Max: Ummm... Wow

Via The BBC

"I put my finger in," Mr Spievak says, pointing towards the propeller of a model airplane, "and that's when I sliced my finger off."

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he'd lost it for good.

Today though, you wouldn't know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it's all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.

Max: A Fucking Travesty

Vets say they feel misled about GI benefits

Cheated. Baited and switched. That's how veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan say they feel about military recruiters who sold them on how the GI Bill would benefit them.

Soldiers, Marines and airmen spoke Tuesday at a Capitol Hill rally sponsored by a group called the "Campaign for a New GI Bill." They complained they were not given enough funds from the bill to cover college expenses.

Najwa McQueen said she joined the Louisiana National Guard in 2004 on what she thought was a promise to help pay for her college education.

"They kind of sell you a dream," she said after the rally. "You think you're going to get all of this stuff and in reality you don't get that. I just kind of believed what my recruiter told me, which is not the truth."

McQueen left behind her husband and 18-month-old daughter in October 2004 and served 10 months in Iraq. After her service she enrolled in college and found her total benefits from the GI Bill would be $400 a month for four months, totaling $1,600. Her classes alone, she said, cost $1,000 each.

Max: Atheism in the Millitary

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

One of the darkest developments of many dark developments in the Bush years has been the slow ascent of Christianism as a core value of the military. The promotion of Christianists throughout the armed services, the insistence by the president that no public institution be regarded as a place where religion should be silent, clear discrimination against Jews and atheists in military educational institutions: the possibility of a secular military dedicated to defending all Americans regardless of their faith or lack of it has been called into question under the current administration. The resilience of the ban on gays - while the military has granted a record number of waivers to criminals - can only be understood if one sees the US military as an increasingly religious institution at this point, and not a rational secular one. The latest story of an atheist soldier being threatened by superiors is believable in this context.

Once again, Sullivan shows his fellow Christians what "Christian" -- Christ like -- means as he calls Christians in the military out for their mistreatment of Atheists in uniform.

Max: Mandelbrot

This video zooms in on the Mandelbrot Set. The image doubles in size 315 times. To show the whole set once we finish zooming in would require a display bigger than the entire Universe.

Neat.

Charles W. Howard: How To Pick Your Pen Name

From the ever New and Weird Jeff Vandermeer

So, what’s your literary pen name? THIS IS THE OFFICIAL FORMULA (as created by, um, me):

(1) Use the first name of your favorite writer as your first name.
(2) Use the name of your first pet as your middle name or for your middle initial (if your pet had a separate last name…you’re a freak).
(3) Use the first or last name of your favorite character in fiction–your choice–as your last name.

Thus, I would be Vladimir Tiko Ahab…er, or not.

Max: My Life

There are some days that being a mentally ill, intellectually deficient loser with no money and no prospects just isn't as fun as it sounds.

Jericho: The PETA Prize

You've heard of the X-Prize. Well, the fine people at PETA now have their own prize. If PETA's plan succeeds, the future will arrive in the summer of 2012.

What are we talking about? Lab grown meat.

"What's the big deal?" you say. "We've had tofurkey for years!" you say. We're not talking about a meat substitute. We're talking about real meat or nearly real meat - but meat that never left the factory or was ever next to a bone. No animal had to suffer the trials of factory farming or had to die so you could enjoy a tender, juicy steak. This is guilt-free meat - and there might be other benefits.

I first came across this idea while reading Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. The idea is that if you can grow meat in the lab, you don't have to kill an animal and you use the materials in question more efficiently. It takes about five pounds of grain to get one pound of beef. Imagine if you could get a pound of beef for just two pounds of grain or even one to one. The rest of that grain could be used to feed people - lowering the over all price of grain. Not to mention changing the carbon footprint required to raise cattle.

Plus, there could be other benefits. What if the fat in your steak was GOOD for you? Well, if you are building meat in a lab, it shouldn't be too difficult to make the bad fats into good fats. I'm sure many of you have heard that meat fat is bad for you. You've probably also heard that Omega 3 fats are necessary for good health. Well, with a few changes, the Omega 6 fatty acids found in meat could be changed to Omega 3 fatty acids in lab grown meat. Then, your steak would not only be something that didn't kill an animal, but it would also be "health food". They could also enrich the steak with vitamins and minerals and other healthy ingredients. Imagine if you felt good about feeding your kid a McDonald's cheese burger?

I haven't agreed with many of PETA's methods and ideas across the years. But, encouraging this kind of research in this way is exactly where organizations like PETA should go in my opinion. Instead of throwing red paint on fur coats, encourage industry to find ways to not need to use animal based products. It benefits everyone - including the yummy cows!

Max: Groovin' on the Enterprise

KAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jericho: My Life in a Nutshell

This is a recent email string between myself and a friend. The string has been slightly edited to protect the creeps involved!


Friend: Wanna run off to Mexico? Wait, too warm. The San Juans? Nah, too rural. Hmmm Vancouver, BC?


Me: I'm in for BC and all points north. When do we leave?

Wait - is this a "Ferris Bueler" thing, a quick vacation thing or are we gee ohh ehch enn ... gohn? :)

I'd prefer the latter!


Friend: Well, we should wait until tomorrow – I have to get some money. Canada is expensive nowadays.


Me: At this stage I don't care about rural. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I care about warm, either. Someplace cheap and far away sounds really good.

You still haven't told me if this is a vacation or if we are running away forever ... ?

Are we going to give the spouses a chance to come along, or are we just leaving notes that say "You should have known better!" ... ?


Friend: I have no plans to come back. I'm ok with giving the spouses a shot.


Me: Okay, so, we leave tomorrow.

Tonight is going to take a lot of planning. We're going to fuck our credit - so we should look for a non-extraditionary country.

I hear Cyprus is becoming quite the little bed of hedonistic evil these days. Lots of Republican plots and international intrigue. I don't know about their extradition status. Interested?


Friend: I don't think they can get you extradited for credit issues. That is usually a criminal issue. What we need is a place where we can live cheaply but has air conditioning.


Me: Dubai?


Friend: You think we can live cheaply in Dubai? Are you nuts?

Afghanistan, Gabon, Philippines, Algeria, Guinea, Qatar, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Rwanda, Bahrain, Indonesia, Samoa, Bangladesh, Iran, Sao Tome e Principe, Benin, Ivory Coast, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan, Jordan, Senegal, Botswana, Kuwait, Somalia, Brunei, Laos, Sudan, Burkina, Faso, Lebanon, Syria, Burundi, Libya, Togo, Cambodia, Madagascar, Tunisia, Cameroon, Mali, Uganda, Cape Verde, Maldives, Central African Republic Mauritania, United Arab Emirates, Chad, Mongolia, Vanuatu, China, Morocco, Vietnam Comoros, Mozambique, Yemen, Djibouti, Nepal, Yemen, South Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Zaire, Ethiopia Oman, Zimbabwe


Me: Oh! I've got it. You'll love this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novo_Hamburgo


Friend: I don't understand.


Me: Novo Hamburgo! It's our new home!

It's Brasil. It doesn't look too hot or too rich. It's near(ish) to water. It has a serious German influence (you like, yes?).

Check it out!

We sell our cars and what not. We set up a series of train routes, maybe a cheap plane if we can find one, as far south as we can. Then we go by bus. Then we go native!

Once we are there, we buy a little business. I should be able to cash out my 401k - more than enough to start a business and put a down payment on a nice place.

We don't even necessarily have to kill our credit ratings. We just pay our bills from there. We should be prepared to renounce our citizenship to apply for a visa or permanent residence or citizenship.

What do you think?


Friend: I can learn Portuguese!


Me: This is what I'm saying!

So, how do you want to break it to the spouses? Mine's in class tonight until 10 PM. If you can talk yours into it, come to our place and we'll talk Steph into it.

What do you think?


Friend: I'm worried that you are serious. :)


Me: Don't worry ... of course I'm serious! Are you?


Friend: No. I'm too practical. Sorry.


Me: There's no way I could ever talk Steph into it. Move even further from her parents? I'm sure she'd rather divorce me.

I'd pull a stunt like this in a minute!

Max: Sexpelled

Max: Charles Darwin Online

The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

This site contains Darwin's complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.

Max: Libertarian Paternalism

Designing better choices

The director of food services for a big-city school system hatches an interesting idea: If she changes the arrangement and display of school food, will it alter kids' decisions about what to eat?

Without modifying menus, she decides to place the desserts first on the cafeteria line in one school, last in another and on a separate line altogether in others. She varies the location of other foods as well. The results are dramatic. Simply by rearranging the cafeteria, the consumption of many items increases or decreases.

This example is a product of our imaginations, but we know from similar real-world experiments -- in supermarket design, for example -- that the arrangement of settings is important to the choices consumers make. Behavior can be greatly influenced by small changes in the context. And the influence can be exercised for better or for worse. In the cafeteria, no doubt a careful designer could get kids to eat more healthy food and less junk.

Max: Did Zeus Use Lasers?

Laser triggers electrical activity in thunderstorm

A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm.

At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity akin to Benjamin Franklin's silk kite string. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves.

'This was an important first step toward triggering lightning strikes with laser beams,' says Jérôme Kasparian of the University of Lyon in France. 'It was the first time we generated lighting precursors in a thundercloud.' The next step of generating full-blown lightning strikes may come, he adds, after the team reprograms their lasers to use more sophisticated pulse sequences that will make longer-lived filaments to further conduct the lightning during storms.

Max: Chris Knight Would Be Proud

Max: Why My Brain Is Broken

The Reinvention of the Self

In her laboratory at Princeton University’s Department of Psychology, Gould is determined to create a marmoset environment that takes full advantage of their innate intelligence. She doesn’t believe in metal cages. “We are housing our marmosets in large, enriched enclosures,” she says, “and with a variety of objects to support foraging. These are social animals, and it’s important to let them be social. Basically, we want to bring our experimental conditions closer to the wild.”

But Gould is not a primatologist. She doesn’t give her marmosets adorable names, or spend time cuddling with their young. In fact, these marmosets don’t even know she exists: Gould prefers to observe them remotely, on a little video screen. Staring at the televised frenzy of this little marmoset world, it is poignant to know how their lives will end. Their brains will be cut into thousands of transparent slices. Their dissected neurons will be stained neon green and the density of their dendritic connections will be quantified under a powerful microscope. They will live on as data.

...

Gould’s insight was that understanding how stress damages the brain could illuminate the general mechanisms—especially neurogenesis—by which the brain is affected by its environ-mental conditions. For the last several years, she and her post-doc, Mirescu, have been depriving newborn rats of their mother for either 15 minutes or three hours a day. For an infant rat, there is nothing more stressful. Earlier studies had shown that even after these rats become adults, the effects of their developmental deprivation linger: They never learn how to deal with stress. “Normal rats can turn off their glucocorticoid system relatively quickly,” Mirescu says. “They can recover from the stress response. But these deprived rats can’t do that. It’s as if they are missing the ‘off’ switch.”

Gould and Mirescu’s disruption led to a dramatic decrease in neurogenesis in their rats’ adult brains. The temporary trauma of childhood lingered on as a permanent reduction in the number of new cells in the hippocampus. The rat might have forgotten its pain, but its brain never did. “This is a potentially very important topic,” Gould says. “When you look at all these different stress disorders, such as PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder], what you realize is that some people are more vulnerable. They are at increased risk. This might be one of the reasons why.”

Not that I was deprived of parental presence as a child. But my childhood was largely defined by stress, mainly at school.

Max: The Autism "Epidemic"

An explanation for the "increasing$quot; incidence of autism

Fashion is a strange thing, and many fields are susceptible to it—not least, medicine. There has, for example, been a vogue (among commentators, if not among doctors) to ascribe the rising number of cases of autism diagnosed over the past couple of decades to childhood vaccinations against measles, mumps and rubella. That this is fashion rather than reality is suggested by the fact that the explanation proffered in Britain has been that such vaccines provoke an immune response that damages the nervous system, whereas Americans have blamed residual mercury in the same vaccines.

We had once come to think of things like mumps, measles, whooping cough, etc as but extinct. But thanks to scientific and mathematical illiteracy, they will soon be on the prowl again. There is a scary degree of stupidity on the march in this country -- the sort of stupidity that thinks it is better to condemn thousands of women to cervical cancer than allow the use of a vaccine that would *gasp* make sex a little safer. Reason seem to still win most of these battles, but it can only win if we are willing to stand up for it -- even in the face of exasperating stupidity.

Max: Creationist Compromise

Read about it at Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy Blog

Max: This Made Me Chortle

Max: State of the Union

Max: The O To The B

Max: Live GodCam

Live GodCam

Max: Monzy: kill -9

Max: Dawkins and Maher Sitting In A Tree

Max: TED Talks

TED Talks, where smart people shove their thoughts into your headmeat.

Max: The Horror

Max: Former Secs. Of State State The Obvious

"Shut Guantanamo," ex-diplomats say

Five former U.S. secretaries of State on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice.

Max: IL Dem Declares Atheists Have No Rights

Max: This Is The Greatest Thing Ever

Max: Will You Be Able To Skip And Use Semaphore?

Crestwood mall to become open-air lifestyle center

Crestwood Plaza will be at least partially demolished and transformed into an open air lifestyle center, according to one of its new owners, Chicago-based Centrum Properties.

Centrum along with New York investment advisor Angelo, Gordon & Co purchased the 48-acre mall from Australian shopping-mall giant Westfield Group for an undisclosed sum. Westfield bought the mall, built in 1957, for $106.4 million in 1998.

The deal, reported first in the Post-Dispatch by columnist Joe Whittington two months ago, closed on March 26. The mall has been temporarily renamed Crestwood Court.

'It had not been aggressively managed for years,' said Sol Barket, Centrum's managing partner of retail development. 'We saw it as a great opportunity to create an open air lifestyle center.'

Max: Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.

Max: Damn Skippy

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: FBI and MLK Jr: Lessons for Today


As part of a recent CNN special called Black in America much new information came to light about the FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr., information that should stand as a stark warning of the dangers of allowing one branch of government to engage in surveillance of American citizens without oversight from another.

Max: Bi

Bisexuality -- What’s in a Name?

Is there anything more inherently suspicious than bisexuality? When a hetero male concedes attraction to another guy, isn’t his self-proclaimed "straight/curious" status just code for "gay, but not ready to admit it?" Or, could it actually be that we all have the same potential for experiencing the full spectrum of human sexuality?

Lots of research and a little common sense say that of all the above questions, only the latter gets an unqualified "yes." But who wants a fence-sitting bisexual on their team? Certainly not the nervous straights; or the sequestered lesbians; or the defensive gays. The transgendered probably don’t mind -- but who can figure them out?

And why should we try to fathom the Bs, when we’ve got enough work to do just carving out a niche for the LGTs? Besides, every reasonable person knows that going for a pint of chocolate or vanilla is a lot easier than contemplating 31 flavors at Baskin-Robbins. It’s no wonder, then, that bisexuality is often an invisible color on the rainbow pride flag - ironic, since nature apparently intended almost everybody to be at least a little bi.

It is a trend that’s getting more and more media attention. Look at Tila Tequila, the VH1 instant celebrity who got her own reality show because she was bisexual. (The gimmick was that she had to choose between groups of straight men and lesbians, and ended up choosing a man.) Or take "Torchwood," the futuristic BBC-series (starring out actor John Barrowman) in which sexuality is fluid and everyone is bisexual. But that’s fiction - what of real life?

Max: Bush Sez The Constitution Doesn't Apply Inside The US

Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations

Today's Washington Post reports on a newly released memo, 'Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States' (March 14, 2003) , which which was declassified and released publicly yesterday. Balkinization has commentary on the very troubling opinion.

While the newly released memo focuses on 'asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators,' it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). (emphasis added)

Jericho: Disappointing Weekend

I had a heck of a weekend lined up.

Then it fell apart and I ended up feeling like an idiot - twice.

Friday night I was planning to hang out with a friend. I ended up canceling that due to catching a stomach bug that Steph had earlier in the week. I thought the bug would be worse - but it just ended up being uncomfortable. I ended up feeling like a whiny ass and like I disappointed my friend.

Saturday was pretty good. I spent the morning playing WoW and enjoying the heck out of that. That evening, Steph and I hung out with friends. As we were leaving the friend's house, snow began to fall. The snow was pretty heavy and the temp was low and looking to get lower. By the time we got home, the forecasts were looking pretty nasty.

My plans for Sunday were pretty fun. I have a new D&D game going with some old and new friends and I'm excited about it. I even blogged about it.

However, the weather and the temp and the forecasts were looking like there were going to be icy roads and lots of traffic issues. On top of that - I'm a terrible driver. So, I did what I thought was the adult, responsible thing: I called the game.

I slept kinda late - might as well, I didn't have a game to look forward to. By the time the game would have rolled around, 10 AM, it was about 38, clear and bone dry. No icy roads.

I ended up feeling like a whiny ass and like I disappointed my friends.

Max: Whacky April Fools Post

Post that starts off odd yet plausible but then veers into the downright whacky.