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Very disturbing!
Mind-reading scientists say future crime can be predicted with '100 per cent' accuracy
READING the minds of terrorists to know where and when the next attack will occur is no longer the stuff of sci-fi films.
A team from the Northwestern University in the US claim they have achieved 100 per cent accuracy in reading the minds of make-believe terrorists simply by attaching electrodes to their scalps and examining their brain waves.
For the study, 29 students were given mock terrorist plans and 30 minutes to learn about an attack on a certain US city.
They were asked to work out their own details based on information they were given regarding weapons and methods.
For the first study, the researchers also knew about the mock terrorist plans. Their goal was to monitor whether the students' brain waves gave away details of where and when the attacks were to take place.
According to psychology professor J. Peter Rosenfeld, the "guilty" patterns occur in "P300" brain waves when meaningful information is shown to a person with "guilty knowledge".
Maybe we should have more police dogs. They seem to generate more respect and deliver a more salutary lesson than the police officers themselves.A POLICE dog has had a bite of an alleged offender during a wild disturbance at a Logan train station.
Police were called to Railway Parade at Woodridge about 2.30am, following reports of about 20 youths wreaking havoc on the train line.
As the patrol cars approached most of the youths fled, and some attempted to hide behind the train station.
There, they ran into the Logan Dog Squad and when one of the teens allegedly lashed out at a police dog, he was nipped on the hip.
First aid was administered to the 15-year-old who is now facing charges of public nuisance and obstruct police.
A short time later, police were alerted to another disturbance at nearby Blackwood Road at Woodridge, where four youths were allegedly bashing a man.
He was robbed of his bag and suffered a head injury.
Two people aged 14 and 15 were arrested by police and will be dealt with under the Juvenile Justice Act.
Jobless millions signal death of the American dream for many
Even the criminals have fallen on hard times in America's poorest city as the long-term unemployed struggle to keep a grasp on normality
....Joblessness has taken hold in America, with the numbers of long-term unemployed reaching levels not seen since the Depression of the 1930s. The figures are frightening and illustrate a society that remains in deep trouble.
The headline jobless figure of 9.5% is bad enough but does not begin to convey the problem as it fails to measure those who have stopped looking for work. Over the past three months alone more than a million Americans have fallen into that category: effectively giving up hope of finding a job and dropping out of the official statistics. Such cases now number some 5.9 million and their ranks are likely to grow as millions more find their jobless status becoming a permanent state of hopelessness. Surveys show that with each passing week on the dole their chances of finding a job get slimmer.
Though corporations, especially in the banking sector, are posting healthy profits, they are not hiring new workers. At the same time, government cuts are sweeping through city and state governments alike, threatening tens of thousands of jobs and slicing away at services once thought vital. Schools, street lighting, libraries, refuse collection, the police, fire services and public transport networks are all being scaled back.
America appears to be a society splitting down the centre, shattering the middle class that long formed the cultural bedrock of the country and dividing it into a country of haves and have-nots. "A once unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal," warned Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in a recent New York Times column. Or, as Steven Green, an economics lecturer at Baylor University, put it to the Observer: "We are really in a tough spot right now."
There is a new name for those falling down the black hole of joblessness that has opened up in America's economy. They are the 99ers.
It is a moniker that no one wants. It refers to the 99 weeks of benefits that the jobless can qualify for in America. Government cash helps those laid off keep a tenuous grip on a normal life. It keeps a roof over their heads, pays a phone bill, puts food on a table and petrol in a car. But once the 99 weeks are up the payments stop – as is happening now for millions of people – and they are 99ers.
The blitz 1940-1941: an interactive timeline
This interactive timeline tracks the German air force's bombing campaign as it devastated towns and cities across Britain during the second world war. By the end of the blitz, 60,000 people, half of them in London, had been killed by the attacks
I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly
The ethical case against eating animal produce once seemed clear. But a new book is an abattoir for dodgy arguments
* George Monbiot
This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong. More to the point, it has opened my eyes to some fascinating complexities in what seemed to be a black and white case.
In the Guardian in 2002 I discussed the sharp rise in the number of the world's livestock, and the connection between their consumption of grain and human malnutrition. After reviewing the figures, I concluded that veganism "is the only ethical response to what is arguably the world's most urgent social justice issue". I still believe that the diversion of ever wider tracts of arable land from feeding people to feeding livestock is iniquitous and grotesque. So does the book I'm about to discuss. I no longer believe that the only ethical response is to stop eating meat.
In Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Simon Fairlie pays handsome tribute to vegans for opening up the debate. He then subjects their case to the first treatment I've read that is both objective and forensic. His book is an abattoir for misleading claims and dodgy figures, on both sides of the argument.
A friend of mine used to be a policeman in the Western Australia Police Service and was one of the trained pursuit drivers. One day on patrol he saw a car speeding in suburbia so he decides to give chase. The car takes off. The pursuit is on. Whilst pursuing the speeding vehicle a cat runs out in front of his patrol car and he thinks he hits the cat. Calls of the pursuit and goes looking for the cat. Spying a cat spread eagled on the lawn across the road with legs akimbo and MEWING loudly he thought that it was in pain from being hit by his car. He gets his night stick out and clubs the cat and places it in the boot of the car. Presumably dead.
He heads back to the station to fill out a report about hitting a cat during a pursuit when he is telephoned by the desk Sargeant on his mobile asking him to go immediately to see the Big Boss when he gets in ! My friend dutifully fronts up to the Beak and asks what the problem is?
The BB asks what has he got against cats?
Apparently the cat he clubbed was not the cat he had run over !!!!!!
It was some old ladies cat sunning itself on the lawn and she watched him from the window of her house get out of the car and strike it with great fury !!
Now my friend starts to laugh a bit at this conundrum to which the BB aint real happy about this. So they go to the cop car to retrieve the "dead cat". When they opened the boot the damn thing flew out the back of the car at a great rate of knots and was never seen again !!!!
When he was telling me I laughed so much at his misfortune (and not the beating of an animal) that I had tears down my eyes.
Now whether this is true or not I cannot say as it is his story and not mine.
FEMALE marine snails living off the Perth coast are growing male sex organs on their heads after exposure to the chemical TBT, according to local researchers.
A man has won $650,000 in compensation after a stripper injured him in a lap dance.
Michael Ireland, from the US state of Florida, was poked in the eye by the woman's spiked high heel during a performance at the Cheetah Club, near West Palm Beach, in 2008.
The heel punctured his eye socket and broke bones around his eyes and nose, NBC Miami reports.
Mr Ireland's lawyers say he has permanent double vision.
Thank You from the Old Folks' Home"
JUST WHEN you lost faith in human kindness. . .
Someone who teaches at a Middle School in Safety Harbor, Florida forwarded the following letter. The letter was sent to the principal's office after the school had sponsored a luncheon for the elderly. An old lady received a new radio at the lunch, and was writing to say thanks:
Dear Safety Harbor Middle School:
God blesses you for the beautiful radio I won at your recent senior citizens luncheon. I am 84 years old and live at the Safety Harbor Assisted Home for the Aged. All of my family has passed away. I am all alone now and it's nice to know that someone is thinking of me. God bless you for your kindness to an old forgotten lady.
My roommate is 95 and always had her own radio, but before I received one, she would never let me listen to hers, even when she was napping. The other day her radio fell off the night stand and broke into a lot of pieces. It was awful and she was in tears. She asked if she could listen to mine, and I said, "**** you."
Life is good.
Sincerely, Edna
Immigration officer sacked for putting wife he didn't like on terror watch list
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by Justin Penrose, Sunday Mirror 30/01/2011
An immigration officer put his own wife on a terrorist watch list – ¬so she could not get home from a trip to Pakistan.
The officer was so sick of his partner that when she was visiting family overseas he added her name to the register of people banned from flights into the UK.
When she went to the airport to get her return flight back, officials told her she could not board the plane and did not ¬explain why.
She called her husband, who ¬promised to look into it – but left her stuck in Pakistan for THREE YEARS. He was sacked after bosses found out about his antics.
An immigration source said: “A lot of people may dislike their other halves but to do this takes it to the next level. Needless to say she was confused when she got to the airport as she had never been involved in anything criminal or terrorist related.
“She obviously thought her husband, being an immigration officer, would be able to find out what was going on. Little did she know it was him who had put her on the list. By all accounts he then had the time of his life.”
The officer worked with a unit that puts terror and criminal suspects on the watch list of people “not conducive to the public good”. He simply had to log on to a computer database to add his wife as a ¬potential suspect.
The officer was caught out when bosses vetted him after he went for a promotion that required him to have a higher level of security clearance. They realised his wife was on the watch list and asked him for an explanation. ¬He had no choice but to confess what he had done – and was fired.
The immigration source added: “He may have lost his job but he is bit of a legend in immigration circles. It will be talked about for years as the officer who hated his wife so much he put her on a watch list.”
A spokesman for the UK Border Agency, based in Croydon, Surrey, said: “We expect the highest -levels of integrity. ¬Allegations of misconduct are ¬thoroughly ¬investigated and we ¬always take ¬action swiftly where we find members of staff who have abused their ¬position. On the extremely rare occasions where this occurs, the strongest action is taken.”
Life, science and... everything
Jo Chandler
June 3, 2011
Sir Gus Nossal.
IN 1938, when he was seven years old, Gustav Nossal was in the crowd outside Vienna's Imperial Hotel to hear Adolf Hitler announce the annexing of Austria into ''Greater Germany''. His father came from Jewish stock, but he had been baptised Catholic, like his well-born mother. A year later, he was a refugee in Sydney being educated by the Jesuits.
At 26, he published a breakthrough paper in Nature and was a precocious scientific talent. At 34, he succeeded Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet as head of Melbourne's internationally renowned Walter and Eliza Hall Institute. Over the next 30 years, his work as a scientist and administrator helped build the foundations of modern immunology, and Melbourne's distinguished place in that archive.
Internationally, through his long involvement in the World Health Organisation, he has been at the front line of the global battle against disease. At home, through his role as a policy adviser and public advocate for science and medicine, he became a household name. On the eve of his milestone birthday, he reflects on the journey.
At 80, what you realise is that whatever little time you've got left really ought to be used to try to be helpful to society.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/life-science-and-everything-20110602-1fiq8.html#ixzz1OAEpiqgJ
My Conversation with TLC Marketing Customer Service
Posted on July 9, 2008 by Neil
After a day of phone calls, I finally was able to get TLC Marketing (or at least some guy in India) on the telephone to discuss the Dockers JCPenneys Free Round-Trip fiasco (see last post).
Neil: I’m calling about the Dockers Free Round Trip Ticket… I still haven’t heard back from you.
TLC Marketing: Yes, did you fill out the form?
Neil: I filled out the form a long time ago. I received a phone call saying everything was OK.
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