Consider the brave new tool known as the National Security Letter, one of the PATRIOT Act’s many Easter Eggs, provided for in Section 215 of the 131-page homeland manifesto. National Security Letters are nothing less than warrantless searches — so secretive that to disclose the very request is itself a prosecutable violation of national security.

NSLs are issued by FBI agents, without so much as a nod to the courts. They are directed to businesses, usually demanding they cough up information on their customers. The companies must comply and cannot even disclose the fact that a request was received. And if you’re thinking this tool is being judiciously and selectively used to protect the United States against terrorists, think again.

More than 30,000 NSLs are issued every year, according to the Washington Post. And that’s just an estimate from anonymous sources. The actual number could be far higher, but we’ll never know, because — you guessed it — it’s a national security secret.

"There is no requirement that the FBI demonstrate a need for such records. It need only assert that the records are ’sought for’ an intelligence or terrorism investigation," according to a 2003 statement on the Senate floor by Sen. Patrick Leahy — ranking Democratic member of the increasingly anachronistic "Senate Subcommittee on Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights".

The National Security Letter existed and was used sparingly to track mostly illegal financial transactions before the PATRIOT Act transformed it into the default tool for collecting information on American citizens. The FBI could circumvent a warrant by using an NSL, but it had to provide specific facts to support its request (not that anyone except the recipient of the letter would actually see these facts).

Now you might be wondering, doesn’t the Fourth Amendment state that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"?

Well, yes, it does. But the Supreme Court ruled during the 1970s that this right does not include protection of information provided to businesses. So as soon as you voluntarily disclose information to a business — a virtually unavoidable action — it becomes fair game for a warrantless search. In other words, if they don’t kick in your actual door or tap your actual phone, pretty much everything else is fair game.

That was bad enough to start with. Then the PATRIOT Act offered the FBI wide latitude to go after banks and credit card companies to obtain information without even bothering to provide a factual basis for its request — a factual basis which, you will recall, was not subject to outside verification or oversight. Instead of having to produce a pretext — however flimsy — for its seizure of financial records, the FBI could now simply assert the request had something to do with terrorism and go to town.

Even that wasn’t enough power, however, to suit the "new normal" in Washington. So the PATRIOT Act was amended and expanded to allow the FBI to send NSLs to virtually any kind of business or institution — "car dealers, pawn brokers, travel and real estate agents", according to Leahy. And so much more.

The Act states that the FBI may demand "production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities" from an ever-broadening spectrum of business types. 

 
The most common uses — that we know of — include snatching customer data from Internet service providers of every ilk, the numbers and dates of subscriber phone calls and library records, because as everyone knows, what you read could be hazardous to the country’s health.

Despite their barking protests, Congressional Democrats have been willing to bite and filibuster additional PATRIOT amendments that have expanded the NSL’s reach still further since PATRIOT’s 2001 debut. Businesses from self-storage to manufacturing were now potentially facing the risk of the secret letter, the ungentle demand for information and the outright threat of criminal prosecution if they breathed a word of this to anyone.

The ACLU finally decided to tackle the issue head-on, filing a lawsuit on behalf of four librarians served with NSLs in the seething terrorism hotbed of Connecticut. In addition to a demand for patron records, all four were told they would go to jail if they discussed the NSLs with anyone, and that the duration of this gag order was forever and ever, world without end, amen. It was barely clear from the PATRIOT Act that they even had the right to contact an attorney.

As the judicial tide began to shift in favor of the librarians, the Justice Department moved to implement what has lately become its legal strategy of first resort:

   1. Stall for as long as possible.
   2. When you can’t stall any longer, "make an exception" for just this plaintiff.
   3. Move to have the appeal and all negative rulings thrown out on the basis that the lawsuit is now moot because of the concession.

The idea here is to prevent the law from being declared unconstitutional and to force every potential future plaintiff to take the time and trouble of litigating their complaint in next week’s exciting episode of "Stall, Bargain and Moot".

But that isn’t the only goal. While this process was playing out in the Connecticut case, you see, the PATRIOT Act was coming up for renewal. The librarians — understandably — wanted very much to speak out about this pending vote, but the government employed every legal tactic in its arsenal to keep them quiet until after the Act was renewed. Meanwhile, the law was subtly changed to disarm some of the plaintiff’s best legal arguments (most notably by conceding explicitly that recipients of NSLs could talk to a lawyer before complying).

The librarians finally won a fairly Pyrrhic victory in which the perpetual gag order was decreed "probably" unconstitutional, while the Justice Department dropped its efforts to enforce the order against them specifically once the PATRIOT Act was renewed for years to come.

Many provisions were made permanent. Section 215 — the NSL proviso — was not, but it was extended four more years. As one of the plaintiffs told the New York Times after the May 2006 decision, the victory felt "like being allowed to call the Fire Department after the building has burned down".

Bloodied but unbowed, the Bush Administration continues to use NSLs to "fight terrorism". For instance, they’ve been particularly aggressive in using the letters to go after those dangerous extremists in the U.S. news media who don’t toe the party line.

Around the same time that the librarians were celebrating their righteous victory, an anonymous source contacted ABC News to inform its investigative reporters that the federal government knew who they were calling — and not just ABC reporters, but reporters for the New York Times and the Washington Post as well.

Needless to say, there would be quite a stink if the FBI had to go through the courts seeking warrants for the phone records of mainstream news reporters covering government misconduct. But that’s what the NSLs are for! ABC reported — and the FBI carefully non-denied — that an investigation of alleged CIA leaks was being facilitated by the use of NSLs and that journalists’ phone records were most definitely not exempt. 

 
Oh, and remember that big NSA phone database that had everyone so upset? In May 2006, USA Today reported "The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."

A slew of nondenial-denials, half-admissions and weird obsfuscations followed. No one denied the NSA had the phone numbers. Yet the NSA was specifically exempted in the PATRIOT Act from using NSLs to collect whatever data it damn well pleases. So how did the agency convince all those phone and Internet companies to cough up their data? USA Today claimed they made arrangements directly with the companies. But the two companies that were willing to comment on the story denied that.

    "One of the most glaring and repeated falsehoods in the media reporting is the assertion that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Verizon was approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers’ domestic calls."

    [However…] "Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program."

Interesting choice of words there. What about BellSouth? The company issued the following:

    "As a result of media reports that BellSouth provided massive amounts of customer calling information under a contract with the NSA, the Company conducted an internal review to determine the facts. Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA."

Let’s go back to Leahy’s statement to the Senate. We’ll pick it up mid-speech as he’s enumerating the many things that the PATRIOT Act neglected to regulate when granting this considerable power to the FBI:

    "Nor are there sufficient limits on what the FBI may do with the records or how it must store them. For example, information obtained through NSLs may be stored electronically and used for large-scale data mining operations."

So let’s walk through this. The NSA wants all these phone records, but it can’t ask for them. The FBI can demand the records and threaten the companies with prosecution if they tell anyone that the bureau ever asked for anything. And once FBI has the records, it can do whatever it wants with them. 

Could these be signs of a legal end-run using the NSLs as cover? Let’s go the President.

    "[T]he intelligence activities I authorized are lawful and have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress, both Republican and Democrat."

The gaping holes in the NSL law clearly allow for the possibility, and maybe even the "lawful" possibility. If the companies had received NSLs, they would be legally prohibited from saying so. For the moment, the question of whether it happened this way must remain unanswered.

But really, this is just one of so many, many, many Big Brother scenarios that could play out in the wide open spaces surrounding the FBI’s use of material seized through this mechanism. Use your imagination. It’s a conspiracy theorist’s delight, or it would be, except once they finish analyzing your Web-browsing, Amazon-reading, phone-calling, library-borrowing patterns, it’s off to the gulag before you even get the chance to say "I told you so". 

When Albert’s mother, Pauline Einstein gave birth to him, she thought that Einstein’s head was so big and misshapen that he was deformed!

    As the back of the head seemed much too big, the family initially considered a monstrosity. The physician, however, was able to calm them down and some weeks later the shape of the head was normal. When Albert’s grandmother saw him for the first time she is reported to have muttered continuously "Much too fat, much too fat!" Contrasting all apprehensions Albert grew and developed normally except that he seemed a bit slow. (Source)

 2. Einstein Had Speech Difficulty as a Child

As a child, Einstein seldom spoke. When he did, he spoke very slowly - indeed, he tried out entire sentences in his head (or muttered them under his breath) until he got them right before he spoke aloud. According to accounts, Einstein did this until he was nine years old. Einstein’s parents were fearful that he was retarded - of course, their fear was completely unfounded!

One interesting anecdote, told by Otto Neugebauer, a historian of science, goes like this:

    As he was a late talker, his parents were worried. At last, at the supper table one night, he broke his silence to say, "The soup is too hot."
    Greatly relieved, his parents asked why he had never said a word before.
    Albert replied, "Because up to now everything was in order." (Source)

In his book, Thomas Sowell noted that besides Einstein, many brilliant people developed speech relatively late in childhood. He called this condition The Einstein Syndrome.

 3. Einstein was Inspired by a Compass

When Einstein was five years old and sick in bed, his father showed him something that sparked his interest in science: a compass.

    When Einstein was five years old and ill in bed one day, his father showed him a simple pocket compass. What interested young Einstein was whichever the case was turned, the needle always pointed in the same direction. He thought there must be some force in what was presumed empty space that acted on the compass. This incident, common in many "famous childhoods," was reported persistently in many of the accounts of his life once he gained fame. (Source)

 4. Einstein Failed his University Entrance Exam
 
In 1895, at the age of 17, Albert Einstein applied for early admission into the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule or ETH). He passed the math and science sections of the entrance exam, but failed the rest (history, languages, geography, etc.)! Einstein had to go to a trade school before he retook the exam and was finally admitted to ETH a year later. (Source)

5. Einstein had an Illegitimate Child

In the 1980s, Einstein’s private letters revealed something new about the genius: he had an illegitimate daughter with a fellow former student Mileva Marić (whom Einstein later married).

In 1902, a year before their marriage, Mileva gave birth to a daughter named Lieserl, whom Einstein never saw and whose fate remained unknown:

    Mileva gave birth to a daughter at her parents’ home in Novi Sad. This was at the end of January, 1902 when Einstein was in Berne. It can be assumed from the content of the letters that birth was difficult. The girl was probably christianised. Her official first name is unknown. In the letters received only the name “Lieserl” can be found.

    The further life of Lieserl is even today not totally clear. Michele Zackheim concludes in her book “Einstein’s daughter” that Lieserl was mentally challenged when she was born and lived with Mileva’s family. Furthermore she is convinced that Lieserl died as a result of an infection with scarlet fever in September 1903. From the letters mentioned above it can also be assumed that Lieserl was put up for adoption after her birth.

    In a letter from Einstein to Mileva from September 19, 1903, Lieserl was mentioned for the last time. After that nobody knows anything about Lieserl Einstein-Maric. (Source)

6. Einstein Became Estranged From His First Wife, then Proposed a Strange "Contract"

After Einstein and Mileva married, they had two sons: Hans Albert and Eduard. Einstein’s academic successes and world travel, however, came at a price - he became estranged from his wife. For a while, the couple tried to work out their problems - Einstein even proposed a strange "contract" for living together with Mileva:

    The relationship progressed. Einstein became estranged from his wife. The biography reprints a chilling letter from Einstein to his wife, a proposed "contract" in which they could continue to live together under certain conditions. Indeed that was the heading: "Conditions."

    A. You will make sure
    1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
    2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
    3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.
    B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons…

    There’s more, including "you will stop talking to me if I request it." She accepted the conditions. He later wrote to her again to make sure she grasped that this was going to be all-business in the future, and that the "personal aspects must be reduced to a tiny remnant." And he vowed, "In return, I assure you of proper comportment on my part, such as I would exercise to any woman as a stranger." (Source)

7. Einstein Didn’t Get Along with His Oldest Son

After the divorce, Einstein’s relationship with his oldest son, Hans Albert, turned rocky. Hans blamed his father for leaving Mileva, and after Einstein won the Nobel Prize and money, for giving Mileva access only to the interest rather than the principal sum of the award - thus making her life that much harder financially.

The row between the father and son was amplified when Einstein strongly objected to Hans Albert marrying Frieda Knecht:

    In fact, Einstein opposed Hans’s bride in such a brutal way that it far surpassed the scene that Einstein’s own mother had made about Mileva. It was 1927, and Hans, at age 23, fell in love with an older and - to Einstein - unattractive woman. He damned the union, swearing that Hans’s bride was a scheming woman preying on his son. When all else failed, Einstein begged Hans to not have children, as it would only make the inevitable divorce harder. … (Source: Einstein A to Z by Karen C. Fox and Aries Keck, 2004)

Later, Hans Albert immigrated to the United States became a professor of Hydraulic Engineering at UC Berkeley. Even in the new country, the father and son were apart. When Einstein died, he left very little inheritance to Hans Albert.

More about Hans Albert: Obituary by UC Berkeley

8. Einstein was a Ladies’ Man

After Einstein divorced Mileva (his infidelity was listed as one of the reasons for the split), he soon married his cousin Elsa Lowenthal. Actually, Einstein also considered marrying Elsa’s daughter (from her first marriage) Ilse, but she demurred:

    Before marrying Elsa, he had considered marrying her daughter, Ilse, instead. According to Overbye, “She (Ilse, who was 18 years younger than Einstein) was not attracted to Albert, she loved him as a father, and she had the good sense not to get involved. But it was Albert’s Woody Allen moment.” (Source)

Unlike Mileva, Elsa Einstein’s main concern was to take care of her famous husband. She undoubtedly knew about, and yet tolerated, Einstein’s infidelity and love affairs which were later revealed in his letters:

    Previously released letters suggested his marriage in 1903 to his first wife Mileva Maric, mother of his two sons, was miserable. They divorced in 1919, and he soon married his cousin, Elsa. He cheated on her with his secretary, Betty Neumann.

    In the new volume of letters released on Monday by Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Einstein described about six women with whom he spent time and from whom he received gifts while being married to Elsa.

    Some of the women identified by Einstein include Estella, Ethel, Toni and his "Russian spy lover," Margarita. Others are referred to only by initials, like M. and L.

    "It is true that M. followed me (to England) and her chasing after me is getting out of control," he wrote in a letter to Margot in 1931. "Out of all the dames, I am in fact attached only to Mrs. L., who is absolutely harmless and decent." (Source)

9. Einstein, the War Pacifist, Urged FDR to Build the Atom Bomb

In 1939, alarmed by the rise of Nazi Germany,physicist Leó Szilárd convinced Einstein to write a letter to president Franklin Delano Roosevelt warning that Nazi Germany might be conducting research into developing an atomic bomb and urging the United States to develop its own.

The Einstein and Szilárd’s letter was often cited as one of the reasons Roosevelt started the secret Manhattan Project to develop the atom bomb, although later it was revealed that the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 probably did much more than the letter to spur the government.

Although Einstein was a brilliant physicist, the army considered Einstein a security risk and (to Einstein’s relief) did not invite him to help in the project.

10. The Saga of Einstein’s Brain: Pickled in a Jar for 43 Years and Driven Cross Country in a Trunk of a Buick!

After his death in 1955, Einstein’s brain was removed - without permission from his family - by Thomas Stoltz Harvey, the Princeton Hospital pathologist who conducted the autopsy. Harvey took the brain home and kept it in a jar. He was later fired from his job for refusing to relinquish the organ.

Many years later, Harvey, who by then had gotten permission from Hans Albert to study Einstein’s brain, sent slices of Einstein’s brain to various scientists throughout the world. One of these scientists was Marian Diamond of UC Berkeley, who discovered that compared to a normal person, Einstein had significantly more glial cells in the region of the brain that is responsible for synthesizing information.

In another study, Sandra Witelson of McMaster University found that Einstein’s brain lacked a particular "wrinkle" in the brain called the Sylvian fissure. Witelson speculated that this unusual anatomy allowed neurons in Einstein’s brain to communicate better with each other. Other studies had suggested that Einstein’s brain was denser, and that the inferior parietal lobe, which is often associated with mathematical ability, was larger than normal brains.

The saga of Einsteins brain can be quite strange at times: in the early 1990s, Harvey went with freelance writer Michael Paterniti on a cross-country trip to California to meet Einstein’s granddaughter. They drove off from New Jersey in Harvey’s Buick Skylark with Einstein’s brain sloshing inside a jar in the trunk! Paterniti later wrote his experience in the book Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain

In 1998, the 85-year-old Harvey delivered Einstein’s brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss, the staff pathologist at Princeton University, the position Harvey once held:

    … after safeguarding the brain for decades like it was a holy relic — and, to many, it was — he simply, quietly, gave it away to the pathology department at the nearby University Medical Center at Princeton, the university and town where Einstein spent his last two decades.

    "Eventually, you get tired of the responsibility of having it. … I did about a year ago," Harvey said, slowly. "I turned the whole thing over last year [in 1998]." (Source) ]]> http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/15/einsteins-little-secrets/feed/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/15/time-travel-theory/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/15/time-travel-theory/#comments Sat, 15 Sep 2007 17:13:37 +0000 Administrator Uncategorized http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/15/time-travel-theory/ It sounds like science fiction, but it is taken so seriously by relativists that some of them have proposed that there must be a law of nature to prevent time travel and thereby prevent paradoxes arising, even though nobody has any idea how such a law would operate. The classic paradox, of course, occurs when a person travels back in time and does something to prevent their own birth — killing their granny as a baby, in the more gruesome example, or simply making sure their parents never get together, as in Back to the Future. It goes against commonsense, say the sceptics, so there must be a law against it. This is more or less the same argument that was used to prove that space travel is impossible. So what do Einstein’s equations tell us, if pushed to the limit? As you might expect, the possibility of time travel involves those most extreme objects, black holes. And since Einstein’s theory is a theory of space and time, it should be no surprise that black holes offer, in principle, a way to travel through space, as well as through time. A simple black hole won’t do, though. If such a black hole formed out of a lump of non-rotating material, it would simply sit in space, swallowing up anything that came near it. At the heart of such a black hole there is a point known as a singularity, where space and time cease to exist, and matter is crushed to infinite density. Thirty years ago, Roger Penrose (now of Oxford University) proved that anything which falls into such a black hole must be drawn into the singularity by its gravitational pull, and also crushed out of existence.[It] consists of two chambers, each containing two parallel metal plates. The intense electric fields created between each pair of plates (larger than anything possible with today’s technology) rips the fabric of space-time, creating a hole in space that links the two chambers. Taking advantage of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, which says that time runs slow for a moving object, one of the chambers is then taken on a long, fast journey and brought back: Time would pass at different rates at the two ends of the wormhole, [and] anyone falling into one end of the wormhole would be instantly hurled into the past or the future [as they emerge from the other end]. It works like this. According to one interpretation of quantum physics (there are several interpretations, and nobody knows which one, if any, is "right"), every time a quantum object, such as an electron, is faced with a choice, the world divides to allow it to take every possibility on offer. In the simplest example, the electron may be faced with a wall containing two holes, so that it must go through one hole or the other. The Universe splits so that in one version of reality — one set of relative dimensions — it goes through the hole on the left, while in the other it goes through the hole on the right. Pushed to its limits, this interpretation says that the Universe is split into infinitely many copies of itself, variations on a basic theme, in which all possible outcomes of all possible "experiments" must happen somewhere in the "multiverse". How does this resolve the paradoxes? Like this. Suppose someone did go back in time to murder their granny when she was a little girl. On this multiverse picture, they have slid back to a bifurcation point in history. After killing granny, they move forward in time, but up a different branch of the multiverse. In this branch of reality, they were never born; but there is no paradox, because in he universe next door granny is alive and well, so the murderer is born, and goes back in time to commit the foul deed! ]]> http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/15/time-travel-theory/feed/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/14/new-drug-deletes-bad-memories/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/14/new-drug-deletes-bad-memories/#comments Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:07:32 +0000 Administrator Uncategorized http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/14/new-drug-deletes-bad-memories/ Do you have a really bad memory, or past heartache, that you would prefer to forget?Researchers at Harvard and McGill University (in Montreal) are working on an amnesia drug that blocks or deletes bad memories. The technique seems to allow psychiatrists to disrupt the biochemical pathways that allow a memory to be recalled.

In a new study, published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, the drug propranolol is used along with therapy to "dampen" memories of trauma victims. They treated 19 accident or rape victims for ten days, during which the patients were asked to describe their memories of the traumatic event that had happened 10 years earlier. Some patients were given the drug, which is also used to treat amnesia, while others were given a placebo.

A week later, they found that patients given the drug showed fewer signs of stress when recalling their trauma.

Similar research led by Professor Joseph LeDoux has been carried out at New York University on rats; scientists were able to remove a specific memory from the brains of rats while leaving the rest of the animals’ memories intact. An amnesia drug called U0126 was administered.

The rats were trained to associate two musical tones with a mild electrical shock so that when they heard either of the tones they would brace themselves for a shock. The researchers then gave half the rats the drug when playing one of the musical tones.

After the treatment, the rats that had been given the drug no longer associated that particular tone with an imminent shock but still braced themselves upon hearing the second tone, demonstrating only one memory had been deleted.

Science fiction fans have a number of associations with the idea of banishing unwanted memories. In the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet and Jim Carrey play lovers who have a falling out. Winslet’s character goes to a company called Lacuna, Inc. to have her memories of the relationship removed; Carrey’s character also has the procedure performed (see photo).

In the film, the process involves showing the person a memento of the relationship and then encouraging them to bring up specific memories while an electric shock is given. Not to give away the film, but this technique does not work as planned.

Here’s a memory you might have repressed. In the classic Star Trek episode Requiem for Methuselah, Jim Kirk becomes enamored of Rayna, a beautiful woman who turns out to be an android created by a five thousand year old man who calls himself Flint, who was also Leonardo DaVinci and Shakespeare (among many others) during the course of his long life. Flint wants Rayna for himself, Kirk wants her, she loves them both, her circuits overload resulting in her death, and Kirk is devastated.

Finally, Spock saves the day by applying a little-known property of the Vulcan mind-meld, which is that he can make Kirk forget about his sorrows and return to duty (see touching photo).

Science fiction legend Philip K. Dick was one of the first to make use of this idea. In his 1966 short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale he writes about selectively erasing memories:

Someone, probably at a government military-sciences lab, erased his conscious memories; all he know was that going to Mars meant something special to him, and so did being a secret agent… ]]> http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/09/14/new-drug-deletes-bad-memories/feed/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/08/26/africa-pictures-taken-from-sky/ http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/08/26/africa-pictures-taken-from-sky/#comments Sun, 26 Aug 2007 18:56:15 +0000 Administrator Uncategorized Art http://contaminated.blogsome.com/2007/08/26/africa-pictures-taken-from-sky/ Whenever Africa is mentioned, most people think of roaming animals and jeep safaris. Whilst Africa has much more to offer than animals, the beauty that nature has bestowed on this continent cannot be overlooked. The animal inhabitants of Africa are amongst the most varied and beautiful in the world. Most of us know that Africa is home to the magnificent giraffe and the impressive cheetah. However, there is also a wider range of animals that live in Africa.

Africa is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Suez Canal and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. There are 46 countries including Madagascar, and 53 including all the island groups.

Africa, particularly central eastern Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the Hominidae tree, as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids, as well as later ones that have been dated to around 7 million years ago including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Africanus, Homo Erectus, with the earliest humans being dated to ca. 200,000 years ago, according to this view.

Driving around with a knowledgeable guide is one of the best ways to visit Namibia and travelling with a small group helps to make such trips affordable. However, because all of our travellers are different, we have developed a wide range of trips to choose from.

Most of these trips concentrate on affordable camping; others use good-value accommodation, while a few private guided trips cater for small, exclusive groups with more flexible budgets. All use knowledgeable local guides: some amongst the best you’ll find in Africa. We don’t cut corners, and won’t fob you off with a guide from outside Namibia who has learned about the country from a book. 

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

Many African nations are well known, from Morocco in the north through Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania to South Africa. South Africa, which is more developed than many of its neighbors, is making real efforts to develop its tourist trade. Abundant wildlife and areas of natural beauty, as well as availability of affordable high quality local wines makes South Africa attractive to visitors from Europe, Canada and the USA.

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

 This amazing pictures can see everybody at:
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Africa_Landscapes_pics 

In the eyes of radical intellectual disturbing sexuality  children are really made wet hell. Sorrow on Monday rump, unformed breast and still silent vagina child, it is time to recall a childhood, which we skarmlivaet Hollywood teeth. This white Negrito under ominous Goat tavern, diggers worms, coddle with cataracts, in the white insects, chumazye proletarians and other horrors behind the faces of young angels beings.

If I missed anything, let me know.

10) Shoulder Pads

I don’t know whose idea it was that women who look like linebackers are more attractive. The shoulder pad, like the padded bra or elevator shoes, were designed to change the way a woman looked, as opposed to accentuating what they already had. I guess sloping shoulders were considered unattractive, but being shaped like Spongebob Squarepants was wicked sexy.

Some trends I won’t see as obnoxious or ugly when they first come out, and it isn’t until a few years later will I realize exactly how stupid they were.

Like a random bandaid on the face, the whole hat thing probably became popular because a rap artist was too drunk to notice he hadn’t properly dressed. The next thing you know Ludacris is going to piss himself on stage, and we’ll have legions of kids walking around with a wet stain between their legs. Abercrombie & Fitch will begin to sell pre-urinated-on jeans for $220, and Wal-Mart will eliminate bathroom breaks for their Chinese factory workers and just store the jeans under their chairs.

8) Leg Warmers

So I saw Footloose the other day. Yup. Lots o’ leg warmers.

7) Shirts with stupid sayings on them

I’ve talked about these before, and I am guilty of exploiting this trend from time to time. While there’s nothing really wrong with slogan shirts, especially when you’re just lounging around, there’s this invisible line that goes from innocuous to annoying to really, mind-crunchingly stupid. And this whole semi-recent crop of sayings shirts are all in that third category.

You know how they say when something is so traumatic, you can forget about it? You know what I mean. Repressed memories and all that jazz. Well, I forgot about these, and I was happier because of it.

Then I saw Rex (Diedrich Bader) in the movie Napoleon Dynamite sporting an American Flag version of these, and it all came rushing back.

Zubaz. Clown pajama pants. That you wear out in public.

I’m combining these even though they could each be their own category. Anyway, I’m not sure if this has been scientifically proven or not, but I’m pretty certain if a straight guy wore a half shirt (crop top/bellyshirt/whatever) out in public sometime during his lifetime, he is haunted by nightmares where he is turned magically into Prince. This can only be cured by therapy. And if it’s not dealt with, it really happens.

And as far as half sweaters and half jackets are concerned… I guess what irks me the most is the transparency of the outfits. People wear jackets and sweaters because they’re cold. But in the case of the cropped sweater/jacket, they’re wearing it to be fashionable, and that’s it.

I was in grade school when these were the rage. The coolest thing ever was to wear parachute pants along with one of those red and black Michael Jackson jackets and try to moonwalk in the gravel during recess.

3) Spandex bodysuits

Bruce Dickinson has spandex amnesty because he’s a real-life superhero.

Almost every metal band from the 80’s decked themselves out from head to toe in full-body spandex. And because of it, they had legions of screaming women clawing over each other just so they could reach up toward their package and squeal like pigs on fire.

"No matter how buff I get, the guys still make fun of me, and I don’t know why."

Twenty years from now, a lot of people are going to be showing pictures of themselves to their children, and their kids are going to say, "Daddy, why were your pants falling down? Why are you showing your underwear?"

"Well, son," they’ll say, patting junior on the head. "It was the fashion back then."

1) Grills

In case you don’t know what Grills are, read this. Basically it’s cosmetic teeth so you look like that Jaws guy from the James Bond movies.

Pervitin, a stimulant commonly known as speed today, was the German army’s — the Wehrmacht’s — wonder drug.

On May 20, 1940, the 22-year-old soldier wrote to his family again: "Perhaps you could get me some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?" And, in a letter sent from Bromberg on July 19, 1940, he wrote: "If at all possible, please send me some more Pervitin." The man who wrote these letters became a famous writer later in life. He was Heinrich Boell, and in 1972 he was the first German to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in the post-war period.

Many of the Wehrmacht’s soldiers were high on Pervitin when they went into battle, especially against Poland and France — in a Blitzkrieg fueled by speed. The German military was supplied with millions of methamphetamine tablets during the first half of 1940. The drugs were part of a plan to help pilots, sailors and infantry troops become capable of superhuman performance. The military leadership liberally dispensed such stimulants, but also alcohol and opiates, as long as it believed drugging and intoxicating troops could help it achieve victory over the Allies. But the Nazis were less than diligent in monitoring side-effects like drug addiction and a decline in moral standards.

After it was first introduced into the market in 1938, Pervitin, a methamphetamine drug newly developed by the Berlin-based Temmler pharmaceutical company, quickly became a top seller among the German civilian population. According to a report in the Klinische Wochenschrift ("Clinical Weekly"), the supposed wonder drug was brought to the attention of Otto Ranke, a military doctor and director of the Institute for General and Defense Physiology at Berlin’s Academy of Military Medicine. The effects of amphetamines are similar to those of the adrenaline produced by the body, triggering a heightened state of alert. In most people, the substance increases self-confidence, concentration and the willingness to take risks, while at the same time reducing sensitivity to pain, hunger and thirst, as well as reducing the need for sleep. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on 90 university students, and concluded that Pervitin could help the Wehrmacht win the war. At first Pervitin was tested on military drivers who participated in the invasion of Poland. Then, according to criminologist Wolf Kemper, it was "unscrupulously distributed to troops fighting at the front."

Thirty-five million tablets

Even then, doctors were concerned about the fact that the regeneration phase after taking the drug was becoming increasingly long, and that the effect was gradually decreasing among frequent users. In isolated cases, users experienced health problems like excessive perspiration and circulatory disorders, and there were even a few deaths. Leonardo Conti, the German Reich’s minister of health and an adherent of Adolf Hitler’s belief in asceticism, attempted to restrict the use of the pill, but was only moderately successful, at least when it came to the Wehrmacht. Although Pervitin was classified as a restricted substance on July 1, 1941, under the Opium Law, ten million tablets were shipped to troops that same year.

Pervitin was generally viewed as a proven drug to be used when soldiers were likely to be subjected to extreme stress. A memorandum for navy medical officers stated the following: "Every medical officer must be aware that Pervitin is a highly differentiated and powerful stimulant, a tool that enables him, at any time, to actively and effectively help certain individuals within his range of influence achieve above-average performance."

"Their spirits suddenly improved"

It took almost six months for the report to reach the military’s senior medical command. But its response was merely to issue new guidelines and instructions for using Pervitin, including information about risks that barely differed from earlier instructions. The "Guidelines for Detecting and Combating Fatigue," issued June 18, 1942, were the same as they had always been: "Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours."

Toward the end of the war, the Nazis were even working on a miracle pill for their troops. In the northern German seaport of Kiel, on March 16, 1944, then Vice-Admiral Hellmuth Heye, who later became a member of parliament with the conservative Christian Democratic party and head of the German parliament’s defense committee, requested a drug "that can keep soldiers ready for battle when they are asked to continue fighting beyond a period considered normal, while at the same time boosting their self-esteem."

A short time later, Kiel pharmacologist Gerhard Orzechowski presented Heye with a pill code-named D-IX. It contained five milligrams of cocaine, three milligrams of Pervitin and five milligrams of Eukodal (a morphine-based painkiller). Nowadays, a drug dealer caught with this potent a drug would be sent to prison. At the time, however, the drug was tested on crew members working on the navy’s smallest submarines, known as the "Seal" and the "Beaver."

Alcohol consumption was encouraged

"The military command turned a blind eye to alcohol consumption, as long as it didn’t lead to public drunkenness among the troops," says Freiburg historian Peter Steinkamp, an expert on drug abuse in the Wehrmacht.

But in July 1940, after France was defeated, Hitler issued the following order: "I expect that members of the Wehrmacht who allow themselves to be tempted to engage in criminal acts as a result of alcohol abuse will be severely punished." Serious offenders could even expect "a humiliating death."

But the temptations of liquor were apparently more powerful that the Fuehrer’s threats. Only a year later, the commander-in-chief of the German military, General Walther von Brauchitsch, concluded that his troops were committing "the most serious infractions" of morality and discipline, and that the culprit was "alcohol abuse." Among the adverse effects of alcohol abuse he cited were fights, accidents, mistreatment of subordinates, violence against superior officers and "crimes involving unnatural sexual acts." The general believed that alcohol was jeopardizing "discipline within the military."

According to an internal statistic compiled by the chief of the medical corps, 705 military deaths between September 1939 and April 1944 could be linked directly to alcohol. The unofficial figure was probably much higher, because traffic accidents, accidents involving weapons and suicides were frequently caused by alcohol use. Medical officers were instructed to admit alcoholics and drug addicts to treatment facilities. According to an order issued by the medical service, this solution had "the advantage that it could be extended indefinitely." Once incarcerated in these facilities, addicts were evaluated under the provisions of the "Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases," and could even be subjected to forced sterilization and euthanasia.

Executing a bootlegger

The execution of a 36-year-old officer in Norway in the fall of 1942 was intended to set an example. The officer, who was a driver, had sold five liters of methyl alcohol, which he claimed was 98 percent alcohol and could be used to produce liquor, to an infantry regiment’s anti-tank defense unit. Several soldiers fell ill, and two died. The man, deemed an "enemy of the people," was executed by a firing squad. According to the daily order issued on October 2, 1942, "the punishment shall be announced to the troops and auxiliary units, and it shall be used as a tool for repeated and insistent admonishment."

But soldiers apparently felt that anything that could help them escape the horrors of war was justifiable. Despite general knowledge of the risks involved, morphine addiction became widespread among the wounded and medical personnel during the course of the war. Four times as many military doctors were addicted to morphine by 1945 than at the beginning of the war.

Franz Wertheim, a medical officer who was sent to a small village near the Western Wall on May 10, 1940, wrote the following account: "To help pass the time, we doctors experimented on ourselves. We would begin the day by drinking a water glass of cognac and taking two injections of morphine. We found cocaine to be useful at midday, and in the evening we would occasionally take Hyoskin," an alkaloid derived from some varieties of the nightshade plant that is used as a medication. Wertheim adds: "As a result, we were not always fully in command of our senses."

German doctors experimented on themselves

The Nazi leadership was more lenient with those who became drug-addicted as a result of the war than with alcoholics, probably because the Wehrmacht was concerned that it could be sued for damages, because it was in fact responsible for dispensing the drugs in the first place.

 Most computers store data on magnetic hard disk drives, in which the direction – “up” or “down” – of the magnetic moments in a small region of the disk corresponds to a binary bit. Data are read by a magneto-resistance element and written by heating the bit with a laser and then flipping the moments with a magnetic field pulse from a tiny coil.

The cost and complexity of hard drives could be reduced significantly if data could instead be read and written using light alone. While some commercial hard drives now use light to read data from magnetic bits, a technique for writing data using only light had remained elusive.

Now, Theo Rasing and colleagues at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands along with researchers at Nihon University in Japan have shown that a single laser pulse can flip the magnetization of a 5 µm spot on a thin magnetic film from up to down and vice versa – without the need for an external magnetic field.

The pulse was only 40 fs (10-15 s) long – much shorter than the magnetic field pulses used in hard drives, which cannot be made much shorter than about 2 ns. Indeed, the 40 fs switching time had been thought to be impossible because in 2004, a 2 ps lower limit on controlled magnetic switching had been established by another team of physicists.

The laser pulse was circularly polarized, which means that it creates an intense but highly localized magnetic field within the material. The pulse was switched between two polarization states, which flips the direction of the field.

The researchers did their experiments on an alloy of gadolinium, iron and cobalt, which is used widely in magneto-optic data storage devices. The team is now checking to see if the switching occurs in materials with higher coercivity, which could allow an all-optical memory to achieve the same storage density as a conventional hard drive.

Rasing has patented the write process and he is confident that it will be commercialized. However, he admits that anyone wanting to build a hard drive using the technology would have to overcome the significant challenge of how to build a tiny laser that can also produce an intense pulse of circularly-polarized light that can be focussed down to a spot 50 nm in diameter, which is much smaller than the wavelength of the laser light. “But these are solvable problems,” he says.