Scientologists Force Comment Off Slashdot: “Last Saturday a comment was posted here by an anonymous reader that contained text that was
copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. They have since followed the DMCA and demanded
that we remove the comment. While Slashdot is an open forum and we encourage free discussion
and sharing of ideas, our lawyers have advised us that, considering all the details of this case, the comment
should come down….

This is the first time since we instituted our moderation system that a comment has had to be removed because of
its content, and believe me nobody is more broken hearted about it than me. It’s a bad precedent, and a blow
for the freedom of speech that we all share in this forum. But this simply doesn’t look like a case we can win…. We need to choose our battles and this isn’t one we want to have. …

Now there is the matter of this specific comment. It contained a text called “OT III”, part of what is known as the
Fishman Affidavit. This text is Copyrighted by the Church of Scientology. In compliance with the DMCA, we are
removing it from Slashdot. In its place we are putting non-copyrighted text: Links to websites about the church of
Scientology, as well as links to how you can contact your congressman about the DMCA.” Slashdot

The End of Science and Math? The Omega Man: Gregory Chaitin, a mathematical researcher at IBM, has discovered a number, Omega, that is uncomputable and demonstrates that it crops up all over mathematics and blows holes in the consistency of mathematical theory.

Chaitin has shown that there are an infinite number of
mathematical facts but, for the most part, they are unrelated
to each other and impossible to tie together with unifying
theorems. If mathematicians find any connections between
these facts, they do so by luck. “Most of mathematics is true
for no particular reason,” Chaitin says. “Maths is true by
accident.”

This is also bad news, for example, for physics. It implies, he shows, that ‘there can
never be a reliable “theory of everything”, neatly summarising
all the basic features of reality in one set of equations.’ In other words, he claims nothing less than that there are fundamental limits on what we can know. New Scientist
A Google search for <a href=”http://www.google.com/search?num=100?client=googlet&q=Gregory%20Chaitin
“>”Gregory Chaitin” provides further references, the text of some of his technical papers, and a pointer to his home page at IBM.

Now available, “Follow Me Here” teeshirts, mugs and mousepads, with a discreet little logo. Coming soon: baseball caps.

Researchers identify an enzyme that regulates the action of chronic cocaine. This work elucidates the biochemical basis of addiction and points to possible biochemical interventions. It may also point to a way of quantifying individual differences in genetic susceptibility to cocaine abuse. The press release, quite curiously, does not mention that principal researcher Greengard was a co-winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine. EurekAlert! And, in another story related to genetic susceptibility to substance addiction, researchers reported that the legendary Chinese weakness for opiates appears to exist. “Mutant genes associated with ‘pleasure and reward pathways’ in the brain make an unusually high proportion of Chinese susceptible to heroin or opium addiction, a two-year study by the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found. Researchers suspect that the Chinese love of gambling may also have a genetic component and are keen to begin blood tests on local gambling addicts.” The Telegraph UK

Sleeping dogs lend a paw to narcoleptics. While various etiologies for narcolepsy have been explored, some evidence points to the hypocretin neurotransmitter system. Deficiencies in hypocretin secretion or the receptors which detect it have correlated with narcoleptic symptoms. Narcoleptic poodles, Labradors, dachshunds and Dobermans have been shown to have a mutation in the gene coding for the hypocretin-receptor. Canine narcolepsy is considered a close analogue to the human malady. EurekAlert!

Deepest ever picture of the universe reveals new type of quasar “Astronomers have peered deeper into the universe than ever
before – and discovered a new type of quasar 12 billion light years away. The
joint venture between the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory and the
Very Large Telescope in Chile also found that giant black holes were far
more active in the early universe than they are today.” Physics Today

Seeing with your tongue. Because the density of touch receptors on the tongue is so great, mapping visual stimuli onto it with a “tongue display unit” has sufficient resolution that it may allow the visually impaired to navigate. New Scientist [via EurekAlert!]

Brazil ‘days away’ from eco-disaster.

Brazil’s state oil company, Petrobras, says a giant oil rig damaged in explosions on Thursday is in danger of sinking and provoking a major environmental disaster, possibly within three days. The floating platform, the largest in the world, has 1.5 million litres of petrol and oil on board, much of which could spill into the sea if the structure collapses.

…The incident is the latest in a series of other accidents. The oil workers’ union says that over the last three years 32 people hired or subcontracted by Petrobras have died in a total of 99 accidents.

…oil industry analysts say that Petrobras and other Latin American state-run oil companies tend to be short of funds, with governments often extracting large revenues to pay for social and other programmes. BBC

First, direct observational evidence of a change in the Earth’s greenhouse effect between 1970 and 1997. “Previous studies in this area have depended on theoretical simulations because of the lack of data. However the Imperial team reached their
conclusions after analysing data collected by two different earth-orbiting spacecraft, in 1970 and 1997.

Comparison between the two data sets has unequivocally established that significant changes in greenhouse gas emissions from the Earth have
caused the change to the planet’s greenhouse effect over this time period.” EurekAlert!

Spelling of Languages Can Affect Dyslexia, Study Finds: “… new research shows that dyslexia–the most common learning disability in
the United States–arises from a problem in the brain that cuts across language
barriers, cultural borders and writing systems…
But the very character of certain written languages, including English and
French, makes the condition worse because their spelling is so dramatically at odds
with how words sound, the researchers discovered.” EurekAlert!

Entire packing depot staff found stoned after cannabis cake prank: “Workers in New Zealand were found crying by their
machines and wandering around stoned after unwittingly
eating birthday cake containing cannabis.” Ananova

Amygdala responses to facial expressions [Thomas KM et al, Biological Psychiatry, 15 February 2001, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 309-316(8)] “The amygdala plays a central role in the human response to affective or emotionally charged stimuli, particularly
fear-producing stimuli. We examined the specificity of the amygdala response to facial expressions in adults and
children (with fMRI)….Adults showed increased left amygdala activity for fearful
faces relative to neutral faces. This pattern was not observed in the children who showed greater amygdala activity with
neutral faces than with fearful faces. For the children,… boys but not
girls showed less activity with repeated exposure to the fearful faces.” [requires free registration]

A Night to Remember A roundup of research from animal and human studies supporting the theory that there’s a connection between sleep and memory consolidation, and the intriguing idea that there may be subjective experience — “dreaming’ — throughout the animal kingdom. The Scientist [requires free registration]

The Organization Kid: “A few months ago I went to
Princeton University to see what
the young people who are going
to be running our country in a
few decades are like. Faculty members
gave me the names of a few dozen
articulate students, and I sent them
e-mails, inviting them out to lunch or
dinner in small groups. I would go to
sleep in my hotel room at around
midnight each night, and when I
awoke, my mailbox would be full of
replies—sent at 1:15 a.m., 2:59 a.m.,
3:23 a.m.” Very little dating, no time for intellectual discussion outside classes and study, no involvement in ‘larger issues’, little insight into issues of morality or character, and not at all unhappy with the situation! The Atlantic

Annals of the Invasion of Privacy (cont’d.): Smile, You’re On Scan Camera “When football fans learned that their faces were scanned and compared to mugshots of common criminals at
this year’s Super Bowl, many were outraged. But they shouldn’t have been surprised.” Wired

Score one for the
evolutionists: Snake study boosts theory of natural selection.

The 140-year-old theory that animals mimic the appearance of poisonous cousins to improve their chances of
survival is widely accepted in
evolutionary circles but has never been conclusively proved. Now a simple but elegant study with decoy snakes provides empirical evidence. Nando Times

Gadget Wars: “A new breed of consumer-electronics device is emerging
from the computer industry, and with it a new sort of
consumer-electronics company…This fabled “convergence” of the analogue consumer-electronics
world with the digital world of computing has been a long time
coming. But unlike the simple substitution of, say, a digital
camcorder for an analogue one, the new products have
fundamentally different DNA from their predecessors. The new
wave of digital devices not only use PC technology and are
marketed as PC peripherals, but are often made by companies that
have their roots in the PC industry itself.” The Economist

The Censorware Project: Exposing the secrets of censorware since 1997. “The Censorware Project was formed by a group of writers and internet activists in late 1997. Our goal is to
bring to light information about censorware products which is, by its nature, hidden.

… Censorware typically works by blocking you from receiving information — or by
preventing you from seeing it once it’s received, which has the same effect. But
it’s also censorware that blocks data flow the other way, typically by X’ing out
parts of your email, or preventing you from posting to a discussion website…

We at the Censorware Project believe that this type of software is the greatest
single threat to free speech as we know it on the internet over the next decade.
We are committed to exposing the flaws of this misunderstood software and
working to encourage alternatives to censorship. ” [via Red Rock Eaters]

junkfaxes.org – Helping to Stop Illicit Junk Faxes “The transmission of unsolicited faxed advertisements has been illegal under U.S. Federal
law since 1991. In addition, many state laws also prohibit the practice.

The reason? It’s theft. Honest advertisers pay to get their message in front of prospective
customers. Junk faxers steal the resources of the recipients… fax paper, ink, personnel
costs, and the time that their equipment is tied up receiving ads instead of being available
for legitimate purposes.

… This web site has been established to disseminate information on various junk fax senders
as an aid to the recipients who wish to enforce the law by pursuing the remedies under
applicable state and federal laws, as well as the growing number of states’ attorney
generals and other government agencies who are stepping up enforcement efforts.”

The time is certainly right to reassert the sense behind the separation of church and state. Selection from the first chapter of Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore: The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness

Americans seem to fight about many silly things: whether a copy of the Ten Commandments can be posted in a city courthouse; whether a holiday display that
puts an image of the baby Jesus next to one of Frosty the Snowman violates the Constitution; whether fidgeting grade-schoolers may stand for a minute in
silent “spiritual” meditation before classes begin. Common sense might suggest that these are harmless practices whose actual damage is to trivialize religion.

Otherwise they threaten no one. Not children, who ignore them as the incomprehensible designs of absurd grown-ups. Not atheists, who may find them
hypocritical and vulgar but hardly intimidating. Not Buddhists and Muslims, who in these small areas of daily practice can demand equal access to the public
landscape. So why do they raise ideological storms?

The answer lies in what history has done to us. Some Americans have inherited extravagant hopes about what religion, specifically Christianity, may
accomplish in solving social problems through moral instruction. Others look to a different legacy, one that suggests how easily partisan religion in the hands of
a purported majority can become a dangerous form of intellectual and political tyranny. Both groups have become masters of hyperbolic language.
However, their quarrels are not about nothing. If Americans have learned to make constitutional mountains out of religious molehills, it is because crucial
principles may become endangered. The creche or the menorah on public property becomes the nose of the camel sneaking into the tent where Americans
have carefully enshrined the constitutional separation of church and state.

Should we be worried? The answer given in this book is yes, at least with respect to one area of ongoing controversy. The authors are concerned about current
pronouncements made by politically charged religious activists, what is called in journalistic parlance the religious right. Their crusade is an old one. Now a
prime target is abortion clinics. Before it was mail delivery on Sundays, or Catholic immigrants, or Darwinian biology in school curriculums. Whenever religion of
any kind casts itself as the one true faith and starts trying to arrange public policy accordingly, people who believe that they have a stake in free institutions,
whatever else might divide them politically, had better look out.

What follows, then, is a polemic. Since before the founding of the United States, European colonists in North America were arguing about the role of religion in
public and political life. Broadly speaking, two distinct traditions exist. We intend to lay out the case for one of them–what we call the party of the godless
Constitution and of godless politics. In brief, this position recognizes that the nation’s founders, both in writing the Constitution and in defending it in the
ratification debates, sought to separate the operations of government from any claim that human beings can know and follow divine direction in reaching
policy decisions. They did this despite their enormous respect for religion, their faith in divinely endowed human rights, and their belief that democracy
benefited from a moral citizenry who believed in God. The party we defend is based on a crucial intellectual connection, derived historically from both
religious and secular thinkers, between a godless Constitution and a God-fearing people.

We will call the other side in this debate that runs through American history the party of religious correctness. It maintains that the United States was established
as a Christian nation by Christian people, with the Christian religion assigned a central place in guiding the nation’s destiny. For those who adhered to this
party in the past, it followed that politicians and laws had to pass the test of furthering someone’s definition of a Christian public order. Recently some who
belong to this party have suggested that the stress upon “Christian” be downplayed in their political pronouncements. By referring more ecumenically to the
United States as a religious nation, they invite other religious traditions to join a family-values crusade launched originally by a particular form of Christian
faith. However, whether the present-day religious right has really moved beyond earlier pronouncements suggesting the forms of American government can
be entrusted only with a Christian people is, with respect to the issues raised in this book, beside the point. A shift in rhetorical strategy to widen political
appeal does not affect the substantive issues at stake.

The label “religious correctness” is pejorative and is obviously intended to turn the tables on those who imagine that the only danger to our free political
institutions lies in something they, pejoratively, call political correctness.

The Perseus Digital Library at Tufts University has online originals and English translations of Greek and Latin classics, English Renaissance text and other source material odds and ends. [via Red Rock Eaters]

“Is it any wonder they are bored, frustrated, angry, troubled and poorly educated
and that, occasionally, some of them engage in desperate acts of destruction? “ Thomas Szasz is still at it! With Friends Like These, Pity America’s Kids: “In words and deeds, young people today tell us that they do not like being
patronized, made to feel useless and baby-sat in day-care prisons called “schools.”
School administrators, teachers, child psychiatrists, child psychologists, social
workers, grief counselors, pharmaceutical companies and the many other
businesses that profit from the education racket are not the friends of children as
they proclaim. The economic and existential self-interests of these do-gooders are
inimical to real education and rational discipline.” LA Times