[Quote:]

D66 organiseert naar aanleiding van de gebeurtenissen in Den Haag en de daarop volgende besprekingen met de coalitiepartners, aanstaande zaterdag 2 april een extra partijcongres in Den Haag.

[..]

Mededeling voor leden die na dinsdag 29 maart 12.00 uur lid zijn geworden

Hartelijk welkom bij D66! Wij waarderen uw steun voor de enig sociaal-liberale partij van Nederland. U bent van harte welkom om aanstaande zaterdag het extra partijcongres bij te wonen en daar uw mening over het gesloten Paasakkoord te geven.

In eerdere berichten is naar buiten gekomen, dat het Landelijk Bureau de nieuwe aanmeldingen niet kon verwerken. Gelukkig helpen de techniek en de tomeloze inzet van de medewerkers van D66 om dit probleem op te lossen. Dat betekent dat u niet alleen welkom bent op het extra congres op zaterdag 2 april a.s., maar ook dat u daar, na het voldoen van uw contributieverplichting, deel kan nemen en desgewenst kan meestemmen.�

Wat een kans! Voor een maandje beltegoed (een lidmaatschap kost 30 euri per jaar) kun je nu een kabinet laten vallen…

[Quote:]

One of Scotland’s national treasures, the 5-foot sword wielded by William Wallace, the rebel leader portrayed in the Academy Award-winning film “Braveheart,” left its homeland for the first time in more than 700 years Wednesday.

The double-handed weapon that belonged to Wallace will be the centerpiece of an exhibition at New York’s Grand Central Station during Tartan Day celebrations, which begin later this week.

This year marks the 700th anniversary of the execution of Wallace, who led the Scots in their battle to free themselves from English rule.

A harp seal looks at the remains of other seals during the first day of the annual harp seal hunt on a ice floe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Prince Edward Island, Canada Tuesday, March 29, 2005. (AP Photo/Jonathan Hayward, CP)

Astra, a female adult bottlenose dolphin, bonds with her calf at Discovery Cove in Orlando in this photo released March 28, 2005. The thriving calf, born March 28, is the first dolphin birth of the year and the eighth overall to be born at Discovery Cove. REUTERS/Chris Gotshall-Handout

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Sterrenkundigen gaan de hulp van Nederlanders en Belgen inschakelen om een extreem zwak radiosignaal op te vangen van de Europese ruimtesonde Huygens. Huygens staat sinds 14 januari op de Saturnus-maan Titan. Hoewel men dacht dat Huygens na zijn afdaling aan parachutes maar een paar minuten zou overleven zijn er aanwijzingen dat de ruimtesonde nog steeds actief is.

Astronomen over de hele wereld willen Huygens’ radiosignaal dan ook zo snel mogelijk opvangen, omdat elke dag de laatste kan zijn dat de sonde nog energie heeft. Om het zwakke radiosignaal op te vangen roepen sterrenkundigen de hulp van de bevolking in. Met behulp van mobiele telefoons kan er gemeten worden, omdat mobiele telefoons gevoelig zijn voor radiosignalen.

Via straalzenders communiceren ze met telecommunicatiesatellieten. Omdat deze satellieten het signaal weer terugkaatsen naar het aardoppervlak, kunnen grondstations voor satellietcommunicatie maar óók radiosterrenwachten, die vaak nog grotere schotelantennes gebruiken, het opvangen. Door alle mobiele telefoons te laten samenwerken, kunnen Nederland en België een gigantische radiotelescoop vormen.

Als mensen tussen 12.30 en 13.00 uur de straat op gaan en hun mobieltje richten naar het oosten, werken die tienduizenden mobieltjes samen als één grote radiospiegel. Het zwakke Huygenssignaal kaatst dan via de ruimte terug naar het oosten van ons land, waar het terecht komt bij de Drentse syntheseradiotelescoop. De verhoogde opbrengst zorgt ervoor dat deze telescopen het Huygens-signaal luid en duidelijk ontvangen. Hopelijk kunnen sterrenkundigen er door deze versterking achter komen wat Huygens de laatste maanden is overkomen.

Bovenstaand bericht is alles wat er hierover op nu.nl staat, dus iemand bij nu.nl heeft vet zitten slapen. Vermeld er nou even bij dat dit vrijdag aanstaande moet gebeuren, sukkels!

Het oorspronkelijke bericht, waar nu.nl kennelijk ook ingetuind is, staat hier en is duidelijk van veel betere kwaliteit.

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Time to revise the periodic table? Maybe we should, now that we have a new class of chemical building blocks called superatoms—atomic clusters that behave like individual atoms. Motivated by evidence that electrons in groups of aluminum atoms might form closed “shells,” physicists A. Welford Castleman Jr. at Pennsylvania State University and Shiv N. Khanna at Virginia Commonwealth University began searching for stable configurations of these atoms. “We thought if we could figure out some way of taking advantage of this, maybe we could make some new materials,” says Castleman. “Then we found a few magic numbers.”

To create the clusters, Castleman and his colleagues used a process called laser vaporization. A high-energy laser coaxed “seeds” from an aluminum rod into merging by trapping them in a pressurized stream of helium gas.

(more info)

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U.S. SENATOR JACK REED (D-RI): General Sanchez, today’s USA Today, sir, reported that you ordered or approved the use of sleep deprivation, intimidation by guard dogs, excessive noise and inducing fear as an interrogation method for a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison. Is that correct?

SANCHEZ: Sir, that may be correct that it’s in a news article, but I never approved any of those measures to be used within CJTF-7 at any time in the last year.

Yes, you did, you liar.

(more info)

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The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.

“These compassionate pro-lifers donated toward Bob Schindler’s legal battle to keep Terri’s estranged husband from removing the feeding tube from Terri,” says a description of the list on the Web site of the firm, Response Unlimited, which is asking $150 a month for 6,000 names and $500 a month for 4,000 e-mail addresses of people who responded last month to an e-mail plea from Ms. Schiavo’s father. “These individuals are passionate about the way they value human life, adamantly oppose euthanasia and are pro-life in every sense of the word!”

Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.

(oh, and they’ve done this before)

Why is it that every time an interesting new product comes along, marketing has to crap all over it? Ah well, now that people can no longer just pick the bits of TV they do like, viewership will be down the toilet even faster…

[Quote:]

Premier Balkenende vindt dat het kabinet gewoon door moet kunnen gaan.Volgens hem zit niemand te wachten op “politiek gedoe”,zoals verkiezingen.
Dat zei hij in een spoeddebat over de afspraken die de coalitie zaterdag over de voortzetting van het kabinet maakte.

PvdA-leider Bos zei dat de crisis rond het kabinet slechts is uitgesteld.Er is volgens hem nauwelijks nog iets dat de partijen bindt;hun drijfveer is vooral
dat ze geen verkiezingen willen.

De eerstvolgende keer dat een politicus me komt vertellen dat ik toch echt moet stemmen, zal ik ‘m verwijzen naar de Wijze Woorden van Balkenende: wat een Gedoe!”

Amazing how sick humor can be.

A harp seal basks in the sun on a ice floe in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Prince Edward Island, Canada Monday, March 28, 2005. The annual seal hunt begins Tuesday. (AP Photo/Jonathan Hayward)

[Quote:]

The legal battle over the life of Terri Schiavo may have ended, but a thick, fervent crowd remains in the makeshift encampment outside the Woodside Hospice House here . . .

No, we’re not going to go home,” said Bill Tierney, a young daughter at his side. “Terri is not dead until she’s dead” . . .

Mr. Tierney, a former military intelligence officer in Iraq who works as a translator and investigator for private companies, cried as he talked about watching the Schiavo spectacle on television and feeling the utter need to be at the hospice.

New York Times
Protesters With Hearts on Sleeves and Anger on Signs
March 28, 2005

Bill Tierney . . . had just returned from eight months working as an interrogator for US forces in Baghdad, and had come to talk, on the record, about torture.

”The Brits came up with an expression � wog,” Tierney said. ”That stands for Wily Oriental Gentleman. There’s a lot of wiliness in that part of the world.”. . .

After explaining his various psychological tactics to the audience, interrogator Bill Tierney (a private contractor working with the Army) said, ”I tried to be nuanced and culturally aware. But the suspects didn’t break.”

Suddenly Tierney’s temper rose. ”They did not break!” he shouted. ”I’m here to win. I’m here so our civilization beats theirs! Now what are you willing to do to win?” he asked, pointing to a woman in the front row. ”You are the interrogators, you are the ones who have to get the information from the Iraqis. What do you do? That word ‘torture’. You immediately think, ‘That’s not me.’ But are we litigating this war or fighting it?” . . .

Asked about Abu Ghraib, Tierney said that for an interrogator, ”sadism is always right over the hill. You have to admit it. Don’t fool yourself � there is a part of you that will say, ‘This is fun.’ ”

Boston Globe
Spy world
February 13, 2005

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Remember, each line of code is a liability

[Quote:]

New details are emerging about Sgrena’s shooting and the death of the Italian official, Nicola Calipari, that bear reporting in English (this, of course, remains a significant story in Italy). Independent journalist Naomi Klein recently met with Sgrena in the Rome military hospital where she has been since returning to Italy on March 5.

“Giuliana is quite a bit sicker than we have been led to believe,” says Klein. “She was fired on by a gun at the top of a tank, which means that the artillery was very, very large. It was a four-inch bullet that entered her body and broke apart. And it didn’t just injure her shoulder, it punctured her lung. Her lung continues to fill with fluid and there continues to be complications stemming from that fairly serious injury.”

This case has been written off by US officials as a “horrific accident” that occurred on what we are told is “the most dangerous road in Iraq,” where insurgents are constantly waiting in the bushes to attack. The Pentagon further contends that the Italians failed to slow down at a checkpoint and only after repeated attempts to stop the car did soldiers fire on the Italians. The problem is, according to Sgrena, this shooting didn’t happen on that road. What’s more, Sgrena says that there was no US checkpoint for which to slow down.

“This is treated as a fairly common and understandable incident that there would be a shooting like this on that road,” Klein says. “I was on that road myself, and it is a really treacherous place with explosions going off all the time and a lot of checkpoints. What Giuliana told me that I had not realized before is that she wasn’t on that road at all.”

According to Klein, when Calipari was killed and Sgrena wounded, they were on a secured road that can only be accessed through the heavily-fortified Green Zone and is reserved exclusively for top foreign embassy and US officials. “It’s a completely separate road, actually a Saddam-era road, it would seem, that allowed his vehicles to pass directly from the airport to his palace,” says Klein. “And now that is the secured route between the U.S. military base at the airport and the U.S. controlled Green Zone and the U.S. embassy.”

[..]

“It was not a checkpoint. Nobody asked us to stop,” Sgrena told Klein “All the streets we were on were USA controlled so we thought they knew we were going through. They didn’t try to stop us, they just shot us. They have a way to signal us to stop but they didn’t give us any signals to stop and they were at least 10 meters off the street to the side.”

Sgrena also says that the US soldiers fired at them from behind, which of course contradicts the claim that the soldiers fired in self-defense. “Part of what we’re hearing is that the U.S. soldiers opened fire on their car, because they didn’t know who they were, and they were afraid,” says Klein. “The fear, of course, is that their car could have blown up or that the soldiers might come under attack themselves. And what Giuliana Sgrena really stressed with me was that the bullet that injured her so badly came from behind, entered through the back of the car. And the only person who was not severely injured in the car was the driver, and she said that this is because the shots weren’t coming from the front.”

[Quote:]

Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

Remember this?

[Quote:]

Indeed, Bessie Smith was in the process of a comeback at the time of her tragic death at age forty-three. On Sept. 26, 1937, she was critically injured while on her way to a singing engagement, when the car being driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan in which she was a passenger crashed into a truck on a road in Mississippi. According to legend segregation led to her death when a white hospital first refused her admission and by the time she arrived at a black hospital in Clarksdale, Miss., it was too late to save her and she bled to death. Although much has been said to dispute this claim, it is not implausible considering that this was the segregated south. The playwright Edward Albee dramatized the account in his 1960 play The Death of Bessie Smith.

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Claire Sellick approached a woman in London’s tony theater district with a clipboard and a chance to win tickets to an upcoming show. All the woman had to do was answer a three-minute survey on locals’ theater-going habits. Or so she thought.

The first question was easy. “What’s your name?” Next came questions about her attitude towards the theater, with more personal inquiries interjected now and then. For instance, the survey company needed the woman’s date of birth (to prove she was legally able to win the seats) and her mother’s maiden name (for later verification) and her address, of course, to mail the tickets if she won the drawing. What about a phone number? Her pet’s name? The name of the first school she attended?

At some point, the woman began connecting the dots. “I work for a bank and this information could be used to open a bank account.”

“Yes,” Sellick responded.

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Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has advised airplane pilots against flying near 100 nuclear power plants around the country or they will be forced down by fighter jets. But pilots say there’s a hitch in the instructions: aviation security officials refuse to disclose the precise location of the plants because they consider that “SSI” — Sensitive Security Information.

“The message is; ‘please don’t fly there, but we can’t tell you where there is,’” says Melissa Rudinger of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a trade group representing 60% of American pilots.

Determined to find a way out of the Catch-22, the pilots’ group sat down with a commercial mapping company, and in a matter of days plotted the exact geographical locations of the plants from data found on the Internet and in libraries. It made the information available to its 400,000 members on its Web site — until officials from the Transportation Security Administration asked them to take the information down. “Their concern was that [terrorists] mining the Internet could use it,” Ms. Rudinger says.

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The pastoral fields and white frame houses appear at peace, but this Pennsylvania farm town is deeply at war over teaching Darwin or Christian creationism in its schools.

Since last year the school board voted to have high school biology teachers raise doubts about Darwin’s 145-year-old theory and suggest an alternative Christian explanation for life. The city has since been deeply riven over the issue of separation of church and state.

In January the school board ordered teachers to tell students that Darwinism is not proved, and to teach as well an alternate theory, “intelligent design,” which posits that a grand creator, God, is responsible for the development of living organisms.

“Darwin’s theory is a theory … not a fact,” the school board declared in their statement to the teachers. “Intelligent design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view,” said the report.

The command landed in the sprawling, red-brick Dover high school like a bomb. Biology teachers refused to read it, while around 15 students walked out in protest.

It really isn’t about Darwin. It’s about power and control. They admit it openly:

Both sides acknowledge the political context of the debate over Darwinism, and the relation to the re-election of staunchly Christian President George W. Bush.

“Christians are a lot more bold under Bush’s leadership, he speaks what a lot of us believe,” said Mummert.

“We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture,” he said, adding that the school board’s declaration is just a first step.

“It took 30 or 40 years to eliminate God in school, it will take probably 30 or 40 years to get him back. You take a little step first, a little bite, then another little bite and another,” said Steve Farrell, a nursery keeper, who dreams of the return to prayer in class.

Control over the school is a vital first step, because an ignorant society is vital to religious wingnuts.

Insanity is rare in devoutly religious individuals, but it is the norm in groups.

[Quote:]

De regeringspartijen CDA, VVD en D66 zijn het zaterdag na ruim elf uur onderhandelen eens geworden over hoe ze verder willen in het kabinet-Balkenende. De politieke crisis, die dinsdag begon toen het D66-kroonjuweel van de gekozen burgemeester sneuvelde in de Eerste Kamer, is daarmee bezworen.

Het akkoord omvat een rechtstreeks gekozen burgemeester in 2010, een kleine wijziging van het kiesstelsel in 2007, een verhoging van het budget voor onderwijs met structureel een kwart miljard euro en een half miljard euro voor kennis en innovatie, die afkomstig is uit een meevaller van de aardgasbaten.

Na afloop van het overleg zaterdagavond zei premier Balkenende dat iedereen gelukkig is: “Er zijn drie winnaars en dat zijn de drie partijen.”

En 16 miljoen verliezers. Ach, ik weet wel waarom dit zo gebeurt:

[Quote:]

Het CDA blijft in de peiling stabiel op 32 zetels, twaalf minder dan in de Tweede Kamer. De coalitie van CDA, VVD en D66 komt daarmee in de peiling op 67 zetels en blijft dus nog steeds ruim beneden een meerderheid in de Tweede Kamer.

[Quote:]

Two researchers surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system.

This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along.

[Quote:]

The Transparent Screens group on Flickr has a lot of these amazing trompe d’oeils on them. On the Couch is great too, and this one includes some advice of how to do it in the description.

[Quote:]

A judge has ruled that Ohio’s new constitutional ban on same-sex marriage prohibits unmarried people from being able to file domestic violence charges, a decision that has prompted an immediate appeal by prosecutors.

Judges and others across the country have been waiting for a ruling on how Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage, among the nation’s broadest, would affect the state’s 25-year-old domestic violence law, which previously wasn’t limited to married people.

Wednesday’s ruling by Cuyahoga County common pleas judge Stuart Friedman changed a felony domestic violence charge against Frederick Burk to a misdemeanor assault charge.

Burk, 42, is accused of slapping and pushing his live-in girlfriend during a January argument over a pack of cigarettes.

His public defender, David Magee, had asked the judge to throw out the charge because of the new wording in Ohio’s constitution that prohibits any state or local government from enforcing a law that would “create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals.”

Prior to the amendment’s approval, courts applied the domestic violence law by defining a family as including an unmarried couple living together as would a husband and wife, the judge said. The new amendment banning same-sex marriage no longer allows that.

[Quote:]

ity education officials were forced to recall test preparation materials for math exams late Wednesday after discovering that they were rife with errors, including basic arithmetic mistakes.

The materials were intended for math students in grades 3 through 7, but the faulty information – at least 18 errors – was found before it reached classrooms. The testing guides were e-mailed late Wednesday to regional instructional specialists, math coaches and local instructional superintendents and recalled a few hours later.

Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word “fourth” was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual.

According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job.

[..]

“They should not be allowed to make all kinds of excuses,” said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of a parents’ organization called Time Out From Testing. “The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation.”

[Quote:]

The Palace of Soviets was planned to be the largest building in the world. Its height was to reach 415 metres – higher than the tallest buildings of the time, the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building, The building-postament was to be topped by a 100 metre statue of Lenin. The constuction of the Palace of Soviets developed into an independent economic and scientific field. This system included special laboratories dealing with optics and acoustics, for the development of special construction materials such as “D.S. steel” and “D.S. brick”, mechanical and ceramic-concrete works, The building site was serviced by its own railway branch. By special decrees of the Soviet of People’s Commissars and the Council for Labour and Defence, the construction of the Palace of Soviets was designate a priority project in 1934, and by 1939 the foundations of the upper part were completed. Construction was suspended in 1941 because of the war and never resumed.

Qian Hongyan, 8, crawls with two home-made props and part of a basketball at Zhuangxia Village in Yannan Province, China. The girl lost both of her legs in a traffic accident in 2000 at the age of three.