Eideard

It feels good to catch a little breeze in summertime

Iranian police have issued warnings to 62,000 women who were “badly veiled” in the Shiite holy province of Qom as part of a crackdown on dress and behaviour.

Colonel Mehdi Khorasani, the provincial police chief, said police had also confiscated around 100 cars for carrying improperly dressed women and said that “encouraging such relaxations are among the objectives of the enemy.”

The population of Qom is more than one million, with most of them concentrated in the city itself which is Shiite Iran’s clerical nerve-centre.

By law, women in the Islamic republic must be covered from head to foot, with their hair completely veiled and social interaction is banned between men and women who are not related.

Iran is known particularly for summertime crackdowns on improperly dressed women but the issue has sparked debate after the hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he “firmly” opposed the crackdown…

His remarks have drawn the wrath of fellow hardliners and several top clerics who have criticised him for opposing the police crackdown…

Meanwhile, like any theocracy, individual sects and their ideological pimps leaders joust to assume the mantle of living prophet.

The judge who overturned deepwater drilling bans allowing BP to resume oil extraction in the Gulf of Mexico, had shares in Transocean and other firms in the industry, it was revealed.

A Louisiana-based judge Martin Feldman ruled that Barack Obama’s six-month drilling moratorium in the Gulf was unjustified because it assumed that all deepwater drilling was as dangerous as BP’s…

Feldman’s most recent financial disclosure forms show that he was paid dividends from his shares in Transocean, the firm that owned the Deepwater oil rig that exploded in April killing 11 oil workers, prompting America’s worst environmental disaster.

The forms, which relate to the calendar year 2008, also show that he sold shares in Halliburton, which was also involved in the disaster.

Feldman’s other interests included Ocean Energy, Quicksilver Resources, Prospect Energy, Peabody Energy, Pengrowth Energy Trust, Atlas Energy Resources, and Parker Drilling…

Feldman has yet to respond to the disclosures. He is one of many federal judges across the Gulf Coast region with money in oil and gas. Several have disqualified themselves from hearing spill-related claims, while others have sold their holdings so they can preside over many cases being filed.

Sounds like business as usual in Louisiana – and in the Oil industry. A pretense at objectivity may be affected in some American courtrooms; but, not especially for cases involving corporate wealth and power.

It’s the American Way.

Two Australian men have been treated in hospital after they decided to shoot each other with an air rifle “to see if it would hurt”.

The men, both aged 34, underwent surgery to remove slug pellets from their bums and legs.

They had been drinking for several hours when they hit upon the plan to shoot each other for fun. They then took turns firing the air rifle at each others’ body parts.

The following day, both men found themselves in severe pain, and went to hospital, where doctors had to remove several slug pellets from their buttocks and thighs…

”They have admitted that it was just stupidity and they wanted to see if it was painful or not.” The friends could face criminal charges over the incident and one of the men involved has had his firearms license confiscated.

Australian men have a habit of doing dangerous things in the name of having a good time.

Earlier this year an Australian man was admitted to hospital after he contracted a rare and deadly disease from eating two slugs as part of a dare.

There’s a comment in here somewhere about maturity, growing up vs. stupidity and inebriation.

I don’t think Aussies have the market cornered on this sort of silliness. But, it gives me a chance to bust balls on one of my fellow blog editors down in Melbourne.

Hobby-Eberly telescope

A team of scientists from the Instituto Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the University of Texas has succeeded in identifying one of the most complex organic molecules yet found in the material between the stars, the so-called interstellar medium. The discovery of anthracene could help resolve a decades-old astrophysical mystery concerning the production of organic molecules in space…

‘We have detected the presence of anthracene molecules in a dense cloud in the direction of the star Cernis 52 in Perseus, about 700 light years from the Sun,’ explains Susana Iglesias Groth, the IAC researcher heading the study.

In her opinion, the next step is to investigate the presence of amino acids. Molecules like anthracene are prebiotic, so when they are subjected to ultraviolet radiation and combined with water and ammonia, they could produce amino acids and other compounds essential for the development of life…

The new finding suggests that a good part of the key components in terrestrial prebiotic chemistry could be present in interstellar matter.

This will freak out the space geeks who believe organic molecules that may have seeded the start of life on Earth could only have originated on other planets. Turns out we may be dealing with complex substances that developed in space.

The Netherlands has agreed to a Nato request to deploy a submarine off the coast of Somalia to combat piracy…

It will be used for reconnaissance in the vast area from the Gulf of Aden deep into the Indian Ocean where Somali pirates have been hijacking commercial vessels for ransom…

The EU has an anti-piracy mission in the same region, Navfor, which is also tasked with protecting World Food Programme ships carrying food aid to Somalia.

Pirates have in the past succeeded in collecting multi-million-dollar ransoms and the head of the Navfor says there has been an upsurge in attacks recently after a period of relative calm…

With warships patrolling along the Somali coast, the pirates have started to operate further away and have even staged some attacks across the Indian Ocean, closer to India than Somalia.

Efforts to fight piracy are complicated by the lack of a functioning central government in Somalia and the lack of an international legal system for people accused of piracy. It is up to individual governments to put suspected pirates on trial if they are captured.

Last week a Dutch court sentenced five Somali men to five years in prison for attacking a Dutch Antilles-flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden last year, in the first such case to come to trial in Europe.

I know they wouldn’t waste anything as expensive as a torpedo on gangbangers like this; but, I’m confident that what passes for small arms on a modern submarine will be used – if needed.

These clowns are dumb enough to attack a military vessel every now and then. I wonder if anyone ever told them about submarines?

Minos Experiment

Scientists have made their most accurate measurement yet of the mass of a mysterious neutrino particle. Neutrinos are sometimes known as “ghost particles” because they interact so weakly with other forms of matter.

Previous experiments had shown that neutrinos have a mass, but it was so tiny that it was very hard to measure.

Using data from the largest ever survey of galaxies, researchers put the mass of a neutrino at no greater than 0.28 electron volts. This is less than a billionth of the mass of a single hydrogen atom, the scientists say.

Their nickname is fitting: a neutrino is capable of passing through a light-year (about six trillion miles) of lead without hitting a single atom…

The neutrino particle comes in three “flavours”: muon, tau and electron. In a recent experiment, physicists caught a neutrino in the act of changing from one type to another…

Scientists used the largest ever 3D map of galaxies in the Universe, based on data gathered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

They were able to determine a new upper limit for the neutrino particle by analysing the distribution of galaxies across the Universe…

I didn’t see any notice taken of angels by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Not even by on pinheads.

More than 40 per cent of Americans believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth by 2050, according to a poll.

Americans are largely optimistic about the future, according to the poll from the Pew Research Center For The People and The Press/Smithsonian Magazine.

By mid century, 71 per cent believe cancer will be cured, 66 per cent say artificial limbs will work better than real ones and 81 per cent believe computers will be able to converse like humans.

But Americans are also braced for a major energy crisis and a warming planet, according to the survey. More than half, or 58 per cent, fear another world war in the next 40 years and 53 per cent expect a terrorist attack against the United States using a nuclear weapon…

Here are some other findings of the poll:

• Nearly three-quarters, or 74 per cent, of those polled believe it likely that “most of our energy will come from sources other than coal, oil, and gas”.
• Yet 72 per cent believe the world is likely to experience a major worldwide energy crisis by 2050.
• 66 per cent say the Earth will definitely or probably get warmer but it breaks down strongly along political lines, with just 48 per cent of Republicans saying so and 83 per cent of Democrats.
• 41 per cent say Jesus Christ will return within the next 40 years while 46 per cent say this will definitely or probably not happen.
• 31 per cent expect the planet will be struck by an asteroid.

Lots of supposedly interesting opinions resulting from one of the least useful polls ever conducted by Pew Research.

Anyone who stays current with Talking Heads, Reality TV, fundamentalist preachers and Tea Party agitprop already has a decent idea of what fills the empty space in American conversation in between sports seasons and presidential elections. And could have written up the results of this poll in advance.

Deep in the Sahara desert are honeybees that have remained isolated from all other bees for at least 5,000 years.

The bees arrived at Kufra in Libya when the Sahara was still a green savannah, and have survived ever since around an oasis in the desert, over 1,000km from their nearest neighbouring bees…

Around 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a green savannah, a habitat well suited to honeybees (Apis mellifera).

Today, the Sahara is inhospitable to honeybees, which can’t survive in the large sand deserts that lack any vegetation. However, honeybees do survive in many oases that litter the desert. Most are maintained by local beekeepers that keep the insects for honey production and to pollinate oasis plants. But some wild populations of bees survive.

One such group lives at the desert oasis at Kufra in southeast Libya, while another lives at an oasis at Brak to the west of the country…

Though honeybees living at Kufra have colonies of a similar density to bees elsewhere, certain genetic traits appeared in the Kufra bees at much high frequencies, with some being unique.

That shows that the Kufra bees have remained isolated from all others for at least 5,000 years and perhaps up to 10,000 years, since the moment they were cut off by the creation of the Sahara desert…

The Kufra bees could also be a source of new genetic traits that could be useful to beekeepers elsewhere, the researchers suggest.

Just like the sensible botanists who maintain heritage species of fruits and vegetables for the same purpose.

A Connecticut priest with a reputation of caring for the poor has shocked his parishioners after being accused of faking a terminal illness to cover up the alleged theft of $1 million from his diocese.

The Rev. Kevin Gray, a 26-year veteran of the Hartford Catholic Diocese, is being investigated by the Waterbury, Conn., police department for allegedly taking money over a seven-year period from a savings fund established for the Sacred Heart parish, money that was to be used for building renovations and church debt, according to the police…

According to Rev. John Gatzak, spokesman, the Hartford Archdiocese became suspicious over the past year as they asked Gray to submit several years’ worth of annual financial reviews from his parish. Gray allegedly said he was unable to complete the reviews because of a serious terminal illness he was battling and asked for more time. Gatzak said that although they gave Gray some leeway and extra time to submit his reports, they began to look at his parish financial records and say they made some troubling discoveries…

Gatzak, 64, said the news has been ever more painful for the parish and it’s parishioners because of the fact that they believed Gray was battling a serious illness, an illness they now believe may have simply been a lie to try and give the priest more time to allegedly cover up the lost funds.

“We are now questioning whether or not he was telling the truth regarding his illness. We don’t know yet,” Gatzak said.

Gatzak said he visited with people outside the church after the 6 p.m. mass, finding them in tears over the news, and full of stories about a priest they loved and admired.

“People telling me how he visited their mother when she was in the hospital, saying he was right there when their grandfather dies. In crisis times, times of need he was there. These are the things people remember and love about him,” Gatzak said.

The inevitable mix of hypocrisy and deceit, gullibility and ignorant trust. The first two couldn’t survive without the latter pair.

If it weren’t for other nations, other cultures, demonstrating that human beings can acquire more education and understanding – I’d wonder if our species isn’t permanently shrouded by the cloud of superstition.