Friday 9 July 2010
GodBlock
GodBlock is a web filter that blocks religious content. It is targeted at parents and schools who wish to protect their kids from the often violent, sexual, and psychologically harmful material in many holy texts, and from being indoctrinated into any religion before they are of the age to make such decisions. When installed properly, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely.
'Never slaughter a chicken in front of a monkey'
A Chinese man who saved a one-armed, one-legged monkey says the primate has paid him back - by killing all of his chickens.
Li Chun, from Menghai village, Yunnan province, says the monkey has become a member of his family since he nursed it back to health. It has become to devoted to the family and performs many chores around the home - but it also copies everything Li does. When it saw him crack some eggs to make a meal it went into the hen coop and smashed all of the eggs it could find. And when Li slaughtered a chicken, the monkey copied him and has since killed about 80 chickens, reports the Chuncheng Evening Post.
"From then on, whenever it's not occupied, it jumps into the chicken pen, and kills the chickens, no matter how big or small, and tries to pluck them," said Li. "His record is nine chickens in one day. The lesson I have learned is to never slaughter a chicken in front of a monkey." Li found the seriously injured monkey in a forest more than a year ago when it jumped into a basket on his back. He found the monkey's right arm and left leg were rotten and took it home where he cut off the decayed limbs and gave it anti-inflammatory medication.
He nursed the monkey back to health and it made an astonishing recovery, putting on weight and soon started to help around the home. It helps look after Li's dog's puppies and even wiped away Li's tears when he was grieving the death of his father. Li said: "It sat besides me quietly and extended his only arm to wipe the tears on my face. He would softly pat my face and head, and look at me with great sympathy.
Report card: Could do SO much better!
With Julia Gillard's 'East Timor refugee solution' falling to bits and with her intention to still bring in the Clean Feed internet filter nothing has really changed has it?
This despite a coalition including state schools, librarians and key players in the internet industry warning that protecting children online could be harder with a mandatory internet filter in place.
This despite a coalition including state schools, librarians and key players in the internet industry warning that protecting children online could be harder with a mandatory internet filter in place.
Meanwhile three Australian internet providers have this morning announced that they have agreed to voluntarily block a list of URLs compiled by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy ahead of the federal government's planned internet filtering plan.
Cary in the Sky with Diamonds
Before Timothy Leary and the Beatles, LSD was largely unknown and unregulated. But in the 1950s, as many as 100 Hollywood luminaries—Cary Grant and Esther Williams among them—began taking the drug as part of psychotherapy. With LSD research beginning a comeback, the authors recount how two Beverly Hills doctors promoted a new “wonder drug,” at $100 a session, profoundly altering the lives of their glamorous patients, Balaban included.
Methadone 'works and saves lives'
The study led by Edinburgh University researchers said methadone treatment reduced the frequency of drug use.
It also led to a drop in the risk of death by 13% each year, the research suggested.
But the findings also showed the drug could prolong the number of years users continued to inject heroin.
The long-term study followed hundreds of heroin abusers in the Muirhouse area of Edinburgh over almost 30 years.
It found that those on heroin substitutes such as methadone led less chaotic lives - and lived longer.
The researchers also rejected calls for methadone prescribing to be reduced.
Roy Robertson, a GP who led the study at the University of Edinburgh, said: "This study confirms that methadone works and works best when prescribed for as long as is needed.
"Even though some users continue to occasionally inject while on methadone, they still gain substantial health benefits from their prescription.
"Suggestions that methadone prescribing should be cut back or confined to the short-term are clearly misplaced and would lead to poorer health for drug injectors."
Three months ago, a group of 40 experts from around the world said methadone should be "readily available" to addicts seeking help.
They argued that scrapping the treatment could lead to a rise in crime and drug deaths.
But its use has been criticised by Scottish Conservatives, who claimed addicts are "parked" on methadone.
The party has called for the underlying causes of abuse to be tackled, and for more addicts to be put into rehabilitation programmes, including in prisons.
The Scottish government's drugs strategy aims to "support people to move on towards a drug-free life as active and contributing members of society".
The new study, which also involved researchers from Bristol and Cambridge universities, suggested there was a "balance" between saving lives and achieving abstinence.
Almost 800 people took part in the study, of whom 571 were still alive when research was followed up. At the end of that process, five more had died, bringing the total deaths to 228, or 29% of the group.
The study will be published by the British Medical Journal on 17 July.
Thursday 8 July 2010
The Velvet Underground - A Symphony of Sound (1966)
The Velvet Underground And Nico (A Symphony of Sound) is a portrait of the band, recorded during a practice session at the Factory in January 1966. The soundtrack is an instrumental.
"This was never meant even as an experiment. It was meant as an item of wallpaper made for use behind the musical group as they set up and tuned their instruments. I had been using five different prints of silent footage, mainly screen tests, for simultaneous projection behind them. This was extremely effective while the music was played but in the long stretches between numbers when there was no sound coming from the stage, it was very boring.
I thought of recording the Velvets just making up sounds as they went along to have on film so I could turn both soundtracks up at the same time along with the other three silent films being projected. The cacophonous noise added a lot of energy to these boring sections and sounded a lot like the group itself. The show put on for the group was certainly the first mixed media show of its kind, was extremely effective and I have never since seen such an interesting one even in this age of super-colossal rock concerts."
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