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Terry Jones, he of Monty Python fame, writes about humiliation in the Guardian . Specifically, he targets the humiliation of UK sailors at the hands of their Iranian captors and shares the outrage being expressed in the British press. Jones compares how the west has treated Arab prisoners in recent Middle East conflict with the treatment being experienced by the sailors. He is outraged -- mad -- at what's being done. Faye Tuney is forced to wear a black headscarf and her picture is allowed to posted around the world; the sailors forced to talk on Iranian TV; they're allowed to write letters home! Jones believes that the UK sailors should be treated the way a civilized nation treats prisoners of war -- the way the US (with British help) has been treating prisoners. He suggests that perhaps the prisoners should have bags over their heads, with their mouths duct-taped; that they should be given "the privacy of solitary confinement;" that they should be held for ye...

From the unimaginable small femtometer to the unimaginable large light year -- the universe is both incredibly small and incredibly large -- defying our ability to come to terms with its size. Nikon has a cool flash animation that depicts this dilemma very well. Turn the volume up, click the link and ponder your place in the universe.

27-years after being released by Disney, the scifi movie Tron , is coming under the guns of the US Homeland Security department. The film, part of which was shot at the Shiva nuclear fusion research facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , is what the US government is interested in. The government contends that the film contains scenes which disclose sensitive nuclear information -- never mind the fact that the Shiva facility was dismantled in 1981. Using the Patriot Act , Homeland Security dweebs have sent out National Security Letters to Disney and video retailers across the country, requesting any and all copies of the film, in every form, to be sent to them . Yes folks, if it wasn't evident before, it certainly is now: the US Homeland Security department has lost their collective fucking minds.

The Cassini spacecraft has sent images back of a weird, six-sided hexagon that covers the entire north pole of Saturn. The hexagon shape was first imaged by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts, and is 25,000 km across -- a size that could hold about four Earths -- and 100 km deep. The hexagon has a system of clouds that is whipping around in it, as can seen in movies made from the Cassini images.

Tolkien's The Children of Húrin is set to be published in April, after being worked on by J.R.R.'s son, Christopher, for about three decades. There's scant detail about the book, other than the little excerpts that has previously been released from J.R.R.'s drafts. The story is set way before the events of the Lord of the Rings -- in the First Age -- and deals with the human hero, Húrin, who is cursed by the Dark Lord Morgoth. The book is eagerly anticipated by Tolkien's fans, who are now speculating on the motion picture rights. More can be found at Wikipedia .

Americans, read this: US News Media's "War on Gore" ; this: Executive Branch Secedes from the Union ; and seriously, start thinking about this now: Impeach Bush Now .

I'm not one to cook from recipes. I have difficulty keeping up with too many instructions. I'd much rather just start in the kitchen and see where the dish takes me. Sometimes I totally screw things up -- but mostly, things sorta work out. Tonight however, I decided to try a recipe, and more or less, stick to it. I had seen a couple of Persian recipes for dishes served during Naw Ruz celebrations in Chatelaine's April 2007 issue. The pictures looked enticing, and I wanted to taste the food. So, when the opportunity presented itself to cook dinner tonight, I went for the Jewelled Rice and Roasted Eggplant Dip (served with pitas) -- click the links for the recipes. The result was pretty good. I enjoyed both dishes -- and my wife must have, as she had seconds. I did make some modifications to the recipes. For the Roasted Eggplant Dip, I had no tomato paste, so I ignored it. I completely forgot the garlic, so it wasn't included. And since I had ...

If wonder why the Palestinians carry such disdain for Israel? Before WWII, there was no Jewish state. After WWII, Israel was carved out of Palestinian land. Remember, most of the Middle East and Africa was still occupied as colonies of European nations -- so they could do as they damn well please. And they did. It may be that they felt some remorse for what the Germans did to the Jews. They didn't feel enough remorse however, to welcome Jews into their own countries. Canada was one of those nations that didn't want the Jewish exodus to land on our shores. Our shame. The map of Palestine today -- our shame as well. There's obviously no going back now. But acknowledging the past mistakes is the only way of making the future peaceful. [Source: eatliver.com ]

They grow them really stupid in Texas. And I don't mean GW alone ... the whole place is awash with stupidity ... and at the highest levels of their society. This one comes from AlterNet -- reporting that the chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee, Republican Warren Chisum, is distributing a memo penned by Ben Bridges, that references "indisputable evidence" that science, from the Big Bang to Evolution, is all just a Pharisee religious conspiracy trying to undermine Christianity. The memo suggests that creation science -- an oxymoron used by morons -- which can't be taught in schools because it has a religious agenda, is the same argument that can be used to remove evolution science from schools. Indisputable evidence -- long hidden but now available to everyone -- demonstrates conclusively that so-called "secular evolution science" is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate "creation scenario" of the Pharisee Religion . This...

A good site should never be wasted ... Worth1000 Picture of the Day Astronomy Picture of the Day UniqueDaily.com TEDTalks GreenBiz.com

Finally, Americans have an opportunity to apologize to the world for having a jackass for a president. If you're an American, head over there and say you're sorry. If you're not an American, head over there and accept what you've been waiting for.

I saw Frank Miller's 300 last week. What a ride! The movie is based on the graphic novel by the same title, and was a no apologies live action rendition of the panels created by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley . The acting was superb, the story was a well crafted and the cinematography, simply out of this world. Greece from the movie was a Greece of the legends, when the gods walked amongst us mere humans. Make no mistake, this movie is not the stuff of the History Channel -- it's for the SciFi Channel. The movie was rated 18A, and so it should. The violence -- and when isn't there violence when you have 300, well-buffed, mostly naked (except of the leotards and capes) men shouting, sweating and wielding long spears, arranged against a well armed, uncountable throng -- was unstoppable. Hordes of attackers from the Persian empire threw themselves at the spears, swords and grunts of the Spartan heroes. There were monsters, immortals (who died), giants, muta...

70% of the world is covered by oceans. That leaves only 30% of the planet to be plundered for the $225US-billion annual mining industry, which feeds our insatiable modern lifestyles. If David Heydon of Nautilus Minerals gets his way however, the 70% of land hidden under the oceans is about to be razed for the treasures that were long beyond our reach. Gold, silver, copper, zinc and other base metals are just sitting on the ocean floor, if you buy into the snake oil being sold by Heydon. The price of getting to the treasure was of course an obstacle, but not anymore. Nautilus has raised hundreds of millions by going public, as well as obtaining seed investment from the mining establishment: Placer Dome, Epion Holdings, Anglo American, Teck Cominco and Barrick Gold. They have also cobbled together the technology and the expertise to be able to launch a drilling project off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The Solwara Project , off Papua New Guinea, is focusing on areas around dead ...

After years of celebrating sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and more recently, sex, guns and thug life, the RIAA is apparently now seeking to teach our children morals . That is apparently the reason why the RIAA is cracking down on music pirates on campus. Read more via Boing Boing .

Menu Foods of Streetsville, Ontario, maker of private label pet foods for mass retailers, as well as Procter & Gamble, is recalling 60 million container of wet pet food , after reports of sickness and deaths. The pet food were sold between December and March, and are probably on shelves at home -- or still in stores. Below are the brands being recalled. Cat Food: Americas Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Best Choice; Companion; Compliments; Demoulas Market Basket; Fine Feline Cat, Shep Dog; Food Lion; Foodtown; Giant Companion; Good n Meaty; Hannaford; Hill Country Fare; Hy-Vee; Key Food; Laura Lynn; Li'l Red; Loving Meals; Main Choice; Nutriplan; Nutro Max Gourmet Classics; Nutro Natural Choice; Paws; Presidents Choice; Price Chopper; Priority; Save-A-Lot; Schnucks; Sophistacat; Special Kitty; Springfield Pride; Sprout; Total Pet; My True Friend; Wegmans; Western Family; White Rose; and Winn Dixie. Dog Food: America's Choice; Preferred Pets; Authority; Award; Best ...

Researchers using the MARSIS radar instrument on board the Mars Express spacecraft have found a huge deposit of frozen water under Mars' south pole. If the ice was convert to water and placed on the surface of Mars, it would be enough to cover the entire planet 11 metres deep. A striking find -- which gives more support to evidence that water once flowed on the surface of Mars. Millions, or even billions of years ago, Mars may have resembled a young Earth, and had possibly supported life similar to that of Earth. The hunt continues.

I've read a few arguments that compared the waking of the two sleeping giants: India and China, and which one will be able to capitalize and sustain the transition from third world, sprawling chaos, to developed nationhood. The advocates of democracy stress that no where in the world is there a successful country built from single party rule -- and only with freedom, can a country be successful by all measures of what success is: economic strength, social justice, freedom, etc. Thus far however, no one would argue that China is realizing successes while India continues to struggle. The latest issue of BusinessWeek carries a cover article that explores what is troubling India. There is much. Most notably, an infrastructure that is totally lacking and in need of investment; and rampant corruption that is bilking resources and time from much needed investments. India's growing prestige in the world is coming mostly from its technology and related services sector. These are...

ComputerWorld is running a fairly good summary on how to use the internet anonymously. Even the noobs know that there is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. Every site you visit is capable -- and most are -- collecting and tracking some of your surfing habits. This site you're on for instance, captures where you're coming from, what site you came from, and which link you click on when you leave -- along with a few other technical bits of information, such as OS, screen resolution, etc. (Why? Cause I find it of interest to know where people come from.) It's not me you have to be afraid of however. For quite some time, some folks, up to know good, have been collecting bits of information from you, in the hopes of finding information they could covert to cash -- the criminal elements of the internet. If you live in a country where there is no freedom, your surfing habits could land you in a great deal of trouble. Increasingly, this is becoming the case here i...

The first salvo has been fired. Viacom has sued Google over YouTube's turning a blind eye to users uploading copyrighted content belonging to Viacom. Viacom's properties include MTV, VH1 and Comedy Central -- yes, so much for those Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert clips . In a statement, Viacom claims that YouTube was "destroying enormous value" in allowing Viacom's content to be available freely on the site. And there you have it -- the problem with this lawsuit -- that YouTube is destroying value belonging to the content owners. YouTube has about 70 million users and even more viewers. Their reach is enormous. You want to become a hit, get your video on YouTube and you stand a good chance. I seriously doubt that Stewart and Colbert would have built such a fanbase, if it wasn't for online sharing of their video clips. Even Microsoft is admitting that piracy does have its merits -- it gets to people who may not otherwise consume your creation, and on...

NASA's Stereo A and Stereo B spacecrafts, launched in the fall of 2006, are on a mission to study the Sun. The spacecrafts have each taken up position in Earth's orbit around the Sun -- with Stereo A being 1 million miles ahead of Earth in orbit, and Stereo B being 1 million miles behind Earth in orbit. The orbits have been planned to afford the spacecrafts the ability to create stereoscopic images and videos of the Sun -- specifically, coronal mass ejections. On Feb. 25 however, Stereo B made a cool video. In an exercise to calibrate its CCD detectors, the spacecraft made a movie of the Moon transiting the Sun. A couple of remarkable things show up on this video. Since the spacecraft is further away from the Moon than we are, the Moon appears smaller than the Sun -- unlike how we would see it on Earth. Secondly, because the spacecraft's cameras see in the extreme ultraviolet, the colours of the Sun are just plain alien. Check out the video below.

Windoze ... freeware! Check out this free open source effort that aims to build, from the ground up, an implementation of a compatible Windows NT operating system. That means when completed, the ReactOS will be able to install and run native Windows drivers and applications. Regardless of whether this actually ever makes it out to general release, you have to give these folks kudos for having fortitude, with just a little bit of crazy.

SCO picked the fight with IBM and just about the every other software vendor that dabbles in Linux. Now it's crying foul because the entire industry, even Microsoft now, is growing tired of its belly-aching and wants nothing to do with it. In the latest of the worst joke thus far this century, SCO is now claiming that IBM soured SCO's relationship with a number of computer juggernauts and caused it severe market and revenue distress. Sounds to me like somebody's crying for mommy . How about SCO taking responsibility for its own litigious strategy that took a company that was already in decline and made it the walking dead, trying to feed of other companies that actually have products customers want to buy? That dose of reality may be too much for McBride of course.

If you use the Firefox browser, you know what a great browser it is already, and some of the advantages it brings over the competition from Redmond. If you use the browser, you may already be aware and using, some of the nifty, cool and useful extensions that are freely available. There are many lists out there with the "best of" extensions, but couldn't we always use another? Here's ComputerWorld's take on the 20 must-have extensions . You may already be using a few.

Superman II - The Richard Donner Cut was released last year by Warner Bros. to coincide with the release of the new Superman movie. This cut is a re-edit of the original 1980 movie by the movie's original director, Richard Donner, who had a different vision of the movie than the producers. I don't remember the original that well, although I do remember it being more campy than this release, which is more serious in its treatment of the Superman character. For details, check out this extensive entry in Wikipedia . Christopher Reeve's Superman was the film Superman I grew up with, and is a Superman I'm glad was replaced last year. I'm not a Superman purist, and most of those would probably prefer Reeve's incarnation. Don't get me wrong, I like the films, but after seeing it recently, I realized that, 1) I saw the films as a kid, and, 2) special effects sure have come a long way, thankfully. Special effects are an artifact of their time, b...

When a group of friends exit a dance party after a drunken fight and are invited to spend the night in the country, you know the ride is not going to be what they expected. Sheitan is a French horror flick from Tartan Films that delivers a confusing and perverted mess. The four friends are seduced to the country by Eve (Roxanne Mesquida). Thai (Nicholas Le Phat Tan) and Bart (Olivier Bartélémy) want to go because they're both vying for Eve's attentions. Ladj (Ladj Ly) is going because he's hoping to hook-up with Yasmine (Leïla Bekhti). Their expectations will hardly be met at the farmhouse in the French countryside. The weirdness starts on the dirt road to the farmhouse. Blocked on the road by goats, the group meets Joseph (Vincent Cassel), who is introduced by Eve as the housekeeper. Joseph is an over-the-top character. Couple of things you're sure of are: he is completely mad, and he has an unhealthy interest in Bart. You realize very quickly th...

You'd be amazed by what parasites can tells us about our evolution. A group of scientists that had previously published findings on human head lice, just published recent research that looked at the co-evolution of human pubic lice (crabs) with humans. The findings are interesting, raise more questions than they answer -- but provide a different lens through which human evolution can be studied. Pubic lice (Pthirus pubis) has at least a thirteen million year history with us -- going on the evolutionary journey with the distant ancestors of today's great apes and the ancestors of humans and chimpanzees. Somewhere on the journey however, Pthirus pubis became extinct on the human/chimp lineage. Then about three and half million years ago, Pthirus pubis from the gorilla lineage, reappeared on our hominid ancestors. What happened? Pthirus pubis is only shared via close contact, which implies that our hominid ancestors shared more with the ancestors of gorillas than had previo...

This image of Io was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft from a distance of 2.5 million kilometres away.  It shows the plume from the Tvashtar volcano, near Io's north pole, which extends to 290-kilometres from the satellite's surface.  New Horizons is currently going snap happy as closes in on Jupiter, on its way for the planned encounter with Pluto in 2015.  Click the thumbnail for the larger image and check out the alien volcano!

Limited thinking would view the poor as a burden to society, but if you buy C.K. Prahalad's bottom-of-the-pyramid theory, the 4-plus billion impoverished people in the world are a vast untapped market. If you're motivated solely by profits, you may limit your understanding of Prahalad's theory to bringing consumerism to the poor -- but if your aspirations are to close the inequalities that exist between those that have, and those that have don't, then this vast untapped market represents an opportunity to make a difference, even while eking out profits. The poster child for tapping into those at the bottom is Grameen Bank , with their micro-financing to aid those in developing nations towards self-sustainment. Helping the poor help themselves is a novel idea that is taking off in philanthropy. It's not just about throwing endless sums of money at the vacuum of need -- but about wisely investing in the poor, so they can create an economic environment where the c...

International Women's Day (IWD) is marked on March 8, every year. It's a day set aside across the world to recognize the achievements of women everywhere -- although it is marked differently by different countries. In some countries, IWD is celebrated like Mother's Day or Valentine's Day -- whereas elsewhere, it's a day marked by the reaffirmation of the equal rights of women; a recognition that there is much more that needs to be done before there is no longer a need for the IWD. If you are female, this day should mean something to you. If you're male, this should also mean a whole lot to you, for you at least have a mother -- and may have a sister, wife, daughter or female friend -- and unfortunately, the world continues to do them a disservice because of their gender. Here in Canada, women have greater rights than in most countries of the world -- aligned more or less with the status of women in other developed nations -- yet, there is much more work that ...