Eideard

A South Korean court Thursday overturned a 1953 law punishing men for making false promises of marriage to have sex with women.

The Constitutional Court ruled 6-3 the law discriminated against men and infringed on women’s competence. The law treated women like “infants” and violated the government’s “constitutional obligation” to treat men and women equally under the law, the court ruled.

The law had punished men convicted of coercing women to have sex after promising marriage with prison sentences up to two years or fines up to $4,300.

The ruling followed a petition by a South Korean man, identified only as “Lim,” who was indicted for having sex with a female coworker on four occasions under the fraudulent promise of marriage.

Lim argued the criminal law was outdated and violated his female partner’s sexual rights as well as his own right to pursue happiness…

The Ministry of Gender Equality submitted a written opinion to the court saying it considered the law discriminatory against men and infringed on women’s sexual rights.

The Ministry of Gender Equality?

It will never happen, of course. It’s against God’s will. Another opportunist lie.

A CIA manual instructing US agents on the use of magic tricks during the Cold War has gone on sale.

It was written in 1953 by magician John Mulholland for a fee of $3,000 – considerable at the time. It includes deceptions such as spiking drinks, pocketing small objects and tying shoelaces to communicate in code.

The CIA ordered copies destroyed in the 1970s, but one survived. It has been republished as The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception…

In the foreword, deputy CIA director John McLaughlin writes that “magic and espionage are kindred spirits“.

So are the politics of religion and the absurd power of patriotism.

Police in Hong Kong are trying to trace members of a group on the social networking site Facebook which appeared to call for a mass suicide.

Nearly 190 people joined group, which allegedly urged them to kill themselves on 21 December, said Chinese media.

Attention was first drawn to the site by a student who told social workers about it after attempting suicide.

The South China Morning Post said the person who started the group had written that it was “meant to be an inside joke”, where people talked humorously about ways to take their lives.
But some of the 188 people who joined it had reportedly written posts in which they shared possible suicide methods and asked for people to join them in dying.

The group has been since taken down but police said they were trying to contact all members and its creator…

Chinese state media reported that photographs had been posted on the site of a female member of the group attempting to kill herself at school.

If we were to make jokes about a topic like this – and I guess pretty much anything is always a potential topic for a joke – I guess I’d try to set up a site for TeaBaggers to commit mass suicide at a Sarah Palin rally.

Nah. Too bad that suicide is still an acceptable solution to emotional and sociological quandaries for religious cultures. Sad.

Ozem Goldwire forced to confess to murdering his sister, Sherika

The city will pay $340,000 to an autistic Brooklyn man railroaded by NYPD detectives into falsely confessing to murdering his sister.

Ozem Goldwire spent more than a year in prison for the January 2006 slaying of his sister, Sherika, before he was exonerated by prosecutors in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.

“This was a terrible, terrible injustice,” said lawyer Gerald Allen, who filed a lawsuit on behalf of Goldwire in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Goldwire was subjected to 21 hours of interrogation at the 73rd Precinct by detectives who screamed, cursed and shoved him. They also accused him of having sex with his sister, according to the suit.

Warned that he wouldn’t be released if he did not confess, Goldwire wrote a statement claiming he strangled his sister because she refused to lower the volume on the TV…

Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach threw out the charges against Goldwire, describing the circumstances as “the perfect storm for false confession.”

At least one of the corrupt coppers involved in this suit – cost the city on another one a few years back. Still around. Still a detective.

I’ve known a couple of sleazy gits who shouldn’t have been allowed to take the test to get into cadet training. But, that’s part of the political process, sometimes. Maybe – in addition to separation of church from state – we should have separation of politicians from police?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the world’s foremost body for weighing and assessing climate science—received a kick in the pants today from members who say the climate situation is much worse than the IPCC has so far reported.

Twenty-six climatologists—including 14 IPCC members—have released a startling update to the panel’s work, reporting that sea levels could rise and methane-laden arctic permafrost could melt much sooner than the panel had anticipated.

“The Copenhagen Diagnosis: Updating the World on the Latest Climate Science” is not an official IPCC report; it’s a summary of the hundreds of peer-reviewed research papers that have been published since the IPCC’s last assessment. It was released now to fill the long gap in between official IPCC reports—the last was released in 2007, but the drafting text is more than three years old, and the next isn’t scheduled until 2013. It was also timed to the Copenhagen climate talks, of course.

The essence of the new report is that things are grimmer than the IPCC has reported. And it’s not like the panel has been painting a rosy picture—its 2007 report concluded that the warming-induced melting of the Greenland ice sheet could create significant sea-level rise in this century. IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said at the time, “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

RTFA. Conspiracy bloggers and let’s pretend-skeptics all avoid any reading matter that contains the results of peer-reviewed science. They will not have gotten more than 2 paragraphs into this news article, much less the report at root-level.

The full report is available over here.

Major social networking websites have been criticised for not introducing a help button for children to report concerns about grooming and bullying.

Jim Gamble, from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), hit out at the sites as one site, Bebo, adopted the button. He said there was “no legitimate reason” why other sites like MySpace and Facebook had not done the same.

Ceop – the UK law enforcement agency tasked with tracing online sex offenders – says its Report button receives 10,000 hits a month on other websites. Clicking the button allows users to contact specially trained Ceop officers for advice. It also provides details of local police and links to 10 other sources of help including Childline.

The person that goes on with harmful intent – whether it’s the bully or whether it’s the paedophile – they know when they see it that there is an active deterrent here

Gamble added: “I am applauding Bebo – it’s taken us three years to get here. But I don’t understand – and there is more than Facebook in this – I don’t understand the logic for the others not following suit.”

Surely, the big social networking sites can afford to include a simple, easy means for a young ‘un to reach out for aid.

To design a lightweight anchor that can dig itself in to hold small underwater submersibles, Anette (Peko) Hosoi of MIT borrowed techniques from one of nature’s best diggers — the razor clam.

“The best anchoring technology out there is an order or magnitude worse than the clam — most are two or three orders worse,” says Hosoi…

Using relatively simple anatomy, the bivalve burrows into the bottom of its native mudflats at a rate of a centimeter per second. Hosoi’s studies of the physics behind this remarkable ability have revealed that the digging is accomplished in two motions — a push upwards with its foot, which mixes the grains of solid into the liquid above, and a synchronized push down.

By borrowing this principle, Hosoi and graduate student Amos Winter have created a simple robot that is now being tested out in the salt water mudflats off of Cape Cod. It digs just as fast as the living clam and is “small, lightweight, and does not use a lot of energy,” says Hosoi.

I never met a clam I didn’t like. Especially with melted butter and a little garlic.

Yes, of course, the project rocks, too.

A key question in the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors. Now, in a study appearing in this week’s JBC, researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet: generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.

Many researchers believe that RNA was one of the first biological molecules present, before DNA and proteins; however, there has been little success in recreating the formation on RNA from simple “prebiotic” molecules that likely were present on primordial earth billions of years ago.

Now, Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues found that ancient molecules called cyclic nucleotides can merge together in water and form polymers over 100 nucleotides long in water ranging from 40-90 °C –similar to water temperatures on ancient Earth…

This finding is exciting as cyclic nucleotides themselves can be easily formed from simple chemicals like formamide, thus making them plausible prebiotic compounds present during primordial times. Thus, this study may be revealing how the first bits of genetic information were created.

Surprising a few generations of True Believers, as well, who presumed scientists would find nano-angels pushing these bits of molecules together to form RNA chains.

Ain’t any cloud of smoke hovering overhead either!

Norway has opened the world’s first osmotic power plant, which produces emissions-free electricity by mixing fresh water and sea water through a special membrane.

State-owned utility Statkraft’s prototype plant, which for now will produce a tiny 2-4 kilowatts of power or enough to run a coffee machine, will enable Statkraft to test and develop the technology needed to drive down production costs.

The plant is driven by osmosis that naturally draws fresh water across a membrane and toward the seawater side. This creates higher pressure on the sea water side, driving a turbine and producing electricity…

Statkraft, Europe’s largest producer of renewable energy with experience in hydropower that provides nearly all of Norway’s electricity, aims to begin building commercial osmotic power plants by 2015…

Osmotic power, which can be located anywhere where clean fresh water runs into the sea, is seen as more reliable than more variable wind or solar energy.

Cripes – it’s been too many decades since I encountered osmosis. Reverse osmosis, pressure-driven, is pretty common here in high desert country. Purifying brackish underground reservoirs into potable water.

RTFA. Sounds interesting and productive.

One of the protests by Indian Muslims against the Mumbai terrorism
Daylife/AP Photo by Ajit Solanki

A Pakistani court on has charged seven suspects in connection with the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people one year ago.

The men were indicted at an anti-terrorism court in a high security prison in the city of Rawalpindi on the eve of the first anniversary of India’s worst militant attacks, which dramatically soured relations with rival Pakistan…

Among the seven, who were arrested by Pakistan over the November 26-29 siege on India’s financial capital, are alleged mastermind Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and alleged key Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operative Zarar Shah…

‘They have been indicted under the anti-terrorism act and the Pakistani penal code,’ said their attorney, Shahbaz Rajput, without elaborating…

According to news agency Press Trust of India, the latest information handed to Pakistan included statements of key witnesses, including a magistrate and FBI officials, from the trial of the lone gunman to survive the attacks.

The gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, has confessed to his involvement in the attacks in a dramatic announcement to a court in Mumbai.

If you think the announcement just coincidentally happened within the context of Obama’s state dinner for the Prime Minister of India, you may also believe the same holds true for the timing of India handing over additional evidence on the case – to Pakistan authorities.

Am I being cynical, again? You betcha.