Tuesday 28 June 2011
Cancel Lord Monckton's university lecture, say academics
Academics in Australia are calling for the University of Notre Dame in Fremantle to cancel a lecture due to be given by the prominent climate sceptic Lord Monckton on Thursday.
In a letter seen by the Guardian, which is currently being circulated among academics, the undersigned say that Monckton "stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter" and "Notre Dame has a responsibility to avoid promoting discredited views on an issue of public risk". Signatories already supporting the open letter include professors and lecturers across Australia, but also academics in the UK and US.
The letter, which is addressed "from the Australian academic community" to Notre Dame, a Catholic university in Western Australia, was originally drafted by Natalie Latter, a political science postgraduate student at the University of Western Australia. The letter says Monckton's lecture is particularly unwelcome in light of recent death threats made against Australian climate scientists.
"Lord Monckton propounds widely discredited fictions about climate change and misrepresents the research of countless scientists," says the letter. "With zero peer-reviewed publications, he has declared that the scientific enterprise is invalid and that climate science is fraudulent … Over the last month there has been a great deal of coverage in the Australian media of the death threats and abusive emails that have targeted Australian scientists working on climate change. These threats are fuelled by misinformation spread by figures like Lord Monckton and the distorted coverage that they receive in the Australian media. As academics, we expect our universities to support us against this kind of abuse. We expect our universities to foster academic standards of conduct and argument."
The letter continues: "We all support academic freedom and the freedom to express our ideas and beliefs … [However] Notre Dame's invitation to Lord Monckton makes a mockery of academic standards and the pursuit of evidence-based knowledge."
Monckton, the deputy leader of the UK Independence party, apologised over the weekend for remarks he made this month during a lecture in Los Angeles in which he likened Prof Ross Garnaut, a climate change adviser to the Australian government, to a Nazi, while showing a slide of a large swastika next to one of Garnaut's quotes. In online footage of the speech, Monckton can be heard saying in a mock German accent, "Heil Hitler, on we go" when referring to Garnaut.
The comment drew criticism from across the Australian political spectrum last week. Julia Gillard, the prime minister, condemned the comments as "offensive and grossly inappropriate". Tony Abbott, the opposition leader who is fighting to stop the government's proposed carbon tax and who is scheduled to attend a mining conference in Perth at which Monckton is due to speak, described the comments as "over the top".
During a television interview on Sunday, Monckton apologised to Garnaut "for having made the point I was trying to make in such a catastrophically stupid and offensive way". He added: "I have written to him to withdraw that unreservedly."
It is not the first time Monckton has been criticised for making such remarks. In 2009, at the Copenhagen climate summit, he described a group of young climate activists as "Hitler youth".
Monckton is scheduled to begin a three-week lecture tour of Australia on Thursday when he addresses the annual conference of the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies in Perth. The organisers have
confirmed that Monckton is still scheduled to speak, despite the controversy over his remarks. Later that day, he will deliver the Lang Hancock lecture at Notre Dame, a lecture series sponsored by Hancock Prospecting, a mining company owned by Australia's richest person, Gina Rinehart.
Chris Doepel, the university's dean of business, has confirmed some invited conference guests have also called for Monckton's speech to be cancelled, but he insisted the event will go ahead. "The university will hold it because we have a commitment to academic freedom," he told local media over the weekend. "I think Lord Monckton is coming into this country with a clear understanding of the boundaries around polite discussion." Doepel added that there is no plan to censor Monckton's presentation and that the 200-strong audience will be free to ask questions.
Not all of Australia's academic community believes Monckton should be censored or barred from speaking, however. Prof Ian Chubb, Australia's chief scientist, told the Guardian: "I think that we have to put up with deplorable people if we value our democracy. And we do. So I couldn't argue that action should be taken, though I find his comments as outrageous as his abuse of science. I don't think making him some sort of victim would serve any purpose, other than to add to the weight of his wallet. There will always be people somewhere in the world who will pay to hear people like him; and enhancing his celebrity through censorship will encourage more of them to pay. He just needs to be exposed for what he is."
Anna-Maria Arabia, the CEO of Science & Technology Australia, which recently organised the Respect the Science event in Canberra in which 200 scientists marched to show solidarity for climate scientists receiving death threats, also feels that Monckton should be free to speak: "Everyone is entitled to their views, but it is important that personal views are differentiated from the scientific evidence that has been through the rigorous peer-review process. The challenge for Lord Monckton is to have his ideas tested through the peer review process."
She added: "The misinformation campaign designed to create fear and uncertainty will not intimidate climate scientists who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and know the importance of placing their results in the public domain so that fair and democratic debate can ensue. Critical decisions about making the world we live in a better and safer place must be informed by the best possible information we have, not by fear. The best possible information we have is the peer-reviewed science."
After visiting Fremantle, Monckton is scheduled to speak at venues across Australia, including the German Club in Adelaide. Last week, Elke Pfau, the club's president said she was "looking into" the booking following Monckton's "unfortunate" remarks about Garnaut. In April, a private school near Brisbane cancelled a business event due to feature Monckton next month after the head teacher deemed his participation to be "too controversial".
Monckton's lecture tour is being co-ordinated by the Climate Sceptics party, a political party set up in 2009 by an Australian farmer to "expose the fallacy of anthropogenic climate change".
Leo Hickman @'The Guardian'
Elliott Sharp - Solo Guitar (2003)
This footage of Elliott Sharp improvising on guitar in his NYC apartment was shot by Steve Elkins in June 2003 for what eventually evolved into the feature documentary 'The Reach Of Resonance,' though this footage was not actually used in the film.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, sound artist, and instrument builder, Sharp has devised innovative ways of applying fractal geometry,chaos theory and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction, as well as pioneering use of computers in live improvisation.
elliottsharp.com
reachofresonance.com
Brothers In Arms
Romanian President Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife, Elena, meeting with Pol Pot, his wife, Kien Samphan, and Khmer Rouge cabinet members.(28-30.V.1978).
source:wikipedia
Monday 27 June 2011
Hand-hacking lets you pluck strings like a musical pro
Want to learn a musical instrument, but can't find the time to practise? A device now under development can take control of your hand and teach you how to play a tune. No spirits of dead musicians are involved.
PossessedHand, being developed jointly by the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, also in Tokyo, electrically stimulates the muscles in the forearm that move your fingers. A belt worn around that part of the subject's arm contains 28 electrode pads, which flex the joints between the three bones of each finger and the two bones of the thumb, and provide two wrist movements. Users were able to sense the movement of their hands that this produced, even with their eyes closed. "The user's fingers are controlled without the user's mind," explains Emi Tamaki of the University of Tokyo, who led the research.
Devices that stimulate people's fingers have been made before, but they used electrodes embedded in the skin, which are invasive, or glove-like devices that make it hard to manipulate an object. Tamaki claims that her device is far more comfortable. "The electric stimulations are similar to low-frequency massage stimulations that are commonly used," she says.
Having successfully hijacked a hand, the researchers tried to teach it how to play the koto, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. Koto players wear different picks on three fingers, but pluck the strings with all five fingertips, so each finger produces a distinctive sound. A koto score tells players which fingers should be moved and when, and from this Tamaki and her team were able to generate instructions telling their device how and when to stimulate the wearer's muscles.
PossessedHand does not generate enough force to pluck the koto strings, but it could help novice players by teaching them the correct finger movements. Tamaki and her team found that two beginner players made a total of four timing errors when using PossessedHand, compared with 13 when playing unassisted. After prompting from the device, the players also made one less mistake about which finger to use.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the players found it unsettling to have the device move their hand by itself. "I felt like my body was hacked," said one. Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear."
As well as helping would-be musicians, PossessedHand could be used to rehabilitate people who have suffered a stroke or other injury that impairs muscle control. Therapists already use electrical muscle stimulation to help these people, but existing non-invasive devices can only achieve crude movements such as contracting the entire arm.
Henrik Gollee, who researches rehabilitation devices at the University of Glasgow, UK, says PossessedHand could help patients train a wider range of movements. "I was surprised by the level of fine movement they can actually achieve," he says.
Simon Holland, director of the Music Computing Lab at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, points out that there is a big difference between learning to play one song and being a competent musician. "You might learn a fingering and be able to reproduce that performance, without necessarily being able to perform simple variants," he says.
Jacob Aron @'NewScientist'
Libya: ICC issues arrest warrant for Muammar Gaddafi
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.
The court had accused him of crimes against humanity and of ordering attacks on civilians after an uprising against him began in mid-February.The Hague-based court also issued warrants for two of Col Gaddafi's top aides - his son Saif al-Islam and intelligence chief Abdullah al-Sanussi.
Thousands of people are believed to have been killed in the conflict.
ICC presiding judge Sanji Monageng said there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that Col Gaddafi and his son were "criminally responsible as indirect co-perpetrators" for the persecution and murder of civilians in Libya.
The warrants had been requested by chief ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in May, who said the three men bore responsibility for "widespread and systematic attacks" on civilians.
Mr Moreno-Ocampo said the court had evidence that Col Gaddafi had "personally ordered attacks on unarmed Libyan civilians and was behind the arrest and torture of his political opponents.
The Libyan authorities have previously said they do not recognise the court and were not concerned by the threat of a warrant.
On Sunday, government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the court was overly preoccupied with pursuing African leaders and had "no legitimacy whatsoever".
The arrest warrant was welcomed by UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who said it further demonstrated "why Gaddafi has lost all legitimacy and why he should go immediately".
Mr Hague called on people within the Libyan regime to abandon Gaddafi and said those responsible for "atrocities" must be held to account.
@'BBC'
(PDF)
Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges
Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.
"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."
Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.
In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.
Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.
Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.
"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."
Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.
"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.
McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."
He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.
Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".
Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.
Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."
Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."
South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.
In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers.
Ed Pilkington @'The Guardian'
N Korean children begging, army starving
Footage shot inside North Korea and obtained by the ABC has revealed the extent of chronic food shortages and malnutrition inside the secretive state.
The video is some of the most revealing footage ever smuggled out of the impoverished North Korean state.Shot over several months by an undercover North Korean journalist, the harrowing footage shows images of filthy, homeless and orphaned children begging for food and soldiers demanding bribes.
The footage also shows North Koreans labouring on a private railway track for the dictator's son and heir near the capital Pyongyang.
Strolling up to the site supervisor, the man with the hidden camera asks what is going on.
"This rail line is a present from Kim Jong-il to comrade Kim Jong-un," he is told.
The well-fed Kim Jong-un could soon be ruling over a nation of starving, impoverished serfs.
The video shows young children caked in filth begging in markets, pleading for scraps from compatriots who have nothing to give.
"I am eight," says one boy. "My father died and my mother left me. I sleep outdoors."
Many of the children are orphans; their parents victims of starvation or the gulag.
But markets do exist - private markets that stock bags of rice, pork, and corn. The state no longer has any rations to hand out.
But the state wants its share of this embryonic capitalism.
In the footage, a party official is demanding a stallholder make a donation of rice to the army.
"My business is not good," complains the stallholder.
"Shut up," replies the official. "Don't offer excuses."
It is clear that the all-powerful army - once quarantined from food shortages and famine - is starting to go hungry.
"Everybody is weak," says one young North Korean soldier. "Within my troop of 100 comrades, half of them are malnourished," he said.
Jiro Ishimaru is the man who trained the undercover reporter to use the hidden camera.
"This footage is important because it shows that Kim Jong-il's regime is growing weak," he said.
"It used to put the military first, but now it can't even supply food to its soldiers. Rice is being sold in markets but they are starving. This is the most significant thing in this video."
Kim Jong-il's grip on power depends on the military and if some of its soldiers have growling, empty bellies, it is bad news for the dictator and his hopes for a smooth transition to his son.
"The priority for Kim Jong-il is the succession," said Mr Ishimaru.
"But Kim Jong-un is still very young, just 27 or 28. He doesn't have any experience and hasn't achieved anything. So opposition to a third generation of the Kim family taking over is growing."
But this dynasty of dictators has proven that it is more than capable of keeping its wretched population in line through gulags, hunger and a total control over every aspect of life.
But as this footage shows, occasionally, a crack of light emerges from this dark, dark place.
Mark Willacy @'ABC'
Self-propelled gut camera swims in your colon
But a team of researchers in Japan recently successfully tested a remote-controlled, self-propelled capsule camera that can examine the human stomach and colon.
Developed by researchers at Ryukoku University, Osaka Medical College, and a private-sector firm, the fish-shaped Mermaid is a 1.7-inch-long, electromagnet-powered capsule with a fin-like tail.
That's longer than a conventional endoscopy capsule, which isn't maneuverable and takes a brute-force approach to capturing images, snapping as many as possible as it descends.
The Mermaid can be precisely maneuvered following oral or rectal insertion, and can take two images per second.
German researchers previously managed to remotely control an endoscope capsule in the stomachs of healthy volunteers. The Japanese team, however, claims to be the first to have moved a remote-controlled capsule inside the colon and captured images there.
The team believes the device could be used to image the entire digestive tract, including the small intestine.
Naotake Otsuka, professor emeritus at Ryukoku University's Faculty of Science and Technology, said he tested the Mermaid himself and had no problems swallowing it.
Now open wide and say "ahhh."
(Via Mainichi Daily News)
Tim Hornyak @'cnet'
Don't Go The F*ck To Jail: An Illustrated Guide To Your Drug-Related Rights
"I've always been interested in drug policy," Cortés explains. "I did a stint on jury duty about two years ago and was actually really impressed with my fellow jurors and their critical thinking about the case. Then I saw that Time article saying 'we will not participate in the machinery of drug war,' and I thought it was amazing. I wanted to keep the ball rolling and talk about this issue more. Particularly in New York, where Bloomberg has had a record number of marijuana arrests, despite his own admittance that he's used and enjoyed the drug..."
Cortés then recounts this tale, which is found in an "author's note" footnote in the pamphlet:
I confronted Bloomberg once at a Gracie Mansion BBQ, where I asked him to reconcile his administration of record marijuana arrests with his own admission of personal use and enjoyment. He hemmed and hawed. I asked why he wouldn’t arrest himself for the past use, and he said “That’s not how the law works.” I said, “So, really you’re just saying ‘I got away with it.’” At that point he said, “You and I have nothing in common,” and walked away from me. True story.Earlier this week, Cortés handed out copies to jurors outside of the Brooklyn Supreme Court, which he plans to do periodically over the next few weeks. The book is available as a free download on Cortés's site, and he'll also be distributing copies of it at this event next month.
Jamie Feldmar @'gothamist'
Björk - Crystalline
“Crystalline” is the first single from Bjork’s Biophilia, the iPad-inspired multi-media LP that will celebrate “how sound works in nature, exploring the infinite expanse of the universe, from planetary systems to atomic structure.”
via
Sunday 26 June 2011
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