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Is it just me, or is the irony lost on these fucking morons? In case aren't aware, Turkey has marched into Northern Iraq to kick Kurdish butt. Specifically the butts of the PKK, a terrorist group that has been launching attacks on Turkey from the mountainous region of northern Iraq. Turkey finally had enough, and sent its military in. Understandably, the Iraq government is pissed. Understandably, the Turks don't give a damn. Totally confusing is the moronic response from the US, as represented by the following words from Defense Secretary, Robert "What is Irony?" Gates: It's very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave, and to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty. I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that. Not months. Military activity alone will not solve this terrorist problem for Turkey. There certainly is a place for security operations but these also need to be accompanied by economic a...

What does it mean when the Canadian and US military reach an agreement to allow each country to call on each other troops to respond in civil emergencies? It means that we could have US troops on Canadian soil to protect infrastructure; enforce laws; control civilians; and basically, project US policies, in case of an emergency . WTF? you say? The agreement was reached between the US and Canadian military on Feb. 14 in Texas, but apparently hasn't been approved by the government of each nation. That such an agreement was even being negotiated without it being known is suspect. And the devil's always in the details. As reported by Canwest , the US military doesn't allow its troops to be under foreign command -- so, any US troops on Canadian soil would report directly to the US military. What constitutes a civil emergency is unknown -- and while it appears that civilian authorities would need to initiate a plea for help, there are no details on whether they will retai...

ThinkProgress is reporting that Taxi to the Dark Side , a documentary about an innocent Afghan taxi driver tortured to death by America at the Bagram Air Base, will finally be aired, thanks to HBO. HBO picked up the film from Discovery Channel, after Discovery broke its contract to broadcast the film before the 2008 elections. Discovery was afraid of the controversy that may result, which would potentially impact a planned IPO. Let this be a reminder that media companies are not public. They are private businesses. They have a responsibility to their shareholders first and foremost, and have absolutely no responsibility to the public. Check out the trailer here .

Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" Vanity asks the question, "Is it popular?" But, conscience asks the question, "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. And with that quote, Wikileaks loads. The site is hosted by PRQ of Sweden, a company owned by two founders of the Pirate Bay, and as it turns out, PRQ is just as hostile to legal assault , as Pirate Bay is. Wikileaks, in case you haven't heard, is a very public whistleblowing site. It publishes the secrets no one else will touch, and the have no regard for the consequences of their actions. It's anarchy, internet style. Here's how the site describes itself: Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaki...

Think Progress has posted a video of George W. Bush defending his decision not to send US troops into Darfur to stop the genocide. Totally lacking a grasp on irony, Bush stated his reasoning: A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces that tend to divide people up inside their country are unbelievably counterproductive. That was the second chance irony waved in front of Bush. It's as if nothing sticks. Showering the man with the obvious still leaves him oblivious. If you took a huge sign of the obvious and danced it in front of him, he would still miss it. That's what happened when he missed his first chance to grasp the irony of the situation -- as he was speaking from the Rwandan Genocide Museum .

Kosovo has just joined the ranks of sovereign nations -- much to the dismay of Serbia and Russia. It's the culmination of events that started with the end of the last Balkan war, and the handing over of Kosovo to the UN for administration. Since then, Kosovo has successfully risen from the ashes. At the declaration of independence , violence erupted in some ethnic Serbian regions of Kosovo. Now, we'll just have to wait for the inevitable war -- which Russia would probably do nothing to stop. Let's face it -- there is enough of a minority in the region ready to stir up nationalist trouble. They've been doing it for centuries. Why stop now. Let the violence begin.

Bruno Maddox's Blinded by Science column (as of this posting, not yet online) in Discover Magazine this month, raises the whole question of a genetic basis for intelligence that exploded last October, when James Watson remarked that blacks are just not as smart as whites. Watson let his tongue get ahead of his brain, and it was too late to take the words back. He got sacked, and his entire career would never be viewed the same again. That being said, in Maddox's column, a myth continues to be perpetuated. The myth of race and a genetic basis for it. The human species may be varied on the outside, but inside, at the genetic level, we're all the same. Race is a social affliction that the best of us seems to find a difficult hurdle to get over. There is more evidence that race is a byproduct of our environment, not our genes. Our environment determines how our genes express themselves -- and while this may have been obvious from early genetic studies, evidence is now...

WTF Canada? Will the Canadian government continue to let the US have its way with us? Apparently so, if you take the answers from the current Federal government. An FBI internal report, states that FBI agents crossed the border into Canada in pursuit of investigations, and routinely do not inform Canadian authorities or get clearance to do so. The federal government is apparently not interested in protesting the US incursion onto Canadian soil -- or stopping it. Are we a sovereign nation or not? See context in FBI Inspector General report .

Americans are getting what they deserve -- why lament it? Americans -- yes, I'm speaking to the majority that voted for the Administration that has successful taken away so many of their freedoms -- are willing to give up the freedoms. They are so willing to give up their freedoms because bad shit only happen to other people. They're so willing to give up their freedoms, because they know more about the Simpsons than they do their First Amendment rights . WTF America?

The Economist is running an article on the ongoing debate of how much accommodation should be given to religions that wish to regulate the lives of their faithful -- especially when they conflict with the laws of the land. This isn't a debate just about Islam and Sharia law -- although that's where the noise has been coming from recently. Religious law and its practice has had a long and rich history in the world's preeminent democracies -- and it has always been a fine line in the court of civic society. As the article points out, the Jews, the Amish, the Christians -- they've all had their share of making binding pronoucements from their respective pulpits. But where does it end? In my opinion, it should have ended before it began. Compromises should not be made to the law of the land, and religion should definitely not play a role in the determining or application of law -- including the ritual swearing on holy books. It is an increasing global state we live ...

Humans have left little of the planet unexploited and unspoiled. A team of researchers now have an aggregated view , showing us just how extensive our pillaging has been. The oceans, once vast, untamed and much larger than human greed, are now bearing the burden of our species footprint . The researchers looked at 17 different human impacts, including fishing, coastal development, fertilizer runoff and pollution from shipping. The results show that coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangrove forests in estuaries, seamounts, rocky reefs and continental shelves are feeling the brunt of human activity. Threatened are the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Bering Sea, along the Eastern Coast of North America and in much of the western Pacific. The study used available data, which was limited, to create this view, and the researchers suggest that reality may actually be worse than they've shown. As clima...

Wired Magazine is running the tale of Chris McKinstry and Pushpinder Singh , two AI researchers, both Canadian, from completely different backgrounds, who eventually took their lives in very similar ways. McKinstry had a history of suicidal attempts, and struggled for legitimacy in the academic world. Singh had a privileged upbringing that culminated in a doctorate from MIT and landing a job working alongside his mentor, Marvin Minsky . Both shared similar theories of AI, and both pursued similar research. Both committed suicide under mysterious circumstances. There probably isn't much more to their stories, but both read like a work of fiction, begging for something deeper to be there. And maybe there is.

The New York Times is running a piece on Susan Jacoby and her latest book, The Age of American Unreason . In her book, Jacoby despairs on the anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism of Americans. Not only are Americans ignorant of "essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters." So who's to blame? Jacoby points to the education system -- with Americans spending more years in school, but learning less; and, religious fundamentalism. Sounds like a book Americans need to read. Update: Feb. 19, 2008 Susan Jacoby writes of the Dumbing of America in the Washington Post. Check it out.

Honeybees are dying off mysteriously, and it's causing quite a stir in circles that usually don't care if another species is about to kick the bucket. Honeybees are important to the food industry in more ways than just the production of honey. Honeybees are valued at about $15US annually for the pollinating services they provide. Without them, there would be a lot less food being produced, and prices would skyrocket. The bees problem, labeled Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), is occurring in North America and Europe. Bees are leaving their hives, with the Queen and a few workers, and not coming back. To date, there are many theories as to why this is happening: from man-made problems, such as pollutants, to an infestation that's hitting the bees hard. Whatever the problem -- there's definitely a problem -- and our dependence one of nature's busiest creations has never been so clear. The problem is so serious, that financial and public awareness help is comin...

In seeking to understand ourselves and our place in the universe, we continue to look for the possibility of life elsewhere. This search has led to us to look many places -- in the deep reaches of place; within our solar system; and closer to home, right here on our beloved blue marble. There are places on Earth that we've never explored, even while we're busily destroying it. One such place, is Lake Untersee , in Antarctica, where a team of NASA scientist have just departed for, looking for alien life. Alien, not in the extra-terristrial sense -- but alien in that they may find life like we've never seen before. Lake Untersee is an extreme environment. It is a subglacial lake that is permanently covered in ice (for now anyway), fed by the Anuchin Glacier, the lake has no outlet. Water loss is via evaporation and ablation. The upper 70 metres of the lake is highly alkaline, with a pH similar to bleach, and the lake's sediment produces more methane gas than any o...

Researchers from the University of Minnesota have released a study that points out the obvious: the creation of biofuels contributes more to the climate change problem than just burning fossil fuels. Not sure why this isn't understood already. The math is really simple. In order to produce biofuels, carbon sequestering land must be converted to crops to convert to fuel. Once the crop is harvest and converted, a process that consumes fuel, the fuel produced is burned and carbon is released into the atmosphere. And the cycle continues. This versus the burning of fossil fuels, which isn't renewable. The problem is in the decimating of existing forests for farmland . “If you’re trying to mitigate global warming, it simply does not make sense to convert land for biofuels production. All the biofuels we use now cause habitat destruction, either directly or indirectly. Global agriculture is already producing food for six billion people. Producing food-based biofuel, too, will r...

IBM Research published a paper last month, on the possibility of leveraging their Blue Gene/P platform, to create a global-scale computer, codenamed Project Kittyhawk. From the abstract: This paper describes Project Kittyhawk, an undertaking at IBM Research to explore the construction of a next-generation platform capable of hosting many simultaneous web-scale workloads. We hypothesize that for a large class of web-scale workloads the Blue Gene/P platform is an order of magnitude more efficient to purchase and operate than the commodity clusters in use today. Driven by scientific computing demands the Blue Gene designers pursued an aggressive system-on-a-chip methodology that led to a scalable platform composed of air-cooled racks. Each rack contains more than a thousand independent computers with highspeed interconnects inside and between racks. We postulate that the same demands of efficiency and density apply to web-scale platforms. This project aims to develop the system softwa...

There are some parts of the world that is dying need of a revolution. One such place is Saudi Arabia, where the Saudi religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, prevented firefighters from rescuing girls from a burning school building, because they were not wearing the abaya. Men who attempted to rescue the girls were stopped, with the police telling them "it is a sinful to approach them." As a result, 15 girls were burned alive .

Hey America -- want to know why they hate you? LewRockwell.com is running a post by J.L. Bryan that provides a timeline from 1953, to present day, with a mirror image of the two states. What if Iran was American and vice versa? Read the post for more, but here's the synopsis: 1953: Iran instigates a coup in America that leads to the toppling of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the installation of Joseph McCarthy as king. All of this, after America got upset over the fact that 90% of American oil revenues were being taken by Iran. 1953-1979: The puppet King McCarthy rule is absolute, backed by Iranian money and arms. Anyone who opposes him, vanishes. 1978-1979: Under McCarthy's rules, Americans can only gather in support of McCarthy or to pray. This leads to a Christian revolution movement led by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. With the support of students, these Christian clerics, dump McCarthy and boots Iranian influence from America. 1980-1988: Th...

Censorship of the internet is a growing problem worldwide, and is growing in favour in developed nations , where those charged with fighting terrorism, repeatedly bleat for the suppression of the internet -- for the filtering and monitoring of sites their citizens visit. For now, internet censorship may be far from our minds, but when does it move from the fighting terrorism to the prohibiting of free speech? Censorship around the world is orchestrated by a few -- those in power, usually authoritarian regimes -- who decide that citizens would be harmed if they were exposed to information about religion, sexuality, culture and worse, politics. The concern for these regimes is only for the preservation of their status quo. A servile populace can only remain obedient if they are ignorant and live in fear. The promise of the internet as a vehicle of social change is a frightening prospect for repressive regimes -- and those within our country, who fear change. The world shrinks with...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the US Homeland Security department, has launched a blog , and want to hear from you, and how you feel about their latest efforts to take the terrorism out of your next flying experience -- and preferably, give it to you while you're still in the airport being screened. Not sure what the TSA is trying to accomplish with the blog. Are they trying to explain themselves to the flying public? Piss them off even more? Show a softer side? Whatever the case, from the comments that are rolling in, people have things to say about the TSA. If you have a moment, head over and have your say. They're not really tracking IP addresses, and no, commenting will not have to submit to new forms of security probes as a result of visiting their blog. That's just you being paranoid.

The Pentagon sees the internet as an enemy "weapons system" that needs to planned for and dealt with. So it said in its Information Operation Roadmap , published in 2003. The internet represents everything that a colonial America should be worried about. Decentralized, anonymous, with the ability to network disparate and like-minded groups, quickly and cheaply. The internet disseminates information and propaganda outside the control of a central authority. With its views, the Pentagon shares the perspective of the Chinese government, which likewise sees the internet as a threat to its ability to control the masses. Unlike the Chinese however, Americans control their government, and can still do something about this. Read more at Global Research .

Ever wonder how large everything is? Well, at least the known universe? People have been wondering for a long, long time about it. Some folks over at Princeton produced this map published in 2005, in the Astrophysical Journal [PDF], of the known universe. We have produced a new conformal map of the universe illustrating recent discoveries, ranging from Kuiper belt objects in the Solar system, to the galaxies and quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey . This may projection, based on the logarithm map of the complex plane, preserves shapes locally, and yet is able to display the entire range of astronomical scales from Earth's neighborhood to the cosmic microwave background. The conformal nature of the projection, preserving shapes locally, may be of particular use for analyzing large scale structure . Prominent in the map is a Sloan Great Wall of galaxies 1.37 billion light years long, 80% longer than the Great Wall discovered by Geller and Huchra and therefore the la...