Category: general

I was driving in to my internship this morning when I heard about the bombings in London. They said on the radio that the Underground was completely shut down because of the explosions, and also that a bus had been blown up. One woman who was riding the bus was quoted as saying there was a huge noise, and then she looked back to see the rest of the bus falling away.

This completely shocked and horrified me, enough that tears came to my eyes while I was trying to drive, and I speculated: Al Qaeda? Someone unhappy that London will be the site of the 2012 Summer Olympics? (The former is more logical, as it probably would have been too soon for the latter…)

Apparently there was no warning whatsoever; no demands were made beforehand. The attack, then, stands as its own “warning”, just like all the other terror attacks.

I am so fucking tired of the stupid fucking terrorists.

Here are some news articles:

Channel 4: London blasts: death toll rises to 37

CNN: Britain launches search for bombers

Three blasts took place in the city’s subway system and one more hit a double-decker bus, all at the height of rush hour. (Timeline)

Paddick said there were 700 to 900 people on each of the affected trains at the time.

Witnesses described the horror of seeing victims dying and with serious injuries. There were scenes of panic as power failed on crowded underground trains, and tunnels filled with smoke.

“We were all trapped like sardines waiting to die,” said Angelo Power. “I honestly thought I was going to die, as did everyone else.”

Yahoo: London attacks kill dozens as world leaders meet

People streamed out of underground stations covered in blood and soot. Hundreds of passengers were evacuated from stations across the capital, many in shock and with their clothes ripped to shreds, witnesses said.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, speaking in Singapore where he had championed the capital’s Olympic bid, suggested suicide bombers may have been involved.

Also in Singapore, International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said: “I’m deeply saddened that this should happen at the heart of an Olympic city. Unfortunately there is no safe haven. No one can say their city is safe.”

Washington Post: Four London Blasts Kill 37, Injure 700

Four explosions rocked the London subway and tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing in the worst attack on London since World War II. At least 37 people were killed and more than 700 were wounded, according to the official count.

A clearly shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called the coordinated attacks “barbaric” and said they were designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland. They also came a day after London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics. A group calling itself the Secret Organization of al-Qaida in Europe claimed responsibility.

BoingBoing has a photo and blog roundup.

Bush is a diehard biker, I guess :) I know how he feels. It’s exhilirating to ride a bike, because you can go so far, but you’re not going too fast to see things. It’s a great way to explore new places. I wouldn’t have been able to resist going for a ride either, despite the rain.

Chris (Man in Japan) posted a hilarious “panel” discussion of why the Japanese do the V-sign in photos. You just have to read it!

Here’s “Noam Chomsky”‘s take:

The two fingers raised are a product of the brainwashed society created by the elites. The person being photographed has been trained by the media to see this small gesture as a sign of rebellion against what is permitted, thereby reducing the risk of greater action against the establishment.

XD

I am so confused by this article.

New scientific find may help smokers quit

In a study that may hold insights into ways to help people quit smoking, researchers at the CNRS-Pasteur Institute in Paris showed that receptors on cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain are involved in nicotine’s addictive and cognitive qualities in mice.

[…]

Changeux and his team genetically engineered mice so they lacked a gene for a portion of a nicotine receptor, to discover the impact it would have on how the mice functioned.

The mutant mice had a mild learning impairment and unlike normal mice, which had learned to press a lever to self-administer nicotine, they showed no interest in getting nicotine.

“When there is a loss of the nicotine receptor then there is a loss of cognitive function in the mouse,” Changeux, who reported the finding in the science journal Nature, told Reuters.

But when the scientists re-injected the gene, the mice’s cognitive function was restored. The rodents were also more likely to seek out nicotine.

They think this research could lead to a way to help smokers quit. But I ask you: how? By giving people learning disabilities?

I mean, really; is this article just horribly written? Obviously it is–just try and interpret the first sentence. But is it so horribly written that important facts vital to comprehension of the meaning of this study are omitted? Or am I missing something?

If cognitive function and nicotine receptors are inextricably linked, what does this mean? Is cognitive function affected by whether or not a person smokes, or only by whether or not they have nicotine receptors? And what do they mean by “mild learning impairment”? How mild, exactly? I don’t smoke, so this is all academic, but if I did, I can’t imagine that any level of “learning impairment” would be acceptable to me.

Circumcision may offer Africa AIDS hope: Procedure linked to much lower rate of new HIV infections

Laboratory studies have found that the foreskin is rich in white blood cells, which are favored targets of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. So the theory is that men who are uncircumcised are much more likely to contract the virus during sex with an infected woman, and that the epidemic spreads when these newly infected men have sex with other women within their network of sexual partners.

Is that weird, or what?

Discussing the article with Hai, the following exchange occurred:

Me (17:42:00): at first I was like, what could the connection possibly be?
Me (17:42:09): is it just that people who are circumcised are less promiscuous?
Me (17:42:13): but no!
Me (17:42:20): it’s actually physically related to the foreskin!
Me (17:42:27): it is NUTS to find a connection like that
Hai (17:42:32): no pun intended
Hai (17:42:35): you sicko
Me (17:42:47): ROFLMAO

:>

Just came across a great article on CNN by historian Dr. Theodore Zeldin about “a new kind of conversation”. Dr. Zeldin proposes that people are learning to be too specialized, and this is a root cause of our unhappiness. He suggests that we have conversations with strangers about our beliefs and our dreams in order to determine what we truly want out of life–that we focus on generalizations, a holistic picture, rather than specifics, so that we can achieve a more well-rounded world view.

This particular section really struck me:

Education — bachelor, master, doctor — is organized to make you ever more specialist and often incomprehensible.

Specialization seldom gives wisdom. Join instead the newly invented postgraduate course that uses conversation to make people generalists and not just specialists, giving them broader sensitivities, and an understanding of how different occupations and cultures think.

Participating in the intellectual adventures of other disciplines is a purge for arrogance.

I have instinctively avoided specialization for some time now. Whenever I think about what kind of job I would like to have, I ultimately see myself walking down a narrow corridor, trapping myself on one route, eliminating thousands of other options. That prospect has always terrified me into inaction. Is there a way to generalize, to keep my options open, to “participate in the intellectual adventures of other disciplines”…and still put food on the table? Or will I have to give in and specialize at least a little in order to survive in this economy?

Germaine to my comment about wind power in my post on distributed generation, here’s a story via Drudge about bird deaths due to wind farms.

A California Energy Commission study estimated wind turbines in the Altamont kill 881 to 1,300 birds of prey a year, including as many as 116 federally protected golden eagles.

Miller said the county could impose conditions that would cut bird deaths in half almost immediately. To accomplish that goal, he said, all of the wind turbines in the Altamont would need to be idled from mid-November through February.

Another 350 machines that kill a disproportionate number of birds would have to be permanently scrapped, the center maintains, citing similar conclusions by biologists studying the issue for the Energy Commission.

In addition to taking wind turbines out of service, the center wants the companies that operate them to pay $6.5 million to preserve bird habitats in the Altamont.

Wind farm operators are willing to shut down only half their turbines each winter and permanently shut down or relocate about 100 turbines that pose the greatest risk to birds. The plan they have put forward to county officials commits to a 35 percent reduction in bird deaths within three years.

If the county places too many conditions on their operations, wind farm operators say they won’t be profitable.

Drudge’s link is entitled “Enviromental Shocker: Wind Farm Kills Thousands of Birds — Including Scores of Golden Eagles…”. Why is Drudge claiming shock at this? Are people just unaware that huge fans in the sky kill birds? Or does he just think it’s funny that this situation pits people with environmental concerns head to head?

All I have to say to that, Tycho, is:

LOL.

;>

Official: Jolie adopts Ethiopian girl

In a posting on People magazine’s Web site, Jolie is quoted as saying the child’s name is Zahara Marley Jolie and that she and Maddox are “very happy to have a new addition to our family.”

[…]

Ethiopia, a country of 70 million, has more than 5 million orphans, their parents lost to famine, disease, war and AIDS — a catastrophe the government has said is “tearing apart the social fabric” of the east African nation.

Caring for the orphans costs $115 million a month in a country whose annual health budget is only $140 million. Because of that, Ethiopia has gone out of its way to make adoption easier.

In 2003, a record 1,400 children were adopted from abroad, more than double the number in the previous year. The number of private adoption agencies in Addis Ababa, the capital, has doubled in the past year to 30.

Ethiopia has strict laws to thwart dubious adoption agents and to ensure that the orphan really exists, that the paperwork is not fraudulent and that no AIDS-infected children are being passed off as healthy.

Agencies charge fees of around $20,000 per child, a relatively inexpensive fee compared to many other countries.

Here’s a story that should sound awfully familiar to Kelly: Man calls ambulance 50 times a year, demands ride home

An unemployed man who often called for an ambulance to take him home after he went drinking has been found guilty of obstruction of duties and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Judge Hidenaga Manabe at the Takamatsu District Court called the wrongdoing of Satoshi Nakagawa “selfish.”

“He committed a selfish crime by obstructing the highly urgent duties of ambulances,” the judge said when he handed down the ruling on Monday.

At least this guy was prosecuted…

This part of the article is hilarious:

The ambulance, however, headed for the fire station, not his home, which prompted an enraged Nakagawa to poke one of the paramedics in the cheek, slightly injuring him, according to police.

I wonder if it was a bunch of little pokes, or one big one.

Continuing in its tradition of taking care of orphaned and injured children, Japan has invited an 11-year-old Afghan girl to visit and receive an eye operation. Do nonprofits in the US do cool stuff like this?

The girl, Shogoofa, who lost her parents in the civil war in Afghanistan when she was three, had her right eye stabbed with a needle during sewing work at a refugee camp in Pakistan, and almost lost her sight, the Save Afghan Children group said.

And following in the wake of the JR West disaster, JR East has fired a driver for using his cell phone while working.

According to the company, a passenger in the front car spotted the driver using a cell phone just before the train reached Torami Station in the town of Ichinomiya in early May. His dismissal was dated June 7, JR East said. JR East instructs its staff to turn off their cell phones while working.

I am really happy that Global Voices Online has started breaking up its Daily Blog Roundups into separate posts, one for each region. Compartmentalization has always made things easier for me to digest ;>

Today I saw some neat stories.

From the Middle East and North Africa Roundup, here’s a story about a guy who has been walking through Middle Eastern nations for seven years in the name of peace.

Inspired by the ancient Arab travel writer Ibn Batuta, a Tunisian traveller has embarked on a 10-year journey on foot and writes about his experiences.
Nearly 7 years and 40,000 kilometres into his walk across the Middle East, Reda Bin Al Haj Ahmad’s journey continues. Whenever the Tunisian traveller becomes weary, he draws strength from his inspiration — the ancient Arab travel writer Ibn Batuta.

[…]

He has visited 18 countries: Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Yemen, Oman and the UAE.

He has been beaten four times, robbed of his money and detained by police four times during his journey.

The idea of traveling all over and writing about it sounds so appealing…except, of course, for that last bit. And I’m not sure I would want to walk the whole way, either :> But what this guy is doing really cool. It’s too bad he’s not blogging it every night!

The Sub-Saharan Africa Roundup links to a blog post that links to this piece, which is a copy-and-paste of a Reuters article by Rebecca Harrison. (Ah, Google.)

“I check the prices for the day on my phone and when it’s a good price I sell,” he [Daniel Mashva] told Reuters from his village in the remote northeast of South Africa. “I can even try to ask for a higher price if I see there are lots of buyers.”

Mashva is one of around 100 farmers in Makuleke testing cell phone technology that gives small rural farmers access to national markets via the Internet, putting them on a footing with bigger players and boosting profits by at least 30 percent.

“Mainstream farmers have access to market information so they can negotiate better prices. This cell phone enables poor rural farmers to get that same information,” said Mthobi Tyamzashe, head of communications at South African cell phone operator Vodacom, which is sponsoring the project.

[…]

Like almost half of Africans, neither Chauke nor Mashva had made a phone call let alone surfed the web before receiving their new phones. But both are now hooked and deftly manoeuvre their hi-tech handsets with pride.

Cell phone use has rocketed 100 percent in the world’s poorest continent since 2000, and the Makuleke scheme is one of many ways the technology is being used to tackle poverty.

Experts say wireless technology is also the best way to bring the Internet to the poor, mainly because inhospitable and sparsely-populated African landscapes mean rolling out landline infrastructure is not commercially viable.

I think this is absolutely fantastic. I hope the project is sustainable!

Out of New York, Paris, London, Moscow and Madrid, I’m glad London won. Britain is our ally, and London is just a cool city.

I can see why New York would want to host the Olympics, why it would be meaningful and impactful and all that, but if you think about it, 2012 is eleven years after 9/11–and in terms of Olympic history, the US just hosted it (1996 in Atlanta, and, for that matter, 1984 in Los Angeles). It wouldn’t really be fair to give it to us again.

Click here for a list of the locations of the modern Olympic games.

Today I decided to watch all the dubbed episodes on my Kyo Kara Maoh! DVD 1.

Poor Sean. I don’t think he’ll ever recover from the horror.

Yes, it was pretty bad. Dubs suck as a rule, but this one was patently horrible. I could at times see where they were coming from with their voice actor selections: Cheri-sama/Celi/whatever had a decently sexy voice, Yuuri had relatively decent “WTF?” range (though his emotional stuff and Maou stuff needs serious work), the girl doing Wolfram matched the original Japanese actress relatively well, and Yozak/Josak was actually pretty funny. Conrad, however, was a disaster, as was Gwendal; the guy doing Gunter only managed to sound like Gunter every now and then, and for the rest of the time he sounded like he was trying to sound like a wuss. Anissina just didn’t fit at all; her voice didn’t stand out. And somehow, the dude doing Murata Ken sounded way too much like Jimmy Flinders. (Ridiculously deep voice, too…) In general, I think the voice actors were chosen for how closely they could get their voices to resemble the original actors; it doesn’t seem like much emphasis was placed on using proper, realistic intonation.

The opening scene of episode 1, with Conrad and Yuuri’s mother in the cab, was the best, hilarity-wise. Conrad sounded absofuckinglutely gay. It was so bad, I can’t think of it without bursting into laughter! Because of that, I was looking forward to the intentionally gay scene in episode 5 where Conrad’s putting in Yuuri’s contact lenses…but unfortunately that fell flat on all counts. Conrad was too stiff, Yuuri didn’t sound vulnerable enough, and Wolfram’s response was hardly filled with shock and outrage.

Oh, well.

My main reason for watching the dub (other than boredom) was to check out the voice acting, but my secondary reason was to see how much the English dub translation differed from the subtitles. There were some interesting changes; for example, in episode 5, when Yuuri asks Conrad if he’d cry for him if he died, Conrad’s line changes to something like, “I’d be too busy. I’ll be coming with you.” That’s a little bizarre, and I’m not sure that meaning is what was originally intended…

Some details were changed, too, to make sense to an American audience. In the subtitled version, the Shibuya Yuuri Harajuku Furi joke is halfway explained; in this version, they changed the joke completely, to “Isn’t Yuri short for urine?”

Ha, ha, ha.

They also changed the part where Yuuri compliments Adelbert’s Japanese, so that instead of just looking baffled at Yuuri’s stupidity, Adelbert explains that he gave Yuuri the ability to understand the language. This kind of messes up the later scene where Gunter and Conrad explain to Yuuri that nobody is speaking Japanese…

They changed the line “feudal drama” to something like “civil war reenactment”, which makes sense to an American audience, but is kind of questionable since they leave the fact that Yuuri is Japanese intact. Additionally, they changed Yuuri’s reaction to his mother’s “fantasy-esque” decor; instead of thinking that his mother’s taste is supernatural, Yuuri now just mutters that she likes teddy bears and teacups.

There are also some funny lines in general, like Yuuri’s “Give me the skinny” in episode 1, or the pirate’s abrupt “Shut your hole” in episode 5. These sometimes added realism and helped the flow, and sometimes didn’t. (I mean, at one point, Gunter says, “That’s the way it went down.” And who says “the skinny”?) I did like Wolfram’s swearing, though; I thought that fit fairly well.

All in all, I still recommend this DVD…for the subs. Please, children, watch the subs. Spare yourselves the pain. For a good laugh, just watch that first opening scene. That’s all you need to see.

Well, now I know where that came from.

If you can deal with an extraordinarily long movie with horrible sound quality, you can watch the fireworks I saw last night. You can even hear all the music that I was too far away to hear!

Watch WAGT’s River Blast Fireworks Show Online

(The links for the movie are right beneath the headline. I didn’t spot them at first either ;>)