Category: interesting

This story is sad.

Starving their child unintentionally by adhering to a strictly vegan diet, a vegan couple will serve life in prison.

The baby died six weeks after birth after being fed a diet largely made up of soy milk and organic apple juice.

Their lawyer said the couple did not realize the baby’s life was in danger until it was too late. Their lawyer also revealed the couple did not take their child to a doctor because they feared hospitals were full of germs.

A Georgia jury delivered a murder verdict.

“It takes money to prove this wasn’t a felony – money we don’t have.”

When you stand on your head, blood rushes in until you’re red in the face.

Then why is it that when you stand upright the blood doesn’t run into your feet?

A little boy nearby shouted, “‘Cause your feet aren’t empty.”

Investigating the starter diet for juvenile salmon and trout, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife discovered and confirmed that the Skretting Co. shipped melamine contaminated feed – labeled as Bio-Oregon Bio-Vita Starter – which has been used in the Willamette, Gnat Creek, Big Creek, Cole Rivers, Butte Falls and Leaburg fish hatcheries. Hatchery managers discontinued using any remaining fish feed from the lot in question and notified the FDA. [story]

When feed compounders discovered that raw materials were poisoned, did they seal and withdraw the shipments from the market?

Did feed producers stop distributing contaminated product?

Instead it seems that the contaminated raw material became a quick bargain for increased profit taking.

The FDA’s show of inability and its late, weak response to poisoned animal feed indicates that the fashion of reducing, eliminating or damaging government services leaves us at risk.

The ideology of the so-called ‘free market’ has exceeded common sense.

What’s an ideology?
A comprehensive set of political, economic, and social views or ideas, particularly concerned with the form and role of government. A relatively coherent system of values, beliefs, or ideas shared by some social group and often taken for granted as natural or inherently true [link]. A philosophical stance, adopted by an individual, organization or country, which has direct implications on the way of doing business [link]. Literally the study of ideas, the collective knowledge, understandings, opinions, values, preconceptions, experiences and/or memories that informs a culture and its individual people [link].

Certified by the Guiness Book of World Records, the world’s tallest dog is Gibson, a Harlequin Great Dane.

When he stands on his hind legs, the 170-pound Dane is more than 7 feet tall, taller than most NBA basketball players.

Gibson has an overwhelming gentle spirit and unconditional love for all. He loves riding in the “GIB-Mobile”, a 1983 Oldsmobile that has the back seat taken out of it with a big soft bed in its place. [link]

Canis familiaris (the domestic dog) shows extreme diversity in body size, unlike other mammals.

Differences among dogs seems to be regulated by a single variant of one gene which small dogs possess and large dogs lack.

The National Human Genome Research Institute published its findings in the journal Science after having studied DNA samples of over 3,000 dogs and 143 breeds.

dogs in the news has a one page photo essay about the biggest dog, tallest dog, shortest dog & smallest dog in the world.

We now need a name for those who value hope above expectations.

We need a name for those who love people more than products…

We need a name for those who love the earth on which each can meet…

We need a name for those who collaborate…

Ivan Illich

A department store in England gave its 140 employees the news that they’re going to be out of a job in two weeks by pulling the fire alarm to clear the store of shoppers and to gather staff in one location — the point where they’re supposed to meet in case of fire. [Techdirt]

i used to feel like i was the pinacle of evolution, like all those poor schmucky forefathers of mine only existed to make me happen. today i just feel like a rung any evolved ape can step on during their climb up my dna. – Heather Smioly

It’s Love Canal all over again but the polluters are us.

For example, streams around Portland, Oregon carry the residue of the region’s medicine cabinets and coffee shops. The list of compounds includes Prozac, Tagamet, Benadryl, and Micatin, as well as caffeine.

Studies show fish reproduction is already being disrupted. Antibiotics and other substances could help bacteria and other organisms develop resistance to drugs and pesticides. Sewage plants cannot filter most complex chemicals. [story]

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I looked up a previous post where the Washington Post published a 2006 story about the Bush administration working to broaden the government’s knowledge of illegal drug use by probing the mysteries of sewage.

Fairfax County agreed to participate in a White House pilot program to analyze wastewater from communities throughout the Potomac River Basin for the urinary byproducts of cocaine.

It is as if Rembrandt and Van Gogh were pulled from the dead to copy each others paintings. – Loose Poodle

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCIyzNISw1Q]

A third of all U.S. stock trades in 2006 were driven by automatic programs. By 2010, that figure will reach 50 percent.

Name it. There are automated trading systems for timing the buying and selling of stock. There are automated trading systems in the futures markets; automated trading systems for crude oil, jet fuel. heating oil, S&P 500, U.S. Treasury Bonds, Dollar, Eurodollar, Gold, Silver, Japanese Yen, Deutschemark, Swiss Franc, British Pound, lumber, animals, animal feed, wheat, corn, ethanol, and soon carbon dioxide.

A computer science professor at Columbia University imagines building an ‘electronic Warren Buffett’ that would be able to answer just about any kind of investing question.

“We want to be able to ask a computer, ‘Tell me about the merger of corporation A and corporation B,’ or ‘Tell me about the impact on the markets of sending more troops to Iraq.'”

Robots in the form of massive “artificial intelligence” routines are replacing human traders. There are many detractors and cynics, and a landscape of broken hearts and bankruptcies over the last years, but researchers have made progress. [story]

Tom Wright, whom I know to be a very good fellow, started his computing career representing IBM during the Apollo launches. He’s built a quantitative analysis firm involved in implementing innovative computer driven, “non-linear, dynamic, adaptive trade timing models using emerging and proven predictive technologies” for world financial markets.

Applied Market Analytics, Inc.
Tom is the chief architect of an advanced exploratory quantitative analysis platform and meta-language for developing computer based trading systems.

There is no evidence that the conservative economic policies begun in the 1980s, from supply-side policies to the current plutonomy of tax cuts for the wealthy, have helped the American economy. Neither Carter nor Reagan had much to do with the economic events that occurred during their terms.

Myth: Carter ruined the economy; Reagan saved it.

Fact: The Federal Reserve Board was responsible for the events of the late 70s and 80s.

Myths about economic history here.

The Republican Party is a clamor looking to revive a compulsion. The high ground it has owned for more than thirty years will require a terrific new leadership to restore.

The vigor in the Republican effort to dismantle excess regulation, bureaucracy and overhead is gone. The vigor to ignite partnership from the marketplace is gone. The stalwart and the articulate defense of individual mobility and private domain is gone.

Today the Republican culture is a balloon of plutocrats lifting a basket of opportunists over battalions of authoritarians each increasingly unable to convince the fundamentalist, the anarchist or the paranoid to remain loyal.

The clumsy ‘War on Terror’ has dwindled our habeas corpus as much as it plucks violence. The clumsy White House graft of autocracy trades civility with mere rank.

I admire the thrust of your post and I admire the conviction of Republicans that use their affiliation as a marque of their principles and hope. And I increasingly admire a Republican courage to admit their vote against a 75 percent gale of disapproval.

But too much of what flows in the basis and creed of the Republican Party is gone. Even their vigor to supply what may trickle down is gone.

Were Lincoln here he would likely speak on behalf of the People not the Party.

This image shows neurons forming a synapse.

How do neurons grow?

Do neurons regenerate when damaged?

Naweed Syed at the University of Calgary studies neurons using state-of-the-art electrophysiological, patchclamp, time-lapse video and fluorescence imaging.

Note:
For Web 5.0 developers looking forward to designing intelligent interface technologies for portable network integrated devices, he also studies the rhythm of neurons when we walk and breathe.

Wiki is weak.

In the paragraph below there are five claims it cannot verify.

The Human Potential Movement arose out of the social and intellectual milieu of the 1960s and formed around the concept of cultivating of extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in most people. The movement took as its premise the belief that through the development of “human potential” humans can experience an exceptional quality of life filled with happiness, creativity, and fulfillment. As a corollary, those who begin to unleash this potential often find themselves directing their actions within society towards helping others release their potential. Adherents believe that the net effect of individuals cultivating their potential will bring about “positive” social change at large. [wiki]

Will Wiki try?

These are all unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them.

Associated with Habit 1:
Be Proactive is the endowment of self-knowledge or self-awareness, an ability to choose your response (response-ability)…

Associated with Habit 2:
Begin With the End In Mind is the endowment of imagination and conscience…

Associated with Habit 3:
Put First Things First is the endowment of willpower…

Associated with Habit 4:
Think Win-Win is the endowment of an abundance mentality. Why? Because your security comes from principles…

Associated with Habit 5:
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood is the endowment of courage balanced with consideration…

Associated with Habit 6:
Synergize is the endowment of creativity…

Associated with Habit 7:
Sharpen the Saw is the unique endowment of continuous improvement or self-renewal to overcome entropy…”

Let all know by these presents, 

whereas we favor strength, 

thereby any show of it, 

error is first upon the weak. 

‘You can go to your house, and you can go to your job, but we will always know where you are, and if you go where you’re not authorized, an alarm’s going to sound and a patrol is going to come pick you up.’

Receivers pick up the signals and relay them to a computer that displays everyone’s exact location. But radio isn’t the only way to monitor movement. Some are experimenting with digital scanners that read palm prints, iris prints, fingerprints, voices, or facial patterns. Each of these sensors might be part of robotic stress and lie detectors someday.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has produced a complementary innovation: sound detectors that count the number of heartbeats in vehicles.

“It’s like watching a video game.”

Security services replaced with “smart” perimeters that eliminate the need for fences and barricades. Electronic sensors monitor barriers, seismometers detect suspicious shaking of property, and microwave beams pick up motion in land or building areas. A positive signal from any of the systems sounds an alarm, swings surveillance cameras to the appropriate spot, sets off warnings and sends a patrol car.

An encumbered population worried about dangerous behavior might rely upon virtual contact with the outside world such as remote employment or virtual college courses. or robotic meal delivery. Or telemedicine exam rooms, where the patient with a stethoscope or performing an electrocardiogram transmits the results are relayed over the Internet to a remote medical specialist.

These systems are not the future.
These are operating now.
For today’s prisoner.

Toxic melamine entered the human food chain not by accident, but deliberately.

“Dogs and cats die from eating the product, but apparently it’s OK to give it to livestock and humans.”, summarizes Emmy Koeleman, reporting from the animal feed hub AllAboutFeed.

“Although it is getting more complex each day, the details are starting to come to the surface. The whole pet food scare doesn’t include only pets anymore, it has spread to pigs and poultry and who knows what more! And when will it stop?”

“When US officials visited the source of the contamination –China- it was concluded that the use of melamine in raw materials (intended for animal feed and pet food) was normal. How can the use of a toxic ingredient for live animals be normal?”

“But what hits me most is that after all the panic, pet food companies did not destroy the pet food. No, that would be a waste! They sold it to companies that make pig and poultry feed. Is it just me that is missing an important part here?”

“The huge panic still fresh in my memory, I now realise that US health officials do not mind that the contaminated feed enters the human food chain? They say the health risks are minimal , but how do they know and where is the real data backing up this statement?”

“The real innovation in automobiles is taking place on the outskirts of a town in Switzerland, ” says Bruno Giussani in his monthly column for the Innovation&Design section of BusinessWeek Online.

The Hy-Light is a silent car with great speed and acceleration and amazing stability that produces zero air pollution. It’s a car built around a hydrogen fuel cell. The gas station is a group of solar panels. It’s 180 miles of energy is stored in supercapacitors: a compromise between a battery (which can store a lot of energy but isn’t good at delivering bursts of power) and traditional capacitors (which offer phenomenal power but little storage). The Michelin-designed electric motors and suspension are inside the wheels.

The announcement adds the industrially disruptive vision that “every Swiss will be able to produce the energy for his own home and car” through a combination of solar panels, a home electrolyzer, and a fuel cell.

Meditation may be a practice of withdrawing from normal life. There are other withdrawals as well.

Yoga is making some people rich.

There may be seriously luxurious hideaways deep in the forest. but the industry of yoga is much more than big budget hippies.

Yoga is an $18 billion dollar business.

But all is not calm in the burgeoning industry of yoga. “Yoga, Inc.” made by New York-based filmmaker John Philp and screened at the Toronto international documentary film festival, explores the money trail of yoga.

Philp is not surprised by yoga’s commercialization.

“In the l960s, yoga fit in with counterculture values, but today most people in the West view yoga as a form of fitness. When an industry is that big, commercialisation is unavoidable, and there will always be people swimming around the edges who are ready to cash in.”

As is the highly capitalized retail franchise operations backed by the flush founders of Ask Jeeves, yoga is a male-dominated field, even though women are 75 per cent of the people who take yoga classes.

In a rush to secure leverage in the market, some ventures are seeking to patent or copyright yoga positions and retail material. [story]

Aggressive activity in the sublime yoga sector has provoked the Indian government to enter the yoga marketplace in order to restrain expoitation and protect its cultural heritage. Last year it developed a National Knowledge Digital Library, an online data base that includes traditional Indian healing and spiritual practices to try to protect these practices against patents and copyright laws.

Can you patent wisdom?, asks Suketu Mehta.

“It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. But as Indians, they ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga.

“There’s more at stake than just the money. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head.”

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Update:
India’s scholars scurry to protect the word ‘OM’ from American trademark laws.

If a word, a single word such as our word ‘home’ received a copyright and trademark registration, would Louis Gray have written the song ‘Home on the Range’? Written in 1852 by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop, could Sir Henry use the word in the old classic ‘Home Sweet Home?

Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

As if to prove again that our copyright and trademark system is a mess and is embarassing us around the world, Stanley Zambowski of Pittsburgh, PA has made a move to copyright and trademark the word OM.

“Inspired by Bikram Choudhury’s successful copyright of 26 poses of Yoga, Mr. Zambowski hired his cousin Walenty Zambowski, a lawyer, who set loose a flurry of cease-and-desist letters warning yoga studios around the world not to use the word OM, the symbol Om nor even chant OM.

“This is a cold and quiet day for all Yoga studios”, lamented Rod Entriteramen of the NirvanaPranaOneWorldYoga Studios.”

Further insightful reporting is at the Yoga Guide On-line Manual.

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Update:
Techdirt posted some material on the recent applications, showing that:

Bikram yoga had been copyrighted — a topic we had discussed a few years ago. However, with nearly perfect timing, the NY Times has an article noting not just that Bikram yoga has been covered by copyright, but that there are currently 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. The author then goes on to discuss how folks in India are getting increasingly upset about this, since almost all of those things are based on Indian traditions from long ago that clearly shouldn’t be protected by new intellectual property laws.

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CrucialSystems reports on the
Matrimandir Meditation Chamber:

“This is totally sci-fi.

“Its bigger than your average planetarium. Its very sci-fi, with a HUGE crystal projecting the sun from the top of the dome into a very very quiet chamber.

“You can hear every fluid in your body move. I was overjoyed that someone actually farted while I was in there; the echo was spectacular.”

For the other winds…
here’s a typical schedule to help manage “gales of thoughts”,

4am    wake4.30   observe the breath and body6      breakfast8      observe the breath and body11     lunch1      observe the breath and body5      tea7      observe the breath and body8      discourse9      observe the breath and body10     sleep  

“There lies before us if we choose, continual progress in happiness,
knowledge and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot
forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings to human beings:
Remember your humanity and forget the rest.” – Bertrand Russel

Western freedom is an illusion

This is particularly true among American posters. They love to write about liberty and what a great democratic nation they are. Some British posters are not far behind them with their constant cries of ‘we’re more civilized than you’.

Read more…

The mental state of livestock has an impact on meat quality.

“Animals feel fear,” states Colorado State University animal science professor Dr. Temple Grandin, an internationally renowned animal welfare specialist and livestock facilities designer.

“Animals that are scared and excited are going to be harder to handle. You’re going to be more likely to get bruised meat – and pale soft meat.”

Teaching low stress methods, Nancy Lidster, a livestock handling instructor in Canada, says, “The main thing that we’re looking at is animal welfare. And that’s both the welfare of the pigs that we’re moving and the welfare of the people that are handling them.”

“Humans have a lot of predatory behavior which is very threatening to pigs. If we understand that conflict then we can change what we’re doing so they feel comfortable responding to us.

“We do a lot of things that are threatening to them.

“We’re yelling and hollering when all we have to do is whisper or just show up.

“Humans instinctively want to get behind animals and make them move away. Animals instinctively want to have us to the side where they can see us while they’re moving away and if we understand what they need we can give them that and they’ll give us what we want from them in return.”

“Some of this stuff just seems so basic and simple that it’s hard to believe it actually works.

“If there is a bunch of us sitting in a room and somebody turns a skunk loose in that room, the skunk doesn’t have to chase us out of there. We will be quite happy to find an exit.

“The whole trick is to keep the animal calm. Stop yelling and screaming.” [from FarmScape]

Ouch! This story hurts.

A study of more than 1.6 million children clearly showed that those conceived in the summer – when pesticide use is at its highest – are less clever.

Spring babies may fare less well at school because they receive the most exposure to pesticides during the first few months of pregnancy – a critical time for brain development.

Dr. Paul Winchester, involved in Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine for more than 30 years and professor of clinical paediatrics of Indiana University School of Medicine, said:

“The foetal brain begins developing soon after conception.

“The pesticides we use to control pests in fields and our homes and the nitrates we use to fertilise our crops and even our lawns are at their highest level in summer.

“Exposure to pesticides and nitrates can alter the hormonal milieu of the pregnant mother and the developing foetal brain.”

“Neurodevelopmental consequences of exposure to pesticides and nitrates may not be obvious for many decades.”

Other work by the same team showed that more babies are born prematurely when pesticide use is at its highest. Dr James Lemons, also of Indiana University, said:

“I believe this work may lay the foundation for some of the most important basic and clinical research and public health initiatives of our time.

“To recognise that what we put into our environment has potential pandemic effects on pregnancy outcome and possibly on child development is a momentous observation, which hopefully will transform the way humanity cares for its world.”

[story found at Australia’s Daily Telegraph]

How did Stalin cope with a violent alcoholic father?

“My Soso was a very sensitive child,” said Stalin’s mother.

“As soon as he heard the sound of his father singing balaam-balaam from the street, he’d immediately run to me asking if he could go to our neighbours’ until his father fell asleep.”

Following his rise she often lived in a Tsarist palace in the Caucasus, but she occupied only one tiny room and died in 1937. [story]

“Young Stalin” by Simon Sebag Montefiore reveals how Stalin became Stalin, based on new evidence discovered in archives across the former USSR.

A video is available narrated by Stalin’s longtime bodyguard, I Was Stalin’s Bodyguard. I failed to convince CBS News to broadcast parts of the unusual tape during the period when the USSR was beginning to fall.

The elderly bodyguard reveals some of Stalin’s odd behavior, including special pots that a worried Stalin would padlock while cooking – even with his mother in the room!

How far from the truth is media?

Fascinating new studies are showing that by the time a story is published for mass circulation, the facts have significantly changed. A top performing company

“positive stories generally indicate the end of superior performance, and negative news generally indicates the end of poor performance”.

Magazine covers: good contrarian indicators

Normal people are those whom you don’t know very well. – Kyrie Martin Hale

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/02/20/various_matters/

“Bob Altemeyer is a Professor of Psychology at the University of
Manitoba, and has become one of the world’s leading experts on the
psychological dynamics which fuel authoritarian political movements
and their followers. John Dean’s best-selling book, Conservatives
Without Conscience (which I reviewed here
<http://www.crooksandliars.com/posts/2006/07/23/john-dean-and-authorit…>),
relied on substantial amounts of Altemeyer’s research.

“Now, Altemeyer has written his own book, The Authoritarians, which
expounds on that research. He is releasing the book chapter by
chapter for free online, and the first six chapters can be read here
<http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/%7Ealtemey/>. I have read the first
three chapters and highly recommend them. The book provides real
insight into the political movement which has been ruling our
country for the last six years — a movement which has at least as
much to do with psychological drives as it does public policy and
geopolitical considerations.”