+ Listening to music can reduce chronic pain by up to 21 per cent and depression by up to 25 per cent, according to a paper in the latest UK-based Journal of Advanced Nursing.

+ Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State.

+ In a move that is raising hackles in Moscow, the US is proposing to install an anti-missile defence system in central Europe to counter any future attack from a nuclear-armed Iran.

+ Veckans topplista (fast jag litar inte riktigt på last.fm:s servrar)

01 Shabazz the Disciple
02 New Delhi FM
03 Xela
04 Brand Nubian
05 Jedi Mind Tricks Presents Army of the Pharaos
06 Raekwon
07 Led Zeppelin
08 Bruce Springsteen
09 Jim Jarmusch
10 Pugh Rogefeldt

+ Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'. Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products. Jag är shockad! Det kan inte vara sant!

+ When recalling memories of negative or positive events that helped to shape our identity, such as a break-up or marriage, we tend to downplay the fear, anger or other negative emotions experienced at the time and remember more of the positive emotions, new study findings indicate.

+ Via Mind Hacks: Peru: Hell and Back—Video Exclusive. Deep in the Amazon jungle, writer Kira Salak tests ayahuasca, a shamanistic medicinal ritual, and finds a terrifying—but enlightening—world within.

+ Iraqi security forces have captured a senior aide of al Qaeda leader in Iraq Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Baghdad, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Monday. :D :D :D Hur många "senior aides" har denna mystiske jordanier egentligen?

+ Briljant krönika av Guillou om antisemitism: Israelerna framstår som gravt rasistiska. I en undersökning som det israeliska Centret mot rasism nyligen publicerade framstår dock en majoritet av israelerna som gravt rasistiska. 68 procent skulle vägra att bo i ett hyreshus där det fanns en arab. 63 procent anser att araberna utgör ett "demografiskt hot" (föder för många barn, blir för många) och ett hot mot statens säkerhet. Och 40 procent stöder tanken på en total etnisk rensning i Israel.

+ In what is being viewed as the gravest allegation to date of war crimes in Iraq, a military investigation is expected to present findings in Baghdad next week that a small group of troops shot dead 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including five men in a taxi, and women and children at homes in the town last November 19. Other marines then tried to cover up the killings, the investigation has found.

+ Saddam and Osama.

+ New materials that can change the way light and other forms of radiation bend around an object may provide a way to make objects invisible, researchers said.
Two separate teams of researchers have come up with theories on ways to use experimental "metamaterials" to cloak an object and hide it from visible light, infrared light, microwaves and perhaps even sonar probes.

+ Tim Boucher har en intressant post som spekulerar om hur nätet håller på att bli medvetet: The Evolution of Spam-Consciousness.

+ Human ears can wiggle as well as produce their own sounds, and now researchers have a better understanding of how these unusual processes work. (...) The research into sounds made by the ear, meanwhile, is surprisingly illuminating when it comes to gender and sexuality issues. It turns out heterosexual men and women and homosexual women appear to produce different levels of ear noise.

+ Trying just one cigarette may not be so harmless for non-smokers after all. Scientists have discovered that a single cigarette has a "sleeper effect" that can increase a person's vulnerability for three years or more to becoming a regular smoker.

+ The Dutch creator of a video game-based movie, which the U.S. government says is being used as a recruitment tool by Muslim militants, says that his home-made creation was nothing more than a bit of fun.

+ Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.

+ This man has invented more than 80% of the world’s known hallucinogenic drugs, has had more than 4000 psychedelic experiences, and in 1967 created the drug ecstasy. Meet Dr Alexander Shulgin, groundbreaking scientist and explorer of the human mind..

+ A new edition of William Burroughs' book 'The Yage Letters' reveals how the writer was transformed by a trip to South America in search of 'the ultimate fix'.

+ The US military plans to deploy a hi-tech laser device in Iraq which is capable of pinpointing sniper fire, a top Pentagon scientist has said.

+ Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he is ready to negotiate peace with the Palestinians but not until Hamas rejects violence and recognises Israel. Samtidigt på Västbanken.. At least four Palestinians have been killed and about 30 injured during an Israeli army raid to arrest militants in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

+ Attenborough: Climate change is the major challenge facing the world.

+ Israeli security forces and settlers are being allowed to perpetrate abuses against Palestinians with no real fear of being brought to justice, Amnesty International said in a report on Tuesday.

+ The United States' reported use of secret CIA-run prisons for terrorism suspects amounts to a policy of "disappearances", human rights watchdog Amnesty International said today in its annual report.

+ Via Daily Grail: View fullscreen 360 degree interactive panoramas from the main locations in Dan Browns fiction The Da Vinci Code. Grymt mäktig site i övrigt också.

+ Amazing interactive nightclub tables.

+ Veckans topplista:

01 Bruce Springsteen
02 Roky Erickson
03 Augustus Pablo
04 Boot Camp Clik
05 Spacemen 3
06 Charlie Parker
07 Ruff squad
08 Brand Nubian
09 Tommy Boy
10 Happy Mondays

+ Vapenvila à la Israel: Gaza strike brings family tragedy.

The small figure of Mariyah Amin lies in intensive care in a Gaza City hospital. A fragment of shrapnel from an Israeli rocket has severed her spinal cord, and she will never move her arms or legs again. In fact Mariyah will never even breathe again - at least not on her own. Tubes link her to an artificial respirator, and every few seconds it fills her lungs. This is how it will have to be for the rest of her life - and she is only three years old. (...) Mariyah was not the only casualty. Her five-year-old brother, Mohannad, her mother, Naimeh, and her grandmother, Hannan, are all dead.

+ Government to force handover of encryption keys.

The UK Government is preparing to give the police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys, a move which has outraged some security and civil rights experts. (...) Anyone who refuses to hand over a key to the police would face up to two years' imprisonment. Under current anti-terrorism legislation, terrorist suspects now face up to five years for withholding keys.

I vår sköna nya värld är hemligheter per definition illegala.

+ En intressant artikel om varför all musik låter lika jävlig nu för tiden: What Happened To Dynamic Range?

In December, 2001, several prominent individuals in the recording industry served on a panel to judge the best engineered CD for the Grammy's. After listening to over 200 CDs, they couldn't find a single CD worthy of a Grammy based on the criteria they were given. Everything they listened to was squashed to death with heavy amounts compression.

+ Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd: The Qur'anic Concept of Justice.

+ Som väntat var historien om att Iran ville införa speciella kläder för religiösa minoriteter bara propaganda.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to condemn Iran on Friday for an anti-Semitic law that appears not to exist. (...) [W]estern journalists based in Iran told their Canadian colleagues that they were unaware of any such law. And Iranian politicians - including a Jewish legislator in Tehran - were infuriated by the Post report, which they called false. Politician Morris Motamed, one of about 25,000 Jews who live in Iran, called the report a slap in the face to his minority community. "Such a plan has never been proposed or discussed in parliament," Motamed told the Associated Press.

+ Jag skrev för en vecka sedan om hur brittiska försvarsdepartementet påstod sig ha löst UFO-frågan. Enligt rapporten är UFO:n varken något slags psykiskt fenomen eller
utomjordlingar, utan snarare ett atmosfäriskt fenomen som vi typ inte vet något om ännu. När jag läste det kom jag att tänka på en artikel jag via Rigorous Intuition läst i the Guardian, men jag kunde för allt i världen inte hitta länken. Idag hittade jag av en händelse länken, men då hade Guardian tagit ner artikeln. Så kan det gå på internet. Men jag skulle fortfarande gärna vilja veta hur man förklarar följande händelse med plasmateorin:

In July 1977 Flt Lt A M Wood reported "bright objects hanging over the sea". The MoD document adds that the RAF officer said the closest object was "luminous, round and four to five times larger than a Whirlwind helicopter". The UFOs were reported to be three miles out to sea at a height of about 5,000ft. The officer, whose report is supported by Cpl Torrington and Sgt Graham, said: "The objects separated. Then one went west of the other, as it manoeuvred it changed shape to become body-shaped with projections like arms and legs." The men who were positioned at the picket post at the RAF station were able to observe the strange objects for an hour and 40 minutes.

At the same time a radar station detected the objects in exactly the same position as the men had observed them. It registered them to be between 30 to 35 degrees before they disappeared from the screen.

The report describes Flt Lt Wood as "reliable and sober". It adds: "Two contacts were noted on radar, both T84 and T85, at RAF Boulmer. They were also seen on the Staxton Wold radar picture which is relayed to West Drayton... On seeing the objects on radar the duty controller checked with the SRO at RAF West Drayton as to whether he could see the objects on radar supplied from RAF Staxton Wold."

Uppsnappat via Rigorous Intuition som sagt. Själva artikeln från the Guardian låg tidigare här. Vem vet, den kanske dyker upp igen. :)

+ Håller just nu på att läsa Emmanuel Carreres I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Mind of Philip K. Dick. För den som är det minsta intresserad av PKD:s liv, verk och filosofi är denna bok ett måste. Oerhört bra! Svenskar köper den nog billigast via Play.com Kostar typ en hundring inklusive porto.

+ Washington Post: U.S. Secretly Backing Warlords in Somalia. The latest clashes, last week and over the weekend, were some of the most violent in Mogadishu since the end of the American intervention in 1994, and left 150 dead and hundreds more wounded. Leaders of the interim government blamed U.S. support of the militias for provoking the clashes.

+ "Frihetens hemland" slår nya rekord i misstänksamhet: Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions. WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions.

+ Angry Arab: I apologize to my readers. I really try to keep you informed of the regular arrests of "senior Zarqawi aides." The arrests, however, have been occurring at a rate that I have not been able to keep up with. So the other day, the US captured yet another "senior Zarqawi aide." That leaves a mere 580900000 senior Zaqawi aides at large.

+ Jag hoppas verkligen att detta bara är propaganda: The Canadian and Australian prime ministers expressed concern at unconfirmed reports that said Iran may force non-Muslims to wear colored badges in public so they can be identified. Tycker rapporten verkar lite suspekt, men om det skulle stämma är det ett skrämmande tecken på hur förvirrad den iranska regimen blivit.

+ Tim Boucher: Is There A Tsunami Heading for the Pacific USA?

+ They don't bring along an umbrella or sunglasses that might be needed later, but researchers say apes, like people, can plan ahead. Both orangutans and bonobos were able to figure out which tool would work in an effort to retrieve grapes, and were able to remember to bring that tool along hours later, researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

+ More than 15,000 Turks, from students to judges still in their robes, marched in the capital to support secularism and to condemn a courtroom shooting that killed one judge and wounded four others.

+ The United States should close its Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba and its secret prisons across the world, the UN says.

+ Detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp used improvised weapons to fight with guards today as a fellow prisoner tried to hang himself, the US military said. The detainees used parts of fans and light fittings to fight off guards trying to prevent the suicide attempt, according to Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Cuban-based naval base. Three other detainees had also tried to commit suicide today using hoarded prescription drugs, Fox News reported.

+ Tyskland har protesterat diplomatiskt hos Sverige mot att Hamasministern Atef Adwan fick visum. Och nu går också Israel till storoffensiv och kallar Sverige det mest fientliga landet i Europa. Åh! Tack tack, det värmer.

+ Ansiktsuttrycket på killen i inledningen av detta inslag är fan oslagbart. Kan inte sluta skratta. :D A computer expert has described his astonishment at seeing the BBC's 24-hour news channel interview supposed taxi driver Guy Goma in the mistaken belief it was him. Guy Kewney - a white, bearded technology expert - was astonished to see himself appear on screen as a black man with an apparent French accent. (med video)

+ How to Pirate a Vinyl Record. :)

+ Giant structures stretching more than a billion light years across have been revealed by two new maps of the distribution of galaxies in the universe. The updated atlases lend more support to the idea that the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy.

+ Soccer hooligans could be silenced by a new sound system that neutralises chanting with a carefully timed echo. Stadiums could use the technique to defuse abusive or racist chants, say the Dutch researchers behind it. The echoes trip up efforts to synchronise a chant, neutralising an unwelcome message without drowning out the overall roar of a crowd.



+ Veckans topplista:

01 The Small Faces
02 Chet Baker
03 Shabazz the Disciple
04 Mirah
05 Lush
06 Mobb Deep
07 Dub Tractor
08 Mojave 3
09 Jan Garbarek
10 Robyn Hitchcock

+ Hoppsan. Råkade visst sabba min kod för denna sida. Ska fixa länkarna vid tillfälle.

+ Jävligt snygg och lite rolig kritik av socialdemokratin: Maktmissbruk.se

+ Från Asia Times: Islamism, fascism and terrorism.

+ Abdurrahman Wahid, Indonesiens f d president: Right Islam vs. Wrong Islam: Muslims and non-Muslims must unite to defeat the Wahhabi ideology.

An extreme and perverse ideology in the minds of fanatics is what directly threatens us (specifically, Wahhabi/Salafi ideology--a minority fundamentalist religious cult fueled by petrodollars). Yet underlying, enabling and exacerbating this threat of religious extremism is a global crisis of misunderstanding.

(...)

The Sunni (as opposed to Shiite) fundamentalists' goals generally include: claiming to restore the perfection of the early Islam practiced by Muhammad and his companions, who are known in Arabic as al-Salaf al-Salih, "the Righteous Ancestors"; establishing a utopian society based on these Salafi principles, by imposing their interpretation of Islamic law on all members of society; annihilating local variants of Islam in the name of authenticity and purity; transforming Islam from a personal faith into an authoritarian political system; establishing a pan-Islamic caliphate governed according to the strict tenets of Salafi Islam, and often conceived as stretching from Morocco to Indonesia and the Philippines; and, ultimately, bringing the entire world under the sway of their extremist ideology.

(...)

Fundamentalist strategy is often simple as well as brilliant. Extremists are quick to drape themselves in the mantle of Islam and declare their opponents kafir, or infidels, and thus smooth the way for slaughtering nonfundamentalist Muslims. Their theology rests upon a simplistic, literal and highly selective reading of the Quran and Sunnah (prophetic traditions), through which they seek to entrap the world-wide Muslim community in the confines of their narrow ideological grasp.

+ Har lagt till ett par nya länkar och rensat bort ett gäng i länklistan till höger.

+ Deviation. En kortfilm baserad på Counterstrike. :)

+ Sverige håller på att bli som USA... En man som var ute på krogbesök stod vid bardisken. Då kände han plötsligt hur någon nöp honom hårt i baken. Det inträffade i Skellefteå i februari. Nu åtalas en annan man för ofredande för att ha utfört den, för offret, kränkande handlingen. Den drabbade vill ha 5 000 kronor i skadestånd.

+ Stoppa pressarna! Det var visst al Qaida som låg bakom Londonbomberna ändå! There is now "considerable" circumstantial evidence that al-Qaida was linked to the July 7 London bombings that killed 52 innocent people, the government claimed for the first time last night.

+ The return of 'thought crimes' in Japan. Japan's government is pushing for the passage of an anti-conspiracy law with potentially far-reaching consequences. (...) In its present form, it could result in Japanese citizens being detained or punished for merely agreeing with one another. In combination with another statute that permits detention without charge, the new law could have a chilling effect on civil
liberties, including freedoms of speech and assembly and the right to organize.

+ Women are fine tuned subconsciously to detect the qualities they are looking for in a man - just by looking at his face, US research suggests.

+ Via Daily Grail:

When a belief is widely held in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, we call it a superstition. By that criterion, the most egrerious superstition of modern times, perhaps of all time, is the "scientific" belief in the non-existence of psi.

Thomas Etter

+ Och Whatreallyhappened påpekar att polisen nu säger att de påstådda Londonbombarna agerade på egen hand: London bombers acted alone: official. Men precis efter bombningarna var tidningarna fyllda av rapporter om att Al Qaida tagit på sig ansvaret. Hade nästan glömt det. Se här: A group calling itself “The Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe” posted a claim of responsibility for Thursday’s blasts in London, saying they were in retaliation for Britain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

+ Och Aangrifan bjuder på London Bombs - 10 unanswered questions.

+ Egyptian security forces brutalized activists and assaulted and detained journalists during a protest Thursday, May 11, in support of two senior judges facing a disciplinary court for blowing the whistle over irregularities that marred last year's legislative polls.

+ Via Michael Muhammad Knight, en intressant kortfilm om hiphop och The Nation of Gods and Earths.

+ Via Ran Prieur: Tough on crime, to hell with the causes of crime if they make money. Research shows a direct link between junk food and violent behaviour. But governments are in cahoots with the industry.

+ Och USA har visst råkat tappa bort 200 00 AK47:or... Some 200,000 guns the US sent to Iraqi security forces may have been smuggled to terrorists, it was feared yesterday. The 99-tonne cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms have vanished. Låter som något ur filmen Lord of War.

+ Kolla in Stephen Colbert som kör rätt dräpande komik på den närvarande George Bushs bekostnad: här. Spola fram till typ 53 min in i filmen så hittar du Colberts framträdande.

+ Via Celt Islam Soundsystem kommer detta korta klipp med Qadiri-sufis från Tjetjenien:


En till sufi-video hittar du här: This is some rare footage of a Murabitun sufi gathering in Granada-Spain recorded in the earily 1980's.

Och ännu mer! Chechen Sufi chants.

+ Aftonbladet har visst publicerat John Pilgers utmärkta artikel om dödsskvadroner i Irak i deras nätupplaga. Läs här: Dödsskvadroner ska krossa det sista av Irak.

Nu när Zarqawi har ersatts av ”sekteristiskt våld” och ”inbördeskrig” handlar den stora nyheten om sunnimuslimers angrepp på shiamuslimska moskéer och basarer. Den verkliga nyheten, som inte rapporteras i CNN:s ”huvudfåra”, är att Salvadoralternativet har plockats fram i Irak. Med detta avses den terrorkampanj vilken bedrivs av dödsskvadroner som beväpnas och utbildas av USA och som attackerar såväl sunni- som shiamuslimer. Målet är att starta ett riktigt inbördeskrig och bryta sönder Irak, vilket var Bushadministrationens ursprungliga krigsmål.

+ Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by "name", scientists in Fife have found.

+ 'Robin Hood' gang rob gourmet stores in bid to feed Hamburg's poor. :)

+ Pain of Hamas boycott worse than feared for Gaza's people.

The international boycott of Hamas is having some unintended consequences. [Åh, hemskt oväntat!] Staff at the Palestinian Authority's environmental protection agency are grounded for lack of petrol money and are no longer able to monitor levels of industrial waste and sewage entering the water supply.

Surgeons at Gaza's biggest hospital have suspended non-essential surgery for lack of sutures, laboratory kits and anaesthetics.

The owner of a once-prosperous supermarket is pondering whether he can extend the credit limit of customers - who long since ran out of cash - without going broke himself.

As the World Bank re-ported at the weekend, the economic crisis confronting the Palestinians is even worse than that projected when international donors announced a cut-off of direct aid to the Hamas-led government.

Its own estimate that personal incomes would sink by 30 per cent this year while the number of people living in poverty would rise from 44 to 67 per cent of the population appears, in the words of the report, to have been too rosy.

Amerika och Israel sätter verkligen ett fint exempel i hur man bemöter den framväxande demokratin i arabvärlden.

+ If you're looking for a reason why Zacarias Moussaoui suddenly testified today to a version of the 9/11 plotline that sounds more like the Official story than even the official Whitewash Commission report, this video may have the answer. In it, NBC news reporter Pete Williams lets slip that Moussaoui is wearing a "Stun belt" underneath his clothing controlled by US Marshals. (!)

+ Och snart öppnar Iran sin nya oljebörs: Iran wants oil market in Euros. Antar att vi får räkna med intensifierad krigshets framöver.

+ Britain’s defence intelligence chiefs have come up with a detailed scientific explanation to solve the mystery of unidentified flying objects. After a four-year inquiry, they have concluded that most sightings can be explained by a little-understood atmospheric phenomenon. Ah! Förklara ett mysterium med ett annat!

+ A pet dog sits on command, but nobody expects an insect to follow human instructions. So it may come as a surprise to learn that researchers recently succeeded in controlling cockroaches with tiny mobile robots. The results hint at a future where we can interact and communicate with many different kinds of animal.

+ WTF? Thousands of tourists and local residents witnessed a mirage of high clarity lasting for four hours off the shore of Penglai City in east China's Shandong Province on Sunday. Mists rising on the shore created an image of a city, with modern high-rise buildings, broad city streets and bustling cars as well as crowds of people all clearly visible. Finns bilder och förklaring till fenomenet.

+ Tim Boucher har ett intressant inlägg om hur vi kanske redan förlorat kampen mot övervakningssamhället: All Tracking, All the Time.

+ Via Daily Grail: The Cloud Appreciation Society. Magisk liten sajt med fint fotogalleri.

+ Den här veckan ser min mp3-topplista ut såhär enligt last.fm:

01 Das EFX
02 Lush
03 Inspiral Carpets
04 Bobby Beausoleil & the Freedom Orchestra
05 The Small Faces
06 Son Kite
07 Muslimgauze
08 Slowdive
09 Manitoba
10 The Streets

+ UFO sightings caused by freak weather, says MoD report.

+ Russia will seek the removal tonight of the core of a UK-sponsored draft United Nations resolution on Iran because it fears that it could pave the way to unilateral military action to curb the Iranian nuclear programme.

+ Hamas sanctions squeeze the life out of West Bank.

+ What Would Kierkegaard Do?

+ Via Angry Arab: In Saudi Arabia, a Resurgence of Sufism.

+ Missa inte detta: Stairway to Heaven.

"My parents are Jehovah's Witnesses and so I had a very strict Christian upbringing. There was a suspicion of rock and pop music, and some music, Led Zeppelin in particular, was branded downright evil. The rumor was that if you played Stairway to Heaven in reverse you could hear messages that would urge you to follow the devil's path. Supposedly even if you listened to the music in a normal manner you would subconsciously pick up these messages and act accordingly. In my early teens, I destroyed some music that I thought I shouldn't listen to or have at home. Stairway to Heaven was a difficult one for my friends and me. We thought the song and the lyrics were so utterly beautiful and yet we couldn't listen to it out of fear of what could happen to us if we did. That's the tension I felt by listening to this record: a teenage attraction to something dangerously beautiful. I am still intrigued how these myths are created and the effect they can have. So I started to learn to sing the song and its lyrics in reverse. After three months the job was done. I went up to the steps outside Saint Paul's Cathedral in London and performed it for an audience of confused passers-by, pigeons, and a video camera. Back home I reversed the tape and put a karaoke track underneath."

Via Boing Boing och I'm Just Sayin'.

+ Copyriot har en del intressant att säga om Wikipedia: Kritiskt kring Wikipedia.

+ Terrorists, beware the ultimate sting: a British company has developed a device to detect explosives at airports with the help of specially trained honey bees.

+ Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed. The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade.

+ A British military helicopter apparently was hit by a missile Saturday and crashed in the southern port of Basra, triggering a confrontation in which jubilant Iraqis pelted British troops with stones, hurled firebombs and shouted slogans in support of a radical Shiite cleric.

+ South Korean protesters clashed with police for the second day on Friday at a planned site for a new U.S. military base, leaving scores of people wounded, some seriously, officials and witnesses said.

+ Tim Boucher kommer med mer oroande nyheter: Digital Noise ID’s Cameras. "Interesting new development in the field of forensics. It seems that they have found a method of analyzing noise patterns in digital images, so that they can be correlated to the specific camera which took the photos."

+ Nu testar jag en ny design. Får se om jag får det att funka. Ha lite överseende om saker ser skumt ut. :)

+ Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

+ Bush says fight against terror is 'World War III'.

+ Heja Sverige! Sweden has granted an entry visa to a Palestinian government minister and member of the islamist Hamas movement, putting EU unity in dealing with the terrorist-branded group to the test.

+ Monkeys keep turning out to be smarter than people think they are. Researchers have shown that they can count to four and are aware of differences between languages like Dutch and Japanese, even though they don't known what is being said. Now, Harvard psychologists find that monkeys can draw correct conclusions about novel situations. For example, shown a white towel that turns blue, a blue knife, and a glass of blue paint, they can figure out that the paint not the knife is responsible for the change in color.

+ The Economist: Reefer madness. IF CANNABIS were unknown, and bioprospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer, and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia—many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body. In reality, cannabis has been with humanity for thousands of years and is considered by many governments (notably America's) to be a dangerous drug without utility.

+ John Pilger: Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration.

+ Daily Grail recenserar Daniel Pinchbecks nya bok: 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl

+ A scientific report commissioned by the US government has concluded there is "clear evidence" of climate change caused by human activities.

+ En till bild på maskerad svensk polis:


Extra intressant eftersom Bodström infört maskeringsförbud för vanligt folk.

+ Apropå "kravallerna" i Stockholm, så kändes det väldigt märkligt att se civilklädda poliser springa omkring med teleskopbatonger och veva på folk. Hur folk ska kunna veta att de rakade biffarna i civila kläder är poliser och inte lokala nazister med batonger vet jag inte. Och om jag inte ser helt fel så har vi på nedanstående bild t o m en maskerad civilpolis! Bodström sitter nog hemma och dreglar av lycka.


+ Israel has shelled the northern Gaza Strip with artillery fire, wounding seven Palestinians, including two children.

+ Possessing marijuana, cocaine and even heroin will no longer be a crime in Mexico if they are in small amounts for personal use under new reforms passed by Congress that quickly drew U.S. criticism.

+ Storms battered parts of Texas with wind up to 100 mph and hail the size of baseballs, damaging buildings and slamming parked airplanes into one another at an airport.