Month: May 2006

Shark Defense

Kayak Company

Shark Defense

These guys have developed chemical Shark Repllants and just won the World Wildlife Funds Contest for Smart Gear, from among 80 entries with magnets to repel sharks from Long Line Trawler’s fish hooks.

Sharks are known to be able to detect magnetic fields – they use this sense to detect Earth’s magnetic field and orient around the ocean. It appras that they wil also avoid artificial magnetic fields that would clutter their orientation.

Every year thousands of sharks die after becoming snared on hooks set by commercial fisheries to catch tuna and swordfish and this has literally pushed some shark species to the brink of extinction. According to the WWF, 89% of hammerhead sharks and 80% of thresher and white sharks have disappeared from the Northeast Atlantic Ocean in the last 18 years, largely due to bycatch.

Link to Promtional video

IRAN OKS ‘NAZI’ SOCIAL FABRIC

IRAN OKS 'NAZI' SOCIAL FABRIC By AMIR TAHER

The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions reflected in clothing, and to eliminate "the influence of the infidel" on the way Iranians, especially the young, dress.

It also envisages separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to instantly recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis" (unclean).

Jewish MP denies Iran badge plan

From correspondents in Tehran

May 20, 2006

IRAN'S only Jewish MP strongly denied reports in a Canadian newspaper overnight that Iran may force non-Muslims to wear coloured badges in public so they can be identified.

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed said in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so. (More)

Even if the badging portion of the new dress regulations are not true, here is some historical re-counting of how this would not be unusual.

An ethos of infidel-hatred, including paroxysms of annihilationist fanaticism, has pervaded Persian/Iranian society, almost without interruption (i.e., the two major exceptions being Sunni Afghan rule from 1725-1794, and Pahlavi reign, with its Pre-Islamic revivalist efforts, from 1925-1979), since the founding of the Shi’ite theocracy in 1502 under Shah Ismail, through its present Khomeini-inspired restoration, since 1979. (More)

May 23, 2006 — EDITORS' NOTE: The Associated Press and others have challenged Amir Taheri's account (published in The Post on Saturday) of the proposed new Iranian dress code, noting that the law does not specify badges for religious minorities. Below is his reply.  I STAND BY MY COLUMN

Research Reveals How Prozac Triggers New Brain Cell Growth

Research Reveals How Prozac Triggers New Brain Cell Growth
The researchers decided to look at how the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants — the widely used class of drugs that includes Celexa, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft — might spur brain cell growth. To do so, they tracked the way in which stem cells — undifferentiated cells that can grow into specialized cells — became neurons in a special mouse model given the antidepressant Prozac (fluoxetine).

"What has been known for 20, 30 years is that Prozac increases the level of serotonin [a neurotransmitter associated with good mood.]" But what wasn't known was why Prozac takes three or four weeks to start working.

"Stem cells in the brain go through several steps before they become neurons," Enikolopov said. Examining the cascade of events, his team found that "cells which are born from the stem cells, called amplifying progenitors, are the cells being targeted by Prozac," he said. According to Enikolopov, Prozac zeroes in on these amplifying progenitors and increases their numbers. Within three to four weeks, his team noticed an increased number of mature neurons.

Click here for the actual researchers Press Release. 

Teens suffer soap opera virus

Teens suffer soap opera virus | Reuters.com
LISBON (Reuters) – An illness that medical officials are calling the “Strawberries with Sugar Virus” is sweeping Portuguese schools as children complain of symptoms similar to those suffered by characters in a television soap opera. Continue reading “Teens suffer soap opera virus”

Indian Soap Operas changing Afghanistan.

Daily Times – Site Edition
Afghanistan is a deeply conservative Islamic society where family problems are invariably kept hidden behind a veil of privacy. The Indian soap operas are gaining popularity with every passing day and changing the culture.

A similar thing happened in Russia, except there it was Mexican Soaps (Novelas) that were the rage. On a trip to Russia, the stars were treated like royalty. These addictive soaps are as important in breaking down cultural barriers, as Rock music was in bringing down the Iron Curtain.

Record 385-pound lemon shark on fly tackle

! Education – News and Articles
Capt. Mike Delph, left, Key West, Fla., USA and Dr. Martin Arostegui, right, of Coral Gables, Fla., hold a 385-pound lemon shark before releasing it back in Florida Bay waters. The International Game Fish Association certified the catch as a world record, Tuesday, May 16, 2006 saying it is also the largest documented fish caught on fly tackle replacing a 356 lb. goliath grouper (jew fish) caught in 1967.

9/11 Loose Change, Michael Moore and the Convenience of Conspirancy

The Observer | Review | Chaos and cock-up always trump conspiracy
Alongside Hurricane Katrina, the tragedy of 9/11 is providing fertile ground for conspiracy theorists and the film industry. But this should hardly be surprising, says Mark Kermode. After all, conspiracies are comforting.

A worrying number of people still believe that the Apollo missions were faked.

Most of what the public knows about the Kennedy assassination is based on a string of excitably dramatic movies, from David Miller’s Executive Action (1973) to Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), which viewers have mistaken for verifiable truth. (Debunked here)
In his new Movie on Katrina, Spike Lee will present that the levees were deliberately detonated, by the government.

In the ongoing tradition, the video 9/11 Loose Change helped force the release of another Pentagon tape of the Pentagon crash (Click on picture to view). The film appears especially popular among young people immersed in a Web culture brimming with sites that question the credibility of government. They see 9/11 as the defining moment of their lives.

A quick search of Wikipedia, produces a slew of carefully researched debunkings including a scene-by-scene Word document and whole web-site (9/11 Myths) devoted to different theories. The Loose Change Web-site tries to counter “the Government did it”arguments. The majority of the Muslim world blames the jews for 9/11 . Andyou can still see Fahrenheit 9/11 to add to your paranoid. But few will take the time to read the patient research. Instead we will be passively entertained by videos.

Conservative writer David Horowitz, a former 1960s radical, says conspiratorial thinking can offer a world view that is somehow less scary than reality. “Conspiracy theories are a kind of secular religion,” he says, adding that campus faculties sometimes encourage anti-government feelings. “People feel great anxiety … by the thought that nobody’s in control.”

People believe in conspiracy theories because the truth “is either too simple or too remote,” says sociologist Clifton Bryant of Virginia Tech University, who has made a study of “deviant logic” and behavior.

“We’re always ready to believe something about which we know nothing,” he says.”

Update –majority of young people believe conspiracy theory. Thanks Daily Show & the Internet?

Search for 9/11 on this site for more links, such as:

www.snopes.com
The Urban Legends Reference Pages, containing entries about conspiracy claims such as the put options, the alleged early arrival of FEMA and the Pentagon attack. The forum also contains some intelligent discussion of conspiracy theories.
www.loosechangeguide.com
This is a viewer’s guide to the documentary “Loose Change,” which contains many of the conspiracy claims discussed in this article.
www.911myths.com
A great general source for all manner of conspiracy claims.

 

Saudis Nix Pictures of Women in Newspapers

Saudis Nix Pictures of Women in Newspapers – Yahoo! News
King Abdullah has told Saudi editors to stop publishing pictures of women as they could make young men go astray, newspapers reported Tuesday. The king's directive, made in a meeting with local editors, caused surprise as the monarch has been regarded a quiet reformer since he took office in the ultra-conservative country last August. In recent months, newspapers have published pictures of women — always wearing the traditional Muslim headscarf — to illustrate stories with increasing regularity.

IRAN’S (COSTLY) WAR ON AMERICA By AMIR TAHERI

IRAN'S (COSTLY) WAR ON AMERICA By AMIR TAHERI – New York Post Online Edition: postopinion
Nowhere is the cost of the so-called "War against the Infidel" more apparent than in Iran's oil industry. Projections made in 1977 envisaged the Iranian oil off-take to reach a daily capacity of 6.5 million barrels, with another 1.5 million available as emergency reserves. The capacity of the Kharg terminal, the chief export facility for Iranian oil, was increased from 5.5 million barrels a day to 8 million.

But lack of investment, and the virtual impossibility of accessing highly complex technology, has meant a steady decline. Today, the Islamic Republic produces something like 3.8 million barrels a day – a level Iran had surpassed in 1973.

Worse still, Iran has become an importer of petroleum products. Because the Islamic Republic failed to build enough refining capacity, it is now forced to secure nearly half of the nation's needs in gasoline and special fuels through imports. So nearly 30 percent of Iran's income from oil exports is spent on imports of petroleum products.

Iran's gas industry is in even poorer shape. Projections made in 1977 saw Iran emerging as the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas by the year 2000. Iran owns the second-largest deposits of natural gas in the world, after Russia, almost 20 percent of the global reserves. Yet it is importing natural gas from Turkmenistan to feed the country's only gas-turbine power station (at Neka on the Caspian Sea).