Month: February 2007

Grenada thanks China for new stadium with a rendition of wrong anthem

Shanghaiist: Grenada thanks China for new stadium with a rendition of Taiwan anthem
The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada suffered a huge diplomatic embarrassment at the inauguration of a US$40 million China-financed stadium built as a gift from Beijing when its police band decided it would perform the Taiwan anthem instead of the March of the Volunteers. Oops.

The Associated Press reports that Chinese Ambassador Qian Hongshan and scores of blue-uniformed Chinese laborers who built the new stadium were “visibly uncomfortable as Taiwan’s anthem echoed inside the 20,000-seat venue on Saturday”. Continue reading “Grenada thanks China for new stadium with a rendition of wrong anthem”

Can a brain scan prove you’re telling the truth?

Can a brain scan prove you’re telling the truth? – tech – 06 February 2007 – New Scientist Tech

If you saw the latest episode of “24”, you saw a MRI-like brain scan, which told Jack that his brother was lying to him during interrogation.
Insurance companies are helping to popularise a new “truth-telling” industry in the US which uses brain scans to determine whether or not people are lying. But experts are already questioning the ethics and validity of such tests.

Jonathan Marks, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, while researching the subject at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank,  recently saw a copy of a confidential document that describes the use of MRI to examine the responses of suspects’ brains to keywords that could betray knowledge of enemy activity. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union are similarly suggestive.

Marooned on a Mega Yacht

Marooned off Key West
Sitting in plain view, in ankle-deep turquoise water just 3 miles away from the docks and mobs of tourists at Mallory Square, lies $30 million in treasure.

For 15 months, pirates and other assorted seafaring scalawags have tried to plunder it, but they have been rebuffed, sometimes at the point of a gun, by an unlikely swashbuckler: 63-year-old multimillionaire tycoon Peter Halmos of Palm Beach.

Update: Stuck MegaYacht Finally Free

Update Megayacht Stuck again

And today, after making peace with the U.S. government, Halmos is free to pluck his bounty from the sea. UPDATE – Still Stuck! Continue reading “Marooned on a Mega Yacht”

Why do they hate us?

Bin Laden, The Left and Me – washingtonpost.com
The thrust of the radical Muslim critique of America is that Islam is under attack from the global forces of atheism and immorality — and that the United States is leading that attack.

WTC1Contrary to President Bush’s view, they don’t hate us for our freedom, either. Rather, they hate us for how we use our freedom. When Planned Parenthood International opens clinics in non-Western countries and dispenses contraceptives to unmarried girls, many see it as an assault on prevailing religious and traditional values. When human rights groups use their interpretation of international law to pressure non-Western countries to overturn laws against abortion or to liberalize laws regarding homosexuality, the traditional sensibilities of many of the world’s people are violated.

In other words, bin Laden believes that the United States represents the pagan depravity that Muslims have a duty to resist. The literature of radical Islam, such as the works of Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb, resonates with these themes. One radical sheik even told a European television station a few years ago that although Europe is more decadent than America, the United States is the more vital target because it is U.S. culture — not Swedish culture or French culture — that is spreading throughout the world.


 20 Face Lash for Dancing in Saudi Arabia

Iraq’s battlefield slang

Iraq’s battlefield slang – Los Angeles Times
World War II veterans invoked Murphy’s Law: “If something can go wrong, it will.” As you’ll see in the brief lexicon I’ve pulled together below, the New Greatest Generation (the generation fighting the war on terror) dubs it “the suck.” (Author and columnist Austin Bay has a PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. A colonel (retired) in the U.S. Army Reserve, in 2004 Austin served on active duty in Iraq.)

“Embrace the suck” isn’t merely a wisecrack; it’s an encyclopedic experience rendered as an epigram, gritty shorthand for “Face it, soldier. I’ve been there. War ain’t easy. Now deal with the difficulty and let’s get on with the mission.” Thanks to Caroline Collier for passing this on. Continue reading “Iraq’s battlefield slang”

Re-inventing the notorious Carlyle Group

Carlyle Changes Its Stripes
n the two decades since private equity firms first stormed the business world, they’ve been called a lot of things, from raiders to barbarians. But only one firm has been tagged in the popular imagination with warmongering, treason, and acting as cold-eyed architects of government conspiracies.

Its ranks were larded with the politically connected, including former Presidents, Cabinet members, even former British Prime Minister John Major. It used its partners’ collective relationships to build a lucrative business buying, transforming, and selling companies–particularly defense companies that did business with governments. 

Carlyle might have continued happily in that niche except for the confluence of three events. First there were the terrorist attacks of September 11. In the aftermath, conspiracy theorists seized on Carlyle’s huge profits, intense secrecy, and close dealings with wealthy Saudi investors. The scrutiny reached a crescendo in Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, which made Carlyle seem like the sort of company image-conscious investors like public pension funds might choose to avoid. The second factor was the tsunami of capital that has been sloshing around the globe for five years, providing almost limitless funding for the kind of dealmaking that is Carlyle’s specialty. All that liquidity has brought with it immense opportunity as well as stiff new competition. Finally, there’s the succession issue. Carlyle’s baby boomer founders can see retirement around the corner. And they badly want the firm, their legacy, to outlast them. Continue reading “Re-inventing the notorious Carlyle Group”

Widow held in lottery winner’s slaying

Rio rages against accused ‘gold digging’ widow – World – theage.com.au
POLICE have arrested the young widow of a multimillionaire lottery winner while prosecutors decide whether to charge her with his killing, a crime that has gripped the country and generated public fury against a woman viewed as a ruthless gold digger.

Ms Almeida, 29, was the girlfriend of Mr Senna, a former subsistence farmer and butcher before he became rich. Mr Senna, who had part of both legs amputated because of diabetes, got around town in a motorised cart.

In July 2005, 54 year-old Mr Senna was the sole winner of a national lottery worth the equivalent of about $A30 million. He bought a sprawling ranch in Rio Bonito, a rural town 75 kilometres north-east of Rio, and married Ms Almeida.

Mr Senna’s family accused Ms Almeida of pressuring Mr Senna to change his will, removing 11 brothers and sisters as potential beneficiaries. Mr Senna wrote a new will leaving the money only to Ms Almeida and a daughter, Renata. Continue reading “Widow held in lottery winner’s slaying”