Posts Tagged ‘Russia’
Quasicrystals not only are “impossible” – they may be from space
Sample from the Koryak Mountains
Examples of a crystal previously thought to be impossible in nature may have come from space…
Quasicrystals have an unusual structure – in between those of crystals and glasses. Until two years ago, quasicrystals had only been created in the lab – then geologists found them in rocks from Russia’s Koryak mountains. In PNAS journal, a team says the chemistry of the Russian crystals suggests they arrived in meteorites.
Quasicrystals were first described in the 1980s by Israeli researcher Daniel Schechtman, who was awarded last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery.
Schechtman’s ideas were initially treated with doubt or scorn by some of his peers, who thought the structures were “impossible”.
Quasicrystals break some of the rules of symmetry that apply to conventional crystalline structures. They also exhibit different physical and electrical properties.
In 2009, Luca Bindi, from the University of Florence, Italy, and his colleagues reported finding quasicrystals in mineral samples from the Koryak mountains in Russia’s far east.
The mineral – an alloy of aluminium, copper, and iron – showed that quasicrystals could form and remain stable under natural conditions. But the natural process that created the structures remained an open question. Now, Dr Bindi, Paul Steinhardt from Princeton University and others claim that tests point to an extra-terrestrial origin for the Russian minerals.
They used the technique of mass spectrometry to measure different forms – or isotopes – of the element oxygen contained in parts of the rock sample. The pattern of oxygen isotopes was unlike any known minerals that originated on Earth. It was instead closer to that sometimes found in a type of meteorite known as a carbonaceous chondrite.
The samples also contained a type of silica which only forms at very high pressures. This suggests it either formed in the Earth’s mantle, or was formed in a high-velocity impact, such as that which occurs when a meteorite hits the Earth’s surface.
Uh, OK. Paul Steinhardt – one of the researchers in the PNAS report – had to remark over the fact that discovery in the lab was difficult enough for folks to say forming naturally was impossible. So, of course, nutty Mother Nature made it happen in outer space.
Grassroots movement offers Pig alternative to Putin’s party
Reuters pictures used by permission
Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party faces an array of Communists, nationalists and liberals in a parliamentary election on Sunday, but one of its ardent opponents is a more peculiar political animal: a cartoon pig named Nakh-Nakh.
Pushed to the margins since Putin came to power 12 years ago, some of the prime minister’s fiercest foes are urging Russians to reject the political system he has put in place by spoiling their ballots in Sunday’s State Duma vote.
“This is not an election in the European sense of the word, because no party that presents a challenge, or has not been agreed with the Kremlin, has been allowed to run,” said satirist Viktor Shenderovich, a co-founder of the Nakh-Nakh movement.
“The question is what people who understand this is a farce should do.”
Their answer: Nakh-Nakh, a bespectacled pig with an orange scarf, a blue beret and a double-entendre of a name that to Russians evokes both the Three Little Pigs and an obscenity which, put more politely, means ‘Go away!’…
In a series of animated clips posted on the Internet, the pink-cheeked pig casts his vote, angrily marking the box for each party with an X and adding a big black X across the entire ballot before slipping it through the slot…
The message: It’s the same no matter how you slice it…
Nearly three million voters did so in the 2003 election to the Duma, Russia’s lower parliament house. The “against all” option received 4.7 percent of the votes, more than 19 of the 23 parties on the ballot.
The Duma then passed legislation striking the “against all” option from ballots, part of a series of electoral reforms enacted during Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency that critics said were meant to silence dissent and strengthen his grip on power.
The Kremlin-controlled parliament also raised the threshold needed to win State Duma seats to 7 percent and threw up other barriers to potential challengers.
All of the restrictions added in Russia have been practiced in the United States – most are still in force.
Primaries are restricted to the options agreed upon by those in command of the party. Independent voters are refused the right to vote in most primaries. Enormous restrictions are placed upon anyone wishing to run for office independent of either of the TweedleDeeDum parties. There are exceptions. They are few. The number diminishes from year to year, decade to decade.
Our Supreme Court continues to makes decisions backing only one concept of free elections. Whoever has the most money has the best chances.
There have been primaries where “None of the Above” is an option. Go ahead and try to get that choice in your own state. Like redistricting, like seeking majority rule in Congress, like any request for increased democracy and participation in governance of the United States – the decisions are made by those least interested in more democracy – the politicians in office.
Nakh-Nakh.
U.S. fails to block accord against cluster bombs
The dangerous task of removing cluster bombs dropped by Israel on Lebanon
A U.S.-led push to regulate, rather than ban, cluster munitions failed Friday after 50 countries objected, following humanitarian campaigners’ claims that anything less than a outright ban would be an unprecedented reversal of human rights law.
While the United States, China and Russia want rules about the manufacture and use of cluster bombs, activists say such regulations would legitimize the munitions, backtracking from the Oslo Convention, an international treaty that seeks a worldwide ban.
“Against all odds it looks like we’re going to have success this evening,” Steve Goose, head of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, told a press conference in Geneva. “How often do you see the U.S., Russia, China, India, Israel and Belarus push for something, and they don’t get it? That has happened largely because of one powerful alliance driving the Oslo partnership.”
Cluster bombs, dropped by air or fired by artillery, scatter hundreds of bomblets across a wide area and can kill and maim civilians long after conflicts end…
Those lining up against the U.S. plan included the International Committee of the Red Cross and the top U.N. officials for human rights, emergency relief and development.
The U.N. agency chiefs said cluster bombs were a particular threat to children, who were attracted by their unusual, toy-like shapes and colors. They said they were extremely concerned at plans to do anything less than ban them…
Activists said the opposition to the U.S. proposal was led by Norway, Mexico and Austria, while 12 signatories to the 2008 Oslo Convention, including Japan, France and Germany, said they were in favor of regulation of cluster bombs under the CCW.
China and Russia, which like the United States are major producers of cluster munitions, were strongly supportive of the U.S. measure.
No surprises in any aspect of the politics on display here. Whether the question is one of allowing torture – or carrying on with the manufacture, deployment and distribution of anti-personnel weapons generally used by the most reactionary regimes on Earth – the United States has supported continuing use.
Questions of use and abuse of weapons using phosphorus, napalm – questions regarding carpet bombing, land mines and cluster bombs – and most recently the revival of torture as acceptable, the United States has lagged the rest of civilization. Whichever domestic decisions have been made by American voters, foreign policy enforced by military means and guided by allegiance to Pentagon protocols and Congressional fiat has relied on death and destruction applied with equal weight to military and civilian targets.
We accepted all the premises from the Axis we fought against in World War 2. And invented new rationales, more lies for the Cold War and beyond.
Virgin Mary’s Belt draws lines of True Believers in Moscow
From morning all through the night, tens of thousands of Russians have been lining up since Saturday in the cold with just one aim: to kiss a glass-covered reliquary that they believe holds the Virgin Mary’s belt.
They shuffle along, waiting for up to 12 hours without complaint in a line that stretches for miles. Within a few days, the organizers say, the wait could reach 24 hours. At any given time there are about 25,000 people, according to news media estimates, and as of Wednesday morning, 285,000 true believers had earned their moment before the belt, said the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, which organized the tour…
Of all the industrial nations, perhaps only Russia outdistances the United States in the religiosity of its people, two million of whom venerated the belt before its final stop in Moscow…
“We came so that we will live well, be happy and healthy, for the sake of our children,” said Anna Kozlova, 68, a pensioner who joined the end of the line late Tuesday night with her daughter Oksana Kulikova, a nurse, wrapped, like her mother, in fur against the cold.
She said she planned to head straight to work after venerating the relic at the towering Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which has been open around the clock…
Moscow’s city government closed streets around the cathedral — causing those Muscovites not so inclined to venerate relics to rant about the even-worse-than-usual traffic jams. Mobile canteens were set up to feed the pilgrims, and heated city buses lined the embankment to offer respite from the cold. A free bus service is shuttling provincial visitors to train stations…
Next – I hear someone is bringing in Jesus’ jockey shorts.
Cyberattack on water plant in Illinois – doesn’t hold water!
Federal officials said Wednesday they have found no evidence to support an initial state report that foreign hackers caused a water pump at an Illinois water plant to fail this month.
The preliminary report, collected by a statewide terrorist intelligence center in Illinois, had said that a Russian hacker had taken control of the operating system at the water plant in Springfield. The pump turned on and off repeatedly, burning out the motor, the report said…
But the Department of Homeland Security and FBI said they failed to confirm reports of a cyberattack. DHS spokesman Chris Ortman called the Illinois state report nothing more than “raw, unconfirmed data.”
He said that the federal investigation also failed to confirm the report’s claim that hackers broke into a software company’s database and retrieved user names and passwords, which enabled access to the water plant system.
“In addition,” Ortman said, “DHS and FBI have concluded that there was no malicious traffic from Russia or any foreign entities, as previously reported.”
Officials from the state intelligence center did not return phone calls seeking comment…
Please, let’s don’t start letting reality, verifiable conclusions or facts stand in the way of Cold Warriors who are required by that alien implant in their brain to transform every possible SNAFU into an assault upon God, Apple Pie and the American Way of Life.
Seven Internet bandits indicted in $14 million advert fraud case
Internet bandits devised an international scheme to hijack more than 4 million computers in more than 100 countries, manipulating traffic on Netflix, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and other popular websites to generate at least $14 million in fraudulent advertising revenue.
Six of the seven people named in the indictment unsealed Wednesday are Estonians who are in custody in that country, and prosecutors said extradition was being sought. One Russian remains at large.
About 500,000 computers in the United States were infected with malware, including those used by individuals, educational institutions, nonprofits and government agencies like NASA, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara told a news conference.
Bharara called the case the first of its kind because the suspects set up their own “rogue” servers to secretly reroute Internet traffic to sites where they had a cut of the advertising revenue. “On a massive scale, the defendants gave new meaning to the term ‘false advertising,’” Bharara said.
The problem was first discovered at NASA, where 130 computers were infected. Investigators followed a digital trail to Eastern Europe, where the defendants operated “companies that masqueraded as legitimate participants in the Internet advertising industry,” according to the indictment…
The indictment estimated the defendants “reaped least $14 million in ill-gotten gains” over a five-year period.
It’s easy enough to say “Don’t click unless you are certain of the source” but, the average user – or even a skilled user, presuming that’s who was fooled at NASA – is only going to spend a minimum amount of time before deciding whether or not an innocent-appearing email in their inbox is legit.
Better solutions require better protective software – or a better operating system. Unix-based operating systems like OS X can be relied upon to provide security beyond the capabilities of most hackers, most cyber-crooks. Additional steps and stages can be placed between a user’s computer and the world living out there on the Internet. The problem resolves back to beancounters who say they can’t or won’t spend that extra little bit. Pennywise and pound-foolish loses again.
Coppers bust suspect with mummified remains of 27 women
Police investigating Russian grave robberies are holding a man after the remains of at least 20 women were found in his flat…Mummified remains of 27 women were found in the flat in Nizhny Novgorod, a police source told government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
The suspect, 45, is a local historian..
He is believed to have dug up the remains of young women at various cemeteries and put dresses on them…
The remains are believed to have been stolen from local graves in Nizhny Novgorod, a city on the Volga. The suspect may be charged with desecrating human remains…
He apparently specialised in exploring cemeteries and was planning to publish a guide book.
Uh, OK. What sort of guidebook? Where to pilfer the sexiest mummies?
Russia prepares to install bomb proof public toilets
Officials in the Russian capital say new public toilets, to be introduced by the end of the year, will be virtually indestructible.
With basins made from ultra-strong fibrous concrete, and fittings hewn from a mixture of steel and reinforced plastic, officials say the state of the art WC’s are vandal and terrorist-proof.
“If somebody will leave a bomb inside the lavatory and it explodes, then the toilet won’t be destroyed,” said Anatoly Ashikhmin, an official involved in the project from the Moscow State Department of Building Maintenance…
The high tech facilities, say officials, will also be kept above 16 degrees centigrade (about 60 degrees Fahrenheit), important in a city where winter temperatures often plunge below -30 degrees centigrade.
City officials say an extra security feature of the new unisex toilet is that members of the public will be able to spend a maximum of 30 minutes inside before the doors automatically open and an alarm sounds.
Please don’t let anyone in Homeland InSecurity know about this.
First off, every member of Congress will want a crapper like this in their office. Second, TSA will make them mandatory in every airport. And we’ll have to pay for them.
Darwin award candidate
A Russian man died after burying himself alive in a friend’s garden in the Far Eastern city of Blagoveshchensk in an endurance test that went wrong, according to investigators.
The 35-year-old man wanted to test his endurance and asked his friend to help him spend the night buried, according to Alexei Lubinsky, a senior aide to the region’s chief investigator.
The two men dug a hole in the garden and put inside an improvised coffin with holes for air pipes. The man also took a blanket, a bottle of water and a mobile phone.
The victim’s friend told investigators he covered the hole with planks and earth to a depth of around eight inches and then went home, after receiving a phone call from his friend telling him he was fine. The next morning, he found his friend dead.
Investigators speculated that a rainstorm overnight could have blocked the air supply to the coffin.
“We know that the victim was a computer programmer and that he has a small child,” Mr Lubinsky said, adding that he probably was influenced by reading stories about self-burial on the internet.
I’m honestly dismayed by the number of truly stupid risks people take with their lives after reading about inane behavior on the Web. If I strolled around town handing out leaflets suggesting idiotic life-threatening stunts for people to try I’d probably be locked away as a menace.
Deservedly so.
Russians arrest man eating human liver with potatoes
Spring onions can provide a piquant addition
Russian police say they have detained a man who was caught eating an acquaintance’s liver.
Police tracked down the suspect after a trail of severed body parts including limbs and a head were found across Moscow.
“When the police came to arrest the suspect, he was eating a human liver with potatoes,” a police spokeswoman for the Moscow’s western district said by telephone.
The rest of the human liver was found in a refrigerator in the suspect’s flat. The police spokeswoman said the cause of the acquaintance’s death was not clear.
What’s obvious is that the suspect knows nothing about proper pairing of ingredients in a meal. He was lacking onions.
