Wednesday Bucket O’News

16 Comments

1. 

   Knoxville Progressive on June 14, 2006 at 9:01 am

   Today in science headlines I thought I’d point out some of the stories that show how – quietly, unobtrusively – we’re slowly evolving towards that “gee whiz” future we all thought the 21st century would be, back when we were kids watching the Jetsons in the `60’s or `70’s, even though we haven’t yet figured out how to give up on our bad habits like war, discrimination, pollution, etc.

   Sometimes a story is so amazing, you just gasp:  The technology now exists – and is moving out of the lab into the “real-world” – to allow totally paralyzed individuals to communicate by wearing a cap fitted with electrodes and composing messages by staring at an on-screen keyboard.  Due to safety concerns, the technology has not yet been released to control motorized wheelchairs, but that step is being worked on.

   Back in the lab, a device which may pave the way for robotic hands that can replicate the human sense of touch has been unveiled.  US scientists have created a sensor that can “feel” the texture of objects to the same degree of sensitivity as a human fingertip.

   And if those stories aren’t “Jetson-like” enough for you, try this:

   Carnegie Mellon University is sending two small bipedal robots to the RoboCup 2006 World Championship June 14-18 in Bremen, Germany, to provide color commentary for robot soccer matches — a first for humanoid robots.  The walking robots are perfectly capable of kicking a ball, but in this new application they will instead be moving their heads and bodies to track the soccer ball with their electronic eyes. During the championships, they will provide commentary for matches between teams of vaguely dog-like four-legged robots that were developed by Sony Corporation.  More on the competition here.

   British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking said Tuesday that the human race should reach for the stars in order to survive. Speaking on a six-day visit to Hong Kong, Hawking said: “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species.  Life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we haven’t yet thought of.  But if we can avoid killing ourselves for the next hundred years we should have settlements that can continue without support from Earth,” he said, predicting a lunar settlement within 20 years and a Martian colony in 40.

   A team of autonomous flying and ground-based robots have successfully cooperated to search for and locate targets in the streets of an urban warfare training ground at Fort Benning, GA. The system could help in search and rescue efforts and military operations.

   And finally, if computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, `computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out.

2. 

   CabinGirl on June 14, 2006 at 9:09 am

   Heckuva job, brownie: AP/Yahoo

   FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the
   Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and has started efforts to collect the money.

   The GAO said it was 95 percent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher — between $600 million and $1.4 billion.

   The investigative agency said it found people lodged in hotels often were paid twice, since FEMA gave them individual rental assistance and paid hotels directly. FEMA paid California hotels $8,000 to house one individual — the same person who received three rental assistance payments for both disasters.

   In another instance, FEMA paid an individual $2,358 in rental assistance, while at the same time paying about $8,000 for the same person to stay 70 nights at more than $100 per night in a Hawaii hotel.

   FEMA also could not establish that 750 debit cards worth $1.5 million even went to Katrina victims, the auditors said.

   Of course, the article actually focuses more on people who used the money to buy season football tickets and sex change operations…guess that’s more titillating than FEMA’s mismanagement problems.

   • 

     cruz del sur on June 14, 2006 at 6:55 pm

     Remember when Republicans wanted to ban the Spanish language in this country? How do they intend to do so by naming hurricans in Spanish? It is not Alberto, it’s hurricane Albert. Shame on FEMA

3. 

   CabinGirl on June 14, 2006 at 9:13 am

   again?  NYT

   In visiting Baghdad on Tuesday, President Bush was trying to deliver a carefully calibrated message to Americans: that Iraq and the administration’s strategy there appear to be turning a corner, but troops will not be withdrawn anytime soon.

   Somebody please tell BushCo and the NYT that line’s already been used…they need some new material.

   • 

     Kidspeak on June 14, 2006 at 9:41 am

     Turn enough corners and you’re back where you started. Seems like we are there, only moreso.

   • 

     Knoxville Progressive on June 14, 2006 at 9:41 am

     Turn four corners and you end up where you started?

4. 

   boran2 on June 14, 2006 at 9:19 am

   Link

   Coffee May Cut Cirrhosis
   By Forbes
   http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/06/13/hscout533237.html
   Drinking coffee seems to protect alcohol drinkers from liver disease, a new study suggests. (Read the full study here)

   Every daily cup of coffee reduced the incidence of cirrhosis, a condition that destroys liver tissue, by 22 percent, according to researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, in Oakland, Calif.

   However, Dr. Arthur L. Klatsky, the leader of the study and an associate in Kaiser Permanente’s research division, said the results “should not be interpreted as giving a license to drink without worry, because of all the other problems connected with drinking.”

   Liver damage is just one of the “multiple medical and social problems caused by heavy drinking,” Klatsky said, adding, “the only proper advice is to drink less.” Three drinks a day should be the limit for most people, he said.

   • 

     Knoxville Progressive on June 14, 2006 at 9:44 am

     The thought occurs to me that if you combine massive alcohol consumption with massive caffeine consumption, you might be putting a heck of a strain on your kidneys.

     Sounds like a heck of an idea for a future research grant proposal for Dr. Klatsky…

     • 

       CabinGirl on June 14, 2006 at 9:45 am

       Heh.  Use it or lose it!

   • 

     kansas on June 14, 2006 at 10:09 am

     All those AA meetings serving all that coffee. . .who knew?

5. 

   supersoling on June 14, 2006 at 11:56 am

   Marines Corps investigates song about killing civilians

   WASHINGTON (AP) — A music video posted on the Internet that tells a tale about a U.S. Marine killing members of an Iraqi family is being condemned by an Islamic group and investigated by the Marine Corps.

   The four-minute song, “Hadji Girl,” appears to be sung by a Marine in front of a cheering audience. The lyrics talk about the Marine gunning down members of an Iraqi woman’s family after they confront him with automatic weapons.

   Wait, it gets worse.

   The singer is shown playing a guitar and singing about meeting an Iraqi woman and then being confronted by her brother and father, who have guns. The lyrics describe the Marine pulling the woman’s little sister in front of him and watching blood spray from her head.

   He then sings about blowing the father and brother “to eternity.”

   Of course the Marines are investigating. Sure they are.
      

6. 

   Man Eegee on June 14, 2006 at 12:05 pm

   brings the official total to 97 since October 1st

   A man and a woman whose decomposing bodies were found in the desert in Santa Cruz County in separate incidents this week likely died of heat and thirst while trying to hike into the United States, Santa Cruz County Sheriff Antonio Estrada said this morning. – linkage

   It’s only going to get worse, but now that it’s not politically expedient for the GOPhuckers to use this as a wedge issue, nothing is going to get done except for more militarization and wall-building.  Sigh…

7. 

   Arcturus on June 14, 2006 at 1:06 pm

   After a shell exploded on a Gaza beach last week, killing seven & finally provoking Hamas to renounce its 18 month old unilateral cease fire (which many suspoect was an Israeli goal), the IDF tried to blame Hamas, claiming that a bomb had been buried in the sand. New evidence says otherwise:

   Revealed: the Shrapnel Evidence That Points to Israel’s Guilt

   . . . the official interpretation was strongly challenged by a former Pentagon battle damage expert who has surveyed the scene of the beach explosion. He said yesterday that “all the evidence points” to a 155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell as its cause.

   Marc Garlasco, who worked in war zones including Iraq and Kosovo during his seven-year stint in the US Department of Defence, called for an independent investigation into the killings after concluding that shell fragments and shrapnel from the site, the size and distribution of the craters on the beach, and the type of injuries sustained by the victims made Israeli shelling easily the likeliest cause. [snip]

   Mr Garlasco said that most of the serious injuries of the victims in the Gaza hospitals that he had visited were to the torsos and heads, which were inconsistent with a land mine or of a bomb embedded in the sand. “If this had been a landmine I would have expected to see serious leg injuries,” he said. Mr Garlasco said that while he could not rule out the theoretical possibility that Palestinian militants had rigged up an unexploded 155mm shell to make an explosive device of their own, that too would have normally produced many more severe leg injuries.

   Mr Garlasco produced a four to five-inch, mainly blackened shell fragment which he collected about 100 yards from the scene of the explosion and in which the figures 55 and the letters “mm” are clearly discernible. While acknowledging that this was not itself definite proof that the shell had killed the Palestinians he said some fragments and shrapnel which the Palestinian police explosives department say they took from the scene where the victims were killed were definitely from a 155mm shell.

   Mr Garlasco who accompanied a small group of journalists to the Beit Lahia beach, pointed to three separate craters, each covered in a whitish powder, which he said were fresh, one of which was at the spot where witnesses agree the fatal blast occurred, and the two others separated it from it by about 120 and 250 yards. Mr Garlasco added: “It would be a really ridiculous coincidence if there is active shelling and then suddenly an IED [improvised explosive device] goes off.”   link

   & a little pimping for my diary yesterday on Rosie Perez’ new documentary (with Jimmy Smits narrating), Puerto Rican Pride: Film review of “Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’Que Tu Lo Sepas” which pretty much flew under the radar. Did you know that up to one third of Puerto Rico’s women were sterilized without their consent between 1956 & 1976? or that the island’s women were used as guineau pigs for US pharmaceutical companies testing oral contraceptives before FDA approval?

8. 

   on June 14, 2006 at 4:23 pm

   Coalition to launch Afghan operation
    Wednesday, June 14, 2006 (Musa Qala):

   The US-led coalition is unleashing more than 11,000 troops to attack militants in the southern mountains of Afghanistan.

   This would be the biggest operation in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001.

   The push starting on Thursday by US, British, Canadian and Afghan troops aims to target Taliban fighters in four volatile provinces, particularly the southern Uruzgan and northeastern Helmand regions.

   The offensive, which the military says it has been planning for 18 months, coincides with a surge in militant attacks in the southern and eastern provinces near the border with Pakistan, where Afghan authorities have little or no presence.

   According to US military and Afghan figures, about 550 people, mostly militants, have been killed in the fiercest fighting since mid-May.
   Read Entire Article

   Rove is on the loose, Iraq War is “improving”, Zarqawi is dead, Hurricane Alberto whimpers etc etc. Coincidence?

   Can Osama’s death be far behind?

   Six months till November…A political eternity?

   • 

     on June 14, 2006 at 4:25 pm

     I just realized re-reading my post that I just put forth the first ever Hurricane conspiracy theory.

     I’m proud of that!

9. 

   mythmother on June 14, 2006 at 8:58 pm

   This headline caught my attention on the CNN website this afternoon.  It just seemed so odd to see the MSM talking about “Corporate Supremacists.”

   Dobbs: President and Senate allied with ‘corporate supremacists’

   The will of the people,” Thomas Jefferson said, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” But if President Bush and the Senate prevail, it will be a clear victory for corporate supremacists, advocacy groups and dominant special interests and a historical defeat for our middle-class working men and women and their families.

   Were they concerned about the corporate takeover of the media?  No-bid government contracts awarded to Halliburton?  Raiding the US Treasury to wage an illegal and murderous war in order to steal another country’s oil?  Pretending that global warming is a conspiracy theory while the energy moguls laugh all the way to the bank?

   Nope.

   None of the above.

   The “Corporate Supremacists” want cheap labor (and they do…) so Dobbs doesn’t mind borrowing a little progressive rhetoric to drive his point home…

   Our largest and least represented group of citizens in Washington cannot even be assured that our elected representatives in both the House and the Senate will pursue the national interest and secure our borders and ports. And that is a travesty. What is the will of the people? Ask any member of Congress who has returned from his or her district and there is no doubt their constituents demand border security and an end to illegal immigration.

   Who are these “Corporate Supremacists” anyway?  Big media like CNN that function as a sockpuppet for Rovian propaganda?