PEOPLE who take up smoking may do so because they are getting up too early. That’s just one symptom of a permanently misaligned body clock, a condition dubbed “social jetlag” that could affect more than half of us…
… Although exposure to daylight can adjust people to even the most unsuitable routines for their chronotype, most office workers get nowhere near enough light to do this. Roenneberg believes that more than half the population are in effect socially jet-lagged all the time, because their body clock is permanently out of synch with their working hours (Chronobiology International, vol 23, p 497).
His team also studied stimulant use among the same volunteers and found that those suffering from social jet lag were much more likely to smoke. Only around 10 per cent of people living within an hour of their natural body clock were smokers, but this rose linearly to around 70 per cent of people with 7 hours’ social jet lag or more, as measured by the difference between the mid-point of their sleep time on work days and free days. “Those that get up too early and live at odds with their body clocks are most likely to become smokers,” says Roenneberg.
See, getting up early really can be bad for your health. Let’s all sleep in, shall we?
I have SAD…..which is a considered a mood disorder that I myself consider a “social disorder”. My body is not turned on fully without sunlight. I hibernate in the winter. Smoking helped me when I was in school to overcome being in a total fog for a 9:00 am lecture. I have always worked afternoon/evening jobs if I could find them, but it is better if I’m self employed. Giving up smoking was so fucking hard for me I had to go to a treatment center and spend 2500.00 for a weeks stay to get it done. I have the Sadellite now by Northern Technology Systems out of Canada…..and when I turn that bad boy on at 6:00 am in order to make other beings palletable it just about knocks my husband out of his chair.
.
For understanding, I’ll stick to the BBC News article … but it seems to be an important result. Although knowledge of human kind and war of agression is still an universal void!
SOUDAN (PhysOrg) March 30 — Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today the first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity beam of muon neutrinos from the lab’s site in Batavia, Illinois, to a particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, scientists observed the disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos.
The observation is consistent with an effect known as neutrino oscillation, in which neutrinos change from one kind to another.
Neutrinos are also associated with the
birth of the elements in stellar furnaces.
(BBC News) March 30 — Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass. This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.
The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe.
The Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector, known as the “LSND” project, involved collaborators from Los Alamos Lab and several U.S. universities and colleges. The principle collaborators were the host institution Los Alamos Lab, VanDalen’s UC Riverside neutrino physics group which led analysis of the indications of neutrino mass, and Louisiana State University primarily responsible for basic neutrino interaction studies. The LSND experiment took data from 1993 through 1998.
Neutrinos produced at Los Alamos Neutron Scattering CEnter (LANSCE) follow well characterized energy and angular distributions. The expected interactions of these neutrinos have been studied by several experiments, including the LSND, to better understand basic nuclear physics. The simple character of the neutrino-nucleus interaction serves as a powerful test of detailed models of the nucleus.
If neutrinos have mass, then one expects to see neutrino “oscillations” between types of neutrinos. This oscillation is analogous to the musical “beat” heard between two notes of slightly differing pitch. The frequency and strength of the “beat” are used to characterize the mass difference and degree of mixing between neutrino types.
It’s been suspected, because scientists have only been able to measure a fraction of the expected amount of nutrinos from the sun, and theorized that they were changing into something else on the way from there to here.
This changing (for complicated reasons I’m not sure I fully understand) implies that the nutrinos have weight.
And a whole raft of theories are going to have to be modified to account for this fact.
Scientists using different methods to determine the mass of galaxies have found a discrepancy that suggests ninety percent of the universe is matter in a form that cannot be seen.
Some scientists think dark matter is in the form of massive objects, such as black holes, that hang out around galaxies unseen. Other scientists believe dark matter to be subatomic particles that rarely interact with ordinary matter.
GAP Praises Senate Vote to End Secret Holds
Amendment Needed to Expose Efforts Blocking Whistleblower Legislation
Washington – The Government Accountability Project is hailing an 84-13 vote by the Senate this past Tuesday, March 28, which approved an amendment to S. 2349, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006, that will require senators to publicly acknowledge their efforts to block normal proceedings on legislation.
The amendment, […]addresses an informal Senate practice, which currently allows senators to place an anonymous “hold” on legislation in order to silently paralyze a bill’s progress without public debate on the merits of the proposal.
[snip]
As a case in point, the 107th (2001-02) and 108th (2003-04) Congresses ended without a vote or debate on legislation to amend the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), despite its unanimous committee approval, because of a secret “hold” put in place by Senate leadership.
In April 2005, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed nearly identical legislation, S. 494, to restore the WPA for the third time. Like its predecessors, S. 494 is being held from further consideration by Senate leadership.
How in hell did this stupid practice come about in the first place?
Hey, these legislators can’t have their constituents knowing what they’re actually doing in DC, can they? They might actually get their assess kicked to the curb if that happened…
Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.
And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the researchers suggested.
Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation….
…In a hurriedly convened news conference, the study’s authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer. But the results, they said, raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them.
Hmm, I wonder how the fundies will react to this one…
If allowed to continue unchecked, the American Taliban will soon be issuing christian death fatwas against those who dare to oppose or question them. (oops! Pat Robertson has already been issuing death fatwas) Considering the results of this study, maybe they should just pray for their enemies. (snort)
Inspired by this cartoon, Nancy Goldstein calls Napoli to find out if she should put chorizo or bacon in her paella.
I wish I could tell you that our heart-to-heart convinced Bill that women like Michelle, who appeared on the same PBS NewsHour segment, should also have the option of a safe, legal abortion. Michelle doesn’t fit Bill’s lurid criterion of a religious virgin who “was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it.” She’s just a woman in her 20s with a low-paying job and two children who drove five hours to the state’s only abortion clinic (it operates one day a month, and the provider is flown in by Planned Parenthood Minnesota).
But no such luck. Our 10-minute discussion was mostly a more polite version of the kinds of exchanges that pro-choice and anti-choice folks have been having for several decades now.
Bill asked me if it wasn’t time for a civilized nation like ours to end abortion. I countered that the US is almost entirely alone among so-called “first world” nations in its anti-choice fervor: that even France, a Catholic country, makes it easier for a woman to obtain a safe, legal abortion on demand. And then I reminded him that murder by a spouse or boyfriend is the #1 cause of death among pregnant women and asked him why he didn’t express his concern for the lives of women and children by convening a task force on domestic violence.
Or perhaps, I suggested, he could look into the causes of South Dakota’s unusually high infant mortality rate. Could it, perhaps, have to do with the 12% uninsurance rate among South Dakotans? But no. Bill blamed the state’s high infant mortality rate on its Native American population, saying “We’ve got a sovereign nation living within our borders, and there’s not a darned thing we can do about them.”
I decided to ask Charon Asetoyer, the Executive Director of the Native American Women’s Health Education Resource Center on the Yankton Nakota Reservation in South Dakota, about Bill’s comments.
“It’s pure nonsense that a state legislator would think there’s nothing he can do to benefit Native Americans,” Asetoyer said. “The high infant mortality rate on reservations is due to devastating poverty. Yet the state has not passed any laws in the last several years that would boost any of the health or education programs within the reservation community. As for tribal sovereignty, the only time the state wants to recognize it is when it benefits the state, as in this instance when it allows Senator Napoli to opt out of an intelligent response.”
Bush promotes democracy in Iraq but vetoes the results.
Prof. Juan Cole’s post today is a high recommend read. (This week it was announced that Prof. Cole was awarded the Aronson Award in Journalism from Hunter College for his blog, ‘Informed Comment’; a first in blogging).
Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has blown off the president of the United States. Bush sent Sistani a letter asking him to intervene to help end the gridlock in the formation of a new Iraqi government. Asked about his response, an aide said that Sistani had not opened the letter and had put it aside in his office.
Sistani does not approve of the American presence in Iraq, and certainly disapproves of the Bush administration’s attempt to unseat Ibrahim Jaafari as the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. Middle Easterners have had Western Powers dictate their politics to them for a couple of centuries and are pretty tired of it.
It is rumored that after the December 15 elections, Bush told Jalal Talabani, the Kurdish President of Iraq, that he would prevent the Shiite coalition from taking power this time, which encouraged Talabani to try to unseat Jaafari. Bush’s plan, however, would only work if the neo-Baathists, the Sunni fundamentalists, the Kurds and the secular Shiites can consistently work together, and if a substantial number of Shiites defects from the United Iraqi Alliance to help elect a president by 2/3s majority. Pigs will fly first.
Meanwhile, Bush’s tinkering with Iraqi politics has contributed mightily to the gridlock in forming a government. Jaafari’s bargaining position has been perhaps fatally undermined. And Washington is blaming the Iraqis! At least Bush is a consistent foul-up.
Reuters points out that Sistani is not only highly influential in Iraq but also in Pakistan.
Idredit, I posted my Sistani thing before I saw your post. Unfortunately, I can’t delete my post.
Don’t you just love Prefessor Cole? Bush keeps poking his nose in Iraqi politics and making things exponentially worse. Thank heavens we have Juan Cole to explain it all.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A letter from President Bush to Iraq’s supreme Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was hand-delivered earlier this week but sits unread and untranslated in the top religious figure’s office, a key al-Sistani aide told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The aide – who has never allowed use of his name in news reports, citing al-Sistani’s refusal to make any public statements himself – said the ayatollah had laid the letter aside and did not ask for a translation because of increasing “unhappiness” over what senior Shiite leaders see as American meddling in Iraqi attempts to form their first, permanent post-invasion government.
Juan Cole says “Sistani does not approve of the American presence in Iraq, and certainly disapproves of the Bush administration’s attempt to unseat Ibrahim Jaafari as the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. Middle Easterners have had Western Powers dictate their politics to them for a couple of centuries and are pretty tired of it.”
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq, March 31, 2006 (ENS) – Every day before school, seven year old Mohammed Fariq Rostam goes with his father on their donkeys to scrounge through Sulaimaniyah’s garbage dump.
Mohammed’s eyes often burn from the smoke that rises from the rubbish, and his forehead bears a scar from when he slipped on trash and sliced it on a piece of glass.
But he is proud when he helps his father find a source of income for their five member family. That could be aluminium cans that they can resell in the market, or a piece of electrical equipment that has been thrown away but can be repaired. Shoes and clothes, though torn or stained, are also prized.
For the second day in a row, we open with an “It’s time to revise your worldview” headline:
Physicists confirm that neutrinos, the “ghost particles” that pervade the Universe, have mass. The corroboration that neutrinos interconvert and have mass has profound implications for particle physics. The findings suggest that the “Standard Model,” which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. The finding may help explain the “missing mass” in the universe and why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. MORE COVERAGE ABOVE, IN COMMENT BY OUI
Habitable, Earth-like planets can form even after giant planets have barrelled through their birthplace on epic migrations towards their host stars, new computer simulations suggest. The finding contradicts earlier ideas of how planets behave and suggests future space missions should search for terrestrial planets near known “hot Jupiters”. Many of the 160 or so known extrasolar planets are hot Jupiters – massive planets that are closer to their stars than Mercury is to our Sun, after migrating in from farther in space due to friction with orbiting dust. That migration was thought to prevent the formation of terrestrial planets, but it now appears that roughly 50% of planets will survive the disruption of their orbits due to the migration and eventually resume stable orbits.
The Russian Satellite Communications Company’s Express-AM11 telecommunications satellite suffered a sudden failure on Wednesday. “At present, providing services via the Express-AM11 satellite is impossible,” the company said in a statement. Telemetry showed the failure, which occurred at 6:55 a.m. Moscow Time, was caused by “a sudden external impact on the spacecraft,” RSCC said in a statement. The cause most probably was space garbage of unknown origin. The result was instantaneous depressurization of the satellite’s thermal control system fluid circuit, followed by “a sudden outburst of the heat-carrying agent.” The spacecraft subsequently lost its geostationary orientation and proper rotation. Although ground engineers were able to maintain marginal control, RSCC said the AM11 would be put “into space disposal orbit” as the current orbit is unsafe, if space junk is present. All Russian commercial TV and radio broadcasting has been restored using other satellites.
About 75 percent of sub-Saharan Africa farms are plagued by severe degradation according to a new report released today on the precipitous decline in African soil health from 1980 to 2004. Africa’s crisis in food production and battle with hunger are largely rooted in this “soil health crisis.” In addition to fueling hunger, soil depletion and population growth in farming areas also leads to environmental challenges, as African farmers often abandon infertile fields to clear forests for cultivation, thus threatening Africa’s endangered wildlife and forests. A summit of regional leaders will be held in Nigeria to address the problem.
Scientists said Thursday they have recreated in computer simulations what appear to be the strongest magnetic fields in the universe – trillions of times more powerful than Earth’s magnetic field – produced when neutron stars collide. Such collisions may explain the mysterious short gamma-ray bursts.
Don’t miss CabinGirl’s comment above on the study about the medical efficacy of prayer.
A new analysis of weather balloon observations from the last 30 years reveals that the Antarctic has the same ‘global warming’ signature as that seen across the whole Earth, but is three times larger than that observed globally. The results by scientists from British Antarctic Survey are reported this week in Science.
Sexually attracting agents, insecticide lamps and bees are being used to combat a ravenous plant-eating moth, which threatens to turn Beijing’s “Green Olympics” brown, China’s forestry officials have said. The American White Moth, native to North American forests, threatened thousands of hectares of trees planted around Beijing as part of the campaign to host an environmentally friendly Games in 2008, they said.
And to end on a hopeful note: Americans are nearly as worried about their country’s dependence on foreign energy sources as they are about the war in Iraq, a poll released by the magazine Foreign Affairs showed on Thursday. Almost half of the 1,000 Americans surveyed for the Public Agenda Confidence in US Foreign Policy Index gave US policymakers a failing grade in weaning the country from foreign oil. Nearly 90 percent said the lack of energy independence jeopardizes national security. Public Agenda, a nonpartisan group, conducted the poll in early January with funding from the Ford Foundation. It said that Americans are at a “tipping point” on energy, akin to their state of mind about the war.
Bergenheim said that neither the Monitor nor Carroll’s family was involved in negotiations for her release. Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn’t happen. The deadline passed without word of her safety.
“Neither we, nor the family, nor anyone that we know of were involved with negotiations. This really was a bolt out of the blue,” Bergenheim told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
A scene soon to be repeated ...
Her twin sister, Katie Carroll, described in the Monitor the wake up call she got at about 5:45 a.m. Thursday.
“Katie, it’s me,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m free.” Then she burst into tears and I did, too, Katie Carroll said.
See, when dealing with an actual reporter, you get hate mail because you don’t follow the talking point of the day. She represents low propaganda value because she lives in the reality-based world. She is not following the script, so she must be denigrated. That’s what these folks do, and these cowards need to be called on it each and every time.
None of them have the, uh–stones–to actually report what’s going on Iraq like she does.
Imus Exec. Producer: “Taliban Jill” Is “Wearing Terrorist Headgear” And “Carrying Zarqawi’s Baby”
MCCORD: Put on 20 pounds while in captivity, yeah.
MCGUIRK: And why do we suspect?
IMUS: Well, why do you suspect?
MCGUIRK: She’s carrying Zarqawi’s baby. No doubt about it.
IMUS: Man, you are a such a, you’re a…
MCGUIRK: Did you hear her comments yesterday? She’s wearing the terrorist headgear. And everything points to that.
…
MCGUIRK: She’s Taliban Janie, this girl. Taliban Jill or whatever.
IMUS: That’s a little strong don’t you think.
MCGUIRK: I don’t think so. Well except for the fact that she seems overly sympathetic. There’s something wrong. Something stinks.
To email Imus or his producer would only generate a chuckle. I’ve sent a little missile over to viewerservices@msnbc.com to be followed up by a call to Microsoft in Redmond WA on Monday. Any other ideas?
BMD [Ballistic Missile Defense] Dreams And Realities
A new report by the Pentagon’s own top scientific assessment body this month issued a warning that the United States is now not even producing enough scientists and engineers to maintain even its current strategic ballistic weapons systems reliably operational in the decades to come. The implications of this conclusion for the vastly more complex and demanding anti-ballistic missile systems now being developed are therefore sobering in the extreme.
The report, issued last week by the Defense Science Board, was the subject of a comprehensive report in USA Today on March 24. And it pulled no punches.
[snip]
According to the USA Today report these problems already include:
— A lack of industry and government expertise in long-range missile systems.
— Lack of experience in the U.S. armed forces and industry in designing new long-range missile systems. It is now a quarter of a century since the last systems were designed and crucial experience and expertise has just been lost.
— An “alarming” lack of missile expertise in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, where severe shortages of civilian experts exist in 124 of 163 critical skills areas, the DSB report says.
— Even the Pentagon’s new $500 million plan to replace nuclear warheads on the missiles in Trident nuclear submarines with conventional weapons is going to take far longer than planned because the entire Department of Defense lacks the necessary engineering skills to do it, the report said.
China and India are now producing scientists and engineers at many times the rate of the US. No matter how much money the DOD throws at projects, it cannot magically produce the expertise needed to complete or maintain those projects. Geeze, that would require a major shift in focus on math and science in our schools. Instead, the right wing is trying to force fantasy science in the form of intelligent design and teaching the bible in our schools. The dumbing down of America continues unabated.
Rolls-Royce today awarded contracts to DutchAero, the AVIO and Philips joint venture company based in Eindhoven, for the manufacture of components for the F136 engine which is being developed in partnership with General Electric to power the Joint Strike Fighter.
The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team (FET) comprises: GE Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; Rolls-Royce plc in Bristol, England; and Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
DutchAero, part of the Avio Group, will be responsible for producing a huge 1.1m diameter component known as a bladed disk or “blisk”.
A former top aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) pleaded guilty in federal court today to a conspiracy charge related to a wide-ranging investigation into corrupt lobbying practices.
Tony C. Rudy, who served as deputy chief of staff to DeLay, the former House majority leader, before joining the lobbying team of Jack Abramoff, entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Washington as part of a deal to cooperate in the investigation. He had faced charges of conspiracy to corrupt public officials and defraud clients, as well as violating a one-year lobbying ban for former government employees, according to a criminal information filed today.
BERLIN, March 30 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting here on Thursday with representatives of the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, raised the idea of imposing unspecified sanctions on Iran, but she received a decidedly cool reaction from China and Russia.
(snip)
But Dai Bingguo, China’s vice minister of foreign affairs, rejected the idea of sanctions and offered a thinly veiled criticism of the war in Iraq when he said: “The Chinese side feels there has already been enough turmoil in the Middle East. We don’t need any more turmoil.”
(snip)
As it is, Russia and China bluntly declared on Thursday that they had no interest in imposing sanctions of any sort or in taking any further action against Iran, though both countries did express concern about the nuclear program. Russian and Chinese officials said they wanted to refer the issue back to the atomic energy agency.
“Russia believes that the sole solution for this problem will be based on the work of the I.A.E.A.,” said the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
Temperatures in the polar troposphere have risen 3.6 degrees in the last 30 years, study finds.
In the winter sky over Antarctica, scientists have detected a vast cap of steadily warming air, in the first sign that record levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may be trapping heat above the ice sheets of the South Pole.
The temperature of the winter air over Antarctica has been rising at a rate three times faster than the world as a whole, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science.
By analyzing 30 years of high-altitude weather balloon records, meteorologists at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, England, concluded that temperatures in the polar troposphere — the dense layer of air reaching from the surface to an altitude of about 5 miles — have risen by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 1970s.
“We have the largest regional warming on Earth at the tropospheric level,” said climate specialist John Turner, who led the research team.
(snip)
The dramatic warming in the air over Antarctica made public Thursday was nowhere evident in any of the climate models on which global warming forecasts are based, Turner said.
(more)
It seems that a lack of respect for the law are trickling down from our leaders in Washington, DC. to local law enforcement.
A Grafton doctor who is a naturalized U.S. citizen from Nigeria says he and his ailing sister were physically and verbally abused by officials at the Pembina port of entry. BISMARCK, N.D.(AP)
The United Nations’ special investigator on torture wants access to alleged secret US prisons in Europe, adding he’s “100 per cent sure” they exist.
Manfred Nowak, who refused to accept a US invitation to visit Guantanamo Bay because he was denied private interviews with detainees, announced that he would go to Chechnya this year because Russia had accepted his condition of direct access to prisoners.
In an interview, Nowak said he hoped Washington would reconsider its policy on terror suspects and allow him to investigate allegations of torture in detention centres outside the United States.
“The United States should allow UN special rapporteurs access to all places of detention where suspected terrorists are held outside of US territory,” Nowak said.
This includes detention centres in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said.
He said he had evidence of the existence of secret prisons in Europe, citing US refusal to provide details or records of interrogations later used in terrorism trials in Germany.
“I am 100 per cent sure. I have evidence,” Nowak said.
Allegations of clandestine US detention centres in Europe have sparked separate investigations by the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the continent’s leading human rights watchdog.
(more)
Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, travels the world to expose human rights violations in so-called “rogue states.” Now he is directing his attention at the United States.
When asked where torture conditions are cruelest in the world, Manfred Nowak frowns. Perhaps in Mongolia, he replies, thoughtfully. There, death row prisoners are abandoned for weeks at a time with their hands and feet bound. “Someone who’s waiting to be executed doesn’t need to be made to suffer in that way,” he says.
For the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, a 55-year-old lawyer, human agony — abused bodies, crushed skulls, broken bones — is a daily concern. The post the UN Human Rights Commission assigned to him a year ago is a difficult one. For the next three years, he will work without pay to enforce the worldwide ban on torture. His work will take him to places where civilization ends and barbarity begins: the dungeons of countries that could care less about human rights. “There are quite a few of them,” he says.
BLACKBURN (BBC News) March 31 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted the US has made thousands of tactical errors in Iraq, but said it was right to remove Saddam Hussein. “This could have gone that way, or that could have gone this way,” said Ms Rice, adding that the US-led invasion was “the right strategic decision”.
Ms Rice’s comments came after she delivered a major foreign policy speech in Blackburn during her tour of the UK.
Her visit has sparked anti-war protests in the north-western town.
Rice: "I have no problem with people
exercising their democratic rights."
While democracy may take time, it’s always worth it – it’s going to take time in Iraq. “I know we’ve made tactical errors – thousands of them, I’m sure,” Ms Rice said in a session of questions after her speech, organised by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and Chatham House international affairs institution.
“But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions,” she said. “I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision, that Saddam (Hussein) had been a threat to the international community long enough,” Ms Rice added.
During her speech Ms Rice touched on a number of key issues of US foreign policy, saying that:
– no-one should doubt America’s commitment to justice and the rule of law.
BLACKBURN (The Guardian) March 31 — Muslim leaders yesterday withdrew an invitation to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to visit a mosque in the Blackburn constituency of the home secretary, Jack Straw. Ms Rice was due to go to the Masjid al-Hidayah mosque tomorrow during her two-day tour of Blackburn and Liverpool as a guest of Mr Straw.
“The invitation to Ms Rice to visit the mosque came, as I understand it, from officials in Jack Straw’s office,” said Hamid Qureshi, chairman of the Blackburn-based Lancashire Council of Mosques. “They might not have consulted with the congregation and members were very angry and decided she should not come.”
Under the category of “like father, like son,” comes this headline from today’s Miami Herald, Liberian Warlord’s Son Arrested in Miami.
Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., the 29-year-old son of warlord Charles Taylor, is behind bars in Miami, accused of trying to fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport, the Justice Department said Friday.
While his dad was being flown to Sierra Leone to face war crimes and crimes against humanity counts, Chuckie was flying to Miami from Trinidad probably to escape same. Chuckie ran the brutal presidential guard that’s accused of sweeping away human rights and conducting torture. Sounds like Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard — or the Bush Administration, that other Republican (old) guard.
BERLIN (ABC/AP) 30 minutes ago — Journalist Jill Carroll arrived in Germany on Saturday, the first stop as she headed home to the United States from Iraq where she was kidnapped and spent 82 days in captivity.
A military transport plane brought Carroll from Balad Air Base near Baghdad to Ramstein Air Base in western Germany.
Carroll was riding in the cockpit as the U.S. Air Force C17 Globemaster came to a stop. She cast a bemused look at the line of television cameras waiting on the tarmac. She got off the plane smiling and wearing jeans, a gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.
Col. Kurt Lohide, commander of the 435th Air Base Wing, greeted her briefly before escorting her into an Air Force van.
“Welcome to Ramstein,” he said he told her.
“I’m happy to be here,” was her answer.
Jill Carroll was scheduled to leave Frankfurt at 10:25 a.m. local time on a Lufthansa flight bound for Boston, with a stopover in Washington, officials at Ramstein said.
Fuel desire to smoke
See, getting up early really can be bad for your health. Let’s all sleep in, shall we?
I have SAD…..which is a considered a mood disorder that I myself consider a “social disorder”. My body is not turned on fully without sunlight. I hibernate in the winter. Smoking helped me when I was in school to overcome being in a total fog for a 9:00 am lecture. I have always worked afternoon/evening jobs if I could find them, but it is better if I’m self employed. Giving up smoking was so fucking hard for me I had to go to a treatment center and spend 2500.00 for a weeks stay to get it done. I have the Sadellite now by Northern Technology Systems out of Canada…..and when I turn that bad boy on at 6:00 am in order to make other beings palletable it just about knocks my husband out of his chair.
.
For understanding, I’ll stick to the BBC News article … but it seems to be an important result. Although knowledge of human kind and war of agression is still an universal void!
SOUDAN (PhysOrg) March 30 — Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today the first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity beam of muon neutrinos from the lab’s site in Batavia, Illinois, to a particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, scientists observed the disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos.
The observation is consistent with an effect known as neutrino oscillation, in which neutrinos change from one kind to another.
Neutrinos are also associated with thebirth of the elements in stellar furnaces.
(BBC News) March 30 — Physicists have confirmed that neutrinos, which are thought to have played a key role during the creation of the Universe, have mass. This is the first major finding of the US-based Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (Minos) experiment.
The findings suggest that the Standard Model, which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. Neutrinos are believed to be vital to our understanding of the Universe.
Neutrinos produced at Los Alamos Neutron Scattering CEnter (LANSCE) follow well characterized energy and angular distributions. The expected interactions of these neutrinos have been studied by several experiments, including the LSND, to better understand basic nuclear physics. The simple character of the neutrino-nucleus interaction serves as a powerful test of detailed models of the nucleus.
If neutrinos have mass, then one expects to see neutrino “oscillations” between types of neutrinos. This oscillation is analogous to the musical “beat” heard between two notes of slightly differing pitch. The frequency and strength of the “beat” are used to characterize the mass difference and degree of mixing between neutrino types.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
This is definitely big news.
It’s been suspected, because scientists have only been able to measure a fraction of the expected amount of nutrinos from the sun, and theorized that they were changing into something else on the way from there to here.
This changing (for complicated reasons I’m not sure I fully understand) implies that the nutrinos have weight.
And a whole raft of theories are going to have to be modified to account for this fact.
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Scientists using different methods to determine the mass of galaxies have found a discrepancy that suggests ninety percent of the universe is matter in a form that cannot be seen.
Some scientists think dark matter is in the form of massive objects, such as black holes, that hang out around galaxies unseen. Other scientists believe dark matter to be subatomic particles that rarely interact with ordinary matter.
Artist's rendition of a brown dwarf● Most of Universe”s Matter Still MIA
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
link
Amendment Needed to Expose Efforts Blocking Whistleblower Legislation
Washington – The Government Accountability Project is hailing an 84-13 vote by the Senate this past Tuesday, March 28, which approved an amendment to S. 2349, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006, that will require senators to publicly acknowledge their efforts to block normal proceedings on legislation.
The amendment, […]addresses an informal Senate practice, which currently allows senators to place an anonymous “hold” on legislation in order to silently paralyze a bill’s progress without public debate on the merits of the proposal.
[snip]
As a case in point, the 107th (2001-02) and 108th (2003-04) Congresses ended without a vote or debate on legislation to amend the Whistleblower Protection Act (WPA), despite its unanimous committee approval, because of a secret “hold” put in place by Senate leadership.
In April 2005, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee passed nearly identical legislation, S. 494, to restore the WPA for the third time. Like its predecessors, S. 494 is being held from further consideration by Senate leadership.
How in hell did this stupid practice come about in the first place?
Hey, these legislators can’t have their constituents knowing what they’re actually doing in DC, can they? They might actually get their assess kicked to the curb if that happened…
Questions the power of prayer:
Hmm, I wonder how the fundies will react to this one…
If allowed to continue unchecked, the American Taliban will soon be issuing christian death fatwas against those who dare to oppose or question them. (oops! Pat Robertson has already been issuing death fatwas) Considering the results of this study, maybe they should just pray for their enemies. (snort)
Full Article
Inspired by this cartoon, Nancy Goldstein calls Napoli to find out if she should put chorizo or bacon in her paella.
I sent that cartoon yesterday to all the women in my email list, LOL!
Bush promotes democracy in Iraq but vetoes the results.
Prof. Juan Cole’s post today is a high recommend read. (This week it was announced that Prof. Cole was awarded the Aronson Award in Journalism from Hunter College for his blog, ‘Informed Comment’; a first in blogging).
Sistani blows off Bush
Idredit, I posted my Sistani thing before I saw your post. Unfortunately, I can’t delete my post.
Don’t you just love Prefessor Cole? Bush keeps poking his nose in Iraqi politics and making things exponentially worse. Thank heavens we have Juan Cole to explain it all.
“pas grave” as we say in french, and in english, “don’t mention, not a problem.”
I’m honored that we’re on the same page.
link
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – A letter from President Bush to Iraq’s supreme Shiite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, was hand-delivered earlier this week but sits unread and untranslated in the top religious figure’s office, a key al-Sistani aide told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The aide – who has never allowed use of his name in news reports, citing al-Sistani’s refusal to make any public statements himself – said the ayatollah had laid the letter aside and did not ask for a translation because of increasing “unhappiness” over what senior Shiite leaders see as American meddling in Iraqi attempts to form their first, permanent post-invasion government.
Juan Cole says
“Sistani does not approve of the American presence in Iraq, and certainly disapproves of the Bush administration’s attempt to unseat Ibrahim Jaafari as the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance. Middle Easterners have had Western Powers dictate their politics to them for a couple of centuries and are pretty tired of it.”
Iraq is going so well.
ENS Link
For the second day in a row, we open with an “It’s time to revise your worldview” headline:
Physicists confirm that neutrinos, the “ghost particles” that pervade the Universe, have mass. The corroboration that neutrinos interconvert and have mass has profound implications for particle physics. The findings suggest that the “Standard Model,” which describes how the building blocks of the Universe behave and interact, needs a revision. The finding may help explain the “missing mass” in the universe and why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe. MORE COVERAGE ABOVE, IN COMMENT BY OUI
Habitable, Earth-like planets can form even after giant planets have barrelled through their birthplace on epic migrations towards their host stars, new computer simulations suggest. The finding contradicts earlier ideas of how planets behave and suggests future space missions should search for terrestrial planets near known “hot Jupiters”. Many of the 160 or so known extrasolar planets are hot Jupiters – massive planets that are closer to their stars than Mercury is to our Sun, after migrating in from farther in space due to friction with orbiting dust. That migration was thought to prevent the formation of terrestrial planets, but it now appears that roughly 50% of planets will survive the disruption of their orbits due to the migration and eventually resume stable orbits.
New recognition that prescribing of hyperactivity drugs for children is out of control comes from two meetings of FDA advisory panels.
The Russian Satellite Communications Company’s Express-AM11 telecommunications satellite suffered a sudden failure on Wednesday. “At present, providing services via the Express-AM11 satellite is impossible,” the company said in a statement. Telemetry showed the failure, which occurred at 6:55 a.m. Moscow Time, was caused by “a sudden external impact on the spacecraft,” RSCC said in a statement. The cause most probably was space garbage of unknown origin. The result was instantaneous depressurization of the satellite’s thermal control system fluid circuit, followed by “a sudden outburst of the heat-carrying agent.” The spacecraft subsequently lost its geostationary orientation and proper rotation. Although ground engineers were able to maintain marginal control, RSCC said the AM11 would be put “into space disposal orbit” as the current orbit is unsafe, if space junk is present. All Russian commercial TV and radio broadcasting has been restored using other satellites.
A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of coral reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.
About 75 percent of sub-Saharan Africa farms are plagued by severe degradation according to a new report released today on the precipitous decline in African soil health from 1980 to 2004. Africa’s crisis in food production and battle with hunger are largely rooted in this “soil health crisis.” In addition to fueling hunger, soil depletion and population growth in farming areas also leads to environmental challenges, as African farmers often abandon infertile fields to clear forests for cultivation, thus threatening Africa’s endangered wildlife and forests. A summit of regional leaders will be held in Nigeria to address the problem.
Youth with superior IQ are distinguished by how fast the thinking part of their brains thickens and thins as they grow up, researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) have discovered.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology explore the hypothesis that human visual signs such as letters have been cross-culturally selected to reflect common contours in natural scenes that humans have evolved to be good at seeing.
Ten years since school children’s discovery of deformed frogs in Minnesota, there is no one answer on what causes the deformities, but there is growing knowledge about a variety of factors, including deformity-causing parasites, that are assaulting frogs.
Scientists said Thursday they have recreated in computer simulations what appear to be the strongest magnetic fields in the universe – trillions of times more powerful than Earth’s magnetic field – produced when neutron stars collide. Such collisions may explain the mysterious short gamma-ray bursts.
Earth to Bush – see sig line below. Redefining ‘wetland’ to include man-made ponds, the Interior Deparment claims that for the first time since measurements began, there has been an increase in wetlands in the US. Natural wetlands decreased. Almost two years ago, President Bush, under attack by environmental groups for loosening controls on development in wetlands, announced that one of his goals was to increase net wetland acreage. So thank your local golf course for building that pond!
Don’t miss CabinGirl’s comment above on the study about the medical efficacy of prayer.
A new analysis of weather balloon observations from the last 30 years reveals that the Antarctic has the same ‘global warming’ signature as that seen across the whole Earth, but is three times larger than that observed globally. The results by scientists from British Antarctic Survey are reported this week in Science.
For Egarwaen and other fans of bioremediation: In research that could help control contamination from the radioactive element uranium, scientists have discovered that some bacteria found in the soil and subsurface can release phosphate that converts uranium contamination into an insoluble and immobile form.
Sexually attracting agents, insecticide lamps and bees are being used to combat a ravenous plant-eating moth, which threatens to turn Beijing’s “Green Olympics” brown, China’s forestry officials have said. The American White Moth, native to North American forests, threatened thousands of hectares of trees planted around Beijing as part of the campaign to host an environmentally friendly Games in 2008, they said.
And to end on a hopeful note: Americans are nearly as worried about their country’s dependence on foreign energy sources as they are about the war in Iraq, a poll released by the magazine Foreign Affairs showed on Thursday. Almost half of the 1,000 Americans surveyed for the Public Agenda Confidence in US Foreign Policy Index gave US policymakers a failing grade in weaning the country from foreign oil. Nearly 90 percent said the lack of energy independence jeopardizes national security. Public Agenda, a nonpartisan group, conducted the poll in early January with funding from the Ford Foundation. It said that Americans are at a “tipping point” on energy, akin to their state of mind about the war.
Thanks for this great summary of science news!
Given that here we are are in the throes of Spring (finally!), I’m expecting the Bushites to count water-filled potholes as wetlands.
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Bergenheim said that neither the Monitor nor Carroll’s family was involved in negotiations for her release. Her captors, calling themselves the Revenge Brigades, had demanded the release of all women detainees in Iraq by Feb. 26 and said Carroll would be killed if that didn’t happen. The deadline passed without word of her safety.
“Neither we, nor the family, nor anyone that we know of were involved with negotiations. This really was a bolt out of the blue,” Bergenheim told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
A scene soon to be repeated ...Her twin sister, Katie Carroll, described in the Monitor the wake up call she got at about 5:45 a.m. Thursday.
“Katie, it’s me,” said the voice on the other end of the line. “I’m free.” Then she burst into tears and I did, too, Katie Carroll said.
January 18 – Iraq’s ministry of justice has told the BBC that six of the eight women being held by coalition forces in Iraq are to be released early.
● ‘Wonderful day’: Journalist Carroll freed in Iraq
≈ Cross-posted from my diary —
U.S. Army Bans Use of Privately Bought Body Armor ≈
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Tons of hate being thrown at Jill Caroll-attacking her mental state, from the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Imus’ executive producer, and John Podhoretz?
What’s with them, instead of celebrating her courage? So hateful.
See, when dealing with an actual reporter, you get hate mail because you don’t follow the talking point of the day. She represents low propaganda value because she lives in the reality-based world. She is not following the script, so she must be denigrated. That’s what these folks do, and these cowards need to be called on it each and every time.
None of them have the, uh–stones–to actually report what’s going on Iraq like she does.
We need to get a little Action emails over to the powers at MSNBC on their continued assault on Jill Caroll. Beyond the pale
Thinkprogress continues the alert with Video
To email Imus or his producer would only generate a chuckle. I’ve sent a little missile over to viewerservices@msnbc.com to be followed up by a call to Microsoft in Redmond WA on Monday. Any other ideas?
What in the hell?
I just can’t type. These fuckers are so hateful until I can barely respond. Do they even think about what they say?
Just beneath contempt.
link
A new report by the Pentagon’s own top scientific assessment body this month issued a warning that the United States is now not even producing enough scientists and engineers to maintain even its current strategic ballistic weapons systems reliably operational in the decades to come. The implications of this conclusion for the vastly more complex and demanding anti-ballistic missile systems now being developed are therefore sobering in the extreme.
The report, issued last week by the Defense Science Board, was the subject of a comprehensive report in USA Today on March 24. And it pulled no punches.
[snip]
According to the USA Today report these problems already include:
— A lack of industry and government expertise in long-range missile systems.
— Lack of experience in the U.S. armed forces and industry in designing new long-range missile systems. It is now a quarter of a century since the last systems were designed and crucial experience and expertise has just been lost.
— An “alarming” lack of missile expertise in the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, where severe shortages of civilian experts exist in 124 of 163 critical skills areas, the DSB report says.
— Even the Pentagon’s new $500 million plan to replace nuclear warheads on the missiles in Trident nuclear submarines with conventional weapons is going to take far longer than planned because the entire Department of Defense lacks the necessary engineering skills to do it, the report said.
China and India are now producing scientists and engineers at many times the rate of the US. No matter how much money the DOD throws at projects, it cannot magically produce the expertise needed to complete or maintain those projects. Geeze, that would require a major shift in focus on math and science in our schools. Instead, the right wing is trying to force fantasy science in the form of intelligent design and teaching the bible in our schools. The dumbing down of America continues unabated.
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Rolls-Royce today awarded contracts to DutchAero, the AVIO and Philips joint venture company based in Eindhoven, for the manufacture of components for the F136 engine which is being developed in partnership with General Electric to power the Joint Strike Fighter.
The GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team (FET) comprises: GE Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA; Rolls-Royce plc in Bristol, England; and Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.
DutchAero, part of the Avio Group, will be responsible for producing a huge 1.1m diameter component known as a bladed disk or “blisk”.
A single engine for the JSF● Hmmm … A Carlyle Investment?!
● Avio Group – 70% Ownership by Carlyle
● Avio LM2500+G4 Turbines Formally Selected to Power FREMM Frigates
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Fmr Delay Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Rudy Pleads Guilty
Rice Floats the Idea of U.N. Sanctions on Iran, but China and Russia Reject It
Air Over Antarctica Is Warming, Scientists Say
It seems that a lack of respect for the law are trickling down from our leaders in Washington, DC. to local law enforcement.
Busy days for the UN’s torture hunter.
UN wants access to ‘secret US prisons’
A Visit with the UN’s Torture Cop
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BLACKBURN (BBC News) March 31 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted the US has made thousands of tactical errors in Iraq, but said it was right to remove Saddam Hussein. “This could have gone that way, or that could have gone this way,” said Ms Rice, adding that the US-led invasion was “the right strategic decision”.
Ms Rice’s comments came after she delivered a major foreign policy speech in Blackburn during her tour of the UK.
Her visit has sparked anti-war protests in the north-western town.
Rice: "I have no problem with peopleexercising their democratic rights."
While democracy may take time, it’s always worth it – it’s going to take time in Iraq. “I know we’ve made tactical errors – thousands of them, I’m sure,” Ms Rice said in a session of questions after her speech, organised by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme and Chatham House international affairs institution.
“But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decisions,” she said. “I believe strongly that it was the right strategic decision, that Saddam (Hussein) had been a threat to the international community long enough,” Ms Rice added.
During her speech Ms Rice touched on a number of key issues of US foreign policy, saying that:
– no-one should doubt America’s commitment to justice and the rule of law.
BLACKBURN (The Guardian) March 31 — Muslim leaders yesterday withdrew an invitation to the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to visit a mosque in the Blackburn constituency of the home secretary, Jack Straw. Ms Rice was due to go to the Masjid al-Hidayah mosque tomorrow during her two-day tour of Blackburn and Liverpool as a guest of Mr Straw.
“The invitation to Ms Rice to visit the mosque came, as I understand it, from officials in Jack Straw’s office,” said Hamid Qureshi, chairman of the Blackburn-based Lancashire Council of Mosques. “They might not have consulted with the congregation and members were very angry and decided she should not come.”
● Rice – U.S. Open to “Bantam” Division Palestinian Land
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Under the category of “like father, like son,” comes this headline from today’s Miami Herald, Liberian Warlord’s Son Arrested in Miami.
Charles “Chuckie” Taylor, Jr., the 29-year-old son of warlord Charles Taylor, is behind bars in Miami, accused of trying to fraudulently obtain a U.S. passport, the Justice Department said Friday.
While his dad was being flown to Sierra Leone to face war crimes and crimes against humanity counts, Chuckie was flying to Miami from Trinidad probably to escape same. Chuckie ran the brutal presidential guard that’s accused of sweeping away human rights and conducting torture. Sounds like Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard — or the Bush Administration, that other Republican (old) guard.
Everyone see where the logic of this is going?
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BBC World Radio Assignment :: De Menezes London Subway Shooting
Order Given to Kill?
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Thanks for this one, Oui.
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BERLIN (ABC/AP) 30 minutes ago — Journalist Jill Carroll arrived in Germany on Saturday, the first stop as she headed home to the United States from Iraq where she was kidnapped and spent 82 days in captivity.
A military transport plane brought Carroll from Balad Air Base near Baghdad to Ramstein Air Base in western Germany.
Carroll was riding in the cockpit as the U.S. Air Force C17 Globemaster came to a stop. She cast a bemused look at the line of television cameras waiting on the tarmac. She got off the plane smiling and wearing jeans, a gray sweater, and a desert camouflage jacket.
Col. Kurt Lohide, commander of the 435th Air Base Wing, greeted her briefly before escorting her into an Air Force van.
“Welcome to Ramstein,” he said he told her.
“I’m happy to be here,” was her answer.
Jill Carroll was scheduled to leave Frankfurt at 10:25 a.m. local time on a Lufthansa flight bound for Boston, with a stopover in Washington, officials at Ramstein said.
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY