Afghan President Rebukes West and U.N.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, delivered extraordinarily harsh criticism on Thursday of the Western governments fighting in his country, the United Nations, and the British and American news media, accusing them of perpetrating the fraud that denied him an outright victory in last summer’s presidential elections...

@'NY Times'

 

Karzai's April Fool's Day joke surely... 

Dan Bull - Home Taping Is Killing Music (The Remix)

Love the 'Choose File' pisstake of Katherine Hamnett's 'Choose Life' slogan T shirt!

Who owns ideas?

In the era of the Internet we're facing a crisis around the new reality of intellectual property and copyright. These legal rights were established over hundreds of years to reward creators of ideas, but at the same time preserve and protect the public's right to access and make use of the expression of ideas.

But slow expansion of the laws of intellectual property through the 20th century, and more recently the emergence of new digital technologies, the Internet in particular, have upset the delicate balance between the rights of creators and the rights of the public. Copyright law has been changed, again and again, in what many perceive as an expansion of the rights and control of the emerging "content industries." Copyright law today covers more kinds of expression, lasts considerably longer, and comes with considerably more stringent enforcement than it has in the past.

When you download music or text from the web, you may be innocently breaking the law. Jim Lebans, a producer with CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks, looks at the tangled world of intellectual property and how the digital age is challenging ideas about who owns our culture.

Listen to the Who Owns Ideas?
( mp3 file runs: 54:00)

The challenges to Intellectual property rights have expanded as well. While in the past the tools of copyright infringement were industrial - printing presses or record-pressing facilities, today they're available on every desktop. Writing, music, movies, television, indeed every form of communication and expression can be digitized, and perfect copies distributed without limit. As a result the digital revolution has been perceived as a nightmare to the owners of creative property.
This might seem to clearly justify an expansion of IP law and its enforcement, but many critics of the direction IP law has taken disagree. They suggest that the opportunities that digital technologies present, and the abilities they give to ordinary people to make use of cultural material creatively is too valuable to be sacrificed.
This tension has become known as the copyfight, and it's ultimately a dispute about who owns ideas.

Featured in this program are:
Graham Henderson, president of The Canadian Recording Industry Association.
Eric Flint, writer and editor. Mr. Flint has a long association with science fiction publisher Baen Books, and with Jim Baen founded the Baen Free Library,
which distributes free digital books in open formats as a promotional vehicle for the company. Mr Flint has written extensively on IP issues as editor of the web magazine Jim Baen's Universe.
James Boyle , William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School and chairman of the board of Creative Commons. His new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, will be published shortly by the Yale University Press.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, professor of media studies in the University of Virginia School of Law. He's also the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity.
Cory Doctorow, writer, journalist and Internet pundit. He's also the founder of popular blog Boing Boing.
Jane Ginsburg, Morton L Janklow Professor of Literary and Artistic Property Law.
She has many papers on Intellectual Property law, including How Copyright Got a Bad Name For Itself.
Dr. Michael Geist, law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law. He's also a columnist on digital issues for The Toronto Star.
Steven Page, singer, songwriter and member of the Barenaked Ladies.
He's also one of the founding members of the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

Music used in this program from free sources:
Bach - Fantasia in B Minor
Yankee Doodle Variations
Open Season on Bach

@'Canadian Broadcasting Corporation'

Lifie

SageFrancisSFR 500 years ago jebus hatched from an egg that was laid by a man in a bunny suit. It was a chocolate egg. I will eat one in celebration.

Sleeping insects covered in dew by Miroslaw Swietek

These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home in Jaroszow, a village in Poland around 30 miles from the city of Wroclaw.

Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.

@'Daily Mail'

George Carlin - Religion is Bullshit! (Thanx Stan!)

Exciting new way of cooking Bacon (with pictures)

I've discovered a new way of cooking bacon. All you need is: bacon, tin foil, some string, and.. oh whats it called?... oh yeah, an old worn out 7.62mm machinegun that is about to be discarded, and about 200 rounds of ammunition.
You start by wrapping the barrel in tin foil. Then you wrap bacon around it, and tie it down with some string.
http://imgur.com/Qzt4t.jpg
you then wrap some more tin foil around it, and once again tie it down with string.
http://imgur.com/fuY3J.jpg
It is now ready to be inserted into the cooking device. I ripped the tin foil a little bit getting the barrel inserted. that part of the bacon got severely burned by hot gasses.
http://imgur.com/q75AR.jpg
After just a few short bursts you should be able to smell the wonderful aroma of bacon.
http://imgur.com/H8fmZ.jpg
I gave this about 250 rounds. but I think around 150 might actually be enough. But then again I don't mind when bacon is crispy. Ahh the smell of sizzling bacon mixed with the smell of gunpowder and weapon oil.
http://imgur.com/FEeq3.jpg
And the end result: Crispy delicious well done bacon.
http://imgur.com/AOjRS.jpg
Oelund @'Reddit'
(Tip o' the hat to JoshS!)

The Pain Relief Scandal

“Opium has been recently made from white poppies, cultivated for the purpose, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut.... comparatively large quantities are regularly sent East from California and Arizona, where its cultivation is becoming an important branch of industry, ten acres of poppies being said to yield, in Arizona, twelve hundred pounds of opium.”

--Massachusetts Government Health Report, 1871

By the mid-1800s, as many people know, opium could be legally purchased in the United States as laudanum, patent medicines, and various elixirs. Less well known is the fact that opium was a godsend during the bloody years of the Civil War. Maimed and disabled soldiers found relief in morphine, the potent alkaloid of opium named after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams. Used against constant, intractable pain, opium and its derivatives were among the most humane medical drugs ever discovered. How could a physician withhold them?

Today, after countless drug wars have merged into a single, inflexible federal stance on “drugs,” morphine and its derivatives remain so stigmatized, so entangled in drug wars and global narco-politics, that the danger of losing sight of their humanitarian applications looms larger than ever.

At least half of all cancer patients seen in routine practice report inadequate pain relief, according to the American College of Physicians. For cancer patients in pain, adequate relief is quite literally a flip of the coin...

Continue reading

Dirk Hanson @'Blogcritics'

Court Says Bush Illegally Wiretapped Two Americans

Tell Me Easter's On Friday

The Associates - Tell Me Easter's On Friday

(Thanx to My Friend Stan!)

Johann Hari on drugs, royals and the lousy laws being rushed through before the election

"...Yet you have been told that this drug is a new and unique menace. It has killed 27 people in Britain, makes teenagers try to "rip off their scrotum", and a ban will stop the harm it causes. Each of these claims is false.

The first mephedrone death was reported last November, when a 14-year-old girl called Gabrielle Price died in Brighton after apparently taking the drug. Immediately, there were calls for a ban. Three weeks later, the autopsy found the drug had nothing to do with her death: she was killed by "broncho-pneumonia which resulted from a streptococcal A infection". But the campaign didn't pause. They were now identifying deaths from mephedrone everywhere – mainly among clubbers who had taken a huge cocktail of different drugs washed down with alcohol. In truth, one death has been found to be caused by the drug. That's one. This makes jmephedrone somewhat less dangerous than peanuts, which kill 10 people a year by causing an allergic reaction.

What about the drug's other effects? The excellent New Scientist magazine tracked down the origins of The Sun's claim that it made a teenager "try to rip off his testicles", which rapidly became an established fact in news reports. They discovered it was based on a claim that circulated on internet chatrooms, and had been written as a joke. The drug isn't even called "Meow-Meow" by anyone: that term was randomly inserted into Wikipedia just before the hysteria broke, and picked up by journalists..."

HERE

Just remember...

'Socilism' 

*snigger*

More @'Teabonics'

HERE

The RNC fugs up again...

The Republican National Committee sent a fundraising mail piece earlier this month with a return number that leads to a phone-sex line offering "live, one-on-one talk with a nasty girl who will do anything you want for just  $2.99 per minute."

At the bottom of a piece designed to resemble a census form, a toll-free number is listed next to the national party's address.

A voter in Minnesota received the mailer and called the number intending to complain about the attempt to raise money with a form that looks like a government document.

But the Minnesotan was instead directed to a second toll-free number that greets callers as "sexy guy" before offering them the chance to talk with "real local students, housewives and working girls from all over the country."

The individual then forwarded the mail piece to the voter's congressman, a Democrat, who shared it with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

A spokesman for the RNC declined to say how many copies of the census-style mailer were sent out.

"The number in question was a typographical error by a vendor used on this particular mailer — using 1-800 instead of 202," said RNC Communications Director Doug Heye.

Heye e-mailed different direct-mail pieces that included the correct RNC phone number, writing: "This is an isolated incident and will not be repeated in the future."

He said the vendor responsible for the mistake "will not be used for the foreseeable future."
AUDIO: HERE

Ben Smith @'Politico' 

Information is beautiful: war games

Who really spends the most on their armed forces?

Info is beautiful: defence budgets Photograph: David McCandless

Amid confusion over the rise in defence cuts, I was surprised to learn that the UK has one of the biggest military budgets in the world - nearly £40bn ($60 bn) in 2008.

But I was less surprised to see who had the biggest.

 

Info is beautiful: war chests. Graphic: David McCandless

Yep, the United States spent a staggering $607bn (£402 bn) on defence in 2008. Currently engaged in what will likely be the longest ground war in US history in Afghanistan. Harbourer of thousands of nuclear weapons. 1.5m soldiers. Fleets of aircrafts, bombs and seemingly endless amounts of military technology.

Here's that bloated military budget in context.

 

Info is beautiful: the US military budget. Graphic: David McCandless

The defence budgets of the other top nine countries can be neatly accommodated inside the US budget.

So the US is an aggressive, war-mongeringing military machine, right? And the numbers prove it.

But is that true? Is that the whole picture?

Military units

First of all, the enormity of the US military budget is not just down to a powerful military-industrial complex. America is a rich country.

In fact, it's vastly rich. So its budget is bound to dwarf the others.

 
Info is beautiful: defence budgets compared. Graphic: David McCandless

(This is a reworking of an image from the blog ASecondHandConjecture.com)

It doesn't seem fair to not factor in the wealth of a country when assessing its military budget.

So, if you take military budgets as a proportion of each country's GDP, a very different picture emerges.

 

Info is beautiful: the biggest spenders. Graphic: David McCandless

The US is knocked down into 8th place by such nations as Jordan, Burundi and Georgia. The UK plunges to 29th.

Why are these other nations spending so much on their military?

• Myanmar (Burma) is a military dictatorship, so that must bias their budgets a little.
• Jordan occupies a critical geographic position in the Middle East and has major investment in its military from the US, UK and France. In return, it deploys large peace-keeping forces across the world.
• The former soviet republic of Georgia was invaded by Russia in 2008. Relations remain extremely tense.
• Saudi Arabia spends heavily on its air force and military capabilities. Why is not clear.

The stories behind Kyrgyzstan, Burundi and Oman's spending are also not clear. (If you have any ideas, please let us know).

Soldiers

A country's military investment is not just dollars and cents. It's also about soldiers and infantry.

When it comes to sheer number of soldiers, you can guess the result.

 

Info is beautiful: active forces. Graphic: David McCandless

But, as ever, using whole numbers creates a skewed picture. China obviously has a huge population. Their army is bound to be huge.

If you adjust the parameters to a proportional view, the image shifts dramatically.

 
Info is beautiful: proportional forces. Graphic: David McCandless

North Korea tops the league with the most militarised population, while China plummets to a staggering 164th in the world league table.

The US barely scrapes the top 50. The UK's armed forces look tiny.

This re-ordering creates some surprises too. Israel and Iraq you could perhaps predict. But Eritrea and Djibouti?

All soldiers

To give the fullest picture of armed forces, reservists, civilian and paramilitary should also be included.

This again gives a different picture and perhaps a more revealing one. One that suggests combat readiness, primed forces and perhaps paranoia too? Who's expecting to be invaded?

 

Info is beautiful: total armed forces. Graphic: David McCandless

Here again, when all the numbers are added up, the US infantry is ranked a lowly 61st for size in the world.

So is the US an "aggressive, war-mongering military machine" obsessed with spending on defence and plumping up its armed forces? Perhaps, the numbers say, not. 

David McCandless @'The Guardian'

Our only 'lanaguage' is English LOL!

Teabonics

REpost - As some people can't be bothered shaving again...

International Workers of the World

The eight hour working day is the fault of these grizzled veterans of union organizing. The Haymarket bombing of May 4th, 1886, was the first inauguration by fire for many into the ideas which coalesced into the charter for the International Workers of the World, bringing union solidarity and the fight for the worker to Chicago. A bomb was thrown at police breaking up the convention and no clear fugitive has materialized for the incident; still 7 men hung from the gallows for the crime of fighting for the working class. Their names were Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg. The belief in solidarity and anarchism alone was enough to convict and execute these men.

There is a rich and storied history to the IWW, and though it is a shadow of the organization it once was. Red-card carrying Wobblies like myself still walk our concrete jungle, fighting toward a general strike to place the means of production in the hands of the worker.

I'd like to draw your attention to a folk singer and nearly life long wobblie, Utah Phillips. Only two shows may be found up at sugarmegs for the fellow, but Mystic Theater is worth a listen. Comedy and folk songs mixed in with the poetry of resistance.

Now, more than ever, is the time to rise up in solidarity with your fellow workers across the globe. Newer mechanisms for control are developed everyday, with the battle of "net neutrality" heating up, the government making attempts at shutting down Wiki-Leaks, and media outlets consolidated into independent or multinational corporate blocs.

Don't forget to celebrate the sacrifices made by our fellow workers this coming May Day, May 1st. Have an on the job slow down if you can't get the day off. Talk to your fellow workers about what you can do to improve conditions in your place of employment. Educate yourself about the varied struggles of the working class world wide. Remember your history; don't forget there's always another day, and another fight.

I'll leave you with the words of Lucy Parsons, an early member of the IWW and the wife of one of the Haymarket martyrs, "Never be deceived that the rich will permit you to vote away their wealth."

@'IWW'

Moscow blames US for 'heroin tsunami' sweeping Russia

Production in Afghanistan has risen nearly 50 fold and in Russia the result is an epidemic of heroin abuse.

Russia now has around 2.5m heroin addicts and at least 30,000 of them will die this year.

The Russian authorities accuse the United States of helping the drug suppliers by refusing to destroy opium crops in Afghanistan.

Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from the Siberian city of Novo-kusnetsk.
@'BBC'

Forget Taxing Marijuana; The Real Money's In Cocaine

A Harvard economist has estimated how much money states would raise by legalizing and taxing marijuana and cocaine.

In a podcast a while back, Harvard's Jeffrey Miron told us that his estimates for what California would bring in from taxing marijuana are much smaller than some of the numbers that are floating around out there (including a $1.4 billion estimate from state officials).

Since that interview, Miron has come out with a paper estimating, among other things, potential tax revenues from cocaine and marijuana.

It turns out the big tax money is in cocaine.

Sure, legalizing marijuana is highly unlikely and legalizing cocaine isn't even on the table in mainstream politics. Still, it's interesting to know what the numbers would be -- particularly when they're coming from a Harvard economist.

Here's a table that shows Miron's estimates for the annual tax revenues each state would get from marijuana and cocaine. (The figures are in millions; for more details, see the explanation and links after the table.)

State	Marijuana	Cocaine
Alabama	25.59	80.54
Alaska	6.53	16.28
Arizona	41.91	177.67
Arkansas	19.87	54.49
California	201.74	767.73
Colorado	46.97	133.74
Connecticut	22.57	72.53
Delaware	6.07	18.76
Florida	142.05	362.34
Georgia	86.75	213.96
Hawaii	10.09	21.59
Idaho	11.73	22.66
Illinois	83.98	263.93
Indiana	43.44	120.04
Iowa	18.72	45.94
Kansas	16.69	53.95
Kentucky	28.05	77.79
Louisiana	30.02	97.43
Maine	6.64	25.46
Maryland	37.68	113.79
Massachusetts	44.94	167
Michigan	69.04	174.55
Minnesota	45.43	102.31
Mississippi	19.67	41.17
Missouri	54.99	111.28
Montana	7.94	19.29
Nebraska	13.87	29.13
Nevada	13.97	53.19
New Hampshire	9.03	29.18
New Jersey	74.6	140.31
New Mexico	11.92	47.42
New York	136.81	464.05
North Carolina	87.88	191.04
North Dakota	4.02	9.54
Ohio	88.7	248.79
Oklahoma	29.23	58.23
Oregon	24.09	76.88
Pennsylvania	73.73	211.85
Rhode Island	7.75	37.12
South Carolina	26.29	79.71
South Dakota	7.28	11.96
Tennessee	39.94	146.9
Texas	270.39	483.02
Utah	16.34	53.16
Vermont	3.67	15.86
Virginia	53.35	175.63
Washington	35.76	143.55
West Virginia	8.97	36.65
Wisconsin	61.12	114.16
Wyoming	3.72	11.26
DC	4.82	25.94
Total	2,138.47	6,234.11

On top of state revenues, Miron estimates that a federal taxes would amount to $4.28 billion for marijuana and $12.47 billion for cocaine.

Miron figures taxes on the drugs would be comparable to taxes on alcohol and tobacco. His estimates for how many people in each state use marijuana and cocaine are based on a government survey. (He notes that the number of users would likely rise if the drugs were legalized, but his estimates don't account for this.) He estimates that if marijuana and cocaine were legalized, their prices would fall by 50% and 80%, respectively. The research was funded by the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation; here's the foundation's take on drug policy.

@'NPR'

As my Spanish friend Ana says:

Senator Conroy: the Internet is not special

"Why is the internet special?,” he asked, saying the net was “just a communication and distribution platform”...but it is not HIS (or another politicians) communication and distribution platform. This is the key, not ethical issues.

My childhood...

 

Cheeky little bast'rd!

Because...

Public Enemy

The Enemy Assault Vehicle Mixx

I first heard this on The Ghost's show on 3RRR here in Melbourne way back and Stephen very kindly put it on a tape for me back then...was probably my most played track on my Walkman over the years!

Get it

HERE

OOPS - I did it again!

As far as "national security threats" go, real or imagined, it's likely that few Americans lose much sleep over Wilkileaks, the website that publishes anonymously sourced documents which governments, corporations, and other private or powerful organisations would rather you not see. It would appear the US security apparatus does not feel the same way.
On Friday of last week, editor and co-founder Julian Assange posted a letter to the site detailing a laundry list of rather Keystone Kop-like instances of surveillance of himself and other members of the Wikileaks team, likely carried out at least in part by members of the US intelligence or law enforcement community:

"We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away."

Ironic if it were not so creepy, much of the observable surveillance took place while Assange and others were in Iceland advising the parliament on a groundbreaking set of laws … designed to protect investigative journalists and web service providers from spying and censorship. Assange also described being tailed on a flight en route to an investigative journalism conference in Norway, by "two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials ... under the name of US State Department".

So why are US tax dollars being spent spying on a bunch of volunteer journalists, human rights activists and web geeks, as appears to be the case? There are a few obvious motives, but the smoking gun might be a classified film Wikileaks claims to have in its possession that shows evidence of a US massacre of civilians. Images have power – think Abu Ghraib, think Mi Lai – and efforts at "perception management" by the department of defence will be much complicated by documentary evidence that leaves little to interpretation or "perception" of a human rights crime committed by US forces. Wikileaks plans to show the video at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on 5 April.

"In my opinion, the operation points not to the CIA, but to the US Diplomatic Security Service (DSS), which (among other things) is tasked with tracing information leaks believed to be originating from US diplomatic staff," Dr Joseph Fitsanakis tells me, founder of Intelnews.org and an expert in the politics and history of intelligence and espionage. "If the US suspected that Wikileaks acquired restricted or classified documents through a US embassy official or staff member (which Julian alludes to in his editorial), then the DSS would get involved."

As a target for surveillance Wikileaks is hardly the Kremlin – the mostly volunteer run site was temporarily shut down a few months ago due to lack of funds. Yet it has provided all manner of scoops in its short life – documented corruption in Kenya, evidence of potentially criminal bank fraud in Iceland, and classified US army documents about the treatment of Guantánamo detainees. And while its list of critics is long, openness and transparency are not chief characteristics regularly attributed to them. North Korea, China, Russia, and Zimbabwe have all blocked access to the site at one time or another in response to controversial leaks.

It's not a very heartening sign that the US government has joined such an illustrious roster. Yet in an ironic twist one of the conclusions of a report prepared by the department of defence intelligence analysis programme (DIAP), and published by Wikileaks earlier this month contains a surprising defence of the workings of a functioning, responsive democracy:

"It must be presumed that Wikileaks.org has or will receive sensitive or classified DoD documents in the future. This information will be published and analysed over time by a variety of personnel and organisations with the goal of influencing US policy."

If the video Wikileaks plans to screen at the National Press Club on April 5 does indeed include scenes of a US massacre of civilians in Iraq or Afghanistan, as is purported, perhaps the "goal of influencing US policy" becomes a little easier to identify. National security is better served by promoting a just and accountable foreign policy. For starters, stop massacring civilians in the never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and investigate and prosecute those responsible for past massacres and cover-ups when and where the burden of proof calls for it.

If the US army and the defence apparatus still need help from the muckrakers at Wikileaks to remind them of this fact, then let the leaks continue. And if you think the work that Wikileaks is doing is important, then consider leaking them some money.

Joseph Huff-Hannon @'The Guardian'

And of course you can add Australia to that illustrious list of countries...
More here.

I think...

...that there is a stoner working as a sub-editor at The Economist LOL!

John Cusack takes us down the rabbit hole (80s style)

"As you can see in this video now, watching the performance was like diving into an ocean of bad fashion and forced smiles. Dr. Pepper dancing and Mom Jeans from shore to shore... pre-Prozac in motion.... military ballet... Mandatory cheers and quasi-religious cult patriotics... the glory of the empire. A choreographed tribute to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King. A celebration of diversity, unity, and fluorescent leggings.

Meanwhile, Reagan was dumping all the mentally ill and vets out on the streets to die, as a direct result of his policies."
@'BoingBoing'

Feeling like a little kraut-blip today...

Punk & The Pistols - The London Weekend Show 1976

Unfortunately you have to put up with the truly awful Janet Street-Porter...

(Thanx Fifi for finding this one!)

Magnets mess minds, morality

Talk about messing with your mind. A new study by neuroscientist Liane Young and colleagues at Harvard University does exactly that: the researchers used magnetic signals applied to subjects’ craniums to alter their judgements of moral culpability. The magnetic stimulus made people less likely to condemn others for attempting but failing to inflict harm, they report in PNAS.

Most people make moral judgements of others’ actions based not just on their consequences but also on some view of what the intentions were. That makes us prepared to attribute diminished responsibility to children or people with severe mental illness who commit serious offences: it’s not just a matter of what they did, but how much they understood what they were doing.

Neuroimaging studies have shown that the attribution of beliefs to other people seems to involve a part of the brain called the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ). So Young and colleagues figured that, if they disrupted how well the RTPJ functions, this might alter moral judgements of someone’s action that rely on assumptions about their intention.

To do that, they applied an oscillating magnetic signal at 1 Hz to the part of the skull close to the RTPJ for 25 minutes in test subjects, and then asked them to read and respond to an account of an attempted misdemeanour. They also conducted tests while delivering the signal in regular short bursts. In one scenario, ‘Grace’ intentionally puts a white powder from a jar marked ‘toxic’ into her friend’s coffee, but the powder is in fact just sugar and the friend is fine. Was Grace acting rightly or wrongly?

Obvious? You might think differently with a magnetic oscillator fixed to your head. With the stimulation applied, subjects were more likely to judge the morality based on the outcome, as young children do (the friend was fine, so it’s OK), than on the intention (Grace believed the stuff was toxic).

That’s scary. The researchers present this as evidence of the role of the RTPJ in moral reasoning, with implications for how children do it (there is some evidence that the RTPJ is late in maturing) and for conditions such as autism that seem to involve a lack of ability to identify motives in other people. Fair enough. But to most of us it is news – and alarming news – that morality-related brain functions can be disrupted or suspended with a simple electromagnetic coil.

If ever a piece of research were destined to incite paranoid fantasies about dictators inserting chips in our heads to alter and control our behaviour, this is it.

Phillip Ball @'The Great Beyond'

Guided By Voices - AOL Session 2002

Bootsy's basic funk formula

Dr. Eddzherton's Apple Macbook vinyl decal

HERE
Other designs here and here.
(Thanx son #2!)

Wine cask inventor dead at 92

The inventor of the wine cask, South Australian Riverland grape grower Thomas Angove, has died in Renmark, aged 92.

Mr Angove revolutionised wine packaging in the 1960s when he created the resealable plastic bag in a cardboard box.

His son, managing director of Angove Wines John Angove, says his father was a great contributor to the wine industry.

"I remember dad coming home with this sort of prototype of a plastic bag inside a cardboard box and I remember thinking to myself and I probably said it to dad 'That's crazy, nobody will buy wine in a plastic bag stuck inside a cardboard box', but in his usual manner he persisted," he said.

"He thought he was onto a good thing and history certainly indicates that he was.

"His commitment and involvement in industry matters and industry bodies and the welfare of the industry overall, as opposed to just Angove family winemakers, was very significant and I think reflects his very broad vision of what the world and life was all about."

@'ABC'

Thomas Angrove - I raise a glass of fruity lexia in your honour...(hic!)

Policing for profit!

Whatever you do, make sure not to hurt the dog.

Worst case of being at the wrong spot at the wrong time. And you know, I live in a rowdy street, so I know about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But at least, if something happened to me here, it's very unlikely I'd be the victim of our local police since they deserted my area some years back. It was a sad story when I read about it last year, and it's sadder still today.

This Thursday a year will have passed since Ian Tomlinson died after being assaulted by a policeman at the G20 protests. No charges have been brought; no one has been punished. Despite 300 official complaints about the policing of the protests on April 1st, and plenty of video and photographic evidence, no officer has faced serious disciplinary proceedings(1,2). Those who removed their identification numbers, beat up peaceful protesters and bystanders, then repeatedly lied about what had happened remain untroubled, either by the law or their superior officers. There has been no apology to Tomlinson’s family. 

Contrast this with another case, in which a Nottinghamshire police officer caused two deaths in June. As soon as it happened, the police reported themselves to the Independent Police Complaints Commission and launched their own investigation. A chief superintendent told the press that “we will certainly take any lessons we can get from this process and make sure we put them in place so this sort of thing never happens again. It has caused immense sadness and immense shock.”(3) The papers carried pictures of officers paying tribute, saluting the flowers left outside police headquarters(4). There was no cover up, no botched post-mortem, no lies about the victims or their families. The officer responsible was quickly charged and, though his victims died as a result of neglect not assault, last month he was convicted over the deaths(5).

There’s a significant difference between the two cases: the Nottinghamshire victims were dogs. The officer had left two police dogs in his car and forgot about them while he completed some paperwork. Judging by their response to these two tragedies, both police and prosecutors appear to care more about dogs than human beings.

George Monbiot @'Monbiot.com'

Hmmm!

Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time

Russia to open massive WWII archive

Russia plans to open the world's largest WWII archive, the size of which will "comply with the contribution of our country to the Victory."  (The Russians have always insisted that they won World War II, not us.  The real answer is that we all won it.)  This archive project will apparently entail building new buildings to house the holding which will be brought in from numerous archives around the country.  The project will also include a major digitization effort and will apparently include some sort of commercial database dealing with Soviet casualties.  The article hints that similar efforts may be undertaken to assess German and Hungarian losses on the Eastern Front.

There are significant practicality issues associated with this project.  Furthermore, the desirability of taking war records out of existing archives and putting them into a purpose-built archive designed around an event as opposed to something that organically grew as out of an agency or other organization, is eminently debatable.  (For an excellent discussion of these issues, see the fine post at The Russian Front.)  On the other hand, many archives in Russia are in lamentable condition, so if the price of survival for these records is some disorganization, perhaps that is a price worth paying.  In addition, the digitization component of the project is certainly a good thing, though one does wonder what if any political criteria will be applied to select the documents and files that will be digitized.

Interestingly, Andrei Artizov, the head of the Russian Federal Archive Agency (Federal'naia arkhivnaia sluzhba Rossii aka Rosarkhiv) says that the new archive should include substantial German records "like those of Hitler's chancellery, the Reich's Security Services and others. In compliance with the existing legislation, they are part of Russia's property."  Meanwhile, a so-far very modest U.S. Government effort to do something similar with copies of analogous Iraqi records captured in 2003 generates accusation of malfeasance.

In any case, this will be an interesting story to follow.

@'On War & Words'