linkfrenzy (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} linkfrenzy) wrote,@ 2007-12-21 02:07:00 |
|
LOST
http://eggmann.blog.is/blog/eggmann/ent
During the last twenty-four hours ...I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible. Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York ...to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. When we landed at JFK airport ...we were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security...
The TSA Took My Baby Away
http://www.area51.org/the-tsa-took-my-b
I flew back to the U.S. from London last week... After a horrible flight back I stand in line for Customs for over an hour. Then ...a guy with a TSA badge walks up and says 'Come with me'. ...the next thing I know, I am in a 'special' back room with three agents staring at me. They didn't say anything for a while... I asked if something was wrong, and the agents just looked at each other. One of them asked me, 'What is the purpose of your entry into the United States?' I said, 'I'm a citizen; I was born here. Don't I have the right to enter my own country?' I ask them what the problem is (again), and one of them says that I am on some kind of watch list. They won't tell me why I'm on the list... But I'm 'on the list'. At this point I am started to be scared. I think of everything I've ever done wrong and worry about which things are what got me in trouble...
Halliburton Confirms Concentration Camps Already Constructed
http://libertyforlife.com/jail-police/u
On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country's security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called "news informers" who needed to be combated in "a contest of wills." In 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants." The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006 that the National Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC) central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of 2003. A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters. Halliburton's company site confirms that the government is engaged in a massive construction and preparation exercise to build concentration camps and prisoner processing facilities in the United States. This is particularity astonishing and disturbing considering that the U.S. already incarcerates more orders of magnitude more people than any other nation, about on-par with U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin's era.
More Women Report Sex Assaults in Iraq
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jSlj
A woman who claims she was raped by a fellow employee while working for a U.S. contractor in Iraq told House lawmakers Wednesday that her case is far from unique...several other women have come forward with reports of sexual harassment and assault while employed in Iraq for Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR.
CIA photos 'show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame
Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.
MPAA rejects Gibney's 'Dark' poster: Org objects to hood on torture docu's one-sheet
http://www.variety.com/VR1117977926.htm
The MPAA has rejected the one-sheet for Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," which traces the pattern of torture practice from Afghanistan's Bagram prison to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay.
Retired FBI agent: Waterboarding produced 'crap' information from detainee
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Retired_F
Contradicting the assertions of President Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA, federal investigators say a suspected al Qaeda operative who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique produced increasingly unreliable information after his interrogators began treating him harshly. "I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted."
Cheap laughs
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/1
I can't resist sharing this titbit from the completely deranged wingnut blog that I read for comic relief.
When will Amy Winehouse Die?
http://www.whenwillamywinehousedie.com/
We'll all have a date with our maker someday, but Amy Winehouse just can't seem to wait. She can write and sing a beautiful tune, but for some reason Amy has landed in a self-destruction derby. It is even rumoured that Amy and Pete are keeping the Colombian economy going. ...Amy is on her way out and as the world is profiting from this decline we thought it only fair that you should profit from it too. Guess her final breath and be crowned Mr. Or Mrs. Death. Winner will be rewarded with a iPod Touch.
Bush policies likely to blame for more teen births
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opin
After declining for more than a decade, births to unmarried teenagers suddenly increased 3 percent among 15- to 19-year-old girls between 2005 and 2006... the figures come after years of national folly, including a White House strategy of endorsing and funding abstinence-only education. President Bush and other social conservatives have long rejected giving adolescents information about contraception while also encouraging abstinence. They insist that teaching kids to rely on chastity will prevent sexual experimentation...
(Bush is the number one proof for the absence of Intelligent Design--or of a Moronic Creator--ED)
Sex education found to help teenagers delay sex
http://www.reuters.com/article/domestic
Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15. Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex
The US sub-prime crisis in graphics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/707
The US sub-prime mortgage crisis has lead to plunging property prices, a slowdown in the US economy, and billions in losses by banks. It stems from a fundamental change in the way mortgages are funded.
"Skeleton of Giant" Is Internet Photo Hoax
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n
The National Geographic Society has not discovered ancient giant humans, despite rampant reports and pictures. ...A digitally altered photograph created in 2002 shows a reclining giant surrounded by a wooden platform?with a shovel-wielding archaeologist thrown in for scale.
Security Specialist Spots Source Spoof Vulnerability in Google Toolbar
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Secu
Security researcher Aviv Raff has spotted a security hole in Google's Toolbar browser utility. The trick lies in a hacker spoofing a URL in a dialog box that pops up once an unsuspecting user wishes to download a new toolbar button. The URL may indicate the download comes from a trusted source, but the actual source of the data may be a hacker, and the application may be far from what was advertised.
Learning From The Past: How DRM Failed in Australia
http://blogcampaigning.com/2007/12/04/l
Official radio transmission in Australia commenced in 1923. In May that year the Postmaster-General convened a conference of all interested parties to consider the introduction of systematic broadcasting. At this conference E.T. Fisk, head of the company that held the Australian rights to the most crucial wireless patents, proposed a scheme "which provided for competitive broadcasting by stations each having exclusive use of a particular wavelength in a given area and getting its income from subscriptions paid by listeners whose receivers were sealed to its wavelength alone" (Barnard, 1992: 6) ? basically some old-school DRM (or should I say Analog Rights Management?)...
U.S. Intelligence Confirms: The Hillbillies Have the Bomb
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the specter of nuclear armageddon looms over the world, as the Pentagon announced yesterday that a group of hillbillies in central Tennessee has constructed a fully operational 50-megaton nuclear device. ...scientists in Helsinki, Finland, have moved the doomsday clock back up to one minute before midnight. Pentagon officials were tipped off to the backwoods people's potential to invoke mass destruction last week when an I.R.S. agent returned from the Smoky Mountains claiming that a group of hillbillies had threatened to "nuke him up real good."
Three-dimensional metamaterials for the optical wavelength range: towards optical cloaking
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/0712
Last year researchers from Duke University stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range... Now, researchers from the group of Harald Giessen at the University of Stuttgart have succeeded in manufacturing a stacked split-ring metamaterial for the optical wavelength range
Monks punch on in fight with police WITH PICTURES!
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25
ABOUT 40 Cambodian Buddhist monks fought with police, knocking one unconscious before being beaten back with batons, as they tried to hand a petition to Vietnam's embassy.
The Ten Nastiest Fish of All Time
http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_na
German ship fights climate change with high-tech kite
http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthN
urning ocean winds into gold while cutting greenhouse emissions in the process might sound like some sort of alchemy for the 21st century. But unlike futile earlier efforts to convert ordinary metals to gold, two fast-growing German companies have worked together developing a high-tech kite system to pull enormous ships across the oceans -- and save enormous amounts of money. The 132 meter (433 ft) long MV "Beluga SkySails" will make its maiden voyage in January across the Atlantic to Venezuela, up to Boston and back to Europe. It will be pulled by a giant computer-guided 500,000-euro ($725,000) kite tethered to a 15-metre high mast.
Peter Jackson to produce 'The Hobbit'
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Mov
Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy "The Lord of the Rings." Jackson, who directed the "Rings" trilogy, will serve as executive producer for "The Hobbit." A director for the prequel films has yet to be named. Two "Hobbit" films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three "Lord of the Rings" films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release.
Trilobis 65
http://www.sub-find.com/trilobis65.htm
a semi-submerged dwelling environment. Reaching 20 metres in length designed by Giancarlo Zema for habitation by six people at sea. It is ideal for living in bays, atolls and maritime parks.
Nanosolar's Breakthrough - Solar Now Cheaper than Coal
http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/nanos
Nanosolar ...have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.
Japan government spokesman says UFOs do exist
http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyle
Yes, UFOs do exist, Japan's top government spokesman said on Tuesday.
Haunted Mouses
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magaz
The Internet is haunted. The floorboards creak; every joint in its rickety construction lets in a draft. The thumps in the basement have become an outright racket. The dead down there are dancing.
Sitting Bull's people break away from US
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC
THE Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the US, some of them more than 150 years old...
Sexy Posters Used in Daring Jailbreak
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/sexy-poste
Two jail inmates used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they used to escape and left behind a thank-you note, signed with a smiley face, for a guard they claimed helped them...
Ontological Terrorism for the Holidays
http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1706#mo
Christmas is always a good time of year for ontological terrorism. For example, "The psychedelic secrets of Santa Claus" is one of my favorite links to spread around Christmas time. Larsen makes the case that though Santa Claus is now a symbol of our annual collective consumer-orgy, he may originally have been inspired by amanita muscaria mushroom eating shamans. That the very same politicians that enforce and promote the war on drugs tend to also whole heartily endorse a religious figure birthed of ancient drug culture amuses me to no end.
Headless Historicals Doll Gallery
http://www.headlesshistoricals.com/Gall
Some of these one-of-a-kind dolls are available for sale. Please click on the name for more information about the doll and the historical character who inspired it.
Garfield Minus Garfield
http://www.divisiontwo.com/garfield/gar
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic strip about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let's laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
Apparently, if you know him and he rapes you, it is a "lover's quarrel."
http://feministing.com/archives/008
Date rape should be treated differently from attacks on women by strangers, John Redwood has said. The former cabinet minister - now a senior Tory party adviser - suggested rape accusations made by women against their partners should be treated as "disagreements" between lovers.
(I rather suspect he meant something different to the load of Dumb which leaped from his mouth...--ED)
Radio 1 censors Pogues' Fairytale
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainmen
BBC Radio 1 has said it will stand by its ban on the word "faggot" from the Pogues' 1987 Christmas hit Fairytale of New York to avoid offence. The word, sung by the late Kirsty MacColl as she trades insults with Shane MacGowan, has been dubbed out.
Woman Accused of Groping Mall Santa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c
Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him. "The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted,"
Weighty matters
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich
If, for decades, it was perfectly acceptable for neutrinos to be both invisible and massless, and nobody ridiculed scientists for believing and asserting precisely this, then why should the concept of an invisible, massless soul be any more risible?
Small group of US experts insist global warming not man-made
http://physorg.com/news116996704.ht
These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data. The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming.
Ancient Egyptians ahead of time
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Heal
The recent discovery of an industrial complex in Egypt has led researchers to revise their conceptions over what level of advancement the Nile civilization had actually reached, with their advanced glass-making abilities proving that the ancient Egyptians were technologically much more ahead of their time than scholars previously thought
Giant dinosaur found in iceblock
http://www.abc.net.au/science/artic
Palaeontologists working on top a frozen Antarctic mountain have extracted a rock and ice fossil popsicle encasing the remains of a massive, previously unknown dinosaur.
Physicists Do the Math on Warp Drive Science
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2
Enterprise The venerable warp drive is science fiction no longer. Baylor University physicists Richard Obousy and Gerald Cleaver have published a paper outlining the math underlying one possible technique an advanced civilization might to use to create such a Star Trekkie means of scooting around the universe.
Pirate of the Caribbean's ship is discovered
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w
The discovery of Captain Kidd's 300-year-old ship in the Caribbean could provide final proof that the Scottish privateer did not deserve to be hanged as a pirate and his rotting body left on public view.
Facebook suing Canadian porn site print this article
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=901
A Canadian company specializing in Internet porn is being sued by Facebook amid allegations it hacked the popular social networking website's computers and tried to access the personal information of users, court documents show.
Elvis release pulled in copyright row
http://uk.reuters.com/article/entertain
Music distributor Cargo Records has pulled the plug on an Elvis Presley release after the singer's label threatened legal action... even though some sound recordings have become part of the public domain...
and The Coolest Billboard In The World
http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=2662
http://eggmann.blog.is/blog/eggmann/ent
During the last twenty-four hours ...I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible. Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York ...to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. When we landed at JFK airport ...we were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security...
The TSA Took My Baby Away
http://www.area51.org/the-tsa-took-my-b
I flew back to the U.S. from London last week... After a horrible flight back I stand in line for Customs for over an hour. Then ...a guy with a TSA badge walks up and says 'Come with me'. ...the next thing I know, I am in a 'special' back room with three agents staring at me. They didn't say anything for a while... I asked if something was wrong, and the agents just looked at each other. One of them asked me, 'What is the purpose of your entry into the United States?' I said, 'I'm a citizen; I was born here. Don't I have the right to enter my own country?' I ask them what the problem is (again), and one of them says that I am on some kind of watch list. They won't tell me why I'm on the list... But I'm 'on the list'. At this point I am started to be scared. I think of everything I've ever done wrong and worry about which things are what got me in trouble...
Halliburton Confirms Concentration Camps Already Constructed
http://libertyforlife.com/jail-police/u
On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country's security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called "news informers" who needed to be combated in "a contest of wills." In 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants." The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006 that the National Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC) central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of 2003. A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters. Halliburton's company site confirms that the government is engaged in a massive construction and preparation exercise to build concentration camps and prisoner processing facilities in the United States. This is particularity astonishing and disturbing considering that the U.S. already incarcerates more orders of magnitude more people than any other nation, about on-par with U.S.S.R. at the height of Stalin's era.
More Women Report Sex Assaults in Iraq
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jSlj
A woman who claims she was raped by a fellow employee while working for a U.S. contractor in Iraq told House lawmakers Wednesday that her case is far from unique...several other women have come forward with reports of sexual harassment and assault while employed in Iraq for Halliburton's former subsidiary, KBR.
CIA photos 'show UK Guantanamo detainee was tortured'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/ame
Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.
MPAA rejects Gibney's 'Dark' poster: Org objects to hood on torture docu's one-sheet
http://www.variety.com/VR1117977926.htm
The MPAA has rejected the one-sheet for Alex Gibney's documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," which traces the pattern of torture practice from Afghanistan's Bagram prison to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay.
Retired FBI agent: Waterboarding produced 'crap' information from detainee
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Retired_F
Contradicting the assertions of President Bush and waterboarding advocates at the CIA, federal investigators say a suspected al Qaeda operative who was subjected to the simulated drowning technique produced increasingly unreliable information after his interrogators began treating him harshly. "I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted."
Cheap laughs
http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/2007/1
I can't resist sharing this titbit from the completely deranged wingnut blog that I read for comic relief.
One hundred scientists from around the globe aren't drinking the Goracle's Kool-Aid, and have petitioned the UN to stop pushing the global warming hoax, and the hysteria associated with it...Yep, 100, count them. Led by Australia's very own Don Aitken, who as a 'social scientist' has about as much expertise on climate change as I do, viz none. But their science is apparently infinitely better than the science of the thousands of scientists whose work informed the International Panel on Climate Change. No explanation is given for this distinction between good trustworthy scientists and bad lying scientists. Indeed, if you didn't know better, you would think that the whole global warming idea is a creation of Al Gore, not scientists, and exists first, last and solely in a movie he made. In fact, the off-the-scale dipshit who wrote this crap genuinely seems to believe that climate change really was invented by Al Gore...
When will Amy Winehouse Die?
http://www.whenwillamywinehousedie.com/
We'll all have a date with our maker someday, but Amy Winehouse just can't seem to wait. She can write and sing a beautiful tune, but for some reason Amy has landed in a self-destruction derby. It is even rumoured that Amy and Pete are keeping the Colombian economy going. ...Amy is on her way out and as the world is profiting from this decline we thought it only fair that you should profit from it too. Guess her final breath and be crowned Mr. Or Mrs. Death. Winner will be rewarded with a iPod Touch.
Bush policies likely to blame for more teen births
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opin
After declining for more than a decade, births to unmarried teenagers suddenly increased 3 percent among 15- to 19-year-old girls between 2005 and 2006... the figures come after years of national folly, including a White House strategy of endorsing and funding abstinence-only education. President Bush and other social conservatives have long rejected giving adolescents information about contraception while also encouraging abstinence. They insist that teaching kids to rely on chastity will prevent sexual experimentation...
(Bush is the number one proof for the absence of Intelligent Design--or of a Moronic Creator--ED)
Sex education found to help teenagers delay sex
http://www.reuters.com/article/domestic
Teenagers who have had formal sex education are far more likely to put off having sex, contradicting earlier studies on the effectiveness of such programs, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They found teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15. Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex
The US sub-prime crisis in graphics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/707
The US sub-prime mortgage crisis has lead to plunging property prices, a slowdown in the US economy, and billions in losses by banks. It stems from a fundamental change in the way mortgages are funded.
"Skeleton of Giant" Is Internet Photo Hoax
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n
The National Geographic Society has not discovered ancient giant humans, despite rampant reports and pictures. ...A digitally altered photograph created in 2002 shows a reclining giant surrounded by a wooden platform?with a shovel-wielding archaeologist thrown in for scale.
Security Specialist Spots Source Spoof Vulnerability in Google Toolbar
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Secu
Security researcher Aviv Raff has spotted a security hole in Google's Toolbar browser utility. The trick lies in a hacker spoofing a URL in a dialog box that pops up once an unsuspecting user wishes to download a new toolbar button. The URL may indicate the download comes from a trusted source, but the actual source of the data may be a hacker, and the application may be far from what was advertised.
Learning From The Past: How DRM Failed in Australia
http://blogcampaigning.com/2007/12/04/l
Official radio transmission in Australia commenced in 1923. In May that year the Postmaster-General convened a conference of all interested parties to consider the introduction of systematic broadcasting. At this conference E.T. Fisk, head of the company that held the Australian rights to the most crucial wireless patents, proposed a scheme "which provided for competitive broadcasting by stations each having exclusive use of a particular wavelength in a given area and getting its income from subscriptions paid by listeners whose receivers were sealed to its wavelength alone" (Barnard, 1992: 6) ? basically some old-school DRM (or should I say Analog Rights Management?)...
U.S. Intelligence Confirms: The Hillbillies Have the Bomb
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30
For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the specter of nuclear armageddon looms over the world, as the Pentagon announced yesterday that a group of hillbillies in central Tennessee has constructed a fully operational 50-megaton nuclear device. ...scientists in Helsinki, Finland, have moved the doomsday clock back up to one minute before midnight. Pentagon officials were tipped off to the backwoods people's potential to invoke mass destruction last week when an I.R.S. agent returned from the Smoky Mountains claiming that a group of hillbillies had threatened to "nuke him up real good."
Three-dimensional metamaterials for the optical wavelength range: towards optical cloaking
http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/0712
Last year researchers from Duke University stunned the world when they announced a cloaking device for the microwave range... Now, researchers from the group of Harald Giessen at the University of Stuttgart have succeeded in manufacturing a stacked split-ring metamaterial for the optical wavelength range
Monks punch on in fight with police WITH PICTURES!
www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25
ABOUT 40 Cambodian Buddhist monks fought with police, knocking one unconscious before being beaten back with batons, as they tried to hand a petition to Vietnam's embassy.
The Ten Nastiest Fish of All Time
http://community.livejournal.com/wtf_na
German ship fights climate change with high-tech kite
http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthN
urning ocean winds into gold while cutting greenhouse emissions in the process might sound like some sort of alchemy for the 21st century. But unlike futile earlier efforts to convert ordinary metals to gold, two fast-growing German companies have worked together developing a high-tech kite system to pull enormous ships across the oceans -- and save enormous amounts of money. The 132 meter (433 ft) long MV "Beluga SkySails" will make its maiden voyage in January across the Atlantic to Venezuela, up to Boston and back to Europe. It will be pulled by a giant computer-guided 500,000-euro ($725,000) kite tethered to a 15-metre high mast.
Peter Jackson to produce 'The Hobbit'
http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Mov
Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have reached agreement to make J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," a planned prequel to the blockbuster trilogy "The Lord of the Rings." Jackson, who directed the "Rings" trilogy, will serve as executive producer for "The Hobbit." A director for the prequel films has yet to be named. Two "Hobbit" films are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, similar to how the three "Lord of the Rings" films were made. Production is set to begin in 2009 with a released planned for 2010, with the sequel scheduled for a 2011 release.
Trilobis 65
http://www.sub-find.com/trilobis65.htm
a semi-submerged dwelling environment. Reaching 20 metres in length designed by Giancarlo Zema for habitation by six people at sea. It is ideal for living in bays, atolls and maritime parks.
Nanosolar's Breakthrough - Solar Now Cheaper than Coal
http://www.celsias.com/2007/11/23/nanos
Nanosolar ...have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.
Japan government spokesman says UFOs do exist
http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyle
Yes, UFOs do exist, Japan's top government spokesman said on Tuesday.
Haunted Mouses
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/magaz
The Internet is haunted. The floorboards creak; every joint in its rickety construction lets in a draft. The thumps in the basement have become an outright racket. The dead down there are dancing.
Sitting Bull's people break away from US
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iVC
THE Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the US. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means said. A delegation of Lakota leaders has delivered a message to the State Department, and said they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the US, some of them more than 150 years old...
Sexy Posters Used in Daring Jailbreak
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/sexy-poste
Two jail inmates used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they used to escape and left behind a thank-you note, signed with a smiley face, for a guard they claimed helped them...
Ontological Terrorism for the Holidays
http://www.alterati.com/blog/?p=1706#mo
Christmas is always a good time of year for ontological terrorism. For example, "The psychedelic secrets of Santa Claus" is one of my favorite links to spread around Christmas time. Larsen makes the case that though Santa Claus is now a symbol of our annual collective consumer-orgy, he may originally have been inspired by amanita muscaria mushroom eating shamans. That the very same politicians that enforce and promote the war on drugs tend to also whole heartily endorse a religious figure birthed of ancient drug culture amuses me to no end.
Headless Historicals Doll Gallery
http://www.headlesshistoricals.com/Gall
Some of these one-of-a-kind dolls are available for sale. Please click on the name for more information about the doll and the historical character who inspired it.
Garfield Minus Garfield
http://www.divisiontwo.com/garfield/gar
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic strip about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let's laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
Apparently, if you know him and he rapes you, it is a "lover's quarrel."
http://feministing.com/archives/008
Date rape should be treated differently from attacks on women by strangers, John Redwood has said. The former cabinet minister - now a senior Tory party adviser - suggested rape accusations made by women against their partners should be treated as "disagreements" between lovers.
(I rather suspect he meant something different to the load of Dumb which leaped from his mouth...--ED)
Radio 1 censors Pogues' Fairytale
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainmen
BBC Radio 1 has said it will stand by its ban on the word "faggot" from the Pogues' 1987 Christmas hit Fairytale of New York to avoid offence. The word, sung by the late Kirsty MacColl as she trades insults with Shane MacGowan, has been dubbed out.
Woman Accused of Groping Mall Santa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c
Santa Claus says that a woman who sat on his lap was naughty, not nice. A Santa at the Danbury Fair mall said the woman groped him. "The security officer at the mall said Santa Claus has been sexually assaulted,"
Weighty matters
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/mich
If, for decades, it was perfectly acceptable for neutrinos to be both invisible and massless, and nobody ridiculed scientists for believing and asserting precisely this, then why should the concept of an invisible, massless soul be any more risible?
Small group of US experts insist global warming not man-made
http://physorg.com/news116996704.ht
These conclusions are in sharp contradiction to those of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which reached its conclusions using largely similar data. The UN body of about 3,000 experts, including several renown US scientists, jointly won the award with former US vice president Al Gore for their work to raise awareness about the disastrous consequences of global warming.
Ancient Egyptians ahead of time
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Heal
The recent discovery of an industrial complex in Egypt has led researchers to revise their conceptions over what level of advancement the Nile civilization had actually reached, with their advanced glass-making abilities proving that the ancient Egyptians were technologically much more ahead of their time than scholars previously thought
Giant dinosaur found in iceblock
http://www.abc.net.au/science/artic
Palaeontologists working on top a frozen Antarctic mountain have extracted a rock and ice fossil popsicle encasing the remains of a massive, previously unknown dinosaur.
Physicists Do the Math on Warp Drive Science
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2
Enterprise The venerable warp drive is science fiction no longer. Baylor University physicists Richard Obousy and Gerald Cleaver have published a paper outlining the math underlying one possible technique an advanced civilization might to use to create such a Star Trekkie means of scooting around the universe.
Pirate of the Caribbean's ship is discovered
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w
The discovery of Captain Kidd's 300-year-old ship in the Caribbean could provide final proof that the Scottish privateer did not deserve to be hanged as a pirate and his rotting body left on public view.
Facebook suing Canadian porn site print this article
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=901
A Canadian company specializing in Internet porn is being sued by Facebook amid allegations it hacked the popular social networking website's computers and tried to access the personal information of users, court documents show.
Elvis release pulled in copyright row
http://uk.reuters.com/article/entertain
Music distributor Cargo Records has pulled the plug on an Elvis Presley release after the singer's label threatened legal action... even though some sound recordings have become part of the public domain...
and The Coolest Billboard In The World
http://eatliver.com/i.php?n=2662
