maintained information for mutual use
A new “gizmo” will be the latest generation of security for PayPal customers. The device will be distributed beginning February 12th to PayPal customers to further validate the authenticity of the online payment system.
Battles in central Iraq are very important. One particular battle 70 kilometers northeast of Baghdad (01.04 - 01.09.2007) against a Sunni terrorist stronghold garnered excellent results. Read more from strategypage.com
This happens to be a beautiful picture of science and art. Different colors were assigned to the four different dna components.
For more information visit dna-rainbow.org
“Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office,” wrote American Enterprise Institute analyst Joshua Muravchik. Craig Unger wrote in this month’s Vanity Fair that not all of President Bush’s advisers are pleased with this idea.
Richard Perle, a former Bush official said he has little doubt that Bush will order a strike against Iran. A section of the military command was ordered to draw up plans against Iraq. Others also have “chimed in” with more warnings.
United Nations inspectors were not allowed to set up cameras at an underground plant where 3000 centrifuges are to be installed for full-fledged enrichment of nuclear fuel. Iran’s announcement of the enhanced nuclear program is scheduled during Islamic Revolution celebrations that will run through February 11. Not letting the International Atomic Energy Agency set up cameras is not illegal as long as nuclear activity has not begun.
One diplomat, who wished to remain unnamed, said that Iran has an attitude of no transparency when the issue is their nuclear program. The U.N. sanctions against Iran are termed illegal according to the Iranian leadership.
Uranium gas processed from ore is fed into the centrifuges that run at supersonic speed to boost the fissile element for nuclear fuel. Uranium enriched to five percent can run power plants and enriched to eighty percent can detonate bombs.
technorati tag: Nuclear Weapons
There is a rule out there that goes something like this: if the NFC team (Bears) win the Super Bowl, the stock market moves higher and if the AFC team wins (Colts) the stock market moves lower.
There is some historic validity to this. Pondering that the NFC teams have generally been around longer and they usually win more than not has something to do with it. But remember, the Colts are an old NFL team, moving into the AFC when the AFL-NFL merger took place. This is the Colts’ third Super Bowl: SB III when they were in the NFL and were upset by the New York Jets and SB V when they defeated the Dallas Cowboys. The Colts were the AFC team in SB V as the merger started after SB IV.
With this in mind, could the stock market move higher if either teams wins?
A compelling article co-written by Dick Morris spells out a complication when dealing with Iran. Iran has stood out as a focal point of global terrorism. The leadership in Iran has vowed to “wipe Israel off the map”. This can’t be ignored, and isn’t ignored by the Bush Administration, especially when Secretary of State Condi Rice has said several times that Iran is the major obstacle to Middle-East peace.
Morris and McGann spell out the problem: that Iran will collectively be asssumed to be a sub-set of Iraq. To be sure, Iran has sent insurgents to Iraq and has several times invoked a heightened terrorism threat to Iraq’s structure. The American people my see Iran and Iraq as the same thing, which is not the way to go about it, according to the article. Iran is trying to gain more influence in Iraq.
Morris and McGann lay out a plan to destroy Iran’s economy by cutting off investments to companies that invest in Iran. The non-gas and oil economy is falling apart and the Bush Administration should propose Americans to divest with companies that invest with terror-states. Iran is vunerable and an increased effort to keep investments away from them is a step in the right direction.
Two powerful new books say today’s global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March.
Singer and Avery note that most of the earth’s recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Moreover, physical evidence shows 600 moderate warmings in the earth’s last million years. The evidence ranges from ancient Nile flood records, Chinese court documents and Roman wine grapes to modern spectral analysis of polar ice cores, deep seabed sediments, and layered cave stalagmites.
Unstoppable Global Warming shows the earth’s temperatures following variations in solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records, and finds cycles of sun-linked isotopes in ice and tree rings. The book cites the work of Svensmark, who says cosmic rays vary the earth’s temperatures by creating more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the earth. It notes that global climate models can’t accurately register cloud effects.
The Chilling Stars relates how Svensmark’s team mimicked the chemistry of earth’s atmosphere, by putting realistic mixtures of atmospheric gases into a large reaction chamber, with ultraviolet light as a stand-in for the sun. When they turned on the UV, microscopic droplets—cloud seeds—started floating through the chamber.
“We were amazed by the speed and efficiency with which the electrons [generated by cosmic rays] do their work of creating the building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei,” says Svensmark.
The Chilling Stars documents how cosmic rays amplify small changes in the sun’s irradiance fourfold, creating 1-2 degree C cycles in earth’s temperatures: Cosmic rays continually slam into the earth’s atmosphere from outer space, creating ion clusters that become seeds for small droplets of water and sulfuric acid. The droplets then form the low, wet clouds that reflect solar energy back into space. When the sun is more active, it shields the earth from some of the rays, clouds wane, and the planet warms.
Unstoppable Global Warming documents the reality of a moderate, natural, 1500-year climate cycle on the earth. The Chilling Stars explains the why and how.
Reported was the arms deal from Russia to Iran. What is going on? Well the sale of anti-aircraft missiles is on the front burner. Conventional weapons is not on the list of sanctions against Iran, so Russia fills a void. The Russians are saying that they’ll probably supply Iran with weapons in the future. Russia’s biggest arms customers is India and China.
Loren B. Thompson of United Press International reveals the 20-year slide of U.S. air power. The fleet of U.S. aircraft is older than the Navy’s fleet of warships. When Dick Cheney was defense secretary he killed the service’s cold-war fighter program. Every facet of U.S. air power was decimated.
As America wages a war on terror… what about the geo-political war? The nuclear arsenal of Russia and the build-up of China’s Navy has to be concern. And don’t forget about North Korea. With al-Qaida the current threat, these factors are largely ignored.
The warm weather we’ve experienced could change, and change rather abruptly. That’s according to Joe Bastardi, long-range forecaster for AccuWeather.com. We’re in a waning El Nino effect just like years past, as Bastardi points out in the article.
A shot of cold air has given mid-westerners January-like temperatures and these numbers will likely continue. That pattern could stay around for the second half of the month of January.
Of the 3000 American GI’s killed in Iraq, most have been killed by improvise explosive devices (IED) than by any other weapon. This weapon has baffled war planners for months. The insurgency is deadly, but largely low-tech. Improvised bomb attacks on U.S. troops total 1000 per month. Since the beginning of the war in March 2003, IED’s have accounted for 45 percent of the American deaths caused by hostile causes. Of 100 recent hostile deaths, 67 were caused by IED’s. These weapons are easy to plant and hard to find and are detonated by a variety of means.
The U.S. military has spent about $3 billion on ways to defend against these weapons. One way is to jam remote control devices. New body armor is also a priority along with tougher vehicles. Training is also important with new high-tech equipment. The use of human intelligence is an important factor as soldiers have received information on hidden bombs from children who are rewarded with toys.
