Author: NW0.eu

The credibility crisis facing the UN’s climate panel over errors in its 2007 report has cast a shadow on IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri. Now, top researchers in Germany are among those calling for his resignation.

Our old friend Jo Abbess BSc is back. And she’s got some searching, pertinent questions which could put paid to my AGW-denying antics once and for all!

British students are unable to concentrate on reading an academic book for study, because the internet is ‘”rewiring” their brains, a new documentary claims.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today supported a statement by a prominent group of Muslim scholars that full-body scanners being introduced in airports worldwide violate religious and privacy rights.

From Fortean Times:

According to the New Catholic Dictionary the Holy Grail is “a legendary sacred vessel, identified with the chalice of the Eucharist or the dish of the Paschal Lamb, and the theme of a medieval cycle of romance”. It “is said to have been the dish… used by Joseph of Arimathea to gather the Precious Blood of Christ.” And, according to author, historian and folklorist Mark Oxbrow, the Grail has actually been found.

Of course, the Grail was once in the hands of Indiana Jones, but even he ultimately lost it; so what makes Oxbrow’s claims special? Why should we believe him when we already have several Grails, including the Nantios Cup, the “Holy Bloodline” of Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln’s The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and the Stone Tablets…

RAW Story is reporting today the ACLU is filing a lawsuit on behalf of the student. Here’s the original report from Dave Davies in the Philadelphia Daily News:

EIGHT YEARS after 9/11, we’re used to changes in our routines. We show ID to get into office buildings, and take off our shoes at airports. But should a college student flying back to school be handcuffed and held for five hours because he has Arabic flash cards in his backpack?

That’s the way Nick George, a senior at Pomona College, in California, sees what happened to him at the Philadelphia airport two Saturdays ago. George, of Wyncote, Montgomery County, was about to catch a Southwest flight back to school when stereo speakers in his backpack caught the eye of screeners at the metal detector.

Concerns over privacy have aligned with apocalyptic Biblical prophecy in a proposed Virginia law that limits the use of microchip implants on humans because of a lawmaker’s concern that the chips will prove to be the Antichrist’s “mark of the beast.”

A former Guantanamo Bay inmate was effectively tortured by US authorities while in CIA custody in Pakistan, according to intelligence notes released Wednesday by a British court.

The New York Times reports on the mysterious link between karaoke and murderous violence in the Philippines. A Frank Sinatra song is singled out as especially dangerous:

The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”

Killings are not limited to the Philippines. In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”

Lavtia has auctioned off an entire city to a private bidder. Skrunda-1 has built by the USSR in the ’80s and kept off all maps and records. “It is not immediately clear” what plans the mysterious investor has for it. From the Boston Globe:

Latvia sold a deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction yesterday, officials said.

The town formerly known as Skrunda-1 housed about 5,000 people during the Cold War. It was abandoned over a decade ago after the Russian military withdrew from Latvia following the Soviet collapse.

The conviction of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui on Feb. 3 of this year for attempted murder raised widespread outrage in Pakistan, Siddiqui’s home country. Born in Karachi in 1972 and educated at MIT in the US, Aafia Siddiqui is not a likely candidate for being caught up in this web of terrorism counter terrorism.
Siddiqui was married […]

The announcement of the invention of a new type of body screening machinery, that does not show detailed naked images of the person it scans, highlights the fact that the public was grossly misled over the scanners now in place in airports the world over.

Since the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a plane over Michigan, there has been discussion of using the “full-body” scanner. Such scanners were rushed into operation at London’s Heathrow Airport February 1st.

Britain’s satellite navigation networks could soon experience problems and disruptions caused by higher levels of radiation coming from the Sun, scientists warn.

MI5 knew that Binyam Mohamed, the former Guantanamo detainee, was being tortured by the CIA, a Court of Appeal judgment has revealed.

US President Barack Obama has pushed for a “significant regime of sanctions” against Iran unless it accepts international proposals aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions.

For several years, residents of coastal areas around the southern and southwestern Caspian Sea have been reporting of an amphibious creature resembling a human being. In March 2005 an eyewitness account from the crew of the Baku, an Azeri trawler, was …

I wish more of the talking heads called out those in positions of influence for what they are, an “empty vessel” is an apt description. We need more honest brokers of information. I completely agree, this line of thinking is truly “frightening” (via Hardball with Chris Matthews):

She’s frightening. Mark, that is frightening stuff. Frightening. First of all, president don’t declare war. Anybody knows that in high school. Congress has to declare war. To declare war on Iran, I don’t think the most far right, Middle East hawk will talk about declaring war on Iran, a country with 70-some million people, with an advanced air force. … Why does she talk like that? Is Michael Ledeen, a real hawk, writing this stuff for her? I don’t know anyone as far right as that, besides him.

With a massive blizzard going on in the Northeastern U.S., water (albeit in a frozen form) is on everyone’s mind in this part of the world. Very interesting article, whether you are snowed in or not. Edwin Cartlidge writes in New Scientist:

We are confronted by many mysteries, from the nature of dark matter and the origin of the universe to the quest for a theory of everything. These are all puzzles on the grand scale, but you can observe another enduring mystery of the physical world — equally perplexing, if not quite so grand — from the comfort of your kitchen. Simply fill a tall glass with chilled water, throw in an ice cube and leave it to stand.

The fact that the ice cube floats is the first oddity. And the mystery deepens if you take a thermometer and measure the temperature of the water at various depths. At the top, near the ice cube, you’ll find it to be around 0 °C, but at the bottom it should be about 4 °C. That’s because water is denser at 4°C than it is at any other temperature — another strange trait that sets it apart from other liquids.

9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerry (Gov. Nebraska) was speaking on climate change at a conference. After it ended, he was answering questions as he was walking to his next engagement. He stopped and talked for a few minutes to people of “We Are Change LA”. Th…