According to this article GM crops under test in the UK have cross pollinated to weeds, giving them the same resistance to herbicide as the GM crops. The article also mentions that this has been reported as occurring in Canada, which like the US is well past the test stage and allows widespread use of GM crops. What’s worse, in Canada crop rotation has conferred multi-herbicide resistance to some of the weeds!
Monthly Archive for December, 2005
From Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
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Category: Social Bookmarking
Best Offering: del.icio.us
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Category: Web 2.0 Start Pages
Best Offering: Netvibes
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Category: Online To Do Lists
Best Offering: Voo2do
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Category: Peer Production News
Best Offering: digg
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Category: Image Storage and Sharing
Best Offering: Flickr
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Category: 3rd Party Online File Storage
Best Offering: Openomy
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Category: Blog Filters
Best Offering: Memeorandum.com
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Category: Grassroots Use of Web 2.0
Best Offering: Katrina List Network
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Category: Web-Based Word Processing
Best Offering: Writely
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Category: Online Calendars
Best Offering: CalendarHub
Category: Project Management & Team Collaboration
Best Offering: BaseCamp
The length of a man’s fingers can reveal how physically aggressive he is, Canadian scientists have said.
The shorter the index finger is compared to the ring finger, the more boisterous he will be, University of Alberta researchers said.
But the same was not true for verbal aggression or hostile behaviours, they told the journal Biological Psychology after studying 300 people’s fingers.
The trend is thought to be linked to testosterone exposure in the womb.
Thinking of spending that next vacation on the moon or Mars or circling the Earth? Before liftoff, there’s a list of things the would-be “space flight participant” should know.
More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don’t-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training for the crew.
Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the “space flight participant” — known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger — of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.
Legislation signed a year ago by
President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the
Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury.
Take, for example, the emergence of Judaism as we know it today. Archaeological evidence—and even “reading between the lines” of the Tanakh—reveals that the original form of Judaism was, aside from its progressive social program, a very typical Bronze Age religion. It was a state religion that provided a foundation myth for the state, and relied on a “spirit of the place” form of monolatry. The God of Israel is presented not as the only god, but either as the best or highest god or, more commonly, our god—the only god we pay attention to.
Monolatry is typically quite tolerant of other religions, so it should come as no surprise that another local god, Baal, became competition for early Judaism. The prophets’ message was primarily a social one centered around caring for the poor and other radical, progressive goals. Such goals were rather unique to the Jewish religion, and obviously such priorities were not shared by Baal. In order to more effectively advance their social agenda, the prophets introduced a new memetic variation: monotheism. The prophets no longer referred to the God of Israel as the best or highest god, but as the only God.
Books are being scanned to make them searchable on the Internet. Television broadcasts are being recorded and archived for online posterity. Radio shows, too, are getting their digital conversion—to podcasts.
With a few keystrokes, we’ll soon be able to tap much of the world’s knowledge. And we’ll do it from nearly anywhere—already, newer iPods can carry all your music, digital photos and such TV classics as “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” along with more contemporary prime-time fare.
Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data?
At the end of an interview broadcast Wednesday night, Fox News anchor Brit Hume asked Bush to show him what’s on his playlist these days.
Bush : Beach Boys, Beatles, let’s see, Alan Jackson, Alan Jackson, Alejandro, Alison Krauss, the Angels, the Archies, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, Dan McLean. Remember him?
Hume: Don McLean.
Bush: I mean, Don McLean.
Hume: Does “American Pie,” right?
Bush: Great song.
Hume: Yes, yes, great song.
Unidentified male: . . . which ones do you play?
Bush: All of these. I put it on shuffle. Dwight Yoakam. I’ve got the Shuffle, the, what is it called? The little.
Hume: Shuffle.
Bush: It looks like.
Hume: The Shuffle. That is the name of one of the models.
Bush: Yes, the Shuffle.
Hume: Called the Shuffle.
Bush: Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the Shuffle.
Hume: So you—it plays . . .
Bush: Put it in my pocket, got the ear things on.
Hume: So it plays them in a random order.
Bush: Yes.
Hume: So you don’t know what you’re going to going to get.
Bush: No.
Hume: But you know—
Bush: And if you don’t like it, you have got your little advance button. It’s pretty high-tech stuff.
Hume: . . . be good to have one of those at home, wouldn’t it?
Bush: Oh?
Hume: Yes, hit the button and whatever it is that’s in your head—gone.
Bush: . . . it’s a bad day, just say, get out of here.
Hume: Well, that probably is pretty . . .
Bush: That works, too. ( Laughter )
Hume: Yes, right.
Deep in a remote, fog-layered hollow near Sugar Grove, W.Va., hidden by fortress-like mountains, sits the country’s largest eavesdropping bug. Located in a “radio quiet” zone, the station’s large parabolic dishes secretly and silently sweep in millions of private telephone calls and e-mail messages an hour.
Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country.
A hundred miles or so north of Sugar Grove, in Washington, the N.S.A. has suddenly taken center stage in a political firestorm. The controversy over whether the president broke the law when he secretly ordered the N.S.A. to bypass a special court and conduct warrantless eavesdropping on American citizens has even provoked some Democrats to call for his impeachment.
This holiday season, a lot of children will open their presents and find robotic toys, like mechanical dogs and dinosaurs. Unfortunately, robot toys often disappoint.
They’re just so robotic, repeating the same things over and over again. But a team at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is exploring how to make robots more engaging over the long term. Their assistant is roboreceptionist Marion “Tank” LeFleur.
Tank sits in the lobby of a computer science building, at a desk decorated with desert storm camouflage and a framed photo of Dwight Eisenhower. He has a computer monitor for a head. On the screen is a blue Frankenstein face. When his sensors register your presence, he smiles pleasantly and says, “Hello there. What can I do for you?”
Einstein said there would be days like this.
This fall scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms into a “cat state.”
No, they were not sprawled along a sunny windowsill. To a physicist, a “cat state” is the condition of being two diametrically opposed conditions at once, like black and white, up and down, or dead and alive.
These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn’t fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across the galaxy.
The abundance mentality is in my opinion, one of, if not the most important aspect of personal development and growth. Abundance means ‘The property of a more than adequate quantity or supply’ and to really take advantage of all that is available to you, you really do have to have a handle on this extremely important way of thinking.
The exact opposite to the abundance mentality is the scarcity mentality. Amongst other things this mentality breeds fear, jealousy, spite and selfishness leading to insecurity and lack of self worth due to your belief that opportunities are lacking and you have little choice or freedom in your life. The scarcity mentality leads to you seeing nothing but obstacles and problems (There is no money to be made in this industry. I don’t have time to spend on something like that.)
Without saying anything more we can see the negative side effects of the scarcity mentality, but how is the abundance mentality superior? It leads to opportunity because you believe it is everywhere, riches because you believe there is plenty to go around and enjoyment because you are able to celebrate other people accomplishments instead of loathing someone for stealing your ‘piece of the pie’.
Imagine that your coffee maker breaks just before you’re about to host a brunch. You go online and click on the model you want to buy. But you don’t have to wait for it to be shipped; instead, a machine on your desk kicks into operation. Inside a glass chamber, a nozzle spits out the electronics, chassis, motor and other components, layer by layer. An hour later, you snap together a few parts and the brewing begins.
That machine would be the “Star Trek” replicator realized. Well, a beta version anyway. Already, several engineering threads are converging that may pull the replicator out of the far future and put it in our homes, or at least at Kinko’s, in the next few decades. MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms, dubs the vision “personal fabrication.” John Canny, a professor at UC-Berkeley’s College of Engineering, where I’m a writer in residence, refers to the research field as “flexonics.” Whatever the buzzword, it’s not unlike desktop publishing, but for products instead of paper. Call it desktop manufacturing.
It starts with the physical object itself, the plastic chassis for the remote control that you stepped on, the body of the coffee maker. Product designers have literally been printing out objects for more than a decade. A digital design is loaded into a machine that drips out thin beads of plastic and glue, building up hair-thin layers until the whole form is complete. These kinds of three-dimensional printers are perhaps the coolest tool in the realm of rapid prototyping, technology that allows designers to quickly mock up models of new products. A designer can feel how the next-generation phone she’s working on will fit in a shirt pocket.
LAWRENCE, Kan. – Mayor Boog Highberger wants to recognize Dadaism with by declaring a month devoted to the early 20th century anti-art movement.
Well, not exactly.
Highberger plans to proclaim International Dadaism Month on Tuesday during the city’s weekly commission meeting. But in the spirit of the Dadaists – who declared “art is dead” and rejected conventional forms, often making deliberately absurd works – the Lawrence mayor hasn’t picked a certain month to celebrate the movement. Instead, International Dadaism Month will be Feb. 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, Aug. 2, Aug. 7, Aug. 16, Aug. 26, Sept. 18, Sept. 22, Oct. 1, Oct. 17 and Oct. 26.
To choose the dates, Highberger rolled dice and pulled numbers from a hat.
As part of the proclamation, Highberger will utter a phrase from a poem by the late Hugo Ball, a founder of Dada: “Zimzim urallala zimzim urallala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam.”
“I just think it is good to acknowledge that there is a place for chance and nonsense in every healthy lifestyle,” Highberger said.
I came across this video on our town website, Lawrence.com, as Burroughs spent the last years of his life here in Lawrence, Kansas. It’s about 20 minutes of amature video of Bill just hanging out with friends (including Steve Buscemi and Allen Ginsberg), shooting the shit and being his charming self.
The US Senate has passed a six-month extension of the anti-terrorist law known as the Patriot Act.
The deal is seen as a compromise as President George W Bush had pushed for a permanent extension of the bill, some clauses of which expire on 31 December.
But Democrats and some Republican senators said the law did not provide enough civil liberty safeguards.
Passed after 11 September 2001 attacks, the law increases the US government’s search and surveillance powers.
Although the compromise is something of a defeat for the White House, raising questions about Mr Bush’s authority, the president has publicly welcomed the extension, the BBC’s James Coomarasamy in Washington reports.
The deal still needs to be approved by the House of Representatives.
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