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Holland's Mobile Euthanasia - Doctors Won't Make House Calls But Levenseinde Will

Holland's Mobile Euthanasia - Doctors Won't Make House Calls But Levenseinde Will

Mar 04 2012 | comment(s)

Mobile euthanasia units in Holland will travel around the country to help people end their lives when their own doctors subscribe to that old-fashioned Hippocratic Oath and refuse to accept 21st century postmodern values.

Levenseinde, "Life End", is the biggest Dutch advancement in helping kill people since turning Anne Frank over to the Nazis. They legalized euthanasia in 2002 as one of their post-World War II liberal values but some doctors violate the law and refuse to kill people, instead persisting in the archaic notion that doctors should try and save lives.

What about the euthanizers?  Their psychological health is important, too. They will only be allowed to kill one person per week.  We don't want anyone getting weird.
SpeechJammer Gun Shuts People Up Remotely

SpeechJammer Gun Shuts People Up Remotely

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University have developed a portable SpeechJammer gun that can silence people from a hundred feet away.

Their claim of a benefit?  It may bring world peace.  Sometimes conflicts can't be resolved peacefully because the other person just won't shut up. France, we mean you.

The cultural implications go beyond the geopolitical. The number one cause for relationship violence, according to wife abusers?  "The bitch just wouldn't shut up".  Now, with the SpeechJammer, domestic discord disappears.

SpeechJammer
General Motors Suspends Chevy Volt (Maybe Pres. Obama Should Have Bought One Sooner)

General Motors Suspends Chevy Volt (Maybe Pres. Obama Should Have Bought One Sooner)

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

President Obama said last week he would buy a Chevy Volt - but not for another five years. We can't fault him for that, in a weak economy lots of people postpone car purchases.  Well, technically, he said that he would buy one when he was no longer president but that means five years.  As long as Republicans trot out one of the current crop of candidates, Obama can maintain an approval rating lower than even Jimmy Carter and still get re-elected, there's no Ronald Reagan coming along.
When Children Grieve

When Children Grieve

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

We grieve in our own ways and in our own time. Some of us push the losses into the dusty recesses of our mind and refuse to go there. Some of us cannot and remain in the immediacy of the loss, continually bombarded with it so that we are sucker punched throughout the day.

Book Review: Cindy Ariel's Loving Someone With Asperger's Syndrome

Book Review: Cindy Ariel's Loving Someone With Asperger's Syndrome

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

Part guidebook, part workbook, Ariel's book for neurotypical partners is sure to be considered a boon for spouses who know almost nothing about Asperger's Syndrome. Written by  Cindy Ariel, a licensed psychologist who provides therapy for a variety of issues, including relationships, it is an easy-to-read guide to understanding Asperger's Syndrome and why partners on the spectrum behave in ways that may be hard for those unfamiliar with the syndrome to understand.

Quaternionic Versus Complex Probability Ampitude Distributions

Quaternionic Versus Complex Probability Ampitude Distributions

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)


Introduction

It is a mathematical fact that both the real numbers and the rational numbers contain an infinite amount of elements. It is possible to devise a procedure that assigns a label containing a different natural number to every rational number. This is not possible for the real numbers. Technically this means that the set of real numbers has a higher cardinality than the set of rational numbers. In simple words it means that there are far more real numbers than there are rational numbers. Still both sets can densely cover a selected continuum, such as a line. However, the rational numbers leave open places,because infinite many real numbers fit between each pair of rational numbers.

Tautologically Totalitarian Totality And Why We Do Not Accept It

Tautologically Totalitarian Totality And Why We Do Not Accept It

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

Quantum physics is close to the ultimate foundation of everything, but not because it is about little things. Quantum physics is not about little things; a radio-wave photon can be hundreds of meters long (in terms of wave length as well as coherence length). Physics is fundamentally the question of what is possible at all. With quantum mechanics, physics arrived at a point where we either face up to uncomfortable facts or refuse to follow science any further. Quantum physics is not important to consciousness because of some quantum magic in the brain that switches the light on, but because physics is fundamentally about all that is possibly possible for consciousness to be conscious about – a consistent description of all phenomena, telling us what is possible.

Why Evolutionary Psychology Pisses You Off (And Why Maybe It Shouldn't)

Why Evolutionary Psychology Pisses You Off (And Why Maybe It Shouldn't)

Mar 03 2012 | comment(s)

If you want to irritate a lot of people at once, write an article about evolutionary psychology. Publishing such an article will invariably provoke a firestorm of denunciations and criticisms. Given the vehemence of these attacks, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the scientific basis for evolutionary psychology (or “evpsy” as it is sometimes abbreviated) was akin to tarot cards or bloodletting. Yet the basic premise of evpsy—that some aspects of the human brain and behavior were subject to evolutionary pressures—seems to be scientifically sound.
Crunching Apples In Poland

Crunching Apples In Poland

Mar 02 2012 | comment(s)

“Sound generated during eating of apples plays important role in its texture evaluation by consumers.”

Cheese versus Time

Cheese versus Time

Mar 02 2012 | comment(s)

Can the basic attributes of a cheese remain stable over half a millennium or so? Fortunately, written details of the visual, olfactory, taste and texture characteristics of Parmigiano-Reggiano™ cheese can be traced back as far as the Middle Ages.
DZERO: 23 MeV Uncertainty On W Boson Mass

DZERO: 23 MeV Uncertainty On W Boson Mass

Mar 02 2012 | comment(s)

Just a few days ago the CDF collaboration announced their new measurement of the W boson mass, with a considerable improvement over the precision of the current world average for that quantity. Now DZERO, the competitor experiment, has also published their own new measurement, which is based on a statistics of 4.3 inverse femtobarns - twice as many data as the ones used by CDF.
Occupy Occupy D.C. Rallies Against ‘Obama's War on Nature’

Occupy Occupy D.C. Rallies Against ‘Obama's War on Nature’

Mar 02 2012 | comment(s)

The anti-Occupy Wall Street movement, styling themselves Occupy Occupy D.C., held a rally today at Freedom Plaza to call for a “Cease Fire in Obama's War on Nature.” They came out today to protest “the Obama Administration's new policy to kill the barred owl in deference to the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.”

If that makes no sense, welcome to politics.  If you've never witnessed taxpayer money being spent on lawyers to get around the federal Wilderness Act law in order to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, you have not been around for long.
Infanticide - The Argument In Favor

Infanticide - The Argument In Favor

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

If you are not a social authoritarian in love with big government and worry about the personal ramifications for freedom if health care is federalized, here is a chilling idea from the home of socialized medicine - Great Britain. Well, sort of Great Britain, now one of them is in Australia. 

Their article shows the slippery slope of choice - basically, if abortions are okay, so is infanticide and if one is not okay, neither is the other.  Which means, of course, anything is okay if the 'elites' determine fitness.  Eugenics is making a big resurgence in the progressive mindset.
Carbon Capture Candidates Clean Up Climate Change

Carbon Capture Candidates Clean Up Climate Change

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

Forget mitigation and rationing, it is not the way cultures and progress work.  The long-term solution is obviously to engage in basic research and come up with effective clean energy but also to create fewer emissions while development is in progress.

America never migrated to nuclear energy the way the French did so today up to 75 percent of electricity used in the United States is instead produced by coal-burning power plants and that means carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere and increased risk of global warming. To reduce the impact of current power generation, researchers are searching for porous materials to filter out the CO2 generated by those plants before it reaches the atmosphere, a process commonly known as carbon capture.
Discovered: Floor Of The World's Oldest Forest

Discovered: Floor Of The World's Oldest Forest

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

Scientists have reported the discovery of the floor of the world's oldest forest. They are now piecing together a view of this ancient site, dating back about 385 million years and - because virtually all studies have to reference global warming these days - they note their research could shed new light on the role of modern-day forests and their impact on climate change.

The recent discovery was made in the same area in Schoharie County, New York where fossils of the Earth's oldest trees, the Gilboa stumps, were discovered in the 1850s, 1920 and again in 2010 and were brought to the New York State Museum. The Museum has the world's largest and best collection of Gilboa fossil tree stumps.
Do Bacteria Talk? Maybe In Their Own Way

Do Bacteria Talk? Maybe In Their Own Way

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

What if bacteria could talk? Or use touch? A new study hypothesizes that bacterial cells may need to communicate in order to perform certain functions. 
An Ode To Venus

An Ode To Venus

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

"To her who appears in the sky
    to her who appears in the sky
I want to address my greeting
    to the hierodule who appears in the sky
I want to address my greeting
    to the great queen of heaven, Inanna [ancient Sumerian name for Venus]
I want to address my greeting
    to her who fills the sky with her pure blaze
    to the luminous one
    to Inanna
        as bright as the sun
    to the great queen of heaven."
An ancient Sumerian hymn to Venus, written by priests
Adorable Baby Squid Videos

Adorable Baby Squid Videos

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)

Baby squid are the cutest, right? I mean, right? 
Inappropriate odors - the benefits (or otherwise)

Inappropriate odors - the benefits (or otherwise)

Mar 01 2012 | comment(s)



“The effect odor has on a consumer’s experience of the product is still not yet understood.” Prompting investigators at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands to set up two experiments in order to clarify the possible influences of odor on consumer goods. Their research took an unusual approach, centring around what they call ‘incongruent odors’ – perhaps simply described as merchandise with ‘the wrong smell’.
For example, a pair of plastic wellington boots (see photo) was treated with a ‘rose-like’ smell and, along with other incongruously odorised items, were then exposed to test subjects in various carefully controlled ways.