Darwin Awards

dying > stupidly
There should be a similar award for utter incompetence in crime.

End of the world: 21 March 2014?

the end > of the world > no, seriously!
Don't bet on it though:
A potential asteroid impact on 21 March 2014 has been given a Torino hazard rating of 1, defined as ‘an event meriting careful monitoring’. The newly discovered 1.2 km wide asteroid, known to scientists as 2003 QQ47, has a mass of around 2 600 billion kg, and would deliver around 350 000 MT of energy in an impact with Earth. Currently, the overall probability of this asteroid impacting Earth is 1 in 909 000.

Use of depleted uranium weapons lingers as health concern.

politics > iraq > is glowing in the dark
Another potent legacy of the "liberators".

Pulsars as Alien communication beacons?

space > weird theories
This is... intriguing... but rather improbable I'm afraid.
via baloney.

Don't leave earth without one.

planet > maps
A map of Mars. A thing of beauty...
[via another excellent science weblog, Baloney]

Acting out the search for infinity

Science > Art > Interface
Infinities is remarkable in its seamless merging of form and content. It gives new meaning to the concept of "science plays" through its highly visual exploration of various mathematical and philosophical postulations about infinity.
This I'd love to see...
via Missing Matter, an excellent science weblog.

Red wine may protect smokers

health > smoking while drunk > is better than just smoking
For all my still smoking friends out there: drink on. Unsurprisingly, the research was done in Greece at Alexandra University Hospital in Athens by Greek doctors ( and I'm willing to bet that more than one of the team is a smoker...)
Maybe Olympic Airways (or "Olympic Airlines" as they are about to be renamed) should consider offering more wine in their international flights to keep them from being sued, in this international climate of anti-smoking hysteria...

Recently on Znet

Znet > Articles

Ted Glick, on possible alternatives to US occupation in Iraq for the near future.

Noam Chomsky interview on a variety of interesting issues.

Edward Said on the anti-Arab racism of US public discource.

Emrah Goker on US pressures to Turkey for its participation in Iraq and the developments in Turkey - from a left wing perspective

Mark Weisbrot on the referendum issue and the current situation in Venezuela.

Confessions of a Terrorist

11/09/2001 > conspiracies
From Time magazine, a story of startling connections between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Al Qaeda. One is left to wonder though about how the CIA, closely connected, to say the least, with ISI (Pakistan's secret sevice), could have known nothing about this... More in the, soon to be bublished, book Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11 by Gerald L. Posner.
An aside for Greek audiences; the Time article contains the following paragraph:
Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.
So much I guess for the "non-existence" of truth inducing drugs: Savvas Xiros was certainly strictly on aspirin and antibiotics in "Evangelismos".

Portrait of an Iraqi Rebel

politics > iraq > occupation > resistance
Walid is a tough-looking, compact little man with a stubble beard and the universally short-cropped hair of young Iraqis. He has thick calluses on his hands from playing handball and he says that he used to stub out cigarettes on them. But he is not all bravura, and in many ways he does not seem to conform to the picture that has emerged of the typical Iraqi resistance fighter. He is no friend of Saddam or the Baath regime, he is not a Muslim fundamentalist and as a student of English Literature at Baghdad University, he is not anti-Western.

In fact, throughout the interview, Walid takes great pains to emphasize that he is tolerant, a man of the world. "You see," he tells a reporter, "I drink cola with you, even though my group has issued a call to boycott all American products." His tale, however, is one of gradually increasing opposition to the presence of U.S. soldiers in the countryside and finally, of a decision to join the resistance. The account cannot be independently verified, but a fellow student from Baghdad University confirms that Walid told him about the same events at the time when they happened over the past few months.