BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 09:21 AM

This week's results are from a single scoop of Martian soil. The science pack was designed to understand the wet chemistry of the soil: what is dissolved in it, and how acidic or alkaline it is. The initial results showed that the soil is very basic, as the pH was measured at between eight and nine. In addition to the basic nature of the soil, the instrument found a host of salt components. Those identified so far include magnesium, sodium, potassium, and chlorine, and the analysis is not yet complete. According to co-investigator Sam Kounaves of Tufts University, science lead for the wet chemistry investigation, these salt findings are simply further evidence of water.

How does this out-of-the-world soil compare to Earth? According to Kounaves, "This soil appears to be a close analog to surface soils found in the upper dry valleys in Antarctica. [...] Over time, I've come to the conclusion that the amazing thing about Mars is not that it's an alien world, but that in many aspects, like mineralogy, it's very much like Earth."

While this instrument has provided a wealth of data, it is not the only chemical analysis currently being undertaken on the Martian surface. The Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) has baked a soil sample up to 1,800 oF to examine the gases released at various temperatures, which can provide a large amount of data. In this case, the analysis is very complicated and it's expected to take a few more weeks until the results are known.

Coupled with the previous results, where the lander uncovered water ice that later sublimed, these new discoveries strengthen the idea that liquid water once existed on the surface. "At this point, we can say that the soil has clearly interacted with water in the past. We don't know whether that interaction occurred in this particular area in the northern polar region, or whether it might have happened elsewhere and blown up to this area as dust," said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead TEGA scientist.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 11:02 AM

FALSE beliefs are everywhere. Eighteen percent of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, one poll has found. Thus it seems slightly less egregious that, according to another poll, 10 percent of us think that Senator Barack Obama, a Christian, is instead a Muslim. The Obama campaign has created a Web site to dispel misinformation. But this effort may be more difficult than it seems, thanks to the quirky way in which our brains store memories — and mislead us along the way.

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The brain does not simply gather and stockpile information as a computer's hard drive does. Facts are stored first in the hippocampus, a structure deep in the brain about the size and shape of a fat man's curled pinkie finger. But the information does not rest there. Every time we recall it, our brain writes it down again, and during this re-storage, it is also reprocessed. In time, the fact is gradually transferred to the cerebral cortex and is separated from the context in which it was originally learned. For example, you know that the capital of California is Sacramento, but you probably don't remember how you learned it.

This phenomenon, known as source amnesia, can also lead people to forget whether a statement is true. Even when a lie is presented with a disclaimer, people often later remember it as true.

With time, this misremembering only gets worse. A false statement from a noncredible source that is at first not believed can gain credibility during the months it takes to reprocess memories from short-term hippocampal storage to longer-term cortical storage. As the source is forgotten, the message and its implications gain strength. This could explain why, during the 2004 presidential campaign, it took some weeks for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Senator John Kerry to have an effect on his standing in the polls.

Even if they do not understand the neuroscience behind source amnesia, campaign strategists can exploit it to spread misinformation. They know that if their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like "I think I read somewhere" or even with a reference to a specific source.

In one study, a group of Stanford students was exposed repeatedly to an unsubstantiated claim taken from a Web site that Coca-Cola is an effective paint thinner. Students who read the statement five times were nearly one-third more likely than those who read it only twice to attribute it to Consumer Reports (rather than The National Enquirer, their other choice), giving it a gloss of credibility.

Adding to this innate tendency to mold information we recall is the way our brains fit facts into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.

In another Stanford study, 48 students, half of whom said they favored capital punishment and half of whom said they opposed it, were presented with two pieces of evidence, one supporting and one contradicting the claim that capital punishment deters crime. Both groups were more convinced by the evidence that supported their initial position.

Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits, encouraging the persistence of falsehoods about Coke — or about a presidential candidate.

Journalists and campaign workers may think they are acting to counter misinformation by pointing out that it is not true. But by repeating a false rumor, they may inadvertently make it stronger. In its concerted effort to "stop the smears," the Obama campaign may want to keep this in mind. Rather than emphasize that Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, for instance, it may be more effective to stress that he embraced Christianity as a young man.

Consumers of news, for their part, are prone to selectively accept and remember statements that reinforce beliefs they already hold. In a replication of the study of students' impressions of evidence about the death penalty, researchers found that even when subjects were given a specific instruction to be objective, they were still inclined to reject evidence that disagreed with their beliefs.

In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true.

In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the Supreme Court wrote that "the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Holmes erroneously assumed that ideas are more likely to spread if they are honest. Our brains do not naturally obey this admirable dictum, but by better understanding the mechanisms of memory perhaps we can move closer to Holmes's ideal.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 02:04 PM

Battle of the Bovines in the Swiss Alps

Forget bullfights. In the Alps, it is the female cows that get to enter the ring. The female members of the robust Heren breed fight it out for the title "Queen of Queens." It's a competition where Daisy and Buttercup get to be contenders.

Spain may have bull fighting but in Switzerland it is the female that gets to enter the ring. Yes, the normally docile cow gets in touch with her inner bovine boxer and locks horns with her rival to claim the title of "Queen of queens."

These moo fighters belong to the small black-coated Herens or Eringer breed, suitable for trekking through steep mountain paths, and are more wiry, muscular and aggressive than their voluptuous placid cousins munching grass in the meadows down below. The robust alpine breed fight amongst themselves to establish hierarchy within the herd.

The "Battle of the Queens," or "Combat de Reines" is a huge attraction in the Swiss canton of Valois, as well as the Aosta Valley in Italy and parts of France, drawing crowds of thousands to the regional bouts. The tradition goes back to the 17th century but the first official cow fight was organized in 1923. Each year the Swiss season culminates in the grand finals in Martigny in October, which are attended by up to 50,000 spectators.

The tournaments are well ordered affairs, with cows put into different categories according to weight. Then each Daisy or Buttercup enters into a duel for dominancy, locking horns and kicking the dirt to show who's boss. While there is aggression and the battles can sometimes take up to 40 minutes, not much harm is done. In fact an animal rights group that turned up to protest one year went off home once they realized how little violence was actually involved.

In fact sometimes the biggest problem can be getting the divas to enter the fray at all. If a cow refuses to take on an opponent then that's that, she is eliminated.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 02:08 PM

THE NEXT BIG THING

Sometime over the next several weeks, a privately held and ultra-secretive company named EEStor Inc., based in Cedar Park, Texas, is expected to release the results of independent third-party testing of its electrical-energy storage unit, which aims to replace the electrochemical batteries we now use in everything from hybrid cars to laptop computers. EEStor says its system, combining battery and ultra-capacitor technology and based on modified barium titanate ceramic powder, could power a car for 400 kilometres with regular performance. It claims the unit would charge in a few minutes and weigh less than 10 per cent of current lead-acid batteries for the same cost.

If it is proven to work, EEStor, and its equity and business partners, including Zenn and U S. defence contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., will have a technology that could change the transportation industry, with implications for renewable energy and any sector that needs electrical energy storage technology.

Officials at Lockheed, which this year bought exclusive rights to use EEStor's power system for military purposes, have said the technology "could lead to energy independence for the war fighter." Officials with Zenn, which bought exclusive worldwide rights to the system for vehicles weighing up to 1,400 kilograms, say they believe it is the "holy grail" of electric storage systems.

EEStor has said it expects its technology to be commercially ready within six months.

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=c2046e9d-ce11-4115-af06-9737c3f6f232

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:19 AM

"Hypocrisy is driven by mental processes over which we have volitional control," said Dr. Valdesolo, a psychologist at Amherst College. "Our gut seems to be equally sensitive to our own and others' transgressions, suggesting that we just need to find ways to better translate our moral feelings into moral actions."

That is easier said than done, especially in an election year. Even if the presidential candidates know in their guts that they are being hypocritical, they cannot very well be kept busy the whole campaign doing mental arithmetic. Besides, they are surrounded by advisers with plenty of spare mental power to rationalize whatever it takes to win.

Politicians are hypocritical for the same reason the rest of us are: to gain the social benefits of appearing virtuous without incurring the personal costs of virtuous behavior. If you can deceive even yourself into believing that you're acting for the common good, you'll have more energy and confidence to further your own interests — and your self-halo can persuade others to help you along.

But as useful as hypocrisy can be, it's apparently not quite as basic as the human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Your mind can justify double standards, it seems, but in your heart you know you're wrong. "


Deep Down, We Can't Fool Even Ourselves
            

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: July 1, 2008, NYT Science

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:30 AM

The evidence is getting stronger that our neighbor, Mars, was struck by a massive asteroid or other space object some four billion years ago, at the dawn of the solar system. Three papers published in the journal Nature make a persuasive case that a cataclysmic impact stripped away much of the Martian surface in the planet's northern hemisphere, leaving behind a huge, smooth basin to puzzle modern researchers.

The thought of the forces at play makes for a thrilling — even chilling — reminder that the solar system was a very dangerous place at the start.

The reports from three separate research teams sought to explain why much of the Martian north is a low-lying expanse of smooth plains, while the southern hemisphere has rugged highlands sitting on a thicker crust. One theory was that geological forces within the planet were responsible. The other, given a strong boost by the new papers, blamed a cosmic collision.

The best guess is that an object about 1,250 miles wide, roughly the size of Pluto, slammed into Mars at 20,000 miles an hour. It created an elliptical basin measuring 6,500 miles by 5,300 miles — about 40 percent of Mars's surface and by far the largest impact scar yet found in the solar system.

At roughly the same time, Earth suffered an even more calamitous collision, which ejected enough material into space to form the Moon. A lesser impact 65 million years ago is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, and a much lesser impact a century ago flattened a forest in Siberia.

For those inclined to fret about their own cosmic risks, another article in Nature provides some reassurances. A decade-long search for asteroids or other objects nearby that might menace the Earth has found "little risk of a cataclysmic impact" — at least for the next century.
"

---

Well!! That's us sorted, eh?



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 09:51 AM

"The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

"Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again. ..."


Robert Kennedy
City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio
April 5, 1968

Thanks, Carol!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 01 Jul 08 - 10:30 PM

The Girl who Silenced the U.N. for Five Minutes


This is an incredible video of a Canadian girl who spoke to the United Nations and left them completely silent and speechless for five minutes. Her name is Severn Suziki, and her speech was given at a U.N. assembly in Brazil when she was twelve years old. She had raised all the money to travel to the delegation, five thousand miles from her home, herself.

Speaking about the hole in the ozone layer, pollution, the devastation of the forests and extinction of so many species, Severn charges that we adults have no idea how to fix these things, in fact can't fix them, and that we must change our ways. "If you don't know how to fix it, stop breaking it," she pleads.

Severn continued to say:

"I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am hear to speak on behalf of starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I'm only a child and I don't have the solutions…but neither do you. I am only a child, but I know we are all part of a family five billion strong; in fact, 30 million species strong, and borders and governments will never change that.

Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share. We are afraid to let go of some of our wealth. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent some time with children living in the streets. This is what one child told us:

'I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicine, shelter, love and affection.'

If child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share - why are we, who have everything, still so greedy?

I am only a child, but I know if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty, and finding treaties - what a wonderful place this world would be."

And here's the kicker - this speech was given in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. How much is still relevant today? All of it. And the more important question is: How much has been changed, accomplished, since Severn spoke that day?

Years later, Severn wrote a piece for Time magazine in which she said: "I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur action. Now, a decade from Rio, after I've sat through many more conferences, I'm not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and in the power of an individual's voice to reach them has been deeply shaken…In the 10 years since Rio, I have learned that addressing our leaders is not enough. As Gandhi said many years ago, 'We must become the change we want to see.' I know change is possible."

At the age of nine, Severn founded the Environmental Children's Organization (ECO), a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other kids about environmental issues. Today, Severn is an environmental activist, speaker, television host and author. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility.

She co-hosted Suzuki's Nature Quest, a children's television series that aired on the Discovery Channel in 2002. In early 2002, she helped launch an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi Annan's Special Advisory Panel, she and members of the Skyfish Project brought their first project, a pledge called the "Recognition of Responsibility", to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002.

Click here to watch the video and hear her incredible speech

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 02 Jul 08 - 04:47 PM

Washington's Boyhood Home Is Found
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By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: July 3, 2008
George Washington's boyhood home has been found.


Researchers announced Wednesday that remains excavated in the last three years were those of the long-sought dwelling, on the old family farm in Virginia, 50 miles south of Washington. The house stood on a terrace overlooking the Rappahannock River, where legend has it the boy threw a stone or coin across to Fredericksburg.

On the subject of legend, the archaeologists who made the discovery could no more tell a lie than young George. No, there was not a single cherry tree anywhere around, not even a stump or a rusty hatchet. The tale of the boy owning up to whacking his father's prized cherry tree, the one thing most people think they know of Washington's youth, has long since been discredited as apocryphal.

But finding the house, archaeologists and historians say, may yield insights into the circumstances in which Washington grew up. Actual documentary evidence of his formative years is scant.

"What we see at this site is the best available window into the setting that nurtured the father of our country," Philip Levy, an archaeologist and associate professor of history at the University of South Florida, said in an announcement of the discovery.

Dr. Levy and other members of the excavation team said the foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains suggested that this was far from being the rustic cottage of common perception, but one befitting a family of the local gentry. It was a much larger one-and-a-half story residence, with perhaps eight rooms and an adjacent structure for the kitchen.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 08 - 03:26 PM

Mercury is not just the solar system's shrimpy kid brother, at least since Pluto was kicked out of the planetary club two years ago. It's shrinking.

New measurements taken by NASA's Messenger spacecraft this year show that the innermost planet has shrunk by more than a mile in diameter over its history. Scientists attribute that to the gradual cooling of the planet's core.


Messenger, which stands for Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging, is the first spacecraft to study Mercury up close since Mariner 10 in 1975. It made its first close fly-by in January, whisking to within 125 miles of the surface of the planet before cruising off on a highly elliptical orbit. It will swing back for a second encounter in October before settling into a final close orbit in 2011.

The first comprehensive data from the January fly-by are being published in today's issue of the journal Science.

Mercury has long been considered little more than a hot rock, with daytime surface temperatures of up to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit. But Messenger has uncovered a more surprising place, with peaks as high as 15,000 feet and vast basins stretching hundreds of miles across the planet's surface.

"When you look at the planet in the sky, it looks like a simple point of light," said Messenger project scientist Ralph McNutt of the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "But when you experience Mercury close up, you perceive a complex system and not just a ball of rock and metal. We are all surprised by how active that planet is."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 08 - 08:56 PM

"Curious footnotes to history" Department:

"ometimes reporters wrote up private memos for the publisher and top editors. Russell Baker summarized a private five-hour meeting with Times reporters and Senator Hubert H. Humphrey on Dec. 15, 1958, about HumphreyÕs talks in Moscow with the Soviet premiere, Nikita Khrushchev. Talking about China, Khrushchev said, according to the memo: ÒTo make a modern society function successfully ... ÔincentivesÕ were required. Humphrey protested that K. was talking capitalism. ÒNevertheless,Õ K. said, Ôit works.Õ Ó"

(NY Times on its own history)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 08 - 09:10 PM

As Jean Barman has noted, this interest in both physical and metaphorical frontiers shaped the way Skinner envisioned the past: Skinner reified the past lives of others using her own life as a model. She had journeyed from a fur trading outpost to one of the largest cities in the world in three decades. Her own life's story, it seemed to her, mirrored much of North American history.7        7
      Both works surpassed expectations. Glasgow called Pioneers of the Old Southwest a book "so good that it seems like an impertinence to praise it." Many inside and outside the history profession considered Pioneers the best new work on the late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century trans-Appalachian South. At first glance, the reasons for her success appear simple and straightforward: She had a knack for writing, a passionate love of the fur trading frontier, and a clairvoyant tone warmed by a sense of place. A passage about Major Patrick Ferguson in Pioneers of the Old Southwest illustrates this point nicely:


Ferguson was a night marauder. The terror of his name, which grew among the Whigs of the Back Country until the wildest legends about his ferocity were current, was due chiefly to a habit he had of pouncing on his foes in the middle of the night and pulling them of out bed to give fight or die. It was generally both fight and die, for these dark adventures of his were particularly successful. Ferguson knew no neutrals or conscientious objectors; any man who would not carry arms for the King was a traitor, and his life and goods were forfeiting ... Hence his wolfish fame. 'Werewolf' would have been a fit name for him for, though he was a wolf at night, in the daylight he was a man and, as we have seen, a chivalrous one.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jul 08 - 11:20 AM

LAST YEAR, LAWYERS for the Social Security Administration queried the Justice Department: Does the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples, also bar the child of a same-sex couple from receiving Social Security benefits from his non-biological parent? The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel concluded in an opinion made public last month that Elijah, son of Karen and Monique, had a right to those benefits...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 05 Jul 08 - 07:21 PM

Coinciding with economic stimulus checks, the internet porn industry has seen a 30% increase in revenues during a season when a fall off of sales is normally seen.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Jul 08 - 11:17 PM

For those who need it, excellent advice on whom not to marry, or how to choose whom you do.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 11:41 AM

JERUSALEM Ñ A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time. (NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 12:45 PM

"There are no signs to announce the edge of the solar system, but when the venerable Voyager 2 spacecraft approached this final frontier last Aug. 31 it was in for quite a shock. So were the scientists who analyzed the data that the craft radioed back to Earth, along with related observations by NASAÕs twin Earth-orbiting STEREO spacecraft.

The signals reveal that at a distance of 83.7 astronomical units (1 AU is the average Earth-sun separation), Voyager 2 had at least five encounters with a turbulent region known as the termination shock, the researchers report in the July 3 Nature. ThatÕs the place where the solar wind Ñ the sunÕs hot supersonic wind of protons and other charged particles, which carves the heliosphere, a bubble in space extending well beyond the orbit of Pluto Ñ slams into cold interstellar space and abruptly slows.

Analyzing the encounter is critical for understanding how the bubble interacts with surrounding space, and how the bubbles carved by other stars affect their surroundings, notes Voyager lead investigator Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Researchers had expected that Voyager 2 would have only one encounter with the shock. The multiple crossings indicate that Òthe shock is not the steady structure that is predicted by the simplest theory,Ó says Len Burlaga of NASAÕs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. ÒIt is like a wave approaching a beach, that grows, breaks, dissipates, and then re-forms closer to shore.Ó


ON THE EDGELocation of the two Voyager spacecraft at the fringes of the solar system and the STEREO spacecraft. New data form the Voyager 2 craft and STEREO are providing fresh insight about the structure of the edge of the solar system. L. Wang/UC Berkeley
Gusts in the solar wind may cause the shock to Òcome and go, re-forming itself and decaying,Ó Stone suggests." (Science News)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 06 Jul 08 - 12:47 PM

"Nearly all of the information transmitted from one brain region to another passes through a core located in the center and back of the brain along the crack that separates the two hemispheres, an international group of researchers reports in the June 30 PLoS Biology.

Earlier research pinpointed an area of the brain called the default network Ñ a group of brain regions that are active when a person is thinking about nothing in particular. The new map of the brainÕs anatomy showed that, in fact, the default network also resides in this physical hub, the core of the brain.

ÒOur map is a very crude one,Ó says Olaf Sporns, a computational neuroscientist at Indiana University in Bloomington. But the wiring diagram is a first step toward understanding how the brain is structured and how it communicates. Such diagrams could help therapists design strategies to improve recovery of stroke victims or people with other brain injuries.

The new study Òtakes the idea of the intrinsic organization of the brain to a new level,Ó says Marcus Raichle, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis. The research reveals that Òthere are hubs in the brain and some hubs are more important than others. This one rises to the top of the pile.Ó" (Ibid)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 10:27 AM

LONDON — The governing body of the Anglican Church in Britain voted on Monday to approve the appointment of women as bishops, a step that appeared to risk a schism in the church in its historic homeland as the Anglican church worldwide faces one of the most serious threats to its unity in its history, over the ordination of gay clergy members.
After a debate late into the night in the city of York, the General Synod of the Church of England, an assembly that holds ultimate authority on church doctrine in Britain, voted by comfortable margins within each of the synod's three houses — bishops, clergy and laity — to approve the consecration of women as bishops in the face of bitter opposition from traditionalists.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jul 08 - 11:56 PM

ith lower surface tension and gas pressure, large bubbles usually outlast their smaller counterparts. But nanoscale bubbles, like the one pictured above, can last over a year.
By covering bubbles with a mixture of glucose syrup, sucrose stearate, and water, Harvard researchers can crystallize this outer layer to form nearly impermeable shells over the bubble surfaces.
The resulting shells buckle over time into a stable pattern of five-, six-, and seven-sided areas.
This experimental study, lead by Howard Stone from Harvard's engineering school, appeared in the May 30 issue of the journal Science.
These microbubbles may one day help extend the lifetimes of common gas-liquid products that rapidly disintegrate like aerated personal-care products and contrast agents used for ultrasound imaging.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Jul 08 - 06:20 PM

So you think the way the universe began is unnatural?

Low-entropy configurations are rare.

If you take a deck of cards and you open it up, it's true that they're in order. But if you randomly chose a configuration of a deck of cards it would be very, very unlikely that they would be in perfect order.

That's exactly low entropy versus high entropy.

The universe is more than what we see?

The reason why you are not surprised when you open a deck of cards and it's in perfect order is not because it's just easy and natural to find it in perfect order, it's because the deck of cards is not a closed system. It came from a bigger system in which there is a card factory somewhere that arranged it. So I think there is a previous universe somewhere that made us and we came out.

We're part of a bigger structure.

Are you saying that our universe came from some other universe?

Right. It came from a bigger space-time that we don't observe. Our universe came from a tiny little bit of a larger high-entropy space.

I'm not saying this is true; I'm saying this is an idea worth thinking about.

You're saying that in some universes there could be a person like you drinking coffee, but out of a blue cup rather than a red one.

If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here.

How many of them are there? The number could well be infinity. So it is possible that somewhere else in this larger structure that we call the multiverse there are people like us, writing for newspapers like the L.A. Times and thinking about similar questions.

So how does the arrow of time fit into this?

Our experience of time depends upon the growth of entropy. You can't imagine a person looking around and saying, "Time is flowing in the wrong direction," because your sense of time is due to entropy increasing. . . . This feeling that we're moving through time has to do with the fact that as we live, we feed on entropy. . . . Time exists without entropy, but entropy is what gives time its special character.

Entropy gives time its appearance of forward motion?

Yeah, its directionality. The distinction between past and future. If you're floating in outer space, in a spacesuit, there would be no difference between one direction and another. However, nowhere in the universe would you confuse yesterday and tomorrow. That's all because of entropy, and that's the arrow of time.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 12:48 PM

In one SPanish town by the sea, they don't fight bulls with swords and capes. Instead they lure them to leap into the sea.

Photos of this strange ritual.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:21 PM

Our universe is a fractal outgrowth from other ordered systems.

We could be an off shoot of anoher Universe's massive black hole or the result of a collision of two branes of Universes.


I have given this a lifetime of thought and may be a crack pot or modern jackass to some, but then again so were some of Jules Verne's ideas.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Jul 08 - 01:43 PM

There are some advanced mathematicians around, Donuel, who believe that that is the most reasonable explanation ofr our universe's existence. But inheritance of anti-entropic systems does not clearly explain the fundamental nature and cause (if there is such a thing) for existence and the existrence of somethign trather than nothing. It just moves the mover back one step and gets no closer to the Prime mover.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:10 AM

On genetics and social engineering:

"The bottom line is this: For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, "Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics," science finds itself enmeshed with social science and the humanities in what researchers call the Gloomy Prospect, the ineffable mystery of why people do what they do.

The prospect may be gloomy for those who seek to understand human behavior, but the flip side is the reminder that each of us is a Luxurious Growth. Our lives are not determined by uniform processes. Instead, human behavior is complex, nonlinear and unpredictable. The Brave New World is far away. Novels and history can still produce insights into human behavior that science can't match.

Just as important is the implication for politics. Starting in the late 19th century, eugenicists used primitive ideas about genetics to try to re-engineer the human race. In the 20th century, communists used primitive ideas about "scientific materialism" to try to re-engineer a New Soviet Man.

Today, we have access to our own genetic recipe. But we seem not to be falling into the arrogant temptation — to try to re-engineer society on the basis of what we think we know. Saying farewell to the sort of horrible social engineering projects that dominated the 20th century is a major example of human progress.

"

(NYT)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:28 PM

Directed self-assembly of ordered structures as a simple nanotechnology tool
(Nanowerk Spotlight) The use of spontaneous self-assembly as a lithography- and external field-free means to construct well-ordered, often intriguing structures has received much attention for its ease of organizing materials on the nanoscale into ordered structures and producing complex, large-scale structures with small feature sizes. These self-organized structures promise new opportunities for developing miniaturized optical, electronic, optoelectronic, and magnetic devices.
An extremely simple route to intriguing structures is the evaporation-induced self-assembly of polymers and nanoparticles from a droplet on a solid substrate. However, flow instabilities within the evaporating droplet often result in non-equilibrium and irregular dissipative structures, e.g., randomly organized convection patterns, stochastically distributed multi-rings, etc. Therefore, fully utilizing evaporation as a simple tool for creating well-ordered structures with numerous technological applications requires precise control over several factors, including evaporative flux, solution concentration, and the interfacial interaction between solute and substrate.
To this end, a group of scientists has developed a simple and straightforward method to create gradient concentric rings of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) over large surface areas with controlled density by combining two consecutive self-assembly processes, namely, evaporation-induced self-assembly of polymers in a sphere-on-flat geometry, followed by subsequent directed self-assembly of MWCNTs on the polymer-templated surfaces.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 15 Jul 08 - 10:34 PM

...Evolutionary psychologists Simon Townsend and Klaus Zuberbuhler studied chimp behavior in Uganda's Budongo Forest over 16 months.
The team established that female chimpanzees hid their sexual activity when high-ranking females were nearby, perhaps in a bid to reduce competition for good quality males.
This could prevent higher-ranking female chimpanzees from turning on them.
They also found the females produced more copulation calls when high-ranking males were around, presumably to attract them.
The scientists believe that having sex with several males causes confusion among the male chimpanzees as to which one sired the offspring.
The males are therefore less likely to kill any babies that might be theirs.
..

(Discovery Channel)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 02:18 PM

A Thousand Wrestlers and Two Tons of Olive Oil (der Spiegel)

Every summer for the last 650 years, Turkish men have gathered to see who was the strongest, fastest and slickest of them all. It's called Kirkpinar, and it's the biggest oil wrestling competition in the world.

The well-muscled men face off in the middle of a grassy field, as a crowd of thousands looks on eagerly. Slowly, methodically, they cover their chests and legs with olive oil -- first with the right hand, then with the left. Then they take turns oiling each others' backs.


Then the fun begins: Turkey's annual Kirkpinar festival, the highlight of the Turkish sporting calendar, is a three-day orgy of oil wrestling. Known as "yagli gures" (pronounced "yaw-luh gresh"), the slippery sport is considered by some to be the Turkish national game.

Oil wrestling season lasts eight months a year in Turkey, but all the local and regional matches are just warm-ups for the main event: the Kirkpinar in Edirne, the granddaddy of all oil-based sports events. The Kirkpinar -- first contested in 1362 -- is considered by some to be the longest continuously running sporting event in the world, lubricated or not.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 17 Jul 08 - 08:22 PM

"Nobody understands how lightning makes X-rays," says Martin Uman, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida. "Despite reaching temperatures five times hotter than the surface of the sun, the temperature of lightning is still thousands of times too cold to account for the X-rays observed."

That said, Uman added, "It's obviously happening. And we have put limits on how it's happening and where it's happening."

In new research, Uman and colleagues have taken a step forward in their understanding:

As lightning comes down from a cloud, it moves in steps, each 30 to 160 feet long. In this "step leader" process, X-rays shoot out just below each step millionths of a second after the step completes, the researchers learned.

The finding, based on lightning created in a lab and detailed online this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, could eventually lead to better predictions of lightning.

"A spark that begins inside a thunderstorm somehow manages to travel many miles to the ground, where it can hurt people and damage property," said Uman's colleague Joseph Dwyer, a professor in the department of physics and space sciences at Florida Institute of Technology. "Now, for the first time, we can actually detect lightning moving toward the ground using X-rays. So just as medical X-rays provide doctors with a clearer view inside patients, X-rays allow us to probe parts of the lightning that are otherwise very difficult to measure."

But challenges remain.

"From a practical point of view, if we are going to ever be able to predict when and where lightning will strike, we need to first understand how lightning moves from one place to the other," Dwyer said. "At present, we do not have a good handle on this. X-rays are giving us a close-up view of what is happening inside the lightning as it moves."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 10:06 AM

The movie Topcapi shows the Turkish festival in detail...




Lightning produces eM waves from IF, visible, UV, radio and even X rays when bolts branch. Sometimes lightning goes up into space in a beautiful blue cone called sprites. The energy potentials change from ground level to toposhere so mauch that a suspended wire would conduct electricity for a town for years. Lightning storms have energies similar to nuclear waapons.

But when we ask why
we encounter mysteries large enough to stump Tesla.

Some mysteries I have been thinking about lately regard particles accelerated in cyclotrons for a significant periods of time at velocities well over 90% the speed of light.
Should they disappear into the future? Will they not age far more than their surrounding?

Can VLS varying light speed exist? Quantum tunneling still conveys information, so can we decode the information that comes from the quantum tunnels streaming virtual particles.

Can Quasars be sibling big bangs from/to our Universe?

Be any of these wonderings have answers, still the question why goes beyond the original questions.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 19 Jul 08 - 11:55 PM

"PARIS, July 19, 2008 - Members of the International Astronomical Union's Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (CSBN) and the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) have decided to name the newest member of the plutoid family Makemake, and have classified it as the fourth dwarf planet in our Solar System and the third plutoid.

Makemake (pronounced MAH-keh MAH-keh) is one of the largest objects known in the outer Solar System and is just slightly smaller and dimmer than Pluto, its fellow plutoid. The dwarf planet is reddish in colour and astronomers believe the surface is covered by a layer of frozen methane.

Like other plutoids, Makemake is located in a region beyond Neptune that is populated with small Solar System bodies (often referred to as the transneptunian region). The object was discovered in 2005 by a team from the California Institute of Technology led by Mike Brown and was previously known as 2005 FY9 (or unofficially "Easterbunny"). It has the IAU Minor Planet Center designation (136472). Once the orbit of a small Solar System body or candidate dwarf planet is well determined, its provisional designation (2005 FY9 in the case of Makemake) is superseded by its permanent numerical designation (136472) in the case of Makemake.

The discoverer of a Solar System object has the privilege of suggesting a name to the IAU, which judges its suitability. Mike Brown says: "We consider the naming of objects in the Solar System very carefully. Makemake's surface is covered with large amounts of almost pure methane ice, which is scientifically fascinating, but really not easily relatable to terrestrial mythology. Suddenly, it dawned on me: the island of Rapa Nui. Why hadn't I thought of this before? I wasn't familiar with the mythology of the island so I had to look it up, and I found Makemake, the chief god, the creator of humanity, and the god of fertility. I am partial to fertility gods. Eris, Makemake, and 2003 EL61 were all discovered as my wife was 3-6 months pregnant with our daughter. I have the distinct memory of feeling this fertile abundance pouring out of the entire Universe. Makemake was part of that." WGPSN and CSBN accepted the name Makemake during discussions conducted per email."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 11:33 AM

The National Aquatics Center in Beijing, newly built for the Olympics, is a glowing cube of bubbles. The walls, roof and ceiling of the ÒWater CubeÓ are covered Ñ indeed, made from Ñ enormous bubbles that seem to have drifted into place randomly, as if floating on the surface of a pool.


But of course, those bubbles hardly skittered there of their own free will. Creating this frothy confection took a lot of steel, a lot of manpower, and not least, a lot of fancy mathematics.


SWIMMING IN BUBBLES

The roof is constructed in the same manner as the walls.
The motivating idea for the building was that it would express the spirit of water. Its designers first thought of liquid water, vapor, or ice, but finally settled on foam. The bubbles, they decided, really would be bubbles: pillows made of a transparent plastic called ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (or ETFE ) filled with air, attached to a steel framework outlining the edge of each bubble.


A basic challenge was that they wanted the foam to look random and organic. But for the engineering to be practical, it had to have some underlying order. So Tristram Carfrae, an engineer at Arup, the Australian engineering firm on the project, looked into the mathematics of foam.


The trail led all the way back to an idea from the 1880s. The physicist Lord Kelvin decided that the ether, the mysterious substance then believed to fill the universe and transmit light waves, must consist of foam. ...

(Full story here.)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 03:10 PM

But the origin of the purity-ball movement was not so much about their five daughters; it was about the fathers Randy saw who, he says, didn't know what their place was in the lives of their daughters. "The idea was to model what the relationship can be as a daughter grows from a child to an adult," Randy says. "You come in closer, become available to answer whatever questions she has."

So he and Lisa came up with a ceremony; they wrote a vow for fathers to recite, a promise "before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the areas of purity," to practice fidelity, shun pornography and walk with honor through a "culture of chaos" and by so doing guide their daughters as well. That was in 1998, the year the President was charged with lying about his sex life, Viagra became the fastest-selling new drug in history, and movies, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, reflected "a surge in the worldwide relaxation of sexual taboos."

Word of the event spread fast: soon the camera crews came, and so did Tyra Banks and Dr. Phil. The Abstinence Clearinghouse estimates there were more than 4,000 purity events across the country last year, with programs aimed at boys now growing even faster. And inevitably the criticism arrived as well, dressed up in social science and scholarly glee at the semiotics of girls kneeling beneath raised swords to affirm their purity. The events have been called odd, creepy, oppressive of a girl's "sexual self-agency," as one USA Today columnist put it. Father-daughter bonding is great, the critics agree--but wouldn't a cooking class or a soccer game be emotionally healthier than a ceremony freighted with rings and roses and vows? Some academic skeptics make a practical objection: The majority of kids who make a virginity pledge, they argue, will still have sex before marriage but are less likely than other kids to use contraception, since that would involve planning ahead for something they have promised not to do. This puts them at risk for sexually transmitted diseases. To which defenders say: Teen pledgers typically do postpone having sex, have fewer partners, get pregnant less often and if they make it through high school as virgins, are twice as likely to graduate from college--so where's the downside?

The purity balls have thus become a proxy in the wider war over means and ends. It is being fought in Congress, where lawmakers debate whether to keep funding abstinence-only education in the face of studies showing it doesn't work; in the culture, as Lindsay and Britney and Miley march in single file off a cliff; at school-board meetings, where members argue over the signal sent by including condoms in the prom bag; at the dinner table, where parents try to transmit values to children, knowing full well that swarms of other messages are landing by text and Twitter. "The culture is everywhere," says Randy's daughter Khrystian, 20. "You can't get away from it." But maybe, the new Puritans suggest, there's a way to boost girls' immunity.


(Excerpt from Time magazine.)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 03:53 PM

"...Of greatest concern to Einstein, and to many yet today, is the quantum insistence that the future is not precisely determined by the past, as it allegedly was in the clockwork universe quantified by Newton. In a quantum universe, multiple outcomes are allowed, with precisely determined odds, like a cosmic horse race in which Big Brown usually wins, but not always. A radioactive atom will probably decay within a given time, but not for sure. EinsteinÕs desire for a deity without dice is defied repeatedly by quantum phenomena. Yet every test of the quantum rules confirms this weirdness; in any experimental challenge, quantum theory is more reliably victorious even than Tiger Woods on good knees.

Quantum physics therefore claims cosmic authority. EinsteinÕs theory of general relativity, for instance, is supposed to govern the cosmos on large scales, but it is widely believed to be ultimately deficient because it cannot be made compatible with quantum requirements. On the other hand, quantum physics has mostly been tested on a small scale. Quantum message sending on Earth, via light pulses transmitted through optical fibers, demonstrates that the weirdness is preserved over distances of kilometers. But thatÕs not necessarily enough to allay all suspicion that someday quantum physics will fail.

From space, though, quantum signals could be sent simultaneously to stations much farther than current technology allows on land. So a group of physicists has devised a plan to test the universality of quantum weirdness by following the lead of Forbidden Planet and sending quantum messages from space to Earth.

Altair-4 is too far away, of course, but the International Space Station is conveniently nearby, and the physicists are far along in plans to use it to test quantum physics. An experimental proposal called Space-QUEST, led by physicists from the University of Vienna, calls for space-to-ground signaling using the latest in quantum communication technology...."

(Live Science)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Jul 08 - 06:08 PM

11:07 a.m. July 19, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO Ð A measure that aims to keep prostitutes from facing criminal charges has qualified for the November ballot in San Francisco.
The measure, which qualified Friday, would bar authorities from spending money to investigate or prosecute prostitutes for engaging in prostitution.

A San Francisco first-time offender program that allows men to avoid charges for soliciting a prostitute if they attend a class and pay a fine would also end under the measure.
The Erotic Service Providers Union recently announced it had gathered the 12,000 signatures necessary to put the measure on the ballot after failing to get a similar initiative before voters in 2006.

Mayor Gavin Newsom says the measure would hurt the city's ability to investigate and prosecute sex-trafficking crimes.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jul 08 - 11:34 PM

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of ancient artifacts and wooden poles more than 3,000 years old have been unearthed in China's southern Yunnan province, possibly the world's largest site of a Neolithic community, local media reported on Tuesday.

The poles, found standing 4.6 meters underground, were used as part of building structures for an ancient community that may have covered an area of 4 square km, the China Daily reported, citing Min Rui, a researcher at Yunnan Archaeological Institute, who is leading the excavation team.

The site could be older than the Hemudu community in Yuyao, in Zhejiang province, which is among the most famous in China and is believed to be the birthplace of society around the Yangtze River.

An area of 1,350 sq m has already been uncovered and excavation is ongoing.

"I was shocked when I first saw the site. I have never seen such a big and orderly one," Yan Wenming, history professor at Peking University, was quoted as saying.

Excavation began in January, but the site was actually discovered five decades ago during the construction of a canal along the banks of the Jianhu Lake, about 500 km northwest of the provincial capital Kunming.

Archaeologists have found more than 3,000 artifacts made of stone, wood, iron, pottery and bone, as well as more than 2,000 of the wooden posts.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 22 Jul 08 - 11:36 PM

ATHENS (Reuters) - German archaeologists using radar technology believe they may have discovered the ancient horse racing track at Olympia where Roman Emperor Nero bribed his way to Olympic laurels.

The whereabouts of the racecourse is one of the last remaining mysteries of Olympia, the holy site where the ancient Greeks founded the Olympic Games in the eighth century BC.

The one-kilometer-long course, the largest structure of ancient Olympia, has been lost for more than 1,600-years since the Christian Emperor Theodosius abolished the games because of their pagan past.

"By means of geomagnetic investigation ... the first clear indications of the localization of the Hippodrome were found," said a statement sent to Reuters by Norbert Muller of the Johannes Gutenburg University Mainz, which helped fund the search.

German archaeological teams have been continuously excavating at Olympia since 1875 but the racehorse has remained hidden by several meters of silt on the floodplain of the Alfeios river.

In the second century AD, the travel writer Pausanias described the location of the track to the east of the Olympic sanctuary, detailing its unusual starting mechanism and the dangers for charioteers who were often injured at its sharp turn.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Jul 08 - 05:23 PM

Subject: [ifaction] Third Circuit Court of Appeals Strikes Down the
Children's Online Protection Act (COPA)
Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:45:56 -0400


The court this morning issued a unanimous opinion in ACLU v. Mukasey
affirming the District Court and holding that the Child Online
Protection Act is unconstitutional.

The court held that COPA is vague and overbroad, and that it does not
constitute the least restrictive means of protecting children. In
reaching these conclusions, the court also confirmed that COPA does not
apply to websites outside the U.S.

COPA is the successor statute to the Communications Decency Act, which
attempted to extend indecency rules to the Internet.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 10:18 AM

"In my extended family, I have something of a reputation for being a privacy Nazi. This is due to my penchant for not giving out addresses and phone numbers to stores that seem to think my buying something from them is a good enough reason to ask for it, but it turns out I'm only playing in the minor leagues. The American Library Association is raising more than a million dollars to fund a new "Right to Information Privacy Campaign" with a goal of nothing less than getting Americans "to recommit to information privacy."

Librarians might not be the group you'd first imagine out in the streets, manning the barricades, but they can get pretty agitated about both censorship and privacy. (Note: never tell a librarian that you'd like to ban a particular book unless the two of you are separated by an inch of plexiglass.) In this case, the 64,000 librarians of the ALA believe that their work remains vital to a vibrant democracy, since "the right to read and search for information is the foundation of individual liberty."


The ALA's new campaign wants to 1) educate people, and then 2) turn them into activists. The education component of the three-year program will make people aware, for instance, that "checking out a biography of Osama Bin Laden could prompt seizure of their library records" or that "online searches create traceable records that make them vulnerable to questioning by the FBI." The ALA also worries about provisions in the law that "gag" the people who are on the receiving end of government orders to turn over these records.

..." (Excerpted from Ars Technica).

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Jul 08 - 07:58 PM

Hare's a fascinating series of essays on why people do not like reason. A great topic and some interesting input on it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 10:07 AM

Once upon a time in Narnia, a little Scots boy lost a battle with corporate lawyers …


Domain name was kept for boy's birthday to coincide with release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

« Previous « PreviousNext » Next »View GalleryADVERTISEMENTPublished Date: 24 July 2008
By SHÂN ROSS
AN 11-YEAR-OLD boy was last night ordered by a court to hand back his birthday present – a Narnia-based website address – after one of the biggest legal firms in the world said it belonged to its multi-millionaire client.
Comrie Saville-Smith, from Edinburgh, an avid fan of the CS Lewis novels, was given the domain name narnia.mobi as a gift by his parents after it became available online.

But yesterday the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Switzerland ruled in favour of New York-based law firm Baker & McKenzie, representing Lewis's estate, that the name belonged to its client.

Last night Gillian Saville-Smith, Comrie's mother and a writer, described the decision as a "scandalously one-sided appraisal of the evidence" and added: "We are shocked by the decision. We put up a spirited fight because we wanted to prove that you do not have to hand something over just because someone richer and more powerful tell you to do so." ...
(The Scotsman

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 02:40 PM

We are growing cancer vaccines in tobbacco plants!

Last week on npr and CNN you may have seen the reseach done on the current state of poor excercise for American Children.

(that was my wife's research project)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Jul 08 - 02:48 PM

We came across one American woman who'd been living there for 19 years. Her shop is hard to miss. Lao Textiles is located in a beautiful old French colonial mansion in the center of town and is the headquarters for Carol Cassidy, a professional weaver who has spent her adult life combining indigenous Asian and African talent with her own designs. In so doing she has created industries in India, Cambodia, Lesotho and Laos that sell exquisite local textiles to an audience from Hong Kong to Rome to New York.

"I build on indigenous culture and skill to create an international product of a high standard," she says. "The goal is to enable these rural producers to benefit. We're the beautiful side of globalization."

Her Next Big Thing: a bag made out of jungle vine by the women of Pakor, a village of about 100 people in Northern Laos filled with members of the minority khummu.

Through two translators, one of them told me by phone: "I hope the bag generates income and gets our products to someone who's interested. I hope it helps the women here have an income. Because usually it is the men who earn and decide everything."

Asked what she knew about the United States, another villager told me: "I don't know where it is. It's a country far away with many, many people who could get to know about Laos and our people through our bags."

---

How achingly lovely to think of someone who lives in a beautiful place and does not know where the United States is!


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Jul 08 - 04:42 PM

"Washington: Scientists have invented a new material that will make cars even more efficient, by converting heat wasted through engine exhaust into electricity.

Such materials are called as thermoelectric materials by scientists, and they rate the materials' efficiency based on how much heat they can convert into electricity at a given temperature.

Previously, the most efficient material used commercially in thermoelectric power generators was an alloy called sodium-doped lead telluride, which had a rating of 0.71.

The new material, thallium-doped lead telluride, has a rating of 1.5 - more than twice that of the previous leader.

"The same technology could work in power generators and heat pumps," said project leader Joseph Heremans, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanotechnology at Ohio State University.

Thermoelectrics are also very small.

Some experts argue that only about 25 percent of the energy produced by a typical gasoline engine is used to move a car or power its accessories, and nearly 60 percent is lost through waste heat - much of which escapes in engine exhaust.

According to Heremans, a thermoelectric (TE) device can capture some of that waste heat. It would also make a practical addition to an automobile, because it has no moving parts to wear out or break down.

"The material does all the work. It produces electrical power just like conventional heat engines - steam engines, gas or diesel engines - that are coupled to electrical generators, but it uses electrons as the working fluids instead of water or gases, and makes electricity directly," he said.

"Thermoelectrics are also very small. I like to say that TE converters compare to other heat engines like the transistor compares to the vacuum tube," he added.

The new material is most effective between 450 and 950 degrees Fahrenheit - a typical temperature range for power systems such as automobile engines. "...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jul 08 - 12:34 PM

Our cars and trucks are about 20% efficient.

Our best vehicles available today are 40% efficient.

Can our goal ever surpass 60% efficiency?

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 11:38 AM

An important scientific breakthrough in workplace relationships may lead to improved morale for workers everywhere except the WHite House, if applied.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Jul 08 - 01:38 PM

A seven-year-old German boy indulged his sweet tooth and liberally handed out money after helping himself to his elderly grandmother's bank account. But the police eventually arrived to spoil the fun for this underage Robin Hood and his jolly schoolmates.


A sweet-toothed youngster who wanted to spread a little joy nicked his elderly grandmother's bank card and pilfered €500 ($778) from her account.

As befits his age, the seven-year-old first bought some sweets. But then -- not knowing how to spend the rest of the money -- the boy was overcome with a generosity that prompted him to press bank notes into the hands of some of his playmates.

Police in the western city of Aachen, where the boy lives, explained on Tuesday how he had learned to use a bank machine -- as well as the card's PIN number -- by accompanying his 80-year-old grandmother on shopping trips. During a recent visit, he pocketed one of her bank cards and made his way to a nearby ATM, where he made five withdrawals over an hour -- until the withdrawal limit had been reached.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Aug 08 - 05:26 PM

Even Jules Verne did not foresee this one. Deep down at the very bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, geochemist Andrea Koschinsky has found something truly extraordinary: "It's water," she says, "but not as we know it."
At over 3 kilometres beneath the surface, sitting atop what could be a huge bubble of magma, it's the hottest water ever found on Earth. The fluid is in a "supercritical" state that has never before been seen in nature.
The fluid spews out of two black smokers called Two Boats and Sisters Peak.
Koschinsky, from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, says it is somewhere between a gas and a liquid. She thinks it could offer a first glimpse at how essential minerals and nutrients like gold, copper and iron are leached out of the entrails of the Earth and released into the oceans.
Liquids boil and evaporate as temperature and pressure rise. But push both factors beyond a critical point and something odd happens: the gas and liquid phase merge into one supercritical fluid. For water, this fluid is denser than vapour, but lighter than liquid water.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 07:13 AM

Thermodynamic Properties of Steam: Including Data for the Liquid and Solid Phases, Joseph H. Keenan and Frederick G. Keys, First Edition, Thirty-First printing, New York, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., ©1936.

I'll agree with "not previously seen in nature" - - maybe, but properties of supercritical and triple-point water have been quite well known for some time, and have had industrial uses for about a century.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 05 Aug 08 - 09:05 AM

State of the US Patent and Trademark office:

"...the same ineptitude by USPTO examiners in different technological arts on a regular basis. My colleagues in other patent law firms constantly complain to me about their similar experiences.

Here is a quote, from an article recently published by one of my very experienced colleagues, patent attorney John Rogitz, a U.S. Naval Academe graduate:

            "The PTO has also established, as a proxy
             for "quality", a declining allowance rate
             (for example, in a December 2006 posting
             on its website), as if quality materializes
             from obstructing one's customers from
             gaining protection they seek without
             reference to whether the increased
             obstruction is due to better searches and
             more penetrating analysis - or simply
             to heightened institutional intransigence."

No doubt your competitors are experiencing similar difficulties in getting their U.S. patent applications allowed with reasonable claims.

..."