Global Spin

british gettin' hitched invasion

Just wanted to congratulate Elton John (and David Furnish) and George Michael (and Kenny Goss) on their impending nuptials. It's nice to know that someone is moving forward on this. Go UK!

Where the porpoises and dolphins play....

This could also be categorized under Things That Make Deana Happy.

Oh, the perversion of muggles

My inner child has had a crush on Daniel Radcliffe since I first saw him interviewed about the Harry Potter movies and he was so nice to a wheelchair-bound kid in the audience (and Rupert Grint definitely WASN'T). Plus, well, glasses just do it for me. As it turns out, I'm not the only one with latent (and rather inappropriate) Harry appreciation. Check out the Harry Potter Legal Age Countdown Clock.

falcon 1 launches this friday

SpaceX announced that Falcon 1, the first privately-developed liquid-fueled rocket designed to reach orbit, will launch this Friday. If successful, it will mean a new era of safe, low-cost access to space; Falcon has both the lowest cost ($7 million) and highest reliability rating of any American launch vehicle. Go Falcon!

UPDATE: The November 26 launch was scrubbed due to technical problems. The next launch attempt is scheduled for December 17th.

news flash: cuddling babies is good

It's an obvious one, but it's good to see the science being done. A Daily Mail article says that recent studies have shown increased levels of oxytocin and arginine vasopressin, hormones involved in social bonding, in children who were held, cuddled, and otherwise lavished with love and attention as babies. The hope is that this research will help to understand why orphaned children have trouble bonding with adoptive families, with the possibility of developing a treatment.

beck + qrio = robotastic

I, for one, welcome our new robot dance overlords. (Warning: your choice of crappy Windows Media or crappy Real Media.) Seriously, who knew that one day robots would be dancing like 80s pop stars dancing like robots?

how organic, exactly?

I'm probably late to the party on this one, but I just heard about this one today. A recent Senate vote weakened the USDA Organic standard by allowing the definition of "organic" to include all sorts of artificial substances:

Ominously, the Senate's act would strip power to decide which synthetic substances can and cannot be used from the National Organic Standards Board, a 15-member panel made up of a mix of farmers, processors, retailers, scientists, consumer advocates, environmentalists, and certifying agents. Although the board is appointed by the USDA chief, it has acted independently -- and by most accounts, responsibly -- in its ten-year history, approving only 38 synthetic ingredients.

The Grist article (linked above) has some good comments at the end, from both sides of the fence. My favorite quote from one of them:

If the USDA and the dominant companies in the OTA continue to ignore consumer and organic community expectations..., we will set up our own label, certification, and accreditation system and point out to consumers that "USDA Organic" means "grade B organic," and that consumers looking for "grade A" will have to look for our new label.

Unfortunately, it's just this kind of label confusion that the USDA Organic program was supposed to resolve in the first place. Sigh.

the real face of gitmo

If you aren't outraged, you're not paying attention. Either way, read Detainees Deserve Court Trials, an outstanding opinion piece in today's Washington Post.

As the Senate prepared to vote Thursday to abolish the writ of habeas corpus, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl were railing about lawyers like me. Filing lawsuits on behalf of the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Terrorists! Kyl must have said the word 30 times.

As I listened, I wished the senators could meet my client Adel. Adel is innocent. I don't mean he claims to be. I mean the military says so. It held a secret tribunal and ruled that he is not al Qaeda, not Taliban, not a terrorist.

The military people reached this conclusion, and they wrote it down on a memo, and then they classified the memo and Adel went from the hearing room back to his prison cell. He is a prisoner today, eight months later. And these facts would still be a secret but for one thing: habeas corpus.

This deserves to be read far and wide. I'm ashamed that my government is doing this in my name, and I want it stopped right now.

inherit the wind (power)

Now that's what I'm talkin' about. The UK government, which recently started supporting wind power in a big way, just completed a study that shows that wind is a stable, continuous source of energy in the UK, and has been for as long as they have records. In fact, it seems to provide more energy during winter, when it's needed most. Imagine that: a fact-based approach to evaluating energy resources. What a novel idea.

iraq racket

BUSH: "We have discovered the true enemy -- that overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people who want US troops to leave immediately. They are a ruthless enemy, and we will not surrender until we have defeated them."

Or at least that's how I heard it.

skullcrusher mountain

I made this half-pony half-monkey monster to please you
But I get the feeling that you don’t like it
What’s with all the screaming?
You like monkeys, you like ponies
Maybe you don’t like monsters so much
Maybe I used too many monkeys
Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?

--Jonathan Coulton, Skullcrusher Mountain

torture: it's what's for dinner

US PEOPLE: Torture is really really really really really bad, and we shouldn't do it.

US GOVT: OK, makes sense. We'll outlaw it from this day forward.

CHENEY: Except when the CIA wants to do it.

US GOVT: Yes, except when the CIA wants to do it.

US PEOPLE: Nooooo!

ORWELL: Oh, fer crissakes.

set phasers on frappe

I'm undecided. Do I like this enough to add it to the sidebar?

Basically, it's a Google map of where we are, and you can add yourself to it. What do you think?

Wealth is in the Eye of the Beholder

This website might put your financial problems into a bit of perspective -- until you realize you need to take into account the cost of living. But, regardless, it's fairly impressive.

my three moons

Hubble astronomers have recently discovered two more moons orbiting Pluto. Our icy neighbor has recently been criticized for not being too different from the big bunch of planetoids in the Kuiper Belt, so this new discovery might provide a new reason to call Pluto a real planet.