UNICEF goodwill Ambassador singer Ricky Martin, wears a traditional shawl while posing with a Palestinian participant of the Arab Children Congress during his visit to the Jordan's Preforming Arts Center in Amman, Jordan on Sunday, July 24,2005. Martin is a guest of honour to the Arab Children Congress which gathered 150 young people from the Arab World, Asia and Europe.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/24/2005 18:53 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I hear ya BR, it'll happen 1 thing at a time,
I've always wanted to win the Giro
I think I can help Team Discovery in some aspect, Hell even as Domsteick.
It would be fun, no pressure.
I'll ride for my team.
#1
In my self destructive hubris, I always believe I'm the worst failure around, but, no, this kind of story proves I'm not the sorriest sucker, after all. What's the (PT Barnum?) saying? "One born every minute"?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/24/2005 11:14 Comments ||
Top||
#2
The brain is an extremely complex organ, and any massive trauma is bound to create odd side-effects. Primary among these are changes in the emotions and perceptions. This often leads to the correct interpretation in others that the person has suffered a complete change in their "personality"; but also, the incorrect interpretation that their screwed-up perceptions are somehow "psychic". Even the person themselves may be totally convinced that they are perceiving something paranormal, from some phenomenon like "crossed senses", where people can "see music" or "hear color" and things like that.
The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice never has and will never employ women, said a source at the commission. The emphatic denial came in response to enquiries about a report carried by Al-Riyadh Arabic newspaper recently claiming that the commission is studying establishing a unit for its female employees to perform their duties concerning women violators.
The newspaper quoted a source at the commission as saying that the job of the female members of the commission would be, if the unit was approved, to assist in apprehending and advising women in violation of rules within the commission's authority. The female members would remove some of the awkwardness for the male members in dealing with women and entering places designated for women or places suspected of having women in them illegally. They would also spread the commission's principles according to Shariah. The article stated that the study would determine the possibility of establishing the unit based on Shariah regulations for women to be members and to conduct their duties.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/24/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11130 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
what do ya whant to bet these frmale members are all butt ugly?
#2
How would the Commission know that the figure in the burka they hired is a woman and not a faker who just wants to see an ankle or two? Sure, the women they dealt with might complain, but Saudis know how much a woman's testimony is worth, right?
Posted by: James ||
07/24/2005 12:12 Comments ||
Top||
#3
time to start ridiculing the ignorant backwards 7th century insecurities of Arabs - make them the laughing stock of the world. All cultures are not equal, and theirs barely qualifies. Asshats without self-control or anything besides seething and victimhood. An entire society of pre-teens
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2005 13:06 Comments ||
Top||
Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, attacked Saudi football teams who pay large amounts of money to acquire players saying they are squandering money on useless things. The mufti ruled that the money paid to these players is unlawful. In a sermon at a Riyadh mosque, the mufti said competition among football clubs to buy players leads to large amounts being wasted, while the money could have been used for more useful purposes. He likened the spendthrifts to the "brothers of the devil", quoting the Quranic verse: "Verily, spendthrifts are brothers of the evil one. And the evil one is to his Lord (himself) ungrateful."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/24/2005 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Ouch! That's some grand mufti, hurts all the way over here.
Posted by: Captain America ||
07/24/2005 10:26 Comments ||
Top||
#2
"Donate the money to Grand Muftis, Do not waste it on frivolous things like sport. How many AK47's could we have bought..."
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2005 12:27 Comments ||
Top||
#3
I think the Grand Mufti probably owns my favorite hockey team--the Chicago Blackhawks.
They never take out the checkbook to buy any talent.
Long article in the Sundya WaPo Magazine. Low-level SS killers were unlikely to be tired as war criminals, so some folks found another way to deal with them. Long, interesting article, edited down to the payback part, which provides some perspective on interrogation techniques.
DPs, or displaced persons, were the survivors of death and POW camps -- Jews, Poles, Russians, Hungarians, refugees of virtually every nationality who either could not return home or no longer had any homes to return to. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Europe, and they were housed in huge temporary DP camps. Several such refugee camps, converted German Army barracks, were near Munich.
"We studied up a little on military law, and there was nothing on the books preventing us from delivering suspects for additional debriefing to the DPs," Weiss recalls. He says he's not sure where the idea originated, who first put it into motion, or how widespread it was. "Whoever first came up with this, I honestly don't know. I don't think they'd own up to it anyway."
While it was perfectly legal under military law to hand over suspects for further questioning to DPs, says Benjamin Ferencz, who was a lead U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunals in 1945 and 1947, knowingly delivering suspects for execution was not. And of course the DPs were not interested in extracting information.
Ferencz, who today is 85 and lives in New York, cautions against making sweeping armchair moral judgments. "Someone who was not there could never really grasp how unreal the situation was," he says. "I once saw DPs beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?"
Posted by: Bobby ||
07/24/2005 16:23 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11128 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
This is a very interesting article. I recommend reading the whole thing.
Posted by: Phil Fraering ||
07/24/2005 18:59 Comments ||
Top||
#2
So Zappy can turn around and offer them to his Chinese masters?
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2005 15:14 Comments ||
Top||
#3
So WTF is the deal here? Are we keeping good relations with the Spanish military in hopes that the appeaser political leadership goes away? I do not get it.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/24/2005 15:15 Comments ||
Top||
#4
Things like this make me wonder which foggy-bottomed idiot in the higher Pentagon/State department made that decision. Obviously, the Spanish government is no longer friendly to the US and I wouldn't be surprised if they sold us down river.
This type of thinking got us into trouble with Iran, Iraq, Soviet Union, China, Central America, South America, etc.
You think these people would learn by now.
#7
The US and Spanish Navy are thicker than thieves... it's a good thing. Besides the strategic value of 50 THawks not that great. This is late '70s technology.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/24/2005 19:27 Comments ||
Top||
#9
What if the software was, um, adjusted, so that no matter what coordinate way-points were programmed in by the end-user, they would be overridden by a circular course - i.e. Return to Sender - set?
(2005-07-23) -- In response to Sen. John F. Kerry's call for release of all documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, President George Bush today said the Massachusetts Senator would "swiftly get a boatload" of data on the little-known federal appeals court judge.
"As a decorated Vietnam veteran, Sen. Kerry deserves swift access to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth," said Mr. Bush. "His own openness to requests for personal records during the presidential campaign is seared, seared in my memory."
The president promised to rapidly hand over all relevant records "in a fashion reminiscent of Sen. Kerry himself, within six months of Judge Roberts' confirmation by the Senate."
WASHINGTON - A major earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Indiaâs remote Nicobar Islands at around 1542 GMT on Sunday, the US Geological Survey said. The quake monitoring center said in a bulletin that the âmajorâ quake struck the Nicobar Islands about 135 kilometers west of Misha, Nicobar Islands or about 440 kilometers northwest of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia. âNo reports of damage or casualties have been received at this time; however, this earthquake may have caused damage due to its location and size,â the USGS cautioned.
The Denver-based quake-monitoring survey said the quake has been felt as far away as Chennai, India and Phuket, Thailand.
In a separate statement, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned in a bulletin that âearthquakes of this size sometimes generate local tsunamis that can be destructive along coasts located within a few hundred kilometers of the earthquake epicenter.â
âAuthorities in the region of the epicenter should be aware of this possibility and take appropriate action,â the center said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/24/2005 13:24 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11127 views]
Top|| File under:
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. â NASA (search) said Sunday it will launch the first space shuttle flight in 21/2 years even if Discovery is plagued by the same fuel gauge problem that halted the previous countdown two weeks ago. We are issuing wooden sticks to the astronauts so they can check manually.
Discovery is set to lift off Tuesday at 10:39 a.m., the same time Columbia took off on its doomed mission in 2003. Insert ominous chord.
Deputy shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said the fuel gauge problem has been a vexing one â engineers still don't know exactly what caused it â and he's repeatedly asked himself, "Are we taking care enough to do it right?"
At an evening news conference, Hale and other NASA officials found themselves defending the decision to launch with a fuel gauge failure. They stressed that they will proceed with a liftoff only if the problem is well understood and involves the gauges in question â anything else will result in a postponement.
NASA's own launch rule â in place since the 1986 Challenger disaster (search) â requires that all four hydrogen fuel gauges in the external tank be working properly. Going with three out of four would result in a "deviation" of the rule, Hale told reporters.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he supports the decision and even hopes the problem recurs to further pinpoint the source of the trouble. He acknowledged that the public might perceive that the space agency is rushing to launch, but insisted it was the right technical judgment.
"These are rather arcane matters, I would admit. They're rather difficult and sometimes they don't always present well," Griffin said. "But in the long run, I think if it's the right thing, we can explain it to you, and you want us doing what's right, not what necessarily is obvious or popular."
Workers last week repaired faulty electrical grounding inside Discovery in hopes that would solve the fuel gauge problem that thwarted the first launch attempt on July 13. One of the four gauges failed a routine test two hours before the scheduled liftoff. Technicians also swapped the wiring between the troublesome fuel sensor and another one to better understand the issue if it reappears Tuesday. If in doubt, start replacing parts. That's what My mechanic does.
The same type of problem occurred back in April during a fueling test, and was written off as an "unexplained anomaly." I guess it's better than saying "They all do that."
The fuel gauges are needed to prevent the main engines from shutting down too soon or too late during liftoff, in the event of an extreme problem like a leaking tank. The first scenario could result in a risky, never-attempted emergency landing; the second could cause the engine turbines to rupture and, quite possibly, destroy the spacecraft. Death, Destruction, Doom, Fairbanks
Only two fuel gauges are needed to avoid such dangerous situations, but NASA normally requires all four to be working at liftoff for redundancy.
Hale conceded there is no way to know with 100 percent certainty that more fuel gauges will not conk out on the shuttle's climb to orbit, if NASA launches with only three functioning ones. But that would involve stacking up multiple failures, he noted, "and the odds become kind of in the acceptable risk category that we have to go fly with."
NASA has just one week to launch Discovery and its crew of seven to the international space station, before putting off the mission until September. But they would never let that influence them.
The space agency is insisting on good lighting in order to see any signs of the type of launch damage that crippled Columbia. The opportunity for good photography, both at Cape Canaveral and over the North Atlantic when the fuel tank separates nearly nine minutes after liftoff, diminishes in August and is unacceptable until Sept. 9.
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/24/2005 21:56 Comments ||
Top||
#2
This NASA program manager sounds about as irresponsible as the one who rejected engineers' requests to use advanced imagery and observe damage to the Columbia before it attempted its doomed return.
If they have a failing sensor, and they can't find and fix the cause of the problem -- they should ask themselves how many other parts of the system are beyond their comprehension. Sadly, manned space-flight at NASA is a total disappointment.
By the way, wasn't there a worldwide Moslem gloating when the Columbia disintegrated?
The good thing here is that some real for-profit companies are part of the picture. However, everyone in this industry has been issuing overly optimistic predictions for about 30 years so stay tuned.
Cost Competitive Electricity from Photovoltaic {PV}Concentrators Called 'Imminent' [this is a govt website and they use scare quotes???]
Golden, Colo. â Solar concentrators using highly efficient photovoltaic solar cells will reduce the cost of electricity from sunlight to competitive levels soon..."Concentrating solar electric power is on the cusp of delivering on its promise of low-cost, reliable, solar-generated electricity at a cost that is competitive with mainstream electric generation systems," said Vahan Garboushian, president of Amonix, Inc. of Torrance, Calif. "With the advent of multijunction solar cells, PV concentrator power generation at $3 per watt is imminent in the coming few years," he added....
NREL announced a new record efficiency of 37.9 percent at 10 suns, a measure of concentrated sunlight. Soon thereafter Boeing-Spectrolab, under contract to NREL and the Department of Energy, surpassed the NREL record with 39.0 percent at 236 suns announced at the European photovoltaic conference in Barcelona, Spain...
#1
They also seem not to want to talk about what it takes, to include toxic materials, just to create the cells and what its going to take to dispose of them at the end of their useful lives.
#2
I'll grant you the point that the manufacturing will generate some nasty stuff. But so does the manufacture of hundreds of items. One of the worst by the way is the manufacture of pickles - the waste is very acidic and there is a lot of it.
#3
So what is the efficiency of currently commercially available photovoltaic cells? And how long is their useful life? I can't judge without comparisons. ;-)
#5
Even if they do 'get this right' it will take so long to manufacture and deploy that the only effect on gas & coal prices will be to ease the escalation and allow those commodities to continue to be used as chemical (& fertilizer) feed stocks.
#6
IIRC back when I was in grad school in the early/mid 90s solar arrays were along the lines of 10-12% efficient and perhaps five years later we were targeting 15-20% as our design goal for spacecraft application though those were somewhat $pendy in comparison to the garden variety commercial stuff.
#8
I wouldn't be surprised to see genetic engineers modify existigng solar collectors (plants) to provide some sort of economic, non-polluting energy source first.
Posted by: Mrs. Davis ||
07/24/2005 10:03 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Great idea Mrs Davis, but I think the enviro's would have a fit if that were to happen (not that that is a bad thing!)
Posted by: Tony (UK) ||
07/24/2005 10:28 Comments ||
Top||
#10
One of the worst by the way is the manufacture of pickles - the waste is very acidic and there is a lot of it
That's why gawd invented ribs, pickel tan is good for children ribs and most every thing else.
#11
236 suns? 10 suns? Uh, what's the operating temperature of these semiconductors? And how long can they last? I always get a little suspicious when a press release gives only one (highly optimized) parameter. Granted that much needed progress may be being made, but such progress is typically made slowly. Misleading âbreakthroughâ reports are unseemly, though the MSM seem to like them.
Posted by: Dave ||
07/24/2005 11:02 Comments ||
Top||
#12
It's all meaningless until the life-cycle cost becomes competitive with large-scale generation using coal and nuclear fuel. Right now, solar is not even close.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/24/2005 11:43 Comments ||
Top||
#13
Wishful thinking. They are describing incremental improvements in efficiency, which are pretty much irrelevant to delivering low cost solar power. That will only come from technology that is cheaper to manufacture and deploy by several multiples.
#15
It's all meaningless until the life-cycle cost becomes competitive with large-scale generation using coal and nuclear fuel.
As measured by what costs? If you include the capital costs of starting a new nuclear plant, and amortize over 10-15 years instead of 25 or so, the cost profile looks a LOT different.
That's not to say that solar is a viable alternative for major power generation at this point. But, as mhw points out, there are a lot of different applications. For many, just the effort of running transmission lines might be very costly or impractical. In these cases solar is MUCH more cost effective and the issue becomes one of capacity and reliability.
Given the value of remote sensors in security now, that is an important point I think.
Posted by: too true ||
07/24/2005 16:06 Comments ||
Top||
#16
I'm going to have an attack of pendantry here. 'Incremental' has 2 overlapping meanings. One is in steps, the other is in small steps/changes (ref Oxford dictionary). General usage is the latter.
Anyway, my point was that any improvement in efficiency will not make it significantly lower cost than other sources of electricty (at current prices) over the mains distribution system. Never mind lower than the cheapest sources of electricity, generally Hydro. That would require efficiences well in excess of 100%, clearly impossible.
Where I live, Western Australia, is about as ideal as it gets for solar. Very high and reliable levels of sunshine. Very long distances and low population densities making electricity distribution expensive. Yet solar (PV as opposed to passive which is widespread) power is non-existent here, except for some telecoms applications, for the very simple reason costs are not even in the ballpark.
#17
Re #14 & #15: Why would I amortize a nuclear plant over 10-15 years? That's as silly as claiming PV is "practical" just because it's cheaper than running poles and wires into a wilderness area to power a remote sensor. This article is talking about PV being "competitive with mainstream electric generation systems". That's pure BS.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/24/2005 16:42 Comments ||
Top||
#18
Several San Diego homes have been set up with rooftop solar and local news has been carrying stories with their electric meters going backwards - they're selling juice to SDG&E, and at peak usage periods. IIRC the setup cost was $10-15K
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/24/2005 16:45 Comments ||
Top||
#19
I don't dispute that PV makes genuine electricity. I just dicpute that the true unit cost is anywhere near competitive with coal or nuclear.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/24/2005 16:48 Comments ||
Top||
#20
Amonix is working with DOE and California grants according to the Amonix website. You can thus expect optimistic predictions at least until the funds run out. Especially on optimistic sites like NREL's. This is not objective -- this is self-serving press releases posing as news. The folks at NREL are about as objective as the folks working on fusion at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. It is the market that rules the energy future, not the energy bureaucrats and their subcontractors.
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/24/2005 17:01 Comments ||
Top||
#21
Why do people who think that socialism doesn't work turn around and think that the government is the defining source for new technology and predicting the future?
Posted by: Neutron Tom ||
07/24/2005 17:04 Comments ||
Top||
#22
When I can afford to put this stuff on my roof and run my heavly energy dependent house call me. Other wise it's BS. By the way I own abot 28 ARCO mud cells I have yet to hook up, I will have to build my own Charge controler and I might be able to run my ham gear off of the power. This is still pie in the sky as far as I am concerned.
#23
By the way, Ship, your pickle shipment will be on the way this week. Dill, bread & butter, and pickled squash.
I ahve done a bit of design with photovoltaic cells. I used a bank of surplus batteries from Ma Bell and a small bank of photovoltaic cells to provide 12 volt power to a small house. We ran the refirgerator, well pump, and lights. Of course, finding 12 volt appliances was not the easiest thing. This was back in 1986 and the house is still working today. The hot water is solar as well. Heating is a whole 'nother problem but as this was in South Alabama it wasn't as much of a problem as it would be here in east Tennessee. A propane heater worked wonders.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/24/2005 18:06 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdul Aziz Al Shaikh, attacked Saudi football teams who pay large amounts of money to acquire players saying they are squandering money on useless things. The mufti ruled that the money paid to these players is unlawful. In a sermon at a Riyadh mosque, the mufti said competition among football clubs to buy players leads to large amounts being wasted, while the money could have been used for more useful purposes. He likened the spendthrifts to the "brothers of the devil", quoting the Quranic verse: "Verily, spendthrifts are brothers of the evil one. And the evil one is to his Lord (himself) ungrateful."
