Eideard

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A coalition of House Republicans and Democrats voiced its frustration at President Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, amassing more than 200 votes on a plan to speed up the withdrawal of U.S. troops.

The move for a quicker exit from Afghanistan was narrowly defeated on a 204-215 vote. In all, 178 Democrats and 26 Republicans voted for the plan by Reps. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and Walter Jones, R-N.C. Similar legislation last year got 138 votes, with far less GOP support.

Today’s action was the first test in the House of Representatives of Obama’s Afghanistan policy since the president announced May 1 that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan by U.S. special operations forces.

Obama is set to begin withdrawing some of the 100,000 troops from Afghanistan starting in July. But lawmakers have become increasingly impatient about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and have been asking for a clear strategy for success.

Now that bin Laden is dead, people say America’s longest war should end. Nearly 60% of Americans said in a recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll that they agreed with the statement that the United States “has accomplished its mission in Afghanistan and should bring its troops home.”

“There is no clear mission. The Karzai government is corrupt. We continue to borrow money to pay for this war,” McGovern said. “We need to rethink what we’re doing in Afghanistan…”

McGovern and Jones got an interesting coalition of liberals and conservatives to support their amendment, including votes from the top Democrats in the House: Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. On the GOP side, Tea Party favorites such as Joe Walsh of Illinois and Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina were among the conservatives to support the amendment.

Just as an aside, our neighbors up in the Great White North – with a conservative Prime Minister – are preparing to reduce the number of Canadians dedicated to making war by almost 10%. Anyone in Congress or the White House ready to start down that road with the Pentagon?

It sounds like something out of Father Ted: a renowned monastery in Rome where monks staged concerts featuring a lap-dancer-turned-nun and opened a hotel with a 24-hour limousine service has been shut down by the pope.

As part of Benedict XVI’s crackdown on “loose living” within the Catholic church, 20 or so Cistercian monks are now being evicted from the monastery at the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, which hosts some of the church’s holiest relics.

“An inquiry found evidence of liturgical and financial irregularities as well as lifestyles that were probably not in keeping with that of a monk,” said Father Ciro Benedettini, a Vatican spokesman. “The church remains open but the monks are awaiting transfer…”

The monks’ days have been numbered since 2009, when the Vatican sacked their flamboyant abbot, Father Simone Fioraso, a former fashion designer who built up a cult following among Rome’s fashionable aristocratic crowd as well as show business worshippers such as Madonna, who prayed at the church in 2008.

In 2009 Anna Nobili, a nightclub dancer who became a nun, was invited to perform her “holy dance” before an audience including archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Vatican’s cultural department. For her performance Nobili, who says she uses dance as a form of prayer, lies spread-eagled in front of the altar clutching a crucifix or twists and turns as in pole-dancing routines…

Sounds like a flock that seriously enjoyed experimenting with new ways to experience the rapture of holiness.

Or something like that.

The jewel-encrusted 2.75 tonne black carriage, made with £161,000 of Australian taxpayers’ money, was supposed to be delivered in 2006, but government officials have admitted they have no idea where it is.

The coach, named Britannia, is decorated with 24 diamonds, 130 sapphires and 400 books of gold leaf and is estimated to be worth a total of £900,000.

It was made by monarchist Jim Frecklington and is said to feature fragments of more than 100 British historical artefacts including timber from Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose, a piece of the 1760 doorway from 10 Downing Street and gold from Admiral Nelson’s crown from the Battle of Trafalgar.

While he was prime minister, John Howard committed $250,000 worth of public money to the project to support “Australian craftsmanship”.

Two years ago Mr Frecklington said the coach was ready and awaiting shipment to Britain, but under questioning in a Senate inquiry on Wednesday, government officials admitted that they do not know where the coach is and had never inspected it.

“Someone could have absconded with it,” Senator John Faulker told the inquiry “Is there any hope that the carriage will be presented to Her Majesty by the time she is 90?”

Do they tow away coaches parked in a No Parking Zone in Oz? Maybe it’s in some coppers’ hostage lot?

Women still outlive men, but the gender gap among U.S. seniors is narrowing.

New 2010 census figures, released Thursday, show men are narrowing the female population advantage, primarily in the 65-plus age group. It’s a change in the social dynamics of a country in which longevity, widowhood and health care for seniors often have been seen as issues more important to women.

In all, the numbers highlight a nation that is rapidly aging even as Congress debates cuts in Medicare, an issue with ramifications for the growing ranks of older men…

Over the past decade, the number of men in the U.S. increased by 9.9 percent, faster than the 9.5 percent growth rate for women. As a result, women outnumbered men by just 5.18 million, compared with 2000, when there were 5.3 million more women than men.

The male-female ratio in the U.S. also increased to 96.7 from 96.3 in 2000, reflecting the narrowing of the female advantage in overall population…There hasn’t been such a sustained resurgence in the U.S. male population since 1910, when medical advances started to increase women’s life expectancies by reducing deaths during pregnancy…

The latest census figures come amid a graying baby boomer demographic of 78 million people — now between the ages of 46 and 65 and looking ahead to retirement — who will have a major voice in the 2012 elections as federal spending and the spiraling costs of Medicare rise to the forefront.

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At first I kind of made fun of GarageBand on the iPad because I never thought anyone could make truly compelling music on a touch device. That’s all changed after I saw Cult of Mac point out George Lambro’s guitar solo on the iPad. I’ll let the music speak for itself, but I will say this is how the iPad becomes “magical,” as Apple likes to put it. It’s not so much what the device can do, but what people can do with the device.

Thanks, Michael Grothaus

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.

The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.

The agreement acknowledges that there will be occasions when people are delayed or prevented from flying because they are wrongly identified as a threat, and gives them the right to petition for judicial review in the US federal court. Well, isn’t that special?

The 15-year retention period is likely to prove highly controversial as it is three times the five years allowed for in the EU’s PNR (passenger name record) regime to cover flights into, out of and within Europe. A period of five and a half years has just been negotiated in a similar agreement with Australia. Germany and France raised concerns this week about the agreement and the unproven necessity for the measure.

Britain has already announced its intention to opt in to the European PNR plan, in which the home secretary, Theresa May, played a key role, and is expected to join the US agreement this summer…

The US Senate passed a resolution last week saying it “simply could not accept” any watering down by European ministers of data-sharing, describing it as “an important part of our layered defences against terrorism”. Senators said it was an important tool in the security agencies’ “identifying possible threats before they arrive in our country”.

But the European parliament, which would have to approve it, has demanded proof that such a PNR agreement is necessary, and said it should in no circumstances be used for data-mining or profiling…

This draft agreement appears to give the Americans all they have asked for…

The data to be collected includes 19 separate items relating to each airline passenger, including their billing details, contact numbers, the names of those they are travelling with and how much baggage they have, as well their itinerary.

Well, we certainly are assured our government cares enough about our safety and security that they are willing to keep an eye on us for years and years. I feel safer, now. Don’t you?

The phony doctor who performed toothpick “acupuncture” on a man and gave him expired pills is facing charges of practicing medicine without a license, Niles police said.

George Fleming, 61, of Skokie, was arrested on May 18. Police said Fleming, who does not have a license to practice medicine in Illinois, treated a man April 23 at a clinic in the 8900 block of Golf Road.

Niles police Sgt. Robert Tornabene said the victim saw an advertisement for Fleming’s medical services in a Bulgarian newspaper. When the man showed up for his treatment, he found no one else at the clinic except Fleming.

Fleming put toothpicks in the patient’s chest (possibly as an acupuncture treatment) and gave him pills labeled “Prosperous Farmer Dietary Supplements,” police said. The label on the bottle stated that the pills expired in February 2002.

On April 26, when the victim and his son called the clinic, an employee said she didn’t know who the doctor was, police reported. The father and son then went to the clinic and saw Fleming, who ran out of the building and fled east on Golf Road, police said.

Investigators reported that Fleming voluntarily came to the Niles Police Department for an interview, and he admitted to practicing medicine without a license, police said.

The patient watched while this clown stuck toothpicks into his chest. Walked out the door with pills that expired in 2002. And didn’t think to call the police on the spot?

Cripes.

Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second. At those speeds, the contents of nearly 1,000 high-definition DVDs could be sent down an optical fibre in a second.

The trick is to use what is known as a “fast Fourier transform” to unpick more than 300 separate colours of light in a laser beam, each encoded with its own string of information…

While the earliest optical fibre technologies encoded a string of data as “wiggles” within a single colour of light sent down a fibre, newer approaches have used a number of tricks to increase data rates.

Among them is what is known as “orthogonal frequency division multiplexing”, which uses a number of lasers to encode different strings of data on different colours of light, all sent through the fibre together. At the receiving end, another set of laser oscillators can be used to pick up these light signals, reversing the process.

While the total data rate possible using such schemes is limited only by the number of lasers available, there are costs, says Wolfgang Freude…

Professor Freude and his colleagues have worked out how to create high data rates using just one laser with exceedingly short pulses. Within these pulses are a number of discrete colours of light in what is known as a “frequency comb”.

When these pulses are sent into an optical fibre, the different colours can mix together and create 325 different colours in total, each of which can be encoded with its own data stream…

At the receiving end, traditional methods to separate the different colours will not work. In the current experiment, the team sent their signals down 50km of optical fibre and then implemented what is known as an optical fast Fourier transform to unpick the data streams…

Professor Freude said that the current design outperforms earlier approaches simply by moving all the time delays further apart, and that it is a technology that could be integrated onto a silicon chip – making it a better candidate for scaling up to commercial use.

He concedes that the idea is a complex one, but is convinced that it will come into its own as the demand for ever-higher data rates drives innovation.

The next stage will be pilot operations to better establish costs and ease. The nicest part of the process as suggested by Professor Freude is that existing optical cables can handle the traffic. The question is getting new and affordable hardware functioning at either end of the path.

Thanks, Wok3

“They say you’re selling condoms in here”

A group which is opposed to abortion in all circumstances and favours an abstinence-based approach to sex education has been appointed to advise the government on sexual health. The Life organisation has been invited to join a new sexual health forum set up to replace the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV…

In contrast, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has been omitted from the forum despite its long-term position on the previous advisory group and 40-year track record in providing pregnancy counselling nationwide.

“We are disappointed and troubled to learn that having initially been invited to the sexual health forum we have been disinvited, particularly now we understand that Life have been offered a seat at the table,” said Ann Furedi, chief executive of BPAS. “We find it puzzling that the Department of Health would want a group that is opposed to abortion and provides no sexual health services on its sexual health forum…”

Not especially different from the catalogue of Republican Party fears about gay sex, young people having sex, old people having sex, contraception, abortion right, women’s rights, choice and above all else – people being free to have sex.

Blake said: “Having made…massive progress, what we have to do is sustain that … and not go back to a time when the young had really poor sexual and relationship education and see a rise in teenage pregnancy rates and sexually transmitted infections as a result…”

Life also became a founding member last week of a new Sex and Relationships Council, which was launched in parliament with the endorsement of the education secretary, Michael Gove.

The council, which includes the Christian-run pro-abstinence group the Silver Ring Thing, says it aims to bring the voice of what it describes as “value-based, parent centred” sex and relationship education (SRE) providers to policy discussions on the future of SRE in schools…

Some secular organisations have been growing increasingly worried that Tory ministers are opening up government to the agendas of faith-based and pro-life groups…

In Richmond, south-west London, the Catholic Children’s Society has taken over the £89,000 contract to provide advice to schoolchildren on matters including contraception and pregnancies. Another Christian-run charity, Care Confidential, is involved in providing crisis pregnancy advice under the auspices of Newham PCT in east London. Care’s education arm, Evaluate, was one of the founding members, alongside Life, of the Sex and Relationships Council.

Sounds to me like the same crap ideology advanced against Planned Parenthood in the United States by reactionaries and religious conservatives. They’ve found a home in what now passes for the Republican Party and are out to press regression of women’s rights back before World War 1.

The Holy Ghost Panel rock painting in the Great Gallery in Horseshoe Canyon, Canyonlands National Park in San Juan, Utah, with the Milky Way in the background