Nauðgun réttlætiskenndarinnar

Áfrýjunarnefnd samkeppnismála lækkar sektir olíufélaganna

Áfrýjunarnefnd samkeppnismála hefur lækkað stjórnvaldssektir sem samkeppnisráð gerði olíufélögunum að greiða í vegna ólöglegs samráðs. Lækka sektirnar úr samtals 2,6 milljörðum í um 1,5 milljarða, mest hjá Skeljungi. Fram kom í fréttum Ríkisútvarpsins að meginniðurstöður samkeppnisráðs um ólöglegt samráð, hafi verið staðfestar að mestu.

Bölvaðar gungur eru þetta hjá áfrýjunarnefnd samkeppnismála.

Tengist:
Lýðræði + kapitalismi = lamað réttarkerfi?

Mikilvægustu spurningar eðlisfræðinnar

The most important questions in physics

Alvöru breiðband í Bretlandi

8Mbit Broadband to Become Available in the UK

UK Online is offering 8Mbit broadband service to the UK. The upstream is 400K, and there's a monthly download cap of 500GB...

Svona á þetta að vera.

Lífverukokteilar

Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy

Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.

In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.

And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.

...

But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?

Furðuverurnar í Star Wars munu kannski ekki þykja neitt sérstaklega furðulegar eftir nokkrar kynslóðir.

Ofsóknaræði Bandaríkjamanna viðhaldið

Truckers recruited in war on terror

"Truck driver normally runs the same route every day. He is used to his surroundings," said Dave Huneryager, president of the Tennessee Trucking Association. "Something may jump out at him."

Longtime trucker Ernie Sherrill agrees: "You see a lot of things."

Besides looking out for potential threats, such as a tanker truck parked for an extended period near a bridge or overpass, volunteers are trained to "avoid becoming a target of terrorists."

"The Highway Watch effort seeks to prevent terrorists from using large vehicles or hazardous cargoes as weapons," according to a program statement.

Training for membership takes about an hour, said Stephanie Fouts, Highway Watch program manager. She said each of the "tens of thousands" of members is assigned an identification number to use when making a report to the around-the-clock operation.

Maður gæti skilið þetta ef allir þessir bílstjórar væru á leiðinni til Írak að vinna fyrir Halliburton & co...

Merkileg æxlun maura

Unusual Reproductive Behavior Of Odd Ants Surprises Scientists

"The DNA of some of these ants was just weird – we certainly didn't expect to get the results that we did," Rissing said. "It seems that the queens in these colonies mate with males from two different genetic lineages. And when a queen and male with the same lineage usually mated, it usually produced a reproductive female – another queen. But when a queen and male from different genetic lineages mated, that pairing overwhelmingly produced a sterile worker.

"This kind of reproductive behavior is very different from what we expect to see in ant societies," he continued. "We'd expect to see the same DNA sequence from all ants in a given colony. But that's not what happened here."

It didn't matter that the laboratory experiments mimicked the founding of a new colony, which depends heavily on workers and only needs one queen: when a queen and male of the same lineage mated, they produced eggs that would give rise to many queens. The results also showed that all of the eggs produced became workers when a queen mated with an alternate-lineage male.

Rolling Stone lúffar fyrir Biblíumönnum

Rolling Stone decides to accept Bible ad

After first rejecting the advertisement, Rolling Stone sent Zondervan a contract for a half-page ad in the rock magazine's February 24 issue, said Doug Lockhart, executive vice president of marketing at the nation's largest Bible publisher.

Lisa Dallos, a spokeswoman for Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media LLC, said Tuesday that the company had "addressed the internal miscommunications that led to the previous misstatement of company policy and apologize for any confusion it may have caused."

Tengist:
Rolling Stone neitar að auglýsa biblíuna

Hverfulleiki minninganna

Making Memories Stick

In the movie thriller Memento, the principal character, Leonard, can remember everything that happened before his head injury on the night his wife was attacked, but anyone he meets or anything he has done since that fateful night simply vanishes. He has lost the ability to convert short-term memory into long-term memory. Leonard is driven to find his wife's killer and avenge her death, but trapped permanently in the present, he must resort to tattooing the clues of his investigation all over his body.

That disturbing story was inspired by the real case history of a patient known in the medical literature only as "HM." When HM was nine years old, a head injury in a bicycle accident left him with debilitating epilepsy. To relieve his seizures that could not be controlled in any other way, surgeons removed parts of HM's hippocampus and adjoining brain regions. The operation succeeded in reducing the brain seizures but inadvertently severed the mysterious link between short-term and long-term memory. Information destined for what is known as declarative memory--people, places, events--must pass through the hippocampus before being recorded in the cerebral cortex. Thus, memories from long ago that were already stored in HM's brain remained clear, but all his experiences of the present soon faded into nothing. HM saw his doctor on a monthly basis, but at each visit it was as if the two had never met.

This transition from the present mental experience to an enduring memory has long fascinated neuroscientists. A person's name when you are first introduced is stored in short-term memory and may be gone within a few minutes. But some information, like your best friend's name, is converted into long-term memory and can persist a lifetime. The mechanism by which the brain preserves certain moments and allows others to fade has recently become clearer, but first neuroscientists had to resolve a central paradox.

Cooperators, Free Riders and Reciprocators

Researchers Define Who We Are When We Work Together And Evolutionary Origins Of The 'Wait And See' Approach

"In any given group of people, youl find three kinds of people: Cooperators, Free Riders, and what we call Reciprocators. Cooperators do the most work and Free Riders do as little as possible, but most of us are Reciprocators. We hold back a bit to determine the chances of success before devoting our full energy to a project," said Robert Kurzban, an assistant professor in Penn's Department of Psychology. "We found that these traits remained fairly stable among people, and you could reliably predict how a group might perform if you know the percentage of each type of person in that group."

Íran vs. Bandaríkin

US 'terminates' Iranian website

Iran has accused the US government of ordering an American internet service provider to stop hosting the website of an official Iranian news agency.

...

Iran was last week cited as a "outpost of tyranny" by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's choice for new US secretary of state, and it was and labelled the world's chief potential trouble-spot by Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Óafturkræfanlegar veðurfarsbreytingar

Irreversable climate change within ten years, says report.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure – for the first time in such a high-level document – on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests – with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as “runaway” global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

The report says this point will be two degrees centigrade above the average world temperature prevailing in 1750 before the industrial revolution, when human activities – mainly the production of waste gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), which retain the sun’s heat in the atmosphere – first started to affect the climate. But it points out that global average temperature has already risen by 0.8 degrees since then, with more rises already in the pipeline – so the world has little more than a single degree of temperature latitude before the crucial point is reached.

More ominously still, it assesses the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere after which the two-degree rise will become inevitable, and says it will be 400 parts per million by volume (ppm) of CO2.

The current level is 379ppm, and rising by more than 2ppm annually – so it is likely that the vital 400ppm threshold will be crossed in just 10 years’ time, or even less (although the two-degree temperature rise might take longer to come into effect).

http://www.climatehotmap.org

Hinir viljugu

Ísland ekki á nýja listanum

Eins og komið hefur fram, hefur Bandaríkjastjórn sett saman nýjan lista yfir þau ríki, sem styðja hernaðaraðgerðirnar í Írak, og er á honum aðeins getið þeirra, sem eru með herlið í landinu.

Coalition Members (www.whitehouse.gov)

...

Forty-eight countries are publicly committed to the Coalition, including:

...

Ethiopia
Georgia
Honduras
Hungary
Iceland
Italy
Japan
Kuwait
Latvia

...

Coalition of the willing (www.wikipedia.org)

Handrukkarar vs. Galloway

Ný meðferðarúrræði fyrir handrukkara

Á að banna auglýsingar á drasli?

EU Considers Banning Junk Food Ads

Children are a hugely attractive target market for advertisers, no matter how many restrictions are imposed on what they can and cannot market. According to Nielsen Media Research in the UK, which examined monthly estimates from TV stations, the estimated total amount of money spent by the top 10 food advertisers in 2003 was €31.8 million ($41.4 million), almost a 40 percent increase on the previous year.

Hvernig væri bara að banna auglýsingar innan 16? Ég hugsa að það hefði afar góð áhrif á geðheilsu bæði barna og foreldra.

eXeem

go get it

The Great Dying

Scientists link volcanic warming to Great Dying

The greatest catastrophe in Earth's history, a massive worldwide extinction of species that engulfed the planet 250 million years ago, may not, as many scientists suspect, have occurred with a bang but with a prolonged and deadly global gasp.

Scientists from four continents reported yesterday that the event known as the Great Dying, which wiped out more than three-quarters of all species on Earth, may have been the result of volcano-induced global warming -- not the impact of a comet or asteroid, as some scientists suspect.

"Animals and plants both on land and in the sea were dying at the same time and apparently from the same causes: too much heat and too little oxygen," says University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward, who headed one of two studies on the event published in the journal Science.

Rolling Stone neitar að auglýsa biblíuna

Rolling Stone refuses to run ad for Bible

Rolling Stone magazine declined to run an advertisement for a new translation of the Bible aimed at young people, the nation's largest Bible publisher said Wednesday.

... skiljanlega, enda óhugguleg bók.

Síðari Konungabók, 2. kafli.

23Þaðan hélt hann til Betel. Og er hann gekk upp veginn, gengu smásveinar út úr borginni, hæddu hann og kölluðu til hans: "Kom hingað, skalli! Kom hingað, skalli!" 24Sneri hann sér þá við, og er hann sá þá, formælti hann þeim í nafni Drottins. Þá komu tvær birnur út úr skóginum og rifu í sundur fjörutíu og tvo af drengjunum. 25Þaðan fór hann til Karmelfjalls og sneri þaðan aftur til Samaríu.

Ofboðslega hlýtur það að vera indæl tilfinning að dýrka Guð, þennan kolbrjálaða barnamorðingja.

Aumingja trúarnöttararnir að eiga svona bágt

Christians issue gay warning on SpongeBob video

The wacky square yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 U.S. schools in March. The makers -- the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation -- say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.

But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association.

Hvernig var það, var þessi ekki líka samkynhneigður?

Voðalega eitthvað viðkvæmir þessi Grikkir

Bók um Jesúm Krist bönnuð í Grikklandi

Dómstóll í Aþenu hefur bannað teiknimyndabókina „Líf Jesú“ þar sem Jesú Kristur er sýndur sem misheppnaður fíkniefnaneytandi og kraftaverkin gerast af heppni. Höfundur bókarinnar, Austurríkismaðurinn Gerhard Haderer, mætti ekki fyrir dóm þegar dómur var kveðinn upp og fékk sex mánaða fangelsisdóm sem byggði á að bókin móðgaði trúnna. Hefði Haderer mætt í réttinn stóð honum til boða að losna undan refsingu með því að greiða sekt.

Repúplikanar í réttu ljósi?

The Imminent Demise of the Republican Party

Summary:

The Republican Party has chosen to deny social, ecological, cultural, religious, and economic realities which are unavoidably complicated, complex, diverse, ironic, and paradoxical. Instead they have chosen to make their own simplistic, ideological, and chauvinistic fantasy world that has little affinity for law, science, a free and independent press, fairness, true security, ecological sustainability, and the accountability that is requisite for genuine democracy.

Nokkur orð frá ráðgjafa Bush

Without a Doubt (nytimes.com, nælið ykkur í login/pass á bugmenot.com)

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

"We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to clean up the mess" væri kannski nærra lagi.

Kristnir öfgamenn greina ástandið í Írak

IRAQ'S "INSURGENTS": WHAT THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU

IRAQ'S "INSURGENTS": WHAT THE MEDIA WON'T TELL YOU--Jan Markell

Olive Tree Ministries, Inc. - www.olivetreeviews.org

Semi-Weekly Review of Significant News - January 17, 2005

Just about everybody will tell you that Abu Mus-ab Al Zarqawi is behind the "insurgents" (terrorists) in Iraq. They're wrong. Zarqawi is but a puppet on a string. The real culprit was the Hebrew prophet Daniel's nemesis as well--the "Prince of Persia." You can read about it in Daniel 10.

This demonic spirit-being headquartered in Iraq and Iran millennia ago and he still does as spirit-beings don't die. Instead, they are neutralized in spiritual warfare: "For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12). Terrorists, nations, and cultures, can be shaped by demonic beings such as the "Prince of Persia."



He is a mighty fallen angel--a demon. With God's permission, he was and is allowed power and influence. Reading on in Daniel, only when the prophet called on the archangel Michael was the "Prince of Persia" able to be subdued back then. Daniel fasted for 21 days over the predicament and then came the breakthrough.

That region--Iraq and Iran--have been, and continue to be, the center of seen and unseen warfare from ancient times. In Daniel, God pulls back the curtain and briefly exposes the wars that continue in Heaven and their effect on earth.

Once again this "prince" is an opposing spirit seeking to conflict with the security of the world in the region. In Daniel's day, the "Prince of Persia" wanted to destroy Israel more than anything else. You can expect his influence to remain strong in the region, and particularly with those who wish to eradicate Israel.

Here is the real power behind the "insurgents" in Iraq. As Daniel fasted and prayed for assistance, so are we as believers today to do the same for that region. Spiritual warfare may be as effective as mortars and assault weapons though now those are needed as well. But, "When the enemy comes in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him" (Isaiah 59:19 KJV).

Keep this in mind as the world lunges towards its climactic encounter with Jesus Christ and His return. We can safely assume that the belligerence of the "Prince of Persia" will escalate unless we wage an offensive "spiritual war" against him. We may be as effective as Daniel was in neutralizing the "Prince of Persia" and even save lives in the region over which this "prince" delights in causing mayhem and murder.

Awaiting His return,
Jan Markell

Þetta gæti verið af the ONION.

Eru hnykkingar vísindi?

Chiropractic school faces opposition

Some Florida State University professors have been circulating a parody map showing the campus of the future, with a new Bigfoot Institute, a School of Astrology and a Crop Circle Simulation Laboratory.

It's a not-so-subtle jab in a growing debate over a proposal to build a chiropractic college on this campus -- the first such school at a public university in the nation.

More than 500 professors, including the university's two Nobel laureates, have signed a petition opposing the school and a handful have even threatened to resign rather than teach alongside what they consider a "pseudoscience."

...

"Chiropractic falls under the same umbrella as any number of therapies including homeopathy, naturopathy, meditation, prayer," said Dr. Bill Kinsinger, an Oklahoma anesthesiologist and longtime critic of chiropractors who is working with Florida doctors to block the new school. "There's no more evidence for chiropractic than there is for any of these other therapies."

The Florida Chiropractic Association says it's unfair for opponents to try to deny them the opportunity to create the school.

"On the one hand, they say there is no science behind what we do," said John Van Tassel, a Tallahassee chiropractor who tends to Florida State's football players. "At the same time, they're trying to prevent the very research (at a university) they say is needed."

Er skammsýnin að fara með okkur?

America’s Finite Future?

Summary:

Near the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever,” John Travolta’s Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, “Fuck the future!” To which his boss replies: “No, Tony, you can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain’t prepared for it!”

Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros — collectively dismissing the future. And nowhere is this mindset more prevalent than at the Bush White House, which is unwavering in its determination to ignore the future.

Þeim alkristnustu er náttúrulega skítsama um framtíðina og ástand Jarðar, Jesús er nefnilega alveg að fara að koma til þess að taka góða fólkið upp til himna. Samkvæmt Hinu Heilaga Orði er Jörðin nefnilega bara 'temporary'.

Index of Articles Relating to the Rapture Doctrine

Spjallþræðirnir á Rapture Ready (samansafn kolklikkaðra skoðana).

Guðni Ágústsson sýnir hvað í honum býr

Guðni: Íraksmálið hefur verið margrætt

„Þarna voru auðvitað bandamenn að fara inn til þess að taka þennan Saddam Hussein, sem hafði drepið milljón manns og ógnaði heimsfriði. Það er auðvitað skýrt að þessi 30 þjóða yfirlýsing sneri eingöngu að því að fara inn og taka þennan mann úr umferð og hefja svo uppbyggingu í Írak og lýðræðislega endurskipulagningu. Nú eru kosningar þar framundan og þar er því hafinn nýr tími og ég held að við eigum ekkert að eyða kröftum okkar í þessar deilur. Maðurinn var ógnvænlegur," segir Guðni.

Annaðhvort er Guðni illa upprættur lygari eða hann er trúgjarn og heimskur, ég vona fyrir hans hönd að það sé það síðara sem á við?

Kristilegt hjálparstarf, ehh, trúboð...?

Villagers furious with Christian Missionaries

Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village in India's southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion.

Trúboð pakkað inn í hjálparstarf, úlfur í sauðagæru.

Vöðvastæltir örþjarkar

'Living' robots powered by muscle

Montemano's team used rat heart cells to create a tiny device that moves on its own when the cells contract. A second device looks like a minute pair of frog legs.

"The bones that we're using are either a plastic or they're silicon based," he said. "So we make these really fine structures that mechanically have hinges that allow them to move and bend.

"And then by nano-scale manipulation of the surface chemistry, the muscle cells get the cues to say, 'Oh! I want to attach at this point and not to attach at another point'. And so the cells assemble, then they undergo a change, so that they actually form a muscle.

"Now you have a device that has a skeleton and muscles on it to allow it to move."

Under a microscope, you can see the tiny, two-footed "bio-bots" crawl around.

Fornminjahvað?

Ancient Babylon's bricks crushed by tanks

The British Museum said U.S. and Polish forces in Iraq have crushed part of ancient Babylon's 2,600-year-old brick paved streets with their tanks and used soil containing archeological artifacts to fill sandbags. The museum is concerned U.S.-led troops, including U.S. marines and the Polish force who have occupied the ancient Mesopotamian capital, have inflicted widespread damage to the ancient centre of civilization, said a report released yesterday.

"This is tantamount to establishing a military camp around the Great Pyramid in Egypt or around Stonehenge in Britain," wrote the report's author, John Curtis, curator of the museum's Near East department.

Hvaða máli skipta miðausturlenskar fornminjar þegar hagsmunir Bandaríkjanna eru í húfi?

Pólverjar svara ásökununum:
Polish military deny damaging Babylon

Nákvæm útlisting á skaðanum:
KBR gives Babylon a makeover

Flott gallerý

[Praising Prairie Dogs]


[Blind Faith]


[Execution Of A Saved Man]

[The last word]

Light and Darkness

Vantrúaður tapar fyrir Bush

California Atheist Loses Inaugural Prayer Challenge

An atheist from California who tried to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance lost a bid on Friday to stop the recital of prayers at President Bush's inauguration.

Bakteríur í kafbátaleik

Antibiotic Resistant Bacterium Uses Sonar-like Strategy To 'See' Enemies Or Prey

For the first time, scientists have found that bacteria can use a Sonar-like system to spot other cells (either normal body cells or other bacteria) and target them for destruction. Reported in the December 24 issue of Science, this finding explains how some bacteria know when to produce a toxin that makes infection more severe. It may lead to the design of new toxin inhibitors.

...

In the Science study, Gilmore and his team found that this toxin is made whenever there is another cell type in the environment near the bacterium, such as a human blood cell. They discovered how these bacteria know when other cells are present, and respond accordingly.

In the laboratory, the team found that Enterococcus releases two substances into the environment. One substance sticks to foreign cells. The second substance reports back and tells the Enterococcus to make the toxin. If no cells are in the area, the first substance sticks to the second, preventing it from reporting back to the Enterococcus, and as a result, no toxin is made. According to Gilmore, "These bacteria are actively probing their environment for enemies or food. Based on whether or not they 'see' other cells, they make the toxin appropriately."

Hringekjur himingeimsins

Observation Of Material Circling A Supermassive Black Hole

Astronomers from the University of Oxford and around the world have observed clumps of X-ray-emitting gas whipping around a black hole at 33,000 kilometres per second, one-tenth the speed of light.

The observation marks the first time scientists have been able to trace individual blobs of gas on a complete journey around a massive black hole, and provides crucial measurements that have long been missing from black hole studies: both an orbital period and an orbital speed. These have allowed the astronomers to calculate a lower limit to the black hole mass of 300,000 times that of our Sun.

Límmiðinn fáránlegi dæmdur úr leik

Evolution ruling gets cheers from scientists

Since 2002, Dr. Kenneth Miller has been upset that biology textbooks he has written are slapped with a warning sticker by the time they appear in suburban Atlanta schools. Evolution, the stickers say, is "a theory, not a fact."

"What it tells students is that we're certain of everything else in this book except evolution," said Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, who with Joseph S. Levine has authored three texts for high schoolers.

On Thursday, Miller -- along with fellow teachers and scientists -- cheered a federal judge's ruling that ordered the Cobb County school board to immediately remove the stickers and never again hand them out in any form.

Tengist augljóslega:
Límmiðinn fáránlegi

Ali G hristir upp í bandaríkjamönnum

"Ali G" Causes Near Riot At U.S. Rodeo

According to a report in the Roanoke (Virginia) Times, a man who was introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan – in reality a Cohen character named Borat – appeared at the rodeo over the weekend after organisers agreed to have him sing the national anthem.

After telling the crowd he supported America’s war on terrorism, he said, “I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards … And may George W Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq.” He then sang a garbled version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Hehehehehehe

Töffaraspendýr í den

When Dinosaurs Ruled, a Mammal Ate (a Little) One

Two newly discovered fossils show that this lowly image of early mammals, long the reigning view of science, did not do them justice. A few of these animals were as large as a dog and spunky enough to devour dinosaurs, at least juvenile dinosaurs.

Eru virkilega engin gjöreyðingarvopn í Írak?

US gives up search for Iraq WMD

The Americans finally admit defeat in the search for weapons of mass destruction, and the only evidence is the Saddam ‘still had the desire’ to produce WMDs. The Iraq Survey Group, which was responsible for the search, will remain but will now focus on work to counter insurgency

Alltaf gaman að ráðast inn í land á röngum forsendum.

Ísland á Slashdot.org

Hydrogen Buses In Iceland

"As part of the shift away from the fossil fuels, Iceland began its switch to hydrogen-powered buses, which are now used on the streets of the capital, Reykjavik. About 70 percent of Iceland's energy is already met by green power. Iceland plans to become the first oil-free country by 2050."

Frumur og morskóði

A Morse code for human cells

Morse code is a simple, effective and clear method of communication and now scientists believe that cells in our body may also be using patterns of signals to switch genes on and off. The discovery may have major implications for the pharmaceutical industry as the signalling molecules that are targeted by drugs may have more than one purpose. The number of ‘dots and dashes’ being used by each signal could have different purposes, all of which could be modified by a drug.

Einstök þróun mannsheilans

Evidence That Human Brain Evolution Was A Special Event

Genes that control the size and complexity of the brain have undergone much more rapid evolution in humans than in non-human primates or other mammals, according to a new study by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers.

The accelerated evolution of these genes in the human lineage was apparently driven by strong selection. In the ancestors of humans, having bigger and more complex brains appears to have carried a particularly large advantage, much more so than for other mammals. These traits allowed individuals with "better brains" to leave behind more descendants. As a result, genetic mutations that produced bigger and more complex brains spread in the population very quickly. This led ultimately to a dramatic "speeding up" of evolution in genes controlling brain size and complexity.

Rætur stjarnfræðinnar

(Einhver allt önnur stytta)

Statue reveals ancient astronomy

What makes it important to scientists is not the titan's muscular form but the globe he supports: carved constellations adorn its surface in exactly the locations Hipparchus would have seen in his day, suggesting that the sculptor based the globe on the ancient astronomer's star catalog, which no modern eyes have seen.

...

Hipparchus, who flourished around 140-125 BC, is believed to have been one of the world's first path-breaking astronomers. Among other innovations, he put together the first comprehensive list of the hundreds of stars he observed, known as a star catalog.

Þvílík tímasetning

Preacher dies with heaven on his lips

A Presbyterian minister collapsed and died at the pulpit after saying "And when I go to heaven...," his colleague said.

Guð hlýtur að hafa misskilið hann eitthvað.

The United States of Abuse II

They Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial

At this moment, the CIA admits that it has imprisoned hundreds of people in foreign prisons. Amnesty International puts that number at well over 1000. At least one American citizen, Ahmed Abu Ali, has been thus imprisoned in Saudi Arabia at the demand of federal prosecutors. Charged with no crime, implicated in no wrongdoing.

But back to the Priest story. The administration apparently has some trouble trusting its lawless incarceration to its friends. Even the most inhumane of governments don’t want to be America’s prison wardens. Recall that Syria sent back to Canada the Canadian citizen the CIA had kidnapped at New York’s Kennedy Airport and sent to Syria for “questioning” (go ahead and read “torture” into that term). The Syrian guards got tired of trying to beat information out of man who had no ties to anything.

Tengist:
The Land of the Free Non-Muslims
Engar pyntingar í Guantanamo?

Brothætt fólk kærir BBC fyrir guðlast

Prayer Group to Sue BBC for Blasphemy

Critics were angered by the show, shown uncut on BBC2 last night, because of foul language and scenes showing Jesus in a nappy admitting he is “a bit gay”.

As the row escalated, senior BBC executives were given security guards after phone threats were made by irate campaigners.

Their private phone numbers were posted on a website and the matter has been reported to the police.

Þetta er náttúrulega bilun.

Tengist:
Hlakka til að sjá hvernig þetta fer

WAS / IS YESHUA OF NAZARETH (JESUS CHRIST) GAY?

Davíð rembist eins og rjúpa við staur

Fráleitt að halda því fram að Íslendingar séu þátttakendur í stríði

Davíð Oddsson, utanríkisráðherra, sagði á stjórnmálafundi Sjálfstæðisflokksins í Valhöll í dag, að það sé fráleitt að halda því fram að Íslendingar séu þátttakendur í stríði í Írak. Hins vegar hefðu Íslendingar tekið undir þau pólitísku sjónarmið, að fylgja skyldi ályktunum öryggisráð Sameinuðu þjóðanna eftir með valdi ef markmið þeirra næðist ekki fram með öðrum hætti.

Það þegar þjóðir fylgja markmiðum sínum á alþjóðlegum vettvangi eftir með valdi kallast nú venjulega að fara í stríð.

Davíð sagði að auðvitað væri auðveldasta leiðin fyrir Íslendinga að búa við sitt, leggja ekki nafn sitt við óþægilega hluti og axla ekki ábyrgð.

Hann meinar væntanlega "leggja ekki nafn sitt við ólöglega, ógeðslega, óréttláta og ósiðlega hluti".

Davíð sagði að það væri allt tóm vitleysa að Íslendingar séu þátttakendur í stríði og íslensk stjórnvöld hafi hvorki vald né vilja til að senda menn til ófriðarsvæða gegn þeirra vilja.

Hver er að tala um að senda menn til ófriðarsvæða gegn þeirra vilja?

En menn eiga þá að deila um rétta hluti og ekki halda því fram að Íslendingar hafi ákveðið að taka þátt í stríðinu

Við höldum því fram að þú hafir ákveðið fyrir okkar hönd að STYÐJA innrásina í Írak. Talandi um að deila um rétta hluti.

Hann sagði að ekki væri nokkur vinnandi vegur að láta ástandið í Írak vera óbreytt og öll þau ríki, sem lögðust gegn hernaðaraðgerðunum á sínum tíma, væru nú á skjön við umræðuna hér á landi því ekkert ríki vildi að hætt yrði við uppbygginguna í Írak.

Hér ruglar Davíð saman hugtökunum "innrás" og "uppbygging".

Davíð sagði einnig að mun friðvænlegra væri nú í heiminum, einkum eftir fráfall Yassers Arafats, forseta Palestínumanna, sem alltaf hefði verið þröskuldur í vegi friðar.

Ógeðslega er djöfullinn Sharon heppinn að trúa á sama gvuð og þú Davíð. Mér sýnist handbendið þitt a.m.k. vera besti vinur hans.

Frelsarinn skrifar á vantru.net

“Allt á jörðinni mun deyja”

Svo hljóðar skylduboðskapur Guðs í höndum séra Sigurðar Pálssonar í bókinni Regnboginn fyrir 7 ára grunnskólabörn. Í bókinni er syndaflóðið kennt sem söguleg staðreynd þar sem ekkert er dregið undan um Nóa og fjöldamorð Guðs ríkiskirkjunnar. Kirkjunnar menn hamra reyndar á því að í skólum landsins sé kennd kristinfræði, en skólabækurnar bera þess skýrt merki að vera trúboð. Í raun er engin munur á frásögn séra Sigurðar til barna landsins og hefðbundin sunnudagaskólakennsla kirkjunnar. Við þekkjum flest frá blautu barnsbeini að Nóaflóðið er ein af mikilvægustu frásögn biblíunnar að mati kirkjunnar. Hvað segja sömu menn við fullorðið fólk um raunveruleg flóð þegar tugþúsundir láta lífið og samviskan kallar?

Afar góð grein.

Sniglar og verkjalyf

New Painkiller Was Born In Utah: Undergrad Discovered Natural Form In Venomous Snails

The natural form of Prialt – a new drug for severe pain approved this week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – was discovered at the University of Utah in 1979 by an incoming freshman studying toxins produced by cone snails.

...

...researchers have found that a gene used by the snail to make venom is more than a half billion years old.

Hvernig er það, ætli sniglarnir eigi þá ekki réttinn á einkaleyfinu?

Eitt af uppáhalds bloggunum mínum

Preposterous Universe

Ideas on culture, science, politics. Sean Carroll is a physicist at the University of Chicago.

Afar málefnalegt.

Gallup: 84% landsmanna vilja af lista staðfastra

Ég leyfi mér að afrita fréttina í heild sinni hingað, sorry RÚV.

Yfirgnæfandi andstaða er við það meðal landsmanna að Íslendingar séu á lista þeirra þjóða,sem styðja hernaðaraðgerðirnar í Írak. 84% landsmanna er á móti því að Íslendingar séu á lista staðfastra þjóða. Þetta kemur fram í könnun sem Gallup gerði í lok nýliðins árs.

Spurt var; Á Ísland að vera á lista með þeim þjóðum, sem styðja hernaðaraðgerðir Bandaríkjamanna og Breta í Írak, eða á Ísland ekki að vera á listanum? 14% þeirra sem svöruðu, vilja að Ísland sé á listanum, 2% telja það ekki skipta máli en 84% telja að Íslendingar eigi ekki að vera þar. Skýr munur er á afstöðu fólks með tilliti til kynferðis og til stjórnmálaskoðana. Þrír af hverjum fjórum körlum, 74%, er á móti stuðningi Íslendinga við innrásina en 93% kvenna eru þeirrar skoðunar. 23% karla styðja en einungis 5% kvenna.

Skýr meirihluti stuðningsmanna allra stjórnmálaflokka er móti því að Íslendingar séu á listanum. 58% stuðningsmanna Sjálfstæðisflokks eru á móti en 40% styðja að við séum á listanum. Andstaðan er hins vegar mjög afgerandi meðal kjósenda Framsóknarflokks; 16% þeirra styðja veruna á lista staðfastra þjóða en tæp 80% eru á móti. Meðal Vinstri grænna mældist ekki stuðningur við það að Íslendingar séu á lista hinna staðföstu þjóða en 2% Samfylkingarmanna styðja það. 99% og 96% kjósenda þessara stjórnarandstöðuflokka eru hins vegar á móti því.

Könnunin var gerð í desember. Úrtakið var rúmlega 1.200 manns, svarhlutfall 62%.

Tengist all svakalega:
Jæja, loksins gerir maður eitthvað af viti

Smá fyrir okkur hugbúnaðarfólkið

The one-minute risk assessment tool

How do software project managers walk the fine line between calculated risks that can lead to innovative business solutions and outright gambling that can lead to career-ending projects? Existing software project risk frameworks do not provide the kind of simple, pragmatic tools needed to rapidly assess and manage risk. To date, the development of such tools has been hampered by the fact that we know precious little about the relative importance of the key drivers of software project risk. To remedy this, we examined 720 software project assessments by senior IT managers in 60 large companies. Some of our findings were a surprise because the top risk driver we uncovered is one that is often neglected by management, while the least influential risk driver is one that managers often complain about the most. This article examines the relative importance of six key drivers of software project risk and introduces a one-minute risk assessment tool that can be applied to improve software practice.

Hverju trúir þú...

...án þess að geta sannað það?

"WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?"

(119 contributors; 60,000 words:) Howard Gardner • Nicholas Humphrey • Marc D. Hauser • Daniel Gilbert • George Dyson • Daniel C. Dennett • William Calvin • Lawrence Krauss • Neil Gershenfeld • Joseph LeDoux • Stephen Kosslyn • Philip W. Anderson • Kevin Kelly • Paul Davies • Haim Harari • Janna Levin • Steven Pinker • Alison Gopnik • Martin E. P. Seligman • John McWhorter • Freeman Dyson • Robert Sapolsky • Leonard Susskind • Keith Devlin • Susan Blackmore • Clifford Pickover • Piet Hut • Gino Segre • Roger Schank • Alan Kay • Bruce Sterling • Judith Rich Harris • Arnold Trehub • Gregory Benford • Lynn Margulis • Sam Harris • Elizabeth Spelke • Kai Krause • Todd Feinberg • Nassim Nicholas Taleb • Irene Pepperberg • Jesse Bering • Scott Atran • Karl Sabbagh • Gary Marcus • Stewart Kauffman • Ray Kurzweil • John Barrow • Jaron Lanier • Alex Pentland • Richard Dawkins • Jean Paul Schmetz • Thomas Metzinger • John R. Skoyles • John Horgan • David Gelernter • Jordan Pollack • Lee Smolin • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi • Jeffrey Epstein • Michael Shermer • Leon Lederman • Tom Standage • Simon Baron-Cohen • Stephen Petranek • J. Craig Venter • Maria Spiropulu • David Buss • Esther Dyson • David Myers • Denis Dutton • Donald Hoffman • Kenneth Ford • Margaret Wertheim • Alun Anderson • Philip Zimbardo • Paul Bloom • Robert Provine • W. Daniel Hillis • Martin Nowak • Seth Lloyd • Donald I. Williamson • Jonathan Haidt • Rebecca Goldstein • Ned Block • Christine Finn • Rupert Sheldrake • Rudy Rucker • Douglas Rushkoff • Verena Huber-Dyson • Chris W. Anderson • Charles Simonyi • Carolyn Porco • Martin Rees • Pamela McCorduck • James O'Donnell • John McCarthy • Carlo Rovelli • Leo Chalupa • Howard Rheingold • Steve Giddings • Tor Nørretranders • Stanislas Deheane • Benoit Mandelbrot • Ellen Winner • Paul Steinhardt • Oliver Morton • Alexander Vilenkin • Terrence Sejnowski • Brian Goodwin • Stephen H. Schneider • Randolph Nesse • Timothy Taylor • Marti Hearst • Anton Zeilinger • Daniel Goleman • Ian Wilmut • Robert Trivers • Jared Diamond

Ágætis umræður um þetta á /.

Hverjir mata krókinn hvað mest í Írak?

Top Ten War Profiteers of 2004

You know it's bad when Halliburton is #7

In mid-July, U.S. officials admitted that fewer than 140 of the 2,300 reconstruction projects funded by the U.S. were underway. Although AID says “dirt has been turned” on 1,167 projects including schools and hospitals, with at least 70 new ones staring each week, it’s unlikely that the big picture has changed much. The kidnapping and execution of contract personnel and the ongoing sabotage of key projects—power plants, electricity lines and oil pipelines—has slowed work in many areas of the country to a crawl, jacking up the cost of security, insurance and other ancillary expenditures, which in most cases amount to half of the contractors’ budgets.

By August, Ambassador John Negroponte had to announce that more than $3 billion of $18 billion in U.S. aid earmarked by Congress for engineering and reconstruction work would be used for security and counterinsurgency operations.

Þessu tengt:
CorpWatch: War Profiters Site

Safnarinn í okkur fundinn?

Brain Region Identified That Controls Collecting Behavior

Hoarding behavior is common among animals; around 70 species hoard and mostly they hoard food, which makes sense from a survival standpoint. Studies of hoarding behavior in rodents have shown that collecting is driven by certain primitive structures deep in the brain and most mammals, including humans, share these subcortical regions.

"But human collecting goes beyond items that are solely useful for survival," said Steven Anderson, Ph.D., UI associate professor of neurology and lead author of the study. "People often collect art or stamps or pretty much anything. Clearly there is some higher structure in humans that modulates the collecting drive and that's what we think we have tapped into."

Tengist:
Söfnunarárátta í sinni tærustu mynd