The Domestication of Social Cognition in Dogs -- Hare et al. 298 (5598): 1634 -- Science
This is neat. I meant to post this some years ago...before this blog existed. Creepy, eh? Heheh. Well, anyway, it seems we've bred dogs to recognize emotions. No surprise, right? So it turns out that puppies raised by humans, or even without human contact in kennels, are able to 'read' humans pretty well, whereas wolves raised by humans mostly fail.


Did the Soviets really build a "doomsday machine"? - By Ron Rosenbaum - Slate Magazine
The answer is yes, kind of. It was a system that, after detecting a nuclear attack on Russian soil, and not receiving any sort of signal from Moscow, would authorize whatever guy happened to be sitting in the bunker that day to launch Russia's arsenal at the US. No two keys, no backups, just one guy. Still, it did require an attack to occur before the system would unlock. But electronics are somewhat less than reliable. heh.
The really awesome part?
It's still turned on.




Experts doubt plan to block Web bomb recipes - Online World - MSNBC.com
Those crazy Europeans. They want to "use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism". That sounds pretty likely to work, doesn't it? And I'm sure it won't impede people's ability to actually talk about the world, or criticize government, or even do basic research on what's going on in the world. Weren't there a few silly, fantasy-story books about dangerous words a few years ago?
Heh. Just imagine - you want to write a paper about suicide bombers, you google "suicide bombers", "terrorism", and get "no results found." While I'd hope that that's true of the results of suicide bombing, I doubt it is true of the information online.



Part of Patriot Act ruled unconstitutional - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com
I don't have to say much beyond the title. It's just like it says. And that's good news. Government has got to play by the rules all the time, not just when it's convenient, or what the hell are rules for?



World Hepatitis Awareness Day 2007
And finally something lighthearted. No, seriously! If you've been failing to get hepatitis lately, this will give you some nice pointers. And knowing is half the battle! (the other half is violence! I saw that on the Internet)

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How to wash a grenade



grenade wash

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Bush slams MoveOn ad - - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper
Remember the "General Betray-Us" thing? I'm sure you've heard already, but MoveOn.org got a $120,000 dollar discount for their somewhat unbalanced newspaper attack.
Anyway, if you'll go onto page two, you'll find at least the New York Times has some honor - they've allowed Giuliani to run an ad at the same price. So, while they aren't raising prices, they aren't raising their standards much, either. Heheh. Alright, that was a cheap shot. To his credit, his ad was defending Gen. Petraeus.



Shag the Dog - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine
This is an old article - but I found it interesting when I first read it, and still do. Basically, it's almost impossible to oppose man-beast relations on any sort of moral grounds besides "it's icky." Well, I could just say, "God says don't do it, and that means don't do it," but people don't tend to listen to that.
Anyway - if you're thinking of opposing it on the grounds of lack of consent...wouldn't that leave animals unable to have sex at all, with each other, since they cannot give any meaningful sort of consent?
Chalk up one more reason to like God-given, inflexible moral rules! Sure, you can't prove them logically, but at least they deny dogsex!


Also,
What's wrong with eating dogs? - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine


Well...that was interesting.

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Well, I should start out strong.
This woman in Texas believes she has the corpses of three chupacabra (s?). They are ugly. They are also dogs.

Also, a man was trying to fish. A sea lion stole his bait. A very large sea lion. So he stabbed it. Now he's going to jail? Only in California, I hope, could this happen. It's a federal law, but....

On the subject...
In Hawaii, they have been without a ferry service. Now they have one. But environmentalists are blocking it, and a judge is cooperating with them. The reason? The boat does not have an environmental impact statement.
Come on. It's a boat. There are already several hundred, if not thousand, there. None of them had to complete one of these.

More bureaucratic awesomeness:
Men were heard speaking Arabic on a plane. So the plane was not allowed to take off. It turns out the men were contractors trying to teach our soldiers Arabic...but the government didn't get things sorted out very quickly, as usual; the flight didn't end up taking off until the next day.
Seriously, people, calm down. Terrorism sucks, but there really aren't that many people trying to kill us. And let's remember - Arabic != death. Or terrorists.

And more!
The Vatican recently started chartering planes to pilgrimage sites. On the way back from Lourdes, passengers were not allowed to carry their vials of holy water onto the plane.
I understand now. See, I thought those rules were silly. But actually, it's all been an elaborate set up for this very case. If you were an undead monster, or something similar, and had to fly on a plane, where you couldn't get away, wouldn't it suck if there was someone with holy water who happened to have it in for you? Problem solved, now!
Either that, or airplanes are inherently evil, like some old Luddites and technophobes have mentioned.

中國新聞的時候!
Officials on the mainland are concerned about the use of English...pretty much everywhere in that country. With good reason. I've seen a few "steamed crap"s in my day. They'd like to clear the confusion. (Though in some cases, there may be truth in advertising - cardboard is the main ingredient in some 包子, for example.)


少林寺徒不但弱, 而且很笨的.
Also, this is too ridiculous to be true, but I'm not in charge of these things, generally. A person wrote on the Internet that a single ninja went to a Shaolin temple and defeated all who would fight him. Another day on the Internet, right?
That reveals that you are neither a Shaolin monk nor the mainland government.
The monks are suing.
Notable quotes:

“The so-called defeat is purely fabricated, and we demand the Internet user
to apologize to the whole nation for the wrongs he or she did,” the Beijing News
said, citing a notice announced by a lawyer for the Shaolin monks.

The Shaolin Temple “strongly condemned the horrible deeds” of the user, the newspaper said.

“It is not only extremely irresponsible behavior with respect to the Shaolin Temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation,” it quoted the monks as saying.

Wow. Haven't they heard the one about the Internet and Special Olympics?


And lastly, making jet fuel out of algae. Awesome.