December 2005 Archives

In 2004, Bush said the following (gathered from the White House website):

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."

But, things change ...:

The president says without apology that he has, and has used, the legal power to order the National Security Agency to conduct electronic eavesdropping on people, including U.S. citizens, within the United States without prior court approval. He said Saturday during a live radio address that his orders to the NSA to eavesdrop domestically were "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists," "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." The government has long had the power, through proper procedures, to conduct foreign surveillance in this fashion. What makes last week's revelations markedly different is that this power now has been used domestically, in some cases against U.S. citizens, without formal Congressional or judicial approval.

The president's legal position — that no law may forbid him from ordering domestic surveillance without a warrant — is not explicitly contained in the text of the Constitution, has never before been implied into it by the federal courts, and is nowhere to be found in Congress' most germane legislation on the topic. You might say, as one long ago Supreme Court justice might have put it, that the president's power to wage war in this fashion, without specific constitutional or statutory authority, stems from the discovery by government lawyers of "penumbral emanations" of such power in the Constitution itself. That doesn't mean the power does not somehow exist; it just means that no other branch of government, including the branch that has the job of interpreting the Constitution, has ever stated that it does.

CBS News | The Constitution Versus Itself

At the bottom of this page is a link to harder material. This is a pretty cool way to learn stuff:

The layman's view of physics is usually far from reality. In fact, the layman's view of reality is often far from reality: Physics is the study of the fundamental properties of the Universe; but the average person understands little physics, at least not in the way a physicist does. Thus, most people have little understanding of the world they live in, except for things limited to humankind, which tends to have a small influence on the Universe as a whole. Of course, if people understood themselves better, the world would be a nicer place to live, but that's another story.

This story is about the impressions many people have about physics, and how they differ from the real thing. (See also Are you a quack?) In particular, it is also about high energy physics, the most fundamental part of physics, and the misconceptions of it held even by many students of physics.

Physics is a science. Most misconceptions about physics are about science in general, but these are most obvious in the case of physics, because of all the sciences it is the most foreign to most people, because it seems to relate the least to everyday events. In fact, the opposite is true, since physics applies to everything, while the other sciences are more specialized. (See science and theoretical high energy physics.)

Common misconceptions

"Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

...

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

...

Jones said advocates of intelligent design "have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors" and that he didn't believe the concept shouldn't be studied and discussed.

"Our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom," he wrote.

...

Although Defendants attempt to persuade this Court that each Board member who voted for the biology curriculum change did so for the secular purposed of improving science education and to exercise critical thinking skills, their contentions are simply irreconcilable with the record evidence. Their asserted purposes are a sham, and they are accordingly unavailing, for the reasons that follow.

We initially note that the Supreme Court has instructed that while courts are “normally deferential to a State’s articulation of a secular purpose, it is required that the statement of such purpose be sincere and not a sham.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87 (citing Wallace, 472 U.S. at 64)(Powell, J., concurring); id. at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment). Although as noted Defendants have consistently asserted that the ID Policy was enacted for the secular purposes of improving science education and encouraging students to exercise critical thinking skills, the Board took none of the steps that school officials would take if these stated goals had truly been their objective. The Board consulted no scientific materials. The Board contacted no scientists or scientific organizations. The Board failed to consider the views of the District’s science teachers. The Board relied solely on legal advice from two organizations with demonstrably religious, cultural, and legal missions, the Discovery Institute and the TMLC. Moreover, Defendants’ asserted secular purpose of improving science education is belied by the fact that most if not all of the Board members who voted in favor of the biology curriculum change conceded that they still do not know, nor have they ever known, precisely what ID is. To assert a secular purpose against this backdrop is ludicrous.

Judge Rules Against Pa. Biology Curriculum - Yahoo! News

Other Links:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/051220_kitzmiller_342.pdf

http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/unconstitutional_to_teach_id/

http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/12/dover-judge-rules-against-intelligent.html

“The FBI should use its resources to investigate credible threats to national security instead of spending time tracking Americans who criticize government policy, or monitoring groups that have not broken the law,” said Ann Beeson, Associate Legal Director of the ACLU. “Labeling law abiding groups and their members ‘domestic terrorists’ is not only irresponsible, it has a chilling effect on the vibrant tradition of political dissent in this country.”

The documents were obtained by the ACLU after the organization filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to discover whether the FBI’s partnerships with local law enforcement in Joint Terrorism Task Forces has resulted in increased surveillance of political and religious activity.

Among the documents released today were more than 100 pages of FBI files on PETA. Multiple documents indicate ongoing surveillance of PETA-related meetings and activities, including a “Vegan Community Project” event at the University of Indiana during which the group distributed vegetarian starter kits to students and faculty, an animal rights conference in Washington, DC that was open to the public, and a planned protest of Cindy Crawford’s decision to become a llama fur spokesperson.

American Civil Liberties Union : New Documents Show FBI Targeting Environmental and Animal Rights Groups Activities as ‘Domestic Terrorism’

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft?, its massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), has surpassed five million customers worldwide. The subscription-based MMORPG launched approximately one year ago in North America, Australia, and New Zealand and has since released in multiple countries throughout Europe and Asia. This latest milestone comes on the heels of Blizzard Entertainment?'s recent announcement of a World of Warcraft expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade™, which will push the boundaries of the game and offer even more content and features for players.

"World of Warcraft's growth continues to exceed all our expectations," said Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We want to reiterate our thanks to the millions of players worldwide and to all the retailers who have enthusiastically supported the game over the past year. Our commitment to continue growing World of Warcraft is stronger than ever, with development on future content patches and on our 2006 expansion, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, well underway. We look forward to offering even more content for current customers in the months ahead and welcoming new players into the world this holiday season."

Blizzard Entertainment - Press Release

Scientists have sequenced part of the genome of a woolly mammoth that died 28,000 years ago, a discovery that raises the possibility of bringing the extinct ice age mammals back from the dead.

Hendrik Poinar, a molecular evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Hamilton, says ancient DNA obtained from the jawbone of a long-dead Siberian woolly mammoth could be used create a modern version of the animal.

The Globe and Mail: Will woolly mammoths live again?

Lovecraft Story Translates to Acclaimed First Film.

Did I go to film school? No, I was actually finishing up a BA in political science when I made my movie. Do I have a job in the film industry? Not unless video rentals count. I work full-time at Videoport, an independent movie store in Portland, Maine, and part time at the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence.

And that's right, I don't live in Hollywood, New York or Vancouver. I live in Portland, birthplace of such diverse talent as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Judd Nelson and Liv Tyler.

So what have I got? Well, a little ingenuity, some blessed ignorance and a passion for the writing of an obscure author named Howard Phillips Lovecraft.

MovieMaker Magazine | Issue #45 | Lovecraft Story Translates to Acclaimed First Film

Microsoft has announced plans to officially end support for and distribution of its Internet Explorer Web browser for Mac OS.

“Important information for Microsoft Internet Explorer for Mac users,” reads a bulletin posted to Microsoft’s “Mactopia” Web site.

“In June 2003, the Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit announced that Internet Explorer for Mac would undergo no further development, and support would cease in 2005. In accordance with published support lifecycle policies, Microsoft will end support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and will provide no further security or performance updates,” said Microsoft.

Macworld: News: Last nail in the coffin for Mac Internet Explorer

(This guy taught me how to speak French ...)

Actor Marc Favreau, who gained fame in Quebec playing Sol the hobo clown, has died. He was 76.

Favreau died of cancer in hospital on Saturday.
In Ottawa, Gov.-Gen. Michaelle Jean said Sunday she learned of Favreau's death with great sadness.

“Sol, the great magician of words, has left us,” she said in a statement, adding he won hearts over the years and opened eyes with his comedy.

The Globe and Mail: Sol the hobo clown actor dies at 76

This is great! Apparently it's a spoof of this serious Jesus artist. I like the joke captions better.

Weird Close-Talking Jesus Guy

In the late 1990s, as a twenty-year rash of high-profile sex abuse cases was winding down, Harvard Ph.D. student Susan Clancy took a skeptical look at the phenomenon of "recovered memories"—memories repressed for years and suddenly recalled in therapy, which had been sending accused molesters to jail for a decade. Her work promptly got her labeled a "friend of pedophiles" by one letter writer, and politically biased by a colleague quoted in the New York Times. Unprepared for the political minefield she'd stumbled into, Clancy started looking for a way to study false memory creation without inviting attacks of political bias. Naturally, she turned to aliens.

Claims of alien abduction have become increasingly common over the past thirty years, Clancy reports, as has a general belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life. Recruiting people who truly believed they'd been abducted by extraterrestrials, she found a way to study memory creation without directly engaging the bitter debate over recovered memories of abuse. And listening to their grotesque and often sexually explicit accounts, she could be reasonably sure that the memories she was studying were not vivid recollections of traumatic abuse, but imaginative reconstructions of the latest Spielberg flick.

Reason: Susan Clancy on recovered memories, alien abductions, and how to believe weird things. A Reason interview.

In October, residents of NYC reported smelling an odor throughout Manhattan that resembled that of maple syrup. No explanation for this smell could be found and it was soon relegated to the sidelines of the city's collective conscience. That is, until late last week, when residents once again awoke in the still of the night to the smell of breakfast wafting through Gotham.

What is this mystery smell? Where does it come from? To find out, SSW launched an investigation with our crack team of journalists and scientists. After laboring all weekend, we cracked the case. The overwhelming evidence points to a sinister Canadian plot to overthrow the US Government by destabilizing our economy by using the secret nerve gas formulation Maple B. The evidence is compelling:

Records obtained by our operatives in Ottawa show that during the Cold War, Canadian scientists developed a method of extracting nerve agents from one of Canada's chief natural resources--maple syrup. This agent, unlike most nerve agents, works subtly and over time, wearing down the exposed's desire to engage in complicated tasks and instead only think of pancakes and waffles.

SomethingSoWrong.Com

A brass egg given to former Beatle, John Lennon "by aliens" has gone on show in London.

The ornament, which Lennon gave to Israeli-born paranormalist URI GELLER before his untimely murder on 8 December 1980, was allegedly a present from extraterrestrials.

And the famous spoon-bender - who has kept the egg in his living room ever since - is sure Lennon's far-fetched story is true.

BEATLE JOHN LENNON - LENNONS EGG LEGACY TO GELLER

The mythical Voodoo curse is based on the principle of sympathetic magic: the metaphysical belief that like affects like. It is sympathetic because if you stick a pin in the voodoo doll’s leg, the person you are cursing is supposed to feel a pain in their leg. It is magic because there is no known reason to suppose this would ever work.

It is the same with homeopathy: its proponents treat an illness with something that they say would give a healthy person the same symptoms as the illness they purport to treat. Again, there is no reason to suppose this is true; it was just made-up by homeopathy’s founder, Samuel Hahnemann. And homeopaths go on to dilute this “medicine” until there is not even one molecule left on the basis that this makes it stronger.

Although homeopathy has been shown by all well designed studies to be nothing more than placebo, it continues to be popular for the same reasons that many altie remedies appear to work. But not only with people: there are homeopathic veterinarians too. The thing to remember is that unlike human medicine, the law states that only qualified vets are allowed to treat animals. This is because animals can't choose for themselves. Therefore while the law leaves people free to go to unqualified quacks if they like, they can't do that with their animals.

Skeptico: The British Veterinary Voodoo Society

It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility.

A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville.

Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Mr. Seigenthaler on Friday that he had written the material suggesting that Mr. Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers.

A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank - New York Times

Heh. I think I'm level one on this list:

Unknown Artist: Bottom Level 1

This is also a fun place to be. No, you don't make any money at it, but your friends may enjoy your work and girls will get naked when they're at your pad and see your talent. Sorry ladies, but few guys will jump you based on your art unlike the other way around. It just makes you feel good yourself.

Keep your day job and have a blast!

Seven Levels of Artists - 2004 KenRockwell.com

Wawadigital.com (and its pseudonyms, Stop4Camera.com, Starlight Cameras, Stargate Photo, and probably half a dozen others) is a complete and utter scam, apparently. They are one of many online companies that sells the camera for below cost, but cancels the order on you unless you buy hundreds of dollars of over-priced accessories.

They are also, apparently abusive to their customers, according to the following couple of sites:

Leeholmes.com: Customer Service at WaWaDigital – "I'm going to break your neck."

Abusive New York Camera Store Threatens to Break Customer's Neck (thomashawk.com)

Boing-Boing: WaWa Digital cameras threatens to break customer's neck

Update:

Here are some more reviews. I wanted to see if I could find a balanced set of reviews for this company (I couldn't):

A CNET Forums posting by mabi in Forum Digital cameras

WawaDigital.com ripoff Brooklyn New York (badbusinessbureau.com)

Epinions Review of WawaDigital.com

Resellerratings.com review of Stargate Photo/Wawa Digital/wawadigital.com

DONALD WATSON survived to the age of 95; good propaganda in his campaign to convince the world that there is nothing inherently lethal about a vegan diet. He always regarded himself as a propagandist, in the term’s non-pejorative sense. When interviewed at 92 he was pleased to report that he had lived thus far without resort to medication “either orthodox or fringe”, and with hardly a day’s illness.

His parents were meat-eaters who did not enjoy particularly good health or long lives. His father, a headmaster who had worked his way up from being a farm boy, impressed on his son the importance of never swearing, which was helpful, Watson said, when spreading the word: “It annoys some people, and propagandists should not annoy anyone except with the truth of their message.”

While staying at the farm run by his much-loved Uncle George, Watson was shocked to see his uncle direct the slaughter of a pig. Its screams remained with him ever after. “I decided that farms — and uncles — had to be reassessed: the idyllic scene was nothing more than death row, where every creature’s days were numbered.” He became a vegetarian, but continued to worry about dairy and other animal products and the way in which their industries were linked to the slaughterhouses.

Donald Watson - Comment - Times Online

From intermaweb.net:

I’m a big fan of lots of aussie hip-hop, and was genuinely excited about the release of the new/first Hilltop Hoods DVD at the beginning of last week. I finally received my copy on Monday (perhaps Obese ’ships’ by camel nowadays?), and can confirm that - generally speaking - it rocks the comb-over in a mighty way. I say ‘generally speaking’, because these comments in Chapter 13 (Digital Music) deeply concern me:

Suffa: “At the end of the day, Independent artists do this for a living, and you’re stealing from them. And you’re not a fan of an artist you steal from. It is stealing from them. You might as well go into their house, and fucking walk out with their couch.”

Debris: “That’s unfortunately a growing trend, but we’re working to combat it with the next album.”**

I’m not sure what you mean by “working to combat it” Debris, but I’m really hoping that you’re referring to an added-value approach (e.g., including multimedia content on the CD; offering access to online content etc.), rather than one relying on rights-restriction crippleware.

intermaweb.net - Blog Archive - An Open Letter to the Hilltop Hoods

Apparently amotion-activated low-res camera captured a picture of something, and all the crypto-zoologist wannabes are trying to make it into something it isn't.

It’s a low quality, highly compressed picture of something that is the colour and shape of a leaf. It’s probably a hairy orange monster.

What Is It? New Photo Mystery: Braxton Beast at Cryptomundo.com

Women who want to lose weight are being offered a startling new way to burn fat - by being set on fire.

Would-be slimmers are flocking to a spa in Hong Kong that promises to reduce their waistlines by smearing them with Chinese herbs, dousing them with alcohol and then setting light to them, all for £78 a session.

The spa claims that the intense heat of the fire penetrates deep tissue, increasing circulation and helping the body to absorb the herbal concoction which works to detoxify the body and break down fat.

The results, it boasts, are immediate with customers recording losses of up to 15 centimetres of fat after the first session.

Telegraph | News | The new way to burn fat - set yourself on fire

Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis's bully-pulpit.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peel in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis's view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis's earth.

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | 'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion'

Wireless enthusiasts have been repurposing old satellite dishes for a while now, and with good reason... the dish helps focus the radio waves onto a directional antenna feed. These guys will show you how to build a biquad antenna feed that offers ranges of 8 miles or more. And they even mount the dish on their Subaru.

How-To: Build a WiFi biquad dish antenna - Engadget - www.engadget.com

In a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the civil rights group, a 23-year-old Catholic man from Genesee County is asking a federal judge to set aside a drug conviction, saying he was punished for not completing a Pentecostal rehabilitation program.

Joseph Hanas was 19 when he pleaded guilty to a marijuana possession charge in February 2001 in Genesee Circuit Court and was placed in a diversion program for young, non-violent offenders.

Upon the recommendation of a probation officer, Judge Robert Ransom sentenced Hanas to the state-sponsored rehabilitation program - the Inner City Christian Outreach Residential Program, run by a Pentecostal church.

Hanas said the program did not offer drug treatment or counseling, nor did it have any organized program other than reading the Bible and attending Pentecostal services.

ACLU sues over faith-based rehab: Catholic man forced into Pentecostal program

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, has defended the US against allegations that it ran a network of "ghost flights" and secret prisons around the world where terror suspects could be interrogated with little concern for international law.

The BBC News website profiles some of the detainees who say they were victims of the US' secret "extraordinary rendition" policy.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Rendition: Tales of torture

For those who want to eat like a carnivore.

Goodie Bag TV: The Triple Tofu Tower

Sweet Jebus, I wish I'd thought of this...

XBiz - Students Trade Bibles for Porn

A group of atheists at the University of Texas at San Antonio is putting a novel twist on the toys-for-guns programs run by many urban police departments. But instead of toys, they are handing out porn in exchange for bibles.

“We consider the bible to be a very negative force in the history of the world,” student Ryan Walker said. Walker is part of a student group that calls itself the Atheist Agenda.

Club members this week posted fliers promoting what they call the “Smut for Smut” campaign then set up a table in the student union to collect religious materials and pass out adult magazines such as Black Label and Playboy.

I'm going to say he has a chemical disorder, probably Bipolar. The elves sing him a very nice song and he's a total jerk about it, leaving the desperately co-dependent Mrs. Clause to patch things up. He has some sort of eating disorder that causes his weight to fluctuate wildly. He tells Dasher he should be ashamed for presenting Rudolph to the community simply because the child has some sort of nose disorder. He only changes his mind about Rudolph once he figures out a way to exploit him. Plus, this guy is absolutely ITCHING to cancel Christmas. Hey Santa. It's not your call. Christmas is the day Jesus was born. God will let you know if Christmas is cancelled. Until then, get in the damn sleigh.

I-Mockery.com - SHORTS - SIXTEEN SERIOUS QUESTIONS RAISED BY RUDOLPH THE RED NOSED REINDEER!

This time, someone really does have to be fired. The revelation that Defense Department money, not even authorized by Congress for the purpose, has been outsourced to private interests and then used to plant stories in the Iraqi press is much more of a disgrace and a scandal than anyone seems so far to have said.

Secrets and Lies - The DoD's disgraceful plot to plant rosy stories in the Iraqi press. By Christopher Hitchens

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Democracy under threat

In the background, at private meetings on the island of Aruba in the Dutch Antilles and in public declarations by Thomas Shannon, the US secretary of state for Latin American affairs, the opposition had been elaborating a strategy to overthrow Chavez. Its plan was to make people believe that "democracy in Venezuela is in grave peril", as Shannon put it to a Washington subcommittee two weeks ago.

It is indeed in peril, threatened by a tiny ragbag of opposition groups given disproportionate international influence through the support of the US. By their irresponsible electoral abstention, they hoped to undermine the credibility of the parliamentary system.

The US-backed strategy is to use apparently neutral non-governmental organisations to tell the world that the elections are not free and fair, that press freedom is under threat, and that human rights are not respected. These allegations are then exaggerated and amplified in Washington.

The complaints are nonsense. The opposition still owns most of the newspapers and television stations. The judiciary has been comprehensively reformed after the scandals of the previous decade when half the judges were found to be corrupt or incompetent. Elections have been endlessly vetted and human rights have been extended to the great mass of the people.

The US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected another patent owned by Research in Motion sparring partner NTP, effectively rendering invalid all eight patents RIM was judged to have infringed in whole or in part.

The USPTO's ruling was made public last week, though it's merely a preliminary judgement, not the last word on the matter. A final, categorical ruling could be some way off - the wheels of the USPTO grind exceeding slow, it seems. In June, the USPTO issued preliminary rejections of seven of eight patents that underpinned NTP's legal action against RIM, and it has yet to issue a final verdict on any of them.

The latest ruling was made after the USPTO concurred with claims that techniques detailed in the NTP patent had already been used by another company.

US Patent Office rejects remaining NTP vs RIM patent | The Register

True.

Regardless of our squeamishness, we have to note that the claim of a five-year-old girl giving birth is apparently true. Her name was Lina Medina, a Peruvian girl from the Andean village of Ticrapo who made medical history when she gave birth to a boy by caesarean section in May 1939 at the age of five years, seven months and 21 days. Lina's parents initially thought their daughter had a large abdominal tumor, but after they took her to a hospital in the town of Pisco physicians confirmed that her abdominal swelling was due to pregnancy. Lina was eventually transferred to a hospital in Lima, where she delivered a six-pound baby boy by Cesarean section on 14 May 1939 (coincidentally the date on which Mother's Day was celebrated that year). Lina's father was temporarily jailed on suspicion of incest, but he was released for a lack of evidence and authorities were never able to determine who fathered Lina's child.

Lina's incredible story was documented in contemporaneous reports by Edmundo Escomel, one of Peru's preeminent physician-researchers of the period and a laureate of the prestigious French Academy of Sciences. Escomel's first correspondence to the editors of La Presse Medicale1 (which is undated but appeared in the 13 May 1939 issue) noted that Lina first came to the attention of Dr. G�rado Lozada, chief physician of the Hospital of Pisco, when she appeared at that hospital in early April 1939 for evaluation of what was assumed to be a massive abdominal tumor.

Urban Legends Reference Pages: Pregnancy (Youngest Mother)

A clever little resource for all things Cthulhu. It may not be "online the liveliest awfulness," but it's pretty darn close.

Cthulhu Gallery

Foreign lawyers defending Saddam Hussein challenged the legitimacy of the U.S.-backed Iraqi court trying him and demanded more security for their team on Monday, after briefly storming out of the courtroom in protest.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a veteran defender of unpopular high-profile causes, and Najeeb al-Nauimi from Qatar were each allowed to address the bench after the walk-out; they assailed a lack of protection and impugned the legitimacy of a court originally formed under U.S. occupation.

International News Article | Reuters.com

A perfectly preserved fossil of a feathered creature that lived 150 million years ago has provided further evidence to show that modern birds originate from dinosaurs.

The fossil is a complete skeleton of an Archaeopteryx and shows that it had features common to birds and a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods.

Scientists said the feet of the fossilised Archaeopteryx were anatomically almost identical to those of theropod dinosaurs, which pointed to a common ancestry for both groups.

Archaeopteryx had many bird-like features, such as feathered wings and a wishbone, but it also had distinctly reptilian traits, including jaws with teeth, a bony tail and claws on its fingers.

IOL: Fossil strengthens dinosaur ancestry case

Nearly 150 years after he proposed it, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution remains controversial, even though most scientists today accept it as biological fact. A major new museum exhibit in New York examines the scientific evidence for evolution, and attempts to understand Charles Darwin both as a scientific genius, and as a man.

At a press opening for "Darwin," one of the American Museum of Natural History's biggest shows in recent memory, Randal Keynes, Darwin's great-great grandson, stands between two exhibits that would certainly have pleased his famous ancestor.

To his left is a pair of live giant Galapagos tortoises, one of many species first recorded by Charles Darwin as a young naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle during its five-year voyage around the world from England through the southern oceans. To Mr. Keynes' right is a full-scale model of the laboratory and study where Darwin wrote his landmark book, On the Origin of Species.

VOA News - NY Museum Exhibit Examines Evolution

I'm sorry, but ... Duh!

Narnia's lion really is Jesus - Sunday Times - Times Online

AN unpublished letter from the novelist C S Lewis has provided conclusive proof of the Christian message in his Narnia children’s books.

In the letter, sent to a child fan in 1961, Lewis writes: “The whole Narnian story is about Christ.” It has been found by Walter Hooper, literary adviser to the Lewis estate.

It has emerged ahead of this week’s release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The film, starring Tilda Swinton and Jim Broadbent, cost ~75m to make and has been at the centre of a tug of war between Christians and secularists.

Brian Sibley, author of Shadowlands, the book which describes Lewis’s marriage to Joy Gresham, said: “This is the most specific explanation of Narnia I have heard.”

The new film depicts one of the seven novels in Lewis’s series, which tell the story of four children journeying through a wardrobe into Narnia, a world of talking animals that is plunged into endless winter by a witch. The children and animals rally to Aslan, a noble lion.

Facing criticism from thousands of fans, the Grateful Dead appears to have backtracked on recent moves to deter people from trading free copies of concert recordings over the Internet.

After consulting with the legendary jam band, a nonprofit group that distributes the group's music online had restored the audience recordings for downloading and streaming on Thursday.

The organization, called the Internet Archive, also made available the Grateful Dead's "soundboard" recordings, which the band sells on its own site, but only for streaming.

Internet Archive had removed the recordings from its site after the Grateful Dead's business managers complained recently. The move caused an uproar among the band's fans. Thousands signed an online petition condemning the band and pledging to boycott all Grateful Dead merchandise. The crackdown appeared to be a sudden reversal by the band, which reportedly had long approved of fans trading homemade concert tapes.

Grateful Dead backtracks on download ban | CNET News.com

A senior telecommunications executive said yesterday that Internet service providers should be allowed to strike deals to give certain Web sites or services priority in reaching computer users, a controversial system that would significantly change how the Internet operates.

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

Or, Smith said, his company should be allowed to charge a rival voice-over-Internet firm so that its service can operate with the same quality as BellSouth's offering.

Network operators can identify the digital "packets" of content moving through their wires from sites and services and can block some or put others at the head of the stream.

But Smith was quick to say that Internet service providers should not be able to block or discriminate against Web content or services by degrading their performance.

Rather, he said, a pay-for-performance marketplace should be allowed to develop on top of a baseline service level that all content providers would enjoy.

Executive Wants to Charge for Web Speed

A U.S. court tightened the noose on Research In Motion Ltd. yesterday, leaving it all but certain that the company will face a ban on its BlackBerry sales there unless it can satisfy the demands of a small patent-holding firm.

A federal judge ruled that RIM never had a valid or enforceable agreement with NTP Inc. to settle a patent infringement case it lost, despite RIM's public assurances earlier this year that it had signed a $450-million (U.S.) deal that ended a lengthy and damaging legal battle.

The Globe and Mail: Latest loss in patent war renews RIM's fight with NTP

Karla Homolka, whose cruel and savage crimes against two Ontario teenagers turned her into the most reviled female felon in Canada, can now enjoy the same freedoms as any ordinary citizen.

A Quebec judge yesterday struck down the series of 14 restraints imposed on her after her release from prison in July.

Effective immediately, Ms. Homolka is at liberty to go where she likes, when she likes, and with whomever she chooses.

The Globe and Mail: Judge strikes down restraints imposed on Homolka's liberty