Photograph a Crime, Go to Jail

This time, France really does look stupid...

Cellular-News.com:

France Criminalizes Citizen Journalists

France's Constitutional Council has passed a new law which would criminalize so called "citizen journalists" who record acts of violence. The rising numbers of cellphones which come with built in video-recorders has lead to a surge in bystanders recording crimes and events of note - then passing those recordings to the media. Under this new law, only accredited journalists would be permitted to make recordings in public places.

The French online civil liberties group, Odebi criticized the new law, which was approved on the 16th anniversary of the infamous Rodney King beating, which was recorded by a bystander on their camcorder. Under the new law, George Holliday who made the recording would himself have been a criminal - and could have faced prison.

The law, which was proposed by Minister of the Interior, and French Presidential hopeful, Nicolas Sarkozy has been designed to criminalize a range of public order offenses, such as the recent endemic of "happy slapping" where school children record attacks on their fellows and then distribute that video clip via mobile phones.

However, so wide is the scope of the law, that any recording of public violence by anyone other than an accredited journalist would now itself be a criminal activity.

While the government is proposing that bloggers and mobile phone networks could request "certification" with some restrictions - it seems that an average person who just happens to come across an act of violence in the streets and whips out their cellphone to record it, would now themselves be a criminal.

Some Science Tidbits

• An article in Lifescience.com tells how adding neutrons to your diet (by incorporating heavier isotopes into your food) may lengthen your life by 10%.
• A study in Sciencedaily.com finds that organic food (at least kiwis) is actually better for you.
• And another story there tells about a future cheap bio-fuel cell that runs on sugar and air.

News from across the ocean

Three interesting stories from the UK Register:

• Scientists create a malaria-resistant mosquito (with green-glowing eyes) to hopefully out-compete malaria-infected mosquitoes.
• The US Navy has announced the development of an electromagnetic ray that upsets the inner ear and causes violent motion sickness.
• Researchers from the Lancet arranged drugs into a top 20 list, depending on the damage they do to users and to society in general. At the top was heroin, with cocaine number two. Fourth worst drug was alchohol, and tobacco number six. Cannabis was number eleven. From one to four were considered class A drugs, the worst. From cannabis at eleven down to number twenty was class C, the mildest, with those in between being class B.

I knew it! I knew Coke dissolved my teeth!

One of my earlier memories is drinking Coca-Cola back in Georgia, where it was something like the state beverage, and noticing how rough and pittted my teeth felt immediately afterwards. Check out that PH table!

From LifeScience.com:

Acids in Popular Sodas Erode Tooth Enamel By Robin Lloyd LiveScience Senior Editor posted: 21 March 2007 05:26 pm ET

Root beer could be the safest soft drink for your teeth, new research suggests, but many other popular diet and sugared sodas are nearly as corrosive to dental enamel as battery acid. Prolonged exposure to soft drinks can lead to significant enamel loss, even though many people consider soft drinks to be harmless or just worry about their sugar content and the potential for putting on pounds, the study says. The erosive potential of colas is 10 times that of fruit juices in just the first three minutes of drinking, a study last year showed. The latest research, published in Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) journal General Dentistry, reports that drinking any type of soft drink hurts teeth due to the citric acid and/or phosphoric acid in the beverages. Non-colas are less acidic than colas overall, the study found, but they erode the teeth more effectively than colas. "This study simply doesn’t mirror reality," said American Beverage Association spokesperson Tracey Halliday. "The findings cannot be applied to real life situations where people's eating and drinking behaviors are very different and there are many factors at work." Nutrition Quiz 5 percent weight loss The study measured the acidity, or pH, of 20 commercial soft drinks, including Coke, Pepsi, 7 Up and their diet versions, immediately after cans were opened. Then slices of enamel from freshly extracted teeth were weighed before and after being immersed in the soft drinks for 48 hours. The result was that the teeth immersed in Coke, Pepsi, RC Cola, Squirt, Surge, 7 Up and Diet 7 Up lost more than 5 percent of their weight, according to the report by Poonam Jain of the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine and her colleagues. (Other sodas brought about losses in the enamel weight in the range of 1.6 percent to 5 percent). AGD spokesman Kenton Ross said that RC Cola was found to be the most acidic soft drink studied, with a pH of 2.387 (the pH scale ranges from 0 to 14 for most liquids, with 0 being the most acidic and 14 being the least acidic—or most alkaline). Cherry Coke was found to be the next most acidic (pH of 2.522), and Coke was the third most acidic soda tested (pH of 2.525). Battery acid has a pH of 1.0. Pure water at room temperature has a pH of 7.0. The results show that a soda's acidity is not the whole story when it comes to tooth erosion. The type of acid in the soda, level of soda and calcium content are also factors. Citric acid is the most erosive acid found in soft drinks and is the predominant acid in non-cola drinks. "The bottom line is that the acidity in all soft drinks is enough to damage your teeth and should be avoided," Ross said in a prepared statement. Top 10 Good Foods Gone Bad Root beer's advantage Root beer was found to be the least acidic of all soft drinks, with a pH 4.038 for the Mug brand, Jain and her colleagues found. The reason for the reduced acidity is that root beer is often non-carbonated and contains no phosphoric or citric acids. A 2006 study reported that orange juice and sports drinks also reduce the surface hardness of tooth enamel, but a cola reduced more—the dentin, surface enamel and two additional dental components. (Dental erosion refers to the action of acid on the entire tooth surface. Cavities and tooth decay tend to hit targeted areas, such as pits, grooves and spots where teeth are adjacent). In the past 40 years, many Americans have swapped nutrient-dense milk for sodas and other beverages that are mostly bereft of nutrients. In 1966, Americans drank, on average, 20 gallons of soft drinks and 33 gallons of milk. In 2003, Americans drank an average of 46 gallons of soft drinks and 22 gallons of milk. Milk contains minerals, proteins, vitamins and, most importantly, calcium. 10 Easy Paths to Self Destruction Study shortcomings No one swishes soda in their mouth for two full days, as was the case with the study, but the corrosive effect of soda starts nearly immediately, Jain's research points out, and increases with time. Richard Adamson, a scientific consultant to the American Beverage Association, called the study "unrealistic," pointing out, among other things, that toothbrushing was not factored in. "The most protective factor you have in your mouth is saliva, which has both a diluting and a buffering effect," Adamson told LiveScience. "Of course, you're not going to mirror reality (with the new study)." "There are many foods which are as important as soft drinks in oral health and dental hygiene," Adamson said. "Fruit and fruit juices and cider and food such as pickles and salad dressing and wine—those are just as important in regards to general erosion as soft drinks. There is no single food or beverage that is responsible for dental erosion. There are numerous factors. The thing is to enjoy everything in moderation." Ross recommends that consumers drink soda through a straw, if at all, as that reduces the teeth's exposure to the beverage. One way to reduce soda intake, he suggested, is to drink it only with meals.

While we're talking science, there's another really cool story here about how some scientists genetically re-engineered some mice to see in COLOR— unlike other mice, which lack one of the three color receptors we have.

Plasmonics

Here's something unique.

Plasmonics holds the key to LEDs 10x brighter, destroying cancer cells inside the body without harm to healthy cells, and communicating within microprocessors without the limitations of normal wires. To read more about the amazing world of Plasmonics, check out this Scientific American story.

Image: BRITISH MUSEUM, LONDON, U.K./BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

LYCURGUS CUP, a Roman goblet dating from the fourth century A.D., changes color because of the plasmonic excitation of metallic particles within the glass matrix. When a light source is placed inside the normally greenish goblet, it looks red.

“Damned Proud” of Dead Arab Women & Children

The UK, US and Israeli were alone in resisting an early ceasefire

March 22nd, 2007

James Bovard

Former US United Nations Ambassador John Bolton

told the BBC today that he was “damned proud” of

how the U.S. intentionally blocked efforts to achieve a

ceasefire last summer when Israel was bombing Beirut

and many other locales in Lebanon.

The BBC summarized Bolton’s comments: “A former top American diplomat says the US deliberately resisted calls for a immediate ceasefire during the conflict in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Former ambassador to the UN John Bolton told the BBC that before any ceasefire Washington wanted Israel to eliminate Hezbollah’s military capability.”

Bolton said it was “perfectly legitimate and good politics” for Israel to seek to crush Hezbollah. The fact that the Israelis used U.S. bombs to wreak death and destruction throughout Lebanon is apparently irrelevant. More than a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed by the Israeli government, with the Bush team cheering on each detonation.

AIPAC, the most powerful lobby in DC, bragged of its role in blocking any ceasefire. (A good critique of AIPAC’s role in the Lebanon carnage is here).

Bolton captures the arrogance and total hypocrisy of the Bush war on terrorism. In a meeting last August, Bolton “implied that because Lebanon harbored Hezbollah, Lebanese lives were forfeit,” according to a UN official who heard Bolton commenting in meetings at the time.

Neither AIPAC nor the Bush team suffered any backlash from Christian fundamentalists as a result of Israeli bombing of Christian villages. Most Lebanese Christians despise and oppose Hezbollah - but they were Lebanese so they apparently deserved to die.

As I wrote in blogs last summer, both Hezbollah and the Israeli government were guilty of mass murder. But the Bush administration’s absolute support (and re-arming) of a government that was intentionally slaughtering civilians is a crime that must not be forgot.

A Letter from One Stanford Professor to Another

Don Knuth is a legendary computer programmer and originator of the TEX programming/typesetting language and Professor Emeritis of The Art of Computer Programming at Stanford University. He and his wife have a sixteen rank pipe organ in their home.

This is from his Stanford website:

[the following letter was mailed in September 2002; I've had no response]

Dear Condi,

I'm 99.99% sure that my writing this letter will have no effect, but my conscience tells me to write it anyway. Danziger's cartoon has pushed me out of my lethargy.

[His cartoon shows her banging on a grand piano, saying "War! War! War!"]

When I knew you at Stanford I had the greatest admiration for your abilities and good sense. (And I was disappointed that we never were able to get together to play four-hands music.) But now I cannot help but express to you my chagrin that the warm feelings I once had have basically evaporated. I hope you can pause to try to understand why this might be the case.

Fundamentally I don't see how the government of my country has done anything whatsoever to address and correct the root causes of international terrorism. Quite the contrary; every action I can see seems almost designed to have the opposite effect --- as if orchestrated to maximize the finances of those who make armaments, by maximizing the number of people who now hate me personally for actions that I do not personally condone. How can I be a proud citizen of a country that unilaterally pulls out of widely accepted treaties, that refuses to accept a world court, that flouts fair trade with shameful policies regarding steel and agriculture, and that almost blindly supports Israel's increasingly unjustifiable occupation?

And worst of all, I find that my leaders, including you, are calling for war against a sovereign nation that we suspect to be corrupt, thereby (even if our suspicions are correct) undermining all precedents against unilateral action by other countries who might in future decide that our own policies are wrong. If we peremptorily strike country X, why shouldn't country X have a right to do the same to us, and to our children and grandchildren in future years?

On my trips to Europe all I can do is hope that my friends there can help their governments try to make somebody in my own government act responsibly.

Sincerely, Don Knuth

P.S. This is the second time in my life that I have written a letter to a U.S. government official. The first time was during the Vietnam war.

---

GEORGE IN FANTASY LAND

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Jim Hightower:

George W has so many fantasies that they're even affecting the First Lady's grasp of reality.

Laura Bush recently castigated the media for not reporting that "many parts of Iraq are stable now." She then added: "But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everyone."

Gosh, should we tell her? Yes, let's. There are some 185 attacks in Iraq every day, Laura. At least 3,000 Iraqi civilians have died in these attacks this year alone. Seventy-three U.S. soldiers died just in the month of February.

But, for flights of fantasy, no one is in George W's league. On President's Day, he ventured out for a photo-op at Mount Vernon, where he stood at the grave of George Washington. There – in a jaw-dropping moment of raw megalomania – Bush compared Washington's principled resolve during the Revolutionary War to his own intransigent stupidity in Iraq! "In the end," said Bush, "General Washington understood that the Revolutionary War was a test of wills, and his will was unbreakable," slyly inferring that if Big George were alive today, he would side with Little George's mulish insistence on battling those uppity insurgents in Iraq's civil war.

Gosh, should we tell him? Yes, let's. Washington and the soldiers of the Revolution were the insurgents, George. They were battling an arrogant and bumbling empire from afar that was occupying their land. And, guess what? The insurgents won!

While we're at it, let's tell George W another thing: It was Big George who rejected the mantle of king when the founders were creating our new government, and he also believed that executive power should be strictly limited by checks and balances, with congress and the judiciary being equal to the presidency.

This is Jim Hightower saying... Bush keeps saying that the public's disapproval doesn't phase him, because history will be his judge. On that, he and I agree.

A Different Analysis of Bush's South American Trip

let us join a long post on Narco-News, mid post...:

Antonio Cruz/Agência Brasil

Out-Flanked: A New War on Terra Arrives with Bush-Lula Ethanol Deal

Another Bush Family Energy Empire Now Forming in the Heart Of South America

By Garrett St. James
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

March 19, 2007

[. . .}

As the well-televised street clashes raged, Bush and Lula were celebrating a new bio-fuels deal between the two countries and drinking champagne. The word of the day was ethanol. An interesting side-event was the same day indictment of the notoriously corrupt Brazilian politician, Paulo Maluf, in New York City. Perhaps his arrest symbolized an act of good faith on the part of the Bush Administration at the bargaining table. Then came the grandiose boasting of “an energy revolution” and “the beginning of a brand new civilization.”

These were no ordinary quotes and it was no ordinary deal, either. Ethanol is not only going to make Lula’s Oligarch buddies very rich but with the help of the United States, Brazil is also going to become very powerful. The ramifications run very deep as well as they are wide. If people begin to think the days of unrestrained First World exploitation upon Latin America are the things of a forgettable past then they are also sadly mistaken. When one begins to look at what actually transpired on March 9th, they’ll begin to realize this was the culmination of a deal at least 30 years in making and could last for another 30 years into the future.

Brazil’s notorious and brutally oppressive Military Government first introduced ethanol production, during the 1970’s as an experiment to find cheaper and more efficient forms of alternative energy. Throughout Brazil’s transformation into a democracy during the 1980’s, to the turbulence caused by corrupt administrations and market crashes of the 1990’s, the ethanol industry steadily and successfully flourished. By the time President Lula was first inaugurated in January 2003, ethanol was the most commonly used fuel for Brazilian automobiles. For Brazil, the future was looking rosy and after decades of struggle: the PT (Workers Party) had at long last taken power.

Almost from the very instant of Lula’s New Year’s Day inauguration things began to get a little strange in the capital, Brasilia, though. People were surprised by Lula’s new fashionable appearance. Gone were the red tee shirts and blue jeans often worn by the self-made leader of trabalhadoros e campahneiros, only to be replaced by super expensive Italian suits. Oh well, Lula was President after all so he had to look Presidential didn’t he?

People must also remember that Lula was the leader of probably the most radical and powerful political party in the western hemisphere if not in the world. The PT was a tough as nails and well organized coalition comprising labor unions, student groups, land reformers and intellectuals. The traditional ruling oligarchs had a lot to fear and began to brace themselves for the inevitable onslaught of socio-economic reforms sure to follow a PT Presidential victory. The Party of the People had arrived and those gringos up north were definitely going to take notice. So everyone waited, January rolled into February and then March, April, June, July but nothing happened.

There was of course Lula’s highly touted “Zero Fome” program aimed at eliminating the starvation of millions of impoverished Brazilians (Nordestinos) living in the arid North Eastern regions of the country. Upon closer look even this seemed odd considering Lula might have been possibly wasting millions of reaisNordestinos to southern Brazil continued unabated which further eroded and over taxed the already decrepitating social infrastructures of major cities like Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. For these particular cities, the already insanely violent crime kept increasing. The Favelas that had absorbed the overwhelming majority of these displaced Nordestinos kept growing and growing. It was obvious to everyone that all of these new migrants were adding to the gross over-population of metropolitan centers. Everything was affected. Everything was falling apart faster and faster. Nothing had really changed except for the worst. transporting truck loads of rice and beans rather than looking for more pragmatic approaches to arid weather farming. The mass migration of hundreds of thousands of

What was also equally strange was Lula’s bizarre approach to international diplomacy. One example was when he quickly went to Libya attempting to open trade agreements between the two countries primarily with oil. Just days later, the international pariah Colonel Qadafi, became the new darling of the West’s Big Oil Companies which soon moved in to enjoy Libya’s world famous super-lite sweet crude. Then there was the Aristide Coup in Haiti. Lula was more than eager to supply the bulk of UN Peace Keeping forces much to the chagrin of his own government and people. Wasn’t Aristide and Haiti an American problem? Lula insisted and even today Brazilian soldiers are policing the streets of Port au Prince. Odd?

Then came wave after wave of corruption scandals, which have virtually destroyed much of the PT’s political infrastructure. Party Big Wigs and luminaries were falling like rain. It looked as if everyone in the PT was involved in some scandal or another: everyone that is except Lula. In spite of it all, Lula went on to comfortably win another four-year term in office in October of ‘06.

Today Brazil is still South America’s most powerful country. No one including Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez can do much without the support of Lula and Brazil. To the casual observer, It looks as if Lula rides the fence between the forces of radical socialist change led by Chavez and neoliberal free market capitalism from the imperialist giant up north. On March 9th, this all changed and Lula, despite what many experts are saying, is definitively now in the so-called neoliberal camp.

Not only will both Brazil and the USA become kings of the new worldwide ethanol fuels industry, but the very company running everything will be the Miami Florida based Inter-American Ethanol Commission. The former Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, and now agri-business tycoon, Roberto Rodrigues, created this newly formed company just last December. Who are his two principle partners? Luis Alberto Moreno from Columbia and Jeb Bush!

Now if people really begin to consider all the strange goings on emanating out of Brasilia from the Lula administration and the history of ethanol bio-fuels in general, things begin to make a lot more sense. Why was nothing of any importance done to stem the human tide of Nordestinos heading south year after year? Why would Lula turn his back on his Leftist past and do nothing to reform the crushing grip the oligarchs still have on the Brazilian economy? Why was the PT systematically gutted with scandal after scandal? Why was Lula so eager to commit troops after the anti-Aristide Coup in Haiti? Why was Lula running around “liberating” oil markets from previously pariah regimes like Libya and later Angola? Don’t forget that green and eco-friendly “Save the Amazon” campaign, either. Finally, what does the new ethanol bio-fuels pact between Brazil and the USA (Bush Family) really mean?

The answers are that the newly displaced Nordestino populations will make excellent slave labor for the expected ethanol producing sugarcane fields and sugar processing mills. The oligarchs as usual will be running and profiting from the enterprise. The PT has been effectively neutralized to keep anyone from getting in the way. Haiti is where the processed sugarcane will be refined into the new E10 ethanol based fuels which can be readily consumed by the American auto owners soon to be weaned off of fossil fuels coming out of the Middle East and Venezuela for starters. Lula has been an active agent promoting Big Oil’s interest in emerging third world markets and petroleum fields.

The Brazilian Amazon look’s like the perfect place to plant ever larger sugarcane crops for the soon to be exponentially growing worldwide ethanol demand. Brazil plans on doubling its ethanol production in five years to 30 billion liters. They’ll eventually have to quadruple this number once serious American ethanol consumption begins. In less than twenty years 300 billion liters are planned to be produced to feed other world markets such as China and India. Serious acreage is going to be needed to pull this off and take a big guess as to where this acreage can be found?

Finally, the Bush Family is re-diversifying its worldwide energy investments. Perhaps the sheiks of the Mid-East aren’t going to be such good close friends in the years to come? The Brazilian Oligarchs look much more interesting? Unfortunately it doesn’t stop there. The Bush Family has recently bought massive amounts of real estate in nearby Paraguay’s Chaco Region: an excellent geographical area to reside if you’re also interested in other energy industries and markets such as natural gas and hydroelectric Power. In the North it’s Bolivia, to the South is Argentina, to the West are Chile and Peru and to the East is Brazil. Well done.

Of course many people aren’t going to like these new arrangements. Lula and his eventual predecessors will have to continue to sell the idea that destroying much of Brazil’s world famous nature preserves is in the best interest of it’s economy. Bush (Hillary Clinton???) will have to convince the American Congress to strike down the unfair protectionist tariffs concerning Brazilian ethanol. Both Senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska are strongly backed by the fledgling American ethanol industry that supports these tariffs. It’s very interesting if you consider that both men are now running for President.

What does this all mean for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his visions of Neo-Bolivarism throughout Latin America? He too is being out-flanked like the rest of us. Eventually The United States is going to become less and less dependent upon his oil in the years to come. What about the Middle East? Everyone has been so distracted by what is going on over there that many of us have failed to notice what is going on below our noses.

Most of us know very well that the continued exploitation and needless deaths of thousands of people are going to continue in South America if Bush and friends are allowed to get away with this out-flanking maneuver: A new war on terra. Nothing ever changes with these guys…

Anesthetics and Olive Oil

"Researchers do know that the proper doses of ether, laughing gas, chloroform and other anesthetics are all based on their solubility in olive oil."

This is one of those things that makes me say, "WHAT??"

Rendering shows how researchers think nerves work by sound rather than electricity. A biological membrane at its melting point. The green molecules are liquid, and the red are solid. Molecules of anesthetic reduce the number of red areas so that the sound pulse can no longer transport its signal. The nerve is anesthetized, the thinking goes. Credit: Heiko Seeger, Niels Bohr Institute

Lifescience.com:

The olive oil clue

Nerves are wrapped in a membrane of lipids and proteins. Biology textbooks say a pulse is sent from one end of the nerve to the other with the help of electrically charged salts that pass through ion channels in the membrane. But the lack of heat generation contradicts the molecular biological theory of an electrical impulse produced by chemical processes, says Heimburg, who co-authored the new study with Copenhagen University theoretical physicist Andrew Jackson.

Instead, nerve pulses can be explained much more simply as a mechanical pulse of sound, Heimburg and Jackson argue. Their idea will be published in the Biophysical Journal.

Normally, sound propagates as a wave that spreads out and becomes weaker and weaker. But in certain conditions, sound can be made to travel without spreading and therefore it retains its intensity.

The lipids in a nerve membrane are similar to olive oil, the scientists explain. And the membrane has a freezing point that is precisely suited to the propagation of these concentrated sound pulses [graphic].

Eckenhoff is not convinced, however.

"It is difficult to explain away an enormous number of real electrical recordings in the cell, tissue and whole animal as being some kind of artifact," Eckenhoff told LiveScience. "And I cannot easily discern how the sound might be generated."

Explaining anesthesia

The idea from Heimburg and Jackson, if it were proven true, could have implication for anesthetics, another mysterious process.

Oddly, scientists don't understand exactly what happens when a patient is anesthetized. While the goal of an anesthetic is to prevent the brain from feeling pain, the drugs can affect a patient's heart rate and breathing. So a better understanding of how it all works would allow development of better drugs.

Researchers do know that the proper doses of ether, laughing gas, chloroform and other anesthetics are all based on their solubility in olive oil. But how the nerves are turned off is a mystery.

Heimburg and Jackson offer an explanation.

If a nerve is to be able to transport sound pulses, they say, then the melting point of its membrane must be close to body temperature. Anesthetics change the melting point so that sound pulses can't propagate, they conclude. Nerves are put on stand-by and a patient doesn't feel the knife slicing into his body.

While Eckenhoff acknowledges there is much to learn, he expects the precise effects of anesthesia will ultimately be explained by an integration of current theories rather than by employing the new idea of sound pulses.

Peeps from above

Bonnie and I were in her kitchen just now and heard this intermittent "PEEP!" Very loud and abrupt. I looked around the window curtain and saw a tiny hummingbird sitting in the top of the still-leafless apple tree, less than ten feet from me, and about at our level.

When next I heard a "PEEP" the hummingbird made no move whatsoever, but I saw a blur above the tree, so that's where I focused my attention.

Seconds later, at its next appearance, the blur resolved into another hummingbird, diving at top speed towards the tree, instantly going "PEEP" and then retreating, as if bouncing from an invisible trampoline a few feet above the tree. "Bonnie, you've got to see this! Look outside the kitchen window!"

So of course she looked, and of course the second hummingbird never appeared again.

Sobering Economic Thoughts

This guy says commodities are the way to go.

from 321gold.com

[. . .]

...In a normal world we would have either a recession or inflation and that's a piece of cake for the Fed. Lower rates with the former and raise rates with the latter. Unfortunately for the Fed stagflation is the worst of all possible worlds and its complicated by the fact that most major countries are raising rates. Why is that so important? We live in a very competitive world and the Fed isn't excluded from that competition. They have to sell their junk paper to the rest of humanity and the only way they can get that done is to restrict supply or raise rates. Restricting supply means spending less money and that would drive the country into a deflationary tailspin. That leaves raising rates. I was convinced for months that Bernanke would choose that path, but now I have serious doubts. A slowing debt-ridden economy and expanding rates would lead to the same deflationary scenario. The Fed has tried to sing the bull to sleep by printing money like there is no tomorrow, but we're at the point where it's not enough. I now suspect that they will be forced to lower rates in an all out attempt to fend off not only deflation but a debt crisis. Inflate and then inflate some more! There are going to inflate debt away and in the process they'll destroy the bond and the dollar. Neither can survive for very long with lower rates, especially the dollar. A sharply devalued dollar would eliminate a lot of debt.

[. . .]

CONCLUSION

I've been walking this earth for over half a century and I see things now that I never would have believed as little as ten years ago. I see the world's greatest nation in decay, and not just economic decay, but political and moral decay as well. I see a crazed administration engaged on something called "nation building" and if they've got to kill a couple hundred Iraqis a day so be it. Obviously no one in Washington has a history book because if they did, and they would turn to the paragraph on a police action called Viet Nam, they would see that that particular approach failed miserably. I've lived in Latin America for the better part of twenty-five years and for the first time, people don't want dollars. They actually prefer their own currency. Here's my last news flash for you. If a fellow with no education, a poor diet, and inadequate medical treatment living at 3,500 meters above sea level can figure out that the US dollar is undesirable as a store of wealth, how much longer do you think it can last as the world's reserve currency? The short answer is that the party is over and all things dollar related will go up the stack with it. What we saw last week is the equivalent of the first drops in a storm destined to last more than forty days and forty nights.

Mar 8, 2007
-Enrico Orlandini

Something to do with all that Pesky CO2

Meanwhile, some other guys have made a catalyst that mimics the way photosynthesizing plants use CO2 as a raw material. It's not as efficient as plants, and uses benzene instead of light, but it's apparently quite a breakthrough.

Mineral may be new state of matter

What????

Yes, that's what they say.

Herbertsmithite's electrons aren't paired —they organize into triangles, so it exhibits the illusion of fractionally charged "quasiparticles," the prediction of which garnered a Nobel Prize for some guys in 1998.

Now some other guys have come up with an alternate explanation for the basis of matter in the universe, where the particles we detect are just the ends of what they call nets of strings, with all these strings entangled, like our ordinary garden variety electrons whose spin can be entangled no matter how far apart they get. Running the calculations for their theory, they came up with Maxwell's Equations, not a bad sign, as well as the fractional charged quasi-particle effect found in herbertsmithite. Some yet other other guys say that either herbertsmithite, or something similar, could be to quantum computing what silicon is to regular computers.

Could things get any weirder?

This is way over my head.

Back to the Bad News

There's a very informative article by Julian Delasantellis:

The subprime dominoes in motion

in the Asia Times Online.

Well worth reading.

Powerful Little Light: LED With 1,000 Lumens

Physorg.com:

Osram has developed a small light-emitting diode spotlight that achieves an output of more than 1,000 lumens for the first time. That’s brighter than a 50-watt halogen lamp, thereby making the device suitable for a broad range of general lighting applications. The Ostar Lighting LED, which will be launched on the market this summer, can provide sufficient light for a desk from a height of two meters, for example. Its small size also enables the creation of completely new lamp shapes. Source: Siemens

Osram has developed a small light-emitting diode spotlight that achieves an output of more than 1,000 lumens for the first time. That’s brighter than a 50-watt halogen lamp, thereby making the device suitable for a broad range of general lighting applications.

The Ostar Lighting LED, which will be launched on the market this summer, can provide sufficient light for a desk from a height of two meters, for example. Its small size also enables the creation of completely new lamp shapes. A lumen (lm) is the unit of measurement for the amount of light emitted by a light source. A 60-watt light bulb emits 730 lm, while a 50-watt halogen lamp has an output of approximately 900 lm. To achieve the 1,000 lm output for the tiny Ostar Lighting LED, the experts at Siemens’ Osram subsidiary employed a sophisticated system for high chip-packing density, whereby the researchers managed to integrate six high-performance LED lighting chips into the unit’s small housing. Each chip has an area of only one square millimeter, which makes for very concentrated overall luminosity.

Different types of LEDs are used today in various areas, for example as background lighting in cell phone displays, as well as in car turn-signal lights, brake lights, and daytime running lights. The benefits are obvious: The diodes are extremely small and consume little energy because they efficiently convert electricity into light. The Ostar Lighting LED, for example, produces 75 lumens per watt at 350 milli-amperes of operating current — much more than an incandescent lamp, which only converts a fraction of the electricity supplied into light, with the rest lost as heat energy. In addition, LEDs contain no lead or mercury, which makes them very environmentally friendly. They also last around ten times longer than halogen lamps and 50 times longer than incandescent lamps, thereby helping to significantly reduce maintenance costs.

For many years, however, LEDs were unsuited for room lighting applications because they weren’t bright enough. The Ostar Lighting LED marks a further step toward suitability for such applications. Osram has already supplied a Migros supermarket in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen with 18,000 Golden Dragon LEDs, which have a lower output than the Ostar Lighting units. These LEDs emit neither UV rays nor heat, which means they have virtually no negative impact on delicate grocery items such as milk, meat, fruit and vegetables.

At Last! Some Good News!

And all it takes is 40 cups of cocoa a week!

Cocoa 'Vitamin' Health Benefits Could Outshine Penicillin

Science Daily — The health benefits of epicatechin, a compound found in cocoa, are so striking that it may rival penicillin and anaesthesia in terms of importance to public health, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. Norman Hollenberg, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told C&I that epicatechin is so important that it should be considered a vitamin.

Hollenberg has spent years studying the benefits of cocoa drinking on the Kuna people in Panama. He found that the risk of 4 of the 5 most common killer diseases: stroke, heart failure, cancer and diabetes, is reduced to less then 10% in the Kuna. They can drink up to 40 cups of cocoa a week. Natural cocoa has high levels of epicatechin.

“This is a very important fundamental achievement as no one has ever seen a photon a second time,”

says Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler at the University of Ulm in Germany.

This is pretty impressive. Think about that. No one has ever "seen" a photon a second time.

Photon's life cycle 'watched' in full

• 18:00 14 March 2007
• NewScientist.com news service
• Amarendra Swarup

Enlarge image

Superconducting mirrors made of copper covered by a thin layer of niobium. These mirrors are able to store microwave photons up to one-tenth of a second (Image: Michel Brune)

For the first time the birth, life and death of a single photon – a particle of light – has been "watched" in real time.

Previously, scientists were restricted to momentary glances because the mere act of measurement absorbed and destroyed the delicate quantum particles.

Now, Serge Haroche and colleagues at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, have succeeded in tracking photons over an average lifetime of 0.13 seconds – long enough for a photon to travel one-tenth of the way to the Moon.

At the heart of their remarkable achievement lies a small box-like cavity, walled with ultra-reflective, superconducting mirrors, which is cooled to just 0.5° above absolute zero (-273.15°C). Photons appear and disappear randomly within the cavity due to tiny energy fluctuations in space that cause quantum particles to blink in and out of existence. However, once there, the photon is trapped, bouncing billions of times between the mirrored walls before it decays.

Trapped and annihilated

To observe the photon, the researchers passed rubidium atoms across the cavity one at a time. A single rubidium atom is unable to absorb a single photon, because the photon is not the correct package of energy to boost the rubidium atom to a different energy state.

However, the photon's electric field slightly shifts the atom’s energy levels by a measurable amount (once the atom has emerged), which the team used to determine whether there were any trapped photons.

“This is not performed at the expense of the photon energy, so if one is detected, it is still there afterwards for successive rubidium atoms, allowing us to track it,” says Haroche. “A typical signal has a sequence of atoms at one energy level, meaning an empty cavity, suddenly interrupted by atoms at another energy level, signalling the photon birth. Later, a jump in the opposite direction signals the photon annihilation.”

Truly, we are living in the future.

Just coincidentally, another current article (about D-mesons spontaneously changing into anti-D-mesons) describes more interactions between "virtual" particles and regular ones:

By observing the rare process of D-meson mixing, BaBar collaborators can test the intricacies of the Standard Model. To switch from matter to antimatter, the D-meson must interact with "virtual particles," which through quantum fluctuations pop into existence for a brief moment before disappearing again. Their momentary existence is enough to spark the D-meson's transformation into an anti-D-meson.

What's mind-blowing to me is that these "virtual" particles were theoretical originally. Someone (Feinman?) figured they must exist. There's an experiment that shows their existence (by measuring the force between two very close plates) but I've never heard of any other effects caused by them.

Harnessing the energy of "virtual particles" is one of the Holy Grails of "free energy" research, which on it's face sounds as wacky as these "virtual particles."

Reminds me of something the Firesign Theater used to say:

"Living in the Future is like having Bees in your head. But there they are!"

Now, here's an interesting afternoon of reading:

Hard-Boiled Dreams of the World:

10 False Flags that Changed the World

Introduction…

Nero, Christians, and the Great Fire of Rome

Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain

The Manchurian Incident

Secrets of the Reichstag Fire

Fake Invasion at Gleiwitz

The Myth of Pearl Harbor

Israeli Terrorist Cell Uncovered in Egypt

U.S.-Sponsored Terrorism: Operation Northwoods

Phantoms in the Gulf of Tonkin

The September 11, 2001 Attacks

Finally, the Democrats Will Stop Bush's Iran War!

well, maybe not...

Jonathan Schwartz at TinyRevolution:

Democrats Just As Embarrassingly Craven As You Expect

As I've mentioned, there's quite a lot Congress can do to prevent Bush from attacking Iran—if they want to. So if we find ourselves at war with Iran, it won't just be Bush's responsibility. It will also belong to a Democratic-controlled Congress.

One of the most powerful of Congress' tools would be to attach a prohibition of such an attack without their approval to an emergency supplemental appropriations bill for Iraq. Bush might veto it, but he'd pay a political price for it.

And to Nancy Pelosi's credit, she at least pretended she wanted to add such language to the House version of the current supplemental. To her enormous discredit, she's now folding:

Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

Here are the only specific Democrats the article cites:

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said in an interview there is widespread fear in Israel about Iran, which is believed to be seeking nuclear weapons and has expressed unremitting hostility about the Jewish state.

"It would take away perhaps the most important negotiating tool that the U.S. has when it comes to Iran," she said of the now-abandoned provision.

"I didn't think it was a very wise idea to take things off the table if you're trying to get people to modify their behavior and normalize it in a civilized way," said Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York.

That's a great argument. Obviously the proposed language wouldn't "take away" the possibility of the U.S. using force. It would only take away the possibility of Bush using force without Congressional approval. In other words, both Berkley and Ackerman want Iran to believe Bush might attack them even if Congress opposes it.

In this, Berkley and Ackerman are regressing from their votes in 2002 to give Bush authority to attack Iraq. Now they want Bush to be able to attack Iran without even asking their opinion.

Fab@Home

Physorg.com:

Low-cost, Home-built 3-D Printer Could Launch a Revolution

"Fabbing" a Lego tire. Credit: Lindsay France/Cornell University

The Altair 8800, introduced in the early 1970s, was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. It was crude, didn't do much, but many historians would say that it launched the desktop computer revolution. Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, thinks a little machine he calls a Fab@Home may have the same impact.

Some day, Lipson believes, every home will have a "fabber," a machine that replicates objects from plans supplied by a computer. Such devices could change how we acquire common products, he suggests: Instead of buying an iPod, you would download the plans over the Internet and the fabber would make one for you.

Such machines could evolve from the 3-D printers currently used by industrial engineers for "rapid prototyping." They design parts in computer-aided design programs and feed the designs to 3-D printers to make working plastic models. A 3-D printer has a small nozzle that scans back and forth across a surface, depositing tiny droplets of quick-hardening plastic. After each scan, the nozzle moves up a notch and scans again until it has built up the complete object, layer by layer. With multiple nozzles or a means of swapping supply cartridges, the machine can create objects made of many different materials. An electronic circuit, for example, can be made by combining an organic semiconductor, metallic inks and ceramic insulators.

Price tags for these machines average around $100,000, but you can build your own Fab@Home for about $2,300 worth of off-the-shelf parts. The prototype, designed by Evan Malone, a Ph.D. candidate in Lipson's Computational Synthesis Laboratory, is slower than the commercial models, and its resolution, or ability or produce fine detail, is lower, but people are finding practical -- and often unexpected -- uses for it.

A high school student in Kentucky is "fabbing" chocolate bars.

Commercial machines can't be modified, which, Lipson says, impedes the progress of the technology, but the Fab@Home is "open source." Anyone can download the plans at http://www.fabathome.org , which is getting about 20,000 hits a day. The site also includes construction hints, ideas for applications, notes on the history of 3-D printing and discussion groups. People are invited and encouraged to make improvements, and a sort of cult is slowly forming.

So far, Lipson says, about a dozen people have said they are building one, and he knows of three that are actually up and running -- two at the University of Washington and one in Innsbruck, Austria. Lipson's group has built several and lent a couple to other researchers.

Some recent developments:

• Biologists at Rockefeller University have been using a Fab@Home to deposit slime mold cells in various arrangements to see how the distribution influences their ability to form colony organisms.

• The British magazine Auto Express suggests that fabbers could be used to make auto parts, allowing individuals to customize cars in ways that were previously available only to those with large manufacturing facilities.

• While the usual expectation is to make solid objects out of epoxy or other quick-hardening plastic, the Fab@Home also can be used with plaster, Play-Doh, silicone, wax (to make forms for casting), low-melting-point metals and a variety of other materials.

• Cornell graduate student Dan Periard and Jennifer Yao '08 have been loading commercial frosting into the machine to make cake decorations. It's not frivolous work, Lipson says: Because frosting dissolves in water it can provide temporary support for hollow structures and later be washed away.

• A high school student in Kentucky is experimenting with a heated syringe to "fab" with chocolate.

Future fabbing machines will have to shift from one raw material to another in midstream and probably deposit material in three dimensions, not just layers, says Lipson. Research in his lab is taking early steps. Malone has built a machine that uses a rack of interchangeable cartridges to make devices out of several materials at once. So far, it has made a working battery, complete with outer case. Malone's long-range goal is to "print" a complete robot, including limbs, actuators, control circuitry and batteries.

Meanwhile, Lipson says, just as the Altair inspired tinkerers to add disk drives, keyboards and monitors and write operating systems and word processors, perhaps the Fab@Home will inspire new fabbing technology.

Source: Cornell University

Just how did Mueller get to be head of the FBI?

Chris Floyd to the rescue again, in this post "Scar Tissue: How the Bushes Brought Bedlam to Iraq,"about BCCI and George Bush Sr. (It must be Chris Floyd week...)

As soon as the BNL case broke, Bush moved to throttle the investigation. He appointed lawyers from both Cardoen and Matrix to top Justice Department posts – where they supervised the officials investigating their old companies. The overall probe was directed by Justice Department investigator Robert Mueller. Meanwhile, White House aides applied heavy pressure on other prosecutors to restrict the range of the probe – especially the fact that Bush cabinet officials Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger had served as consultants for BNL during their pre-White House days as spear-carriers for yet another secretive international front that profits from war, weapons, and the avid greasing of highly-placed palms: Kissinger Associates. The U.S. Senate later found that the probe had been unaccountably "botched" – witnesses went missing, CIA records got "lost," all sorts of bad luck. Most of the big BCCI players went unpunished or got off with wrist-slap fines and sanctions.

One of the White House aides who unlawfully intervened in the BNL prosecution was a certain factotum named Jay S. ByBee. In 1994, said factotum was appointed by George W. Bush to a place on the federal appeals court – a lifetime sinecure of perks and power. Mueller, meanwhile wound up as head of the FBI, appointed to the post in by George W. in July 2001. Well done, thou good and faithful servants!

Ritter says Hillary knew Saddam was disarmed, but voted for the Iraq War resolution anyway

It Doesn't Matter If Hillary Apologizes for Her Iraq War Vote

By Scott Ritter, AlterNet. Posted March 3, 2007.

Hillary Clinton knew years before she voted for the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs -- Bill Clinton lied about Iraq's weapons programs to justify attacking the country in 1998.

Sen. Hillary Clinton wants to become President Hillary Clinton. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she said, announcing her plans to run for the Democratic nomination for the 2008 presidential election.

Let there be no doubt that Hillary Clinton is about as slippery a species of politician that exists, one who has demonstrated an ability to morph facts into a nebulous blob that blurs the record and distorts the truth. While she has demonstrated this less than flattering ability on a number of issues, nowhere is it so blatant as when dealing with the issue of the ongoing war in Iraq and her vote in favor of this war.

Ok, I was too restrictive

Read all of Chris Floyd's webpage.

You will be rewarded by tales of the Clinton/Bush conglomerate (including reasons why Bill and Bush Sr. are so close), dire warnings about the upcoming possible Iran war (and possible ways to stop it), and a photo of Tony Blair from the days of his rock band, Ugly Rumours.

Chris Floyd reminds us of other suicides

Chris Floyd:

Kholodov was just one of the several journalists who met their final deadline with Uncle Borya in the Kremlin. This is a particular hazard of those who delve into military matters, like Safronov. The Russian military, like its American counterpart, is a vast, amorphous, many-headed hydra, with numerous secret units, criminal enterprises and rogue operators, all of them well-armed and many of them trained in the blackest covert arts. One needn't automatically assume that presidential orders (or knowledge) are required to instigate the murder of a reporter disturbing some well-feathered military nest somewhere.

On the other hand, the window -drop "suicide" does have a well-established official pedigree – and not just in Russia. When I first read of Safronov's death, I immediately thought of a similar case involving the death of an American scientist who had uncovered Nazi-style medical experiments on prisoners and tests of LSD and other mind-altering drugs on unsuspecting targets. He too "committed suicide" by somehow hurtling himself through a glass window from a hotel room, while in the company of a CIA handler. The government cover-up of his death continued for decades, and was assisted, years after the death, by the knowing deception of two top presidential aides: Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

I wrote about the case of Frank Olson for CounterPunch in 2002. The story traces "the thin red cord that weaves in and out of the shifting facades of reason and respectability that mask the brutal machinery of power. At certain rare moments the thread flashes into sight, emerging from the chaotic jumble of unbearable truth and life-giving illusion that makes up human reality." One emergence was the Frank Olson case, which had been kept alive by his son, Eric [shown in a childhood photo with Frank below], who for half a century tried to find out what happened to his father on that fatal night in 1953. As I wrote then:

Frank's son, Eric, believes he knows the answer now: his father was murdered to keep the thread from sight, to "protect" the American people from the knowledge that their own government had taken up and extended Nazi experiments on mind control, psychological torture and chemical warfare – and that it was conducting these experiments as the Nazis did, on unwilling subjects, on captives and "expendables," even to the point of "termination."

Frank Olson was a CIA scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the Army's biological weapons research center. Ostensibly he was a civilian employee of the Army; his family didn't know his true employer. Olson worked on methods of spreading anthrax and other toxins; some of his colleagues were involved in mind control drugs and torture techniques. But his life within the charmed circle of the American intelligence elite would unravel with dizzying speed in just a few months in 1953.

It began in the summer of that year, when Olson made several trips to Europe, to investigate secret American-British research centers in Germany. There he found the CIA was testing "truth serums" and other torture drugs on "expendables," including captured Russian agents. He told a British colleague that he had witnessed "horrors" there – horrors which called into starkest question his own work on biochemical weapons. He came home a changed man, troubled, morose. He told his wife he wanted to leave government service.

But it was too late: the brutal machinery was already grinding. His British colleague told his own superiors about Olson's concerns; they in turn informed the CIA that Olson was now a "security risk." Not long after his return, Olson given LSD by one of his colleagues – slipped into his drink as part of a covert "field experiment." A few days later, he was flown to New York, ostensibly for psychiatric treatment at the hands of a CIA doctor – who prescribed whiskey and pills. Then he was taken to a CIA magician – yes, a magician – who apparently tried to hypnotize him for interrogation.

Finally he checked into a cheap hotel – with a CIA handler, Robert Lashbrook, in tow. Olson called his wife, told her he was feeling better and would be home the next day. But that night, he was found dead on the street, 10 floors below. The handler said that Olson had apparently thrown himself through the closed window in a suicidal fit. The government told the family it was simply a tragic suicide. They didn't mention the LSD – or the fact that Olson worked for the CIA.

It would take Eric Olson 49 years to piece together as much of the truth as we are ever likely to know about what happened that night. But first would come a false dawn, a cruel trick played on the family by cynical operators in Ford Administration, who used a screen of half-truth and deliberate falsehood to divert the Olsons – and the nation – from the darkest tangles of the thread. Two of those operators would work the thread – play upon it, thrive on it, hold hard to its damp crimson stain – to rise from the obscurity of White House functionaries to positions of colossal, world-shaking power:

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

(The complete story, with annotations, can be found here: The Secret Sharers: The CIA, the Bush Gang, and the Killing of Frank Olson.)

So let us lay not that flattering unction to our souls, that such mysterious deaths and defenestrations occur only in the mephitic air of Putin's Moscow. Inconvenient people – especially those persistent enough to be a bother but not powerful or connected enough to protect themselves from reprisal – are removed from the scene, one way or another, all the time. Gangsters do it; terrorists do it; and so do agents of the state, "rogue" or otherwise.