the activists.

In addition, the newspaper says, the fact that investigations into both crimes were shelved suggests police authorities wielded an unacceptable influence over the country's judicial process. ...

Dmitry Medvedev today accused government officials of allowing security checks at Domodedovo airport to slip into "a state of anarchy", amid reports that a Black Widow suicide bomber detonated the bomb that killed 35 people there yesterday.

The Russian president told chiefs of the federal security service (FSB) that those responsible for transport security "could be dismissed or face other sanctions" as a result of the negligence.

"We will have to put in place a much tougher inspection system, total inspections. It will likely take passengers longer, but it's the only way out," he said. "The information available to us [from Domodedovo] suggests that it was simply a state of anarchy. People were able to enter [the airport] from any place. Control over people's movements was partial and did not apply to those waiting for passengers."

Medevedev said earlier in the day: "What happened shows that there were clear security violations."

The massive blast took place at about 4.30pm beside the international arrivals hall at Moscow's busiest airport. The bomb, packed with nuts, bolts and ball bearings, ripped through the area, wounding up to 180 people. ...

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At least 35 people, including two Britons, were killed today after a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up at Moscow's busiest airport.

The bomber entered the ground floor of Domodedovo airport's terminal building apparently unchallenged. He then made his way to the crowded international arrivals zone. At 4.32pm local time he set off a massive explosive device, possibly hidden in a suitcase, causing a blast equivalent to 7kg of TNT.

Up to 168 people were injured, many of them critically. Relatives waiting to meet family members and arriving passengers were killed instantly.

Witness Artyom Zhilenkov, 30, survived the blast and tonight told the Guardian: "There was a massive boom and then a wave of heat and pressure that swept along the floor, bent my legs and flung me aside.

"I was looking toward a dark-skinned man when it happened. I think it was the suitcase standing next to him that exploded." ...

Kosovo's prime minister, Hashim Thaçi, has been identified as one of the "biggest fish" in organised crime in his country, according to western military intelligence reports leaked to the Guardian.

The Nato documents, which are marked "Secret", indicate that the US and other western powers backing Kosovo's government have had extensive knowledge of its criminal connections for several years.

They also identify another senior ruling politician in Kosovo as having links to the Albanian mafia, stating that he exerts considerable control over Thaçi, a former guerrilla leader.

Marked "USA KFOR", they provide detailed information about organised criminal networks in Kosovo based on reports by western intelligence agencies and informants. The geographical spread of Kosovo's criminal gangs is set out, alongside details of alleged familial and business links.

The Council of Europe is tomorrow expected to formally demand an investigation into claims that Thaçi was the head of a "mafia-like" network responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo war. ...

New Language Discovered: Prairiedogese

Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
January 20, 2011

... Slobodchikoff and his students went out into the prairie dog villages, hid behind bushes, and stuck out their microphones whenever a human, or a dog, or a coyote, or a hawk passed through. They recorded calls that the prairie dogs made in response to different predators. Then he took his recordings to a lab and used a computer program to analyze the sounds. Any given sound is actually made up of different frequencies and overtone layers on top of one another. Slobodchikoff's computer measured those frequencies and separated out all the component tones and overtones.

What Slobodchikoff discovered was that the calls clustered into different groups, and each cluster had its own signature set of frequencies and tones. Prairie dogs, in other words, don't just have a call for "danger" — they have one call for "human," another for "hawk" and a third for "coyote." They can even differentiate between coyotes and domesticated dogs.

Slobodchikoff can now tell the difference between these different calls using just his ears, no computer needed. But the sophistication of prairie dog "chees" goes even deeper than he initially suspected.

During his analysis, Slobodchikoff noticed something: Even though the human call was consistently different from the other calls, there was still significant variation between the individual human calls. He began to wonder whether the little rodents could possibly be describing their predators — not just differentiating hawk from human, but actually saying something about the particular human or coyote or hawk that was approaching.

So he devised a test. He had four (human) volunteers walk through a prairie dog village, and he dressed all the humans exactly the same — except for their shirts. Each volunteer walked through the community four times: once in a blue shirt, once in a yellow, once in green and once in gray.

He found, to his delight, that the calls broke down into groups based on the color of the volunteer's shirt. "I was astounded," says Slobodchikoff. But what astounded him even more, was that further analysis revealed that the calls also clustered based on other characteristics, like the height of the human. "Essentially they were saying, 'Here comes the tall human in the blue,' versus, 'Here comes the short human in the yellow,' " says Slobodchikoff. ...


Ta much, dear MSiegel

One of these things is not like the others....

Keith Olbermann was just fired by MSNBC. According to Keith, he received notice that "this is going to be the last edition of your show," and bam, he was out the door.

Keith's commentaries gave voice to our hopes and our fears. He helped so many of us survive the Bush years, and while a staunch Obama supporter, he wasn't afraid to stand up to his own President either.

We will all miss Keith, and wish him well wherever he ends up next.

Please sign the petition and show Keith that we stand with him today. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Darwinists Discover New Way to Destroy Their Property

THREE PEOPLE IN BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON, ARE IN SERIOUS condition following a fire triggered inside the van they were riding in Wednesday afternoon. The conversion van had apparently run out of gas before the two men and a woman could make it to a gas station, so one of them walked to the nearest station to buy some and carry back. He did not have a regular gasoline can, so he took a bucket and poured 2 gallons of gasoline in it and returned to the van.

Finding that they were unable to pour the gas out of the bucket into the filler pipe, they removed the interior engine cover in the front of the van and began using a water bottle to pour gasoline directly into the carburetor while they were driving. You know what happened next. ...


[brilliant snooty English butler]One of the maids has informed me that a Mr Darwin has repeatedly rang for you, Sirs, Madam.[/brilliant snooty English butler]


Ta much, dear Anneliese

UK authorities passed information about British nationals to notorious Bangladeshi intelligence agencies and police units, then pressed for information while the men were being held at a secret interrogation centre where inmates are known to have died under torture.

A Guardian investigation into counter-terrorism co-operation between the UK and Bangladesh has revealed a detailed picture of the last Labour government's reliance on overseas intelligence agencies that were known to use torture.

Meetings and exchanges of information took place between British and Bangladeshi officials in an effort to protect the UK from attacks that might be fomented in Bangladesh, according to sources in both countries.

The likelihood that a number of suspects would be tortured as a result of the meetings went unmentioned, according to the sources. Subsequently, more than a dozen men of dual British-Bangladeshi nationality were placed under investigation, and at least some suffered horrific abuse from the Bangladeshi authorities. ...

The government will respond today to revelations that police spent millions of pounds running a network of undercover spies in the environmental protest movement.

Home Office minister Nick Herbert will be questioned by MPs about Mark Kennedy, who spent seven years living as an activist. Kennedy claims he has been "hung out to dry" by his handlers, makes numerous criticisms of the operation and admits to sexual relations with activists.

He also alleges that secret surveillance tapes would have exonerated six activists accused of breaking into a power station. He accuses senior officers of suppressing the tapes, a move that could have resulted in a serious miscarriage of justice.

Herbert, who has responsibility for policing, will appear before the home affairs select committee to answer questions on police financing. Members of the committee, including the Labour chair, Keith Vaz, are planning to question him over Kennedy. A programme to plant spies in the protest movement is now estimated to have cost £15m over the last decade.

Kennedy denies claims by activists that he was an agent provocateur in protests, including the attempt to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009. He insists all of his activities were scrutinised and "sanctioned" by his superiors. ...

...it was some years before I heard he had been an informer. I was left feeling rather grubby, and rueing my taste in men. Yet I never thought that he had specifically targeted me, or that anything I said had been of particular use to his police handlers.

A far greater betrayal came in the form of Joy Harnden, another spy in my organisation, the End Conscription Campaign. We weren't particularly close but I remember being impressed by her dedication and intimate knowledge of the workings of the apartheid state. (Odd that.) I recall one conversation when she pumped me for personal information about a housemate who had recently been released from police detention. I should have noticed something was amiss, but I admired Joy and was pleased to spend time with her.

I later learned that she was a lieutenant in the security police and was responsible for the death of at least one ANC comrade. It still makes me feel sick. She changed her name and lived in Scotland for a while, and sometimes I fantasise about tracking her down and confronting her.

But it didn't cross my mind to take legal action against the police over any of this. After all, it was South Africa in the 1980s and we were trying to overthrow the state. We expected it. But it's not what I would expect if I was protesting against climate change in Britain today.

Boy, 9, has Disney World trip ruined after US immigration rules him a threat
A nine-year-old boy's dream trip to Disney World was ruined when US immigration officials ruled he was a threat.
14 Jan 2011

Civil servants Kathy and Edward Francis planned to surprise their grandson Micah Strachan with the holiday of a lifetime to Florida in February.

They were only going to tell Micah about it when they took him to the airport on February 19 for the flight to the US.

They had already spent more than £1,500 on plane tickets and had been organising the trip for months.

But this week US Embassy officials denied the schoolboy a visa to enter the US.

They said there was a risk he would not leave the US at the end of his holiday and refused his application under Section 214 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Micah was born in Britain and has lived in Middlesex all his life with his mum Claudia Lewis.

He holds a South African passport because his grandparents Kathy and Edward, who have lived and worked in Britain since 1990, only got him a South African passport.

They are originally from South Africa.

A letter from Micah's primary school was included in his visa application confirming he attended the school.

But the US Embassy's rejection letter to Micah said: "Because you either did not demonstrate strong ties outside the United States or were not able to demonstrate that your intended activities in the US would be consistent with the visa status, you are ineligible."

His grandmother Kathy, from Brixton, South London, said: "It was going to be a total surprise. He would have loved it." ...

A bizarre decision to ride an inflatable doll down a flood-swollen Yarra River blew up in a woman’s face yesterday when she lost her latex playmate in a rough patch.

The incident prompted a warning from police that blow-up sex toys are "not recognised flotation devices’’.

Police and a State Emergency Services crew were called to the rescue when the woman and a man, both 19, struck trouble at Warrandyte North about 4.30pm yesterday.

They were floating down the river on two inflatable dolls and had just passed the Pound Bend Tunnel when the woman lost her toy in turbulent water.

She clung to a floating tree, calling for help while the man stayed with her. Fortunately for the pair, a passer-by called triple zero while while a kayaker took life jackets to the pair. Police and the SES crew hauled the water-logged thrillseekers to safety. ...


Ta much, dear Anneliese

Hundreds of British holidaymakers on a Saga cruise were ordered below deck after pirates closed in on their ship off the coast of Tanzania.

Passengers on the £2,000 a head voyage across the Indian Ocean were instructed to stay out of sight on the floor of the main lounge of the Spirit of Adventure.

A fast moving boat carrying armed Somali pirates was first spotted on the vessel's radar on Wednesday evening as it sped towards the liner.

Pirates operating out of lawless tracts of Somalia have spread their attacks south towards Tanzania and east far beyond the Seychelles in an attempt to avoid surveillance by European naval patrols protecting the international shipping lanes in the Red Sea. ...

Silvio Berlusconi was tonight facing the potentially devastating possibility that he might be put on trial as an alleged sex offender.

The chief prosecutor in his home city of Milan said the Italian prime minister had been formally placed under investigation on suspicion of having sex with an underage prostitute. He was also accused of abusing his position to pressure the police.

The offences carry sentences totalling up to 15 years in jail. Berlusconi had not been charged, but had been invited to present himself for questioning, according to the prosecutor's statement.

The previous day Italy's constitutional court overturned key passages of a bill introduced by Berlusconi's government that would have shielded him from the courts. The double blow looked certain to weaken a leader whose majority in parliament has hung by a thread ever since he was deserted last year by his former ally and deputy, Gianfranco Fini.

The investigation concerns Karima El Mahroug, otherwise known as Ruby Rubacuori, a Moroccan teenager who told investigators last year – when she was 17 – that she had attended parties at Berlusconi's estate near Milan, one of which ended in an erotic game called "Bunga Bunga".

The period in which Berlusconi is suspected of relations with a juvenile prostitute, February to May 2010, coincides with that in which Mahroug is thought to have visited his estate. She has denied having sexual relations with the prime minister, but acknowledged accepting from him a gift of several thousand euros.

Berlusconi's lawyers said in a statement that the allegations were "absurd and groundless". They called the investigation a "very serious interference in the private life" of the prime minister. ...

Any one of the many allegations levelled at Silvio Berlusconi over the years would probably be sufficient to sink a prime minister in most countries, but the scandal which could finally undo him is perhaps the most scurrilous of them all. It combines an underage belly dancer, ribald sex parties and claims of political interference with the police.

The unwitting protagonist in this particular tale is Karima el-Mahroug, who also goes under the stage monicker of Ruby Rubacuori, or Ruby Heartstealer.

According to a series of media reports last October, Berlusconi met Mahroug, then 17, through Nicole Minetti, a TV showgirl turned dental hygienist who acquired a post in Berlusconi's Freedom People party after catching his eye while cleaning his teeth.

Mahroug insisted that she had not slept with the 74-year-old prime minister, but she told Italian newspapers that she attended "bunga bunga" sex parties at his mansion near Milan. At one of these, Mahroug said, she sat next to Berlusconi, who later took her upstairs and gave her an envelope containing €7,000. She said he also gave her jewellery.

Their acquaintance came to light after Mahroug was arrested in Milan for allegedly stealing cash. The station commander said that she was released after police received a call from the prime minister's office saying – incorrectly – that she was the granddaughter of Egypt's long-serving president, Hosni Mubarak.

Berlusconi ridiculed opposition calls for him to resign over the affair, saying: "As always, I work without interruption and if occasionally I happen to look a beautiful girl in the face, it's better to like beautiful girls than to be gay." ...

Twenty environmental activists are seeking to overturn recent criminal convictions in the wake of the Guardian's revelations about a network of undercover police officers embedded deep in the movement.

Lawyers for the group claim that a failure to disclose the role of covert police operative Mark Kennedy during their trial may have led to a miscarriage of justice and have written to the Crown Prosecution Service demanding details of his role.

Six other activists walked free from court earlier this week after their lawyer, Mike Schwarz, demanded details of the part played by Kennedy in planning the environmental protest they took part in at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, near Nottingham, in 2009.

However, last month, in a separate trial, the 20 green campaigners were convicted of conspiracy to commit aggravated trespass during the same protest, after failing to convince a jury that their actions were designed to prevent immediate harm to human life and property from climate change.

"The police allowed this trial, unlike the later one, to run all the way to conviction," said Schwarz, whose firm, Bindmans, represents both groups of protesters. "In the light of events last week, this must be seen as a potential miscarriage of justice."

Revelations of PC Kennedy's activities by the Guardian this week have triggered a crisis in undercover policing. He is alleged to have played a central role in organising a proposal to break into the power station.

Kennedy used the fake identity "Mark Stone" to live for seven years in the protest movement, infiltrating activist groups in 22 countries. He had sexual relationships with a number of women. He also revealed the identity of another undercover officer to fellow activists, leading to a security operation this week as police tried to ensure all their undercover officers were safe.

An investigation into the collapse of the trial of the six activists is expected to be launched shortly by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. The body is also considering widening its inquiry to take into account whether or not Kennedy acted as an agent provocateur during his years undercover. A further review into the wider undercover operation and those organising it may also follow. ...

see more My Food Looks Funny

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Ta much, dear MSiegel

... The woman who said she had had a sexual relationship with Kennedy now lives abroad and wants to be known only by her first name, Anna. She said she had sex more than 20 times with the undercover officer about five years ago, including at his house in Nottingham, when she was aged just 21. They met at protests around Europe, and it seemed clear to her that Kennedy was "seeing other women" around the same time. "I'm not sure personally if I would be willing to take part in an inquiry that touched on our sexual relationship," she said. "If the Met knew that this was going on, then obviously they should reveal this. There should be an inquiry into whether this is legal."

Kennedy, who joined the police in about 1994, is known to have had a wife and children before going undercover. There have also been unconfirmed reports that Kennedy had a long-term relationship with a woman in Nottingham while posing as an activist.

Questions over the ethics of the Kennedy operation have already been raised in Germany, where the MP Andrej Hunko has tabled questions asking whether authorities authorised the undercover officer to have "sexual relationships" in the country.

A Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that Kennedy had used a fake passport to travel to 22 different countries while posing as a campaigner, earning the trust of activists and feeding back intelligence to his commanders. ...

WikiLeaks: US targets EU over GM crops
US embassy cable recommends drawing up list of countries for 'retaliation' over opposition to genetic modification
John Vidal, environment editor
Monday 3 January 2011

The US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops, newly released WikiLeaks cables show.

In response to moves by France to ban a Monsanto GM corn variety in late 2007, the ambassador, Craig Stapleton, a friend and business partner of former US president George Bush, asked Washington to penalise the EU and particularly countries which did not support the use of GM crops.

"Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits.

"The list should be measured rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should not expect an early victory. Moving to retaliation will make clear that the current path has real costs to EU interests and could help strengthen European pro-biotech voices," said Stapleton, who with Bush co-owned the St Louis-based Texas Rangers baseball team in the 1990s.

In other newly released cables, US diplomats around the world are found to have pushed GM crops as a strategic government and commercial imperative.

Because many Catholic bishops in developing countries have been vehemently opposed to the controversial crops, the US applied particular pressure to the pope's advisers.

Cables from the US embassy in the Vatican show that the US believes the pope is broadly supportive of the crops after sustained lobbying of senior Holy See advisers, but regrets that he has not yet stated his support. The US state department special adviser on biotechnology as well as government biotech advisers based in Kenya lobbied Vatican insiders to persuade the pope to declare his backing. "… met with [US monsignor] Fr Michael Osborn of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, offering a chance to push the Vatican on biotech issues, and an opportunity for post to analyse the current state of play on biotech in the Vatican generally," says one cable in 2008.

"Opportunities exist to press the issue with the Vatican, and in turn to influence a wide segment of the population in Europe and the developing world," says another.

But in a setback, the US embassy found that its closest ally on GM, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the powerful Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the man who mostly represents the pope at the United Nations, had withdrawn his support for the US.

"A Martino deputy told us recently that the cardinal had co-operated with embassy Vatican on biotech over the past two years in part to compensate for his vocal disapproval of the Iraq war and its aftermath – to keep relations with the USG [US government] smooth. According to our source, Martino no longer feels the need to take this approach," says the cable.

In addition, the cables show US diplomats working directly for GM companies such as Monsanto. "In response to recent urgent requests by [Spanish rural affairs ministry] state secretary Josep Puxeu and Monsanto, post requests renewed US government support of Spain's science-based agricultural biotechnology position through high-level US government intervention."

It also emerges that Spain and the US have worked closely together to persuade the EU not to strengthen biotechnology laws. In one cable, the embassy in Madrid writes: "If Spain falls, the rest of Europe will follow."

The cables show that not only did the Spanish government ask the US to keep pressure on Brussels but that the US knew in advance how Spain would vote, even before the Spanish biotech commission had reported.

Because the world’s most powerful military is being destroyed by a combination of a) goat herders in Afghanistan and b) some weird guy with a website, the Pentagon has just banned any kind of little gizmo that can save information off a computer. (It is apparently impossible to ban goat herders … yet.) As of immediately, any military person (or military contractor, maybe?) cannot use removable/portable disk thingies such as thumb drives or external DVD/CD writable drives when using the secret computers that have all the potential WikiLeaks stuff on them. Hooray, there will be no more leaks of information! ...

A man and two teenagers have been charged with theft after a £1.2m antique violin was stolen from outside a London railway station.

The 300-year-old Stradivarius was taken from Euston station when classical musician Min-Jin Kym, 32, went to buy a sandwich. Today John Michael Maughan, 26, of no fixed abode, and two boys aged 16 and 14, from Tottenham, north London, who for legal reasons cannot be named, were charged with theft at West London magistrates court. Maughan was remanded in custody while the teenagers were released on court bail, said British Transport Police (BTP). They will appear again at the same court on 20 January.

Investigating officer Detective Inspector Andy Rose said along with the 1696 Antonio Stradivarius violin there was a Peccatte bow, valued at £62,000, in the case and another bow made by the school of Bazin, valued at more than £5,000.

A BTP spokesman said there was a £15,000 reward, issued by Lark Insurance Broking Group and certain underwriters at Lloyd's, for information leading to their safe recovery. ...

Public release date: 16-Dec-2010
Contact: Natasha Pinol
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Science's breakthrough of the year: The first quantum machine

A mechanical device that operates in the quantum realm tops the journal's list of advances in 2010

Until this year, all human-made objects have moved according to the laws of classical mechanics. Back in March, however, a group of researchers designed a gadget that moves in ways that can only be described by quantum mechanics—the set of rules that governs the behavior of tiny things like molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. In recognition of the conceptual ground their experiment breaks, the ingenuity behind it and its many potential applications, Science has called this discovery the most significant scientific advance of 2010.

Physicists Andrew Cleland and John Martinis from the University of California at Santa Barbara and their colleagues designed the machine—a tiny metal paddle of semiconductor, visible to the naked eye—and coaxed it into dancing with a quantum groove. First, they cooled the paddle until it reached its "ground state," or the lowest energy state permitted by the laws of quantum mechanics (a goal long-sought by physicists). Then they raised the widget's energy by a single quantum to produce a purely quantum-mechanical state of motion. They even managed to put the gadget in both states at once, so that it literally vibrated a little and a lot at the same time—a bizarre phenomenon allowed by the weird rules of quantum mechanics.

Science and its publisher, AAAS, the nonprofit science society, have recognized this first quantum machine as the 2010 Breakthrough of the Year. They have also compiled nine other important scientific accomplishments from this past year into a top ten list, appearing in a special news feature in the journal's 17 December 2010 issue. Additionally, Science news writers and editors have chosen to spotlight 10 "Insights of the Decade" that have transformed the landscape of science in the 21st Century.

"This year's Breakthrough of the Year represents the first time that scientists have demonstrated quantum effects in the motion of a human-made object," said Adrian Cho, a news writer for Science. "On a conceptual level that's cool because it extends quantum mechanics into a whole new realm. On a practical level, it opens up a variety of possibilities ranging from new experiments that meld quantum control over light, electrical currents and motion to, perhaps someday, tests of the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality."

The quantum machine proves that the principles of quantum mechanics can apply to the motion of macroscopic objects, as well as atomic and subatomic particles. It provides the key first step toward gaining complete control over an object's vibrations at the quantum level. Such control over the motion of an engineered device should allow scientists to manipulate those minuscule movements, much as they now control electrical currents and particles of light. In turn, that capability may lead to new devices to control the quantum states of light, ultra-sensitive force detectors and, ultimately, investigations into the bounds of quantum mechanics and our sense of reality. (This last grand goal might be achieved by trying to put a macroscopic object in a state in which it's literally in two slightly different places at the same time—an experiment that might reveal precisely why something as big as a human can't be in two places at the same time.)

"Mind you, physicists still haven't achieved a two-places-at-once state with a tiny object like this one," said Cho. "But now that they have reached the simplest state of quantum motion, it seems a whole lot more obtainable—more like a matter of 'when' than 'if.'" ...

A Liberal Democrat MP who hired an alleged Russian spy as his research assistant has tabled a series of parliamentary questions about Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent and the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston since the election.

Mike Hancock yesterday insisted there was nothing unusual about asking for the locations of berths for submarines as he launched a staunch defence of Katia Zatuliveter, who was arrested on Thursday and is facing deportation over allegations that she spied for Russia.

The MP declared yesterday that his 25-year-old assistant had "nothing to hide" as he challenged the security services to produce evidence against Zatuliveter, originally from Dagestan who was forced to flee her home as a child in the mid-1990s during the Chechnyan conflict.

Zatuliveter is appealing against a deportation order that was issued after Theresa May, the home secretary, was briefed by MI5 about alleged connections to the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service.

The assistant, who first came to Britain three years ago to study for a masters degree at Bradford University, was initially questioned after being stopped at Gatwick airport in August as she returned to the UK from a holiday in Croatia. She was released and initially retained her House of Commons pass, issued after police and MI5 security checks, which gave her free access to the Palace of Westminster. ...

see more My Food Looks Funny

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... An acquaintance, only joking, suggested the unthinkable: Maybe the bees were hitting the juice — maraschino cherry juice, that sweet, sticky stuff sloshing around vats at Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company over on Dikeman Street in Red Hook.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” said Ms. Mayo, a soft-spoken young woman who has long been active in the slow-food movement. She found it particularly hard to believe that the bees would travel all the way from Governors Island to gorge themselves on junk food. “Why would they go to the cherry factory,” she said, “when there’s a lot for them to forage right there on the farm?”

It seems natural, by now, for humans to prefer the unnatural, as if we ourselves had been genetically modified to choose artificially flavored strawberry candy over strawberries, or crunchy orange “cheese” puffs over a piece of actual cheese. But when bees make the same choice, it feels like a betrayal to our sense of how nature should work. Shouldn’t they know better? Or, perhaps, not know enough to know better? ...

see more Historic LOL

Revealed: Lib Dems planned before election to abandon tuition fees pledge
Exclusive: Documents show Nick Clegg's public claim was at odds with secret decision made by party in March
Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
Friday 12 November 2010

In addition to the party's manifesto pledge, Nick Clegg signed an NUS pledge in April to vote against any increase in tuition fees. Photograph: NUS press office

The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal.

As the Lib Dem leader faces a growing revolt after this week's violent protest against fee rises, internal documents show the party was drawing up proposals for coalition negotiations which contrasted sharply with Clegg's public pronouncements.

A month before Clegg pledged in April to scrap the "dead weight of debt", a secret team of key Lib Dems made clear that, in the event of a hung parliament, the party would not waste political capital defending its manifesto pledge to abolish university tuition fees within six years.

In a document marked "confidential" and dated 16 March, the head of the secret pre-election coalition negotiating team, Danny Alexander, wrote: "On tuition fees we should seek agreement on part time students and leave the rest. We will have clear yellow water with the other [parties] on raising the tuition fee cap, so let us not cause ourselves more headaches."

The document is likely to fuel criticism among Lib Dem backbenchers and in the National Union of Students that the party courted the university vote in the full knowledge that its pledge would have to be abandoned as the party sought to achieve a foot in government. Within a month of the secret document, Clegg recorded a YouTube video for the annual NUS conference on 13 April in which he pledged to abolish fees within six years. ...

see more Historic LOL

Opposition politicians and commentators accused Italy's government of neglect and mismanagement today over the collapse of the 2,000-year-old House of the Gladiators in the ruins of ancient Pompeii.

Some commentators said the Unesco world heritage site should be privatised and removed from state control. La Stampa newspaper ran a story headlined "Pompeii – the collapse of shame," echoing national opinion over the cultural disaster.

The stone house, on one of the site's main streets and measuring about 80 sq m (860 sq ft), collapsed just after dawn yesterday while Pompeii was closed to visitors. The structure was believed to have been used as a club house by gladiators before they went to battle in a nearby amphitheatre.

Business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said the only solution for Pompeii was a private sponsor which would be allowed to place its logos at the entrance.

"Precisely because it belongs to all humanity, its management should be taken away from a state that has shown itself incapable of protecting it," it said.

The building was not open to visitors but was visible from the outside.

Its walls were decorated with frescoes of military themes. Culture minister Sandro Bondi visited the site today and said experts believe at least some frescoes could be saved.

Approximately 2.5 million tourists visit Pompeii every year, making it one of Italy's most popular attractions. Art historians and residents have for years complained that the sites were in a state of decay and needed regular maintenance. Two years ago the government declared a state of emergency for Pompeii but it lasted only a year. ...

Posted: Oct. 27, 2010
Kwame Kilpatrick's news of tossed city computer upsets judge
Computer, e-mails for Greene case gone

By TRESA BALDAS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

Someone threw away ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's city computer in the middle of his heated text-message scandal in 2008.

And a federal judge is demanding to know why.

"It's highly troubling," U.S. Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen said at a hearing Tuesday after learning the computer was tossed seven months before Kilpatrick resigned in September 2008.

Of particular concern, said Whalen, who could sanction the city for spoiling evidence, is that e-mails potentially relevant to several lawsuits have been wiped out.

Whalen's comments came during an evidentiary hearing in a lawsuit filed by the family of Tamara Greene, a slain stripper said to have danced at a rumored wild party at the Manoogian Mansion. The family is suing the city and Kilpatrick, claiming authorities sabotaged the murder investigation to shield the killers.

Gary Hermanson, an attorney for the family, argued that the city has dragged its feet in producing e-mails for Kilpatrick and his ex-chief of staff and lover, Christine Beatty.

City attorney John Schapka, in explaining why the city doesn't have the e-mails, disclosed that computer hard drives belonging to Kilpatrick and Beatty were thrown away and replaced in February 2008. Any deleted e-mails would have been electronically shredded by the main server to free up space, he said.

Whalen was miffed as to why "nobody archived anything," given the litigation the city has faced involving Kilpatrick's and Beatty's electronic communications.

"The relevance and potential role seems really obvious to me," he said.

Whalen ordered Hermanson to submit a brief within two weeks addressing the handling of evidence. The city will get two weeks to respond. ...

Armed men burst into a drug rehab centre in the Mexican border city of Tijuana and killed up to 13 people. While police would only confirm today that 10 people were shot dead, officials had been celebrating a decline in the terror unleashed on the city by the drug cartels.

The attackers made the addicts lie on the floor and then sprayed them with bullets, killing 13 during the assault on Sunday night, according to one witness, Jesus, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals. There are normally about 45 clients at this ramshackle, privately run treatment centre and the people sleeping upstairs survived.

Police have not identified the motive behind the massacre but gangs have attacked clinics in other cities to target rivals.

It was the second massacre of the weekend in Mexico: 14 people were killed on Friday night when gunmen stormed a birthday party in another border city, Ciudad Juárez. The victims ranged from 13 to 32 years old, and most of them were high school students, a survivor said.

But the attack in Tijuana is the first mass killing at an addiction treatment centre in a city praised for its anti-gang efforts. In Ciudad Juárez, several such attacks have killed dozens of recovering addicts; and these killings have been accompanied by a message from an unknown voice – "this is a taste of Juárez" – heard over a police radio frequency. ...

Killed By His Own Beer
October 18, 2010

BEER IN GERMANY IS MUCH CHEAPER THAN it is in Denmark. So naturally, there are clusters of beer stores along the German-Danish border catering to the fleets of vans and other small trucks who load up to take some back home. Early Saturday morning, one of the Danish entrepreneurs failed to secure his load properly before heading back home on a rain-slickened highway. While traveling, his vanload of beer shifted causing the vehicle to spin off the road and crash into a pole.

The impact itself wasn’t too hard, but the sudden shift forward of the hundreds of pounds of beer cans nailed the driver and crushed him to death.

Before the van could be towed away, all of the beer had to be offloaded by hand. So who better to do it than a gang of firefighters? Most of them have probably already been practicing picking up cans of beer recently, anyway. ...



Ta much, dear Anneliese

Christie's caught up as £30m forgeries send shock waves through the art world
German police hold three suspects after works sold through leading auction houses are exposed as fakes
Dalya Alberge
Sunday 17 October 2010

Panic is spreading through the art world following the discovery of forgeries among major 20th-century paintings sold in recent years by leading auctioneers and dealers worldwide, including Christie's in London.

More than 30 paintings, thought to be by artists including Max Ernst, Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger, have been unmasked as forgeries, the Observer has learned. The fakes have duped leading figures in the art world into parting with at least £30m.

Four of the paintings have gone through Christie's, including forgeries of Ernst's La Horde, estimated at £3.5m and eventually sold to the Würth Collection, and André Derain's Bateaux à Collioure, sold for £2m. Six paintings were sold by the leading German auctioneer, Lempertz, one for £2.8m. The forger's strategy appears to have been to create compositions that would relate to the titles of documented works whose whereabouts are not currently known.

Dealers and collectors who have recently acquired works by the artists involved "are shaking over this scandal", one insider said. "They are in a panic over whether their paintings are also forgeries. Everyone's taking a second look." The panic is so acute that collectors are even seeking refunds on unquestionably genuine works.

One expert describes the forgeries as "gold standard". They cover many styles and include works by Heinrich Campendonk, the German Expressionist. Most are in the style of the particular artist, rather than a direct copy. All are believed to have been painted by a German forger over the past 15 years. Police are now investigating whether that forger is Wolfgang Beltracchi, 59, an artist from Freiburg, aided by his wife, Helene, 52, and her sister, Susanne, 57 – women described as "great charmers". All three are now in police custody. Two men are also being investigated.

The deception involved an invented story about inheriting the paintings from the sisters' grandfather, Werner Jägers.

Dr Nicholas Eastaugh, of Art Access and Research, a leading British expert in scientific analysis of paintings, told the Observer that he has seen four of the forgeries and conducted extensive tests on three. The results confirmed that they contain pigments not available when they were supposed to have been painted. One of the paintings, Campendonk's Rotes Bild Mit Pferden (Red Picture with Horses), was sold in 2006 by Lempertz for a record price.

Eastaugh emphasised that the duped buyer has given him permission to discuss the case. A painted sketch on the back of the canvas – suggesting that the artist was trying out another idea – is also a forgery. Clues to a painting's provenance, or history, are often found on the back of a painting. Many of the forgeries have fake labels from galleries or collections to give a further authentic touch, suggesting past exhibitions. The Christie's Ernst is said to bear a false label, "Flechtheim Collection", which aroused the suspicions of the distinguished historian and Flechtheim biographer, Ralph Jentsch. Labels on other works suggest they are from the "Jägers Collection".

One duped auctioneer said: "It's significant that these paintings have been through the sale process before they got to me. They must have been sufficiently convincing."

The buyer of the Campendonk was Trasteco, a trading company in Malta, which is now claiming back the purchase price. The firm is one of two collectors represented by Friederike Gräfin von Brühl, a German lawyer at K&L Gates. She said: "For the art world, this is a big scandal. Everyone is shocked."

Christie's London – which handled alleged forgeries that include Campendonk's Girl with a Swan, sold for £67,000, and another painting that fetched £344,000 – said: "We take any doubt surrounding authenticity extremely seriously and are investigating the matter fully."

It was so hot Monday that it broke the all-time record — and the weatherman's thermometer.

The National Weather Service's thermometer for downtown Los Angeles headed into uncharted territory at 12:15 p.m. Monday, reaching 113 degrees for the first time since records began being kept in 1877.

Shortly after that banner moment, the temperature dipped back to 111, and then climbed back to 112. Then at 1 p.m., the thermometer stopped working. ...

By Gene Weingarten
Sunday, September 19, 2010

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

The language's demise took few by surprise. Signs of its failing health had been evident for some time on the pages of America's daily newspapers, the flexible yet linguistically authoritative forums through which the day-to-day state of the language has traditionally been measured. Beset by the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.

In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling "pronounciation" has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.

On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was "Alot," which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of "spading and neutering." The Miami Herald reported on someone who "eeks out a living" -- alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a "doggy dog world." The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of "prostrate cancer." ...




Ta much, dear MSiegel, despite the heartbreak.

HIC!

Similac Baby Formula Recalled Due to Insect Parts
by Mary Rothschild | Sep 23, 2010

Abbott, the company that makes Similac-brand baby formula, is voluntarily recalling certain powder formulas after small beetles were found in one of its manufacturing plants.

The company said there was a "remote possibility" that the insects or their larvae could have contaminated some of the formula. It initiated the recall as a precautionary measure. ...




Breast Milk: Now, and Always 100% Beetle Parts-Free!

Commonwealth Games organisers in Delhi have been given 48 hours to save the crisis-hit event after team officials warned they would pull their athletes out if serious ongoing concerns about the standard of facilities were not immediately addressed.

The sense of impending crisis was exacerbated when a section of the ceiling in the weightlifting arena fell down amid growing fears over rising flood waters near the athlete's village, which had already been condemned by team officials as "filthy" and "unfit for human occupation".

With the Games at risk of descending into farce, thousands of athletes from the major competing nations remained in the dark about whether or not they would be boarding a plane to compete.

The Scottish team delayed the departure of the first batch of their 192 athletes, comprising 41 boxers, rugby players, wrestlers and support staff. The Wales team set a deadline of Wednesday night to receive reassurances from organisers that the athlete's village and venues would be "fit for purpose" and plan to discuss the issue further on Thursday. ...

Ta much, dear Anneliese

Ta much, dear MSiegel, I think....

Ta much, dear MSiegel

see more EpicFail

Ta much, dear Anneliese

'Get Money' haircut identifies Seattle suspect
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Seattle (AP) --

A woman who was robbed of $310 while sitting at a Seattle traffic light gave police a detailed description of the man who stuck a gun in her open window.

He had "GET MONEY" shaved into the hair on one side of his head. He also had "GET" tattooed on his right hand and "MONEY" on his left hand.

The Seattle pi.com reports a detective searched records using the tattoo information and identified a suspect who was later pulled over by a patrol officer in the Lake City neighborhood.

His "GET MONEY" haircut and tattoos matched, and 18-year-old Larry Shawn Taylor was identified by the victim in the Aug. 23 robbery.

Now, he's held in the King County Jail for investigation of robbery.




Ta much, dear MSiegel

YOW.

Ta much, I ahem think, dear BrightKnight

Tank mit Gülle geplatzt

Tank mit Gülle in Roggendorf geplatzt

“Definitely an increased smell annoyance…” was the description of the incident earlier this morning (Monday) when a tank truck hauling 20 tons of liquified pig manure burst open in the center of Rye, Germany. The truck was hauling the crap from the Netherlands to a fertilizer plant not much farther down the road from Rye in Pulheim when the tank’s discharge cap suddenly fell off in the center of the village around 7:30 am this morning.

The entire load was ejected and violently sprayed over 100 meters of roadway, six houses, seven cars and two pedestrians. ...

... They soon learned that the slop had been pasteurized before shipment and was not carrying any harmful bacteria....

... They had the job wrapped up by noon and returned to quarters with a good story to pass along to the next generation of firefighters.




Ta much, dear Anneliese, I think.

Algerian web pirates 2,000 miles astray in siege of Belvoir Castle
One of Britain’s best-known castles fell victim to a band of hapless Middle-Eastern “cyber-pirates” last week after they mistook it for a Crusader fortress of the same name more than 2,000 miles away.
By Heidi Blake
01 Sep 2010

Belvoir Castle, the family seat of the 11th Duke of Rutland, was mistakenly targeted by a subversive group of Algerian hackers who confused its website with that of Belvoir Fortress in Israel.

The hackers hijacked the castle’s homepage and replaced images of the stately home nestled in rolling Leicestershire countryside with a black page displaying the Algerian flag and a tirade against the Jewish state in Arabic.

Belvoir Fortress became a stronghold of the Christian military order of the Knights Hospitaller in 1168, when it was erected to fend off Muslim forces attacking the Kingdom of Jerusalem from the east.

It returned to Muslim control in the 13th Century, but was abandoned after a bloody assault by Israeli forces on the surrounding village of Kawkab al-Hawa in 1948.

By contrast, Belvoir Castle was a Royalist stronghold in the English Civil War and now holds an annual teddy bears’ picnic in its 15,000-acre gardens.

An Algerian subversive group called the Dz-SeC claimed responsibility for the cyber attack, which occurred on Friday afternoon, writing in Arabic on the castle’s website: "The cause of this hack is Israel's presence.”

The message added: "Internet law does not protect the ignorant. Thank you to all the pirates of Algeria." ...






The UK Belvoir is pronounced 'beaver' which is also -inducing.

1 September 2010
Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle
By Howard Falcon-Lang Science reporter, BBC News

... Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker's visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.

Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens - where Hooker's father was director - shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.

The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.

So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.

Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.

Back in England, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution were busily uprooting the Garden of Eden.

But on a green hill far away, a new "island Eden" was being created.

Yet could Darwin's secret garden have more far-reaching consequences?

Dr Dave Wilkinson is an ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University, who has written extensively about Ascension Island's strange ecosystem.

He first visited Ascension in 2003.

"I remember thinking, this is really weird," he told the BBC.

"There were all kinds of plants that don't belong together in nature, growing side by side. I only later found out about Darwin, Hooker and everything that had happened," he said. ...

Elderly widow threatened with £2,500 fine for dropping cigarette ash
An elderly widow has been threatened with a £2,500 fine for dropping cigarette ash on the pavement.
16 Aug 2010

Sheila Martin, 70, was smoking at a bus stop when a warden pounced and handed her the £75 fixed penalty for littering.

However she has refused to pay – and could now face a £2,500 penalty.

Mrs Martin, from Oldbury, West Mids, was hit with the original fine by the Sandwell Council warden while at the bus stop on May 25.

She said: "I still can't believe what happened. I was just sat at a bus stop quietly enjoying my cigarette and from nowhere a warden appeared and accused me of littering.

"I couldn't believe it, I was only smoking a cigarette. It is one of the few things I have left that I can afford to buy myself.

"I can't work out why the council would be so vindictive over such a petty matter. I'm so upset and angry."

It is not the first time Sandwell Council has been accused of heavy handedness over littering.

The authority handed out 2,200 penalty fines last year, compared to just 336 in neighbouring Dudley.

Cllr Derek Rowley, Sandwell's Cabinet member for safer neighbourhoods, refused to be drawn on Mrs Martin's case, but said: "In general terms, our wardens do not issue fixed penalty notices for dropping cigarette ash...."



They did, in general terms, issue a fixed penalty notice to Ms Martin, you fuckwits.

Screw you, fbi.