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.