Politics

I saw the movie today and am still shaky from it. I've long believed that movies which portray actual historical events faithfully, without embelishment and without a political axe to grind make potent cinema. With United 93 there is no attempt to understand causes yet the movie treats all of the people as flesh and blood. For those that have seen the movie, what did you take away from the experience? Beyond the emotional wreck it made of me, hours later, I draw the following lessons: 1. We do live in a different world post 9/11. Now connections would be made instantly but at the time they were hard to draw even after one plane had hit the WTC. There wa…

I just found out about this article from Sept 05, so it isn't exactly timely, but it really upset me actually. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4221538.stm I've disliked the censorship that we've aided the chinese in implementing, but for a US firm, and people working at that firm in the US, who get to pay lip service to how much they love freedom and put yellow ribbon magnets on their cars and all that good stuff, then turn around and help send a guy off to jail for 10 years who simply tried to get information out about how bad they have it. Honestly I don't care if the US legal system required an employee at Yahoo to hand that info over to th…

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000C4698-F1DE-146C-B1DE83414B7F0000&ref=rss To me this seems no big deal. Why shouldn't they? Anyway the reported result is that apes think ahead: they prepare for the future. Not not just a few minutes from now, either. The experiment had them thinking ahead so as to get rewards the next morning. The two researchers sounded quite proud of their simian friends' accomplishments: "Apes selected, transported and saved a suitable tool not because they currently needed it but because they would need it in the future," the authors write in the paper presenting the research in today's Science.

Oh hell yeah. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling have been convicted of fraud for the Enron fiasco. Each face 25 years in prison. Finally there is justice for the Enron employees. http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aUm5vViGkGwc&refer=home And even more interesting, it's yet another victory against corporate corruption by the Bush administration's Justice Department. A conviction that never would have happened under the Clinton/Reno Justice Department, given the level of Enron's political donations.

The foreign ministers of the two nations met and publically agreed that all nations have a right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but stopped short of saying the same for WMDs. This is of course very much at odds with the position of the United States. Interesting.

Physicists have long been able to slow down and speed up light using different techniques. Now researchers have been able to make light travel backwards. Boyd (a professor of optics) said "Through experiments we were able to see that the pulse inside the fiber was actually moving backward... In this case, as with all fast-light experiments, no information is truly moving faster than light". The findings were published in the May 12 issue of Science. http://www.world-science.net/othernews/060512_lightfrm.htm

Scientists have found that about 20% of people of an African descent have a potentially deadly protein called Caspase-12. This protein is quite a nasty character as it has the ability to completly shut down the body's immune system... this could possibly lead to some nasty developmnets in the near future. There are many questions that still have to be answered, such why only African populations have this enzyme. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060506234925.htm - Ryan Jones

John McCain gave an amazing comencement speach at the New School in New York on Friday. It was disrupted by anti-war demonstrators who tried to stop him, but in the end he delivered it. Normally I don't like to quote a source as partisan as the Wall Street Journal, but in this case I think the story speaks for itself. http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008409 Here are a couple of fascinating quotes from the speech: This is the most fascinating part, right at the end: Wow. So how was this speech received by students and faculty at the New School, which dwells only a few blocks from Ground Zero? Wow again. I wonder…

When I was young I would have supported this nationalist tactic. However, I don't see English as the national language of America. The U.S. has never declared a national language, but it has been talked about. I'm thinking since this topic isn't a big issue, Bush will try to stab it the first chance he gets. Some people like to attack topics whenever people aren't talking about them; that way, laws and other things can get passed, while the republics back is turned. One of those "let's pass this into law before people start noticing what we are doing" things. What do all of you think?

Arizone is considering a plan to combine a million-dollar lottery with the next election, as a way to entice voters to the polls. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Voter_Reward.html What do you guys think? Good idea or bad?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Taft Who else? This should be interesting when they try to use Diebold machines to "re-elect" him in Ohio.

Some background can be found here. Essentially, California is considering a bill that would put more information in textbooks about specific contributions of gay people in history. Here's a question: How is this different from creationists asking for religious history to be taught as part of the non-optional curriculum? - Both are arguably aimed at a specific social engineering goal - Both involve highly stylized and politically-motivated re-writings of history So what exactly is the difference? Why would one be legitimate, and not the other?

I haven't read this book or seen this movie, and I haven't decided yet if I will. So I thought maybe I'd just ask the question here. Has anybody read it, and if so what do you think? ABC News ran a story tonight on the fictionalized film version, which is in competition at Cannes: http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1985724 (It's a video clip -- they have a print story on the site but it doesn't cover the counterpoint from the beef industry spokesperson or some other interesting aspects of the story.) The best part of this, and to me the most compelling reason to read it, was this quote from the author: "I still eat meat, but I think if you're goin…

This week's Frontline on PBS began with the following premise: That everyone who worked used to get a pension, and now corporations are trying to reneg on that promise. The whole episode is available for viewing online at this URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/view/ Here's a quote from the beginning of the story: Wow, wasn't that awfully sweet of them? Here's another one: Okay, I think you get the general idea. The statements are reasonably accurate, perhaps -- I'm not questioning that. What I'm suggesting is that this is a bit of a ruse. A snow job. A lie. The lie is this: All Americans used to have access…

Scientists have long known that the ozone layer was being damaged by CFC's, but little was done until recently. In 1987, 180 countries signed what is known as the Montreal Protocol - it was designed to control the emmisions of ozone depleting products such as CFC's. Recent scientific reports have shown that there has been a positive reaction to this and the atmosphere is showing early stages of ozone regenreation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060510094508.htm - Ryan Jones

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2179408_2,00.html During their last meeting, Saddam told her he had written a new epic work. “I didn’t have time to write poetry before,” the dictator said, “but now I have had the time to become a poet.”

this was reported in the London Times http://www.physorg.com/news66717645.html May 13, 2006 "A British woman has become the first in the country to conceive a "designer baby" selected specifically to avoid an inherited cancer, The Times said Saturday. The woman, who was not identified, used controversial genetic screening technology to ensure she does not pass on to her child the condition retinoblastoma, an hereditary form of eye cancer from which she suffers. Doctors tested embryos created by the woman and her partner using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) methods for the cancer gene. Only unaffected embryos were implanted in her womb, the newspaper said. …

does anyone have first hand accounts of what people outside the US think of the US, (general perception, its policies etc.)? ie, oppinions of yourself, freinds, or family, not what you hear on the news. I'm kind of curious because of a book I recently read and a general belief that the current foreign policy of the US may be alienating other nations. I hope this doesn't turn into a debate to soon, as I am really interested in the starting oppinion, and even in the unlikely event that anyone could be convinced that their oppinion is wrong then there are still millions of other persons who have the same oppinion as they do.

One of those really rare cosmic events has recently been seen - an almost simultaneously, two stellar explosions! The "gigantic potato crisp" lies in the constellation Leo and is approximately 70 million light years away from us. This article has a nice picture included. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/05/060517001622.htm - Ryan Jones

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060515/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_libya

A new study by the a group of physicists has shone new light on the big bang, using a modified form of Einstein’s cosmological equations. They have shown that the big bang may infact have been a a sort of "quantum bounce". This is a stunning revelation, as if it proves to be correct it will mean that there may have been another universe before this one, that may have suffered a fate such as the big crunch. http://www.physorg.com/news66660003.html - Ryan Jones

Since we were talking about the recent White House Correspondant's Dinner, I thought you all might appreciate this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCTN12cRT0I&search=gore%20snl It's Al Gore doing last night's opening act for Saturday Night Live. VERY funny stuff -- possibly the funniest opening act in SNL history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/washington/14nsa.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1147579200&en=9a442ce4901ab0c7&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

Europe's £400m ExoMars robot, which is expected to be launched to Mars in 2011, has been undergoing tests in Tenerife. The rocks and dust around the volcano El Teide (in Tenerife) is the ideal real life simulation of Mars's surface. The robot, which is about the size of a go-kart, has a top speed of 0.1 miles per hour; however, the aim is durability rather than speed, and so far it has been quite durable on and off the road. The head of the project said "we've got bigger margins, with more finance and more support. We're really confident". http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4767403.stm (includes video of robot in action)

As most of you probably know, surfaces on the atomic scale are not smooth, so if two bodies are brought together there will be tiny gaps. Water can condense and fill these gaps using the technique below. So for practical purposes water can now be used as a 'safe' glue. http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2006/05/freezing-water-at-room-temperature.html