Ape-Man Russkies

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

(scotsman article)

By the time the Horse Inseminologist comes in, you'd swear it was a Monty Python skit.

Prologue to X-Mas Vacation Noise

she wants revenge -"out of control"

I have one of She Wants Revenge's songs on here somewhere, and I right well loved it. This song isn't as damned good as that one, but I still really enjoy it...a bit dancy for me, but I guess that's not exactly a bad thing.

Vashti Bunyan-"Turning Backs"

It might be just that I'm writing this at 3:10 am, but this song is beyouteefull. In more eloquent words, it's transcendental, haunting...and more then a little melancholy. Then again, it also feels like perfect driving music when you've got nothing but five hours on the road and time to kill. Oi, I'm looking forward to that drive home.

Radical Face Versus Phalex Sledgehammer-"Crooked Teeth"

With a name like that, how can they do wrong? The singer should never ever use cough drops, because the voice on this song is perfect. It's hard to articulate, but everything about this song makes me like it. So yes, check them out.

the Notes and Scratches-"The Clockmaker's Daughter"

For the melodramatics reading this, this is a great song to sit around your room and smear your eyeliner to. Damn emo kids. For the stalkers among us, this song is a good song to sit around your room and watch your true love through your binoculaurs...damn freaks. Again, yet another lead singer whose best aspect is a voice that needs to stay away from cough syrup. Sad, like old country, and in a good way.

Radiant Darling-"Familiar"

So it's now 3:27, and I'm losing all ability to properly comprehend. But I do comprehend liking this song.

Incompetent Design

No self-respecting engineering student would make the kinds of dumb mistakes that are built into us.
All of our pelvises slope forward for convenient knuckle-dragging, like all the other great apes. And the only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution's way of modifying something or else it's just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.

(seed magazine article)

As far as the devine beauty of the eye goes, I've needed glasses since birth.

Oil Industry still seeking Ecological Apocalypse

Documents obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian reveal a systematic plan to persuade European business, politicians and the media that the EU should abandon its commitments under the Kyoto protocol, the international agreement that aims to reduce emissions that lead to global warming. The disclosure comes as United Nations climate change talks in Montreal on the future of Kyoto, the first phase of which expires in 2012, enter a critical phase.

(guardian unlimited article)

*cough police state cough*

House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement Thursday to extend the USA Patriot Act, the government's premier anti-terrorism law, before it expires at the end of the month.

(yahoo news article)

I'm amazed that this is actually passing. Bush approval ratings are low, Republican initiatives are meeting resistance left and right, and people seem to actually want to talk about non-approved opinions again. And yet, the USA Perlustration Act passed again.

Americans love to be watched, I guess.

Inuit sue United States, global warming not as easy to ignore in the North

The Inuit petition urges the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to declare the US to be in violation of the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.

(al jazeera article)

So, how are you going to trust on this one? Michael Crichton, the author of State of Fear and anti-global warming pundit, or the Inuit, who live in the artcic, where they tend to notice things like global warming?

Don't expect an Emmy

IN Speed, Keanu Reeves had to keep driving a booby-trapped bus at 50 mph at least or it would explode. In Crank, Jason Statham is a hitman who's been shot up with a Chinese poison that will kill him if his adrenaline level drops. Amy Smart (above), who plays his girlfriend, told the Chicago Sun Times: "What Jason must do to keep his adrenaline up is insane. He has to hammer nails into his legs, snort coke and have crazy sex in public."

(new york post article)

Death to the Mind-Killer

Scans of the hormone oxytocin's effect on human brain function reveal that it quells the brain's fear hub, the amygdala, and its brainstem relay stations in response to fearful stimuli.

(national institute of mental health article)

Virtual Sweatshops

The people working at this clandestine locale are "gold farmers." Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they "play" computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash.

That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them.

(new york times article)

Nag, nag nag

“We knew that chronic stress causes reduced immunity, but to find that an argument of just half an hour has such a profound effect on wound healing is quite shocking,”

(new scientist article)

Bring out your dead, bring out your dead

Dr. Nguyen Tuong Van, who runs the intensive care unit of the Center for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi, followed World Health Organization guidelines in her treatment of patients but concluded it had no effect on the disease.

"We place no importance on using this drug on our patients," she said. "Tamiflu is really only meant for treating ordinary type A flu. It was not designed to combat H5N1 ... [Tamiflu] is useless."

(WorldNetDaily article)

Democratic process full of payola

Sen. Conrad Burns and his staff met Jack Abramoff's lobbying team on at least eight occasions and collected $12,000 in donations around the time that the lawmaker took legislative action favorable to Abramoff's clients in the Northern Mariana Islands, records show.

(washington post article)

Noise without a proper title line

Cranes- "Particles & Waves"

Electric President- "Good Morning, Hypocrite"

Simian- "Never Be Alone"

Electrocute- "Tales of Ordinary Sadness"

The ironic metaphors are staggering

Taipei 101 is a building with a lot to boast about. Standing 508 metres (1,667ft) high, it is the world's tallest. And at 700,000 tonnes, it must be among the heaviest.

But the sheer size of the Taiwan skyscraper has raised unexpected concerns that may have far-reaching implications for the construction of other buildings and man-made megastructures. Taipei 101 is thought to have triggered two recent earthquakes because of the stress that it exerts on the ground beneath it.

According to the geologist Cheng Horng Lin, from the National Taiwan Normal University, the stress from the skyscraper may have reopened an ancient earthquake fault.

(Guardian Unlimited article)

Vicious Pharmaceutical Cycle

To cope with rising medical costs, insurers are requiring patients to pay higher premiums and co-payments for drugs. While poor uninsured patients can often get expensive medicine free from drug companies, people with insurance are increasingly finding it difficult to afford these drugs. In response, drug companies are giving money to charities that are specifically set up to help patients pay such costs.

Under this support system, drug-company money keeps patients insured -- and keeps insurers paying for the high-priced medicine.

"It's a win-win situation," says Dana Kuhn, co-founder and president of Patient Services, a Midlothian, Va., charity, which solicits money from drug companies. "Patients are helped and companies are helped. They make a small contribution to help the patient and get much more money back when the insurer pays for the drug."

(Wall Street Journal article)

Honeypot Networks: The new Anti-Viral-Fu

Part of the problem, the researchers say, is that countermeasures sent from a central server over the same network as the virus it is pursuing will always be playing catch-up.

They propose developing a network of "honeypot" computers, distributed across the internet and dedicated to the task of combating viruses. To a virus, these machines would seem like ordinary vulnerable computers. But the honeypots would attract a virus, analyse it automatically, and then distribute a countermeasure.

(New Scientist article)