This is only surprising to people who still believe in the mind-body dichotomy, of course…

“Some claim they are a new life form responsible for a wide-range of diseases, including the calcification of the arteries that afflicts us all as we age. Others say they are simply too small to be living creatures.” New research describes the isolation of miniscule cell-like structures from diseased human arteries, which self-replicated in culture and showed evidence of containing DNA. Furthermore, they seemed to be building RNA, as a mechanism that transcribes code from DNA would do. The controversy provoked by the claims of naonbacteria supporters have been likened to that in physics around cold fusion. Less than 100 nanometers across, the idea that these particles can contain DNA and the proteins needed to function has been ridiculed, and positive findings are ascribed to contaminants. Moreover, they point out, the Finnish researchers promoting the nanobacteria concept have already set up a company to profit from diagnosis and therapy of the supposed disease-causing entities. Both critics and proponents agree that the evidence to data is not probative but only suggestive. — New Scientist

sway with me, everything sad —

madmen in stone houses

without doors,

lepers steaming love and song

frogs trying to figure

the sky;

sway with me, sad things —

fingers split on a forge

old age like breakfast shell

used books, used people

used flowers, used love

I need you

I need you

I need you:

it has run away

like a horse or a dog,

dead or lost

or unforgiving.

— Charles Bukowski

Why your laptop is always running out of power:

“Another way to provide more power would be to invent a “new chemistry”—a new set of materials with which to build batteries—or to develop a technique for more heavily charging an existing chemistry. But there’s a tradeoff: Generally, the more electricity a battery can store, the more dangerous and toxic it is. Even the lithium-ion battery, a traditionally safe technology, has its own risks. If it were to somehow catch fire, it becomes “exothermic”—it doesn’t need oxygen to burn, so it can’t be smothered. It’ll just burn and burn and burn until there’s nothing left.

This hair-raising prospect means that anyone who wants to build a stronger battery has to deal with federal regulators, most notably the Federal Aviation Administration. If a super-potent battery caught fire on a plane, it could do serious damage to the aircraft. And if it’s a choice between having my laptop conk out after three hours and having a nice powerful battery that knocks the entire plane out of the sky, I’m siding with the FAA. The lithium-ion battery, lame as it can sometimes be, hits the sweet spot between stability and usability. (Computer chips don’t face these problems. When you make them faster, they get hotter, but that isn’t as scary a proposition. You can deal with hot chips by installing better fans, which, of course, require ever more battery power.)

The great hope for the future lies with fuel cells, which are a whole new paradigm for laptop power. When they run out, you don’t recharge them. You just buy new cells and shove ’em in, the same way you put double-As into a portable radio. This year, some companies promise to introduce the first cells. In the long run, they aim to have them widely available for two or three dollars a pop, with each one promising perhaps 15 hours of power.

But fuel cells have their own downside. If they’re made with hydrogen, they produce water as a byproduct, so you’d have to cope with your laptop urinating. And the airlines aren’t too keen about letting people carry hydrogen onboard either, since it can be explosive, too. Manufacturers are looking at making fuel cells safer by using less-potent fuels like ethanol and methanol instead of hydrogen, but they deliver less energy—and the FAA claims they can be a fire hazard, too. In this quest for infinite life there is, as it turns out, no holy grail.” Slate

How about murder?

More Photos Surface:

The Washington Post jumps on the bandwagon with this editorial:

This pervasive rot at the core of US military practice in Iraq and elsewhere, the editorial goes on to suggest, arose specifically from Bu**sh**’s decision to take the January 2002 advice of his White House counsel, in a blatant disregard for law and human decency, to ignore State Dept. objections and proceed with his decision to exclude Afghani detainees from the protections of the Geneva Conventions, although it was recognized that this could eventually undermine military conduct. As this policy on prisoner treatment spread to the Iraqi conflict, the president blatantly lied and stated that we were respecting the Geneva Conventions.

I am more than a little impatient with all the soul-searching public debate over just how high up the responsibility for such savage practices goes. A wanton disregard for the law has been the rule in the Bu**sh** administration since the struggle they waged to steal the White House in the first place. Combine that with a grandiose (Salon) and misguided adventurist sense of mission, guided by voices¹ (Village Voice), against an enemy we reinvent daily as a self-justification for global war, and it is clear that a pervasive culture of barbarity and deceit (ABC News) is the inevitable outcome.

¹“It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that “the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level”—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.”