Tuesday News Bucket

Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
– Emo Phillips

9 Comments

CabinGirl on December 5, 2006 at 6:59 am

No more of those serene Tahitian beach posters…nope, gotta be terra-fied: WSJ

The Bush administration plans to brighten up the holidays by distributing hundreds of colorful “wanted terrorist posters” to U.S. airports across the country. “More than 500 posters are on their way to major airports in New York City, Houston, Kansas City, Newark, Sacramento and Washington, D.C.,” says a State Department press release. “Smaller airports across the country also requesting posters include those in Guam, Fairbanks, several cities in the Hawaiian Islands, Dayton, Myrtle Beach, Little Rock, San Antonio and Londonderry, N.H.”

The posters, intended to increase travelers’ “awareness of wanted terrorists,” feature 26 “faces of global terrorism” on a bright red background with a mound of $50 bills at the bottom.

Gotta make sure he sheeple are still happy to be strip-searched on their way through security, you know.

Knoxville Progressive on December 5, 2006 at 12:53 pm

On the whole, I’d rather see wanted posters (they haven’t kept me from the post office, LOL) than this. Talk about creepy Big Brother-esque, life imitates art…

CabinGirl on December 5, 2006 at 7:08 am

coming to Comedy Central: CNN

Comedy Central has ordered “Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States,” a cartoon satire that re-imagines President Bush and key executives in his administration as elementary school misfits.

The title character is surrounded by close pals like Lil’ Cheney, who grumbles unintelligibly, and Lil’ Condi, who pines for Lil’ Bush and does his homework for him.

“Bush” is not without its risque moments. When Lil’ Bush’s school serves falafel instead of hot dogs for lunch in one episode, he and his pals torture the cafeteria employees with methods made famous during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

It sounded funny until they got to the Abu Ghraib parody. Maybe I’m just being crabby today, but making a joke out of torture just doesn’t strike me as cartoon material.

What do you all think?

Knoxville Progressive on December 5, 2006 at 12:45 pm

If they get expelled from school for the torture incident I’d call it a happy ending! 😉
- CabinGirl on December 5, 2006 at 12:51 pm
  
  That could work for me.

Knoxville Progressive on December 5, 2006 at 8:41 am

NASA on Monday unveiled a proposed strategy for lunar exploration (and eventual colonization), to return humans to the moon (and later, Mars). NASA plans to learn to use the moon’s natural resources to live off the land, make preparations for a journey to Mars, conduct a wide range of scientific investigations and encourage international participation. The colony will be built at the lunar south pole.

Diversified social roles for men, women, and children may have given Homo sapiens an advantage over Neanderthals, says a new study. Division of economic labor by sex and age emerged relatively recently in human evolutionary history and facilitated the spread of modern humans throughout Eurasia. “The competitive advantage enjoyed by modern humans came not just from new weapons and devices but from the ways in which their economic lives were organized around the advantages of cooperation and complementary subsistence roles for men, women, and children,” write researchers Steven L. Kuhn and Mary C. Stiner.

New research from the University of California indicates that reductions of human-generated air pollution could create unexpected agricultural benefits in increased rice production for one of the world’s poorest regions – the Indian subcontinent.

Increasing temperatures in California during the next 45 years could negatively affect the amount of almonds, walnuts, oranges, avocados and table grapes that Americans put on their tables. Production losses in some of California’s most popular crops could be as high as 40 percent by mid-century due to global warming.

A new metal-hydride compound that could help move hydrogen-powered cars into the realm of the practical has been discovered. The material can release hydrogen at room temperature, unlike other storage materials that have to be heated to 300C. This material would allow a quick start-up for a hydrogen-powered car, with the main fuel release then switching to other compounds with a higher hydrogen storage capacity.

Criminal psychopaths are people with aggressive and anti-social personalities who lack emotional empathy. They can commit hideous crimes, such as rape or murder, yet show no signs of remorse or guilt. Now, biological brain differences that mark out psychopaths as different from other people have been discovered. Psychopaths were far less responsive to fearful faces than healthy volunteers; it has been suggested that people with psychopathic disorders lack empathy because they have defects in processing facial and vocal expressions of distress, such as fear and sadness, in others. While treatment for this disorder is still years away, this is progress towards that goal.

New images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show three additional NASA spacecraft that have landed on Mars: the Spirit rover active on the surface since January 2004 and the two Viking landers. Story here and images here.

But there’s no global warming, oh no… Europe is experiencing the warmest autumn since Columbus first sailed to America. …it’s all natural and all just coincidences… And besides, it will go away when the Gulf Stream turns off…