Nanotech Development

Nanotechnology is developing slowly but it is progressing, possibly heralding a new age of incredible advances. A new device has been created which functions a little like a pair of pliers, the opening and closing action in turn causing a pair of pedals to move. It might not sound like much of an accomplishment but we're talking about machines built on a molecular scale here.

Both science and science fiction have long imagined that such tiny contraptions would one-day produce awe-inspiring results - whether as artery cleaning nanorobots or out-of-control producers of grey goo.

However, the mechanics of molecular machines is extraordinarily complex. It relies on the dynamics of chemical bonds and nanoscale forces, as apposed to the relatively straight-forward engineering principles at work in large-scale mechanical devices, like cars. Furthermore, magnetism becomes more important than gravity, and the strongest "welding" is a chemical bond that can be ripped open by nearby molecules.

But perhaps the biggest challenge is that the devices are not usually built one molecule at a time. Instead machines such as this new one are produced by a series of chemical reactions in solution that assemble billions of billions of units at a time.

Jason Forrester - War Photographer

This has to be one of the best music videos I've seen in a long time. The tie-in between the animation and music superb- and it's fun. Hope you all have a good weekend!

48 Hours

That's all it will apparently take the end the nuclear threat from Iran-

Gary Berntsen, the former senior CIA operative who led the search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in late 2001, believes the United States has the ability to easily destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. He said the US could use bunker-buster bombs and other weapons to carry out the operation.

“We can dig those things out. We can destroy them,” he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.

“We can take care of it in a couple of days with air strikes and they wouldn’t be able to stop us,” he added.

Jizya To Continue

Looks like the dhimmis in the EU will continue to hand over the jizya-

The European Union will sign a deal Monday with the United Nations granting euro64 million (US$78 million) in urgent aid for Palestinians, but much more in future funding is under threat after the formation of a government by Hamas, a group the Europeans consider a terrorist group.

On Sunday, a European diplomat said the EU will work with Hamas, but added, “Those putting together the new government must know that how they decide their government program will have repercussions.”

Having terrorists in the government obviously hasn't changed anything.

Preparing For The Worst

Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, sure knows how to prepare for the possibility of a repeat of Katrina hitting the city he runs- he's allowing residents to rebuild wherever they like in the city, including those areas most at risk of flooding.

I've always thought that it was a somewhat unusual idea to have a city at below sea level in hurricane country but to completely ignore the threat- after that same city is devastated- and rebuild the most at risk parts again seems preposterous.

Kind of like building a sprawling metropolis on top of a major fault line.

Cold Steel 2006

After what seems like an age, Cold Steel has finally updated their website and they have a whole host of new items available.

Here are a few that caught my eye- the African walking stick (I've been considering buying the Irish equivalent but this may win the day), a karambit blade called the Steel Tiger, a fixed blade Finnish style knife called the Sisu which is like a work of art, and the Safe-Maker series- a pair of fixed blade push daggers.

Confused in San Francisco

Zombie has another photo shoot up from a "Global Day of Action" in San Francisco to mark the 3rd anniversary of the war to liberate Iraq. One of the photos sums up for me the completely ridiculous stance of the Left in aligning themselves with the enemy of freedom-

"Here's a classic. This guy's sign says he supports the "Iraqi resistance," accompanied by his scantily-clad girlfriend who's the exact embodiment of everything that "resistance" (composed mostly of Islamic fundamentalists) would most like to stamp out."

Theocracy At Work

As the Left continues to wail about the threat of a Bush-imposed theocracy emerging in the United States, the real thing is already present- in Afghanistan.

Michelle Malkin highlights the story of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity and who could now face the deasth sentence under the country's Islamic legal system.

Abdul Rahman, 40, was arrested last month, accused of converting to Christianity. Under Afghanistan's new constitution, minority religious rights are protected but Muslims are still subject to strict Islamic laws. And so, officially, Muslim-born Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and not for practicing Christianity.

On Thursday the prosecution told the court Rahman has rejected numerous offers to embrace Islam. Prosecuting attorney Abdul Wasi told the judge that the punishment should fit the crime. He says Rahman is a traitor to Islam and is like a cancer inside Afghanistan. Under Islamic law and under the Afghan constitution, he says, the defendant should be executed.

Despite the leaps and strides Afghanistan has made since the overthrow of the Taliban, it's still nothing like a modern, pluralistic society. And it never will be so long as Sharia law is enshrined in their constitution.

Flight of Fantasy

I just found this- Mina Murray of Dracula by Frank Frazetta. Wonderful.

The "Palestinians"

Another must read from Robert Spencer-

Before the Six-Day War, not a single Arab spokesman, at the U.N. or anywhere else, and not a single Arab document, referred to the local Arabs as the "Palestinian people." They appeared, as if by magic -- summoned by the public-relations advisors to Arafat -- only after that war made clear that the Arab dream of going in for the kill had been dashed, and that a different, long-term effort was necessary.

The intention of that effort was to persuade former supporters of Israel in the Western world that Israel had won territory to which it had no legal, moral, or historic claim. Since the area had been known in the West as "Palestine," then the local Arabs would become the "Palestinian people." As the older and better-educated generations died out, the young, the naive, the uninformed, would come to think something along the simple-minded lines of "well, there's a place called Palestine, and there's these people who are the Palestinian people, so of course they must be the ones whose land it is."

It was at that level that the “Palestinian people” was created -- a level that required an absence of any historic sense, any real and detailed knowledge of the history of that area, and of the Middle East, not merely in the 20th century, but during the 1300 years before.

Rising Taxes

This is a startling report-

The level of taxation in Britain is about to reach- and then pass- the all time highest level. Under Gordon Brown's Chancellorship taxation now brings in a total of £490 billion a year; that's up £271 billion from when he took office. That works out as an average of £9,000 per household.

A basic rate taxpayer now pays £48.50 tax on every £100 earned. For the higher tax rate the figure is £57.10.

It comes at a time when the NHS is in desperate straits- laying off staff and cancelling operations. It seems that the Labour policy of throwing money at institutions in the hope of improving them hasn't yet worked. Perhaps Brown will continue his tactic just in case it does work. No point in streamlining and increasing efficiency- not when they can add layer after layer of bureaucrats instead of hiring more nurses, doctors and making more beds available.

Where all of this extra money is going is a mystery- our armed forces are gutted year after year, the police seem incapable of doing anything about rising crime levels, the health service is failing, schools are being closed down and the price of living is getting increasingly out of hand.

Perhaps if MPs weren't given allowances to pay for almost all of their bills on top of their inflated wages (and if some of them didn't claim an extra £72,000 on top of that) we would have a little extra cash for the necessities.

Lists

I'm a sucker for lists, so here are a couple for you to browse through-

Top 100 Overlooked Films of the Nineties

Some really good movies here- Hudsucker Proxy, Ghost Dog, great detective movie Zero Effect, Takeshi Kitano's superb Hana-Bi and the violent Sonatine, the oddball LA Story, and Bill Murray's fantastic heist movie Quick Change.

Top 100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have To Read

Bradbury only comes in at 61? Edgar Rice Burroughs only makes 100? And no mention of Edgar Allan Poe, the man who virtually invented science fiction? That's just not right at all.

V For Vendetta

Excellent comics blog Photon Torpedoes has details of an interview with Alan Moore- the creator of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Watchmen, From Hell and V for Vendetta. The latter is just about to be released here in the UK.

Alan Moore has severed his ties with DC Comics, infuriated by the way his work has been mangled in its translation to the big screen. LXG, for example, bears very little similarity to the incredible work he created.

I had my qualms about seeing V for Vendetta, knowing that Hollywood would try to make it have something to say about the state of the world today- seems like I was right. This is what Moore had to say when he say the script;

"...This was one of the things I objected to in the recent film, where it seems to be, from the script that I read, sort of recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see. The fascism had been completely defanged. I mean, I think that any references to racial purity had been excised, whereas actually, fascists are quite big on racial purity."

It seems like Hollywood fails to understand that fascism is on the opposite side of the political spectrum from conservatism- or they just don't care.

Airport Security

Federal investigators decided to test airport security- so they assemble the ingredients to a home-made bomb, from public sources, and bought the items over the counter. They then attempted to bring the materials onto various aircraft. Twenty one airports were the target of this test and, chillingly, all twenty one failed the test. The federal agents were able, every single time, to get the bomb components on board aircraft- even when they "triggered deliberate screenings of the bags".

The Transportation Security Administration needs a swift kick in the seat of the pants.

That's simply not good enough. Heads should roll.

Terrorists in the White House

It's St. Patrick's Day and the Bush White House is playing host to the leaders of an armed, still active terrorist organisation. Of course, getting the VIP treatment isn't enough for Sinn Fein/IRA leader Gerry Adams- he's annoyed that the administration won't let him raise funds in the US (and a big thank you to all the Americans who have previously contributed to the terrorist bombing and murder campaign here in Northern Ireland)-

Mr Adams is angry that the US government has refused him permission to fundraise, and said it was wrong to treat Sinn Fein differently.

He was speaking as he arrived at a Friends of Sinn Fein gala breakfast on Thursday.

The party has been forced to refund donations that were to be made at the event at Washington's Capitol Hilton hotel.

Could be they are being refused to raise funds because they are armed terrorists engaged in such activities as lying about destroying their weapons, spying, organised crime and recruiting and training in terrorist tactics.

Strange that the Bush White House obviously recognises all of this, but they still invite Adams around for a party.

So much for the War on Terror. Will Al Qaeda be getting an invite for their Ramadan get-together?

Gates and the $100 Laptop

Bill Gates is being a bit of an ass and, it seems, displaying a bad case of sour grapes.

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

Yeah, it would be great if really poor people could get broadband in their remote villages without even electricity.

Gates seems to be completely missing the point of the entire project and it seems to me he's belittling the effort of MIT in order to promote his own micro-laptop, which has a 7" screen.

Geez, Bill, why not get a machine with a decent sized screen that you can actually, you know, read text on?

For Gates' information the $100 laptop machines will have a hard disk- a 1Gb hard drive to be exact. They will also be Wi-Fi and cell-phone enabled. In some of the areas they are aimed at, the light from the screen could be the only light source available in the home.

Amish Spirit

This is the sort of community spirit and selflessness which I didn't think existed anymore. What a great story.

The Grabers escaped unharmed from the tornado that plowed through Webster County.

Not so their home. It was torn apart by the twister's fury.

But in less than 15 hours, the Grabers were back in a new home rebuilt on the same spot — a peaceful valley south of Missouri 38 about 10 miles east of Marshfield — by more than 100 men and boys from neighboring Amish homesteads near the Grabers.

It took them 15 hours to rebuild this man's home.

It is a remarkable testimony to the Amish spirit and credo that neighbors help neighbors in times of need.

That's something of an understatement.

The Crusades

I almost missed this one- Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch discussing the Crusades.

Early in the ninth century the persecutions grew so severe that large numbers of Christians fled for Constantinople and other Christian cities. In 937, Muslims went on a rampage in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, plundering and destroying the Church of Calvary and the Church of the Resurrection.

In 1004, the Fatimid Caliph, Abu 'Ali al-Mansur al-Hakim, ordered the destruction of churches, the burning of crosses, and the seizure of church property. Over the next 10 years 30,000 churches were destroyed, and untold numbers of Christians converted to Islam simply to save their lives.

This is a period of history on which my knowledge is sparse to say the least. It's an interesting read, and one sure to spur me on to learn much more. I think it's time I got my copy of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades ordered.

SIDS

Thank goodness I have no personal experience of the tragedy that is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. However, during a work experience session at a forensics lab I did have the unpleasant job of disposing of some organs which had been kept for study. One of them was a tiny little heart in a jar- it belonged to a baby which had died of cot death.

Some new research seems to suggest that SIDS may be influenced by serotonin in a child's brain-

Serotonin was thought to be involved in activating "pacemaker" cells in the medulla at the base of the brain, which prompt a suffocating baby to gasp and recover, says Jan-Marino Ramirez of the University of Chicago. "Now we've found that these neurons depend on serotonin, and if you take it away there's no gasping," says Ramirez.

The great thing about this avenue of research is that it may one day lead to a test to enable hospitals to indentify those babies who are at most at risk from SIDS. Until then all parents can do is not smoke, put babies to sleep on their back and prevent them from overheating.

Armed Robots

Slashdot reports that Asimov's first law of robotics is being broken- by US Army robots fitted out with M249 or M240 machine guns. The SWORDS bots are ultimately controlled by a human - so they are, in effect, little more than big radio controlled cars with a high rate of fire.

The laws of robotics postulated by Asimov are-

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Obviously robots intended for military or police work will not be able to function according to these laws. When - or if- the US military develops a truly autonomous robot capable of entering combat it will be interesting to see just what sort of rules it "lives" by.

I wonder what the tetravaal robots work on?