Quantum computer solves problem, without running

This makes my brain hurt.

By combining quantum computation and quantum interrogation, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found an exotic way of determining an answer to an algorithm – without ever running the algorithm.

Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of "counterfactual computation," inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run. The researchers report their work in the Feb. 23 issue of Nature.

Quantum computers have the potential for solving certain types of problems much faster than classical computers. Speed and efficiency are gained because quantum bits can be placed in superpositions of one and zero, as opposed to classical bits, which are either one or zero. Moreover, the logic behind the coherent nature of quantum information processing often deviates from intuitive reasoning, leading to some surprising effects.

"It seems absolutely bizarre that counterfactual computation – using information that is counter to what must have actually happened – could find an answer without running the entire quantum computer," said Kwiat, a John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois. "But the nature of quantum interrogation makes this amazing feat possible."

Sometimes called interaction-free measurement, quantum interrogation is a technique that makes use of wave-particle duality (in this case, of photons) to search a region of space without actually entering that region of space.

Utilizing two coupled optical interferometers, nested within a third, Kwiat's team succeeded in counterfactually searching a four-element database using Grover's quantum search algorithm. "By placing our photon in a quantum superposition of running and not running the search algorithm, we obtained information about the answer even when the photon did not run the search algorithm," said graduate student Onur Hosten, lead author of the Nature paper. "We also showed theoretically how to obtain the answer without ever running the algorithm, by using a 'chained Zeno' effect."

Through clever use of beam splitters and both constructive and destructive interference, the researchers can put each photon in a superposition of taking two paths. Although a photon can occupy multiple places simultaneously, it can only make an actual appearance at one location. Its presence defines its path, and that can, in a very strange way, negate the need for the search algorithm to run.

"In a sense, it is the possibility that the algorithm could run which prevents the algorithm from running," Kwiat said. "That is at the heart of quantum interrogation schemes, and to my mind, quantum mechanics doesn't get any more mysterious than this."

Another step in Skynet's inevitable journey to self-awareness

'Borg' Computer Collective Designs NASA Space Antenna

Like a friendly, non-biological form of the Borg Collective of science fiction fame, 80 personal computers, using artificial intelligence (AI), have combined their silicon brains to quickly design a tiny, advanced space antenna.

If all goes well, three of these computer-designed space antennas will begin their trip into space in March 2006, when an L-1011 aircraft will take off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The airplane will drop a Pegasus XL rocket into the sky high above the Pacific Ocean. The rocket will ignite and carry three small Space Technology (ST5) satellites into orbit.
...
"This is the first time an artificially evolved object will have flown in space," observed Jason Lohn, who led the project to design the antennas at NASA Ames Research Center, located in California's Silicon Valley.
...
To design the ST5 space antenna, the computers started with random antenna designs, and through the evolutionary process, refined them. The computer system took about 10 hours to complete the initial antenna design process.

"The AI software examined millions of potential antenna designs before settling on a final one," said Lohn. The software did this much faster than any human being could do so under the same circumstances, according to Lohn. "Through a process patterned after Darwin's 'survival of the fittest,' the strongest designs survive and the less capable do not."

"We told the computer program what performance the antenna should have, and the computer simulated evolution, keeping the best antenna designs that approached what we asked for. Eventually, it zeroed in on something that met the desired specifications for the mission," Lohn said.

Technically, diamonds are worthless rocks

This is an old article from 1982 that talks primarily about how the idea of diamonds as "special" was almost completely fabricated by the DeBeers company. I've also read (though this article does not mention) that DeBeers purposley mines its diamonds at a rate far below their ability... just so supply never quite meets demand. The article also doesn't mention how the diamond trade kept the South African Apartheid going. Maybe just calling them "worthless rocks" is being too kind....

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems.

The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland.
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The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever -- "forever" in the sense that they should never be resold.
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In 1951, N. W. Ayer found some resistance to its million-dollar publicity blitz. It noted in its annual strategy review:

The millions of brides and brides-to-be are subjected to at least two important pressures that work against the diamond engagement ring. Among the more prosperous, there is the sophisticated urge to be different as a means of being smart.... the lower-income groups would like to show more for the money than they can find in the diamond they can afford...

To remedy these problems, the advertising agency argued, "It is essential that these pressures be met by the constant publicity to show that only the diamond is everywhere accepted and recognized as the symbol of betrothal."
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In 1976, the Dutch Consumer Association also tried to test the price appreciation of diamonds by buying a perfect diamond of over one carat in Amsterdam, holding it for eight months, and then offering it for sale to the twenty leading dealers in Amsterdam. Nineteen refused to buy it, and the twentieth dealer offered only a fraction of the purchase price.

Selling diamonds can also be an extraordinarily frustrating experience for private individuals. In 1978, for example, a wealthy woman in New York City decided to sell back a diamond ring she had bought from Tiffany two years earlier for $100,000 and use the proceeds toward a necklace of matched pearls that she fancied. She had read about the "diamond boom" in news magazines and hoped that she might make a profit on the diamond. Instead, the sales executive explained, with what she said seemed to be a touch of embarrassment, that Tiffany had "a strict policy against repurchasing diamonds." He assured her, however, that the diamond was extremely valuable, and suggested another Fifth Avenue jewelry store. The woman went from one leading jeweler to another, attempting to sell her diamond. One store offered to swap it for another jewel, and two other jewelers offered to accept the diamond "on consignment" and pay her a percentage of what they sold it for, but none of the half-dozen jewelers she visited offered her cash for her $100,000 diamond. She finally gave up and kept the diamond.

Retail jewelers, especially the prestigious Fifth Avenue stores, prefer not to buy back diamonds from customers, because the offer they would make would most likely be considered ridiculously low. The "keystone," or markup, on a diamond and its setting may range from 100 to 200 percent, depending on the policy of the store; if it bought diamonds back from customers, it would have to buy them back at wholesale prices. Most jewelers would prefer not to make a customer an offer that might be deemed insulting and also might undercut the widely held notion that diamonds go up in value. Moreover, since retailers generally receive their diamonds from wholesalers on consignment, and need not pay for them until they are sold, they would not readily risk their own cash to buy diamonds from customers. Rather than offer customers a fraction of what they paid for diamonds, retail jewelers almost invariably recommend to their clients firms that specialize in buying diamonds "retail."

The Many Unusual Looking Buildings On Earth

This site has photos and brief descriptions of a handful of unusually designed buildings, including:


Frank Gehry's "Dancing House" in Prague


This unknown upside down house


The Bank of Asia's "Robot Building"

Please press one for more options

The gethuman database lists companies' customer service numbers and what you need to do or say in order to bypass the computer and get to a real live human. No details on whether that human is in the U.S. or India...

More reasons to hate the Bush administration

Industries Get Quiet Protection From Lawsuits

Federal agencies are using arcane regulations and legal opinions to shield automakers and others from challenges by consumers and states.

WASHINGTON — Near sunrise on a summer morning in 2001, Patrick Parker of Childress, Texas, swerved to avoid a deer and rolled his pickup truck.

The roof of the Ford F-250 crumpled, and Parker didn't stand a chance. His neck broke and, at 37, he was paralyzed from the chest down. He sued, and Ford Motor Co. settled for an undisclosed amount.
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Parker's case and hundreds like it are behind a beefed-up roof safety standard proposed in August by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But safety regulators tucked into the proposed rule something vehicle makers have long desired: protection from future roof-crush lawsuits like the one Parker filed.

The surprise move seeking legal protection for automakers is one in a series of recent steps by federal agencies to shield leading industries from state regulation and civil lawsuits on the grounds that they conflict with federal authority.

Some of these efforts are already facing court challenges. However, through arcane regulatory actions and legal opinions, the Bush administration is providing industries with an unprecedented degree of protection at the expense of an individual's right to sue and a state's right to regulate.

In other moves by the administration:

• The highway safety agency, a branch of the Department of Transportation, is backing auto industry efforts to stop California and other states from regulating tailpipe emissions they link to global warming. The agency said last summer that any such rule would be a backdoor attempt by states to encroach on federal authority to set mileage standards, and should be preempted.
  
  
• The Justice Department helped industry groups overturn a pollution-control rule in Southern California that would have required cleaner-running buses, garbage trucks and other fleet vehicles.
  
  
• The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has repeatedly sided with national banks to fend off enforcement of consumer protection laws passed by California, New York and other states. The agency argued that it had sole authority to regulate national banks, preempting state restrictions.
  
  
• The Food and Drug Administration issued a legal opinion last month asserting that FDA-approved labels should give pharmaceutical firms broad immunity from most types of lawsuits. The agency previously had filed briefs seeking dismissal of various cases against drug companies and medical-device manufacturers.

A quiz from the Daily Show

White House press secretary Scott McClennan recently said, "I'm not going to speculate about this ongoing investigation."

Was he referring to:

A) Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of a man
B) The bungled federal response to Hurricane Katrina
C) The Jack Abramoff corruption scandal
or D) The Valerie Plame CIA leak affair
...
or E) The investigation into illegal wiretapping
or F) The Abu Ghraib prison torture cover up
or G) The Guantanamo Bay prison torture cover up
or H) The Tom Delay corruption scandal
...
Z) Oil industry subsidies
greek letter alpha) NASA censorship
greek letter beta) Politicization of PBS
greek letter gamma) Halliburton no-bid contracts
or greek letter delta) The failure to find Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq
?

So many scandals to choose from...

Clearly Bush doesn't think civil liberties are a priority

Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger

A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board has yet to do a single day of work.

For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.

Someday, it might actually meet.

Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.

More than a year later, it exists only on paper.

Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members — one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor — has kept the board from doing a single day of work.

On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.

Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.

"They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously."

Photos of the First Few Microseconds of an Atomic Blast

Holy shit, these are freaky.

Edgerton built a special lens 10 feet long for his camera which was set up in a bunker 7 miles from the source of the blast which was triggered Nevada - the bomb placed atop a steel gantry anchored to the desert floor by guide wires. The exposures are at 1/100,000,000ths of a second.

Yeah, but when will it fit in my cell phone?

Tabletop nuclear fusion device developed

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design.

The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could potentially lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. The new results are described in the Feb. 10 issue of Physical Review Letters.

“Our study shows that ‘crystal fusion’ is a mature technology with considerable commercial potential,” says Yaron Danon, associate professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer. “This new device is simpler and less expensive than the previous version, and it has the potential to produce even more neutrons.”

The device is essentially a tabletop particle accelerator. At its heart are two opposing “pyroelectric” crystals that create a strong electric field when heated or cooled. The device is filled with deuterium gas — a more massive cousin of hydrogen with an extra neutron in its nucleus. The electric field rips electrons from the gas, creating deuterium ions and accelerating them into a deuterium target on one of the crystals. When the particles smash into the target, neutrons are emitted, which is the telltale sign that nuclear fusion has occurred, according to Danon.

All I ever got was "Atari thumb."

Better living through video games?

When he snags downtime from his schoolwork, Ryerson University student Brad Evans gabs with friends, grooves to Kanye West on his MP3 player and races virtual hotrods on his Sony PlayStation. All at the same time.

Before you assume gadgets and video games fry the minds of the future, consider this: Canadian researchers are finding evidence that the high-speed, multitasking of the young and wireless can help protect their brains from aging.

A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks.

A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.
...
Brain-imaging research released this week shows that the physical inability to silence mental noise is key in making the elderly prone to distraction and poor multitaskers.

That study, published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, shows the elderly lose the ability to power up brain regions, such as the frontal lobe, needed to focus on a task, and to turn down activity in inner brain regions that are most active when a person is in idle or default mode.

"You can't turn off the extraneous things . . . the areas involved in thinking of the self -- 'What do I have to do? . . . Gee, I have a really bad headache," said study leader Cheryl Grady, senior scientist and associate director at Toronto's Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest.

In contrast, the brain images of people between ages 20 and 30 displayed a far more dramatic see-saw effect activating and de-activating regions as they shifted out of idle to task. The study found this pattern begins to dull in middle age and actually results in cognitive deficits beyond age 60.

Dr. Grady said the results suggest that the brains of today's youth might grow up differently.

Thank the FSM I'm not a cockroach

This article, from the same person who wrote about the thought-influencing brain parasites found in cat shit, is just about the most terrifying thing I've ever read.

The Wisdom of Parasites

As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it's time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head.

The wasp slips her stinger through the roach's exoskeleton and directly into its brain. She apparently use ssensors along the sides of the stinger to guide it through the brain, a bit like a surgeon snaking his way to an appendix with a laparoscope. She continues to probe the roach's brain until she reaches one particular spot that appears to control the escape reflex. She injects a second venom that influences these neurons in such a way that the escape reflex disappears.

From the outside, the effect is surreal. The wasp does not paralyze the cockroach. In fact, the roach is able to lift up its front legs again and walk. But now it cannot move of its own accord. The wasp takes hold of one of the roach's antennae and leads it--in the words of Israeli scientists who study Ampulex--like a dog on a leash.

The zombie roach crawls where its master leads, which turns out to be the wasp's burrow. The roach creeps obediently into the burrow and sits there quietly, while the wasp plugs up the burrow with pebbles. Now the wasp turns to the roach once more and lays an egg on its underside. The roach does not resist. The egg hatches, and the larva chews a hole in the side of the roach. In it goes.

The larva grows inside the roach, devouring the organs of its host, for about eight days. It is then ready to weave itself a cocoon--which it makes within the roach as well. After four more weeks, the wasp grows to an adult. It breaks out of its cocoon, and out of the roach as well. Seeing a full-grown wasp crawl out of a roach suddenly makes those Alien movies look pretty derivative.
...
And then there's the sting. Ampulex does not want to kill cockroaches. It doesn't even want to paralyze them the way spiders and snakes do, since it is too small to drag a big paralyzed roach into its burrow. So instead it just delicately retools the roach's neural network to take away its motivation. Its venom does more than make roaches zombies. It also alters their metabolism, so that their intake of oxygen drops by a third. The Israeli researchers found that they could also drop oxygen consumption in cockroaches by injecting paralyzing drugs or by removing the neurons that the wasps disable with their sting. But they can manage only a crude imitation; the manipulated cockroaches quickly dehydrated and were dead within six days. The wasp venom somehow puts the roaches into suspended animation while keeping them in good health, even as a wasp larva is devouring it from the inside.

Do frequent flyers catch more colds?

This article first confirms that flying in an airplane increases your chances of catching a cold and then talks about why that is.

Is it true that you’re more likely to catch a cold if you take a flight on a commercial airplane?

The short answer is yes. People who fly catch more colds than those who stay at home.

This question concerns everyone who flies, especially frequent flyers ands those who fly during winter when fellow passengers are more likely to be infected with colds and even influenza.

Martin Hocking and Harold Foster of Canada's University of Victoria have studied the problem of increased colds among airline passengers. In an article for the Journal of Environmental Health Research ("Common cold transmission in commercial aircraft: Industry and passenger implications," 2004) , they reported that 20 percent of passengers who flew on a 2.5 hour flight developed colds within a week.

Depending on three different flight scenarios, Hocking and Foster found that airline passengers in three different scenarios were 5, 23, or 113 times more likely to catch a cold than if they had not flown at all!
...
The most logical reason for infections would seem to be the limited amount of cabin air shared by the passengers. But Hocking, Foster and other scientists have found this is only one factor. The very low humidity in an airplane seems to be much more important.

Commercial jet airplanes fly typically fly at altitudes ranging from 27,000 to 39,000 feet. The air is extremely dry at these high altitudes. Therefore, when fresh air is brought into the plane to supply the passengers ands crew, it is very dry air.

Very dry air dries up the mucous system that captures and expels bacteria and viruses from our noses. This may be a key reason why airplane passengers catch more colds.

Cue Warren Zevon...

This web page is an extensive summary of different kinds of werewolves, as well as interesting "facts" about their biology, psychology, and sociology.

DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS

(In folklore and superstition) a human being that has changed or been changed into a wolf, or is capable of assuming the form of a wolf, while retaining human intelligence.

Lycanthropy:

Lycanthropy from Greek lykoi, "wolf" anthropos, "man" - a delusion that one has become a wolf. The assumption of the form and characteristics of a wolf held to be possible by witchcraft or magic
...
At the Center of Biomedical Research in Guadalajara, Mexico geneticist Dr. Luis Figuera is studying a Mexican family with a rare genetic mutation that causes fur like hair to grow all over their bodies. This werewolf disorder has mysterious resurfaced for the first time since the middle ages. The gene that causes the mutation lay dormant for centuries. It can be passed through either parent in the "X" chromosone. This is known as the "Werewolf Disorder".
...
LYCANTHROPIC DISORDER :

Lycanthropic Disorder - is a mental condition in which the subject (called a Lycanthrope) believes that he or she is a werewolf. The subject does not actually change shape, but is nevertheless capable of being as dangerous as an actual werewolf. Most cases of supposed werewolfry are really the works of Lycanthropic Disorder victims.

MAN TO BEAST:

In real werewolves a physical change to wolf form does occur. The change can be voluntary (at will), or can be forced by certain cycles of the moon and certain sounds (such as howling).

WEREWOLVES & IMMORTALITY:

Werewolves are immune from aging and from most physical diseases due to the constant regeneration of their physical tissue. They can, therefore, be virtually immortal. However, they can be killed by any wound that destroys the heart or the brain, or any form of death that causes brain or heart damage (such as hanging or other oxygen-deprivation methods).

THE MIND OF A WEREWOLF :

Though primarily a true wolf while in wolf form, there is some proof that the werewolf retains enough knowledge to assist his killing; recognition of victims, evation of traps, and human cunning have all been seen on werewolf cases.

BECOMING A WEREWOLF:

There are several ways to become a werewolf. They include being givin the power of shape shifting through sorcery, being cursed by someone who you have wronged in some way (called Lycaeonia curse), being bitten by a werewolf, and being born to a werewolf. In each case, the blood becomes tainted or cursed.
...
ALPHA & BETA WEREWOLVES:

The relationship between Alpha and Beta werewolves is a complex one. Once a subject is bitten by a werewolf, his or her life and death are doomed to the werewolf curse. The victim does, however, have some hope - as long as they themselves do not taste of human blood, the curse is reversible. If the Alpha werewolf is killed - through some action of the Beta - the Beta's curse is broken. It is important to note that whether the Beta werewolf was bitten by the Alpha werewolf himself or by another Beta, it is the Alpha who must be destroyed - the source of the original tainted blood. It is also an interesting note that since Betas and Alphas share common blood, an Alpha cannot physically harm a Beta of his own bloodline by his own hans without inflicting the same injury upon himself. However, if a Beta is harmed or killed by another, it does not affect the Alpha.

SYMPTOMS OF WEREWOLFRY:

When hunting for a werewolf it is important to remember that your biggest clues will come through your suspects personalities. Becoming a werewolf is not transparent, no matter how the victim tries to hide it. The tainted, sub-human blood appearence. Therefore, look for symptoms in your human suspects that include increasing violence, increasing aggression, unprovoked rages, insomnia, restlessness, and other bizarre behavior. Unfortunately, over time these symptoms can be brought under control, so do not rely on them exclusively.

Yet another list of monkeys

This one is from a Mr Monkey and claims to be the original.

Tesla, the original mad scientist

Tesla's 0 Time Reference Generator

Basic schematic of the Tesla 0 reference time generator, or "whirligig" as it was called.

This was constructed by Tesla in the 1920's, and was said to be a strange device, as it when it is turned on, you can hear it lock into the rotation of the earth.

Briefly;
The Earth is a secondary 0 time reference, because it's rotation is inertially related to the solar system, which is inertially related to our galaxy system, on down to the Universe.

The Universe rotates around "THE" 0 time point...

I don't understand any of it (or anything Tesla did) but it sounds really freaky.

U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies

Why the fuck is our government giving billions of dollars TO an industry that includes companies earning $38 Billion in profits???

The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history, worth an estimated $7 billion over five years.

Royalty-Free Oil and Gas New projections, buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, anticipate that the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and natural gas from federal territory over the next five years without paying any royalties to the government.

Based on the administration figures, the government will give up more than $7 billion in payments between now and 2011. The companies are expected to get the largess, known as royalty relief, even though the administration assumes that oil prices will remain above $50 a barrel throughout that period.
...
Moreover, the projected largess could be just the start. Last week, Kerr-McGee Exploration and Development, a major industry player, began a brash but utterly serious court challenge that could, if it succeeds, cost the government another $28 billion in royalties over the next five years.
...
"I don't think there is a single member of Congress who thinks you should get royalty relief at $70 a barrel" for oil, said Representative Richard W. Pombo, Republican of California and chairman of the House Resources Committee.

"It was Congress's intent," Mr. Pombo said in an interview on Friday, "that if oil was at $10 a barrel, there should be royalty relief so companies could have some kind of incentive to invest capital. But at $70 a barrel, don't expect royalty relief."

SO FIX THE FUCKING LAWS ALREADY!

Yet another example of how the entertainment industry is destroying itself

Boing Boing: Only big companies' PCs will play high-def DVDs

PCs with expensive video-cards won't be able to play high-definition DVDs unless they're built by big companies like Dell and Sony. PCs you build or upgrade yourself with "HDCP"-compatible high-end video cards will be locked out of high-def DVD playback by the copy-restriction system on the discs.

HDCP is a system for crippling PCs so that they are incapable of copying some digital files. It is overseen by a licensing authority that controls whose HDCP implementations can play back files that are locked with its restrictions.

The world's supermajority of "high-definition" displays are connected to PCs, and many PC owners have attempted to future-proof their investment in this equipment by buying video-cards that advertise HDCP compatibility.

However, true HDCP compatibility is controlled by an inter-industry consortium of giant CE companies and Hollywood studios, and these companies have ruled that merely buying a HDCP-compatible graphics card is insufficient for gaining access to HDCP-locked video. Only systems designed from the ground up by OEMs (such as themselves) will be able to gain access to these videos.
...
The only good news here is that this will spur unauthorized P2P systems into developing the capability of sharing high-definition video more reliably. After all, you may not be able to play Matrix Impossible 2000 at high rez on your PC if you buy the DVD, but you'll sure be able to do so if you download it instead.

Way to fight piracy, guys.

The Red Crystal

Emblems of the Red Cross

The Red Cross was created to help people in need. Does it really matter whether it's a cross, crescent, star, or crystal? Thanks to religious nuts, I guess it does.

Originally, only the Red Cross (being the flag of Switzerland reversed) was to be used as an emblem of the Geneva Conventions, but most of the Muslim nations (primarily the Ottoman Empire, later Turkey) objected to this, and as a result an additional emblem (the Red Crescent) was to be provided for.
...
For over 50 years, Israel has requested the addition of a Red Star of David, arguing that since Christian and Muslim emblems were recognized the corresponding Jewish emblem should be as well. This emblem is the one currently used by Magen David Adom, but it is still not recognized by the International Commitee of the Red Cross. The ICRC denies that the Red Cross is a Christian emblem.
...
On December 8th, 2005, partly in response to growing pressure to alleviate the inclusion of an Israeli society as a full member of the Red Cross movement, a new emblem (informally called the Red Crystal) was adopted by amendment of the Geneva Conventions. The new emblem was designed to be easily recognizable and, to make it more universally acceptable throughout different cultures, devoid of religious affiliation (contrasting the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which are often affiliated with Christianity and Islam, respectively). No country or National Society will be obliged to change their emblems, none will be obliged to use the new one, but all will be required to respect it in the same manner.

The last of the savages

Stone Age tribe kills fishermen

ONE of the world's last Stone Age tribes has murdered two fishermen whose boat drifted on to a desert island in the Indian Ocean.

The Sentinelese, thought to number between 50 and 200, have rebuffed all contact with the modern world, firing a shower of arrows at anyone who comes within range.

They are believed to be the last pre-Neolithic tribe in the world to remain isolated and appear to have survived the 2004 Asian tsunami.

These guys make oil executives look like Mother Theresa

A Cancer Drug Shows Promise, at a Price That Many Can't Pay

Doctors are excited about the prospect of Avastin, a drug already widely used for colon cancer, as a crucial new treatment for breast and lung cancer, too. But doctors are cringing at the price the maker, Genentech, plans to charge for it: about $100,000 a year.

Ellis Minrath, 87, is declining to take a drug for pancreatic cancer partly because he would have to make a co-payment of about $1,000 a month.

That price, about double the current level as a colon cancer treatment, would raise Avastin to an annual cost typically found only for medicines used to treat rare diseases that affect small numbers of patients. But Avastin, already a billion-dollar drug, has a potential patient pool of hundreds of thousands of people — which is why analysts predict its United States sales could grow nearly sevenfold to $7 billion by 2009.

Doctors, though, warn that some cancer patients are already being priced out of the Avastin market. Even some patients with insurance are thinking hard before agreeing to treatment, doctors say, because out-of-pocket co-payments for the drug could easily run $10,000 to $20,000 a year.

Until now, drug makers have typically defended high prices by noting the cost of developing new medicines. But executives at Genentech and its majority owner, Roche, are now using a separate argument — citing the inherent value of life-sustaining therapies.

If society wants the benefits, they say, it must be ready to spend more for treatments like Avastin and another of the company's cancer drugs, Herceptin, which sells for $40,000 a year.

And I'm not just posting this because I'm single on Valentine's Day

From Werewolves with Love: The History of Valentine's Day

The early Church fathers were well aware of the popularity of a vast number of heathen gods and goddesses, as well as the dates of observation of pagan festivals, so they set about replacing as many of the entities and the holidays as possible with ecclesiastical saints and feast days. Mid-February had an ancient history of being devoted to acts of love of a far more passionate and lusty nature than the Church wished to bless, and the bishops moved as speedily as possible to claim the days of February 14 through 17 as belonging to Saint Valentine, the courageous martyr to the ties that bound couples in Christian love.
...
Actually, there is no proof that the good priest Valentine even existed.

Some scholars trace the period of mid-February as a time for mating back to ancient Egypt. On those same days of the year that contemporary lovers devote to St. Valentine, men and women of the Egyptian lower classes determined their marital partners by the drawing of lots.
...
The annual Lupercali festival of the Romans on February 15 was a perpetuation of the ancient blooding rites of the hunter in which the novice is smeared with the blood of his first kill...
...
The god Lupercus, represented by a wolf, would next inspire and command men to behave as wolves, to act as werewolves during the festival.

Lupus (wolf) itself is not an authentic or original Latin word, but was borrowed from the Sabine dialect. Luperca, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, may have given rise to secret fraternities known as the Luperci, who sacrificed she-goats at the entrances to their “wolves’ dens.” For centuries, the Luperci observed an annual ritual of chasing women through the streets of Roman cities and beating them with leather thongs.
...
One can easily see why the early Church fathers much preferred the union of man and woman to be smiled upon by St. Valentine, rather than the leering wolf god Lupercus. And, of course, they encouraged a knot tied securely by the sacred rite of marriage and blessed by the priest, rather than a fleeting midnight liaison.
...
By the late 1400s, the upper classes of Europe and England would come together in homes to celebrate Valentine’s Day and allow their young men to draw a “valentine” with the name of a member of the opposite sex, beside whom he would be seated at a lavish dinner party. Hostesses took advantage of the holiday theme to express the tradition in colorful decorative schemes.

Gradually, Valentine’s Day came to be synonymous with the exchange of pretty sentiments, written in flourishes on scented paper and decorated with hearts, arrows, doves, and cupids—those little pagan deities maintaining their hold on the ancient holiday. By the early 1800s, young men were taking care to create symbols of their passion on elaborate cards that they could offer to “My Valentine.”
...
Today, of course, we have vast commercial enterprises centered around St. Valentine’s Day, insisting that callow young men and seasoned husbands must buy their sweetheart a box of candy, a dozen roses, a diamond ring or necklace, or at least a five-dollar card. But don’t let the slick advertisers fool you with all this talk of a saint named Valentine who was martyred for love. Remember that it all began with a hyped-up wolfman smeared in blood chasing the object of his desire with a leather thong.

It doesn't look good for "V for Vendetta"

First they change its release date from the 400th Anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day to the cinema dead zone of mid-March, and now I learn that Alan Moore hated the script.

MOORE SLAMS V FOR VENDETTA MOVIE, PULLS LoEG FROM DC COMICS

Alan Moore, co-creator of the 'V For Vendetta' comic, has publicly disassociated himself from the upcoming Warner Brothers movie project based on the comic book and written and produced by the Wachowski Brothers. And as a result, he has cut his remaining ties with DC Comics, including future volumes of the 'League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen.'
...
Alan gave some details about bits of the V For Vendetta shooting script he'd seen. "It was imbecilic; it had plot holes you couldn't have got away with in Whizzer And Chips in the nineteen sixties. Plot holes no one had noticed."

Let's just hope its more "Dazed and Confused" and less "Newton Boys."

Richard Linklater talks FAST FOOD NATION

As was announced a few weeks ago, director Richard Linklater is developing a movie based on Eric Schlossers non-fiction FAST FOOD NATION. Since that announcement there has been a lot of speculation as to how he is going to handle the material. In a recent interview with EMPIRE, Linklater went into a little more detail.

"Eric Schlosser and I, we wrote the script, kind of based on a town in Colorado where all the various sides are represented. It’s sort of the human effects of that industry; I guess that’s how you’d describe it… It’s about the teenagers who work at the fast food places, and immigrant labourers who come across the border, working in the packing plants, and an executive. It’s kind of from different perspectives. It’s the different sides of the fast food industry. Yet another one that’s kind of tricky to put together as a film, but it looks like it’s happening. I’m pretty skeptical of the whole food industry, so it should be interesting."

The unmitigated gall of oil executives

After ridiculously escalating gas prices and record setting profits like Exxon-Mobil's $36 Billion the oil industry has the nerve to expect "incentives"???

Oil Giants Fell Behind on Fees

More than three dozen energy companies fell nearly $500 million behind last year on royalty payments the federal government says they owed for oil and gas extracted from public territory, according to Interior Department documents released Thursday.

While most of that money was later turned over after the government demanded payment, almost $60 million remains in dispute.

The companies, which included major producers like Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips, had claimed lucrative government incentives for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico even though the incentives were not supposed to be available if market prices climbed above certain "threshold prices."

The Interior Department, in a report sent to lawmakers looking into the energy royalty program, identified 41 companies that incorrectly claimed about $493 million in "royalty relief" during 2004, when prices for both oil and gas climbed to records.

The Interior Department said that 38 of the 41 companies quickly paid $435 million in back royalties after it sent out warning letters in December, months after the money should have been paid.

Ray Bradbury's suggestion for public transportation in LA: Monorail!

I read a very similar article from Bradbury several years ago but it's nice to see his suggestion come up again.

L.A.'s future is up in the air

SOMETIME IN THE next five years, traffic all across L.A. will freeze.
...
In recent months there has been talk of yet another subway, one that would run between downtown L.A. and Santa Monica. That would be a disaster.

A single transit line will not answer our problems; we must lay plans for a series of transportation systems that would allow us to move freely, once more, within our city.

The answer to all this is the monorail.
...
Forty years have passed, and more than ever we need an open discussion of our future. If we examine the history of subways, we will find how tremendously expensive and destructive they are.

They are, first of all, meant for cold climates such as Toronto, New York, London, Paris, Moscow and Tokyo. But L.A. is a Mediterranean area; our weather is sublime, and people are accustomed to traveling in the open air and enjoying the sunshine, not in closed cars under the ground.

Subways take forever to build and, because the tunnels have to be excavated, are incredibly expensive. The cost of one subway line would build 10 monorail systems.

Along the way, subway construction destroys businesses by the scores. The history of the subway from East L.A. to the Valley is a history of ruined businesses and upended lives.

The monorail is extraordinary in that it can be built elsewhere and then carried in and installed in mid-street with little confusion and no destruction of businesses. In a matter of a few months, a line could be built from Long Beach all the way along Western Avenue to the mountains with little disturbance to citizens and no threat to local businesses.

Compared to the heavy elevateds of the past, the monorail is virtually soundless. Anyone who has ridden the Disneyland or Seattle monorails knows how quietly they move.

They also have been virtually accident-free. The history of the monorail shows few collisions or fatalities.If we constructed monorails running north and south on Vermont, Western, Crenshaw and Broadway, and similar lines running east and west on Washington, Pico, Wilshire, Santa Monica and Sunset, we would have provided a proper cross section of transportation, allowing people to move anywhere in our city at any time.
...
The freeway is the past, the monorail is our future, above and beyond.

And because I just can't ignore the obvoius Simpsons reference...

Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!

Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology.

Super Vision Sans Bionics

PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia, just won a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to refine its "supervision" technology, which Blum claims could double the quality of a person's eyesight. "Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly," he says.

At the heart of PixelOptics' technology are tiny, electronically-controlled pixels embedded within a traditional eyeglass lens. Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer -- a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision -- and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.

Traditional glasses correct lower-order aberrations like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatisms. PixelOptics' lenses handle higher-order aberrations that are much more difficult to detect and correct.

Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person's eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light.

Software reads the scattered beam and creates a map of the patient's eye, including tiny abnormalities such as bumps, growths and valleys. The pixelated eyeglass lens is then tuned to refract light in a way that corrects for those high-level aberrations.

Blum hopes to have a working prototype within a year that is built to military specifications.
...
Blum agrees that improving upon 20/20 vision isn't an end in itself. But people likely can't conceive of the results they might get with his company's technology. For example, slight changes in lighting and air pressure can trigger pixels to reprogram, powered by a computer built into the spectacle frames.

"Most higher-order abnormalities impact vision only under certain conditions," he says. "We can adjust dynamically to those conditions, which makes a big difference in your ability to see."

Chavez may be crazy, but at least he's not a greedy U.S. oil executive

Politics or Not, Bronx Warmly Receives Venezuelan Heating Oil

Citgo Petroleum Corp., which is controlled by the Venezuelan government, signed a deal with three Bronx housing nonprofits to sell 5 million gallons of heating oil at 45 percent below the market rate, an estimated savings of $4 million. The discounted oil will heat 75 Bronx apartment buildings, housing 8,000 low-income working poor and elderly tenants.
...
Chavez has sold the discounted oil in two U.S. markets, New York and Massachusetts. Citizens Energy Corp., a Boston-based nonprofit cooperative, bought 12 million gallons at a steep discount after U.S. oil companies ignored its written plea for help.
...
Americans face record prices for heating oil this winter, with a gallon selling for $2.41 -- a 38 percent increase from this time last year. Congress declined to provide additional funding for the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and Citizens Energy and other housing advocates expect that families, especially in the Northeast, will exhaust their benefits by Christmas.
...
it did not escape the notice of tenants that a foreign government stepped in after Congress did not.

"The government should have done it," said Shirley Manuel, 52, a tenants' rights activist, wrapped up tightly in her wheelchair. "This is their country, this is their people -- they should be taking care of their own."

fuckthestateoftheunion.com

The author of "Annotated Rant" has now taken on last week's State of the Union.

Sweet baby Jesus, you call that the fucking State of the Union? Please. George Lucas writes better monologues for Jar Jar Binks. You didn’t really think we were going to be sucked in by that load of crap, did you? Try this on for size: the real state of our little union is a mindbending clusterfuck that would make Ron Jeremy chafe.

Sorry, was that a little too direct for you? You were hoping to conduct politics in a more . . . civil tone? Fuck you. We’re not complete morons out here, you know. We didn’t miss the fact that your minions outed a CIA agent out of spite, or started rumors that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child, or said that Democrats’ response to 9/11 was to find Al Qaeda a good therapist. And that’s just Karl Rove. How about that Dick you work for telling a senator to go fuck himself right there in the halls of Congress? Tell you what, we’ll put down our guns when you put down yours. Until then, you can stick your civil tone right up your Turd Blossom.

And don’t even try and peddle that nineleven crap – we’ve heard all that shit a million times. “We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas”? Where the fuck have you been? We knew before, asshole. And being vague about how the “government” didn’t connect the dots isn’t gonna help you wriggle out of this little mess. “It is said that prior to the attacks of September 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy”? No, motherfucker, it is said of you that you failed to read the goddamn reports that said, “Here’s a terrifying dot, and here’s another terrifying dot, and there’s this big red line between them, so we might want to do something about that.” When you took over as Commander-in-Chief, did you think your morning briefings would be color-by-numbers?

Whose asshole did you pull Zimbabwe and Burma out of, anyway? Those are the two countries you chose to replace Iraq in the Axis of Mean? First off, we’ll take our lectures on international relations from someone whose pre-Presidential travelogue included countries not featured in Maxim’s Spring Break Spectacular, if it’s all the same to you. And secondly, Zimbabwe? Like you knew that was a country a week ago. The day you spend one minute thinking about the death of democracy in Zimbabwe is the day Dick Cheney climbs a set of stairs without a defibrillator and a forklift.

And we’d take your tough-on-Burma bit a little more seriously if your campaign staff hadn’t ordered its election swag from Myanmar.

But we’re all about ending tyranny in the world now, is that it? No, we don’t dismiss that as “misguided idealism” you smug little shit, we dismiss it as the rantings of someone whose idea of an international dialogue includes asking the President of Brazil if he “has blacks here, too?” Let’s examine your superstars of democracy just a tad more closely, shall we? Egypt? Call us when they stop imprisoning anyone who wants to run against the President. Palestine? Well, we all know how psyched you are about those results. And Saudi Arabia? Good Lord – where to start with Saudi Arabia. The fact that women can’t vote? Or that only half of the local seats are up for election? Or that only one in eight people are even eligible to vote? Or maybe this: it’s a fucking monarchy. Tell you what, come on back when you can get your allies in the War on Terror to stop burning children for not following the dress code, and we’ll talk about your bullshit idealism.

Then there’s your favorite son: Iraq. Better put a basket over that shining example on a hill before someone starts firing grenades at it. Exactly where, in your “clear plan for victory,” is the bit about losing track of seventy-five percent of the reconstruction money? Those Iraqis must be fucking thrilled that instead of building roads we’re betting the limit at the blackjack table in Manila. But the Iraqi forces are getting ready to stand up so we can sit down, or some shit like that? Maybe they’d pick up the pace if we gave them something other than second-rate equipment? It's a good thing that story will never get out, because no American journalists would be brave enough to travel around in those tin cans you call armored vehicles. Oops. Better pray that guy never gets back to the anchor desk. But at least they’ve had elections in Iraq, so everything’s gonna be fun and flowers. So glad you noticed that their fingers are purple. Did you check to see which one they were showing you?

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the problem isn’t the “defeatism,” it’s the fucking defeat. You can keep throwing our kids into that meat-grinder, or you can listen to your own State Department officials when they tell you that all we’re doing is making things worse. Saying that anyone who’s not behind you all the way wants to leave Iraq to the evildoers might go over well when you’re preaching to those sheep your advance team keeps rounding up, but those of us over here in the real world are just asking this: let’s stop tossing our kids into this inferno and instead start actually listening to some of the people whose experience in the Middle East extends beyond a photo-op visit to the Green Zone.

And speaking of the military, that line about commanders getting to tell you how many troops they need might be wearing a little thin. Planning on pulling a division or two out of your ass? Maybe you missed that day in flight training, but the line of command starts with you, asshole, so when you say, “A couple dozen soldiers can totally handle the security for northern Iraq,” well, there's not really shit they can do. Well, there is, but if they do speak up, you drum their asses out of town.

Tell you what, next troop rotation, let’s send Rummy over there with the body armor he has, not the body armor he wants, and while he’s dodging roadside bombs, his buddies can quiz him on why in his last job he sold nuclear reactors to North Korea. You remember North Korea, right? You’ll find it in the seventh paragraph of this milquetoast piece of shit you’re calling a speech this year. See also: Axis of Evil, or We’re Fucked If They Build a Bomb.

But soon we’ll be weaning ourselves off the oil teat, so all that chaos in the Middle East won’t be quite so scary, hmmm? Forgive us if we can’t keep a straight face while an alcoholic oil baron scolds us for being “addicted” to foreign crude. Tell us, Mister Future Man, when technology comes to our rescue and we’re all driving solar-powered Humvees through the cornfields that keep our electric toilet seats warm, will we have figured out what to do with the huge piles of nuclear waste we’ve got stored in unsecured locations around the country? No? Then maybe we could put off creating more atomic employment opportunities for Homer Simpson until we nip that little problem in the ass.

Ah, the future. Brought to us by all the smarties we’re gonna educate in those Intelligent Design biology classes you’ve endorsed. I’m thinking “and then a miracle happened” might not be the answer Microsoft is looking for on its application quiz, but it’s definitely the only way we’re gonna get those little shavers through middle school.

Just how does that fit into your little plan to keep America competitive? Somewhere near your strategy to get us all on those fancy Health Savings Accounts, I bet. Those are the ones where we save piles of cash on our heathcare bills when we’re not sick, right? That sounds great, except when you consider that there are huge numbers of us who, sooner or later, are going to want to buy ourselves a rectal exam. Ok, not want, but you know what I mean. And when you want to buy a whole bunch of stuff cheap, do you go to the corner store? No, you go to fucking WalMart, and you buy in bulk. This plan has each of us paying a doctor to stick just one finger up our ass, but what we need is, like, a big ol’ organization that can buy lots and lots of finger-up-the-ass-ograms, and then we can all buy into it and get our assholes stretched at a bargain rate. It’d be a way of insuring that we get good, cheap healthcare. We could call it health insurance. I bet everyone would want some of that.

Or, we could pretend that people who aren’t doctors can figure out what is necessary care and what’s frivolous on their own. Yeah, fuck it, that’s a much better idea.

And one more thing: once you’re done congratulating yourself on all the help you’re sending down to New Orleans, do you think we could look for the 3,000 people that are still missing? They haven’t been “excluded from the promise of this country” or whatever cliche your speechwriters have decided will pass for down home empathy this week, they’re fucking dead. Spare us the “history is turning in a wide arc” and the “freedom is on the march” bullshit. When we need trite crap to soothe our savage souls, we’ll kidnap Celine Dion.

Tell you what, if you’ll quit hiding health benefits from vets and telling their families that they should laugh their troubles away, we’ll promise to put a stop to those man/chicken hybrid experiments. Deal? Good. Now run along home to your bubble, boy. The grown-ups have to figure out how we’re gonna fix this fucking mess you made.

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