TUESDAY 28 OCTOBER, EARLY WIRLY BIRLY

weekends are difficult, teaching classes in the morning and the evening just seem like too much for my body, so i took some great sleeping pills last night. what a great dreamless sleep, but then i wake up at 4 am, all fresh, but what do you do at 4 bloody am?




English Russia just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth surface


Slime Molds


Category: Photos, Science |








This Russian guy is fond of making photos of the ’slime molds’ - micro mushrooms that grow on the plants.











































































http://englishrussia.com/?p=2059

INTERNATIONAL

We Should Talk to Our Enemies








John Moore
Getty Images

A U.S. army lieutenant in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan


By Nicholas Burns | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Oct 25, 2008


One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
or Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. In each of the three presidential debates,
McCain belittled Obama as naive for arguing that America should be
willing to negotiate with such adversaries. In the vice presidential
debate, Sarah Palin went even further, accusing Obama of "bad judgment
… that is dangerous," an ironic charge given her own very modest
foreign-policy credentials.
Are McCain and Palin
correct that America should stonewall its foes? I lived this issue for
27 years as a career diplomat, serving both Republican and Democratic
administrations. Maybe that's why I've been struggling to find the real
wisdom and logic in this Republican assault against Obama. I'll bet
that a poll of senior diplomats who have served presidents from Carter
to Bush would reveal an overwhelming majority who agree with the
following position: of course we should talk to difficult
adversaries—when it is in our interest and at a time of our choosing.
The
more challenging and pertinent question, especially for the
McCain-Palin ticket, is the reverse: Is it really smart to declare we
will never talk to such leaders? Is it really in our long-term national
interest to shut ourselves off from one of the most important and
powerful states in the Middle East—Iran—or one of our major suppliers of oil, Venezuela?

During
the five decades of the cold war, when Americans had a more Manichaean
view of the world, we did, from time to time, cut off relations with
particularly odious leaders such as North Korea's Kim Il Sung or
Albania's bloodthirsty and maniacal strongman, Enver Hoxha. But for the
most part even our most ardent cold-war presidents—Dwight Eisenhower,
John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, none of whom was often
accused of being weak or naive—decided that sitting down with our
adversaries made good sense for America. They all talked to Soviet
leaders—men vastly more threatening to America's survival than
Ahmadinejad or Chávez are now. JFK negotiated a nuclear Test-Ban Treaty
with his mortal adversary, Nikita Khrushchev, just one year after the
two narrowly avoided a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban missile
crisis. Perhaps more dramatically, Nixon, the greatest anticommunist
crusader of his time, went to China in 1972 to repair a more than 20-year rupture with Mao Zedong that he believed no longer worked for America.
All
of these cold-war presidents embraced a foreign-policy maxim
memorialized by one of the toughest and most experienced leaders of our
time, Israel's Yitzhak Rabin, who defended his discussions with Yasir
Arafat by declaring, "You don't make peace with friends, you make peace
with very unsavory enemies." Why should the United States approach the
world any differently now? Especially now? As Americans learned all too
dramatically on 9/11 and again during the financial crisis this autumn,
we inhabit a rapidly integrating planet where dangers can strike at any
time and from great distances. And when others—China, India, Brazil—are
rising to share power in the world with us, America needs to spend more
time, not less, talking and listening to friends and foes alike.
The
real truth Americans need to embrace is that nearly all of the most
urgent global challenges—the quaking financial markets, climate change,
terrorism—cannot be resolved by America's acting alone in the world.
Rather than retreat into isolationism, as we have often done in our
history, or go it alone as the unilateralists advocated disastrously in
the past decade, we need to commit ourselves to a national strategy of
smart engagement with the rest of the world. Simply put, we need all
the friends we can get. And we need to think more creatively about how
to blunt the power of opponents through smart diplomacy, not just the
force of arms.



continue reading at:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/165650

Feds disrupt skinhead plot to assassinate Obama



By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes Jordan, Associated Press Writer

–
4 mins ago



WASHINGTON – Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.
In
all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned
to kill 88 people — 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in
U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community.
The
spree, which initially targeted an unidentified predominantly
African-American school, was to end with the two men driving toward
Obama, "shooting at him from the windows," the court documents show.
"Both individuals stated they would dress in all white tuxedos and wear top hats
during the assassination attempt," the court complaint states. "Both
individuals further stated they knew they would and were willing to die
during this attempt."
An Obama spokeswoman traveling with the senator in Pennsylvania had no immediate comment.
Sheriffs'
deputies in Crockett County, Tenn., arrested the two suspects — Daniel
Cowart, 20, of Bells, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman 18, of Helena-West Helena,
Ark. — Oct. 22 on unspecified charges. "Once we arrested the defendants
and suspected they had violated federal law, we immediately contacted
federal authorities," said Crockett County Sheriff Troy Klyce.
The
two were charged by federal authorities Monday with possessing an
unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally
licensed gun dealer, and threatening a candidate for president.
Cowart and Schlesselman are being held without bond. Agents seized a rifle, a sawed-off shotgun
and three pistols from the men when they were arrested. Authorities
alleged the two men were preparing to break into a gun shop to steal
more.
Attorney Joe Byrd, who has been
hired to represent Cowart, did not immediately return a call seeking
comment Monday. Messages left on two phone numbers listed under
Cowart's name were not immediately returned.
No telephone number for Schlesselman in Helena-West Helena could be found immediately.
The
court documents say the two men met about a month ago on the Internet
and found common ground in their shared "white power" and "skinhead"
philosophy.
The numbers 14 and 88 are
symbols in skinhead culture, referring to a 14-word phrase attributed
to an imprisoned white supremacist: "We must secure the existence of
our people and a future for white children" and to the eighth letter of
the alphabet, H. Two "8"s or "H"s stand for "Heil Hitler."
Court records say Cowart and Schlesselman also bought nylon rope and ski masks to use in a robbery or home invasion
to fund their spree, during which they allegedly planned to go from
state to state and kill people. Agents said the skinheads did not
identify the African-American school they were targeting by name.
Jim
Cavanaugh, special agent in charge of the Nashville field office for
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, said
authorities took the threats very seriously.
"They said that would be their last, final act — that they would attempt to kill Sen. Obama," Cavanaugh said. "They didn't believe they would be able to do it, but that they would get killed trying."
He added: "They seemed determined to do it. Even if they were just to try it, it would be a trail of tears around the South."
The
investigation is continuing, and more charges are possible, Cavanaugh
said. He said there's no evidence — so far — that others were willing
to assist Cowart and Schlesselman with the plot.
At this point, there does not appear to be any formal assassination plan, Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said.
"Whether or not they had the capability or the wherewithal to carry out an attack remains to be seen," he said.
Zahren said the statements about the assassination came out in interviews after the men were arrested last week.
The Secret Service became involved in the investigation once it was clear that an Obama assassination attempt was part of this violent far-reaching plot.
"We don't discount anything," Zahren said, adding that it's one thing
for the defendants to make statements, but it's not the same as having
an organized assassination plan.
Helena-West Helena, on the Mississippi River in east Arkansas' Delta, is in one of the nation's poorest regions, trailing even parts of Appalachia in its standard of living. Police Chief Fred Fielder said he had never heard of Schlesselman.
However, the reported threat of attacking a school filled with
black students worried Fielder. Helena-West Helena, with a population
of 12,200, is 66 percent black. "Predominantly black school, take your
pick," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Erik Schelzig in Nashville, Tenn., Jon Gambrell in Little Rock, Ark., and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081027/ap_on_el_pr/skinhead_plot

Sarah Palin's War on ScienceThe GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, Oct. 27, 2008, at 11:43 AM ET
Sarah Palin

In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and
intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can
go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal
deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe
the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it
didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber.
But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah
Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic
and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in
Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."


It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan
won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of
chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making
of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or
fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very
useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a
laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great
variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and
since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue"
of disability and special needs, she might even have had some
researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center
for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit
fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of
research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's
especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make
such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself
after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical
research.



In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her
own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who
appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated
use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and
elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the
expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana
was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008,
Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered
Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of
tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire
hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as
they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory.
The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of
understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield
results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all
McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was
a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service
was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he
associates in his mind with DNA.)


With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more
sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of
McCain. We never get a chance to ask her
in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of
creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in
the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an
argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all
creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now.
This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether
conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the
flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be
funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also
says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming;
again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her
co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other
words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and
preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon
us.

Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used
to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one
of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a
reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on
the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different
times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken
on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times
gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin
has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least
in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points,
also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed"
by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in
the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual
warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons.
Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And
only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a
radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his
lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that
"God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4."This is what the
Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach
of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud,
boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not
anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who
are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who
prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith"
but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the
Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and
stupidity.





http://www.slate.com/id/2203120

don't know what's up with this computer. who is this spunky winkerbean character? these are my posts.

safari is not the browser to use with this forum, i take back that recommendation. something really buggy with that safari.

Puppy vs. Lion Cub


Oct.26, 2008 in
Animals



This puppy may be able to take on this kitty now, but in two years, this cat will dominate!


















http://www.tutztutz.com/2008/10/puppy-vs-lion-cub/

Hey Spunky! it all turned out okay didn't it?

Brains won over the horde of evil.
Like slime molds prove, beauty emerges even in decay.

Don't pay no nevermind to that spooky guy,
we can tell you're real.

Kuala Lumpur eh? it looks beautiful from your ebullient description at that other forum.

I so happy for you. you find paradise on earth everywhere you go.
this mean you are fully human and in harmony with your spirit.

I'm having some down time. not feel so hot.

I applaud you.