Continental integration by
stealth
by Michael Byers |
the
Toronto Star
As Ottawa
prepares to renew NORAD agreement, a bi-national panel suggests nothing less
than the complete integration of Canada's military, security and foreign
policy into the decision-making and operating systems of the U.S.
They seem harmless enough at
first: two mid-level Canadian Forces officers and a mild-mannered bespectacled
American consultant explaining the work of their 48-member Bi-National
Planning Group to audiences across Canada. Their professed goal is to improve
co-operation between the Canadian and U.S. militaries, the better to defend
both countries.
Yet a close reading of their
final report released last month, reveals that their actual intent — or at
least the intent of the politicians who set their mandate — is far from
benign. They seek nothing less than the complete integration of Canada's
military, security and foreign policy into the decision-making and operating
systems of the U.S.
In 2002, it was revealed that
Ottawa and Washington were contemplating a "combined defence plan" that would
have placed our forces under the umbrella of the U.S.'s new Northern Command (NORTHCOM).
Opposition to the plan quickly
led to its being shunted out of view and into the newly created Bi-National
Planning Group (BPG). Based at the headquarters of NORTHCOM and the North
American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) in Colorado Springs, the planning
group was intended to devise counterpoints to critics' concerns, while
postponing formal decision-making until a more politically opportune moment.
Today, two Canadian elections
later, the authors of the BPG report can hardly believe their luck. Prime
Minister Stephen Harper may have only a minority government, but there is
little doubt he desires closer ties with Washington....
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Sun Apr 30th, 2006 - 10:13pm by CPC
Top of page
The Soundtrack of your Life
by David Owen |
The New Yorker
Muzak in the
realm of retail theatre.
If you blindfolded Dana
McKelvey and led her into a retail store, a restaurant, a doctor’s office, or
a bank, she could tell fairly quickly whether the music playing in the
background was Muzak. You may think that you would be able to tell, too, but
unless your job is creating Muzak programs, as McKelvey’s is, you probably
wouldn’t. The syrupy orchestral “elevator music” that most people associate
with the company scarcely exists anymore. Muzak sells about a hundred
prepackaged programs and several hundred customized ones, and only
one—“Environmental”—truly fits the stereotype. It consists of “contemporary
instrumental versions of popular songs,” and it is no longer terribly popular
anywhere, except in Japan. (“The Japanese think they love it, but they
actually don’t,” a former Muzak executive told me. “They’ll get over it
soon.”) All of Muzak’s other programs are drawn from the company’s huge
digital inventory, called the Well, which contains more than 1.5 million
commercially recorded songs, representing dozens of genres and subgenres—acid
jazz, heavy metal, shag, neo-soul, contemporary Italian—and is growing at the
rate of twenty thousand songs a month. (Some record labels now upload new
releases directly to the company, which, like a radio station, pays licensing
fees for the songs it uses.) The Well includes seven hundred and seventy-five
tracks recorded by the Beatles, a hundred and thirty by Kanye West, three
hundred and twenty-four by Led Zeppelin, eighty-four by Gwen Stefani, a
hundred and ninety-one by 50 Cent, and nine hundred and eighty-three by Miles
Davis. It also includes many covers—among them, versions of the Rolling
Stones’ song “Paint It Black” by U2, Ottmar Liebert, and a late-sixties French
rock band with a female vocalist (who sang it in French) and approximately
five hundred versions of the Beatles’ song “Yesterday,” which, according to
Guinness World Records, is the most frequently covered song in the world.
“There are so many songs out
there that if I listened to just one I’d never know whether it was Muzak or
not,” McKelvey, who is twenty-six years old, and has the kind of soft,
persuasive voice that would sound good on late-night radio, told me. “But I
could tell if I listened to the flow of a few. The key is consistency. How did
those songs connect? What story did they tell? Why is this song after that
song, and why is that one after that one?
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Sat Apr 29th, 2006 - 6:55am by CPC
Top of page
Looney
Tunes hidden gags
The Looney Tunes Hidden Gags page has oodles of in-jokes that the
animators snuck into their shorts.
After you watch enough Warner Bros.
theatrical cartoons it becomes obvious that the directors and animators
liked to slip in little hidden gags during the cartoons. The meanings of the
gags often would only be understood by a small number of people, or in some
cases, the gag was either executed very quickly or was lost in the
background.
found at Drawn!
Posted Fri Apr 28th, 2006 - 11:30am by CPC
Top of page
Reefer
madness
Marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not
From
The Economist
print edition
IF
CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some
remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical
breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything
from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose
chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has
been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many
governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility. Any
suggestion that the plant might be medically useful is politically
controversial, whatever the science says. It is in this context that, on April
20th, America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying
that smoked marijuana has no accepted medical use in treatment in the United
States.
The statement is curious in
a number of ways. For one thing, it overlooks a report made in 1999 by the
Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academy of Sciences, which
came to a different conclusion. John Benson, a professor of medicine at the
University of Nebraska who co-chaired the committee that drew up the report,
found some sound scientific information that supports the medical use of
marijuana for certain patients for short periods—even for smoked marijuana.
This is important, because
one of the objections to marijuana is that, when burned, its smoke contains
many of the harmful things found in tobacco smoke, such as carcinogenic tar,
cyanide and carbon monoxide. Yet the IOM report supports what some patients
suffering from multiple sclerosis, AIDS and cancer—and their doctors—have
known for a long time. This is that the drug gives them medicinal benefits
over and above the medications they are already receiving, and despite the
fact that the smoke has risks. That is probably why several studies show that
many doctors recommend smoking cannabis to their patients, even though they
are unable to prescribe it. Patients then turn to the black market for their
supply.
Another reason the FDA
statement is odd is that it seems to lack common sense. Cannabis has been used
as a medicinal plant for millennia. In fact, the American government actually
supplied cannabis as a medicine for some time, before the scheme was shut down
in the early 1990s. Today, cannabis is used all over the world, despite its
illegality, to relieve pain and anxiety, to aid sleep, and to prevent seizures
and muscle spasms. For example, two of its long-advocated benefits are that it
suppresses vomiting and enhances appetite—qualities that AIDS patients and
those on anti-cancer chemotherapy find useful. So useful, in fact, that the
FDA has licensed a drug called Marinol, a synthetic version of one of the
active ingredients of marijuana—delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).
Unfortunately, many users of Marinol complain that it gets them high (which
isn't what they actually want) and is not nearly as effective, nor cheap, as
the real weed itself.
This may be because Marinol
is ingested into the stomach, meaning that it is metabolised before being
absorbed. Or it may be because the medicinal benefits of cannabis come from
the synergistic effect of the multiplicity of chemicals it contains. ...
Read the entire article
here
Posted Thu Apr 27th, 2006 - 10:59pm by CPC
Top of page
North Korean slaves:
Russia’s imported Koretsky labour without reward
North Korea, for all its nuclear ambitions,
is close to economic disaster, and is short of food, fuel and the simplest
material goods. To pay its debt to Russia (which Moscow will not cancel), it
exports a migrant labour force to be cruelly exploited in Russia’s far eastern
wild west.
By Alain Devalpo |
Le Monde diplomatique
The
man with the face wizened and marked by years of toil said: “I’m not afraid to
tell you my story, because it’s true.” He looked like a native of the vast
forests of northern Russia. But he wasn’t. “I am from Nampo in North Korea,”
he began, struggling to find words. “I was a chauffeur; I worked for the state
for 10 years but then I was taken ill. I ended up with no money, so I decided
to try my luck at the logging camps in Russia. I got here at the beginning of
1995. They sent me to the camp at Tynda”
North Korean lumberjacks
have been hacking at the taiga forests of eastern Russia for decades. There
are many of them in the Amur region north of Khabarovsk. The Far East is home
to only 5% of Russia’s people, yet it covers 33% of the federation’s enormous
area, and workers are hard to find in this human desert. For historical and
geographical reasons, the area has always had close ties with communist North
Korea, ties that survived the fall of the Soviet system. There are frequent
official meetings and good transport links: the railway between the countries
has reopened and there is a weekly flight between Vladivostok and Pyongyang.
“There were three waves of
North Korean worker immigration during the 20th century,” explained Larisa
Zabrovskaya, a historian who is based in Vladivostok. The first started with
the end of the second world war and the liberation of Korea, when Soviet
fish-treatment factories called on North Korean manpower. In the 1950s there
were about 25,000 of these workers and their families living in the Soviet
Union.
Read the full article
here
Posted Wed Apr 26th, 2006 - 7:20am by CPC
Top of page
East Germany and Chernobyl: The Censorship of Fear
By Miriam Schröder | der
Spiegel
In
West Germany they were closing children's playgrounds and distributing iodine
tablets. But in communist East Germany life after the Chernobyl nuclear
disaster carried on as normal -- at least officially. The government simply
censored fear.
For East German racing
cyclist Olaf Ludwig, winning the International Peace Race -- considered the
East Bloc's "Tour de France" -- was a bizarre experience. It started in the
Ukrainian capital Kiev on May 7, 1986, 11 days after the accident and 100
kilometers from Chernobyl, and he recalls being startled as he raced past
lines of trucks being checked with Geiger counters. The many cancellations by
Western teams also came as a surprise to him.
"They told us there'd been
an accident but that it was far away and that we would be fine," said the
current director of the Team Telekom racing outfit. "They" refers to the high
sports and party officials of East Germany who accompanied their team in order
to "calm down people who were becoming very unsettled," said Ludwig. Calming
people down, glossing over the facts, lying -- that was the strategy of the
communist state in dealing with the biggest nuclear disaster of all time. ...
read the full article
here
Posted Tue Apr 25th, 2006 - 11:22am by CPC
Top of page
The Case Against
Coke
by Michael Blanding |
the Nation
The
ballroom at the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, Delaware, is the picture of
opulence. Paintings of Greek gods and goddesses peer down from the walls, lit
by two crystal chandeliers the size of Mini Coopers. It's here in April that
the Coca-Cola Company will hold its stockholders' meeting, an annual exercise
designed to boost the confidence of investors. If the meeting is anything like
last year's, however, it may do the opposite.
As stockholders filed into
the room in April 2005, news hadn't been good for Coke, which has steadily
lost market share to rivals. Investors were eager for reassurance from CEO
Neville Isdell, a patrician Irishman who had recently assumed the top job. Few
in the room, however, were prepared for what happened next. As Isdell stood at
the podium, two long lines formed at the microphones. When he opened the
floor, the first to speak was Ray Rogers, a veteran union organizer and head
of the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke. "I want to know what [Coke is] going to
do to regain the trust and credibility in order to stop the growing movement
worldwide...banning Coke products," boomed the 62-year-old.
That was just the beginning
of a ninety-minute slugfest that the Financial Times later said "felt more
like a student protest rally" than a stockholders' meeting. One after another,
students, labor activists and environmentalists blasted Coke's international
human rights record. Many focused on Colombia, where Coke has been accused of
conspiring with paramilitary death squads to torture and kill union activists.
Others highlighted India, where Coke has allegedly polluted and depleted water
supplies. Still others called the company to task for causing obesity through
aggressive marketing to children. ...
Read the article
here
see also:
The Case Against Coke at
amendone.org
Posted Mon Apr 24th, 2006 - 9:12pm by CPC
Top of page
While Cheney
Slept
You have to be
impressed by U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's ability to nap, even at a Press
Briefing during the state visit of the leader of a soon-to-be rival superpower
(or so the gang on the U.S. left would have us believe). Clearly Mr.
Cheney has no concerns for or about President Hu of the People's Republic of
China.
See:
Cheney Takes
a Nap
Cheyney is one of my
favourite character in the Bush cabal... although it is hard to have just one
favourite! He reminds of of Burgess Meredeth's
Penguin character from the
60's Batman TV series.
Posted Sun Apr 23rd, 2006 - 8:45am by CPC
Top of page
2006 Miss Klingon Empire Beauty Pageant
Contestants in the
2006 Miss Klingon Empire
Beauty Pageant will be judged in three separate categories. These include:
"Beauty"
--- Contestants will be judged on the quality and professionalism of their
costumes, make-up and "modeling." Contestants may assume the identity of any
Klingon female character from any incarnation of Star Trek, or any original
Klingon persona of their own creation. Contestants will be asked to walk a
runway in their Klingon persona. Poise, grace and the authenticity of her
persona will be the criteria for judging.
"Talent" --- Contestants
will be allowed NO MORE THAN THREE MINUTES to demonstrate a talent or skill.
Contestants may sing, dance, act, perform or make any other type of
presentation that demonstrates a talent or skill so long as the presentation
does not endanger herself, other contestants or the audience. (In other
words, no flaming bat'leth twirling, etc.) Contestants are encouraged but
not required to present a Klingon-themed talent or skill. Originality and
the authenticity of her persona will be the criteria for judging.
Contestants must disclose to the TrekTrak
staff their talent intentions prior to the convention for planning purposes,
but such information will be kept strictly confidential. Audio, video or
other technical equipment needed for a specific talent presentation can
usually be provided with sufficient advance notice.
"Personality" --- Each
contestant will either be asked a question to which she must respond, or be
asked to perform some simple task on the spot. The authenticity of her
answer or performance, and of her persona, will be criteria for judging.
Be still my heart!
Posted Sat Apr 22nd, 2006 - 12:01pm by CPC
Top of page
Miroslav Tichý's
home-made camera
The
Micheal
Hoppen Gallery in London is holding an exhibition of Czech photographer /
artist Miroslav Tichý, displaying some of his hand-developed prints. His
photographs were shot on his home-made camera, which in itself is a work of
art.
Tichý wandered his small town in rags,
pursuing his obsession as an artist with the female form by photographing in
the streets, shops and parks with cameras he made from tin cans, childrens
spectacle lenses and other junk he found on the street. He would return home
each day to make prints on equally primitive equipment, making only one print
from the negatives he selected.
Posted Fri Apr 21st, 2006 - 8:23pm by CPC
Top of page
Oddball Comics
Shaw! has launched a new site devoted to his
collection of Oddball Comics which
includes ridiculously detailed and in-depth analysis of some of the weirdest
comic titles you’ll ever see.
seen at Drawn!
Posted Thu Apr 20th, 2006 - 6:59am by CPC
Top of page
While Washington Slept
The Queen of England is
afraid. International C.E.O.'s are nervous. And the scientific establishment
is loud and clear. If global warming isn't halted, rising sea levels could
submerge coastal cities by 2100. So how did this virtual certainty get labeled
a "liberal hoax"?
By MARK HERTSGAARD |
Vanity Fair
Ten months before Hurricane
Katrina left much of New Orleans underwater, Queen Elizabeth II had a private
conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair about George W. Bush. The Queen's
tradition of meeting once a week with Britain's elected head of government to
discuss matters of state—usually on Tuesday evenings in Buckingham Palace and
always alone, to ensure maximum confidentiality—goes back to 1952, the year
she ascended the throne. In all that time, the contents of those chats rarely
if ever leaked.
So it was extraordinary when
London's Observer reported, on October 31, 2004, that the Queen had "made a
rare intervention in world politics" by telling Blair of "her grave concerns
over the White House's stance on global warming." The Observer did not name
its sources, but one of them subsequently spoke to Vanity Fair.
"The Queen first of all made
it clear that Buckingham Palace would be happy to help raise awareness about
the climate problem," says the source, a high-level environmental expert who
was briefed about the conversation. "[She was] definitely concerned about the
American position and hoped the prime minister could help change [it]."
Press aides for both the
Queen and the prime minister declined to comment on the meeting, as is their
habit. But days after the Observer story appeared, the Queen indeed raised
awareness by presiding over the opening of a British-German conference on
climate change, in Berlin. "I might just point out, that's a pretty unusual
thing for her to do," says Sir David King, Britain's chief scientific adviser.
"She doesn't take part in anything that would be overtly political." King, who
has briefed the Queen on climate change, would not comment on the Observer
report except to say, "If it were true, it wouldn't surprise me."
With spring arriving in
England three weeks earlier than it did 50 years ago, the Queen could now see
signs of climate change with her own eyes. Sandringham, her country estate
north of London, overlooks Britain's premier bird-watching spot: the vast
North Sea wetlands known as the Wash. A lifelong outdoorswoman, the Queen had
doubtless observed the V-shaped flocks of pink-footed geese that descend on
the Wash every winter. But in recent years, says Mark Avery, conservation
director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, she also would have
seen a species new to the area: little egrets. These shiny white birds are
native to Southern Europe, Avery says, "but in the last 5 to 10 years they
have spread very rapidly to Northern Europe. We can't prove this is because of
rising temperatures, but it sure looks like it."
Temperatures are rising, the
Queen learned from King and other scientists, because greenhouse gases are
trapping heat in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of such
gases, is released whenever fossil fuels are burned or forests catch fire.
Global warming, the scientists explained, threatens to raise sea levels as
much as three feet by the end of the 21st century, thanks to melting glaciers
and swollen oceans. (Water expands when heated.)
This would leave much of
eastern England, including areas near Sandringham, underwater. Global warming
would also bring more heat waves like the one in the summer of 2003 that
killed 31,000 people across Europe. It might even shut down the Gulf Stream,
the flow of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico that gives Europe its mild
climate. If the Gulf Stream were to halt—and it has already slowed 30 percent
since 1992—Europe's temperatures would plunge, agriculture would collapse,
London would no longer feel like New York but like Anchorage. ..
Read the full article at
Vanity Fair
Posted Wed Apr 19th, 2006 - 7:22am by CPC
Top of page
Laptop Stickers
A Flickr
collection of stickered laptops!
(Inspiration for my Powerbook!)
Posted Tue Apr 18th, 2006 - 5:23am by CPC
Top of page
Cilantro haters
unite!
About
15 hundred years ago, people started thinking it was cute to add loathsome
cilantro to my favorite cuisines: Indian, Thai, Indonesian, and Mexican. For
years, I've been hoping that reports would come out announcing that cilantro
causes cancer. I've wondered how much it would cost to genetically engineer an
insect or fungus that laid waste to cilantro crops. So far, no luck. At least
I can cry on the shoulders of other cilantro despisers at
IHateCilanto.com. The first-person cilantro stories are fun to read:
"That summer, a group of
us decided to spend a week or so camping on the beach on the Pacific side of
Costa Rica, which involved a 12 mile trek from where we left the van.
Supplies were divided up between the group, and I wound up lugging some of
the food items, including the cilantro. About half way to the beach, my
future wife and I halted at a bluff, ostensibly to watch some soaring King
vultures. When all of the group had passed by, I threw the cilantro off the
bluff. The two of us bonded over our little secret, and love was born. The
rest of the group never figured out what happened to the cilantro, which
lead to frantic digging through packs and prolonged bitching when dinner
time came around. Needless to say, I ate better for that week than I did for
the rest of the trip. "
Link
(whole piece lifted from Boing Boing)
Posted Mon Apr 17th, 2006 - 6:55am by CPC
Top of page
Splitting hares: Pets or meat?
Save the bunny, there is no other animal in western culture that we regard as
pet, pest and protein in almost equal measure
Tony Atherton |
The Ottawa Citizen
Have
some sympathy for Peter Cottontail this Easter. Hopping blithely down the
bunny trail, he can't be entirely certain what kind of reception he'll get.
Though we generally give
bunnies a break at this time of year, we are confoundedly fickle when it comes
to Peter's long-eared race. Running into a human, a rabbit has a roughly equal
chance of being cuddled, cudgelled, cooked, or made into fur collars and
good-luck charms.
Some of us, notably those
who subscribe to Playboy, see Peter as symbol as fecundity and lasciviousness.
Over the course of millennia, we have characterized Peter's kind as
tricksters, braggarts, varmints and clowns, but also as gods, goddesses, noble
questers and virgins.
There is likely no other
animal in western culture to which we react with such feckless inconstancy, no
other creature which we regard as pet, pest and protein in almost equal
measure. Fluffy, doe-eyed bunnies are not the only animal we are inclined to
anthropomorphize (in everything from Warner Brothers cartoons to Watership
Down), but there is no protein source we are more likely to invest with human
characteristics.
Like Beatrix Potter's Farmer
McGregor, we hate rabbits because they destroy our gardens (and, in extreme
cases, entire agricultural economies). But we also love rabbits. Especially
when they're wearing Edwardian waistcoats. Or gambolling with our children. Or
simmering in our pots.
The Flint, Michigan, woman
who infamously sells rabbits for "pets or meat" in Michael Moore's documentary
Roger and Me (and its short sequel, Pets or Meat) is not a trailer-park
aberration. On the website
mybunnyfarm.com, a family of rabbit breeders recommends "duel-purpose
(sic) pet rabbits," mixed breeds that will look cute and have "good meat
portions." The website includes pictures of "baby bunnies at play," and a list
of rabbit recipes.
"What kind of mentality is
that?" asks Patti Henningsen, vice-president of the Virginia-based
Friends of
Rabbits, an organization whose creed states that "all rabbits are valuable as
individuals, regardless of physical attributes, personality or health."
Henningsen answers her own
question. "It's the 4-H mentality: to raise (animals) lovingly so they have a
good little life -- until you do whatever you want to do with them." ...
Read the rest of the article
here
P.S.: Happy Easter!
See:
A Glimpse Into the History of Easter Candy
See:
Hunting with the Vice-Peep
See:
Lord of
the Peeps
Posted Sun Apr 16th, 2006 - 4:23pm by CPC
Top of page
Lostpedia
If you are a fan of ABC's
Lost,
you'll want to check out this unofficial
wiki site.
n.b.: Googling "Lost
+ ABC" returns 37,400,000 hits!
Posted Sat April 15th, 2006 - 5:33pm by CPC
Top of page
Good Friday
-
- Because,
dear Christ, your tender, wounded arm
- Bends back the brier that edges life's long way,
- That no hurt comes to heart, to soul no harm,
- I do not feel the thorns so much to-day.
-
- Because I never knew your care to tire,
- Your hand to weary guiding me aright,
- Because you walk before and crush the brier,
- It does not pierce my feet so much to-night.
-
- Because so often you have hearkened to
- My selfish prayers, I ask but one thing now,
- That these harsh hands of mine add not unto
- The crown of thorns upon your bleeding brow.
-E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
Posted Fri Apr 14th, 2006 - 7:46am by CPC
Top of page
The Soundtrack
of Your Life
Muzak in the realm of retail theatre.
by DAVID OWEN |
the New Yorker
If
you blindfolded Dana McKelvey and led her into a retail store, a restaurant, a
doctor’s office, or a bank, she could tell fairly quickly whether the music
playing in the background was
Muzak.
You may think that you would be able to tell, too, but unless your job is
creating Muzak programs, as McKelvey’s is, you probably wouldn’t. The syrupy
orchestral “elevator music” that most people associate with the company
scarcely exists anymore. Muzak sells about a hundred prepackaged programs and
several hundred customized ones, and only one—“Environmental”—truly fits the
stereotype. It consists of “contemporary instrumental versions of popular
songs,” and it is no longer terribly popular anywhere, except in Japan. (“The
Japanese think they love it, but they actually don’t,” a former Muzak
executive told me. “They’ll get over it soon.”) All of
Muzak’s other
programs are drawn from the company’s huge digital inventory, called the Well,
which contains more than 1.5 million commercially recorded songs, representing
dozens of genres and subgenres—acid jazz, heavy metal, shag, neo-soul,
contemporary Italian—and is growing at the rate of twenty thousand songs a
month. (Some record labels now upload new releases directly to the company,
which, like a radio station, pays licensing fees for the songs it uses.) The
Well includes seven hundred and seventy-five tracks recorded by the Beatles, a
hundred and thirty by Kanye West, three hundred and twenty-four by Led
Zeppelin, eighty-four by Gwen Stefani, a hundred and ninety-one by 50 Cent,
and nine hundred and eighty-three by Miles Davis. It also includes many
covers—among them, versions of the Rolling Stones’ song “Paint It Black” by
U2, Ottmar Liebert, and a late-sixties French rock band with a female vocalist
(who sang it in French) and approximately five hundred versions of the
Beatles’ song “Yesterday,” which, according to Guinness World Records, is the
most frequently covered song in the world. ...
Read the rest
of the article
here
Posted Thu Apr 13th, 2006 - 7:07am by CPC
Top of page
Mass extinctions a risk: Climate study
by Dennis Bueckert |
Canadian Press
Climate
change will cause the extinction of tens of thousands of species in coming
decades, warns a study in the scientific journal
Conservation Biology.
The study predicts a
disastrous thinning of life in the world's biodiversity "hot spots" — places
like the tropical Andes or the Caribbean basin, which contain a
disproportionate wealth of species.
The authors estimate that 39
to 43 per cent of species in these regions — 56,000 plant species and 3,700
vertebrates — would likely disappear with a doubling of carbon dioxide from
pre-industrial levels.
"These (hotspots) are the
crown jewels of the planet's biodiversity," lead author Jay Malcolm of the
University of Toronto said in an interview yesterday.
"Unless we get our act
together soon, we're looking at committing ourselves to this kind of thing."
Malcolm said the hot spots
tend to be found on high mountains, near the edges of continents or on
islands.
Until recently, a carbon
dioxide doubling was projected to occur around the end of this century, but
many scientists now believe it will happen faster since greenhouse emissions
are rising faster than expected.
Carbon dioxide, the main
greenhouse gas, is produced by the burning of fossil fuels. It is transparent
to incoming solar radiation but prevents the radiation from bouncing back into
space, causing a heat trap.
Malcolm said there is a big
margin of uncertainty in the study's predictions, but the need to protect the
atmosphere is obvious.
"The atmosphere is our bread
and butter, and here we are doing an experiment with it ... Not a good idea.
You don't realize what services nature provides in terms of clean air, water,
soil, waste removal.
"If you start playing with
that and you have this potential unravelling, then ... we're hard-pressed to
have much of an idea of what will happen."
Faisal Moola, a scientist
with the David Suzuki Foundation,
which helped fund the report, said Canada is home to many species not found
elsewhere, especially in the Rockies, the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Far
North.
Gee, I hope we get to keep blueberries and
trout...
See the story
here
Posted Wed Apr 12th, 2006 - 3:06pm by CPC
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Why Bees Fly With their legs Down
By Sara Goudarzi | Fox News
Unlike
landing gears that are retracted during a jet's flight, some bees leave them
down as they buzz along.
Orchid bees swing their hind
legs forward to reach top speed, a new study finds. The legs also generate
lift, which keeps the bees balanced and helps prevent rolling.
"The hind legs resemble
airplane wings, which probably explains why they also generate lift," said
Stacey Combes of the University of California, Berkeley.
It was just earlier this
year that other researchers figured out how bees fly. In order to examine
their flight mechanism more closely, Combes and colleagues encouraged the bees
to fly in an outdoor wind tunnel by enticing them with aromatic oils.
They found that as speeds
got higher, the bees extended their hind legs to maintain a stable position.
But at the highest speeds, even those with fully extended legs reached their
limit and lost their balance. This instability came from the rolling force on
their legs.
"They roll all the way to
the side or often upside down, and crash to the ground," Combes said....
Read the rest of the story
here
Posted Tue Apr 11th, 2006 -9:35am by CPC
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Pondering the Dentist's Drill
As I sat in my Dentist's chair this
afternoon pondering/lamenting the probable impending distress of a root canal,
I remembered reading this article in the NYT late last week:
Man Was Enduring the Dentist's Drill 9,000 Years Ago
By KYLE JARRARD | International Herald Tribune
Man's first known trip to
the dentist occurred as early as 9,000 years ago, when at least 9 people
living in a Neolithic village in Pakistan had holes drilled into their molars
and survived the procedure.
The findings, to be reported
Thursday in the scientific review Nature, push back the dawn of dentistry by
4,000 years to around 7000 B.C. The drilled molars come from a sample of 300
individuals buried in graves at the Mehrgarh site in western Pakistan,
believed to be the oldest Stone Age complex in the Indus River valley.
"This is certainly the first
case of drilling a person's teeth," said David Frayer, professor of
anthropology at the University of Kansas and the lead author of the report.
"But even more significant, this practice lasted some 1,500 years and was a
tradition at this site. It wasn't just a sporadic event."
The earliest previously
known evidence of dental work done in vivo was a drilled molar found in a
Neolithic graveyard in Denmark dating from about 3000 B.C.
All 9 of the Mehrgarh dental
patients were adults — 4 females, 2 males, and 3 individuals of unknown gender
— and ranged in age from about 20 to over 40. Most of the drilling was done on
the chewing surfaces of their molars, in both the upper and lower jaws,
probably using a flint point attached to a bow that made a high-speed drill,
the researchers say. Concentric ridges carved by the drilling device were
found inside the holes.
The drilling may have been
done to relieve the pain and damage of tooth rot, but only 4 of the total of
11 teeth showed signs of decay associated with the holes. The scientists say
it is clear that the holes were not made for aesthetic reasons, given their
position deep in the mouth and on the erosion-prone surface of the teeth...
Read the rest of the article
here
see also: the
History of
Dentistry at the ADA
Posted Mon Apr 10th, 2006 -5:22pm by CPC
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Walking on Water
Study claims ice, not water, kept Jesus afloat
University professor attempts to explain miracles with science
MIAMI,
Florida (Reuters) -- The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a
Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous
explanation -- he walked on a floating piece of ice.
Professor Doron Nof also
theorized in the early 1990s that Moses's parting of the Red Sea had solid
science behind it.
Nof, a professor of
oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found
an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now
northern Israel could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee.
Nof used records of the
Mediterranean Sea's surface temperatures and statistical models to examine the
dynamics of the Sea of Galilee, which Israelis know now as Lake Kinneret.
The study found that a
period of cooler temperatures in the area between 1,500 and 2,600 years ago
could have included the decades in which Jesus lived.
A drop in temperature below
freezing could have caused ice -- thick enough to support a human -- to form
on the surface of the freshwater lake near the western shore, Nof said. It
might have been nearly impossible for distant observers to see a piece of
floating ice surrounded by water.
Nof said he offered his
study -- published in the April edition of the
Journal of Paleolimnology -- as a "possible explanation" for Jesus' walk
on water...
Read the rest of the article
here
Check out
HollywoodJesus.com
If you'd like to try walking on water yourself,
this might interest you.
If you'd like to step out in faith, perhaps you
might like to read
this.
Posted Sun Apr 9th, 2006 -8:56pm by CPC
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Dark Matter
The Economist print edition
Accidence and substance: Two possible explanations
for the bulk of reality
THE
unknown pervades the universe. That which people can see, with the aid of
various sorts of telescope, accounts for just 4% of the total mass. The rest,
however, must exist. Without it, galaxies would not survive and the universe
would not be gently expanding, as witnessed by astronomers. What exactly
constitutes this dark matter and dark energy remains mysterious, but
physicists have recently uncovered some more clues, about the former, at
least.
One possible explanation for
dark matter is a group of subatomic particles called neutrinos. These objects
are so difficult to catch that a screen made of lead a light-year thick would
stop only half the neutrinos beamed at it from getting through. Yet neutrinos
are thought to be the most abundant particles in the universe. Some ten
thousand trillion trillion—most of them produced by nuclear reactions in the
sun—reach Earth every second. All but a handful pass straight through the
planet as if it wasn't there...
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Sat Apr 8th, 2006 - 8:03am by CPC
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the Gospel of Judas
As
reported in the
New York Times, the
National Geographic
Society has been part of an international effort, in collaboration with
the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and the
Waitt Institute for Historical
Discovery, to authenticate, conserve, and translate a 66-page codex, which
contains a text called James (also known as First Apocalypse of James), the
Letter of Peter to Philip, a fragment of a text that scholars are
provisionally calling Book of Allogenes, and the only known surviving copy of
the heretical
Gospel of
Judas.
The Gospel of Judas gives
a different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, offering new
insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Unlike the accounts in the
canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which Judas is
portrayed as a reviled traitor, this newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas
as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities.
see also:
Judas Helped
Save Mankind @ the BBC
Finally, read the
Gospel of Judas Piggybacking on the Da Vinci Code @ Aplogia Christi
Posted Fri Apr 7th, 2006 - 7:11pm by CPC
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.... Obviously
Ricky Gervais'
site is a "must see" for fans of
NBC's the Office.
If you have not done so
already, jump on your favorite P2P search engine and download all of the
episodes from the original series. Too funny!
Posted Thu Apr 6th, 2006 - 9:03pm by CPC
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Here Be Dragons
The Economist
With luck, you may soon be able to buy a
mythological pet
PAOLO
FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito,
California, is a man with a dream. That dream is a dragon in every home.
GeneDupe's business is
biotech pets. Not for Dr Fril, though, the mundane cloning of dead moggies and
pooches. He plans a range of entirely new animals—or, rather, of really quite
old animals, with the twist that even when they did exist, it was only in the
imagination.
Making a mythical creature
real is not easy. But GeneDupe's team of biologists and computer scientists
reckon they are equal to the task. Their secret is a new field, which they
call “virtual cell biology”.
Biology and computing have a
lot in common, since both are about processing information—in one case
electronic; in the other, biochemical. Virtual cell biology aspires to make a
software model of a cell that is accurate in every biochemical detail. That is
possible because all animal cells use the same parts list—mitochondria for
energy processing, the endoplasmic reticulum for making proteins, Golgi body
for protein assembly, and so on.
Armed with their virtual
cell, GeneDupe's scientists can customise the result so that it belongs to a
particular species, by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal's genome.
Then, if the cell is also loaded with the right virtual molecules, it will
behave like a fertilised egg, and start dividing and developing—first into an
embryo, and ultimately into an adult.
Because this “growth” is
going on in a computer, it happens fast. Passing from egg to adult in one of
GeneDupe's enormous Mythmaker computers takes less than a minute. And it is
here that Charles Darwin gets a look in. With such a short generation time,
GeneDupe's scientists can add a little evolution to their products...
Ha ha! Good one Economist!
Read the rest of the article
here
See Genedupe @
BetterHumans.com
Posted Wed Apr 5th, 2006 - 6:45am by CPC
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Iran's
Underwater Missile
Iran: High-speed underwater missile test-fired
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran
announced its second major new missile test within days, saying Sunday it has
successfully fired a high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge
warships and submarines.
The tests came during war
games that Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have been holding in the Gulf and
the Arabian Sea since Friday at a time of increased tensions with the United
States over Tehran's nuclear program.
The Iranian-made underwater
missile has a speed of 223 miles per hour, said Gen. Ali Fadavi, deputy head
of the Revolutionary Guards' Navy.
That would make it about
three or four times faster than a torpedo and as fast as the world's fastest
known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995.
It was not immediately known if the Iranian missile, which has not yet been
named, was based on the Shkval.
"It has a very powerful
warhead designed to hit big submarines. Even if enemy warship sensors identify
the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high
speed," Fadavi told state-run television.
It was not immediately clear
whether the ship-fired missile can carry a nuclear warhead...
Hrmmm... It's all fun and games
until someone looses an eye.
Read the rest of the article
here
Posted Tue Apr 4th, 2006 - 7:11am by CPC
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Jack Speak
As
the salt and grime of Montreal's past winter is washed away by early April
showers, my mind is drifting somewhat to thoughts of sailing (and quite
arguably, other types of saltiness).
A friend of mine is
former Royal Navy, and sent me the following link:
Jack speak
(Thanks Nick!)
Posted Mon Apr 3rd, 2006 - 8:03am by CPC
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Holy
onomatopoeia, Batman!
In
1969, one of the coolest shows (to my then 9 year old mind) was the original
Batman TV series.
Unfortunately, I was not allowed to view it,
because it gave my younger brother nightmares. I believe that he still
has a irrational fear of bad acting and cartoonish camp to this very day...
Happily, it was a great show for others as
well, and there are lots of "fan sites" out there to enjoy. I was glad
to come across a site that celebrated the Batman fight scene
lettering/artwork. This description is lifted from
Drawn!:
"Biff! Crash! …Zlonk? Precisely, Robin. Fans
of the Dynamic Duo are sure to go batty over this collection of lettering
title cards from the 1960’s Batman TV series. Check out the whole bat-list at
this
bat-link."
Posted Sun Apr 2nd, 2006 - 10:05pm by CPC
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Poisson d’avril!
La tradition du 1er avril
remonte à 1564, et c’est Charles IX qui en est le responsable. Je vous raconte
comment tout cela a commencé.
Charles
IX avait fait paraître une ordonnance fixant le premier jour de l’année au
début de janvier en lieu et place du 1er avril, date qui marquait le début de
l’année depuis longtemps. Bien sûr, cela a suscité des réactions : certains
étaient d’accord pour le changement, des jeunes pour la plupart qui n’avaient
pas connu mieux… [rires], mais il y avait des contestataires, en général des
personnes plus âgées... Pris en grippe par les tenants du changement, ces "
conservateurs " ont alors commencé à recevoir des poissons derrière la tête –
un peu avancés les poissons... Un mauvais tour à leur jouer, en quelque sorte.
Et c’est ce qui a donné naissance à la tradition du poisson d’avril, qui n’est
plus aujourd’hui qu’une plaisante excuse pour jouer un tour à quelqu’un.
J’ai toujours pensé que l’année
devrait commencer le 1er avril, parce que l’année débute véritablement avec le
printemps, symbole de retour, de renaissance. Pour la faire commencer avec la
mort apparente de la nature, Charles IX devait avoir des raisons qui, encore,
me dépassent.
voir aussi:
poisson d'avril
see also:
April Fool's Day
Posted Sat Apr 1st, 2006 - 7:32am by CPC
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