(Boston Globe) The armed forces, already struggling to meet recruiting goals, are considering expanding the number of noncitizens in the ranks — including disputed proposals to open recruiting stations overseas and putting more immigrants on a faster track to US citizenship if they volunteer — according to Pentagon officials. Foreign citizens serving in the US [...]
Archive for December, 2006
Posted in Bush on Dec 27th, 2006
(UK Telegraph) Prince Harry is to be sent to Iraq next year as a troop commander and is likely to patrol the hazardous border with Iran, defence sources have disclosed. The third in line to the throne will join the Army’s 1st Mechanised Brigade, which will be deployed to Basra in May 2007. The prince [...]
Posted in Political on Dec 21st, 2006
(Wired) 2006 will be remembered as the year in which our government imprisoned journalists, embraced kidnap and torture as a “no-brainer,” and moved toward implementing an infrastructure for total surveillance of American citizens. Hopefully, it also will be remembered as the year we started to bring these practices to a halt. In this column, I [...]
Posted in News on Dec 19th, 2006
(Reuters) U.S. growers produce nearly $35 billion (18 billion pounds) worth of marijuana annually, making the illegal drug the country’s largest cash crop, bigger than corn and wheat combined, an advocate of medical marijuana use said in a study released on Monday. The report, conducted by Jon Gettman, a public policy analyst and former head [...]
(LiveScience) The Bush administration is clamping down on scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, who study everything from caribou mating to global warming, subjecting them to controls on research that might go against official policy. New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists. The rules apply to all scientific papers and [...]
Posted in Technology on Dec 15th, 2006
(New Scientist) Imagine getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour. We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark’s brain. Engineers [...]
Posted in Squirrels on Dec 14th, 2006
(Scotsman) Squirrels are to be given contraceptives in a project approved by Scottish ministers, The Scotsman has learned. The Executive has agreed to fund research into immuno-contraception for Scotland’s grey squirrel population. Ministers want to know if contraception can be given to squirrels safely and effectively and whether this could solve the problem of the [...]
Posted in Journal on Dec 12th, 2006
I’ve been watching a series called Bushcraft by Ray Mears. The premise is that Mears participates in the cultural skills practiced by various peoples, which he calls Bushcraft. Mears uses the term to encompass anything from fire building, tool making, hunting and gathering. While not really a survival program, Mears is quick to point [...]
Posted in Science on Dec 11th, 2006
(New York Times) A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found. The finding is a striking example of a cultural [...]
Posted in Political on Dec 6th, 2006
(Honolulu Advertiser) It was a president’s signature that made them infamous, and now, more than six decades later, it will take a president’s signature to preserve them. Congress yesterday gave final approval to a bill that would create a $38 million grant program to help communities preserve the sites where Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals were [...]
