http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175058/roane_carey_will_israel_attack_iran_ Tomgram: Roane Carey, Will Israel Attack Iran? Sometimes, reading about the Middle East, or at least about Israel, Iran, and nuclear weapons, feels like your most basic broken-record phenomenon. As New York Times op-ed columnist Roger Cohen reminded readers recently, there's nothing new about Israeli predictions that Iranian "madmen" -- or rather, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of a rather extreme new government, put it recently, "a messianic apocalyptic cult" -- would soon have nuclear weapons in their hands. The charges and predictions of the imminent arrival of the Iranian bomb go back well into the 1990s and yet, despite Iran's growing nuclear enrichment program, we still don't know what the true predilections of its leaders are on the basic issue of weaponization. (They might, for instance, be planning to opt for the Japan "solution," not weaponizing, but simply being capable of doing so relatively quickly.) The other part of that broken-record phenomenon concerns Israel's nuclear arsenal, which I wrote about at TomDispatch back in 2003, since which time remarkably little has changed. One of the genuinely strange aspects of just about anything you can read here in the U.S. on nuclear weapons and the Middle East is this: all fear and much print (and TV time) is focused on whether the Iranians may someday, in the near or far future, get a nuclear weapon; that is, we're focused on a weapon that doesn't yet exist and, for all we know, may never exist. In the meantime, just about no mention is ever made of Israel's massive nuclear arsenal, which includes city-busting weapons, and leaves that tiny country as perhaps the fifth largest nuclear power on the planet. In addition, at least some of its nuclear weapons are on submarines in the Mediterranean, which means that the country is invulnerable to the madness of a take-out first strike by any other nation. This is simply reality. The Israelis have long taken a position in which, as Jonathan Schell once put the matter, "They won't confirm or deny that they have [nuclear weapons], but they have this curious phrase: 'We will not introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.' Evidently, in some abstruse way, possessing them is not introducing them." Our media has, in essence, accepted the Israeli approach to its arsenal as if it were a reasonable reportorial stance on the subject. It's from within this distinctly unbalanced world of heightened fear and silence that we read of both the dangers of the Iranian bomb and responses to it, which is in itself, simply put, dangerous. Recently, warnings from Israel about possible future attacks on Iran have multiplied. Roane Carey, managing editor of the Nation magazine and co-editor of The Other Israel, is in Israel at the moment on a journalism fellowship at the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy. As his first piece for this site, I asked him to offer an assessment from that country of just how dangerous the most recent warnings and threats actually are. Tom Don't Flash the Yellow Light Mixed Messages from Washington Could Lead to Catastrophe in Iran By Roane Carey JERUSALEM -- Israel has been steadily ratcheting up pressure on the United States concerning the grave threat allegedly posed by Iran, which seems poised to master the nuclear fuel cycle, and thus the capacity to produce nuclear weapons. The new Israeli prime minister, Likud Party hawk Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned President Barack Obama that if Washington does not quickly find a way to shut down Iran's nuclear program, Israel will. Some analysts argue that this is manufactured hysteria, not so much a reflection of genuine Israeli fears as a purposeful diversion from other looming difficulties. The Netanyahu government is filled with hardliners adamantly opposed to withdrawal from, or even a temporary freeze on, settlements in the occupied territories, not to mention to any acceptance of Palestinian statehood. On his first day as foreign minister, extremist demagogue Avigdor Lieberman, with characteristic bluster, announced that Israel was no longer bound by the 2007 Annapolis agreements brokered by Washington, which called for accelerated negotiations toward a two-state settlement. Such talk threatens to lead the Israelis directly into a clash with the Obama administration. In what can only be taken as a rebuttal of the Netanyahu government's recent pronouncements, in his speech to the Turkish Parliament Obama pointedly reasserted Washington's commitment to a two-state settlement and to the Annapolis understandings. So what better way for Netanyahu to avoid an ugly clash with a popular American president than to conveniently shift the discussion to an existential threat from Iran -- especially if he can successfully present it as a threat not just to Israel but to the West in general? All of this adds up to a plausible argument against undue alarm over the latest Israeli warnings about an attack on Iran, but it's flawed on several grounds. There is a broad, generally accepted paranoia in Israel about Iran, a belief that its leaders must be stopped before they proceed much further in their uranium enrichment program. (This view is not shared on the Israeli left, but it's now a ghost of its former self.) In an interview for TomDispatch, Ephraim Kam, deputy director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a specialist on the Iran issue, commented, "Of course there are different opinions, but there is a general consensus, among both security experts and political leaders, from Labor to the right wing. This is not a controversial issue: if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it will pose a deep threat. It will be the first time in our history that another country can deal a major blow to Israel." Kam hastens to add that, in his own view, the scenario Netanyahu proposes -- that Iran is led by irrational fanatics who would nuke Israel at the first chance, even knowing that an Israeli nuclear counterstrike would be swift and catastrophic -- is false. "Iran is a pragmatic, logical player," Kam says. He remains convinced that "even a radical fundamentalist regime" wouldn't attack Israel, but he adds, "This is just my assessment, and assessments can go wrong. I wrote a study on wrong assessments, so I know something about this." In other words, if Kam's claims about the Israeli consensus are correct, the country's leadership takes it for granted that Iran is indeed hell-bent on producing a nuclear weapon and is not inclined to take a chance that a nuclear Iran will play by the MAD (as in mutually assured destruction) rules hammered out by the two Cold War superpowers decades ago and never use it. This attitude reflects a longstanding Israeli strategic principle: that no neighboring state or combination of states can ever be allowed to achieve anything faintly approaching military parity, because if they do, they will try to destroy the Jewish state. By this logic, Israel's only option is to establish and then maintain absolute military superiority over its neighbors; they will, so this view goes, accept Israel's presence only if they know they're sure to be defeated, or at least vastly outmatched. This is the famous "iron wall," conceived by early Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky more than 80 years ago, well before the founding of Israel itself. (Jabotinsky founded the Revisionist movement, which in opposition to the Labor mainstream refused to accept any territorial compromise regarding Zionist aims, such as partition. Although he and his followers were for years shut out of the political leadership, their views regarding Israel's neighbors became deeply lodged in the public psyche.) If Iran were to acquire the capacity to build even one nuke -- Israel itself is estimated to have 150-200 of them -- that iron wall would be considered seriously breached, and the country might no longer be able to dictate terms to its neighbors. Given Iran's support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Israel would then have to recalibrate its strategy both on its northern front and vis-à-vis the Palestinians. Recent developments in Israel could certainly give the impression of a nation preparing for war: the Home Front command, one of four regional divisions of the Israeli army, has just announced the largest defense exercise in the country's history. It will last an entire week and is intended to prepare the civilian population for missile strikes from both conventional warheads and unconventional ones (whether chemical, biological or nuclear). Meanwhile, the country is accelerating its testing of missile defense systems, having just announced the successful launch of the Arrow II interceptor. Can Israel Go It Alone? Would Israel really attack Iran without at least tacit approval from Washington? Could Israel do so without such approval? At the very least, Israel would need approval simply to get permission to fly over Iraq, whose airspace is controlled by the U.S. military, not the Iraqi government in Baghdad. As columnist Aluf Benn put it in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, "Defense experts say that without a green light from Washington, Netanyahu and Barak will not be able to send in the air force." Kam adds, "In my judgment, it is somewhere between difficult to impossible for Israel to do it alone, for both technical and political reasons." Most analysts here believe that a solo Israeli attack would, at best, set back Iran's nuclear program by several years -- not that this would necessarily be a deterrent to Netanyahu & Co. It's widely believed that, in their view, even a temporary delay in Iran's nuclear capability would be an improvement on the current course. It's worth recalling that Israel sought an explicit go-ahead from the Bush administration for an attack last year, which President Bush -- presumably fearing massive conventional retaliation from Iran in both Iraq and Afghanistan -- sensibly refused, a rare moment in his tenure when he did not accede to Israeli wishes. It's also clear that President Obama seeks to resolve the standoff with Iran through diplomatic means. He's abandoned the confrontational rhetoric of his predecessor and continues to extend peace feelers to the Islamic Republic. Tehran's response has been mixed, but at least a new mood of negotiation is in the air. Israeli strategists, however, see this new mood as threatening, not hopeful. Any U.S. rapprochement with Iran -- especially if carried out on terms that acknowledge Iran's status as a regional power -- could, they fear, undermine Israel's "special relationship" with Washington. As Iran analyst Trita Parsi put it in a recent piece in the Huffington Post, Iran would then "gain strategic significance in the Middle East at the expense of Israel." It's within the realm of possibility, for example, that Washington could work out a grand bargain with Tehran terminating its policy of regime change and ending sanctions in return for Tehran's vow never to weaponize its nuclear program. Intrusive international inspections would presumably guarantee such a bargain, but Tehran's national pride would remain intact, as it would be allowed to retain the right to enrich uranium and develop a peaceful nuclear infrastructure. There has even been some recent slippage in Washington's language when it comes to demands placed on Iran -- with an insistence on an end to all nuclear enrichment evidently being replaced by an insistence on no weapons development. To Israel, this would be a completely unsatisfactory compromise, as its leaders fear that Iran might at some point abandon such an agreement and in fairly short order weaponize. Given Obama's new approach, it might seem that Israel is stymied for now. After all, it's hard to imagine Obama giving the go-ahead for an attack. Just this week, Vice President Joe Biden told CNN that he thought such an Israeli attack "would be ill-advised." Other factors, however, play in the hardliners' favor: the Obama administration's new special envoy for Iran, Dennis Ross, is himself a hardliner. Last year, Ross was part of an ultra-hawkish task force that predicted the failure of any negotiations and all but called for war with Iran. Ross is a man who not only knows how to play the bureaucratic game in Washington, but has powerful backers in the administration, and his views will have plenty of support from pro-Israel hawks in Congress. The attitude of another key sector in decision-making, the high command of the U.S. military, may also be evolving. Washington's dilemma in Iraq is not nearly as dire as it was two years ago. The nightmare envisioned by the American generals running the Iraq campaign in recent years -- that, in response to an attack on its nuclear facilities, Iran could send tens of thousands of well-trained commandos across the border and inflict grave damage on U.S. forces -- has faded somewhat. The Iraqi government's military has much better control of the country today, with insurgent violence at far lower levels. The Shiite Mahdi Army and Iran-connected "special groups" seem to be mostly quiescent. Of course, the situation in Iraq is still unstable, and any attack on Iran could easily throw the country back into ungovernable chaos. Still, given the role we know American commanders played in nixing such an attack in the Bush years, the question remains: Has resistance to such an attack lessened in the military? It's unclear, but an issue worth monitoring, because American commanders were the most consistent, persuasive voices for moderation during the Bush administration. It should go without saying that an Israeli attack on Iran would have disastrous consequences. No matter what Washington might claim, or how vociferously officials there denounce it, such an attack would be widely understood throughout the Muslim world as a joint U.S.-Israeli operation. It would, as a start, serve as a powerful recruiting tool for extremist Islamist groups. In addition, an outraged Iran might indeed send commandos into Iraq, aid armed Iraqi groups determined to attack U.S. and government forces, shoot missiles into the Saudi or Kuwaiti oilfields, and attempt to block the Straits of Hormuz though which a significant percentage of global oil passes. Washington would certainly have to write off desperately needed cooperation in the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Any attack would only strengthen the reign of the mullahs in Iran and reinforce the country's determination to acquire a nuclear deterrent force that would prevent future attacks. And keep in mind, Iran's nuclear program has overwhelming public support, even from those opposed to the current regime. Given the Netanyahu government's visible determination to attack, an ambiguous signal from Washington, something far less than a green light, could be misread in Tel Aviv. Anything short of a categorical, even vociferous U.S. refusal to countenance an Israeli attack might have horrific consequences. So here's a message to Obama from an observer in Israel: Don't flash the yellow light -- not even once. Roane Carey, on leave as managing editor of the Nation magazine, is on a journalism fellowship at the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel. He is co-editor of The Other Israel (New Press). Copyright 2009 Roane Carey

Good English abbreviation: BOHICA

This is an acronym that can be used often in today’s economy J

1 BOHICA acronym, although pronounced as if it is a single word, for "Bend over! Here it comes again."

Commonly used around the workplace when getting repeatedly fucked by the work center supervisor. Very commonly used within the military, specifically the navy and FFG-22.

 

2 (Office Space reference)
Bill Lumburgh asking Peter Gibbons to work on Saturday is a perfect example of getting fucked by the supervisor.
Lumbergh asking Peter to come in on Sunday is even more fucked up. Peter should have yelled "BOHICA!" and walked out of the office.

 

3. BOHICA Acronym: Bend Over Here it Comes Again. Often associated as the 3rd and highest level of something gone very wrong.

Level 1) SNAFU Situation Normal All Fucked Up.
Level 2) FUBAR Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
Level 3) BOHICA Bend Over Here it Comes Again.

"I've already been chewed out by the customer, my boss and now my wife found out. It's a friggin' BOHICA".

4. Bend over, here it come again. Military slang.

The Navy screwed me twice this month, but BOHICA.

 

5. BOHICA

That act of getting shafted by your unit, common reference to homosexual act of bending over and grabbing your ankles for insertion of object/s into your anus, usually painfully and without pleasure.

Look guys, the 726th shut down the porta-johns for some stupid ass reason, BOHICA!

6. BOHICA An acronym for "bend over, here it comes again". Refers to getting screwed over by the same means twice.

Dan, your car broke down again! BOHICA!

Mixing Real and Virtual Controls : A Microsoft project lets a touch screen control other hardware.

I am not such a big fan of MS products, but this project sounds like fun!

Halo effect: This MIDI controller is surrounded by virtual controls. Four of the virtual buttons control discrete tasks, including playing or pausing a track. The physical knobs provide finer control of the same function than the four virtual sliders.
Credit: Microsoft Research

 

Mixing Real and Virtual Controls

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22411/?nlid=1936&a=f

 

A Microsoft project lets a touch screen control other hardware.

By Kate Greene

Large touch-screen tables have emerged as a useful way for several people to collaborate on projects like video editing or graphic design, but often these tasks require fine controls that can be difficult to simulate on a touch surface with limited resolution. When a person needs precision, it may be best to use a physical controller instead, says Dan Morris, a researcher at Microsoft.

Morris and his colleagues have developed software for touch-screen surfaces that allows physical controls to be added to them. In addition, the software lets people define the functions that each knob, button, and slider on a controller will perform.

The researchers' system, called Ensemble, was presented on Monday at the Computer-Human Interaction (CHI 2009) Conference in Boston. It consists of a custom-made touch table that is two meters long and one meter wide, and several portable sound-editing controllers that connect to the computer that controls the surface. The table is similar to Microsoft's Surface, but larger. As with Surface, cameras underneath the tabletop are used to sense when a user touches the surface or when an object is placed on top of it.

The idea of incorporating traditional input devices like mouses or keyboards with a touch display is not new, but the Microsoft researchers show with Ensemble that it's possible to make hardware do more than a single specified task.

Cameras within the Ensemble table detect a special tag on the bottom of each audio control box to recognize each box and determine its position on the surface. The software then produces an "aura" around each device, including touch-surface controls like "play," "pause," and "stop," and virtual sliders that correspond to physical knobs on the box.

A person can then edit a music track, for example, using both the physical device and the touch-surface controls. The virtual sliders can be used to zoom in on the audio waveform of a track, or to go to a different location on the waveform by panning. The physical knobs on the box perform the same function but offer much finer control. The system also allows a person to change the function of the knobs to, say, control the volume of a trumpet track instead.

"It's a software mechanism for telling the hardware what to do," says Morris. He explains that once a person has mapped different functions onto the controller, she's able to save it for later or pass it along to someone else who has a similar role in the editing process.

The paper, presented at CHI 2009 by Rebecca Fiebrink, a graduate student at Princeton University, also describes a study examining how people used the interface. Most of the study participants used the physical controls, favoring the accuracy and responsiveness that they offer. However, these participants also made extensive use of surface controls, choosing them mainly for tasks in which a single touch produced a discrete result, such as playing or stopping a track.

Robert Jacob, a professor of electrical engineering at Tufts University, in Medford, MA, says that the researchers "did a nice job of investigating what users actually did when given both [physical controllers and a touch screen] and the opportunity to switch between them."

Jacob, who chaired the session in which the paper was presented, acknowledges that bridging the gap between physical and digital objects can be challenging. "It's a difficult problem with no general solutions, but rather individual interesting designs," he says. "Ideally, you want the benefits of the digital without giving up those of the physical."

While Ensemble was designed for sound editing, its underlying technology could find other applications in graphics, gaming, and visual design, says Morris. "It could be used in scenarios where you want people to collaborate on a surface as a group," he says, but where the resolution of touch surface limits the precision of the virtual controls.

Copyright Technology Review 2009.

 

DAMN those doctors, they are taking away every good things in life as dangerous for our health :(

Oral sex linked to throat cancer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6639461.stm

 

Scientists looked at tissue samples from patients

A virus contracted through oral sex is the cause of some throat cancers, say US scientists.

HPV infection was found to be a much stronger risk factor than tobacco or alcohol use, the Johns Hopkins University study of 300 people found.

The New England Journal of Medicine study said the risk was almost nine times higher for people who reported oral sex with more than six partners.

But experts said a larger study was needed to confirm the findings.

HPV infection is the cause of the majority of cervical cancers, and 80% of sexually active women can expect to have an HPV infection at some point in their lives.

It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza, study author

The Johns Hopkins study took blood and saliva from 100 men and women newly diagnosed with oropharyngeal cancer which affects the throat, tonsils and back of the tongue.

They also asked questions about sex practices and other risk factors for the disease, such as family history.

Those who had evidence of prior oral HPV infection had a 32-fold increased risk of throat cancer.

HPV16 - one of the most common cancer-causing strains of the virus - was present in the tumours of 72% of cancer patients in the study.

Risk factors

There was no added risk for people infected with HPV who also smoked and drank alcohol, suggesting the virus itself is driving the risk of the cancer.

Oral sex was said to be the main mode of transmission of HPV but the researchers said mouth-to-mouth transmission, for example through kissing, could not be ruled out.

Most HPV infections clear with little or no symptoms but a small percentage of people who acquired high-risk strains may develop a cancer, the researchers added.

Study author Dr Gypsyamber D'Souza said: "It is important for health care providers to know that people without the traditional risk factors of tobacco and alcohol use can nevertheless be at risk of oropharyngeal cancer."

Co-researcher Dr Maura Gillison said previous research by the team had suggested there was a strong link.

But she added: "People should be reassured that oropharyngeal cancer is relatively uncommon and the overwhelming majority of people with an oral HPV infection probably will not get throat cancer."

A vaccine which protects against cervical cancer caused by HPV strains 6, 11, 16 and 18, and also against genital warts is available and the researchers said the study provided a rationale for vaccinating both girls and boys.

But whether the vaccine would protect against oral HPV infection is not yet known.

Dr Julie Sharp, science information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "There is conflicting evidence about the role of HPV, and this rare type of mouth cancer.

"As this was a small study, further research is needed to confirm these observations."

"We know that after age, the main causes of mouth cancer are smoking or chewing tobacco or betel nut, and drinking too much alcohol."

 

EU becoming the new Stasi state-DDR's last leader Eric Honecker is laughing in his grave

Net firms start storing user data Details of your website visits will be recorded Details of user e-mails, website visits and net phone calls will be stored by internet service providers (ISPs) from Monday under an EU directive. The plans were drawn up in the wake of the London bombings in 2005. ISPs and telecoms firms have resisted the proposals while some countries in the EU are contesting the directive. Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, said it was a "crazy directive" with potentially dangerous repercussions for citizens. All ISPs in the European Union will have to store the records for a year. An EU directive which requires telecoms firms to hold on to telephone records for 12 months is already in force. The data stored does not include the content of e-mails and websites, nor a recording of a net phone call, but is used to determine connections between individuals. Authorities can get access to the stored records with a warrant. Governments across the EU have now started to implement the directive into their own national legislation. The UK Home Office, responsible for matters of policing and national security, said the measure had "effective safeguards" in place. ISPs across Europe have complained about the extra costs involved in maintaining the records. The UK government has agreed to reimburse ISPs for the cost of retaining the data. Mr Killock said the directive was passed only by "stretching the law". The EU passed it by "saying it was a commercial matter and not a police matter", he explained. "Because of that they got it through on a simple vote, rather than needing unanimity, which is required for policing matters," he said. Sense of shock He added: "It was introduced in the wake of the London bombings when there was a sense of shock in Europe. It was used to push people in a particular direction." Sweden has decided to ignore the directive completely while there is a challenge going through the German courts at present. "Hopefully, we can see some sort of challenge to this directive," said Mr Killock. In a statement, the Home Office said it was implementing the directive because it was the government's priority to "protect public safety and national security". It added: "Communications data is the where and when of the communication and plays a vital part in a wide range of criminal investigations and prevention of terrorist attacks, as well as contributing to public safety more generally. "Without communications data resolving crimes such as the Rhys Jones murder would be very difficult if not impossible. "Access to communications data is governed by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) which ensures that effective safeguards are in place and that the data can only be accessed when it is necessary and proportionate to do so."

Fw: جوکهای انقلابی

: جوکهای انقلابی      معلم از بچه ها ميپرسه :كي ميدونه بازيافت زباله يعني چي ؟  يه بچه اجازه ميگيره ، ميگه : يعني اينكه احمدي نژاد دوباره راي بياره …!!! تست ديني كنكور 87:  اولين خوني كه بر زمين ريخته شد كدام است ؟  الف - قتل هابيل !  ب- عادت ماهانه حوا !  ج - بكارت حوا !  د- ختنه آدم !! انقلاب   دل مي‌رود ز دستم صاحبدلان خدا را   ما انقلاب كرديم يا انقلاب ما را؟   ناگه صدايي آمد از پشت سنگ خارا   آخوند و شيخ و ملا كردند هر سه ما را به يه بسيجيه ميگن يه شعار محكم براي رهبري بگو ميگه: توپ تانك مسلسل، دو تاش تو كون اكبر يكيش تو كون رهبر   ميگن:محكمتر ميگه: توپ تانك مسلسل، يكيش تو كون اكبر دو تاش تو كون رهبر  ميگن: از اينم محكمتر ميگه: توپ تانك مسلسل، سه تاش تو كون اكبر، اكبر تو كون رهبر        نمایش لباس زیر زنانه در ویترین مغازه  ها ممنوع است (چون نظام اسلامی دستور داده امت اسلام حشری میشوند   به همین دلیل مغازه داران شرت ماماندوز مردانه پشت ویترین مغازه ها  آویزان میکنند، و زیرش مینویسند 'مال خواهران نیز موجود است!'     يه روز خبرنگاره از يكي مي‌پرسه: مي‌تونيد در اين يوم الله بيست و دو  بهمن پرچم سه رنگ ايران اسلامي رو توصيف كنيد؟  طرف ميگه: سبزش مال سيدهاست. سفيدش مال آخونداست. قرمزش خون شهداست  چوبشم كه ميكنن تو كون من و تو مقام عظماي ولايت: در مبارزات انقلاب زنم نقش دست راستم رو داشت. لكن  زماني هم كه در بازداشت بودم، دست راستم نقش زنم رو داشت!!! از يه بسيجيه مي‌پرسن: توي انتخابات به كي رأي ميدي؟   ميگه: به نام خدا و با عرض سلام ويژه خدمت مقام عظماي ولايت و خانواده  معظم شهدا و جانبازA 7ن و ايثارگران، بنده به چند دليل به آلت خودم رأي  مي‌دهم! 1-   انسان سازه 2-    سرشو در راه اسلام داده  3-  در برابر مشكلات قد علم مي‌كنه 4-   نه شرقيه و نه غربي و فقط در صراط مستقيم حركت مي‌كنه     از بسيجيه مي پرسن معيار شما واسه انتخاب همسر چيه؟   مي گه: صداقت فاطمه. عفاف زهرا. صبر زينب. هيكل جنيفر لوپز!!    يه آخونده داشته روضه مي‌خو6ده، كه يهو يه بسته پاسور از جيبش ميفته بيرون.   براي اينكه ضايع نشه ميگه: اي مردم، ميدونيد اين چيه؟   همه ميگن: بي‌بي خشت.   > آخونده ميگه: اي خاك بر سرتون كه ميدونيد بي‌بي خشت چيه، اما نمي‌دونيد  بي‌بي زينب كيه!   احمقي نژاد: براي حفظ ارزش‌هاي اسلامي، اسم شهر سوسنگرد رو به فاطي قلمبه  تغيير مي‌دهيم!   احمدینژاد میره سر قبر کورش میگه ای کوروش بیدار شو، پاشو، ما ریدیم. از حضرت امام خمینی پرسیدند شما ورزش را دوست دارید؟   ایشان گفتند: من خود ورزش نمیکنم ولی ورزشکاران را چرا.!!    شيخي را پرسيدند اسلام چيست؟   شيخ گفت: اسلام ديني است كه اگر در آن داخل شوي سر آلتت ببرند و اگر از  آن خارج شوي سر خودت را.!! يه روز يه جهنمي ميره دم در بهشت ميگه: ا گه ميشه يه كاسه يخ بدين!   بهش ميگن: برو بابا   ميگه: باشه من ميرم، ولي فردا صبح دنبال آب جوش نيايدا!!!

Liquid Battery Offers Promising Solar Energy Storage Technique

Liquid Battery Offers Promising Solar Energy Storage Technique March 6th, 2009 by Lisa Zyga Enlarge The all-liquid battery: discharged (left), charging (middle), and charged (right). Molten magnesium (blue) is the top electrode, in the middle is the electrolyte (green), and molten antimony (yellow) is the bottom electrode. Image credit: Arthur Mount. (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the biggest challenges currently facing large-scale solar energy technology is finding an effective way to store the energy, which is essential for using the electricity at night or on cloudy days. Recently, researchers from MIT have designed a new kind of battery that, unlike conventional batteries, is made of all-liquid active materials. Donald Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at MIT, and his team have fabricated prototypes of the liquid battery, and have demonstrated that the materials can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity, as required for solar energy storage. "No one had been able to get their arms around the problem of energy storage on a massive scale for the power grid," says Sadoway. "We're literally looking at a battery capable of storing the grid." The battery consists of three layers of liquids: two electrode liquids on the top and bottom (electrodes are usually solid in conventional batteries), and an electrolyte liquid in the middle. In the researchers' first prototype, the electrodes were molten metals - magnesium on the top and antimony on the bottom - while the electrolyte was a molten salt such as sodium sulfide. In later prototypes, the researchers investigated using other materials for improved performance. Since each liquid has a different density, the liquids automatically form the three distinct layers. When charging, the solid container holding the liquids collects electrons from exterior solar panels or another power supply, and later, for discharging, the container carries the electrons away to the electrical grid to be used as electricity. As electrons flow into the battery cell, magnesium ions in the electrolyte gain electrons and form magnesium metal, rising to form the upper molten magnesium electrode. At the same time, antimony ions in the electrolyte lose electrons, and sink to form the lower molten antimony electrode. At this point, the battery is fully charged, since the battery has thick electrode layers and a small layer of electrolyte. To discharge the electrical current, the process is reversed, and the metal atoms become ions again. As Sadoway explained in a recent article in MIT's Technology Review, the liquid battery is a promising candidate for solar energy storage for several reasons. For one thing, it costs less than a third of the cost of today's batteries, since the materials are inexpensive and the design allows for simple manufacturing. Further, the liquid battery has a longer lifetime than conventional batteries, since there are no solid active materials to degrade. The liquid battery is also useful in a wide range of locations compared with other proposed solar storage methods, such as pumping water. Most importantly, the liquid battery's electrodes can operate at electrical currents tens of times higher than any previous battery, making it capable of quickly absorbing large amounts of electricity. The researchers hope to commercialize the liquid battery in the next five years. As Sadoway explained, connecting the batteries into a giant battery pack to supply electricity for New York City would require nearly 60,000 square meters of land. Such a battery pack could store energy from enormous solar farms, which would replace today's power plants and transmission lines as they become old.

On the road to Fascism in Australia: Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day Saved Asher Moses March 17, 2009 - 11:48AM Advertisement The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks. Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites. The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website. ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme. But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages. Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal. "The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban. The site has also published Thailand's internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions. Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond. Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA's subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA's own blacklist - which is secret - to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering. "We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government's own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future," EFA said. "The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment." Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its "watch list" of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information. The main issue raised was the Government's proposed internet censorship regime. "This report demolished the Communications Minister's contention that Australia is just following other comparable democracies," Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam said. "We are not. The Government is embarking on a deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the internet. "I agree with Reporters Without Borders. If you consider this kind of net censorship in the context of Australia's anti-terror laws, it paints a disturbing picture indeed." EFA said the Government's "spin is starting to wear thin" and it could no longer be denied that the ACMA blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial. The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has repeatedly claimed his proposed mandatory filters would target only "illegal" content - predominantly child pornography. "As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material," EFA said. "If the minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with, child pornography, then there's a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the ministerial suites." Already, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has said he hopes the sex industry will go broke as a result of the censorship scheme. Independent Senator Nick Xenophon previous expressed his desire to have online gambling sites added to the blacklist but has since withdrawn his support for the scheme, saying it was dangerous and could be "counter-productive". The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked. The Opposition has obtained legal advice that "legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required", but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation. Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation. Despite previously saying his scheme would be expanded to block "refused classification" content that includes sites depicting drug use, sex, crime, cruelty and violence, he said opponents of his plan were spreading "conspiracy theories". The Government's internet censorship trials are due to begin shortly but critics have said they may not provide much useful data on the real-world implications because none of the major ISPs were chosen to take part.

Safe P2P software for all :)

They call it the nightmare of the Hollywood and the RIAA :) http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu/

ICH: Exposed: Cheney Assassination Squads