Maopost: Vintage Chinese Posters

01Jun06

Maopost.com has some (as you may have guessed) vintage Chinese propaganda posters. Check it out. If you really like themther eis even a Dashboard Widget to display the poster of the day on your desktop.

Filed under: MacStuff, Software, Trivia   |  Leave a Comment

Democrats protest E-voting supplier

30May06

Business Week reports that Democrats are protesting the use of a particular company for supplying voting machines for U.S elections. Before you get all excited that the Dems have grown a spine… no, they are not talking about Diebold and their CEOs promise to deliver Ohio to Bush, but about a Venezuelan company, no doubt under the control of that leftist rogue Hugo Chavez!

One Man, One Vote, One Conspiracy Theory
Critics of electronic balloting are raising questions about a voting machine supplier

After the controversial 2000 Presidential election, the U.S. embarked on a campaign to replace paper ballots and their infamous hanging chads with electronic voting. But the new systems, many based on touch screens similar to bank ATMs, have become the bane of computer experts and some political activists on the Left.

[...] 

Filed under: Politics   |  Leave a Comment

Bush Tracker Update

30May06

Forbes: Rep. Lewis (R) Subject of Federal Probe The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles has opened an investigation into House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis and his dealings with a lobbyist with connections to disgraced former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.	Corruption
NYT: C.I.A. Aide's House and Office Searched Federal agents conducted searches on Friday at the office and home of Kyle Foggo, who stepped down this week as the Central Intelligence Agency's third-ranking official. The searches were part of a widening criminal investigation of possible contracting fraud that has also focused on lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee.	Corruption
InfoClearing: 105 Killed In Afghanistan The Taliban death toll from fighting Wednesday night and Thursday ranged up to 87, U.S. and Afghan officials said. Also, 14 Afghan police officers, one American civilian, a Canadian soldier and an Afghan civilian also were killed in the fighting, officials said.	AfghanWar
InfoClearing: Iraq is Disintegrating Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.	Iraq
BBC: US 'must end secret detentions' The US should close any secret "war on terror" detention facilities abroad and the Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba, a United Nations report has said.	Guantanamo
TP: Hastert hearts Abramoff too Dennis Hastert, is under investigation by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level official sources.	Abramoff Corruption
Marines massacre in Haditha A group of enraged Marines entered homes in the Iraqi town of Haditha and murdered their occupants, including children, in cold blood. And it's not an isolated incident.	Iraq

Filed under: Bush Tracker   |  Leave a Comment

Mandelian evolution

30May06

Over at Business Week, wunderkind gets all radical and suggests we throw open the border. Funny thing with liberal ideas that sit around long enough… they get picked up by conservatives and neo-liberals . We have been calling for action against Saddam for a few decades. Bush thinks of the same thing, for the first time ever, and decimates the country. We have been talking about the environment for ages. Now the evangelicals adopting the platform but from the funny perspective of stewardship. And now we have Mandel:

BW: Bordering on Absurdity

Cars can move more easily from country to country than people, and that is crimping both human potential and economic growth

What's the best long-term immigration policy for the global economy? Right now we have an international system where goods and services move easily across national borders, but flows of people are strictly regulated. The 149 countries that belong to the World Trade Organization are committed, by treaty, to a "substantial reduction of tariffs and other barriers to trade." No such organization or commitment exists for global immigration reform.
I think that's wrong. It should not be the case that toys and cars can move from country to country more easily than people do. Instead, pulling down the barriers that impede immigration should be our long-term goal. Immigration policy should facilitate the movement of people, just as trade policy facilitates the movement of goods.

From an economic perspective, this is a no-brainer.

[...]

Filed under: Economics   |  Leave a Comment

Geek fight clubs

30May06

CNN reports that geeks are now joining fight clubs to liberate their inner macho child:

CNN.com – Computer techs turn to fisticuffs for fun

MENLO PARK, California (AP) — They may sport love handles and Ivy League degrees, but every two weeks, some Silicon Valley techies turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club.

[...]

I wonder what would happen to these dudes if some real men showed up to the fight?

Filed under: News, Silliness   |  3 Comments

Values confusion!

26May06

Below is a snippet of a Gallup poll on values, via PollingReport. Read the whole thing. There's plenty of bad news: if you are an animal rights proponent, like me, then there is the disappointing bit that 60+% approve of animal testing and even wearing fur. Then we have the righteous disapproval of homosexuality. And more. Read on.

Next, I'm going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong. How about …

	Morally Acceptable	Morally Wrong
	%	%
The death penalty
5/8-11/06	71	22
5/5-7/03	64	31
Buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur
5/8-11/06	62	32
5/5-7/03	60	36
Medical testing on animals
5/8-11/06	61	32
5/5-7/03	63	33
Gambling
5/8-11/06	60	34
5/5-7/03	63	34
Homosexual relations
5/8-11/06	44	51
Abortion
5/8-11/06	43	44
5/5-7/03	37	53
Suicide
5/8-11/06	15	78
5/5-7/03	14	81

So, if get this right: the public does not approve of suicide, but they approve of the death penalty. In other words, they want do kill you rather than let you kill yourself. So if you want to commit suicide, your best bet is to kill someone else, including (as the above indicates) the not yet human foetus inside a woman — then turn yourself in, and they will kill you. But make sure you don't kill a homo since the public doesn't care much for that sort of people.

Filed under: Animal Rights, News, Rants   |  Leave a Comment

Net neutrality moves forward in Congress

26May06

CW: House panel approves Net neutrality bill
May 25, 2006 (IDG News Service) — A U.S. House of Representatives committee has approved a bill that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or impairing their customers' access to Web content offered by competitors.

[...]

Filed under: Computing, Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment

Opera 9 Beta

24May06

You can now download a Beta of the Opera browser 9. If you have never used Opera, give it a whirl. Its wicked fast, provides easy keyboard navigation, did tab-like stuff before Mozilla, and now, again beating Mozilla to it, does the latest fad: widgets! Sweet!

Download Opera Web Browser

Filed under: Software   |  1 Comment

Genetic inheritence through RNA

24May06

Next time you meet a reductionist, you can wave this bit of news at him! 

BBC | Spotty mice flout genetics laws

[...] 

The scientists, based at the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, used mice which carry one normal version of Kit and one mutant version, giving them spotted tails.

They bred these mice together, producing offspring with a range of Kit gene combinations:

* two mutant genes (these are shown to die shortly after birth)
* one mutant and one normal gene (these should be "spotty" like their parents)
* two normal genes (these should not be spotty).

However, the researchers found that mice born with two normal versions of Kit also had a spotted appendage.

"We were very surprised to see this," said Professor Minoo Rassoulzadegan, a geneticist at the University of Nice and lead author on the paper.

After further investigation, the scientists suggested the transfer of RNA molecules as the cause.

[...]

Filed under: Biology, Reductionism   |  2 Comments

Apropos to the Kaavya Affair

24May06

[A question to English usage types: is "Apropos of" or "Apropos to" the right usage in this title? My initial urge was "of" but on further thought I felt "to" is more apropos!]

I have already posted on the Kaavya Viswanathan affair (plagiarization by the young Indian-American author), though I did not quite articulate what it is that bothered me about her. Below is an article from the Guardian that describes the difficulty that minorities have in getting published. A comment towards the qend of the quoted text describes my uneasiness: that minority writers are further disadvantaged by those (otherwise privileged) who play upon their minority status to open doors. 

Guardian | Monica Ali and Zadie Smith are in the minority, finds survey
Michelle Pauli

Wednesday May 10, 2006

The book trade is missing a trick by ignoring the potential of the black and ethnic minority (BME) market, says a new report by the Bookseller and the Arts Council.

The Books for All survey of publishers, booksellers, agents and librarians found that a "fear factor" was holding back the book trade from pursuing a growing market and a huge potential source of writing talent.

[...]
While 7.9% of the UK's population is of ethnic minority origin, only 50 (1%) of this year's top 5,000 bestsellers are by BME writers, despite the high profile of award-winners Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy and Monica Ali.

[...]

The report is critical of the lack of monitoring that takes place in the publishing process, with 58% of publishers unsure whether the number of submissions received from BME authors has risen, fallen or stayed the same during the past year, but acknowledges that accusations of tokenism can also be damaging.

"There is obviously a wealth of excellent Asian writers out there," said Poorna Shetty, editor of Asiana magazine, "but, inevitably, there are some books that get published because of the ethnic tag, rather than because they're actually great books."

[...]

Filed under: Books, India   |  1 Comment