New York Times reviewer writes: “It probably isn’t fair to Joss Whedon’s Serenity to say that this unassuming science-fiction adventure is superior in almost every respect to George Lucas’s aggressively more ambitious Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith. But who cares about fair when there is fun to be had? Scene for scene, Serenity is more engaging and certainly better written and acted than any of Mr. Lucas’s recent screen entertainments. Mr. Whedon isn’t aiming to conquer the pop-culture universe with a branded mythology; he just wants us to hitch a ride to a galaxy far, far away and have a good time. The journey is the message, not him.”

“In the century since, E = mc² has become the most recognized icon of the modern scientific era. Yet for all its symbolic worth, the equation’s intimate presence in everyday life goes largely unnoticed. There is nothing you can do, not a move you can make, not a thought you can have, that doesn’t tap directly into E = mc². Einstein’s equation is constantly at work, providing an unseen hand that shapes the world into its familiar form. It’s an equation that tells of matter, energy and a remarkable bridge between them.” — Brian Greene, Columbia University mathematician and physicist (New York Times op-ed)

“The brains of pathological liars have structural abnormalities that could make fibbing come naturally.

“Some people have an edge up on others in their ability to tell lies,” says Adrian Raine, a psychologist at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “They are better wired for the complex computations involved in sophisticated lies.”

He found that pathological liars have on average more white matter in their prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that is active during lying, and less grey matter than people who are not serial fibbers. White matter enables quick, complex thinking while grey matter mediates inhibitions.” (New Scientist)

“There is a possibility the virus is becoming less virulent, but how this would affect the progress of the pandemic or the number of people killed remains unclear” (New Scientist)

“The first ever pictures of a live giant squid in its natural environment have been snapped in deep water off Japan. Working with a cheap camera and a fishing boat, the two Japanese researchers have succeeded where millions of dollars and international film crews have failed.” (New Scientist)

“With the indictment of Tom DeLay there can no longer be any doubt that with the Bush regime we are observing not a variation on politics but chronically criminal and corrupt behavior parading as ideology. This is not a movement but a mob and a disservice as much to conservatives as to progressives and moderates. The whole purpose of the Bush machine is to line its own pockets, increase its own power, and suppress any who would complain about it. For the media to treat what is happening as just another political discussion merely makes it a tool of the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American public. It is time the press learned to distinguish clearly between a con and a concept. – Sam Smith” (The Progressive Review)

“Since the attacks of 9/11, a great deal has been written about fanaticism, terrorism, and religious extremism of all stripes. In an earlier essay in JMB (3), I described the terrorist mind-set in terms of three features: paradoxical narcissism, ressentiment, and schadenfreude. I argued that terrorists such as Osama bin Ladin demonstrate what Eric Hoffer called, ‘the vanity of the selfless’ (4). I further suggested that much of the animus of terrorists stems from a corrosive sense of hatred, envy, and impotent rage: what Nietzsche called ressentiment. Finally, I argued that the atypical behavior of the 9/11 terrorists just prior to the attacks–their eating out at pizza parlors and enjoying sexual favors from an ‘escort service’–represented a kind of ‘malicious joy’ (schadenfreude). I now want to link these aspects of the terrorist mind to Kafka’s ‘hunger artist’; and, much more broadly, to suggest that attitudes about food and fasting can teach us a great deal about fanaticism. And what could be more mundane–more ‘ordinary’ and ‘of this world’–than the way we feel about food?” (Journal of Mundane Behavior)

“A meteorologist in Pocatello, Idaho, claims Japanese gangsters known as the Yakuza used KGB inventions to cause Hurricane Katrina, Wireless Flash reported Thursday.

Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the hurricane, he’s is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators from ground-based microwave transmitters.

“There is absolutely zero chance that this is natural, zero,” Villagevoice quoted Stevens as saying after Katrina’s landfall, pointing out suspiciously rectilinear shapes in the satellite-photoed hurricane clouds

The generators emit a soundwave between three and 30 megahertz and Stevens claims the Russians invented the storm-creating technology back in 1976 and sold it to others in the late 1980s.

Stevens says the clouds formed by the generators are different from normal clouds and are able to appear out of nowhere and says Katrina had many rotation points that are unusual for hurricanes.

At least 10 nations and organizations possess the technology, but Stevens suspects the Japanese Yakuza created Katrina in order to make a fortune in the futures market and to get even with the U.S. for the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima. ” (MosNews)