The big picture

ChinaDaily: "Democracy makes a difference"

2006-07-04T11:33:00.000+02:00

Interesting article (2006-07-03) that in itself shows that it is gradually becoming easier to talk and write publicly about issues previously regarded as critisim of the etstablishment.

"During his visit to the United States in April, President Hu Jintao said there could be no modernization without democracy. People have noted that Chinese leaders, at each crucial stage of the country's development, show great concern with the progress of China's democratization."

"One of democracy's important institutional attributes is the public's supervision of the implementation of power. One of its most salient spiritual features is helping bring people's initiative into full play."

"Without democracy, there would be no respect for people. Wisdom and creativity are at the core of human dignity. In the absence of care for and encouragement of people's creativity and wisdom, creating a new type of country would remain a dream."

Source: China Daily; By Qin Xiaoying, a researcher with the China Foundation for International and Strategic Studies.

S. Korean scientists find cancer-spreading gene

2006-07-04T11:20:00.000+02:00

"A human gene that causes the growth and spread of cancer was identified by a team of South Korean scientists, the Korean Times reported Monday." (July 3rd 2006)

"Im and his colleagues applied for a domestic patent on the new found cancer regulator and are looking to register an international patent immediately, the newspaper said."

Source: Xinhua / english.people.com.cn

Peru - Machu Picchu - 222 Megapixel | Andre Gunther Photography

2006-04-07T00:16:00.000+02:00

Peru - Machu Picchu - 222 Megapixel | Andre Gunther Photography

This is as much a technology demo as a magnificent picture of Machu Picchu. Check the zoom functions. Amazing.

Photos from women's day 2006

2006-03-09T11:36:00.000+01:00

Women's day around the world - photo series - Aftenposten.no
Click on the photos to see the next.

Christian-Muslim Relations, Inter-Religious Dialogue

2006-02-08T20:01:00.000+01:00

"Welcome to Oddbjorn Leirvik's web site, which mostly deals with
Christian-Muslim Relations & Interreligious Dialogue"

USA: "Misstatement of the Union"

2006-02-05T00:36:00.000+01:00

" The President burnishes the State of the Union through selective facts and strategic omissions. "

People's Daily Online -- Most global CEOs view China as market opportunity: survey

2006-01-28T15:52:00.000+01:00

People's Daily Online -- Most global CEOs view China as market opportunity: survey: "More than 70 percent of the 1410 CEOs (chief executive officer) surveyed say their company plans to do business over the next three years in at least one of the BRIC countries, named Brazil, Russia, India and China."

Leaders at Davos appeal for eradicating poverty in Africa

2006-01-28T15:31:00.000+01:00

"African nations should focus on boosting primary education and good governance while the western countries should remove agriculture tariffs, according to several leading world figures in the World Economic Forum. The panelists in the African development debate on Friday said that the world should shake off 'poverty fatigue' and follow through on the momentum and 'mountain of good will' generated from 2005 toward the goal of eradicating poverty in Africa."

Wired News: Spin Doctors Create Quantum Chip

2006-01-26T09:51:00.000+01:00

Wired News: Spin Doctors Create Quantum Chip: "University of Michigan scientists have created the first quantum microchip, which could be a giant stride in the race to produce a new generation of brawny, super-fast computers.

Working with individual ions is key to building powerful computing machines that will exploit quantum physics -- instead of transistors -- and trump the power of today's most powerful supercomputers.

So, on a semiconductor chip roughly the size of a postage stamp, the Michigan scientists designed and built a device known as an ion trap, which allowed them to isolate individual charged atoms and manipulate their quantum states.

An ion expresses a positive or negative charge, depending on whether its parent atom has a missing or an extra electron. And ions are the preferred building blocks for a quantum system."

Ekstremisme kan ikke bekjempes med våpen

2006-01-24T18:36:00.000+01:00

"Sikkerhetsberedskapen rundt Musharraf er like høy som når USAs president George Bush er på reise.

Gjør mest
- Ekstremisme er en sinnstilstand, og kan ikke bekjempes med militære handlinger. Vi må bekjempe ekstremisme med både politiske og sosiale virkemidler, sa han.

- Det trengs en muslimsk renessanse for å forstå den virkelige islam og korrigere bildene inni oss selv og inntrykket som resten av verden har, sa han."

Mujuru - Zimbabwe's female VP

2006-01-20T13:10:00.000+01:00

People's Daily Online -- Zimbabwe's female VP unveils ambition to succeed Mugabe: "Mujuru, who was appointed to her position in 2004, however called on the women to uphold their cultural values which she described as a source of dignity.

Women, she said, made good leaders as they were generally peace loving and had softer hearts, characteristics which they should exploit in solving problems."

Norwegian government launches onlind forum to combat trafficking

2006-01-16T10:59:00.000+01:00

"http://www.Sexhandel.no is financed by the Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Women and Children, made by the Government of Norway.

This website is made by Reform –Resource Center for Men on behalf of the Ministry of Children and Equality.

The measure of the website is to curtail the demand that creates a market for human trafficking. The website is meant to encourage a debate and to draw attention to the link between prostitution and trafficking.

Sexhandel.no contains information and facts about prostitution and trafficking, and offers the opportunity to participate in discussions on the web as well as counselling by phone. "

Wired: Biggest Discoveries of 2005

2006-01-15T13:08:00.000+01:00

"Paleontologists in March accidentally stumbled upon the first soft tissue from a dinosaur -- some cells and blood vessels from a 68 million-year-old female Tyrannosaurus rex. They had to split a thigh bone to remove it from a remote dig, and it's expected to be a goldmine of dino physiology. Previously, it had been assumed tissue couldn't survive longer than 100,000 years."

Booming nations 'threaten Earth'

2006-01-15T12:45:00.000+01:00

"Earth lacks the water, energy and agricultural land to allow China and India to attain Western living standards, a US think-tank has warned."

Energising the quest for 'big theory'

2006-01-05T22:33:00.000+01:00

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Energising the quest for 'big theory': "About 100m below us, in a tunnel that runs in a ring for 27km (17 miles), the LHC is being assembled from its constituent parts like a vast, impossibly complex Meccano set.

When it is switched on for a pilot run in summer 2007, this huge physics experiment will collide two beams of particles head-on at super-fast speeds, recreating the conditions in the Universe moments after the Big Bang.

The beam collisions should create showers of new particles, revealing new physics beyond the Standard Model. In order for that to happen, the LHC needs to reach much higher energies than previous colliders."

SDS - Same-Language Subtitling

2005-12-14T11:18:00.000+01:00

Official Google Blog: Same-Language Subtitling:

"I hit upon this idea in 1996 through a most ordinary personal experience. While taking a break from dissertation writing at Cornell University, I was watching a Spanish film with friends to improve my Spanish. The Spanish movie had English subtitles, and I remember commenting that I wished it came with Spanish subtitles, if only to help us grasp the Spanish dialogue better. I then thought, ‘And if they just put Hindi subtitles on Bollywood songs in Hindi, India would become literate.’ That idea became an obsession. It was so simple, intuitively obvious, and scalable in its potential to help hundreds of millions of people read -- not just in India, but globally. So you can see how it works, we’ve uploaded some folk songs using SLS into Google Video. And we've uploaded other examples there as well. "

Scientific quests: Better bananas, nicer mosquitoes | CNET News.com

2005-12-10T21:04:00.000+01:00

"Addressing 275 of the world's most brilliant scientists, Bill Gates cracked a joke:

'I've been applying my imagination to the synergies of this,' he said. 'We could have sorghum that cures latent tuberculosis. We could have mosquitoes that spread vitamin A. And most important, we could have bananas that never need to be kept cold.'

They laughed. Perhaps that was to be expected when the world's richest man, who had just promised them $450 million, was delivering a punchline. But it was also germane, because they were gathered to celebrate some of the oddest-sounding projects in the history of science.

New York Times

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Their deadly serious proposals--answers to the Grand Challenges in Global Health that Gates posed in a 2003 speech in Davos, Switzerland--sounded much like his spoofs: laboratories around the world, some of them led by Nobel Prize winners, proposing to invent bananas and sorghum that make their own vitamin A; chemicals that render mosquitoes unable to smell humans; drugs that hunt down tuberculosis germs in people who do not even know they are infected; and vaccines that are mixed into spores or plastics or sugars and can be delivered in glasses of orange juice or modified goose calls.

What Gates had outlined at Davos were the greatest obstacles facing doctors in the tropics: Laboratories are few and far between. Vaccines spoil without refrigeration and require syringes, which can transmit AIDS. Mosquitoes develop resistance to all insecticides. Crops that survive in the jungle or desert often have little nutritive value. Infections outwit powerful drugs by lying dormant.

His offer--originally $200 million, raised to $450 million after 1,600 proposals came in--'was to make sure that innovation wasn't reserved just for big-ticket items like cancer and heart disease,' said Carol A. Dahl, the foundation's director of global health technologies, who ran the conference.

The winning teams, which were named in June, came from as far away as Australia and China, with research partners all over Africa and Southeast Asia. Over three days in a Seattle hotel, the 43 team leaders delivered 10-minute summaries of their plans, quizzed foundation officials about details of the grants and discussed possible ethical quandaries with bioethicists from the University of Toronto.

(The most common questions were about the one ironclad rule: Grantees may patent anything they discover, but must make it available cheaply to poor countries. An ethical concern common to many projects is that they will eventually require clinical trials on impoverished Africans or Asians with little understanding of informed consent.)

In the hallways and over cocktails and dinners--all paid for by the foundation--virologists and neurologists talked with plant biologists and nanoparticle physicists, sometimes finding ways to help one another. For example, a scientist with plans to improve vitamin-fortified 'golden rice' asked the designer of a hand-held laboratory to test blood for pathogens whether it could be modified to test blood for iron and vitamins."

Scientific quests: Better bananas, nicer mosquitoes | CNET News.com

media girl - about men...

2005-11-22T12:12:00.000+01:00

"A new ICM opinion poll commissioned by Amnesty International indicates that a third (34%) of people in the UK believe that a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she has behaved in a flirtatious manner."

See mediagirl.org

China:- applying the Internet to politics

2005-10-09T00:14:00.000+02:00

"On July 25, a live online broadcast in East China's Zhejiang Province attracted the attention of 100,000-plus netizens, which allowed them for the first time to watch online a session of the standing committee of the provincial people's congress, the local legislature, which is traditionally met behind closed doors.

'By watching live online broadcasting, Chinese citizens are endowed with a chance to participate in the democracy-building process,' comments Xia Xueluan, a professor of sociology with Beijing University.

In fact, Zhejiang is not alone to apply the Internet to politics. The Beijing municipal government already launched an online opinion poll in 2003. Logging into www.beijing.gov.cn, local netizens can cast votes on 64 governmental organs under the municipality. In two years' time, more than 140,000 netizens have aired their views on the administrations' effectiveness, transparency and legal awareness. And their votes on issues ranging from whether the city should lift the ban on firecrackers to the area of buffer zone of the Forbidden City as a World Heritage Site has been taken into consideration in policy making.

'Online appraisal has effectively improved the public organs' service standard,' observes Prof. Xia.

The Internet helps the administrators to get first-hand opinions from the grassroots, thus making the policy making process more scientific, says Prof. Cheng Weimin of Beijing University.

Even the country's leaders would go online for people's opinions on government work. Before he gave a press conference during a session of the National People's Congress (NPC) in late March, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao accessed to the xinhuanet.com to search for ordinary people's questions for him.

'The development of the Internet in China will not only lead to a transfer of economic activities, but also change people's ideas about the public affairs,' says Prof. Min Dahong, an expert on Internet communication with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Meanwhile, the Internet has partially given rise to Chinese people's individuality. A vivid example is the prevalence of web-blog writing since 2002.

'The essence of web-blog is to share both information and thoughts,' says Fang Xingdong, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Bokee, the largest blog website in China, which has more than 2 million registered users.

By writing web-blogs, Fang says, netizens have shifted from 'passive receptors' to 'active producers.'

Li Shanyou, vice president of Sohu, one of the three largest portal sites in China, agrees that the Internet has impelled a 'grassroots' spirit.

Although there exists the digital divide, Prof. Xia Xueluan says the Internet 'is no longer a privilege enjoyed by a few in China, but a common area everyone can contributes to.'

'The Internet has expanded my horizon and deepened my communication with others. In the realm of the Internet, I dream to fly higher,' smiles the young Lu Li."

Source: Xinhua / People's Daily Online:
Internet being part of Chinese people's life

WEF - 2005 competitiveness rankings

2005-09-29T14:42:00.000+02:00

World Economic Forum 2005 competitiveness rankings:

"Finland remains the most competitive economy in the world and tops the rankings for the third consecutive year in The Global Competitiveness Report 2005-2006, released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The United States is in second position, followed by Sweden, Denmark, Taiwan of China and Singapore, respectively.

Altogether 117 countries and areas are included in the rankings. Researchers place particular attention on elements of the macroeconomic environment, the quality of public institutions which underpin the development process, and the level of technological readiness and innovation.

'The Nordic countries share a number of characteristics that make them extremely competitive, such as very healthy macroeconomic environments and public institutions that are highly transparent and efficient, with general agreement within society on the spending priorities to be met in the government budget,' said Augusto Lopez-Claros, chief economist and director of the WEF's Global Competitiveness Program.

According to the report, the United States demonstrates overall technological supremacy, with a very powerful culture of innovation. However, technological prowess is partly offset by a weaker performance in other areas measured by the index. The country's greatest weakness concerns the health of its macroeconomic environment, where it ranks a low 47th overall."

Read the full article at People's Daily

Increasing global interest in Confucius

2005-09-28T17:14:00.000+02:00

"After being criticized for nearly 100 years in the 20th century, why has Confucianism become popular again? Why have Western wise men call for absorbing Confucius' intelligence to safeguard the survival of mankind? The world today is not in peace, this is mainly because of hegemony and terrorism. World peace requires treatment and cure of such modern world maladies. 'Harmony without uniformity' proposed by Confucius can be taken as a good medicine for treating the illness.

Confucius said, 'A gentleman gets along with others, but does not necessarily agree with them; a base man agrees with others, but does not coexist with them harmoniously'."

Click to read the full article in People's Daily Online

China: Gray-haired population hits 130 million

2005-09-25T10:12:00.000+02:00

"The number of senior citizens above the age of 60 has reached 130 million in China, or more than one tenth of the country's total population.

And China's gray-haired population has kept an annual growth rate of three percent, according to information from a recent forum on the country's old-age care trends and countermeasures held in Kunming, capital of southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The birth rate has kept falling, while the average life span has continued to rise in China, thanks to social, economic and scientific progress and improvement in medical and health conditions.

It is estimated that by the year of 2015, the population of senior citizens above the age of 60 will exceed 200 million yuan in the country and the figure will rise to 280 million by 2025."

Source: People's Daily/Xinhua

"The 100-minute bible" - and 3-minute version :-)

2005-09-24T22:57:00.000+02:00

"A new version of the Bible which its author says can be read in less than two hours has been launched.
The 100-Minute Bible, written as a page-turner for those who do not have the time to read the full version, was unveiled at Canterbury Cathedral. "

Source: BBC, Sep. 21st, 2005

- And for those in an even bigger hurry...:

"God created heaven and earth in six days. He then made Adam, quickly followed by Eve when he saw that Adam was bored. Their descendants proved a real disappointment, so he flooded the world and started again.

But God continued to have a lot of problems. Abraham was OK, but Jacob cheated on his brother and Joseph was such a prima donna that his brothers sold him into slavery. Moses tried to lay down the law but it took an almighty strop for anyone to notice. Joshua killed a lot of people; so did Gideon; in fact most of the judges and kings were lying psychopaths. Understandably the Jewish people needed to relax, so they sang psalms to the tune of Kumbaya.

Back in the action and it was still looking grim. A few grumpy prophets apart, it was bloodletting on a grand scale all the way. Things improved when an angel got Mary pregnant in 1BC. Joseph was very understanding about this and nine months later Jesus was born. Various shepherds and wise men paid their respects before Jesus was whisked out of town to escape Herod. He spent the next 30 years chilling out before beginning his ministry when John the Baptist was arrested. Jesus tried to avoid publicity but it was hard to keep a low profile when he was pulling off stunts like raising the dead. So it wasn't long before he collected some disciples, and from these he chose his main crew, the apostles.

Much of Jesus's teaching was captured when he spoke about the meaning of humility during the Sermon on the Mount. Apart from forgiving sins, he also said that anyone who divorces and remarries commits adultery. These views made him extremely unpopular, but calling himself the Messiah was the last straw. When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he knew his days were numbered. On the Thursday night he was betrayed by Judas and taken before Pontius Pilate, who offered the Jews a chance to reprieve him. They refused and he was crucified and buried.

He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Jesus reassured his followers he was for real and over the next 40 days he made a number of other appearances before going up to heaven."

Source: The blue room

Meet Mr. Neandertal

2005-09-24T11:08:00.000+02:00

Perhaps a bit smelly, extinct in Europe around 25-30.000 years ago, but said to be a family guy, and possibly among the first to make clothes

:-)

The Indian ocean tsunami explained

2005-01-05T13:10:00.000+01:00

Downloadable illustrations, animations, presentation:
The International Center for GeoHazards

Tsunami / Indian ocean: Animation + pictures of the wave & train accident

2005-01-01T23:07:00.000+01:00

Pictures of the tsunami arriving at the coast:
http://www.aftenposten.no/spesial/bildeserier/article938632.ece

Animation of the tsunami:
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/utenriks/4390089.html

The tsunami caused the worst train accident in history:
1.500 people on an express train in Sri Lanka was hit, rolled over 4 times, 800+ killed in the train.
Pictures:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article938558.ece

2004-05-05T00:44:00.000+02:00

US war crimes in Iraq

Photo series - the US abuse of iraqi prisoners:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/irak/article785735.ece

Apache helicopter kills wounded man, video:
(illegal/breaking human rights to "kill a wounded enemy" according to int. laws/UN)
On the video one can hear the helicopter pilots' talk/messages/orders.

http://home.no.net/ansandbe/apache_helicopter_vs_iraqis.mpeg

2004-05-05T00:39:00.000+02:00

Ex US diplomats' open letter to President Bush:

"Dear Mr President:

We former US diplomats applaud our 52 British colleagues who recently sent a letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair criticising his Middle East policy and calling on Britain to exert more influence over the United States.

As retired foreign service officers we care deeply about our nation's foreign policy and US credibility in the world.

We also are deeply concerned by your April 14 endorsement of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan to reject the rights of three million Palestinians, to deny the right of refugees to return to their homeland, and to retain five large illegal settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.

This plan defies UN Security Council resolutions calling for Israel's return of occupied territories.

It ignores international laws declaring Israeli settlements illegal.

It flouts UN Resolution 194, passed in 1948, which affirms the right of refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation for the loss of their property and assistance in resettling in a host country should they choose to do so.

And it undermines the Road Map for peace drawn up by the Quartet, including the US. Finally, it reverses longstanding American policy in the Middle East.

Your meeting with Sharon followed a series of intensive negotiating sessions between Israelis and Americans, but which left out Palestinians.

In fact, you and Prime Minister Sharon consistently have excluded Palestinians from peace negotiations.

Former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo voiced the overwhelming reaction of people around the world when he said: "I believe President Bush declared the death of the peace process today".

By closing the door to negotiations with Palestinians and the possibility of a Palestinian state, you have proved that the United States is not an even-handed peace partner.

You have placed US diplomats, civilians and military doing their jobs overseas in an untenable and even dangerous position.

Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige and friends.

It is not too late to reassert American principles of justice and fairness in our relations with all the peoples of the Middle East.

Support negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, with the United States serving as a truly honest broker.

A return to the time-honored American tradition of fairness will reverse the present tide of ill will in Europe and the Middle East - even in Iraq.

Because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East, the entire region - and the world - will rejoice along with Israelis and Palestinians when the killing stops and peace is attained.

Sincerely,

Andrew I Killgore, Ambassador to Qatar, 1977-1980
Richard H Curtiss, former chief inspector, US Information Agency
Colbert C Held, Retired FSO and author
Thomas J Carolan, Counsel General Istanbul, '88-'92
C Edward Bernier, Counselor of Embassy, Information and Culture, Islamabad, Pakistan
Donald A Kruse, American Consul in Jerusalem
Ambassador Edward L Peck, former Chief of Mission in Iraq and Mauritania
John Powell, Admin Counselor in Beirut, '75-'76
John Gunther Dean, last position held US Ambassador to India
Greg Thielmann, Director, Office for Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, Bureau of Intelligence and Research
James Akins, Ambassador to Saudi Arabia
Talcott Seeyle, Ambassador to Syria
Eugene Bird, Counselor of Embassy in Saudi Arabia
Richard H Nolte, Ambassador to Egypt
Ray Close, Chief of Station Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 1971-1979
Shirl McArthur, Commercial Attache, Bangkok
"

Source:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article787234.ece

2004-04-20T11:42:00.000+02:00

bt.etree.org | Trade friendly artists:

"This site is provided by the etree.org community for sharing the live concert recordings of trade friendly artists. "

2004-04-17T23:44:00.000+02:00

Bush and Sharon agrees...
(Caricature from Aftenposten.no, a Norwegian newspaper)

Mixed Double:

www.Aftenposten.no

2004-03-14T20:11:00.000+01:00

A personal comment on the talks about the current wave of terrorism:

Please avoid generalising: This is NOT about "the muslims".
Terrorist cells are extremist groups of what could as well be self-claiming "(mis)representatives" of "any" other group. Generalising in this issue leads us astray, and clutter both the debates and useful common insight/knowledge... Terrorism has nothing to do with "real islam"...

In this particular issue, I think that the most important task for common man to take on as a responsibility for practical resistance, it is exactly this:

-> avoid generalising or relating terrorism to muslims/islam.

Please point this out to any other person that does so, whenever anyone is generalising...

By NOT pointing this out (refusing others' generalisations), YOU are in effect helping the extremists making their false case in suggesting that common muslims/islamists have any responsibility to take part in/for their cause.

One of the most practical efforts of combating terrorism is to prevent the recruitment to the extremist groups. It is therefore imperative to continously remove the foundation for the suggestions that common muslims have any responsibilities towards the goals of extremist groups.

K.

2004-02-19T04:26:00.000+01:00

Subject: Economic theories

TRADITIONAL ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You sell one and buy a bull.
* Your herd multiplies and the economy grows.
* You retire on the income.

AMERICAN ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You sell one and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.
* You profess surprise when the cow drops dead.
* You put the blame on some nation with cows and naturally that
nation will be a danger to mankind.
* You wage a war to save the world and grab the cows.

FRENCH ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You go on strike because you want three cows.

GERMAN ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You reengineer them so that they live for 100 years, eat once a
month and milk themselves.

BRITISH ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* They are both mad cows.

ITALIAN ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You don't know where they are.
* You break for lunch.

SWISS ECONOMICS
* You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you.
* You charge others for storing them.

JAPANESE ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You redesign them so that they are one-tenth the size of an
ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
* You then create cute cartoon cow images called Cowkimon and
market them worldwide.

RUSSIAN ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You count them and learn you have five cows.
* You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
* You count them again and learn you have 17 cows.
* You give up counting and open another bottle of vodka.

CHINESE ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You have 300 people milking them.
* You claim full employment, high bovine productivity and arrest
anyone reporting the actual numbers.

INDIAN ECONOMICS
* You have two cows.
* You worship them.

*************************

2004-02-08T13:57:00.000+01:00

"From the TR Blog: One Step Closer to Designer Babies?
In a biology first, researchers have created transgenic versions of zebrafish by growing and genetically modifying sperm in the lab. Further development of such a procedure could eventually open the door to correcting genetic diseases before birth—ushering in an age of “designer babies," with all its attendant ethical thickets."
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1250&trk=nl

2004-02-08T13:53:00.000+01:00

"Gas on Ice
Once dubbed an energy pipe dream, the prospect of extracting significant quantities of natural gas from frosty hydrate deposits just got a major boost. Scientists working on an experimental drilling project in northern Canada have demonstrated for the first time that they can produce natural gas from an existing gas hydrate deposit in nature. The potential payoff? If we could produce gas from only 1 percent of all the hydrates in the world, we would have enough natural gas to last more than 170,000 years."
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_wolman013004.asp?trk=nl

2003-12-27T00:45:00.000+01:00

Big-Picture Biotech:
""Systems biology" aims to provide a clearer picture of how diseases work?and how to prevent them."

2003-12-27T00:38:00.000+01:00

Technology Review: World-Changing Technologies 2003

"10 Emerging Technologies That Will Change the World
Technology Review identifies the developments that will dramatically affect the way we live and work—and profiles the leading innovators behind them."

2003-12-26T23:41:00.000+01:00

Putting Teeth in the Biological Weapons Ban:

"A biological attack could create an almost unimaginable catastrophe. According to an estimate by the U.S. Congress's former Office of Technology Assessment, 100 kilograms of anthrax, released from a low-flying aircraft over a large city on a clear, calm night, could kill 1-3 million people. This figure is comparable to the casualties from a one-megaton hydrogen bomb. When disseminated as an aerosol, anthrax spores (analogous to microscopic seeds) are inhaled deep into the victim's lungs and travel to the lymph nodes, where they germinate and multiply. The bacteria then secrete potent toxins, giving rise in about three days to a devastating illness. For the victims to have any chance at all of surviving, antibiotics must be administered intravenously before the onset of acute symptoms. "

"Iraq acknowledged in 1995 that prior to the Gulf War, it had produced large quantities of anthrax spores, botulinum toxin, and a fungal poison called aflatoxin, filled them into at least 166 aerial bombs and Scud missile warheads, and stock-piled them ready for use. Although Iraq claimed to have destroyed its biological arsenal after the war, U.N. inspectors suspect that Iraq may still be hiding a cache of anthrax spores and germ filled warheads. "

"... could easily adapt laboratory or industrial equipment in "a matter of hours" to produce stocks of biological warfare agents."

2003-12-26T23:25:00.000+01:00

Corn That Clones Itself:

"If they?re allowed out of the lab and into the field, crops genetically engineered to reproduce through cloning could feed the world?s poor."

"... is the second-most widely grown crop after rice; it’s a remarkably efficient factory for converting sunlight, soil, and water into food for people and animals. Within the next few years, corn is projected to pass rice and take over the top spot. "

2003-12-26T22:42:00.000+01:00

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Advertising | MPs challenge supermarkets on obesity:

Politicians in UK consider usng the "club cards" that supermarkets etc. use, to inform and affect peoples buying habits in the pursue of better public health. Some worries about the "big brother" issues about givng government access to such "monitoring tools".

K D.

Extract:

"'You have enormous power with these,' he said, holding up a Sainsbury's Nectar card. 'Perhaps there is a use for these to steer people, in some respects, towards more healthy products.'
Mr North admitted the information gathered through loyalty cards could be used to influence customers but said it could alienate them if they felt they were being patronised.
'We do have a club card. Can it be used as a way of understanding customers? Yes, absolutely. Can it be used to point out new opportunities to customers? Yes it can but underlying that is the question of how it's done,' he said."

2003-12-26T22:02:00.000+01:00

Fast Company | He Struck Gold on the Net (Really):
"At first, Goldcorp's geologists were appalled at the idea of exposing their super-secret data to the world. 'This is a very conservative, very private industry,' says Dr. James M. Franklin, former chief geoscientist for the Geological Survey of Canada and a judge in the Goldcorp Challenge. 'Confidentiality and secrecy about reserves and exploration have been its watchwords. This was a totally unconventional thing to do.'"

2003-12-19T00:24:00.000+01:00

Medieval Global Warming:

"Medieval Global Warming
A controversy over 14th century climate shows the peril of letting politics shape the scientific debate."

"There are also the valid concerns of politicians who have to make decisions in a timely way. In 1947, Harry Truman grew so annoyed at the prevarications of economists that he joked that he wanted a one-armed advisor—who could not hedge his conclusions with the phrase “on the other hand.”

Some people think that science is served by open debate between left-handed and right-handed advocates, just as in politics. But the history of science shows it is best done by people who have two hands each. Present results with caution, and insist on equivocating. Leave it to the president and his advisors to make decisions based on uncertain conclusions. Don’t exaggerate the results. Use both hands. We cannot afford to lower our standards merely because the problem is so urgent."

2003-12-19T00:21:00.000+01:00

2003-12-06T22:45:00.000+01:00

O'Reilly Network: Free Radical: Ian Clarke has Big Plans for the Internet:

"Ian Clarke, Freenet's creator and project coordinator, was selected as one of the top 100 innovators of 2003 by MIT's Technology Review magazine."

" Freenet is free software which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. To achieve this freedom, the network is entirely decentralized and publishers and consumers of information are anonymous. Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack."

- here is an old article, and the main link.

K

"by Richard Koman - 11/14/2000

Freenet - one of the Big Three of P2P (the others, of course, are Napster and Gnutella) - has mostly been written about, even by founder Ian Clarke, as a censorship-proof network, where no one knows where a specific piece of information exists. Even the owners of Freenet nodes don't know what content exists on their computers. But Freenet is much more than an anonymity system: Clarke has built into it the seeds of a radically new Internet. "

Related Articles:
A Directory of Peer-to-Peer Projects
How Ray Ozzie Got His Groove Back
Open Source Roundtable: Free Riding on Gnutella
O'Reilly's Peer-to-Peer Conference
How the Peer-to-Peer Working Group Ought to Be Organized

http://freenet.sourceforge.net/

MIT Technology review:
http://www.technologyreview.com

2003-11-30T14:05:00.000+01:00

Google search: "popularisation of science":

I was looking for background information about this book:
"Title: Popularisation of Science and Technology Education: Some Case Studies
from Africa Editors"

But the Google search results are interesting by themselves, have a look at the list from the link above.

2003-11-29T23:39:00.000+01:00

46664.COM - Give 1 minute of your life to the fight against AIDS. All it takes is listening for 1 minute. The Nelson Mandela Foundation.

2003-11-27T20:08:00.000+01:00

"The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) offers state-of-the-art knowledge services that engage our global network of development practitioners to provide timely and high-quality advice, expertise and know-how to policy makers and other partners in the countries where we operate - helping them pursue the best possible development solutions.

Knowledge services are provided principally through two mechanisms. Thematically defined "knowledge networks" function as global communities having a shared interest and professional focus. Geographically organized Sub-Regional Resource Facilities (SURFs) work for specific clusters of country offices, and have advisory and research capacity to address substantive issues in greater depth.

There are currently more than 4,000 participants in this initiative - over half of UNDP's entire staff from every part and all levels of the worldwide organization, as well as more than 600 members from the United Nations system and other external partners. New members are joining every week. Included in this number are 160 full-time UNDP policy specialists, 80 of whom are located in the SURFs. Other than the full-time specialists, members of the knowledge networks participate on a voluntary basis.

The major networks currently number twelve: Democratic Governance; Poverty Reduction; Crisis Prevention and Recovery; Energy and Environment; ICT for Development; HIV/AIDS; Evaluation; Gender Equality; Human Development Reports; Management Practice; Millennium Development Goals; and, Small Enterprise and Microfinance. The networks are dynamic and evolve in response to community interests, resulting in the creation of both new networks and sub-networks with more targeted themes or a regional focus.

The nine SURF country clusters are: Arab States; Caribbean; Central & Eastern Africa; Europe/CIS; Latin America; Pacific, North & South East Asia; Southern Africa; West & South Asia; and, Western Africa."

http://www.undp.org/knowledge/index.htm

2003-11-23T22:19:00.000+01:00

Khalil Gibran
"Gibran on Love...

Then said Almitra, "Speak to us of Love."

And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips"

2003-11-23T20:22:00.000+01:00

Wired News: Brazil Gives Nod to Open Source: "BRASILIA, Brazil -- If he is to make good on his promise to improve life for the tens of millions of Brazilians who live in dire poverty, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva knows that one key challenge is to bridge a massive technology gap. And if that means shunning Microsoft software in South America's largest country, then so be it.
Silva's top technology officer wants to transform the land of samba and Carnival into a tech-savvy nation where everyone from schoolchildren to government bureaucrats uses open-source software instead of costly Windows products. "

2003-11-13T01:51:00.000+01:00

Dumb Blogs Have More Fun - Mom finds out about blog: "Hi Mom,
Just wanted to drop you a note to say that the guy I brought home with me last week wasn't my roommate but my boyfriend who I use to do drugs with and have casual sex. Also, your cooking sucks.
This article is hillarious:"

2003-11-09T23:18:00.000+01:00

2003 Global Influentials