NET VALUES

Conroy’s Filter Hits Online Business

By getting sucked into a debate on censorship, the critics risk backing into a corner as arguing for the right to view porn is always going to be a contentious issue. On the other hand, slowing our already poor broadband speeds and risking damage to ecommerce has a more tangible impact.

While politicians and industry bodies debate and argue and protest, one possible repercussion has been overlooked. Online business has seen a steady increase over the last few years and recently pundits have predicted the internet economy as being potentially more resilient during the tougher economic times ahead.

But will ecommerce remain resilient under the threat of technical interference?

BIG BROTHER

Big Brother police to get 'war-time' powers to demand ID or face jail

State officials are to be given powers previously reserved for times of war to demand a person's proof of identity at any time. Anybody who refuses the Big Brother demand could face arrest and a possible prison sentence.

The new rules come in legislation unveiled in today's Queen's Speech. They are presented as a crackdown on illegal immigration, but lawyers say they could be applied to anybody who has ever been outside the UK, even on holiday.

The civil rights group Liberty, which analysed clauses from the new Immigration and Citizenship Bill, called them an attempt to introduce compulsory ID cards by the back door.

DUST TO DUST

The death of the orb mystery

I have been photographing orbs since capturing my first ones near Menindee Lakes in June. I was beguiled by the idea they may have been associated with consciousness and have photographed many. I have shown the prints to others and got the usual two responses: Fascination and curiosity or disdain and lack of interest ("clean your lens" and "it's dust" comes to mind).

One skeptic sent me a link to The Orb Zone. The author states: "The 'orb zone' theory of orbs is that orbs are out-of-focus airborne particles (e.g. dust). However the technical explanation is fairly complicated."

I dismissed his argument at first because it meant the orbs needed to be in out-of-focus zones, whereas they appeared to be away from the camera near other objects.
I based this presumption on a single photograph in which a friend and I, both shooting the same scene, caught orbs at about the same time. And given our relative camera positions, it was conceivable that they were the same object, well away from the camera and in the field of focus. However, being a sole example and given my recent experiment, that now looks to be a coincidence.

This morning I was sweeping the floor and gave the broom a dust off. It created a lot of dust and, since the adjoining room was pretty dark, I decided to do a test.

I set up the camera on a table and put it on timer. A second before the shutter triggered I held the broom 20cm above and 20cm in front of the lens and ran my hand across the bristles to release some dust.  The results show structures identical to those found in all the orbs I have captured so far, even a nice coloured one. Although they often have a vaguely "focused" appearance the ones in the experimental pictures I took this morning are likely all in the out-of-focus zone (ie close to the lens).

I found I had become attached to the theory that they were emanations from the cosmic soup or better still ... emanations of consciousness itself with mysterious links to this world. (Crop circles come to mind). It was deflating to find such a prosaic explanation but I know the world has many more mysteries to wonder at. Sadly I don't think this is one of them.

Another pic

STUPIDITY CONSULTANT

How We Will Learn to Love George W. Bush

Only 50 more days of President George W. Bush. So many feelings, right? ABC has released the transcript of a Charlie Gibson sit-down interview airing tonight, and it must be said that our current president was, and remains, a very stupid man.
For example, he blames the current recession on "a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in president." But now is a time to look forward. Is there a future for the man who wrecked our nation and the world? Yes, and his stupidity is what makes it work.
Take our advice and prosper, George; here are the five keys to the revival of your image [Here].

EARTH CHANGES

Government reversal on coal mines

There are plans to open more deep mines and extend the few we still have. But deep mines take years to develop and there is a much easier and quicker method of extracting the coal - opencast mining on the surface.

When the government came to power it called the huge excavations of opencast mines "too high a price to pay" in environmental terms.

But as the BBC's Panorama programme reports this week, Whitehall seems to have reversed that election promise and has been giving the go-ahead for more and more opencast mines.

QUOTABLE QUOTES

Why is Alistair Darling quoting Guy Fawkes?

In recent weeks the line "exceptional times that required exceptional measures" has been delivered by his boss Gordon Brown. By Jose Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission. And by the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King.
It's a well-known phrase and the variations are plentiful. As well as exceptional, times are often desperate, drastic or extreme, and can require action as well as measures. We all get the drift, but where does the phrase come from?

It was most famously used about the same time by a man who was not a fan of politicians - Guy Fawkes. He tried to wipe out King James I and his entire government by blowing up the Houses of Parliament.

TRUTH BE TOLD

Murdered journalist's children tell court of mother's fears

The son and daughter of slain investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya took the stand in her murder trial Thursday, and spoke about their mother's growing sense of threat in the days before her death.
"She warned me she had seen strange people hanging around outside the entrance of the apartment building that weren't there earlier, and told me to be cautious," said Politkovskaya's daughter Vera, who moved in with her mother about one week before she was killed.

GENE GENIE

Genetically modified maize lowers fertility in mice, study finds

Feeding mice with genetically engineered maize developed by the US-based Monsanto corporation led to lower fertility and body weight, according to a study conducted by the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna presented Tuesday. In the study, mice fed with the NK603 x MON810 sweetcorn variety over a period of 20 weeks showed a smaller litter size and lighter offspring than mice fed with non-engineered maize.

The differences "were statistically significant in the third and fourth litters," according to an abstract of the study led by Professor Juergen Zentek and commissioned by Austria's Environment Ministry.

EARTH CHANGES

Earth shattering dinosaur killer unearthed

Scientists have now discovered the ‘dinosaur extinction layer’ in Montana in the USA, which is a chocolate-coloured strip of rock containing millions of bones.
‘For 30 years, we’ve believed Earth was hit by a giant asteroid that created global warming and killed the dinosaurs, but scientists hadn’t, until now, found any evidence of this.
No one realised that over the millions of years since it hit, any traces would be covered in layers of rock.

TRUTH BE TOLD

McCain addresses crowd as ‘my fellow prisoners.’

"Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners. And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

This is the kind of mental mixup that really makes you wonder what is truly going on inside of John McCain's mind. Here he is, campaigning in Pennsylvania, accidentally calling Americans "my fellow prisoners".

Also worth noting is that the tickertape news at the bottom of the screen has the words "rounding up hundreds of Arabs" as he says the words "my fellow prisoners".

More here.  Martial Law just rolls right off of McBush’s tongue and Pallid doesn’t bat an false eyelash…

TRUTH BE TOLD

McCain addresses crowd as ‘my fellow prisoners.’

"Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners. And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

This is the kind of mental mixup that really makes you wonder what is truly going on inside of John McCain's mind. Here he is, campaigning in Pennsylvania, accidentally calling Americans "my fellow prisoners"

Extended video here.

Martial Law just rolls right off of McBush’s tongue and Pallid doesn’t bat an false eyelash…

MATTER MATTERS

It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations

Matter is built on flaky foundations. Physicists have now confirmed that the apparently substantial stuff is actually no more than fluctuations in the quantum vacuum.

The researchers simulated the frantic activity that goes on inside protons and neutrons. These particles provide almost all the mass of ordinary matter.

Each proton (or neutron) is made of three quarks - but the individual masses of these quarks only add up to about 1% of the proton's mass. So what accounts for the rest of it?

NANNY STATE

Children in artwork rules 'too restrictive'

Artists are warning that something as simple as street photography could die out under the Australia Council's proposed protocols for photographing children.

The rules require anyone who takes a picture of a child under the age of 15 to obtain permission from a parent or guardian. They are intended to protect the children.

But photographers and visual arts groups say the rules will restrict the work of documentary photographers who take spontaneous pictures in public places.

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Mystery of lost US nuclear bomb

The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968, a BBC investigation has found.

Its unique vantage point - perched at the top of the world - has meant that Thule Air Base has been of immense strategic importance to the US since it was built in the early 1950s, allowing a radar to scan the skies for missiles coming over the North Pole.

The Pentagon believed the Soviet Union would take out the base as a prelude to a nuclear strike against the US and so in 1960 began flying "Chrome Dome" missions. Nuclear-armed B52 bombers continuously circled over Thule - and could head straight to Moscow if they witnessed its destruction.

Greenland is a self-governing province of Denmark but the carrying of nuclear weapons over Danish territory was kept secret.

OUR GALAXY

First pic of planet outside solar system

Astronomer Paul Kalas captured the first visible-light images of a planet some 25 light years from our solar system using a camera mounted on the Hubble telescope.
Likely similar in mass to Jupiter, the planet is orbiting the star Fomalhaut in the southern constellation Piscus austrinus at a distance of about four times the distance between Neptune and our sun, said the study's lead author Mr Kalas, with the University of California, Berkeley.

BIG PHARMA

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans Than Illegal Drugs

A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.
An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together.

According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

LOREM IPSUM

Lorem Ipsum - What does it all mean?

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old.
Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance.

LOOTING THE TREASURY

Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

MARTIAL LAW

Space-Based Domestic Spying: Kicking Civil Liberties to the Curb

During Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in "support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's relief efforts," the insider tech publication reported.

The Predator B carries out "targeted assassinations" of "terrorist suspects" across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for "disaster management" is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

'I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated'

E-mail error ends up on road sign

BBC news on 31 October had a story about a bilingual road sign in Swansea, South Wales. In English it reads "No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only."
Underneath, the text in Welsh is "Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i'w gyfieithu", which may be translated as "I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated."
This was the text of an e-mail that came back from the translation service used by staff of Swansea council when a Welsh equivalent of the English sign was requested.

RIGHT PRIORITIES

Firefighting system kills 20 but saves vessel

At least 20 people have died in an accident on a Russian nuclear submarine when a fire extinguishing system was activated by mistake.

Russian Pacific Fleet spokesman Igor Dygalo said both sailors and shipyard workers died in the accident, which occurred during sea trials.
The dead were suffocated by freon gas, which is used to put out fires as it removes oxygen from the air.

The vessel was not damaged and there was no radiation leak, Mr Dygalo said.

POT HOLE

Pot Wins in a Landslide

Michigan voters made their state the 13th to allow the medical use of marijuana by a whopping 63 percent to 37 percent, the largest margin ever for a medical marijuana initiative.

And by 65 percent to 35 percent, Massachusetts voters decriminalized the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, replacing arrests, legal fees, court appearances, the possibility of jail and a lifelong criminal record with a $100 fine, much like a traffic ticket, that can be paid through the mail.

What makes these results so amazing is that they followed the most intensive anti-marijuana campaign by federal officials since the days of "Reefer Madness."

Marijuana arrests have been setting all-time records year after year, reaching the point where one American is arrested on marijuana charges every 36 seconds.

FOLDING STUFF

Mathematicians And Artists Use Algorithms To Make Complicated Paper Sculptures

Mathematicians design new figures in a traditional art form called origami, using modern techniques. Innovations developed in pursuit of the art find application in multiple fields, including applied mathematics and engineering. One application is the use of folding algorithms to pack air bags.

FINAL SOLUTION

Beheaded after trying for asylum in Australia

AN AFGHAN asylum seeker rejected by Australia under the Howard government was tortured and beheaded by kidnappers less than four weeks ago in a province south of Kabul.

The man, Mohammed Hussain, was thrown down a well by gunmen, believed to be the Taliban. Then in front of onlookers including members of his family, the killers threw a hand grenade down the well and he was decapitated.

According to The Guardian Weekly, the response of the Howard Government's Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock, then in charge of Australia's "Pacific Solution" was:

"The UN convention does not say you cannot be returned to a dangerous place".

Accounts of the killing were given to Phil Glendenning, director of the Edmund Rice Centre, this week. He told the Herald he has verified the events with four different sources in Afghanistan.

UFO FLAP

A huge, flat triangle-shaped craft apparently lifting a large, glowing object from a hill near Empire, Ohio.

Triangular craft picks up huge luminous ball-shaped object

Tim Comstock, Truck Driver, Waynesburg, Ohio:  “...  there was a very bright object just above the tree level. I can’t really say for sure what it was because I’ve never seen anything like it. It seemed self-luminescent. It was about the size of a large pickup truck and it was very bright whenever I looked at it. That’s really what caught my attention.

"It was a white light with a little bit of orange inside of it. It had a little bit of red and the shape just seemed so strange to me because it seemed like a biological shape. As I watched that shape, it was rising upward. As I looked above that, I saw a pattern of three bluish-colored lights. They weren’t flickering like a star. They were in some kind of sequence, but they were all in tune with each other. They were very large lights. They were definitely not stars.

"As the large white-orange object was rising up, it looked like it was going into the center of the triangle of blue lights. At first glance when I saw the triangle of lights and rising, glowing object, I could not process what was going on.

"As the white-orange object got closer to the triangle of lights, I could see from reflected light that the underside of the inside of the triangle pattern of blue lights was one object - one very, very large object. When I saw it with my naked eye, I saw the bottom of the craft and it looked like it was very flat. There might have been some features like whenever you crack open a piece of coal, there’s some crystalline structure to it. But beyond that, there was no visible doors or windows or anything like that.

BIG BROTHER

Centrelink 'using casino records to dock pensions'

The Welfare Rights Centre in New South Wales says aged and disability pensioners are being unfairly targeted by Centrelink over money won at Sydney's Star City Casino.
"You walk in with $100 and you walk out with $100, you might have gone up and down through the whole day but each time you go up, that's what Centrelink counts as the income," centre director Maree O'Halloran says.

POLITICALLY INCORRECT

I thought I Saw a P***y Cat: iTunes censorship is bullshit

"I thought I Saw a P***y Cat - Danny Kaye" - iTunes' automatic profanity censor goes into overdrive.
Among the words that were rather inexplicably asterisked by the online music store were "hot", which became "h*t" in (Red Hot Chilli Peppers); "killer" which became "k****r" (Killer Queen); and "Johnny" which became J****y for Johnny Cash.

BIG BROTHER

Microsoft patents web moderator robots

“Microsoft has just been awarded a patent for technology designed to automatically detect and remove ‘undesired words or phrases’ from all manner of digital communications, ranging from YouTube broadcasts to internet chat and songs,” writes Mark Harris.

According to Mr. Harris, Microsoft will release this technology to protect children, which is the usual explanation. “The patent describes a system that listens out for phonemes (word fragments) likely to be part of a "swearword".

If it thinks it hears a forbidden phrase, the software either fades out the offending syllables or simply replaces the "rude" word with a similar-sounding but clean alternative lifted from earlier speech without a second’s delay.”

Of course, defining “rude” will be left up to a corporate censor. It will not be limited to “explicit rap music.” It may very well include phrases such as “9/11 truth” and other political slogans at odds with the government.

BIB BROTHER

Australia to implement mandatory internet censorship

AUSTRALIA will join China in implementing mandatory censoring of the internet under plans put forward by the Federal Government.The revelations emerge as US tech giants Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, and a coalition of human rights and other groups unveiled a code of conduct aimed at safeguarding online freedom of speech and privacy.
The government has declared it will not let internet users opt out of the proposed national internet filter.

The plan was first created as a way to combat child pronography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

It came from outer space

The telephones of neighbours and friends within a 250-kilometre radius south of Alice Springs began ringing to discuss the meteorite that had flashed through the dusk on Friday night.
"I was outside with the children when I noticed them looking up at the sky," said Nicole Buddle from Hugh River Farms.
"I looked up and saw this white magnesium flare with smoke swirling. It was hard to see against the setting sun."
She called neighbour Ross Morton 40 kilometres away. "He said he had been feeding the cats on the veranda and felt the roof shake."

Piecing together the sightings across the Northern Territory enabled Sergeant Johnsson to conclude the smoking flare across the sky was some type of meteorite. "It looks like it came in a westerly direction at great speed and came down sometime around 7pm," he said.

The meteor was spotted near where the Henbury Meteor struck 4700 years ago. That giant meteor was travelling at more than 40,000kmh when it disintegrated and hit Earth, creating 12 giant craters 145 kilometres south-west of Alice Springs.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Two-metre asteroid roars over Sudan

An asteroid that slammed into the Earth’s atmosphere over northern Sudan, designated 2008TC3, had been discovered just a day earlier.
This was the first time an object had been discovered before hitting the Earth. Astronomer Richard Kowalski discovered the asteroid with the 1.5 metre telescope of the Catalina Sky Survey. The survey operates from Mt Lemmon near Tuscon, Arizona and also has a component at Siding Spring, Australia.

Soon after discovery other astronomers determined the path of the 2-metre-wide asteroid and determined that it was on a collision course with Earth.

In the 19 hours or so before 2008TC3 moved into the Earth’s shadow prior to impact 26 observatories around the globe provided an amazing 570 observations. These observations allowed the impact point to be determined to be over northern Sudan in Africa.

NORMAL FEMALE HUMAN

Cindy McCain Claims She’s ‘Just Like Any Other Female Human’

HONORABLE DISCHARGE

Woman stoned to death for adultery

THOUSANDS gathered to witness 50 Somali men stone a woman to death after an Islamic court found her guilty of adultery, witnesses say.

Aisho Ibrahim Dhuhulow, who had been found guilty of extra-marital intercourse by a court in the southern port of Kismayo, was buried in the ground up to her neck while the men pelted her head with rocks, the witnesses said.
The execution was carried out in one of the city's main squares.

The port of Kismayo was seized in August by a coalition of forces loyal to rebel leader Hassan Turki, and the Shebab, the country's main radical Islamist insurgent organisation.
The new administration began implementing a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law).

REALITY BITES

Meet the World's New Reserve Currency

"The harsh reality of the economic fallout isn't that Joe the plumber can't buy his business or that people's retirement funds are being lost or that unemployment is rising; the harsh reality is that people will die.

PRESS FREEDOM

Australian press freedom crumbling

AUSTRALIA's media freedom is slipping because of its "outrageous" anti-terror laws and lack of protection for reporters' sources, experts say. Australia is ranked 28th in the annual Press Freedom Index released this week by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
Australia's ranking is the same as last year's and puts it behind New Zealand (ranked 7th), the United Kingdom (23), Canada (13) and Scandinavian countries.

Iceland, Luxembourg and Norway were jointly named the nations with the most press freedom, while Eritrea was named as the country with the least media freedom.


Rupert Murdoch and wife Wendy Deng

The Mayne Report: Rupert ducks our questions

After twice promising to take general questions following his formal address, when the time came Rupert Murdoch promptly shut down the meeting without explanation. This still this hasn’t been reported in any News Corp newspaper throughout the world.
More on the Sun King: The New York Times is reporting that Rupert Murdoch has complained to the author of his upcoming biography -- a book called The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch -- that "it contains some extremely damaging misstatements of fact.
Murdoch's main complaint is that the book suggests he "is at times embarrassed by Fox News, which he owns ... and that he often shares 'the general liberal apoplexy,' as Mr. Wolff writes in the book, toward Fox News and its perceived conservative slant". Michael Wolff actually spent some 50 hours interviewing the mogul on the record.

TURNING TIDE

Election: Scott McClellan Endorses Obama

The White House press secretary hinted he would do it in May, and now Scott McClellan has finally pulled the trigger, telling CNN's D.L. Hughley " I will be voting for Barack Obama... I am going to support the candidate that has the best chance for changing the way Washington works and getting things done."

This scenario looks familiar, and may presage more last-minute Obama endorsements to come.

OBAMA BIN LADEN

Another October surprise?

"My money is on Osama Bin Laden popping back up with a hate video, just as he did the weekend before the 2004 election.
"That tape reminded the public that the country was still at risk from this sickening terrorist and that President Bush had kept us safe for the three years since the 11 September 2001 attacks."

While sophisticated analysts could explain that bin Laden released the tape just before the election because he hoped Bush would win (Bush was a better recruiting tool for Al Qaeda than a President Kerry would have been), none of that got through.

In this year's second debate, McCain said, "I know how" to find Bin Laden.
This should have led Obama to respond that if he knows how to catch him, he should have told his friend George Bush.

ALL TERRORISTS NOW

'Jihad Jack' cleared of al-Qaida link

ACCUSED Australian terror supporter "Jihad" Jack Thomas has been found not guilty of accepting cash from the world's most infamous terror group. Thomas mouthed "thank you" to a jury after it found him not guilty of taking money from terror group al-Qaida this afternoon.
But the jury found him guilty of using a falsified passport.

Mr Thomas's family cried as the verdicts were handed down.
Joseph Terrence Thomas, 35, had pleaded not guilty to intentionally receiving funds from a terrorist organisation and using a falsified passport.

He was originally convicted on the same charges in 2006, but the Court of Appeal later quashed the conviction.
The appeal court later ruled there should be another trial based on fresh evidence contained in interviews Mr Thomas gave to the ABC's Four Corners program about his actions while in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

JANUARY SURPRISE

Biden: 'There’s going to be a crisis come along on the 21st or 22nd of January'

“Mark my words,” the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy.
"The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said.
"Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

AGNOSTIC ATHEISTS

'No God' slogans for city's buses

Buses with the slogan "There's probably no God" could soon be running on the streets of London for four weeks.

The atheist posters are the idea of the British Humanist Association (BHA) and have been supported by prominent atheist Professor Richard Dawkins. The BHA planned only to raise £5,500, which was to be matched by Professor Dawkins, but it has now raised more than £36,000 of its own accord.

The slogan strangely uses the word probably: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

ADVERT YOU EYES

Ban for Horlicks and noodle ads

An advert claiming that Horlicks makes children "taller, stronger and sharper" has been banned after it mistakenly was screened on British television.
The Advertising Standards Authority  has also banned an advert for a brand of Nestle noodles which claimed to strengthen muscles and bones.

Both were meant to air in Bangladesh.

UFO DISCLOSURE

US pilot was ordered to shoot down UFO

Two US fighter planes were scrambled and ordered to shoot down a UFO over the English countryside during the Cold War, according to previously secret files which have been made public.

One pilot said he was seconds away from firing 24 rockets at the object, which moved erratically and gave a radar reading like "a flying aircraft carrier".
The pilot, Milton Torres, now 77 and living in Miami, said the UFO spent periods motionless in the sky before reaching estimated speeds of more than 12,000 kph.
After the alert, a shadowy figure told Mr Torres he must never talk about the incident and he duly kept silent for more than 30 years.

His story was among dozens of UFO sightings in defence ministry files released at the National Archives in London.

NOTHING TO SEE. MOVE ALONG

Airliner had near miss with UFO

A passenger jet bound for Heathrow Airport had a near miss with a UFO, Ministry of Defence files reveal.

The captain of the Alitalia airliner shouted "Look out" to his co-pilot at the sight of a brown missile-shaped object shooting past them overhead.
Civil Aviation Authority and military investigations could not explain the 1991 incident near Lydd in Kent.

The unsolved close encounter features in UFO-related military documents made available by the National Archives.
After ruling out the object flying past the Alitalia jet being a missile, weather balloon or space rocket, the MoD closed the inquiry.

Nineteen files covering sightings between 1986 and 1992 are being made available online.

PLAGUE PROPORTIONS

Decon^3: Deconstructing and Decontextualizing Decontamination

Foucault described how authorities once used the specter of plague to justify draconian quieting of any civil unrest.

Just the mere mention of the word "plague" could be used for quarantine or forced mass evacuations. Forced evacuation to mass delousing centers, cleansing stations, or the like, has sometimes been used to remove undesirables from a given area. Even "ethnic cleansing" could fall under the domain of decontamination ("decon").

Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government describes powers that responding agencies might desire:

• The authority to compel people to remain in one location or move to another, including temporary detention;
• The authority to use the military for domestic law enforcement, population control, and mass logistics;
• The authority to seize community or private property, such as hospitals, utilities, medicines, vehicles, or transit centers, or to compel the production of certain goods;
• The authority to compel individuals to undertake decontamination procedures, take medicines, or be quarantined;
• The authority to censor and control the media;
• The authority to liberalize standards for conducting searches and seizures;...
• The authority to waive regulatory requirements on the use of certain pharmaceuticals.

NUDE AND PRUDE

New airport body scanners spark privacy debate

The Government has defended controversial new airport body scanners as safe, but prominent civil libertarian Terry O'Gorman says the technology is an invasion of privacy.
A new millimetre wave radio frequency body scanner is being trialed at three major Australian airports. It does not use X-rays, but it does have "X-ray vision".

Using this technology, security officers can detect metal and plastic weapons and also they can see through your clothes.
The Government says it is very safe, but it is still controversial.
Mr O'Gorman, who heads the Council for Civil Liberties, says the technology is a "total invasion of privacy", allowing virtual strip searches and has overstepped the mark.

But the Government says this will not be allowed when the technology is used with the public.
"No images will be stored," the Office of Transport Security's Andrew Tongue said.
"Anybody but the person viewing the image is remote from where the person will be going through the body scanning, so they can't link in any way a person and their image.

[Not linking the image to an individual? Isn't that the whole point?]

911 LIHOP

NSA Tapped 9/11 Hijackers' Phone Calls for 2 Years

The U.S. government heard the 9/11 plans from the hijackers' own mouth. The NSA was tapping the hijackers' phone calls inside the U.S.
Specifically, hijackers Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi lived in San Diego, California, for 2 years before 9/11. Numerous phone calls between al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in San Diego and a high-level Al Qaeda operations base in Yemen were made in those 2 years.
The NSA had been tapping and eavesdropping on all calls made from that Yemen phone for years. So NSA recorded all of these phone calls.  George Washington's Blog

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Politkovskaya murder trial starts in Russia

The trial of three men charged with involvement in the murder of prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya has begun in Moscow. There are calls for the trial to be open to the public.

Ms Politkovskaya was an investigative journalist with Novaya Gazeta renowned for her reports from Chechnya. She was shot dead outside her Moscow apartment just over two years ago.

Three men are now on trial for their alleged involvement in her murder. But the judge has reportedly indicated this is to be a closed trial, because of secret material involved in the case.

CREDIT CRUNCH

A £516 trillion derivatives 'time-bomb'

The derivatives market is worth more than $516 trillion, (£303 trillion), roughly 10 times the value of the entire world's output: it's been called the "ticking time-bomb".
It's a market in which the lead protagonists – typically aggressive, highly educated, and now wealthy young men – have flourished in the derivatives boom. But it's a market that is set to come to a crashing halt – the Great Unwind has begun.
The beginning of the end started for many hedge funds with the combination of diving market values and worried investors pulling out their cash for safer climes.

Not for nothing did US billionaire Warren Buffett call them the real 'weapons of mass destruction'

The complex and opaque derivatives markets in which these hedge funds played has been dubbed the world's biggest black hole because they operate outside of the grasp of governments, tax inspectors and regulators. They operate in a parallel, shadow world to the rest of the banking system. They are private contracts between two companies or institutions which can't be controlled or properly assessed.

It is also impossible to establish their worth – the $516 trillion number is actually only a notional one. In the mid-Nineties, Nick Leeson lost Barings £1.3bn trading in derivatives, and the bank went bust. In 1998 hedge fund LTCM's $5bn loss nearly brought down the entire system. In fragile times like this, another LTCM could have catastrophic results.
In the late 1990s when confidence was roaring in the midst of the dotcom boom, a small band of politicians, uncomfortable with the ease with which banks would be allowed to play in these burgeoning markets, were painted as Luddites failing to move with the times.

At the core of this market is the credit derivative swap, effectively an insurance policy against the default in the interest payment on a corporate bond. One doesn't even need to own the bond itself. It is like Joe Public buying an insurance policy on someone else's house and pocketing the full value if it burns down.
As markets slid into crisis, and banks and corporations began to default on bond payments, many of these policies have proved worthless.

UNDERCOVER POLICING

Jean Charles de Menezes, innocent, shot by police.

Menezes officer changed evidence

An investigation has begun after an officer admitted changing evidence during the inquest into the death of Jean Charles de Menezes.
The Special Branch officer, named as Owen, said he deleted a line from computer notes which quoted Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission said it would investigate.Brazilian Mr de Menezes, 27, was killed by police who mistook him for one of the failed 21 July 2005 bombers.

HUGE ERECTIONS

Saudi prince plans 1000-metre tower

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal says he plans to build the world's tallest building in the city of Jeddah.
The tower will be more than a kilometre high at a cost of about $40 billion.

GENDER EQUALITY

Captain Hanadi Hindi, 27

First Saudi woman pilot to fly; driving still illegal

While the debate over whether Saudi women should be allowed to drive rages on, Captain Hanadi Hindi will soon become the first woman to fly a plane with the private fleet of a prince.
Hindi, 27, is preparing to take to the skies at a time when supporters and opponents of lifting the ban on women's driving in the conservative kingdom are still fighting it out in the local press.

"I never meant to be a pioneer. When I started learning to become a pilot, I did so for my father, who himself had aspired to be a pilot. I then got attached to flying," Hindi said by telephone from her home in Mecca.
Prince Al Walid Ben Talal's decision to make Hindi part of his private crew has drawn criticism from some conservative Muslim scholars, who object to any easing of constraints that bar Saudi women from mixing with men other than relatives or travelling without the authorisation of a male guardian.

Hindi said she was "not against" allowing women to drive because some women either cannot afford to employ drivers, which forces them to rely on public transport, or have no able-bodied men in their families to take them around. It would be good if women could get behind the wheel "with certain restrictions," such as granting that right only to women of middle age or more, she said.

POLICE STATE

Bush Plan For Martial Law - sheep led to slaughter

Under the heading of "civil disturbance planning," the U.S. military is training troops and police to suppress democratic opposition in America.
The master plan, Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2, is code-named, "Operation Garden Plot".
Originated in 1968, the "operational plan" has been updated over the last three decades, most recently in 1991, and was activated during the Los Angeles "riots" of 1992, and more than likely during the recent anti-WTO "Battle in Seattle".

...Equipped with flexible "military operations in urban terrain" and "operations other than war" doctrine, lethal and "less-than-lethal" high-tech weaponry, US "armed forces" and "elite" militarized police units are being trained to eradicate "disorder", "disturbance" and "civil disobedience" in America.
Further, it may very well be that police/military "civil disturbance" planning is the animating force and the overarching logic behind the incredible nationwide growth of police paramilitary units, a growth which coincidentally mirrors rising levels of police violence directed at the American people, particularly "non-white" poor and working people.

Frank Morales, "U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning: The War at Home," in Police State America, ed. Tom Burghardt, Toronto/Montreal: Arm The Spirit/Solidarity, 2002, P. 59

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Russia test fires long-range missile

President Dmitry Medvedev oversaw the test firing of an intercontinental Topol missile on Sunday and vowed to commission new generation weapons for Russia's armed forces.
A Reuters reporter said the truck-mounted Topol was fired in drizzling rain from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, which is nestled among the taiga forests of Russia's north.
Half an hour later it hit the Kura testing site, 6000 kilometres away on the Kamchatka peninsula in the Pacific.
"I have just been told that the dummy warhead has landed in Kura," Mr Medvedev said from the Topol launch pad where acrid smoke from the missile still hung thick in the air.

“The advanced Topol missile…has three cruise engines and can develop hypersonic speed. The high thrust-to-weight ratio allows the warhead to maneuver on the trajectory and pass through a dense air defense system.”

The RT-2UTTKh Topol-M (Russian: РТ-2УТТХ) is one of the most recent intercontinental ballistic missiles to be deployed by Russia and the first to be developed after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In its Russian designation РТ stands for Raketa Tverdotoplivnaya ("solid fuel rocket")
It has been assigned the NATO reporting name STALIN/DIA: SS-27. "Topol"  in Russian means "poplar".

IDENTITY HOLOCAUST

MoD computer hard drive missing

An investigation is under way into the disappearance of a computer hard drive which could contain the details of about 100,000 Armed Forces personnel.

The hard drive was being held by EDS, which is the Ministry of Defence's main IT contractor. The MoD said it was told the drive was missing on Wednesday following a priority audit carried out by EDS. It is thought to contain more than 1.5m pieces of information, including the details of 600,000 potential recruits.

There may also be some personal information including bank and driving licence details, passport numbers, addresses, dates of birth and telephone numbers.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.

OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

Asteroid near-miss prompts calls for astronomy funding

Astronomers in Arizona reported seeing a tiny asteroid, which they described as a new but routine fast-moving object.
Scientists at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center (MPC) in Massachusetts had calculated the object was likely to pass within one Earth's radius of the centre of the planet.
That means it would have struck the surface of the Earth if had been big enough.

WORDS OF GOD

The rival to the Bible

"When people ask me if the Bible is the word of God I answer 'which Bible?'" - Professor Bart Ehrman

For those who believe the Bible is the inerrant, unaltered word of God, there will be some very uncomfortable questions to answer. For 1500 years, the Codex Sinaiticus lay undisturbed in a Sinai monastery. It shows there have been thousands of alterations to today's bible.

The Codex contains two extra books in the New Testament. One is the little-known Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 2nd Century - the other, the Epistle of Barnabas. This goes out of its way to claim that it was the Jews, not the Romans, who killed Jesus, and is full of anti-Semitic kindling ready to be lit. "His blood be upon us," Barnabas has the Jews cry.

IGNOBLE LAUREATES

Spontaneous knotting ties up physics Ig Nobel prize

Physics, the Ig Nobels turned to US academics providing mathematical proof that hair, string, or anything else of the kind, will inevitably become tangled in knots - a process termed "spontaneous knotting of an agitated string".

VOICE OF REASON

Cannabis less harmful than drinking, smoking: report

Cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco, according to a report by a research charity Thursday, which called for a "serious rethink" of drug policy.

The Beckley Foundation, a charity which numbers senior experts and other academics among its advisors, said banning cannabis has no impact on supply and turns users into criminals.

"Although cannabis can have a negative impact on health, including mental health, in terms of relative harms it is considerably less harmful than alcohol or tobacco," says the report by the Foundation's Global Cannabis Commission.

The government is pressing for cannabis to be re-classified in law as a Class B drug compared with its current, less serious, Class C classification.

VOICE OR REASON

Is it time the world forgot about cannabis in its war against drugs?

A British think-tank has published a report for next year's United Nations Strategic Drug Policy Review, suggesting that a decriminalised, regulated market in cannabis would cause less harm than the prohibition of the drug currently in force across most of the world.

FREE MARKET

The dirty secret of the bailout

A critical - and radical - component of the bailout package proposed by the Bush administration and reserve chief Paulson is nothing short of outrageous. It includes no oversight of his own closed-door operations.
It merely gives congressional blessing and funding to what he has already been doing, ad hoc.

Section 8 of this legislation is just 32 words but it represents a significant consolidation of power and an abdication of oversight authority. It reads, in its entirety:

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

THOUGHT CRIME

Can a government remotely detect a terrorist's thoughts?

The US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect "hostile thoughts" in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

IMAGINE the scene. You arrive at New York's JFK airport, tired after a long flight, and trudge into line at passport control. As you wait, a battery of lasers, cameras, eye trackers and microphones begin secretly compiling a dossier of information about your body.
Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview - or more. Last week, the DHS science unit gave an update on the project, now dubbed the less-hostile-sounding Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST) program.

The trial technology was installed in a trailer because it is planned to be easily transportable, so that FAST trucks can appear at any sports or music event as required. They look set to become as regular a sight at such events as mobile toilets and catering trucks.

HATE CAMPAIGN

Without wanting to condone irresponsible drink driving (which I discriminate from responsible drink driving) I have to say the South Australian Government's latest ad campaign is utterly vile.
Our noble leaders have been telling us since "9-11" that the world has changed ... and that it has changed because of unrestrained HATRED.
Keeping in mind that hatred of the Jews was Government policy in Nazi Germany, here we have the kernel of more of this toxic mentality.
Hatred is the enemy of society. For that reason I sadly (again) conclude that OUR ALIEN MASTERS are in fact a pack antisocial creeps.

POLICE STATE

Jury retrace Menezes' last steps

Jurors are due to retrace the final journey of Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes who was shot dead by police marksmen three years ago.
He was shot by two police officers who mistook him for failed suicide bomber Hussain Osman.
Taking the inquest jury through events leading up to the electrician's death, Sir Michael listed a number of occasions where officers were unclear whether or not they thought they were pursuing a bomber.
He said that as Mr de Menezes entered a Tube station at Stockwell, no member of the surveillance team had positively identified him as Osman - the man they were looking for.

Two marksmen had jointly fired nine rounds, seven of which entered the Brazilian's head at point blank range.

There have been five inquiries relating to the death and its aftermath, including a criminal trial. In 2007, an Old Bailey jury found the Metropolitan Police guilty of breaching health and safety laws, after hearing about the events leading up to Mr de Menezes being shot.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Mysterious Activity at Marriott Hotel Islamabad by US Marines

After the blast, mysteriously fire was started at the fourth and fifth floors.

Those flours were housing the mysterious steel boxes under the heavy guard of United States marines and no one including the Pakistani security forces and the security men of the hotel were allowed to go near with the them. These boxes were shifted inside the hotel when the Admiral Mike Mullen met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and others in Islamabad.

A member of parliament Mumtaz Alam who belongs to the PPP, the ruling party was an eye witness when the white truck of US embassy came to the gate of Marriot Hotel and US marines unloaded the steel boxes and shifted them to the fourth and fifth floors without passing through them the scanners at the entrance of the hotels.

When the truck was there, all the entrance and the exit passage way to the hotels were closed.

STONEHENGE ROCKS ON

Dig pinpoints Stonehenge origins

For centuries, archaeologists have marvelled at the construction of Stonehenge, which lies on Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire.
Mineral analysis indicates that the original circle of bluestones was transported to the plain from a site 240km (150 miles) away, in the Preseli hills, South Wales.

MORAL OVERLORDS

Suicide note targets 'bully boy' prosecutor

A voluntary euthanasia campaigner who was facing a jail term over a man's killing has used her suicide note to accuse New South Wales Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi QC of harassment. Caren Jenning's suicide note was read out by Exit International director Dr Philip Nitschke to a voluntary euthanasia conference in Sydney this morning after she took her life last Thursday.

Jenning was due to face a sentencing hearing next month for being an accessory to manslaughter after the fact. She had imported the drug from Mexico that was used in the 2006 death of former Qantas pilot Graeme Wylie, who she and his wife maintained wanted to die.

"During the trial, I felt persecuted and harassed by Crown prosecutor Mark Tedeschi," she wrote. "He is a bully boy."

STASI STATE

US schools pay classroom informants $1000

Under an incentive scheme at Scripps Ranch, a large San Diego high school, students can call a special "tip line" - 888-580-TIPS - to report suspicious activity on campus.Callers whose tips lead to arrests or charges can earn themselves rewards of up to $1000.

POLICE STATE

Secret' police to use fake IDs

POLICE will have the power to create false identity documents for undercover operatives under new laws to be introduced in South Australia.
And for the first time, the identities of the undercover police officers will remain secret during court processes to prevent reprisals from criminals they help to apprehend.
Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, who will introduce the legislation into Parliament this week, said the new laws would help police fight organised crime "from the inside".

BACK IN USSRA

USA transforming into USSRA

An economic analyst says by buying out investment giants, the USA had transformed into the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America).

"This transformation of the USA into a country where there is socialism for the rich, the well connected and Wall Street (i.e. where profits are privatized and losses are socialized) continues today with the nationalization of AIG,” Nouriel Roubini said.

"This latest action on AIG follows a variety of many other policy actions that imply a massive - and often flawed - government intervention in the financial markets and the economy," Roubini added.

"the bailout of the Bear Stearns creditors; the bailout of Fannie and Freddie; the use of the Fed balance sheet (hundreds of billions of safe US Treasuries swapped for junk toxic illiquid private securities); the use of the other government sponsored enterprises GSEs (the Federal Home Loan Bank system) to provide hundreds of billions of dollars of "liquidity" to distressed, illiquid and insolvent mortgage lenders; the use of the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC to manipulate the stock market (restrictions on short sales); the use of the US Treasury to manipulate the mortgage market (Treasury will now for the first time outright buy mortgage-backed security agency to manipulate and prop up this market);…." Roubini elaborated.

GOD BOTHER

Sarah Palin’s links to the Christian Right

The religious background of Sarah Palin is not unrelated to her bid to take the nation’s second highest office. She herself has been extremely vague about that background. Given the details, it becomes clearer perhaps why.

Sarah Palin has spent more than two and a half decades of her life as a member of an Alaska church which is part of a fanatical Christian-named cult project that is sweeping across America.

Palin comes out of the most radical stream of US Born-Again Evangelism known as ‘Joel’s Army,’ an offshoot of what is called Dominionism and sometimes also called the Latter Rain cult or Manifest Sons of God. The movement deliberately attempts to remain below the radar screen.

Theocratic Sect Prays for Real Armageddon

Todd Bentley, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous "supernatural healing revival" in central Florida.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read "Joel's Army." They're evidence of Bentley's generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that's gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other "hyper-charismatic" preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel's Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers.

GLOBAL WARRING

Russia threatens to seize swathe of Arctic

Vladimir Putin, now Russia's prime minister, has said global warming is good for Russia – melting its vast icy territories to reveal previously inaccessible oil and gas reserves.
President Dmitry Medvedev said that Russia should unilaterally claim part of the Arctic, stepping up the race for the disputed energy-rich region.

With oil production declining – and Russia's oil-fuelled power rising – it is keen to grab ever more.

NEW WORLD DICTIONARY

RECESSIONISTA: A person who manages to look fashionable despite being on a tight budget.

NUDE AND LEWD

Thousand of Balinese rally against anti-porn bill

About 1000 Balinese have rallied to protest against a controversial anti-pornography bill that critics say could hurt local cultural traditions.

The anti-smut bill contains provisions that could jail people for kissing in public and criminalise many forms of art or traditional culture that hinge on sensuality.

The bill has been in parliament for over three years because of criticism it would threaten Indonesia's tradition of tolerance.

But one Islamic party's lawmaker has said the bill's passing would be a Ramadan gift.

"We in Bali see the body as aesthetic, but the pornography bill sees the body as an object of sin," said Sugilanus, one of the protesters at the rally in Denpasar, capital of the predominantly Hindu island of Bali.

Nude sculptures and paintings are common in culturally-rich Bali, which earns most of its income from domestic and international tourists.

BIG BROTHER

Covert tagging and tracking

Earlier targeted operations, such as the attack on Al Jazeera in Kabul, depended on electronic monitoring of cell phones and satellite uplinks, while the Israelis have found their targets with the help of both electronic intercepts and spies on the ground.
The Pentagon's latest plans for CTTL go far beyond, and include everything from covertly tagging suspects with microscopic radio chips to tracking them by the way they walk and even they way they smell.

But beyond CTTL's wizardry, both real and imagined, the obvious question is no matter how brilliantly done, does targeted killing work in the long run against a popularly supported resistance to colonial rule?

NB. The Pentagon has explicitly committed itself to make its new tagging, targeting and locating technology available for use within its own borders.

INSANE IN THE MEMBRANE

The Army's Totally Serious Mind-Control Project

Soldiers barking orders at each other is so 20th Century.
That's why the U.S. Army has just awarded a $4 million contract to begin developing "thought helmets" that would harness silent brain waves for secure communication among troops.

Ultimately, the Army hopes the project will "lead to direct mental control of military systems by thought alone."

PRIMAL SCREAM

Counting RSA-integers

In the RSA cryptosystem integers of the form n=p.q with p and q primes of comparable size (`RSA-integers') play an important role.

It is a folklore result of cryptographers that C_r(x), the number of integers n<=x that are of the form n=pq with p and q primes such that p<q<rp, is for fixed r>1 asymptotically equal to c_r*x*log^{-2}x for some constant c_r>0.

Here we prove this and show that c_r=2log r.

About the logic of the prime number distribution

There are two basic number sequences which play a major role in the prime number distribution. The first Number Sequence SQ1 contains all prime numbers of the form 6n+5
and the second Number Sequence SQ2 contains all prime numbers of the form 6n+1.

All existing prime numbers seem to be contained in these two number sequences, except of the prime numbers 2 and 3.

PRIME SPIRAL

Prime Spiral

The prime spiral, also known as Ulam's spiral, is a plot in which the positive integers are arranged in a spiral with primes indicated in some way along the spiral.

This construction was first made by Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909-1986) in 1963 while doodling during a boring talk at a scientific meeting.
While drawing a grid of lines, he decided to number the intersections according to a spiral pattern, and then began circling the numbers in the spiral that were primes.
Surprisingly, the circled primes appeared to fall along a number of diagonal straight lines or, in Ulam's slightly more formal prose, it "appears to exhibit a strongly nonrandom appearance" (Stein et al. 1964). The spiral appeared on the March 1964 cover of Scientific American magazine.

MATH MUSIC

"Geometrical Music Theory," by Rachel Wells Hall. Science, 18 April 2008, pages 328-329.
"The shape of Beethoven's Ninth," by Davide Castelvecchi. ScienceNews, 24 May 2008, page 13.

Math in the Media

Recent research by Clifton Callendar, Ian Quinn, and Dmitri Tymoczko---all three of whom work in academic music departments---shows a novel way of using geometry to map out a musical score.

Using mathematics, and even geometry, to study music is not new, but the three authors present a way to look at each moment in time in a musical score, like a vertical snapshot of the written music, as a point in n-space, where n is the number of "voices," or instrumental parts, in the piece.

Callendar’s work also demonstrates how the mathematical concept of equivalence classes---a group of objects sharing a single property---can be applied to music.

According to the reviewer, the new research may lead to new methods for teaching and visualizing music.

(The research article, "Generalized Voice-Leading Spaces," starts on page 346 of the same issue.)
At left: Musical orbifold, ordered pairs of pitch classes, courtesy of Rachel Wells Hall.--- Lisa DeKeukelaere.

POLICE STATE

The Pentagon’s alarming project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine

There is alarming evidence accumulated by serious scientific sources that the US Government is about to or already has ‘weaponized’ Avian Flu. If the reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out. Pentagon and NIH experiments with remains in frozen state of the 1918 virus are the height of scientific folly. Is the United States about to unleash a new racially selective pandemic through the process of mandatory vaccination with an alleged vaccine "against" Avian Flu?

There is reason to believe that sections of the international pharmaceutical industry cartel are acting in concert with the US Government to develop a genetically modified H5N1 virus substance that could unleash a man-made pandemic, perhaps more deadly than the 1918 ‘Spanish Influenza’ pandemic claiming up to 30 million lives.

POLICE STATE

Cities Would be Locked Down, Quarantined Under Pandemic Flu Response Plan

How would an authoritarian regime implement a lock-down of its civilians ... break open a vial or two of one of their "military grade" superbugs.

The federal government would need to quarantine infected households and ban public gatherings to contain pandemic flu, according to a computer simulation study conducted by researchers from Virginia Tech and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"You wouldn't go out to the movies. You wouldn't congregate with people," said researcher Stephen Eubank. "You'd pretty much be staying home with the doors and windows battened down.
"The consensus among health experts is that a pandemic, or global epidemic, of influenza is inevitable. The last such pandemic, in 1918, killed between 40 and 100 million people.

CASHLESSNESS

Shoppers to use fingerprints or eye scans to pay for goods

A "contactless payment" technology, called OnePulse, allows customers to use everyday items they carry around with them - such as mobile phones, key fobs or even their eyes or fingerprints - to make payments. It means shoppers will no longer have to rely on cards.
Barclaycard, which is part of Barclays Bank, has already introduced a new-style cash machine in the United Arab Emirates enabling people to use their fingerprints to withdraw money and shoppers in the UK may soon be able to use the same technology.

STASI STATE

Eight-year-olds recruited by councils to spy on neighbours who drop litter

Children are being offered money by councils to spy on neighbours and report petty offences such as 'bin crimes' and dog-fouling.
The youngsters are among 5,000 residents encouraged to photograph or video neighbours in the act of 'environmental crimes'.
In some cases children as young as eight, are being bribed with rewards of £500 for passing on the names of neighbours or taking down their car registration numbers.

For a reminder of what the Stasi was, start here.

BIG BROTHER

Anti-terrorism laws used to spy on noisy children

three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year.

The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions.

The findings alarmed civil liberties campaigners. Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "Councils do a grave disservice to professional policing by using serious surveillance against litterbugs instead of terrorists."

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Hypocrisy of the Authoritarians

It appears that, when it comes to one of their own, the religious right can adjust, twist and fit anything into their set of values. If that fails, they just deny the facts and call them "a smear campaign". You would expect them to think Palin a "bad mom" for returning to work when her baby was only three days old, or for failing to instill the values she preaches into her daughter. But no, she is a "good mom" because she supports her daughter, and because abortion wasn't an option in their family. There are many other examples of such thinking. McCain had an affair with a lobbyist? Unsubstantiated rumors; this simply cannot be, and who cares anyway. George W. Bush used drugs and alcohol? He has found Jesus since then and is forgiven. Etc, etc.

These people, incidentally, are the ones claiming to have absolute moral values, unlike the "liberal" moral relativists.

RED MENACE

Russian Opposition Blogger Murdered by Police

The owner of a website opposing the Kremlin-backed leadership of Russia's troubled Ingushetia region—scene of a recently failed separatist uprising—was shot and killed by law enforcement officials there today. Magomed Yevloyev, who ran the site www.Ingushetiya.ru, had just touched down at the airport after a trip to Moscow when police took him into custody and drove away with him in a Volga. Inside the car, Yevloyev was shot in the temple. The authorities don't even deny it, coming up with an excuse that will be quite familiar to film fans.

Using the "Vincent Vega Defense" the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow claims that the gun accidentally went off inside the car, and just happened to hit Yevloyev directly in his brain. Though that doesn't explain why, as his friend contends, the police tossed his body into the street near a local hospital and sped off. "It was in no way a mistake," says the friend.

BEES COOL MAN

Pesticide data may tell why bees die

A Bayer CropScience pesticide is at the center of a legal battle for research data that could help explain what's killing U.S. honeybees in large numbers.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal court, accuses the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of hiding the honeybee data.

The Natural Resources Defense Council sued after the EPA missed a deadline to respond to a Freedom of Information request the council submitted July 17.
It's not unheard of for federal regulators to take years to fulfill an FOIA request. But in the case of Bayer's pesticide chlothianidine, the Natural Resources Defense Council decided to push hard.

DEATH OF DEMOCRACY

Ohio Voting Machines Contained Programming Error That Dropped Votes

A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.

The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.

THE QUICKENING

At top of Greenland, new worrisome cracks in ice

In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.
And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year.
If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in sourthern Greenland.

GREEN BROWN

UFO HOT SPOT

Buyer keen on caravan park UFO hot spot

A potential buyer has been found for a caravan park in central Australia reportedly ranked fifth in the world for reportings of UFO sightings.
The owners say a buyer from Adelaide is interested in the roadhouse and camp ground at Wycliffe Well, despite fears of alien invasion.

Maintenance worker Russell Redding says there is nothing to fear from the numerous 'visitors' who do not arrive with cars and caravans. Mr Redding says sightings have happened as recently as this week.

"I saw a black line in the sky. A huge amount of lights came on. Then all of a sudden the lights closed like a building closing down, but it was parallel and it closed right down to one light and it lifted off and it went on an angle then that light turned off," he said.

FLEXIBLE VOWS

Russia's leader Vlad (the Impaler) Putin dumped his wife for Alina Kabaeva ...
When you're the leader of the not so free world you need something to take the stress out of a hard day.