A collection of "fan" mail on the Warner Brothers YouTube Page

 

	kplesz (22 minutes ago) Spam Marked as spam Message to the entertainment industry: There is nothing you can do, short of outlawing technology, that will prevent people from easily and quickly getting copies of stuff. Because that's what technology has made possible. So what you need to do before you completely lose touch with reality (assuming it's not too late already) is to acknowledge that there is no longer a future in making money from content distribution, because technology has put that power in the hands of those who can do it best - the consumer. Sorry guys. Your gravy train is derailed. Find a new way to make money from your consumer..... you know... one that doesn't involve suing them.
	queensowntalia (24 minutes ago) Spam Marked as spam Incompetence. I will never, EVER buy any CD from Warner Music ever again, and I will advise everyone I know to do similar. Companies run this poorly deserve not a red cent of my money.
	ithacated (34 minutes ago) Spam Marked as spam dear warner music group, you're not doing a very good job pleasing your customers. in fact, you're ruining youtube. get with the times. do something innovative instead of retreating into a dark corner like an injured dog. chew your leg off, heal, and return to the prowl. because I know you love that prowl.
	XXXSBAG (42 minutes ago) Spam Marked as spam The artists I like get my money because I go to their shows and buy the merch there. I find a lot of new artists by surfing around on YouTube and the internet. It's a shame that good artists who made the mistake of signing with WB will never get my money because I will have never heard of them due to the legal take down notices.
	graffle (45 minutes ago) Spam Marked as spam I believe that as the dissemination of media and copyright law evolves there will be even greater ironies than this, but not many. Unfortunately the biggest loser here is you, WBM. Consider all the potential new revenues you've just lost by disallowing people to hear samples of your product in a way that promotes and reinforces the belief that you've hit the end of the road in your fiscal evolution while annoying potential customers enough that they won't buy your product. and they will be verbose about it. "There is no bad pr" appears to have lost it's relevance.
	anothe (1 hour ago) Spam Marked as spam Hello WBM, Sire Records, the company YOU own has had all its videos taken down by you. Nice work banning your own official videos. It makes your company is a laughing stock. It also brings your company to a new low short changing the artists on your label as well as their fans. If you cant even feature your own videos on your own sites then it begs the question what are you paying anyone for? Save yourselves the trouble and ban everything and tell the music artists to sign to a label who aren't scum like you.
	Kagakusha (1 hour ago) Spam Marked as spam Haha, you guys are peeing at your own shoes.
	OrvelZ (1 hour ago) Spam Marked as spam You will fail, we will prosper. Go back to the stone ages!

http://www.youtube.com/user/warnermusicgroup

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Ron Paul On The Swine Flu Scare

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Ronald Reagan: vengeful, score-settling, Hard Left ideologue

by Glenn Greenwald

This is a perfect illustration of how severely our political spectrum has shifted in the last two decades and how depraved and extremist our political and media classes have become:

Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, today:  "When to Torture":

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. . . . The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. . . .

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

Ronald Reagan, May 20, 1988, transmitting the Convention Against Torture to the Senate for ratification:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention.  It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

Convention Against Torture, signed and championed by Ronald Reagan, Article II/IV:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, April 29, 2009:

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified.

The views that Ronald Reagan not only advocated, but signed a treaty compelling the U.S. to adhere to, are ones that are now -- in the view of our dominant media narrative -- the hallmarks of The Hard Left:  torture is never justified; there are "no exceptional circumstances" justifying it; it must be declared to be a serious criminal offense ; and -- most of all -- the U.S., as Ronald Regan put it, "is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."  Reagan's explicit view that the concept of "universal jurisdiction" permits signatory nations (such as Spain) to prosecute torturers from other countries (such as the U.S.) is now considered so fringe that it's almost impossible to find someone in mainstream American debates willing to advocate it.

If you now believe about torture and prosecutions exactly what Ronald Reagan advocated in 1988 -- or what Israel today advocates -- then, according to our establishment narrative, you are, by definition, a member of the Hard Left.  And nobody who believes what Reagan advocated could possibly, in Krauthammer's words today, be entrusted with national security decisions. 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/01/shifts/index.html

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Contractors paid $1,000 a day to supervise, design torture program

 by Raw Story

Two former military officers, both psychologists, were paid $1,000 a day by the Central Intelligence Agency to supervise the torture and waterboarding of US detainees, according to a report published late Thursday.

According to current and former government officials cited by ABC News, the CIA doled out responsibility for waterboarding to a private contractor, Mitchell Jessen and Associates. Waterboarding of detainees was designed to be "safe" by the two men running the firm, Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell.

The two worked out of an unmarked office in Spokane, Washington, according to ABC.

Both men refused to speak on the record — and their refusals (here and here) have been captured on videotape.

"It's clear that these psychologists had an important role in developing what became the CIA's torture program," Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, was quoted as saying.

Ex-U.S. officials told the network the two were the architects of the CIA's 10-step interrogation plan.

"Associates say the two made good money doing it, boasting of being paid a $1,000 a day by the CIA to oversee the use of the techniques on top al Qaeda suspects at CIA secret sites," ABC notes.

"The whole intense interrogation concept that we hear about, is essentially their concepts," according to Col. Steven Kleinman, an Air Force interrogator.

But, the network's reporters add, "it turns out neither Mitchell nor Jessen had any experience in conducting actual interrogations before the CIA hired them.

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/05/01/contractors-paid-1000-a-day-to-supervise-design-torture-program/#tab=home&url=home.php

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A Sick Situation

Early this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that anyone with flu symptoms stay home from work or school.

President Obama reiterated that advice at his press conference on Wednesday night. "If you are sick, stay home," he said. "If your child is sick, keep them out of school."

"I know it sounds trivial," the president said, after asking families to start taking other "very sensible precautions" like washing hands and covering up during coughs. "But it makes a huge difference."

The president's admonition to the sick to stay home didn't sound trivial to Silvia Del Valle, a 42-year-old restaurant worker in Miami.

It sounded impossible.

When I spoke to her Thursday morning, Del Valle was sick in bed with a cough and a fever. Was she planning to go to work, I asked her, Obama's press conference still fresh in my mind.

"Yes," she said. "I need to go. Because if I don't go, I lose my job."

Del Valle's not alone. Nearly half of all private sector workers in our country – more than 59 million people – have no paid sick time at all. The problem is particularly acute among women, low-wage workers – more than three-quarters of whom have no paid sick days – and part-timers.

Food service employees are the least likely to have access to sick leave. According to the Institute for Women's Policy Research, only 14 percent of the people serving and handling food in restaurants can stay home from work when they're coughing and sneezing, without fear of losing their jobs. José Oliva, the policy coordinator for the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, told me that among the food service employees he normally counsels – many of whom, like Del Valle, speak poor English and earn well below the minimum wage for tipped employees – only about one percent can stay home sick without the fear of losing pay or even their jobs.

http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/30/sick-leave/?th&emc=th

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1976 Swine Flu Propaganda

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Swine gets human flu

Herman Swine of Cincinnati got the flu this week...Mr. Swine (a golfer) will soon return to the links with his wife Patty, once he's feeling up to par!

 

Herman Swine of Cincinnati got the flu this week but he's better now, according to Dr. Anasaurus Rex, who is seeing a lot of this. "It was just the flu," he reiterated.

 

Herman Swine of Soo-eee Falls got the flu this week...Mr. Swine (a former police officer) will soon return to the family farm, Swill Hill Acres, once he's feeling in the pink!

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetWits/

 

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Piglet and Pooh

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When Pig Viruses Fly!

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"Bernie Madoff, Scapegoat" by Michael Moore

The following piece written by Michael Moore appears in this week's Time magazine (and in full at Time.com) as part of their annual "Time 100" issue highlighting their choices for "The World's Most Influential People."

Elie Wiesel called him a "God." His investors called him a "genius." But, proving correct that old adage from the country and western song, you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.

Bernie Madoff, for at least 20 years, ran a Ponzi scheme on thousands of clients, among them the people you and I would consider the best and brightest. Business leaders, celebrities, charities, even some of his own relatives and his defense attorney were taken for a ride (this has to be the first time a lawyer was hosed by the client).

We're clearly in one of those historic, game changing years: up is down, red is blue and black is President. Aside from Obama himself, no person will provide a more iconic face of this end-of-capitalism-as-we-know-it year than Bernard Lawrence Madoff.

Which is too bad. Yes, he stole $65 billion from some already quite wealthy people. I know that's upsetting to them because rich guys like Bernie are not supposed to be stealing from their own kind. Crime, thievery, looting — that's what happens on the other side of town. The rules of the money game on Park Avenue and Wall Street are comprised of things like charging the public 29% credit card interest, tricking people into taking out a second mortgage they can't afford, and concocting a student loan system that has graduates in hock for the next 20 years. Now that's smart business! And it's legal. That's where Bernie went wrong — his scheming, his trickery was an outrage both because it was illegal and because he preyed on his side of the tracks.

Had Mr. Madoff just followed the example of his fellow top one-percenters, there were many ways he could have legally multiplied his wealth many times over. Here's how it's done. First, threaten your workers that you'll move their jobs offshore if they don't agree to reduce their pay and benefits. Then move those jobs offshore. Then place that income on the shores of the Cayman Islands and pay no taxes. Don't put the money back into your company. Put it into your pocket and the pockets of your shareholders. There! Done! Legal!

But Bernie wanted to play X-games Capitalism, run by the mantra that's at the core of all capitalistic endeavors: Enough Is Never Enough. You have the right to make as much as you can, and if people are too stupid to read the fine print of their health insurance policy or their GM "100,000-mile warranty," well, tough luck, losers. Buyers beware!

It would be too easy — and the wrong lesson learned — to put Bernie on TIME's list all by himself. If Ponzi schemes are such a bad thing, then why have we allowed all of our top banks to deal in credit default swaps and other make-believe rackets? Why did we allow those same banks to create the scam of a sub-prime mortgage? And instead of putting the people responsible in the cell block in Lower Manhattan, where Bernie now resides, why did we give them huge sums of our hard-earned tax dollars to bail them out of their self-inflicted troubles? Bernard Madoff is nothing more than the scab on the wound. He's also a most-needed and convenient distraction. Where's the photo on this list of the ex-chairmen of AIG, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup? Where's the mug shot of Phil Gramm, the senator who wrote the bill to strip the system of its regulations, or of the President who signed that bill? And how 'bout those who ran the fake numbers at the ratings agencies, the lobbyists who succeeded in making sleazy accounting a lawful practice, or the stock market itself — an institution that's treated like the Holy Sepulchre instead of the casino that it is (and, like all other casinos, the house eventually wins).

And what of Madoff's clients themselves? What did they think was going on to guarantee them incredible returns on their investments every single year — when no one else on planet Earth was getting anything like that? Some have admitted they did have an inkling "something was up," but no one really wanted to ask what it was that was making their money grow on trees. They were afraid they might find out it had nothing to do with gardening. Many of Madoff's victims have told investigators that, over the years, they have made much more than the original investment they gave Bernie. If I buy a stolen car from the guy down the street, the police will take that car from me regardless of whether I knew it was stolen. If I knew it was stolen, then I go to jail for receiving stolen property. Will these "victims" give back their gains that were fraudulently obtained? Will the head of Goldman Sachs reveal what he was doing at the meetings with the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary before the bailout? Will Bank of America please tell us what they've spent $45 billion of our TARP money on?

That's probably going too far. Better that we just put Bernie on this list.

Moore's new documentary on the wonders of capitalism will be in movie theaters this fall.

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Michael Steele's First 100 Days: A Retrospective

 

 

by Senate Guru

Countless media outlets are paying close attention to the benchmark of President Obama's 100th day in office.  Not as many are focusing on the first 100 days of Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.

Steele was elected Chair of the RNC on Friday, January 30, ten days after President Obama was sworn in.  The 100 day mark will be on May 9.  While it's 10 days early, I thought today would be a good time to reflect on the highlights of RNC Chair Michael Steele's first 100 days.

January 30 (Day 1): Michael Steele is elected RNC Chair.

February 4 (Day 6): Steele makes his first visit to New York's 20th Congressional district to help Republican nominee Jim Tedisco in the upcoming special election.  Steele subsequently boasts that a Tedisco victory would be a "credible repudiation" of President Obama and the Democratic Congress.  The race is thought to be an easy pick-up for Republicans given that the GOP enjoys a 70,000+ voter advantage over Democrats in the district.

February 9 (Day 11): Steele refers to President Obama's economic stimulus bill disparagingly as "bling bling."  The ensuing laughter is at Steele rather than with Steele.

February 19 (Day 21): The Washington Times runs an interview with Steele in which Steele commits to an "off the hook" PR effort aimed at younger voters by applying conservative principles to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."  The laughter at Steele continues.

February 23 (Day 25): Steele makes clear that he is open to withholding RNC funds from the re-election campaigns of the three Republican Senators who voted in support of President Obama's economic stimulus bill, perhaps making them feel no longer welcome in the Republican Party.

February 25 (Day 27): Steele sends "slum love" to Republican Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.

March 1 (Day 31): Steele belittles conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh as "ugly," "incendiary," and just "an entertainer."

March 2 (Day 32): Steele promptly apologizes to Limbaugh for his comments, illustrating who truly runs the Republican Party.

March 10 (Day 40): Rumors emerge that Steele may face a no-confidence vote before the Republican National Committee.

March 25 (Day 55): In an interview with CNN, Steele insists that "there is a rationale, there's a logic behind" his mistakes and gaffes.

April 24 (Day 85): Republican Jim Tedisco concedes defeat in the NY-20 special election that Steele earlier boasted would be a "credible repudiation" of President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

April 28 (Day 89): Senator Arlen Specter announces that he will defect from the Republican Party and join the Democratic Party.

May 9 (Day 100): ???

In less than 100 days, Steele led the GOP to defeat in what should have been an easy pick-up in a House special election, lost a Senator to a Party switch, became the subject of no-confidence vote rumors, embarrassed himself over and over again, and convinced America that Rush Limbaugh controls the Republican Party.  I'll give Steele considerable credit - one must keep extremely busy to fit that many "strategic" gaffes into less than 100 days.

 

http://www.senateguru.com/diary/684/michael-steeles-first-100-days-a-retrospective

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SMOKING GUN: NEW DEADLY VIRUS HAS GENE SEQUENCES NEVER SEEN BEFORE

GENES DO NOT "POP UP" OUT OF NOWHERE. 
WE BELIEVE THIS IS A BIOENGINEERED WEAPON.

YOU NEED TO READ THIS BLAST, THEN BUY SILVER

www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions

AND GET OUT OF THE US IF YOU CAN, AT LEAST FOR A WHILE -
OR BOTH

Note 1: Nano silver, www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions, overcomes all known pathogens (that is, disease-causing organisms) against which it has been tested. Currently, I am aware of about 635 successful tests.  I cannot tell you that it will deal with this weaponized virus, but I can tell you that if anything can, this virus can — safely, without harming you, your children or pets…   [Note: You can obtain colloidal, ionic or nano silver from a number of companies, some of which are listed on our www.NaturalSolutionsMarketplace.org web site, or from your local health food store. Dr. Laibow cautions, however, that the most beneficial form is nano silver. And don't forget plenty of Vitamin C!]

Note 2: The information which appears at the end of this email was originally intended to be the sole subject of today's email blast.  The appearance of a potential novel "Pandemic" virus meant that we had to cover that situation carefully and thoroughly first but the information is so relevant that we decided to add it to the end of the blast.  I urge you to set aside some time in your overcrowded schedule to read this entire email from start to finish and then send it out with a request that your entire list do the same.  I know that you are busy.  But your immune system is your only defense against being overwhelmed with whatever is being brought to you by dedicated lunatics who literally want you and your family dead.  Literally.

Index:

Weaponized Flu Pandemic Starting?
Pushback: Nano Silver Victory
Pushback: Food Bill
Pushback rbGH Victory
Dr. Coldwell and Wellness
Nutrients for Health
GMO Free Food
Clean Water for Life
Toxic Load Assay
De-Stressing
Final Note

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Banner week for hypochondriacs

By Pete Jackson

On Monday, Governor Gregoire weighed in on the swine flu crisis. "There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the people of this state to panic," Gregoire said, "but we all need to be vigilant." The undertow from the Governor's use of "vigilant" should trigger fear in the immuno-deficient hearts of hypochondriacs everywhere. It's a sentiment best reduced to the favorite Czech saying of University of Washington professor Bruce Kochis: "Situation is hopeless but not serious."

Fatalism, especially for hypochondriacs, is a self-preserving virtue. I had an Aunt Agnes who died in Everett from the Spanish Flu at the turn of the century. I had a Dad who contracted but survived small pox in the 1920s. It doesn't require a tragedian to connect the apples of the poisoned tree and appreciate that I'm next.

Which brings me to my girlfriend who arrived at Sea Tac Airport at 11:36 PM Tuesday night from Mexico City. What's a self-respecting hypochondriac to do?

Laurie has a robust immune system which is one of the reasons that I'm so attracted to her. By day she works for an international development organization that is not, contrary to appearances, a CIA front. She labors nonstop, takes frequent overseas trips, and occasionally shouts into her cell in bursts of fluent Spanish like a Latina version of Alden Pyle in Graham Greene's The Quiet American. (The Company, I'm confident, would not have sent her to Mexico City).

She is clearly more than a petri dish, or a throat culture, or a potential incubator of the swine flu. She is a human being. That's why I'm so heartsick that the Mexican government didn't detain her or throw her into quarantine for just a few days. On this side of the border, why not deposit her into a hermetically sealed bubble like the Apollo 11 astronauts? What's good enough for Neil Armstrong should be good enough for a non-astronaut Idahoan. It seems pluralism and civil liberties trump epidemiological common sense.

http://crosscut.com/blog/crosscut/18940/

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A Fierce Outbreak of Swine Flu Coverage

Sheer Extent of Attention Implies Full-Blown Crisis

By Howard Kurtz

The story spread rapidly in the news vacuum of Sunday afternoon, when federal officials declared a health emergency, and by yesterday the coverage of a swine flu outbreak had reached fever pitch.

With front-page headlines, constant cable-news updates and top-story status on the evening newscasts, the outbreak -- with at least 40 confirmed cases in the United States -- was inescapable. But the sheer volume of media attention suggested a full-blown crisis.

"This is one of the hazards of 24-hour Internet-media-television," said MSNBC President Phil Griffin. "It's obviously a big story and you want to give it attention. I do think we have to be careful not to overstate it and not make people scared to death."

Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, said from Mexico City that some reporting, "if taken the wrong way, can cause undue excitement. But it can also calm or allay people's fears. You have to make sure what you're saying is absolutely credible and not sensational. I'm trying to provide that context."

But some analysts say the media are collectively going overboard. "Of course we're doing too much to scare people," said Mark Feldstein, a former correspondent for NBC, ABC and CNN who teaches journalism at George Washington University. "Cable news has 24 hours to fill, and there isn't 24 hours of exciting news going on. If you scare people, they'll tune in more." At the same time, he noted, "we don't yet know the parameters of how big this is going to be."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/27/AR2009042703762.html

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Mexico Senate OKs bill to legalize drug possesion

MEXICO CITY, April 28 (Reuters) - Mexico's Senate approved a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of narcotics for personal use, in order to free resources to fight violent drug cartels.

The bill, proposed by conservative President Felipe Calderon, would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounces) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounces) of cocaine and tiny quantities of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines.

Mexico's Congress passed a similar proposal in 2006 but the bill was vetoed by Calderon's predecessor Vicente Fox, under pressure from the United States, which said it would increase drug abuse, but now is worried by the drug-related violence along its border.

Calderon has staked his presidency on curtailing the escalating violence between rival drug gangs as they fight over smuggling routes to the United States, with violence spilling into U.S. cities like Phoenix and Tucson.

Calderon was praised by U.S. President Barack Obama this month for his army crackdown in a visit to the Mexican capital and Washington is sending more agents to its side of the border to curb the flow of guns and cash to the cartels.

Drug violence has killed 2,000 people this year across Mexico after 6,300 deaths in 2008.

The bill, which needs to be approved by the lower house, also allows Mexican states to convict small-time drug dealers, no longer making it a federal crime to peddle drugs. Drug dealers are rarely convicted in Mexico as federal courts are saturated with bigger cases and local judges cannot interfere.

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN28349522

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Amazon Doesn’t Want to Sell Music to Pirates

by Ernesto

A music only torrent indexer, Coda.fm stands out from other sites with its clean design and innovative features. One of these features is a link to buy the various albums on Amazon, after downloading them on BitTorrent and enjoying the sample. Surprisingly enough, Amazon objects to getting business this way and has taken action.

When we first reported on Coda.fm we praised the site for its great design and functionality. It has a full-blown recommendation engine that makes it a great tool to discover new music and its ease of use is superior to that of most industry sanctioned 'legal' alternatives.

On the album download pages Coda.fm has a short bio of the artist, the album's track list, recommended albums, but also a link to buy the album on Amazon. Contrary to the "pirates of the Amazon" firefox plugin we covered previously, users are encouraged to buy the music instead of downloading it - not the other way around.

"We give the user the option to easily buy an album that they liked after downloading and hearing it for free," the Coda.fm founder told TorrentFreak. He thought it was a good idea, and it therefore came as a surprise when Amazon asked him to remove the links from the site. In addition, the world's largest online retailer closed his associate account.

"I can't overstate enough the idiocy of said request: they're actually telling us to stop helping them selling albums," the Coda.fm said venting his frustration. Indeed, in theory this is a win-win situation for all parties involved. Amazon, the artists, labels and the Coda founder all made extra money while the users of the site could buy off their guilt.

U2's latest album on Coda.fm, with Amazon link.

So why did Amazon request the links to be removed then? Most likely they don't want to be affiliated with a BitTorrent site because that might hurt their image. The Amazon links are still on Coda.fm though, and the founder of the site has no intention of removing them anytime soon.

http://torrentfreak.com/amazon-doesnt-want-to-sell-music-to-pirates-090430/

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United States of Torture

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8-year-old Saudi girl divorces 50-year-old husband

By HADEEL AL-SHALCHI

CAIRO – An 8-year-old Saudi girl has divorced her middle-aged husband after her father forced her to marry him last year in exchange for about $13,000, her lawyer said Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has come under increasing criticism at home and abroad for permitting child marriages. The United States, a close ally of the conservative Muslim kingdom, has called child marriage a "clear and unacceptable" violation of human rights.

The girl was allowed to divorce the 50-year-old man who she married in August after an out-of-court settlement had been reached in the case, said her lawyer, Abdulla al-Jeteli. The exact date of the divorce was not immediately known.

A court in the central Oneiza region previously rejected a request by the girl's mother for a divorce and ruled that the girl would have to wait until she reached puberty to file a petition then.

There are no laws in Saudi Arabia defining the minimum age for marriage. Though a woman's consent is legally required, some marriage officials don't seek it.

But there has been a push by Saudi human rights groups to define the age of marriage and put an end to the phenomenon.

One Saudi human rights activist Sohaila Zain al-Abdeen was optimistic that the girl's divorce would help efforts to get a law passed enforcing a minimum marriage age of 18.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_saudi_child_marriage;_ylt=Av7Ez8Ano_3VfxxknudFRzms0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTJwYzdkcTV0BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNDMwL21sX3NhdWRpX2NoaWxkX21hcnJpYWdlBGNwb3MDOARwb3MDMTgEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDOC15ZWFyLW9sZHNh

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Dick Cheney's Torture Hypocrisy

by Joseph C. Wilson IV

Dick Cheney has called for declassifying memos he claims will vindicate the Bush administration's torture policy. Now former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV urges the former vice president to extend his demand for transparency to his still-secret testimony in the Scooter Libby obstruction of justice case.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney's reemergence on the political stage after his ignominious departure on Inauguration Day, eschewing the traditional handshake with his successor and the new president, is nothing if not ironic. The most secretive individual in American politics is now calling for the selective release of documents that remain classified in one of his own files marked "Detainees." We have also learned that a principal reason for having tortured senior al Qaeda detainees was not, in fact, to defend the Homeland, but rather to build the case for war with Iraq based on alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Despite literally hundreds of waterboarding sessions, there was no evidence developed that such a link existed. But that did not stop Cheney. He and others in the Bush administration simply asserted a link even though they knew one did not exist.

The disinformation campaign to manipulate public opinion in favor of the [Iraq] invasion, the torture program, and the illegal exposure of a clandestine CIA agent—my wife, Valerie Plame Wilson—were linked events.

I know something about Cheney's disinformation. When I, and a number of others, including a four-star Marine Corps general, Carleton Fulford, and the then-U.S. Ambassador to the West African nation of Niger, reported to the CIA that there was no evidence to support the assertion that Iraq had entered into a contract to purchase 500 tons of uranium yellowcake, our conclusions were ignored by the Bush administration. Instead, the president, in his State of the Union address in 2003, proclaimed a falsehood: "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was trotted out to assert that we could not afford to "wait for the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud," and Cheney himself asserted that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program.

There is no longer any question that we were misled by an administration that had already made the decision to invade, conquer, and occupy Iraq, and did everything it could to force the facts to justify their action. Cheney, the architect of the Bush administration's disastrous national security and foreign policies, now wants to declassify certain classified documents that he believes will vindicate his advocacy of a war of choice in the Middle East and his support of torture. Cheney asserts that the ends justify the means whatever the insult to international law, the conscience of the world, and damage to the long-term U.S. national-security interests.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-26/freedom-of-disinformation/

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Okay, I'm a witch!

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Candidate for Georgia governorship says he’d kill his own son to secede

By John Byrne

A longshot Georgia candidate for governor who's already admitted having sex with a mule before finding God says he's ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union.

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His "Nuremberg Files" website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

Now he's ready to make new news. In an interview by Dylan Otto Krider published late Wednesday, he indicated he'd kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade).

Asked if he was ready to sacrifice his own son in a national insurrection, Horsley recounts a fight with his son where he almost killed him.

"I was one foot from killing my own son, or hurting him really, really bad," Horsley told Krider. "If he would have attacked me again, I would have stuck him. Or cut him or sliced him or done something to stop him. That's the point, you hypothetical has literally already been worked out with me, and that's what makes me different from the other candidates for Governor. They understand I'm not like no politician they have looked at, ever. I am prepared to do a John Brown. I'm not prepared to do an Abe Lincoln and talk out both sides of my mouth and try to get a majority together. I'm looking for the people who are prepared to go with me and take over the foundry, then set up shop and prepare to fight to the death. I'll do it."

Asked again if he was willing to sacrifice his son, he was even more explicit, telling the interview to read the Bible's Matthew 10.

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/30/candidate-for-georgia-governorship-says-hed-kill-his-own-son-to-secede/

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Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds

The CNN Wire Latest updates on top stories

WASHINGTON (CNN) — The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/30/churchgoers-more-likely-to-back-torture-survey-finds/

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The guilty parties

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Fox's Padded Greenroom

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After refusing to cover press conference, Obama doesn’t call on Fox

By John Byrne

After its affiliate was the only network not to carry President Obama's press conference Wednesday night, Fox News is out in the cold.

At Obama's press conference, which lasted nearly a full hour, Obama called on a wide array of reporters, representing media organizations from the Detroit News to the Associated Press. He also called on all three major networks — ABC, NBC and CBS.

But not Fox News. Fox (its sister network) decided not to carry Obama's press conference live, instead deciding to run the drama "Lie to Me." The networks generally carry presidential press conference live, but executives have grumbled because the events shave advertising dollars off the evening's schedule.

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/30/fox-news-not-granted-a-question-at-obamas-press-conference/

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Use Condoms or Make Hitler

By Willa Paskin

A truly astounding series of German condom advertisements are making the rounds this morning—each features a sketch of a sperm made to look like Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden or Mao Zedong. Their not so subtle message being, "Better wrap it up... unless you want to bring evil into the world!" The ads are arresting and hilarious, but the self-flagellation inherent in them strikes me as being distinctly German: I can't imagine many American dudes susceptible to the suggestion that their sperm wear swastikas, or, to use a more purely American parallel, KKK outfits. (Obviously, their sperm have 90 mile an hour fastballs, good looks and a working familiarity with the art of the deal). It's a dark take on procreation, informed by an everyday awareness that people can go really, really bad. Of course, people can go good as well, and I almost expect to see these images re-purposed for an anti-condom or pro-life campaign, with sperm made to look like Jesus, Abe Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr.

 

http://slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2009/04/14/use-condoms-or-make-hitler.aspx?GT1=38001

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Obama seeks to change crack sentences

By Larry Margasak

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration joined a federal judge Wednesday in urging Congress to end a racial disparity by equalizing prison sentences for dealing and using crack versus powdered cocaine.

"Jails are loaded with people who look like me," U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, an African-American, told a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said the administration believes Congress' goal "should be to completely eliminate the disparity" between the two forms of cocaine. "A growing number of citizens view it as fundamentally unfair," Breuer testified.

It takes 100 times more powdered cocaine than crack cocaine to trigger the same harsh mandatory minimum sentences.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who chairs the committee, said, "Under current law, mere possession of five grams of crack — the weight of five packets of sweetener — carries the same sentence as distribution of half a kilogram of powder or 500 packets of sweetener."

Durbin said more than 81 percent of those convicted for crack offenses in 2007 were African-American, although only about 25 percent of crack cocaine users are African Americans.

Congress enacted the disparity during an epidemic of crack cocaine in the 1980s, but the senator said lawmakers erred in assuming that violence would be greater among those using crack.

Breuer said the best way to deal with violence is to severely punish anyone who commits a violent offense, regardless of the drug involved.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090429/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/crack_laws

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Google on the defensive as book deal starts to come apart

by Richard Koman

With the Google Book settlement showing signs of coming apart at the seams, Google has taken to its blog to make its case for the deal.

Background: The settlement, reached in October between Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, would create a $125 million fund that authors would be paid out of. The authors and publishers sued in a 2005 class action over Google's giant book-scannning operation, which has been scanning both public domain and copyrighted works.

Opponents say the deal gives Google a monopoly on online book access.

Google's argument, in the words of Book Search product manager Adam Smith:

Until now, we've only been able to show these users a few snippets of text for most of the in-copyright books we've scanned through our Library Project. Since the vast majority of these books are out of print, to actually read them you have to hunt them down at a library or a used bookstore. And if you can't find them — because the only known copy is at a library on the other side of the country–you're unfortunately out of luck.

…The settlement won't just expand access to out-of-print books, either. Because authors and publishers will have the ability to let users preview and purchase their in-print books through Google Book Search, readers will have even more options for accessing in-print books than they have today.

The problem with this theory is in the text of the post.

We've only been able to show a few snippets . . .

News flash to Google: The world - even the online world - of books, literature, history and pulp fiction actually is bigger and more diverse than Google. Readers might or might not be happy with a Google-owned one-stop-shop for all books online. That's not the point. To the extent the deal makes forward motion on orphan works - those works that were retroactively covered by the Copyright Act of 1976 (which removed the requirement of copyright registration) but whose copyright holders can't be found - it gives Google a monopoly on the legal right to use the works.

Larger point: Google's entire business model is the commoditization of other people's content. See Google News, Gmail, AdSense/Adwords, etc. Book Search puts Google in the driver's seat of determining how online books are monetized, at what rates, what share Google, authors and publishers get, how the metrics are determined. Books are reduced to data. Competitors are cut out. Other players remain unable to use the orphan works. Google leverages the audience.

http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4719

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Young pilot's tale is a real cliffhanger

 

A Taylorcraft single-engine plane piloted by Jake Soplanda of Anchor Point hangs over the edge of a cliff near the summit of an unamed peak east of Talkeetna. Soplanda and a passenger escaped injury after a landing attempt went awry.

By CRAIG MEDRED

After a cliffhanger of a plane landing in the Talkeetna Mountains earlier this month, 21-year-old Matthew "Jake" Soplanda of Anchor Point and a skiing buddy managed to climb away from Soplanda's dated, single-engine Taylorcraft as it hung perched over a 1,500-foot drop.

Embarrassed by the botched touchdown that nearly turned deadly, all Soplanda wanted was to recover the airplane from the teeth of the rocky ridge that held it so he could fly again.

Given the ubiquitous nature of digital cameras and the Internet, however, he got more.

A photo shot from another aircraft that overflew the precariously perched airplane has made Soplanda's Taylorcraft -- if not the pilot himself -- something of an Internet sensation among small plane pilots.

His mother, Jolayne, said by telephone from Anchor Point on Tuesday that her son wishes the attention would all just go away. He would have preferred to learn his lesson in private.

He is now trying to avoid talking about it, she added.

He knows how lucky he is, she said. "I know it. We know it."

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/aviation/story/776605.html

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Minnesota Poll: Most want Coleman to call it quits

 

The Republican should end his recount fight, most say, and fatigue over the six-month ordeal is clear.

 

By KEVIN DUCHSCHERE

Nearly two-thirds of Minnesotans surveyed think Norm Coleman should concede the U.S. Senate race to Al Franken, but just as many believe the voting system that gave the state its longest running election contest needs improvement.

A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll has found that 64 percent of those responding believe Coleman, the Republican, should accept the recount trial court's April 13 verdict that Democrat Franken won the race by 312 votes.

Only 28 percent consider last week's appeal by Coleman to the Minnesota Supreme Court "appropriate."

Large majorities of those polled said they would oppose any further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Should Coleman win at the state Supreme Court, 57 percent of respondents said Franken should concede. And 73 percent believe Coleman should give up if he loses at the state's highest court.

"I voted for Coleman, but this thing has gone on way too long," said Mike McCombs, 50, a Lakeville furnace and air conditioning salesman. "Obviously, the Republican Party is trying to keep Franken's vote out of the United States Senate. We should get another [senator] in there."

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/senate/43699772.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1PciUoaEYY_4PcUU

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Congressman reads long list of sex acts on House floor

By David Edwards

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) read a very long list of sex acts not covered by the hate crimes bill on the House floor Wednesday. One observer speculated that he "likely set a congressional record" for citing the most sex acts of any speech in Congress.

"I apologize to our transcriber, but I want to put into the record what we have to put up with in the Rules Committee," said Hastings. What followed was a very long and unusual list of sex acts not protected by the proposed bill.

Hasting was reading the list of sex acts with reference to an amendment introduced to the hate crimes bill that he asserted made a mockery of what was a determined effort by House Democrats to pass a federal hate crimes law.

Among the sex acts to be protected in the amendment included asphyxiphilia, necrophilia, toucherism and tranvestite fetishism.

"We can't legislate love," Hastings said. "But we can legislate against hate."

The House passed the hate crimes bill Thursday.

This video is from C-SPAN, broadcast Apr. 29, 2009.

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/30/congressman-reads-longest-list-of-sex-acts-on-house-floor/

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Spread The Love… And The Swine Flu!

By Stew

So, here's a fun little game to pass the monotony at your office desk! Ever wanted to be Typhoid Mary for a minute? Oh sure you have: to maintain your own health but to just see how far you could spread a potentially deadly disease and create a world-wide pandemic? Well, here's your chance! Check out SNEEZE! where you can infect your friends and random strangers, it's a blast!

 

http://www.gunaxin.com/spread-the-love-and-the-swine-flu/18983

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RIAA’s Hostile Takeover of the Internet

by Jens Roland

Until recently, the recording industry were committing publicity suicide by routinely issuing legal threats to file sharers. Now, they seem to have changed the routine, going for fewer, but bigger targets. The goal is clear: if you own the Internet, you don't have to worry about pirates — or anyone else.

Earlier this month, four Pirate Bay visionaries were given harsh fines and jail sentences. Their only crime: creating the largest, free, uncensored, versatile file sharing platform on the Internet. Soon after, Taiwan passed 3-strikes legislation for copyright violations. The recording industry is no longer targeting pirates - they are actually trying to hijack the very fabric of the Internet.

The apparent strategy:

1. Outlaw file sharing
2. Outlaw personal encryption and anonymization services
3. Set up a global, privately-run Internet surveillance program to spy on everybody all the time without a warrant — run by ISPs and paid for by the taxpayers
4. And finally, get the authority to block anyone from the Internet entirely, without the involvement of police, courts or any verifiable trail of evidence

We can not let this happen.

"It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state." - Bruce Schneier

One of the main reasons why the recording industry are currently succeeding in this hostile takeover of the Internet, is that most people simply don't understand what file sharing is, or why it matters to them in the first place. Whenever civil liberties are sacrificed, it is always on the bonfire of ignorance. We need to educate the world - neighbors, parents, judges and lawmakers - as to why the Internet must remain free, neutral, and uncensored.

It sometimes helps to explain that a file sharing technology like Bittorrent is the digital society's equivalent of the wheel. It allows fast and easy transportation of data between users and businesses alike. But like the wheel, file sharing needs a stable, flat surface to perform at its best. In this analogy, The Pirate Bay is nothing short of the largest, best maintained, and most stable network of such 'digital roads' in the world. And it's free to use for anyone, at any time, for any purpose.

Naturally, as is always the case where people congregate in a free society, some of the people who drive their wheeled carts on this network of roads will be carrying things in their carts of questionable quality, purpose or origin. In any system or society that is based on freedom rather than censorship or distrust, there is no question that individual transgressions can take place. This is the most basic cost of liberty.

As a digital society in its teens, we have yet to realize the enormous potential of file sharing in culture, education, knowledge sharing, and business. But already, we are seeing massive opposition against it from the likes of IFPI, the RIAA and the MPAA. This opposition, of course, stems from some of the aforementioned wheeled carts transporting 'questionable goods', in the form of copyrighted material.

The ensuing battle has been disguised as a legal matter concerning rights holders and 'pirates', but that is only the tip of the iceberg. It is true that the recording industry wants to stop criminals, but they are attempting to prohibit the wheel and all building of roads to pull it off. These lawyers are prepared to sacrifice our liberties, our privacy and our digital freedom in order to reach their goal. It is a grossly disproportionate and misdirected attack, and it has already begun: Once the verdict of the Spectrial was in, the Swedish anti-piracy office immediately began issuing legal threats against other file sharing networks. They are bulldozing every street and burning every car to prevent any possible (mis)use of the wheel. And worse yet - we are letting it happen.

The case of The Pirate Bay was not a case of artists vs. freeloaders, or even the recording industry vs. pirates. There were no artists on the accusing side, nor were there any pirates on the defending side. It was, and is, a case of misguided frustration by industry executives and lawyers, directed not against the actual violators of copyright law, but against the most outspoken proponents and enablers of a fundamental digital technology. A technology that allows fast and easy transportation of data - all data - between users and businesses alike.

We must never blame the network for the actions of individuals. Both rights holders and lawmakers must respect the fundamental principle of personal, individual responsibility. Let each peer be responsible for his own actions, just as every driver is liable for his own car.

The Pirate Bay is not illegal. File sharing is not illegal. Using file sharing for illegal purposes is illegal. The difference may be subtle to a layman, but in legal terms, the distinction is clear as day. The fact that the judges in the Pirate Bay case failed to recognize this, is a judicial travesty bordering on flat out corruption.

It cannot be stressed enough: this is not a question of copyright, of music, or of piracy. This is a question of a private organization now aiming to subvert several of the most important digital inventions since the World Wide Web, and our judges and politicians turning a blind eye in a staggering display of ignorance and corruption. This fight is about much more than The Pirate Bay. When our liberties are taken from us, we must rise, united in one voice, and fight for them.

http://torrentfreak.com/riaas-hostile-takeover-of-the-internet-090429/

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Matthias Rath - steal this chapter

by Ben Goldacre

This is the "missing chapter" about vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath. Sadly I was unable to write about him at the time that book was initially published, as he was suing my ass in the High Court. The chapter is now available in the new paperback edition, and I've posted it here for free so that nobody loses out.

Although the publishers make a slightly melodramatic fuss about this in the promo material, it is a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience, as I hope you'll see, and it was also a pretty unpleasant episode, not just for me, but also for the many other people he's tried to sue, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and more. If you're ever looking for a warning sign that you're on the wrong side of an argument, suing Medecins Sans Frontieres is probably a pretty good clue.

Anyway, here it is, please steal it, print it, repost it, whatever, it's free under a Creative Commons license, details at the end. If you prefer it is available as a PDF here, or as a word document here. Happy Easter!

This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009.

You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don't change it – including this bit – so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net

The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don't own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow.  Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

On this last point there is, however, one small consolation, and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. This chapter, I should also mention, is available free online for anyone who wishes to see it.

Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost academic distance of this book. For the most part we've been interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling, and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand, these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where things really matter?

In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment. AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people have died from it already, three million in the last year alone, and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that's eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.

It's hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers, but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark.

http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/matthias-rath-steal-this-chapter/

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Let’s Hear It for the Bees

By Leon Kreitzman

 

Gardeners know that plants open and close their flowers at set times during the day. For example, the flowers of catmint open between 6:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m.; orange hawkweed follows between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m.; field marigolds open at 9:00 a.m.

In "Philosophia Botanica" (1751), the great taxonomist Carl Linnaeus proposed that it should be possible to plant a floral clock. He noted that two species of daisy, the hawk's-beard and the hawkbit, opened and closed at their respective times within about a half-hour each day. He suggested planting these daisies along with St. John's Wort, marigolds, water-lilies and other species in a circle. The rhythmic opening and closing of the plants would be the effective hands of this clock.

Plants have carefully timed routines determined by internally generated rhythms. In 1729, Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan, a French astronomer, put a Mimosa plant in a cupboard to see what happened when it was kept in the dark. He peeked in at various times, and although the plant was permanently in the dark its leaves still opened and closed rhythmically – it was as though it had its own representation of day and night. The plant's leaves still drooped during its subjective night and stiffened up during its subjective day. Furthermore, all the leaves moved at the same time. It took another 230 years or so to come up with the term circadian – about a day – to describe these rhythms.

In a similar vein, tobacco plants, stocks and evening primroses release their scent as the sun starts to go down at dusk. These plants attract pollinating moths and night-flying insects. The plants tend to be white or pale. Color vision is difficult under low light, and white best reflects the mainly bluish tinge of evening light.

But plants cannot release their scent in a timely manner simply in response to an environmental cue, like the lowering of the light levels. They need time to produce the oils. To coincide with the appearance of the nocturnal insects, the plant has to anticipate the sunset and produce the scent on a circadian schedule.

Flowers of a given species all produce nectar at about the same time each day, as this increases the chances of cross-pollination. The trick works because pollinators, which in most cases means the honeybee, concentrate foraging on a particular species into a narrow time-window. In effect the honeybee has a daily diary that can include as many as nine appointments — say, 10:00 a.m., lilac; 11:30 a.m., peonies; and so on. The bees' time-keeping is accurate to about 20 minutes.

The bee can do this because, like the plants and just about every living creature, it has a circadian clock that is reset daily to run in time with the solar cycle. The bee can effectively consult this clock and "check" off the given time and associate this with a particular event.

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/guest-column-lets-hear-it-for-the-bees/?th&emc=th

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Party of No(body)?

by Nate Silver

Republican party identification, which had already been at fairly low levels, in fact appears to have slumped further since Inauguration Day, although the gains are being had not among Democrats but by voters who identify themselves as independent.

Several polls conducted within the last week have attracted attention for their notably low levels of self-reported Republican voters. In particular, ABC/WaPo reported the number of Republicans as 21 percent, CBS/NYT at 20 percent, NBC/WSJ also at 20 percent (not counting "leaners"), and Pew at 22 percent.

FOX, by contrast, which generally reports higher numbers of Republicans and Democrats but fewer independents, put the number of GOPers at 30 percent (although this nevertheless represents a decline from most of their recent polling). Rasmussen put the number of Republicans at 33.2 percent in March, essentially unchanged from recent months; they have yet to report their results from April.

The following chart combines the numbers from these six organizations since August 2008, while adding LOESS regression trendlines.



Per the LOESS curves, the number of Republicans has decreased by about 5 percent since Inauguration Day, from roughly 27 percent to 22 percent. The number of Democrats has also decreased slightly, however, from 38 percent to 35-36 percent. The gains have been made by independents, whose numbers have increased from 30 percent to about 36 percent, such that there are now roughly equal numbers of independents and Democrats.

 

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

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Solitary Confinement: The Invisible Torture

By Brandon Keim

The expanding torture scandal has left the American public horror-struck at how casually the Bush administration and its employees countenanced torture techniques like sleep deprivation, waterboarding and stress positions. However, another form of torture was not just used on detainees, but is being used on at least 25,000 Americans right now.

That's the number of people currently held in long-term solitary confinement in the United States, living for years in 80-square-foot concrete cubes lit by round-the-clock fluorescent light, with little or no human contact. The U.S. is alone among developed countries in using long-term solitary confinement on a regular basis.

Academic scientific analysis of solitary confinement is still in its early stages, but the results are obvious, and echo the experiences of Americans who've been held in solitary confinement by terrorists or as prisoners of war. Human beings evolved to be social creatures. Solitary confinement drives us mad.

Wired.com spoke with psychologist Craig Haney of the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on long-term solitary confinement. Asked if it's torture, Haney replied, "For some people, it is."

Wired.com: Everybody's talking now about waterboarding and sleep deprivation and stress positions, but I haven't seen solitary confinement mentioned much. Why is that?

Craig Haney: My interpretation is that the other techniques are generally regarded as more severe. But solitary confinement is in the background of all this. It's assumed to be part of the environment in which torture is occurring. And it is itself a painful, potentially harmful condition of confinement.

Wired.com: What have you seen in your own work?

Haney: First let me note that solitary confinement has historically been a part of torture protocols. It was well-documented in South Africa. It's been used to torture prisoners of war.

There are a couple reasons why solitary confinement is typically used. One is that it's a very painful experience. People experience isolation panic. They have a difficult time psychologically coping with the experience of being completely alone.

In addition, solitary confinement imposes conditions of social and perceptual stimulus deprivation. Often it's the deprivation of activity, the deprivation of cognitive stimulation, that some people find to be painful and frightening.

Some of them lose their grasp of their identity. Who we are, and how we function in the world around us, is very much nested in our relation to other people. Over a long period of time, solitary confinement undermines one's sense of self. It undermines your ability to register and regulate emotion. The appropriateness of what you're thinking and feeling is difficult to index, because we're so dependent on contact with others for that feedback. And for some people, it becomes a struggle to maintain sanity.

That leads to the other reason why solitary is so often a part of torture protocols. When people's sense of themselves is placed in jeopardy, they are more malleable and easily manipulated. In a certain sense, solitary confinement is thought to enhance the effectiveness of other torture techniques.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/solitaryconfinement/

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No, really, this jerk is a judge!

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Superman is Real

Being a collection of real world encounters by comic book creators with their characters. . .

Neil Gaiman and Adam Rogers in Wired - The Myth of Superman

About a decade ago, Alvin Schwartz, who wrote Superman comic strips in the 1940s and '50s, published one of the great Odd Books of our time. In An Unlikely Prophet, reissued in paperback this spring, Schwartz writes that Superman is real. He is a tulpa, a Tibetan word for a being brought to life through thought and willpower. Schwartz also says a Hawaiian kahuna told him that Superman once traveled 2,000 years back in time to keep the island chain from being destroyed by volcanic activity. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't, but it does sound like a job for Superman – all in a day's work for a guy who can squeeze coal into diamonds. Schwartz then tells of his own encounter with Superman in a New York taxi, when he learned firsthand that Superman's cape is, in fact, more than mere fabric. . .

(via Technoccult)

An Unlikely Prophet arrived at my door early this morning. It begins with the author receiving a phone call from a Tibetan tulpa named Thongden, who appears a few days later on a bicycle. Seeking to be made real by Schwartz, it is Thongden who started the author on the path that would eventually lead him to the Man of Tomorrow.

Schwartz, however, is not the only comic book writer to have an encounter with one of their characters.

Grant Morrison speaks frequently of meeting an incarnation of Superman during a shamanistic experience, as well as a wide variety of his Invisibles characters, and in fact has developed an entire occult system based on interacting with them.

It was Superman Plus. I wrote most of it after meeting the Man of Steel at 2am opposite the Sheraton in San Diego - a true shamanic moment.

"He was wearing the best Superman suit I've seen and looked fantastic as Superman, a cross between Chris Reeve and Billy Zane, so we asked him if he'd answer some questions which he did in the character of Superman! It was like a possession. I'd say to the guy, 'So how do you feel about Batman?' and he'd come back with 'Well, Batman and I don't really see eye to eye on a lot of things. He's so hung up on the darkness in everyone's soul and I just don't see it that way…' and so on. He spoke to us for about an hour and a half.

"The thing that really hit me, wasn't so much what Superman was saying as how he was sitting. He was perched on a bollard with one knee drawn up, chin resting on his arms. He looked totally relaxed…and I suddenly realized this was how Superman would sit. He wouldn't puff out his chest or posture heroically, he would be totally chilled. If nothing can hurt you, you can afford to be cool. A man like Superman would never have to tense against the cold; never have to flinch in the face of a blow. He would be completely laid back, un-tense. With this image of Superman relaxing on a cloud looking out for us all in my head, I rushed back to my hotel room and filled dozens of pages of my notebook with notes and drawings."

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http://electricchildren.com/wordpress/?p=334

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