Aiko is the first android to mimic pain, and reacts to it. This technology can be beneficial for people born with or who have undergone amputations. This is the first step toward a life-like mechanical limb that has the ability to feel physical sensation.There's also a Project Aiko blog. Aiko was designed and built by a robotics enthusiast in his basement.
Aside from eyewitness testimony, some of the most believable evidence presented in criminal cases in the United States comes from the FBI crime laboratory in Quantico, Va. Part of its job is to test and analyze everything from ballistics to DNA for state and local prosecutors around the country, introducing scientific credibility to often murky cases.Emphasis mine. And this is pure fantasy.
But a six-month investigation by 60 Minutes and The Washington Post shows that there are hundreds of defendants imprisoned around the country who were convicted with the help of a now discredited forensic tool, and that the FBI never notified them, their lawyers, or the courts, that the their cases may have been affected by faulty testimony.
The science, called bullet lead analysis, was used by the FBI for 40 years in thousands of cases, and some of the people it helped put in jail may be innocent.
[...]
For years, the FBI believed that lead in bullets had unique chemical signatures, and that by breaking them down and analyzing them, it was possible to match bullets, not only to a single batch of ammunition coming out of a factory, but to a single box of bullets. And that is what the FBI did in the case of Lee Wayne Hunt, tying a bullet fragment found where the murders took place to a box of bullets the prosecutors linked to Hunt.
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The Rogers Indicator of Multiple Intelligences created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Musical/Rhythmic You are sensitive to sounds in your environment, enjoy music and prefer listening to music when you study or read. You learn best through melody and music. People like you include singers, conductors, composers, and others who appreciate the various elements of music.
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The world wide banning of all Alan's from public buildings will come into force during the new year, said a politician with ambitions to being the king ruler of the world.
Mr Alan Allen, of the preserving Alan Society in Basildon said: 'This is political correctness gone mad. It is alright for the Zebedes, and Zachariahs, but do all the country's Alans really want to go the same was as the country's Abigails. Nothing much was said when that happened, because there are more Alans in the country, but what about all of the Brians, Beths, and Chriss, soon to be kept in their own homes for all eternity. Where will the money for the enhanced security come from, then, eh?'
The Schmidt Sting Pain Index or The Justin O. Schmidt Pain Index is a pain scale rating the relative pain caused by different Hymenopteran stings. It is mainly the work of Justin O. Schmidt, an entomologist at the Carl Hayden Bee Research Center. Schmidt has published a number of papers on the subject and claims to have been stung by the majority of stinging Hymenoptera.And follows with a listing of various stings on the pain index. Interesting. We have some little wild bee or wasp out here that I got stung by once, and at the time I thought a grassburr had poked me through my pants leg. I only realized I had been stung when I looked down to pick it out. I was stung so often by honeybees as a kid that their sting now is mostly just an annoyance. On the other hand, a red wasp sting will make me sick. I get nauseated and feverish, and the initial sting feels like someone stabbed me with a red-hot ice pick. Scorpions affect me similarly, but not as bad. I've never been stung by a yellowjacket.
His original paper in 1984 was an attempt to systematise and compare the hemolytic properties of insect venoms. The index contained in the paper started from 0 for stings that are completely ineffective against humans, progressed through 2, a familiar pain such as a common bee or wasp sting, and finished at 4 for the most painful stings. In the conclusion, some descriptions of the most painful examples were given, e.g.: "Paraponera clavata stings induced immediate, excruciating pain and numbness to pencil-point pressure, as well as trembling in the form of a totally uncontrollable urge to shake the affected part."
The premise of the series is that in the mid-1980s, Garth Marenghi and his publisher Dean Learner made their own TV series on a shoestring budget. Set in Darkplace Hospital in Romford, East London Garth Marenghi's Darkplace tells of the adventures of Dr. Rick Dagless, MD, as he fights the forces of darkness while simultaneously coping with the pressures of running a modern hospital.Catch it late Friday nights on Cartoon Network, during the adult swim segment. The funniest thing about it isn't the flying staplers, it's the dialogue. Especially the behind-the-scenes commentary.
In reality the series is a deliberate send-up both of the horror genre and of 1980s TV production. Action series such as Blake's 7, Doctor Who, The A-Team, The Sweeney, cult drama Twin Peaks and various American medical dramas are also obvious influences, and the comedy relies partly on familiarity with such programmes. More obscurely, Darkplace makes reference to Lars von Trier's "haunted hospital" TV series The Kingdom (Riget in Danish), which was later remade by Stephen King for an American audience as Kingdom Hospital. Much of the show could be taken as a parody of King's work (with the flying staplers and other deadly inanimate objects of Hell Hath Fury, for example, being a fairly direct parody of King's Maximum Overdrive and similar works).
I don't know if I can clearly explain it, but I'll try.
Pratchett
doesn't write in a conventional "serious" mode. Therefore, his
descriptions of things: people, places, ideas, attitudes (many of these
being fantastical things), are not constrained by the limits of "serious"
writing. His humorous fantasy style allows him to slip outside the
usual methods of description, and takes the reader outside of the
conventional methods of understanding.
Even if he is only describing a wet rock, you will see it in a new and different way.
That's my take on it.
My colleague Dave Wiegel calls it "Ron Paul Derangement Syndrome," and there certainly seems to be something to it. Here you have a Republican running for president who's actually serious about downsizing the federal government, who gives a damn about individual rights, and who understands that big government overseas breeds big government at home, and reaction from the Beltway right is to dismiss the guy with eye rolls, patronizing lectures about "seriousness," and lame ad hominem attacks.Yep.
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Which Discworld Character are you like (with pics) created with QuizFarm.com | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| You scored as Rincewind You are Rincewind! Greatest survivor of all times! But a rather inept wizard. You seem to be going from bad to worse, without slowing down. Rather miserable with your luck, the luggage that follows you around offers little comfort.
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No random 20 tonight, because I got a new CD. The Screen Behind the Mirror by Enigma.
But seriously, Oddee has an interesting article on 7 Incredible Natural Phenomena you've never seen. The goats pictured climb those trees because they really really like the fruit which grows there.
The joke about Sullivan hiring anyone as a policy adviser is that Sullivan’s policy has been fixed since he first started out as a DA: Go for the maximum charge for just about every offender. Sullivan refuses to cut plea deals (though Tom Finneran managed to get one), instead demanding that his prosecutors pile charges on a defendant, often using previous convictions at the state level to trigger higher mandatory-minimum sentences and boost the severity of the federal charges.So be prepared to be treated like someone who committed murder with a stolen gun just because you wrote "Y" instead of "Yes."
This approach has created friction between Sullivan’s office and federal judges, who find his philosophy mindless and demeaning not just to defendants but also to attorneys, judges, and Lady Justice herself. In 2004, two federal judges offered rare public rebukes of Sullivan’s tactics. U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf castigated Sullivan for tying up the courts with penny-ante street-crime cases , and U.S. District Court Judge William Young hammered Sullivan’s office for evincing “a moral code more suited to the alleys of Baghdad than the streets of Boston” and adopting a mindset that “reveals such callous indifference to innocent human life as would gag any fair-minded observer.”
Sullivan has often said he doesn’t care if he annoys judges; by his reckoning, the more cases you’ve gotten to trial, the more successful you’ve been, so he’s just kept on pushing more through each year, in the process racking up some of the longest average sentences of any U.S. attorney in the country. But beyond drawing the ire of jurists, Sullivan’s methods have also insulted his own staff. U.S. attorneys working a case typically arrive at a plea deal they feel adequately punishes the defendant while at the same time avoiding a lengthy, costly trial. They then bring the proposed deal to a supervisor for approval, and it continues up the chain from there. Sources say that previous U.S. attorneys, from Bill Weld to Donald K. Stern, took the position that their employees had some idea of what they were doing. Under Sullivan it’s been different. Prosecutors have labored to find what they feel is an appropriate resolution to a case, only to see their agreement rejected out of hand by the boss months later, with an admonishment to go back and seek the maximum charge. Former staffers say the practice has had a disastrous effect on morale, leaving the rank and file to feel they’re merely cogs in Sullivan’s machine.
And when those cogs squeak, sources say, they sometimes find themselves removed from the picture.
RU: According to the CAE defense fund FAQ, you were originally charged under prohibitions on biological weapons, but a grand jury instead handed down indictments related to "wire fraud" and "mail fraud." And then it also states that the terrorism charges could come back to haunt you.Man's wife dies of heart failure. Responding "authorities" see "suspicious stuff" mainly because they're a bunch of ignorant punks so they send him through hell.
I wonder how your attorneys are coping with all this. Are they simply trying to get across the absurdity of the whole mess, or are their any legal fine points?
SK: What they have been arguing in motion hearings is that the Department of Justice is making an absurd interpretation of the mail fraud law. The DoJ has thrown away its guidelines (which state my case should not be prosecuted) and interpreted the law in a way that is unique for my situation. [emphasis added -- ed.]
My co-defendant Bob Ferrell and I are the first citizens to ever be indicted for mail or wire fraud because we supposedly broke a material transfer agreement. The “defrauded” parties do not believe we did anything to harm them — the crime is a DoJ fantasy that they hope to prove. We’ll see at trial if rationality prevails.
If it doesn’t, the case will set a precedent that will mean that the Justice Department can drop a major felony on someone for filling out a warranty card incorrectly and mailing it. This will be a major tool for them. Talk about being able to pick off people at will!
A police officer has been reprimanded for accidentally discharging a Taser, causing an injury — to the police officer.Good to know that Tasers can discharge themselves just like guns, without the handler being responsible in any way. As long as the handler is an Only One, of course.
Madison police released a report Monday on the July 31 incident, without revealing the officer's name or gender. The department said the Taser accidentally discharged during a standard checkout procedure.
The principal brief has now been filed on Wayne's appeal. The brief was filed in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals by Quentin Rhoades of Montana as pro bono counsel with the assistance of Stewart Rhodes of Nevada.Via The War On Guns.
The Government's response is due within 30 days. There will then be opportunity for rebuttal argument.
He sighed heavily as he sat on the bench next to the chest and from his vest pocket he pulled a Garcia Y Vega, snipped off the tip of the cheroot with his Cold Steel Gunsite knife and lit it, inhaling deeply the smooth acrid smoke. His eyes glazed over somewhat as he began to reminisce his youthful days as a combat soldier in the jungles of Southeast Asia and the band of brothers that were his and were now, no longer. He began to feel a great sadness and sense of loss as their faces materialized and then vanished from the walls of his memory.
Again he sighed deeply, and took another long draw from the cheroot. Suddenly it dawned on him that dusk was fast approaching on this cold November day. The early evening breeze from the nearby mountain had begun to blow cold, its icy fingers penetrating to the very marrow of the old veteran’s weary joints. He groaned and with a sense of urgency he pulled a soft cloth from the chest. Quickly he unwrapped the cloth from around the cheek rest for his Bushmaster. As quickly as his finger joints would allow he attached the cheek rest to the stock of the rifle. Quickly, oh so quickly, he pulled an oddly shaped appendage made of black plastic from the chest and attached it to the ejection port of the rifle. It was a brass catcher. Last but not least he withdrew several of what appeared to be long metallic boxes. He shoved one up into the magazine well of his rifle, pulled back the charging handle and then released it. The bolt flew forward with a resounding “clunk.”
| What American accent do you have? (Best version so far) Southern People used to hate Southern accents but now everyone wants one.
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A municipal judge ruled the wallaby was technically exotic and therefore illegal, according to a city memo. But because the ordinance is too vague, the judge said Skippy could remain with Freed.
During a workshop on Thursday, the City Council plans to discuss a proposed ordinance specifically banning wallabies. The city contends wallabies carry diseases and do not make good urban pets.
Freed disputes that assertion.
Kay Johnson, the city's director of environmental services, acknowledged the animals are cute when they're babies. "But cute doesn't necessarily mean it's right for the city," she added.
She said the city did not know anybody in town had a wallaby until Freed's escaped.
Photos of the teenager's corpse show a deep cut on his right arm, horrific bruising on his neck and chest. His face is swollen and covered with cuts. A silhouette of violence runs from the corner of his left eye over the cheekbone to his jaw, and his legs are pocked with small burns the size of a lighted cigarette.Via Reformed Chicks Blabbing.
But police in Japan's Aichi prefecture saw something else when they looked at the body of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-old sumo wrestler who arrived at a hospital in June. The cause of death was "heart disease," police declared.
As is common in Japan, Aichi police reached their verdict on how Saito died without an autopsy. No need for a coroner, they said. No crime involved. Only 6.3% of the unnatural deaths in Aichi are investigated by a medical examiner, a minuscule rate even by nationwide standards in Japan, where an autopsy is performed in 11.2% of cases.
Forensic scientists say there are many reasons for the low rate, including inadequate budgets and a desperate shortage of pathologists outside the biggest urban areas. There is also a cultural resistance in Japan to handling the dead, with families often reluctant to insist upon a procedure that invades the body of a loved one.
But Saito's case has given credence to complaints by a group of frustrated doctors, former pathologists and ex-cops who argue that Japan's police culture is the main obstacle.
Police discourage autopsies that might reveal a higher homicide rate in their jurisdiction, and pressure doctors to attribute unnatural deaths to health reasons, usually heart failure, the group alleges. Odds are, it says, that people are getting away with murder in Japan, a country that officially claims one of the lowest per capita homicide rates in the world.
"You can commit a perfect murder in Japan because the body is not likely to be examined," says Hiromasa Saikawa, a former member of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police security and intelligence division. He says senior police officers are "obsessed with statistics because that's how you get promotions," and strive to reduce the number of criminal cases as much as possible to keep their almost perfect solution rate.
A Michigan couple is lucky to be alive after their minivan was hit by a falling cow on Sunday.Another one of those weird things. If they had been driving a little slower or a little faster, the cow would have missed them. A flat tire or an extra cup of coffee that morning, and the cow would have missed them. Or maybe they were driving a little slower or faster than usual, or maybe they did have a flat or an extra cup of coffee, and that's how they got to that exact point at that exact instant. And if they had been going just a hair faster, it would have hit the cab instead of the hood, and they would now both be dead.
According to a report in the Wenatchee World newspaper, Charles Everson, Jr. and his wife Linda were driving on Highway 150 about one mile east of Manson in Chelan County when a cow fell about 200 feet off a cliff and landed on the hood of their minivan.
If you are a uniformed Police Officer of any rank and do not fully, and honorably support the pre-existing God given rights enumerated in the 2nd Amendment, you are a disgrace to your Badge and your oath of office to protect and serve. The citizens of the United States of America deserve better than you. You should not be allowed the honor of public service as a sworn peace officer of the law. Taking a contrary, selective position to the Constitution means you are not following the supreme law of the land and are, in fact, endangering the safety of yourself, your fellow officers, and the public you are sworn to protect. This dishonor is increased if you support any (so- called) “Police Fraternal Organization” that aligns itself with groups seeking to infringe, limit, or destroy the 2nd Amendment (Such as “Handgun Control Incorporated,” etc). This dishonor is increased if you support any State or Federal Attorney General, Legislator (Politician); or local Government body that have de facto reneged on their sworn oath to “Protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or domestic.” For these individuals (by endorsing “gun control”) have become the “domestic enemies” embodied in that oath.
The new 2007 DVD catalog contains detailed information on the entire product line and all of the new products currently available from Benelli, Franchi, Uberti, Stoeger and Stoeger Books. This exciting DVD is over 60 minutes in length and contains action videos of the products, interactive presentations, printable PDFs of all the 2007 catalogs, links to all of the Benelli websites and much more.Sounds good just for the "action videos." And it's free. The only catch is you have to live in the continental 48.
4. Of the Republican candidates, only Mike Huckabee seems sympathetic to gun owners. Of the others, who would be the worst President for gun owners? Who would be the worst Democrat?Only Mike Huckabee seems sympathetic to gun owners?
Almost everyone died, for a little while. The few who lived thought it was the end of the world. Sometimes now it's easier to believe it was the beginning of hell.
And here I am again, almost out of ammo and the sun coming up. I can feel them gathering, moving on the other side of the wall. They are drawn by the warmth of my flesh, by the beating of my still living heart. I can feel them like the brush of cold scales across my skin in the darkness, like the vague movement of a shadow in the night, like the chill of a winter wind down the back of my neck.
Kornfield gets after students to be more skeptical. At the start of Introduction to Forensics, he asks them not to violate copyright laws on class materials. They sign an agreement, seal it in an envelope, sign the outside, pass it forward.
Then he scolds them.
Don't hand over your DNA (their saliva on the envelope) and signature so easily! Question authority.
Two Canadian astronomers think there is a good reason dark matter, a mysterious substance thought to make up the bulk of matter in the universe, has never been directly detected: It doesn't exist.Posted only because I often find it interesting--an amusing--when scientists are at odds with each other over something that's never been conclusively proven or "detected."
Dark matter was invoked to explain how galaxies stick together. The visible matter alone in galaxies—stars, gas and dust—is nowhere near enough to hold them together, so scientists reasoned there must be something invisible that exerts gravity and is central to all galaxies.
Now John Moffat, an astronomer at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and Joel Brownstein, his graduate student, say those announcements were premature.
In a study detailed in the Nov. 21 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the pair says their Modified Gravity (MOG) theory can explain the Bullet Cluster observation. MOG differs from other modified gravity theories in its details, but is similar in that it predict that the force of gravity changes with distance.
"MOG gravity is stronger if you go out from the center of the galaxy than it is in Newtonian gravity," Moffat explained. "The stronger gravity mimics what dark matter does. With dark matter, you take Einstein and Newtonian gravity and you shovel in more dark matter. If there's more matter, you get more gravity. Whereas for me, I say dark matter doesn't exist. It's the gravity that's changed."
[...]
Moffat compares the modern interest with dark matter to the insistence by scientists in the early 20th century on the existence of a "luminiferous ether," a hypothetical substance thought to fill the universe and through which light waves were thought to propagate.
"They saw a glimpse of special relativity, but they weren't willing to give up the ether," Moffat told SPACE.com. "Then Einstein came along and said we don't need the ether. The rest was history."
Douglas Clowe, the lead astronomer of the team that linked the Bullet Cluster observations with dark matter (and now at Ohio University), says he still stands by his original claim. For him and many other astronomers, conjuring up new particles that might account for dark matter is more palatable than turning a fundamental theory of how the univese works on its head.
"As far as we're concerned, [Moffat] hasn't done anything that makes us retract our earlier statement that the Bullet Cluster shows us that we have to have dark matter," Clowe said. "We're still open to modifying gravity to reduce the amount of dark matter, but we're pretty sure that you have to have most of the mass of the universe still in some form of dark matter."
In other words, if you're caught carrying a concealed pistol on the street and don't have a permit, tell the cop you're walking between your car and your home, either getting ready to travel somewhere or coming home. The burden now falls on the police officer to prove you are not really "traveling," which Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins says is virtually impossible.First of all, no it doesn't. The Motorist Protection Law clearly states that one must be "inside of or directly en route to a motor vehicle that is owned by the person or under the person's control." I think most police officers can tell if you are "directly en route" to your car or not. If you're busted with a gun halfway across town from your car, it's going to be pretty obvious. It also means that you can't leave your car with the gun for any reason other than to go to "the person's own premises or premises under the person's control." That means you can't take your gun into Wal-Mart under the Motorist Protection Law. You can only have your gun in your car as you drive there.
"If you read the new statute, it essentially does away with the concealed handgun law," Watkins says. As of September 1, his office no longer accepted most UCW (unlawfully carrying a weapon) charges that involved the "traveling" issue and dismissed pending cases.
"Actually we didn't really have a choice," Watkins says. "The law had changed, and some of the individuals could have fallen under the old statute, but it would be an unfair standard if we prosecuted them. And it's impossible now for us to prove those charges when we get them. Now it makes it the responsibility of the state to disprove that a person is on their way to or from their car, and that's pretty difficult to prove. It does a disservice to law enforcement. They have to prove this person was not on their way to somewhere. Why should they even bother [to arrest them]? I see it as a possibility for a lot of individuals with criminal intent to be carrying weapons."
The change has some police officers grumbling.
"It's insane," says one Dallas officer, who asked not to be named. "They basically destroyed the concealed gun law. We're letting drug dealers with Glocks under the seat go and say have a nice day. In the past we could have charged them at least with a weapons violation and confiscated the gun. Texas is wide open now. It's a huge story. This has just gone under everyone's radar."
The ramifications will take a while to percolate through the system. But the bottom line is: "If you've got a car," says a Dallas officer, "you can carry a gun."And what's wrong with that? As far as I care, if you're not conspiring to commit a crime, you can carry a gun. Whether you have a car or not.
Waterspout, a small helicopter that can take off underwater from a submarine, has been designed by students at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and the University of Pennsylvania. The joint team of students have won first prize in a US helicopter design competition.
A wildly interesting story about the eventual division of mankind into two species by the year 3000 caught my eye over the weekend. The story originally published by the Daily Mail authored by Niall Firth on October 26, 2007 provided astounding predictions for the future of mankind. It was also given a top position in the American news index Drudgereport. The Daily Mail story has graphic displays of the evolution of mankind and film clips of the classic work by H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.The Mainstream Media: is there anything you can't trust them to screw up?
Further, the story piqued my interest because the sources cited were from the eminent London School of Economics. Specifically, a professor, Oliver Curry who received his PHD from the London School of Economics. His dissertation concerns Morality as Natural History: An adaptationist account of ethics, published in 2005. In essence Professor Curry interests are about values and attitudes and where do they come from.
[...]
In response to the press releases mentioned in the Daily Mail article, Dr. Curry released the following explanation on October 17, 2007.
"In the summer of 2006 I was commissioned by Bravo Television to write an essay on the future of human evolution. The essay was intended as a science fiction way of illustrating some aspects of evolutionary theory."
"Bravo then sent out a press release on the essay, but did not release the essay itself. As a result, a wildly distorted version of what I had written ended up being reported as science fact in the media. I do not endorse the content of these media reports."
[...]
In essence Dr. Curry was asked to write a fictional account of what if and make some projections about some 1,000 years in the future for an episode of a popularized series on Bravo. He never intended that his Essay for Bravo be presented as scientific evidence. An examination of the quotes made in the Daily Mail article referring to a report confuses the peer review research he is conducting and an entertaining essay he never intended to have published as scientific evidence. His words and work are taken out of context.
