les nouvelles

Kepler gets first glimpse of its planetary hunting ground

A microbial ecosystem has been trapped under an Antarctic glacier for over a million years. Researchers have now figured out what fuels these bacteria thanks to a shift that has brought bright red, iron-rich ice to the surface.

Google Profit and Revenue up in Q1

Budget report: NASA facing shortfalls, launch delays

Stem Cells Promising for Type 1 Diabetes:
Insulin No Longer Needed by Some Diabetic Patients Who Underwent Experimental Treatment

Prostate Cancer Vaccine Meets Goal:
Vaccine's Maker Says Provenge Improved Survival in Pivotal Study

Marijuana Debate Goes Mainstream

news

A man who allegedly kept his daughter locked up for 25 years and raped her repeatedly together with his son has been arrested by Italian police

Don't you just love it when people report rapes, then the government never does anything about it? It seems like our society encourages victimizers to victimize.

p.s. I always thought all those asian cultures had the most dark kinky shit to them, because they are so repesressed, that it has to find its own way out in other areas... but now with all this shit going on in europe- the children and babies being beaten to death in the uk... the other story about the crazy sex cult and the mom eating her little boy alive, plus all the sexual abuse with many different people... maybe europe is now just as fucked up?

the virgin megastore is closing!

So sad! I remember when I was in middle school and would come to San Francisco on the BART. The virgin megastore was, at one point, the coolest store I had ever been in. I loved it! I would spend hours in it, although I don't remember in retrospect buying hella shit there... I guess that contributes to the reason why it's closing.

Still, I've always loved the atmosphere. It's one of the only places I like to sit in while reading magazines. In fact, I think if I remember correctly, I've never stolen anything from the virgin megastore.

More recently, when I was living downtown and trying to avoid my ex-bf, I would hang out here for hours. I will always remember the great times I had here, and all the memories.

Did you know that the San Francisco Virgin Megastore has a myspace? myspace.com/virginmegasanfrancisco

[SALT] Managing social collapse (Orlov talk)

With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself as "Goldilocks"---just the right size---when in fact is was "Tinkerbelle," and one day the clapping stops. As in Russia, the US made itself vulnerable to the decline of crude oil, a trade deficit, military over-reach, and financial over-reach.

Russians were able to muddle through the collapse by finding ways to manage 1) food, 2) shelter, 3) transportation, and 4) security.

Russian agriculture had long been ruined by collectivization, so people had developed personal kitchen gardens, accessible by public transit. The state felt a time-honored obligation to provide bread, and no one starved. (Orlov noted that women in Russia handled collapse pragmatically, putting on their garden gloves, whereas middle-aged men dissolved into lonely drunks.) Americans are good at gardening and could shift easily to raising their own food, perhaps adopting the Cuban practice of gardens in parking lots and on roofs and balconies.

As for shelter, Russians live in apartments from which they cannot be evicted. The buildings are heat-efficient, and the communities are close enough to protect themselves from the increase in crime. Americans, Orlov said, have yet to realize there is no lower limit to real estate value, nor that suburban homes are expensive to maintain and get to. He predicts flight, not to remote log cabins, but to dense urban living. Office buildings, he suggests, can easily be converted to apartments, and college campuses could make instant communities, with all that grass turned into pasture or gardens. There are already plenty of empty buildings in America; the cheapest way to get one is to offer to caretake it.

The rule with transportation, he said, is not to strand people in nonsurvivable places. Fuel will be expensive and hoarded. He noted that the most efficient of all vehicles is an old pickup fully loaded with people, driving slowly. He suggested that freight trains be required to provide a few empty boxcars for hoboes. Donkeys, he advised, provide reliable transport, and they dine as comfortably on the Wall Street Journal as they did on Pravda.

Security has to take into account that prisons will be emptied (by stages, preferably), overseas troops will be repatriated and released, and cops will go corrupt. You will have a surplus of mentally unstable people skilled with weapons. There will be crime waves and mafias, but you can rent a policeman, hire a soldier. Security becomes a matter of local collaboration. When the formal legal structure breaks down, adaptive improvisation can be pretty efficient.

By way of readiness, Orlov urges all to prepare for life without a job, with near-zero burn rate. It takes practice to learn how to be poor well. Those who are already poor have an advantage.

--Stewart Brand

I'm very interested in social collapse...

economix

... one of my biggest faults is my complete failure to grasp business and economics, and since I'm self aware I often speak of these problems. I'm not enterprising at all, although I should be, and I want to be. Just like most people, nothing in my life is set at that this point, and it's impossible to feel secure, or "in your natural state" when basically nothing in your life is how you want it to be. With that being said, I should also say I'm grateful to have a job, since the world job market is going through such unprecedented lows.

As a result, I've been trying to pay attention to things I really don't care about, and in fact don't like- business and economic news. What used to look like impossible to decipher number/letter hybrids now mean something to me, and I have been watching the news more, although the news is endlessly depressing, and inevitably obsolete the very next day.

Anyways, I'm trying to focus on positive things, and an economist on tv last night explained the current economic crisis in a "nicer way" basically, that the observed effect means that there's a price drop, but that everyone will be making less money. It's not like the way I get information is from the tv, and I totally don't watch it every single spare second that I possibly can ;)

Apparently, the united states borrowed it way out of recession in past recessions, but this time widespread price drops are going to be the dominant themes. Hopefully, political actors can act in time to make sure the united states doesn't get as ghetto as China. Why does the government and economy have to be so intertwined?

a big news year for evolution

Four out of five Britons repudiate creationism

p.s. how did intelligent design ever come into thought- it's beyond ridiculous. Still, I am offended by creationism more, purely for the fact that I've observed evolution in my life.

It's impossible to say that science doesn't have an impact on sociology, because all of society and it's views depend on what science and technology provide for people. No wonder the bible belt and antiquated views are the only part of the current social collapse.

be sure to catch a glimpse tonight

Prepare yourself for a sight tonight — not to mention some wild behavior, if the legends are true. The biggest full moon in 15 years is set to grace the northern hemisphere tonight.

Because the moon orbits along an egg-shaped ellipse, not a circle, its distance from us changes. Today, the moon is approaching its nearest point to Earth, so it should look about 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than this year's other full moons, according to NASA.

FDA advisers back new female condom

Sugar as addictive as cocaine, heroin, studies suggest

-> p.s. I could have told u that!

Scientists find 2,000-year-old brain in Britain

Gene Mutation Is Tied to Fast Fat Breakdown

this week in science

This Week in Science - 09 December, 2008

Posted: 10 Dec 2008 12:07 AM CST

Sperm Don’t Lie, We Will Remember, Fishy Waterways, Historical Starlight, Super-Tough Mother, Secrets of a Killer, and Much More!

early morning news

SAN FRANCISCO — The State of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Electric Company on Tuesday endorsed an effort to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles with swappable batteries and an “intelligent” battery recharging network.

Britney Spears Tops Yahoo Searches In 2008

I never really read the news irl, and if I do, it's usually in passing. Like looking over someone's shoulder in a public area, or noticing the headlines in a newspaper stand or vending machine. I guess I just post news so that in retrospect, I can look back and "try" to "use what was really going on" to help me piece together my memories more coherently...

Medical Residents Must Sleep After 16 Hours, Experts Urge

-> I always make sure to sleep at least 9 hours. no sleep = wrinkles. It's one of my "lifestyle choices" that I more fiercely defend than any other idiosyncrasy...

China's rural migrants are new front in AIDS fight Reuters

Plumes from Saturn moon may come from liquid water

-> I've been following The Cassini spacecraft for years at this point...

Astronauts share freeze-dried Thanksgiving feast

news

Red (Planet) Alert: Massive Subsurface Glaciers Discovered on Mars
Surface-penetrating radar reveals features composed of ice, not rock

San Francisco enters Agassi's electric car dream

Astronauts Conduct Second Spacewalk, Continue Repairs On Space Station

news via google news

NASA's Phoenix Lander stops phoning home from Mars

-> I was rather surprised to find out MarsPhoenix is using Twitter.

IPhone Crowned Top Cell Phone In U.S.

Octopuses had Antarctic ancestor: marine census

news from 10/28

The sound of space: Scientists reveal 'music' made by stars

Scientists discover 'transsexual gene' that makes men feel like women

X marks the Spock as scientists claim 'Earth-like' planets may be hidden in solar system where Vulcans 'lived'

Purple 'super tomato' that can fight against cancer

'What a ride!' Space tourist and Russian cosmonauts return to Earth in 'flawless' landing

The fuel of the future is... pond algae, say scientists

Mars astronauts should never return to Earth, says Buzz Aldrin

news

Homosexuals, Blacks Bear the Heaviest Burden of HIV Infections

Stem cell therapies have yet to achieve their widely publicized promise as potential cures for a wide range of ailments. But this is an exciting field of scientific endeavor and many people are following developments with great interest.

Virus From Rodent Droppings Suspected in Death of Utah Man

LA council wants restaurants to post calorie info

Integrated circuit is 50 years old

This week Google announced Mobile Search with My Location, for devices running on Windows Mobile. By either using GPS or cell-ID, Google can tap into your location and deliver location-specific information.

why didn't I think of that!?

wow!

CELLULAR INTERVENTION FOR ADVANCED AGE MANAGEMENT

The emerging science of telomere biology is changing the way we look at aging*. Telomeres are DNA repeats located at the ends of all chromosomes. They serve as caps that protect our genes. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres grow shorter and shorter. Once telomeres become too short, a cell can no longer divide and it becomes senescent or dies.

700th Post!

NASA Dispels Internet Rumors About Life On Mars: Officials caution against rumors, conspiracy theories, and speculation as interest grows and the Phoenix Mars Lander continues to collect specimens from the Red Planet.

Hackers: Uncle Sam Wants You

At Black Hat, agencies including the FBI, US-CERT, and the military make the pitch for assisting in the U.S.'s fight against cybercrime and cyberwar.


Engineers John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Yonggang Huang of Northwestern University, Chicago have created an electronic eye-shaped camera that uses a new class of electronics technology that can conform to almost any shape of a human eye. The new retina-like camera sensor uses flexible photosensitive pixels.

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard University scientists have made lines of stem cells, able to turn into any other cell in the body, from bits of skin or blood of 10 patients with genetic diseases including muscular dystrophy and juvenile diabetes.

The findings will help researchers decipher the workings of these diseases, enabling them to study what happens as cells that carry a condition's genetic seeds develop and age. The lines will be made available for a ``nominal fee'' to researchers around the world, the Harvard scientists said.

Teams at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, created the lines using a technique that reprograms cells to give them the same power as those from embryos to become any of the roughly 210 cell types in the body. Their advance was described in a paper appearing today in the journal Cell.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - More than 80 percent of Americans think the U.S. health system needs either fundamental change or a complete overhaul, according to a survey released on Thursday.

Salmonella Is Tested To Fight Cancer Cells

Scientists have developed a procedure which may help end the need for transplant patients to rely on powerful anti-rejection drugs.

space news

Latest NASA Probe Reveals Planet Mercury Is Shrinking

space news

NASA estimates 3,000 to 4,000 shuttle job losses

WTF

Boy eaten by family
By NEIL SYSON
Published: 20 Jun 2008

A BOY of seven was kept chained in a cellar by his cannibal family — as they ATE parts of him.
Sobbing Ondrej Mauerova was rescued alive when a neighbour’s TV picked up footage from a camera filming his agony.

He had been partially skinned after monstrous mum Klara, 31, caged him for months while relatives who were also in a sick cult feasted on his raw flesh, an appalled judge heard yesterday.

The mum wept in a Czech court as her evil was exposed in a case echoing the Fritzl dungeon horror in Austria.

Ondrej and his helpless brother Jakub, nine, were kept in cages or handcuffed to tables as they were ritually TORTURED, BURNT and WHIPPED with belts.

Naked

Their life of hell only ended when a neighbour in the city of Brno bought a CCTV baby monitor.


Horror ... Ondrej, far right, brother Jakub, their 'sister' - and mum
CEN
Instead of pictures of his newborn he was confronted by live images of Ondrej naked in the cellar — beaten and chained.

Cops swooped on the house next door and also freed a girl posing as an adopted sister aged 13 and clutching a teddy.

She later turned out to be 34 — and one of the torturers. The boys’ mum accused the woman — fellow cult member Barbora Skrlova — of brainwashing her. She wailed: "Terrible things have happened. I realise it and can’t understand how I could have allowed it."

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The court in her home city heard the abuse of her children was co-ordinated via text messages sent by a leader of the Grail Movement cult — who was known only as the "Doctor".

Her sister Katerina was also involved.

The abuse trial of the boys’ mum, another relative and their bogus sister Skrlova — who fled and was later found posing as a boy in Norway — continues.

Three others also face charges.

I love good things

The Good News Blog