Groonk's Newsmine 2.0

After an increase for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing by leaps and bounds, White House budget documents assume a cutback in 2008 and further cuts thereafter.

In fact, the proposed cuts are so draconian that it seems to some that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better. More realistic numbers, however, would raise doubts as to whether Bush can keep his promise to wrestle the deficit under control by the time he leaves office.

[...]

The veterans' medical care cuts would come even though more and more people are trying to enter the system and as the number of people wounded in Iraq keeps rising. Even though Iraq war veterans represent only about 2 percent of the Veterans Administration's patient caseload, many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care.

[...]

Kevin and Marie Barre, a husband and wife from New Orleans, wore white plastic coveralls bearing the all-too-familiar spray-painted "X" that denotes a home that has been checked for bodies.

"It's a reminder. A lot of people who are coming down here don't understand what we've been through," Kevin Barre said.

Several people draped in blue tarps like those used to cover damaged roofs. One woman appeared in a nun's habit made of a blue tarp. A man with a model of a military helicopter suspended over his head wrapped himself in a white blanket with "2000 lbs" stenciled on it - he was a giant sandbag, like the ones dropped into one of the breached levees.

Another group of French Quarter revelers dressed as blind people with canes and dark glasses. They wore hard hats and T-shirts emblazoned "LEVEE INSPECTOR."

Along an Uptown parade route, a family who lost their Lakeview home to flooding poked fun at former FEMA director Michael Brown. Jenny Louis, her husband, Ross, and their three children strolled around in all-brown costumes, similar to the uniforms worn by UPS drivers. Printed on their backs: "What Did Brown Do For You Today?"

As a sail traps the wind, a planetary harddrive would use geomagnetism.

Provided constant motion on behalf of the trains, I thought, and given absolutely gigantic magnets of the right polarity and location, Berlin could start producing its own magnetic field – which meant that any city with a subway could be transformed into a harddrive. Harddrive London. Harddrive Beijing. Harddrive Moscow.

Of course, it’s obvious even to me that you’d have to do quite a lot more than just bury some magnets underground in order to transform a city into a harddrive – you’d need a shovel, for instance, and perhaps some strong anti-manic drugs; but my point is that if Christopher Wren could build a tower that simultaneously memorialized the Great Fire of London even as it acted as a scientific device, then perhaps you could turn urban infrastructure itself into a kind of working scientific apparatus.

You could turn all of Berlin into a geomagnetic harddrive....

Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami.

Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Maria’s pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The town’s cable television network will carry no X-rated channels.

Though it's been eight years since BABYLON 5 left our screens (though only four since Andreas last reprised his role in the ill-fated LEGEND OF THE RANGERS), his poetic speeches still inspire me as I labor over pages of my own work. His voice still reminds me what it means to make a difference. His countenance still offers an enigmatic smile and a mischievous twinkle. His presence behind that latex mask through which his charisma shown like sunlight through glass will linger to remind me what a great character can accomplish.

Andreas Katsulas is gone. For that, the world has lost something special. Andreas Katsulas is loved. For that, we're all the better.
(via TV Wasteland's JASON DAVIS

God provided the 22-year-old Smith with a pair of glasses and seer stones that allowed him to translate the "Reformed Egyptian" writings on the golden plates into the "Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ."

Mormons believe these scriptures restored the church to God's original vision and left the rest of Christianity in a state of apostasy.

The book's narrative focuses on a tribe of Jews who sailed from Jerusalem to the New World in 600 BC and split into two main warring factions.

The God-fearing Nephites were "pure" (the word was officially changed from "white" in 1981) and "delightsome." The idol-worshiping Lamanites received the "curse of blackness," turning their skin dark.

According to the Book of Mormon, by 385 AD the dark-skinned Lamanites had wiped out other Hebrews. The Mormon church called the victors "the principal ancestors of the American Indians." If the Lamanites returned to the church, their skin could once again become white.

"It would be a virtual certainly that their DNA would be swamped," said Daniel Peterson, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, part of the worldwide Mormon educational system, and editor of a magazine devoted to Mormon apologetics. "And if that is the case, you couldn't tell who was a Lamanite descendant."

"I'm willing to live in ambiguity. I don't get that bothered by things I can't resolve in a week."

For others, living with ambiguity has been more difficult. Phil Ormsby, a Polynesian who lives in Brisbane, Australia, grew up believing he was a Hebrew.

"I visualized myself among the fighting Lamanites and lived out the fantasies of the [Book of Mormon] as I read it," Ormsby said. "It gave me great mana [prestige] to know that these were my true ancestors."

The DNA studies have altered his feelings completely.

"Some days I am angry, and some days I feel pity," he said. "I feel pity for my people who have become obsessed with something that is nothing but a hoax."

Google: Congressman, I actually can't, I don't think it's fair for us to say that we're ashamed.

Lantos: You have nothing to be ashamed of?

Google: I am not ashamed of it, and I am not proud of it...We have taken a path, we have begun on a path, we have done a path that...will ultimately benefit all the users in China. If we determined, congressman, as a result of changing circumstances or as a result of the implementation of the Google.cn program that we are not achieving those results then we will assess our performance, our ability to achieve those goals, and whether to remain in the market.

Lantos, to Cisco: Is your company ashamed?

Cisco: (Begins to talk about products that Cisco sells.)

[...]

Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law...We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years? Have any of the companies reached out to these families and asked if you could be of any help to them?

Yahoo: We have expressed our condemnation of the prosecution of this person, expressed our views to the Chinese government...We have approached the Chinese government on these issues.

Lantos: Have you reached out to the family? I can ask it 10 more times if you refuse to answer it. You are under oath.

Yahoo: We have not reached out to the families.

The effect is based on the development of a new material that exploits the way atoms in matter move, to make them interact with a laser beam in an entirely new way.

The work is based on a breakthrough which contradicts Einstein's theory that in order for a laser to work, the light-amplifying material it contains, usually a crystal or glass, must be brought to a state known as 'population inversion'. This refers to the condition of the atoms within the material, which must be excited with enough energy to make them emit rather than absorb light.

If Coleman is to be believed, then I suspect the single most important thing I've learned is that the chocolate business is full of lying bastards out to exploit the public and flog inferior crap. This is not how he put it, and it's not how he comes across (more of that in a minute), but over the course of the anecdotes about other chocolate makers, it's very hard not to see a picture emerging.

True story: in 1899, Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla decided to end war forever. With Twain's connections and Tesla's inventions, they went into business, selling world peace.

So what happened?

Only now can the tale be told-- in which Twain and Tesla collided with Edison and Morgan, an evil science cabal merging the Black Arts and the Industrial Age. Turn of the century New York City sets the stage for a titanic battle over the very fate of the mankind.
----
SCIENCE!
No longer the realm of the fop, the dandy, or the physicist!
SCIENCE!
No longer the purview of landed gentry or the monied upper classes
SCIENCE is TODAY! SCIENCE is NOW!
SCIENCE IS FOR YOU!

The purpose is to teach soldiers that using the wrong gestures can potentially cause offence and escalate already tense situations.

In the program, users must build trust with local people through verbal communication and gestures.

One of the system's creators says the training tool, known as Tactical Iraqi, has already been a great success.

[...]

The program teaches military personnel some key gestures such as an up-down movement with the right hand to ask someone to slow down and gives them tips such as removing mirror sunglasses when approaching local people.

"In Iraq, to show sincerity you have to put more effort into your gestures," said Dr Vilhjalmsson.

He added that reserved body language in exchanges with local people could be interpreted as having something to hide in Iraq, potentially escalating a tense situation.
Military personnel also learn that people can approach each other more closely than one normally might in the West.

Dr Vilhjalmsson said it was important troops should not automatically interpret close proximity in an exchange as a threat.

And the game teaches them that pointing the finger at a person can be considered aggressive in Arab cultures.

The scientists have succeeded in making the first remote copies of beams of laser light, by combining quantum cloning with quantum teleportation into a single experimental step. Telecloning is more efficient than any combination of teleportation and local cloning because it relies on a new form of quantum entanglement - multipartite entanglement.

Professor Sam Braunstein, of the Department of Computer Science at York, said: "Quantum mechanics allows us to do things which we previously thought were impossible. In 1998, I was involved in an experiment in America which was one of the first for quantum teleportation in which we transmitted a beam of light without it crossing the physical medium in between.

"This new experiment is an extension of that work. Whether it will change the world for individuals or is just of use to governments or big companies is hard to say. Any new protocol is like a new-born baby and it has to develop, but we know this one could be used to tap cryptographic channels.

Stephen Colbert: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority-authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say "Listen to me, and just don't question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine"-the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. 'Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America's current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren't thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can't argue with the validity of that feeling.

But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there's only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press "liberal," they call the press "biased," not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left-or even because of the bias for the left, because it's hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion-but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there's any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government-it's like the existence of another authority. So that's another part of truthiness. Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

(via boingboing)

(via boingboing)

LEE: I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I kept it a secret until I did my first movie.

SPIELBERG: You never admitted it?

LEE: No. I always felt ashamed.

Because your father didn't approve?

LEE: Yes. And because of the society I came from.

SPIELBERG: What would your father have wished for you?

LEE: Anything but this, I guess. Something practical. So film was a very repressed pleasure for me. I always had scenes in my head, but "The Virgin Spring" was an epiphany for me. After that movie, you cannot move for a long time. You feel you will see life differently now. [Pause] I always wished I could do something like that on screen.

(a little later, after Spielberg reveals his start in film was the Night Gallery pilot)

CLOONEY: Was Rod Serling around?

SPIELBERG: He was great with me also. I actually lit his cigarette.

CLOONEY: Did you really?

SPIELBERG: Yeah.

CLOONEY: You helped him die.[Laughter]

Come Wednesday he will be elevated to superhero status when a comic book based on his life arrives in stores. The graphic novel, called "The Flying Friar" and the work of London writers Rich Johnston and Thomas Nachlik, tells the story of Copertino’s life and his troubles with fictional foe Lux Luther.

Copertino was know for levitating feet above the floor for hours while in a state of religious ecstasy.On a more down-to-earth level, another feat is about to be performed. “The Flying Friar” is reported to have nearly sold out its print run, albeit a small one, even before it ships to stores.

While this probably says something of the pulling power of the book, it also says something about the category generally. The sector, particularly the graphic novels area, is now mainstream. “Graphic novels are seeing increasing sales,” agrees Johnston, who points to a number of recent Hollywood movies spawned by the genre.

Taste it-"not half bad," according to Apollo 16 astronaut John Young.

Sniff it-"it smells like spent gunpowder," says Cernan.

How do you sniff moondust?

see captionEvery Apollo astronaut did it. They couldn't touch their noses to the lunar surface. But, after every moonwalk (or "EVA"), they would tramp the stuff back inside the lander. Moondust was incredibly clingy, sticking to boots, gloves and other exposed surfaces. No matter how hard they tried to brush their suits before re-entering the cabin, some dust (and sometimes a lot of dust) made its way inside.

Once their helmets and gloves were off, the astronauts could feel, smell and even taste the moon.

The experience gave Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt history's first recorded case of extraterrestrial hay fever. "It's come on pretty fast," he radioed Houston with a congested voice. Years later he recalls, "When I took my helmet off after the first EVA, I had a significant reaction to the dust. My turbinates (cartilage plates in the walls of the nasal chambers) became swollen."

Online, ongoing comics, exclusive to that webspace.

"Information Peacekeeping" is how information and communications technologies can be used to avoid and prevent conflicts by creating the means for the creation of indigenous knowledge and wealth creation. This is a term that Robert Steele has coined and a concept that I talk more about in this post: "Can Open Source Intelligence Be a Non-Violent Alternative to War?"

"Peacekeeping Intelligence" is the information that is used by military forces after conflict has already broken out, and peacekeeping military operations have come in to stabilize a region.

And Information Operations are the combination of Strategic Communication with a foundation from Open Source Intelligence. The intent of information operations is to explain and offensively communicate US Foreign Policy and our National Security interests.

Robert Steele sees US National Security as being fundamentally interconnected with Global Security, and that the free and open distribution of information helps to stabilize countries and avoid and prevent conflict.

"Information Peacekeeping" seems to be quite separate from the mandate that have been given to the US intelligence communities or the Department of Defense with regards to Open Source Intelligence. It is certainly a related concept and a potential application of Open Source Intelligence, but the application of OSINT products in this way would probably fall underneath the umbrella of diplomacy and the State Department. There are also some who suggest that there needs to be a new institution like a Department of Peace that would be explicitly tasked with coming up with these types of best practices for avoiding and preventing conflict.

Available exclusively through iTunes, the song features choppy Tex-Mex style guitar runs and Nelson's deadpan delivery of lines like, "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?" and "Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out."

The song, which debuted Tuesday on Howard Stern's satellite radio show, was written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981. Sublette said he wrote it during the "Urban Cowboy" craze and always imagined Nelson singing it.

There's many a young boy who feels things he don't comprehend.
Well small town don't like it when somebody falls between sexes,
No, small town don't like it when a cowboy has feelings for men.

Well I believe in my soul that inside every man there's a feminine,

And inside every lady there's a deep manly voice loud and clear.
Well, a cowboy may brag about things that he does with his women,
But the ones who brag loudest are the ones that are most likely queer.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other

What did you think those saddles and boots was about?
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother,
Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out.

Ten men for each woman was the rule way back when on the prairie,

And somehow those cowboys must have kept themselves warm late at night.
Cowboys are famous for getting riled up about fairies,
But I'll tell you the reason a big strong man gets so uptight:

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other

That's why they wear leather, and Levi's and belts buckled tight.
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;
There's many a cowboy who's more like a lady at night.

Well there's always somebody who says what the others just whisper,
And mostly that someone's the first one to get shot down dead:
When you talk to a cowboy don't treat him like he was a sister
Don't mess with the lady that's sleepin' in each cowboy's head.

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
Even though they take speed and drive pickups and shoot their big guns;
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother;

There's many a cowboy who keeps quiet about things he's done.

Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was in stable condition in the intensive care unit of a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday.

"He is stable and doing well. It was almost like he was spending time with me in my living room," said hospital administrator Peter Banko, who visited Whittington.

Banko said Whittington was in the intensive care unit because his condition warranted it, but he didn't elaborate.