Friday, October 3, 2008
House approves bailout; Bush signs it; Ron Paul "You're going to guarantee a depression"
A $700 billion bailout package designed to ease the nation's worsening economic crisis cleared Congress and was signed into law Friday after the House of Representatives approved a revised version of the bill that it had rejected days earlier.
Some 32 Democrats and 26 Republicans switched positions to vote for the Senate-passed bill, pushing it through the House by 263-171. President Bush quickly signed the measure, praising Congress for rallying behind the rescue package.
"By coming together on this legislation, we have acted boldly to help prevent the crisis on Wall Street from becoming a crisis in communities across our country," Bush said during a five-minute statement in the White House Rose Garden. Later, he walked next door to the Treasury Department, where he thanked Secretary Henry Paulson and the building's employees for their hard work during the financial crisis.
Stock prices slid on Wall Street despite the bill's passage as new data from around the world made it clear that the economic outlook is darkening rapidly. U.S. employers shed 159,000 jobs in September, the highest monthly number in five years, for example. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped another 157.47 points to close at 10,325.38. ... - mh
Hidden in this version of the bill is a tax break for makers of wooden arrows for children.
Oregon Sens. Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith introduced a bill in May to fix an item in the tax code under which the excise tax on inexpensive arrows for children is greater than the selling price of the arrows. Some nine manufacturers nationwide are affected. Wyden (D) voted No on the bill. Smith (R) voted Yes. - politicocomment
This is just a way of Wall Street forcing us to pay (by taxes) for worthless investments. I agree with Ron Paul and many others: Let Wall Street eat it. Things will be difficult for a year, but then they will get better. With the bail out, we are just going down the same road again and another crash is inevitable.
PAUL: Well, I think [the bail out is] a mistake because we don't have the money. But that doesn't mean you have to do nothing. I mean, we could reform the system. We could return to sound money. We could balance our budget. We could change our foreign policy. We could take care of our people at home. We could lower taxes.
There's a lot of things that we can do. But the worst thing that we can do is perpetuate the bad policies that gave us this trouble in the first place, and that is that we no longer, over the last quite a few decades, believed in free-market capitalism. Capital is supposed to come from savings. We're supposed to work hard and save.
As a matter of fact, the Chinese work hard, right now, and they save, and they're buying up the world. But we borrow and spend and consume, and now it's caught up to us and it's undermining our whole system. ... So this $700 billion is not going to do it. - latimes
Watermelon-eating dog prompts stabbing
A dog eating a watermelon helped cause a Boston man to repeatedly stab himself to prove to his brother he wasn't afraid of pain, police say.
A police report said the two unidentified brothers got into an argument this week after a dog belonging to one of the men consumed a watermelon owned by his brother, the Boston Herald said Thursday. Tuesday's argument over the missing watermelon escalated into a shouting match between the siblings that allegedly caused one brother to repeatedly stab himself in order to show he didn't care if he got hurt, police say.
Police officer Jamie Kennealy said when police arrived at the scene to help take the injured brother to the hospital, the other brother allegedly tried to barricade himself in a room. Kennealy told the Herald the brother used a saw and hammer to place numerous pieces of wood across the door to keep police out of the room.
"During his barricading construction project he stated that he wasn't going to get arrested for stabbing his brother," he told the Herald, adding that police were content to leave him alone after learning the other man's wounds were self-inflicted. - upi
Only in Boston.
Ultrasound machine creates fine wine in 30 minutes
An entrepreneur claims to have invented a machine that turns a cheap bottle of plonk into a vintage-tasting wine in a matter of minutes. Inventor Casey Jones says the £350 gadget uses ultrasound technology to recreate the effects of decades of ageing by colliding alcohol molecules inside the bottle. The Ultrasonic Wine Ager, which looks like an ordinary ice bucket, takes 30 minutes to work and has already been given the thumbs up by an English winemaker. Mr Jones, 53, said: "This machine can take your run-of-the-mill £3.99 bottle of plonk and turn it into a finest bottle of vintage tasting like it costs hundreds. "It works on any alcohol that tastes better aged, even a bottle of paintstripper whisky can taste like an 8-year-aged single malt. "The look and bouquet of the drink is improved and because of the chemical changes, the alcohol is easier to absorb by the kidneys and therefore, hangovers are virtually eliminated. ...
Andre Jones, no relation, a winemaker who produces 40,000 bottles-a-year at his family-owned Buzzard Valley Vineyard, near Tamworth, Staffs, said he was impressed by the gadget. He said: "Casey took one of our bottles and brought it back for us to try after it had been in the machine. I was amazed, it had definitely aged. - telegraph
Elephants march through hotel lobby after it was built on their migration trail
These amazing pictures show why you shouldn't get between an African elephant and its favourite food. Mfuwe Lodge in Zambia happens to have been built next to a mango tree that one family of pachyderms have always visited when the fruit ripens. When they returned one year and found the luxury accommodation in the way, they simply walked through reception. - dailymail
Enlarge
Enlarge
Enlarge
'Guests can stand in the lounge are but as long as there is a barrier between the elephants and the guests that is okay,' he added. 'The elephants are not aggressive but you don't want to tempt anything as they are wild animals. 'It is the elephants choice to come into base camp and they have been doing it for the last ten years. 'There are other wild mango trees around and they seem to prefer this one. ...
Enlarge
Assault charges filed in peanut butter 'attack'
Prosecutors have filed assault charges against a 19-year-old man who smeared peanut butter on the forehead of a classmate with a severe peanut allergy at Wenatchee High School. According to the police report, Joshua Hickson overheard the student saying he was allergic to peanuts and then dipped his finger in a peanut butter sandwich. The victim told Hickson to stop, but Hickson put more peanut butter on his fingers and touched the student again, according to Wenatchee Police. The victim did not suffer an allergic reaction. Hickson faces a year in jail and a fine of $5,000 if convicted. School administrators suspended Hickson after the September 8th incident. - krem
Where in the brain, is the cruelty center?
No more using live fish in pedicures, state rules
Nail salons won’t be allowed to use live, skin-eating fish when performing pedicures, the state Department of Licensing has ruled. A King County salon had offered the service, in which tiny fish eat dead skin cells, but no longer. State officials require all tools and implements used in a pedicure to be sanitized, disinfected or disposed of after using. “We do not believe you can properly sanitize a live fish,” said Liz Luce, director of the Washington state Department of Licensing. “We are greatly concerned about the safety of salon customers who choose to put their feet in a tank of live fish to eat away dead skin,” she said in a statement. - bizj
Having the pedicurist doing the nibbling just isn't the same, because their mouths are much bigger and they might accidentally eat an entire toe. This is what it used to look like...
Reptilian Aliens interbreeding with humans in Australia?
The parents of a 7-year-old boy who broke into an Australian outback zoo and fed a string of small animals to its resident crocodile are likely to be sued after police said the boy was too young to be held responsible.
A turtle, four western blue tongue lizards, two bearded dragons, two thorny devil lizards and a 1.8 meter (5.9ft) adult female Spencer's goanna were fed or led into the jaws of a 3 meter, 200kg (440lb) saltwater crocodile named "Terry."
Security camera footage at the Alice Springs Reptile Center showed the smiling youngster also bludgeoning to death a small blue tongue lizard and two more thorny devils during a half-hour of breakfast-time havoc last Wednesday. - yahoo
Strange Clouds Filmed
Here is a Babel Fish translation of the spanish text:
A strange cloudy series of formation brought about the surprise of the crew of a Japanese commercial airplane while it realised a flight on the sea of Okhotsk. The extended clouds presented/displayed formation, distributed of equidistant way throughout 100 kilometers in the sky. A cloud is a visible mass formed by crystals of snow or suspended drops of water in the atmosphere.
Is there a meteorologist who can comment? Are these due to gravity waves?
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Vice Pres Debates
Here is the live CNN video feed if you'd like to watch the Vice Presidential debates tonight.
Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden share the same stage in a vice-presidential debate on Thursday, but the spotlight will be on the untested Palin as she tries to ease doubts about whether she is up to the job.
The lone match-up of the vice-presidential contenders before the Nov. 4 election promises more than the usual drama, most of it supplied by Palin's debut in an unscripted format. - can
Here are real-time comments on twitter as the debates are going on. Conclusion: Biden won but Palin didn't totally blow it.
Wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane found
Madera County sheriff John Anderson says search teams have found the wreckage of missing adventurer Steve Fossett's airplane. (Oct. 2)
McKinney: DoD shot 5,000 prisoners & dumped them in a swamp during Katrina
... If you think that this is the kind of insanity one normally hears from Alex Jones, well … you’d be right. ... let’s skip past the extremely weak sourcing McKinney uses to make her charges and go right to some obvious points. Wouldn’t the families of these 5,000 prisoners wonder what happened to them? And which prisoners, specifically, have not been accounted for?
Those in Gitmo? Bush's secret prisons?
... McKinney is a former member of Congress and a candidate for President on a party that wants to claim national legitimacy. ... - hotair
Perhaps there is some mis-communication and they just killed five people from the Thousand Good Nights Louisiana Jazz Band?
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Penicillin bug genome unravelled
Dutch researchers have decoded the DNA sequence of the fungus which produces penicillin.
It is hoped that uncovering the genome of Penicillium chrysogenum will boost the development of new antibiotics to overcome problems of resistance.
The findings come just in time for the 80th anniversary of the discovery of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming.
Full details of the 13,500-gene sequence will be published in Nature Biotechnology in October. Penicillium chrysogenum is used in the production of antibiotics such as amoxicillin, ampicillin, cephalexin and cefadroxil.... There are genes and gene families we did not think would be involved in biosynthesis of penicillins - they weren't on our radar so that is our follow-up work." Professor Hugh Pennington, an expert in bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, said the genome sequence might well lead to the development of new antibiotics.
"If we understand the genome we might be able to manipulate the genes." He said traditionally antibiotics had been found just from looking at what fungi produce, but in recent years scientists had been trying to modify existing treatments.
"All the easy targets have been hit by one drug or another so it's proving very difficult to find new compounds and we're going to need some lateral thinking. - bbc
Antisocial behaviour hormone link
Low levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been linked to antisocial behaviour in adolescent boys.
Cortisol levels in the body usually surge in stressful situations, thought to help people regulate emotions.
But a Cambridge university study found this did not happen in boys with a history of severe antisocial behaviour.
The Biological Pyschiatry study suggests some bad behaviour may be a form of mental illness linked to a chemical imbalance in the brain. - bbc
MI6 secrets found on camera sold on eBay
Newspaper says info includes names, school records of al-Qaida suspects... Britain's MI6 intelligence service is investigating how a camera holding sensitive information about al-Qaida suspects came to be lost by one of its agents and then sold on eBay, police said on Tuesday.
"We can confirm we seized a camera after a member of the public reported it," said a statement by police in Hertfordshire, north of London, after the camera was handed into a police station.
"Intelligence services are investigating," the statement added. A 28-year-old Briton bought the Nikon Coolpix camera for 17 pounds ($31) and discovered the secret material when he downloaded pictures after a vacation in the United States, the Sun newspaper reported.
A document stored on the camera's memory card was marked "top secret" and detailed an encrypted computer system used by intelligence officials, it said. The buyer was not identified.
Its memory had names of suspected al-Qaida members and suspects' academic records as well as pictures of rocket launchers and missiles, the Sun said.
The incident is the latest in a series of embarrassing data losses to affect the intelligence services and the government. - msnbc
Elephants 'phone' friends with rumbles
Researchers at Disney's Animal Kingdom outfitted elephants with a GPS system and recorder attached to a collar made out of fire hose to monitor the rumblings of the animals. The elephants emit the rumblings to communicate with other elephants far away. ... Human friends and relatives keep tabs on their loved ones by phone when they're apart, and now new research shows elephants do nearly the same thing with rumble vocalizations that can transmit over one and a half miles.
The finding helps to explain how elephants almost always find their way back to their herd, even after they wander far off.
Elephants can see and smell their fellow herd members over long distances too, but visual obstructions, such as rocks, trees and even other big animals, can block their views, while wind changes and smells can compromise odor detection. ... Leighty, a behavioral ecologist at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida, and her team conducted the first systematic study of spontaneously produced elephant rumble vocalizations. These are typically infrasonic calls, with frequencies between 13 and 35 Hz, which fall outside the range of human hearing. - msnbc
Phoenix sees snow above Mars, but it's not sticking
NASA's Phoenix lander has detected snow falling from Martian clouds, hinting that liquid water may once have been common on the surface of the Red Planet. However, the snow seen by the explorer robot didn't merely turn to rain as it fell - it vapourised, never even reaching the ground at all.
"Nothing like this view has ever been seen on Mars," said Jim Whiteway, of York University in Toronto, speaking of the results obtained by the Meteorological Station on the Phoenix. The Station is Canadian supplied.
It seems that the interplanetary Earthling probe-droid has also found signs of calcium carbonate and possible clay at its landing site in the plains of the Vastitas Borealis, close to the Martian North Pole. Carbonates and clay on Earth normally form in the presence of water.
"We have found carbonate," rejoiced William Boynton of the University of Arizona, lead scientist for the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA), a major piece of kit in Phoenix's armoury.
"This points toward episodes of interaction with water in the past." - thereg
Unlocking The Inner-Savant In All Of Us
We are all capable of the extraordinary savant skills displayed by people with autism according to Professor Allan Snyder, speaking at the Royal Society today. Snyder argues that it is our inbuilt expectations of the world that stop us from using them.
Prof Snyder spoke on the savant syndrome and his efforts to 'turn on' autistic savant skills in people who don't have autism at a discussion meeting jointly organised by the Royal Society and the British Academy. Snyder is director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, Australia.
The savant syndrome is a rare condition in which people with autism or other mental disabilities have extraordinary skills that stand in stark contrast to their overall handicap. Savant skills are typically confined to five areas: art, music, calendar calculating, mathematics and spatial skills and these skills are accompanied by an exceptional ability to recall meaningless detail. In autistic savants these skills appear spontaneously at a young age.
Prof Snyder has been able to artificially induce savant skills in people who do not have autism using the inhibiting influence of low frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to turn off that part of the brain which controls all our inbuilt expectations.
"To do this," says Snyder, "we direct magnetic pulses into the brain, to a specific site called the left anterior temporal lobe, which is near to the left ear. This site has been implicated in individuals who suddenly display autistic savant skills after injury or fronto-temporal lobe dementia." The magnetic pulses are applied over the left anterior temporal lobe for 15 minutes using directed, low frequency rTMS."
During one study conducted by Prof Snyder and his colleagues participants were asked to perform a specific task, before, during, immediately after, and 45 minutes after rTMS treatment, with tasks including drawing a dog, horse or face from memory in one minute, or proofreading a document.
The result was a major change in the drawing ability in four out of the 11 participants, two of these participants also showed a noticeable improvement in their ability to recognise duplicated words in the proofreading task. Their abilities returned to normal within about an hour. - mednews
Scoop: Local bands to play at Sacramento Kings games
This pic is from the dinner / info meeting we attended last night
Left: Amy Anne of Xenophilia. Quiz: Can you name the local artist with Amy Anne?
Inside scoop: The Arco Arena, to attract new people to sporting events, and to generate new opportunities for local musicians, is enlisting local Sacramento area bands to help sell tickets. The bands will play for one hour outside of the sporting events before certain games, weather permitting. Perks for the band include having a song broadcast inside the Arena, reaching potentially 17,000 people.
Xenophilia played a Monarchs Women's Basketball game at Arco and last night attended an info meeting about playing outside for one hour at Sacramento Kings Games (and selling b-ball tickets to music fans).
Bands in attendance included The Grumpy and The Generals. We also spotted Dig Music representing Walking Spanish (fronted by Jackie Greene's brother) among others.
If you are a Sacramento area band interested in playing the Arco Arena, contact me, and I'll pass your information to the organizer. - Xeno
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)