Robots Teach Each Other To Sing (I'm Sure I Was In A Band With These Guys Once)

After what must've been a few painful minutes of rehearsal, a few robots built by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research have preformed what we assume to be their first and last paid gig: a rendition of Happy Birthday to celebrate the 100th of the Science Museum in the UK. What's interesting about these bots -- outside of their horrible ear for music and laughable singing voices is the fact that they've actually been programmed to communicate and teach each other to sing through the process of singing to each other. Videos of both painful acts are after the break, and while we wouldn't call it art, we shouldn't throw stones: we've been in plenty of garage bands that sounded quite a bit worse.

link: Tone-deaf robots teach each other to sing, passionately butcher a Happy Birthday rendition

In-Fighting over Health Care: Activists v. Lukewarm Democrats

Ceci Connolly writes:

In the high-stakes battle over health care, a growing cadre of liberal activists is aiming its sharpest firepower against Democratic senators who they accuse of being insufficiently committed to the cause.

The attacks -- ranging from tart news releases to full-fledged advertising campaigns -- have elicited rebuttals from lawmakers and sparked a debate inside the party over the best strategy for achieving President Obama's top priority of a comprehensive health-system overhaul.

link: Health-Care Activists Are Targeting Democrats Who Are Usually Allies - washingtonpost.com

New Old Hemingway: Revised, or Revisionist "Moveable Feast"?

Early next month, Scribner, now an imprint of Simon & Schuster, is publishing a new edition of the book, what it is calling “the restored edition,” and this time it is edited by Seán Hemingway, a grandson of Hemingway and Pauline. Among the changes he has made is removing part of that final chapter from the main body of the book and placing it in an appendix, adding back passages from Hemingway’s manuscript that Seán believes paint his grandmother in a more sympathetic light.

“I think this edition is right to set the record straight,” said Seán Hemingway, 42, who said Mary cut out Hemingway’s “remorse and some of the happiness he felt and his very conflicted views he had about the end of his marriage.”

Scholars are clear that this new edition should not be regarded as definitive any more than the 1964 version. “This book can’t become a sacred text,” said Ann Douglas, a professor of literature at Columbia University, adding that “there can be no final text because there is not one.”

link: ‘Moveable Feast’ Is Recast by Hemingway Grandson - NYTimes.com

New Power Struggle in Iran?

The power struggle inside Iran appears to be moving from the streets into the heart of the regime itself this weekend amid reports that Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani is plotting to undermine the power of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Rafsanjani's manoeuvres against Khamenei come as tensions between the speaker of the parliament, Ali Larijani, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also appeared to be coming to a head.

link: Battle for Iran shifts from the streets to the heart of power | World news | The Observer

Neda's Family Forced from Home?

A British newspaper says Neda's family has been forced from its home. CNN's Octavia Nasr reports

link: CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

Leathered Up and Sweatin'

As this weekend’s New York gay-pride parade rises to new heights of respectability, The Daily Beast goes off the beaten path to attend “Leather Pride Day,” an old-school, X-rated orgy of outrageous behavior.

link: Getting Whipped at Leather Pride - Page 1 - The Daily Beast

Attempt to Break Saxophone Record: and I Don't Mean Coltrane's "Ascension"

The Shuffle Demons, famous for a brassy mid-eighties pop song called 'Spadina Bus', are up to some Canada Day shenanigans this week as part of the Toronto Jazz Festival.

The band is celebrating their 25th anniversary, a remarkable milestone considering the transient nature of the Canadian music industry. This Wednesday they are attempting to break a Guinness World Record for the largest saxophone ensemble...ever.

Our fair city held the previous record in 2004 (also orchestrated by the Shuffle Demons) but it was broken by a group of Taiwanese sax players last year.

The Demons', headed by frontman Richard Underhill, will be leading approximately 950 sax players in a five-minute version of 'Oh Canada'. Hosted at Nathan Phillips Square, this brazen concert will be among the largest, and definitely jazziest, Canada Day celebrations in the country.

link: The Shuffle Demons: Saxophone World Record Attempt

{Note from TRH: this makes me very, very happy to contemplate.}

Underdog: New World's Ugliest Dog a Dark, Err, Horse

It was an upset victory for Pabst, who beat former champion Rascal, a pedigree Chinese Crested.

link: Pabst Wins World's Ugliest Dog Contest

The Most Perfect Spherical Objects on the Planet

Recently the most perfect spheres in the world were created as an answer to the "kilogram problem." Made to replace a chunk of platinum and iridium that has defined how much a kilogram weighs for 120 years (the weight of the metal has been changing ever so slowly ) the spheres are about the size of a melon and almost perfectly round. They are likely the most perfectly spherical objects on the planet.

"If you were to blow up our spheres to the size of the Earth, you would see a small ripple in the smoothness of about 12 to 15 mm, and a variation of only 3 to 5 metres in the roundness"

link: Spheres of Influence: A Collection of Spherical Sites - Boing Boing

RIP Antonio Bianco, One of the Greatest Diamond Cutters

Margalit Fox writes:

Whenever Antonio Bianco started singing at his workbench, it meant that the lump of carbon he had spent months transforming into a world-class diamond was nearly finished. Hoda Esphahani, an executive of the diamond company for which Mr. Bianco did much of his work, used to listen for that sound.

“He sang opera,” Ms. Esphahani, the president of Safdico USA, recalled in an interview in the company’s New York offices on Monday. “And when he was singing opera, I knew that the stone was almost done, and we’d have great results.”

Mr. Bianco, his colleagues said, was a Stradivari of stones, one of the most renowned diamond cutters in the world. For more than 30 years he worked in blissful anonymity in New York’s diamond district, cutting some of the largest, rarest and most valuable stones of his time — stones important enough to have their own names. The diamonds Mr. Bianco cut are owned by some of the world’s most prominent collectors, among them Hollywood film stars and crowned heads of state.

link: Antonio Bianco, Master Diamond Cutter, Dies at 57 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Iran: "Defeated" Candidates Reject Compromise

Parisa Hafezi writes:

Defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mirhossein Mousavi on Saturday rejected authorities' proposals for a partial recount of votes from this month's election and repeated his demand the entire ballot be annulled.

Iran's top legislative body, the Guardian Council, had offered to recount 10 percent of ballot boxes from the June 12 vote in the presence of senior officials representing the government and opposition.

"This kind of recount will not remove ambiguities...There is no other way but annulment of the vote...Some members of this committee are not impartial," Mousavi said in a statement posted on his website.

Another beaten candidate, pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi, also rejected the partial recount offer in a statement on his site.

link: Mousavi rejects partial Iran vote recount | Reuters

Cancer Research Focuses on the Wrong Kind of Survival

Gina Kolata writes:

The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Richard M. Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946.

Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began.

One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that the focus will be on small projects unlikely to take significant steps toward curing cancer.

“These grants are not silly, but they are only likely to produce incremental progress,” said Dr. Robert C. Young, chancellor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and chairman of the Board of Scientific Advisors, an independent group that makes recommendations to the cancer institute.

link: Forty Years' War - Playing It Safe in Cancer Research - Series - NYTimes.com

California Turns Against Grass (No, Not THAT Kind)

Cut the grass will you?...Are you done edging?....Time to water the grass...Grass is too long!...Feed the grass...Grass is too high. Suburban US teens of an earlier generation will remember hearing these very expressions, having grown up with acres of the Kentucky blue. Now it's pretty much the landscaping service that gets an earfull.

Things are changing, though, in places where water is increasingly scarce and costly. Californians, in fact, have good incentives to rip it up. Los Angeles Times reports on this with their story: The Dry Garden: L.A. offers rebate for ripping out your lawn.

link: "Go Dry" Movement Spreads, As Californians Rip Up Their Grass Lawns : TreeHugger

Book Review: the Daughters of God the Father

Sholto Byrnes writes:

The question of whether God hates women is not one that can be answered with certainty; not least since, by the time any of us dared ask a putative deity such an impertinent question, we would be in no position to communicate the response to our fellows. You don't have to read very far into this aggressive polemic, however, to be sure that its authors certainly hate God. Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom have marshalled plenty of evidence to make their case that the "God of bullies" persecutes and subjugates women, and they hit the reader with some of the most horrific examples straight off. (By page three, for instance, we have already reached the anal rape of a 55-year-old widow with a chilli paste-covered police truncheon.) The main religions were all founded at times when patriarchy was an unchallenged notion, they argue, and still enshrine male domination today. Honour killings, female genital mutilation, violence against women, sexual slavery, marriage with minors: they're all explicitly justified or lent respectability by religion.

link: Does God Hate Women?, By Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom - Reviews, Books - The Independent

Gay Rights: Memo to Politicians--Catch Up or it will Catch Up with You

The conflicting signals from the White House about its commitment to gay issues reflect a broader paradox: even as cultural acceptance of homosexuality increases across the country, the politics of gay rights remains full of crosscurrents.

It is reflected in the surge of gay men and lesbians on television and in public office, and in polls measuring a steady rise in support for gay rights measures. Despite approval in California of a ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, it has been authorized in six states.

link: Political Memo - Political Shifts on Gay Rights Lag Behind Culture - NYTimes.com

O Arizona: Our Educators Protest Another Raw Deal

Teachers and public school supporters gathered on the State Capitol lawn Saturday morning, to speak out against what they call a Republic deal crafted behind closed doors.

The amended budget proposal includes tax decreases and cuts to education and other government programs.

"Ultimately it's not even about the teachers that have lost their jobs, although that's a tragedy itself, but it's about the students - the parents," said David Hill who received a RIF notice from Scottsdale Unified School District.

Protesters called the recent budget agreement between the legislature and the governor a back-room budget deal.

link: Education Advocates Protest 'Back-Door Budget' - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix

O Arizona: The Cameras Suck! Stick to your Guns! (Well, not literally. . . .)

Arizona senators beat back an attempt to remove a ban on state highway speed enforcement cameras from a bill moving through the Legislature.

The move is the latest development for a controversial measure that already had languished this year. It came in a rare Saturday session scheduled so Senators could act on a crush of bills before the fiscal year ends on Tuesday.

After the measure appeared dead over concerns about violating a contract with the company that operates the cameras, a Senate committee added the photo enforcement ban to a wide-ranging transportation bill it approved Thursday.

link: Senate Advances Radar, Fireworks Bills - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix

O Arizona: Legislature, Get Your Shit Together

Key Arizona lawmakers are drafting emergency legislation that could be used to keep state government going temporarily even if a new budget isn't approved in time -- but not for all of state government nor for very long.

Gov. Jan Brewer and Republican legislative leaders have a proposed a budget compromise, but the next fiscal year begins Wednesday and the full Legislature has yet to approve a new budget.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Russell Pearce said he and his House counterpart are working on temporary spending legislation that likely would cover most of state government initially, possibly for a week.

But Pearce said the spending authority would then "ratchet down" to cover only selected critical services, such as the Department of Corrections.

link: Lawmakers Draft Stopgap Plan - Money News Story - KPHO Phoenix

[**Blogmeister Note: Dept. of Corrections?! Does that top our list of "critical services"? Yeah, probably.**]

Do No Evil: White House Denies Bad Mojo Infinitity Detention Report

The White House dismissed reports that it has drafted an executive order allowing indefinite detention in the United States of some of the top terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay.

An administration official told AFP that no such draft order existed, though internal deliberations were taking place on how to deal with those inmates who could not be released or tried in civilian courts.

The source said that a task force established by the president was not due to present its recommendations until July, and that the administration would then work with Congress to find a solution to the conundrum.

link: AFP: White House denies indefinite detention order

Breaking The Glass Oar: Dante's Daughter Made First Ever Gondolier

VENICE (Reuters) - Nine centuries of male monopoly on the canals of Venice came to an end Friday when the first woman passed the grueling test to become a trainee gondolier.

Giorgia Boscolo, the 23-year-old daughter of a gondolier, got the lowest points for one of the 22 places available, while two other women candidates failed to gain admission at all. She is now authorized to take passengers on her gondola while completing her training.

"I have always been in love with gondolas, unlike my three sisters, and I used to prefer going rowing with my father to going out with my friends," Boscolo told Ansa news agency.

Her father, Dante, said being a gondolier was "a job that requires a lot of physical strength, but with experience you need less effort and my daughter has lots of experience."

link: Venice gets its first woman gondolier | Lifestyle | Reuters

Hariri New Lebanon PM

Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman has named Saad Hariri as the country's new prime minister, following parliamentary election earlier this month.

Mr Hariri's pro-Western alliance won 71 out of 128 seats in the vote, with the Hezbollah-led bloc taking the rest.

His choice as leader was confirmed when 86 MPs backed his nomination.

Mr Hariri, the son of assassinated former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, must now form a cabinet from the country's polarised political factions.

The 39-year-old said he would seek to form a national unity government.

link: BBC NEWS | Middle East | Hariri named as Lebanon's new PM

Democrats Fear Bad Historical Karma

Carle Hulse writes:

As Democrats strained to win over crucial holdouts on the way to narrow, party-line approval of global warming legislation, they were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?

Veteran members of both parties vividly remember when many House Democrats, in the early months of the Clinton administration, reluctantly backed a proposed B.T.U. tax — a new levy on each unit of energy consumed — only to see it ignored by the Senate and seized as a campaign issue by Republicans, who took control of the House the next year.

“A lot of Democrat members got burnt on that vote,” warned Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, who called the climate change measure the defining vote of this, the 111th, Congress.

link: Congressional Memo - In Climate Change Bill, What May Become an Election-Year Issue - NYTimes.com

Stackable Electric Cars

MIT's Smart Cities Lab is developing a whole new transportation system for urban environments one element of which could be the stackable City Car.

They are like luggage carts at the airport. You pick one up, use it briefly and drop it off at another location.

The City Car charges while stacked.

"It has displays, batteries onboard and different control systems that help us use the vehicle," said William Lark, an MIT research assistant. "But the key feature of this is the wheel itself.

"Instead of having a traditional drive train with mechanics throughout the vehicle," he said.

"We can localise everything to the wheel itself and do things like turn the wheel a full 120 degrees which allows us to have the vehicle spin on a dime, translate sideways, give you all the freedoms and movements that you might get just moving around as we do as humans today.

link: BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | Robots and cars for the future

Bela Fleck & the African Roots of the Banjo

FOR more than 30 years, the banjoist Béla Fleck has been pushing the boundaries of his instrument. Driven by a need to burnish the banjo’s backwoods image, he has sought out collaborators all over the musical map.

“The banjo has been a much maligned instrument, so I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder,” he said. “I want to prove it’s more than people think it is.”

Mr. Fleck’s evangelism has led him into territory largely uncharted for the banjo, from the Baroque to bebop. Lately, he has delved deeply into the banjo’s African roots, an exploration that he will bring to the Caramoor International Music Festival, in Katonah, on July 3. He plans to explore Indian music next.

link: A Virtuoso of the Banjo Explores Its Roots in African Music - NYTimes.com

"Extreme Missionaries" Embedded with US Troops

Bruce Wilson writes:

A June 23, 2009 report from Al Jazeera (English) by Josh Rushing, "Fault Lines - Religion in the Military", expertly covers a topic the US media has been reluctant to address: an aggressive effort, often abusive, coercive and even illegal, to advance a heavily sectarian, supremacist form of Christianity in the United States military.

Rushing, a United States Marine for 15 years, explained to Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft that he was initially very skeptical but had become personally convinced while researching his story. When Rushing told Scowcroft, "[Al Jazeera] received ...video of missionaries embedding with the US troops," Scowcroft responded, "...I would be very surprised if that were true. Missionaries embedded with the troops - I find a very unusual statement." Rushing then informed Scowcroft that three half-hour show segments were aired on the Trinity Broadcast Network (TBN) popular reality TV show "Travel The Road," in which the show's central characters, "extreme" Christian missionaries Will Decker and Tim Scott, were embedded with US troops in Afghanistan and illegally proselytized and distributed native-language copies of the New Testament. "Travel The Road" claims to reach three million viewers per episode. Scowcraft, incredulous, testily declared he'd look into the matter.

link: Bruce Wilson: Al Jazeera Special Report Covers Advance of Fundamentalism in US Military

The Norm for the Way Things Appear

Michael Llewellyn

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism. - Susan Sontag

Review of THE EAST, THE WEST, AND SEX: That's Right, He Said "Fleshpots"

"The East, the West, and Sex" is the best sort of book about sex: It is replete with anecdotes from history that titillate as they inform and observations on human nature that amuse as they illuminate, all delivered in language and tone that is broadly moral without being moralizing and certainly far from prudish. To his credit, Mr. Bernstein strives hard to avoid prurience, or even the suggestion of it, although occasionally he does drop his guard, as when he writes of Western men being "powerfully drawn to the slim, small-boned, black-haired women of Asia, more plumlike than melonlike of breast, spare rather than full of buttocks and hips."

Mr. Bernstein's survey of Westerners in the fleshpots of the East -- ranging from the 17th century to the present -- is actually cultural history with a point, an attempt to show that nonmonogamous sex in the Orient (at least for men in power) long carried no contingent connotation of sin and was, in fact, a natural part of the masculine condition. While Christian scolds of old viewed such easy sexual possibility as clinching proof of Eastern degeneracy, the more worldly among Western men saw in the East an opportunity for liberation -- for a breaking of the shackles they wore, perforce, in London, Lisbon or Rotterdam, before the West's own sexual revolution.

link: Seeking Pleasure Far From Home - WSJ.com

Guatemalan Twitterer Arrested

Jean Anleu was so fed up with corruption in his country that he decided to vent on the Internet, sending a 96-character message on the social-networking site Twitter.

That message has now earned him a potential five-year prison sentence and the unfortunate distinction of becoming one of the first people in the world to be arrested for a tweet.

Writing under his Internet alias "jeanfer," Anleu urged depositors to pull their money from Guatemala's rural development bank, whose management has been challenged in a political scandal: "First concrete action should be take cash out of Banrural and bankrupt the bank of the corrupt."

These words illegally undermined public trust in Guatemala's banking system, according to prosecutor Genaro Pacheco. Authorities proved Anleu sent the message by searching his Guatemala City home, and then put him in prison with kidnappers, extortionists and other dangerous criminals for a day and a half before letting him out on bail.

link: Guatemalan fears a tweet will make him a jailbird - washingtonpost.com

Courage Campaign: Sign the Petition

Lt. Dan Choi may be fired from the military for refusing to lie about who he loves

Sign a personal letter of support for Dan before Tuesday's trial and help him fight "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

Courage Campaign | Sign the Statement of Support for Lt. Dan Choi

A Lecture Not To Be Missed if You're In Bath: Morbid Anatomy

Please join Morbid Anatomy and Observatory for our next event this Thursday, July 2, at 7:30 PM:

"'Bodies Embalmed by Us NEVER TURN BLACK!' A Brief History of the Hyperstimulated Human Corpse"

John Troyer, Ph.D., Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath Date: Thursday July 2nd Time: 7:30 PM Admission: Free

link: Morbid Anatomy

Department of Rhetorical Absurdity: Republicans Under Threat from Democrats' "Forces of Darkness"

Last week, several Republican House members compared themselves to Iranian protesters, claiming that being in the minority in Congress was just like being violently oppressed in Iran. “I wonder if there isn’t more freedom on the streets of Tehran right now than we are seeing here,” said Rep. David Dreier (R-CA). Reps. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) and John Culberson (R-TX) made similar comparisons on Twitter.

Despite the online uproar that followed the egregious comparisons, Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) went even further today. Complaining about the proposed rules for debate on clean energy legislation, Gingrey compared Democrats to the “forces of darkness” in Iran and North Korea:

GINGREY: Madam speaker, thank you. I rise in opposition to this rule and to the underlying legislation. I’m just not sure to which I’m more opposed. Americans are watching as from Iran to North Korea, the forces of darkness are attempting to silence the forces of democracy and freedom. The irony is on this day, the Democratic process and the nation’s economic freedom are under threat not by some rogue state, but in this very chamber in which we stand. Good people may disagree on the impact or the merits of this bill. But no one can disagree with the fact that the speaker and her rules committee have silenced the opposition.

link: Think Progress » Home Page

Department of Redundancy Department: Jacko to be Plastinated?

According to the Daily Mail, admittedly not the most reputable of sources, Michael Jackson's body will be plastinated by Gunther von Hagens of the controversial Body Worlds exhibition. We'll see.

link: Michael Jackson to be plastinated? - Boing Boing

Guinea-Bissau: Even the Drug Dealers have Bailed

Adam Nossiter writes:

First the general was blown up. Then the president was shot dead, the former prime minister was arrested and tortured, a presidential candidate was killed in his villa and the former defense minister was ambushed and shot on the bridge outside town.

Despite those chilling messages — reportedly executed by men in military uniform — Sunday’s election to replace the assassinated president, João Bernardo Vieira, will go on.

There is jolly music and dancing in the decaying streets; earnest international observers crisscross Bissau, the capital; the remaining candidates hold buoyant rallies in preparation for the vote; and trucks packed with chanting supporters bounce up and down over the little city’s deep potholes.

Underneath, though, there is anxiety and doubt here in Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony that is pitch-black at night because of a lack of electricity and that is so fragile it is being abandoned even by the drug traffickers, according to a United Nations expert.

link: Fragile Nation in Disarray Holds Few Hopes for Vote - NYTimes.com

Iran: Regime Confiscates Opposition Files

Iranian officials have seized documents and computers from a political party that had backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi in the June 12 presidential election, a newspaper reported on Saturday. The reformist Etemad Melli newspaper said "officials inspected the office of Executives of Construction Party in Tehran and took away its documents and computers," without specifying when this took place.

link: AFP: Iran officials seize pro-Mousavi party documents

Space Shuttle Pollution Yields Information

There is new evidence in the debate regarding the 1908 Tunguska event that destroyed 80 million trees in Siberia.

Researchers say that clouds that form at the poles after shuttle launches are due to the turbulent transport of water from shuttle exhaust.

Similar clouds were visible at night long after the Tunguska event.

The Geophysical Research Letters study suggests that an icy comet, rather than a meteor, must have been responsible for the event.

link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Cloud clue in space blast mystery

RIP Ulysses: Plug Finally Pulled on a Very Long Extension Cord

After more than 18 years studying the Sun, the plug is finally being pulled on the ailing spacecraft Ulysses.

Final communication with the joint European-US satellite will take place on 30 June.

The long-serving craft, launched in October 1990, has already served four times its expected design life.

link: BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Light goes out on solar mission

Honduras Discovers Relativity

The president of Honduras said Friday that the situation in his country was relatively calm, despite signs that he has lost the support of his armed forces, the supreme court and other government institutions.

link: Honduras president: Nation calm before controversial vote - CNN.com

O Arizona: The Budget--Get Up to Speed

After weeks of bitter debate, Governor Jan Brewer and Ariz. Sen. President Leader Bob Burns and House Speaker Kirk Adams agreed to a deal on the budget early Friday morning.

They agreed to about $600 million in spending cuts to the state's 2010 budget.

The agreement also puts a controversial proposal to increase the state's sales tax by one cent on the dollar on the November ballot. It would change the state's income tax to a 3 percent flat tax on every Arizona resident, regardless of income.

With the June 30 budget deadline looming, lawmakers tried to get up to speed on the proposal.

link: Arizona Leaders Closer To Budget Deal - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix

Iran Bans Fateh from Leaving Country

Parisa Hafezi writes:

Iran has banned an ally of the country's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi from leaving the Islamic state, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.

Abolfazl Fateh, head of Mousavi's media office, said the ban would not change his political stance, adding he was banned from leaving Iran because of his role in post-election developments.

"Such pressures can not push people like me to change our political stances," he told IRNA. "The imposed ban will not change my political views."

link: Iran bans Mousavi ally from leaving the country | International | Reuters

Regimes Censor Protest News

Out of fear that history might repeat itself, the authoritarian governments of China, Cuba and Burma have been selectively censoring the news this month of Iranian crowds braving government militias on the streets of Tehran to demand democratic reforms.

link: China, Cuba, Other Authoritarian Regimes Censor News From Iran - washingtonpost.com

Global Warming No, Earthquakes Yes

[T]he new project [near San Francisco] will tap geothermal energy by fracturing hard rock more than two miles deep to extract its heat. AltaRock, founded by Susan Petty, a veteran geothermal researcher, has secured more than $36 million from the Energy Department, several large venture-capital firms, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Google. AltaRock maintains that it will steer clear of large faults and that it can operate safely.

But in a report on seismic impact that AltaRock was required to file, the company failed to mention that the Basel [Switzerland] program was shut down because of the earthquake it caused. AltaRock claimed it was uncertain that the project had caused the quake, even though Swiss government seismologists and officials on the Basel project agreed that it did. Nor did AltaRock mention the thousands of smaller earthquakes induced by the Basel project that continued for months after it shut down.

The California project is the first of dozens that could be operating in the United States in the next several years, driven by a push to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases and the Obama administration’s support for renewable energy.

link: Deep in Bedrock, Clean Energy and Quake Fears - NYTimes.com

Munitions to Somalia

Mary Beth Sheridan writes:

The U.S. government has provided about 40 tons of weapons and ammunition to shore up the besieged government of Somalia in the past six weeks and has sent funding to train Somali soldiers, a senior State Department official said yesterday, in the most complete accounting to date of the new American efforts in the strife-torn country.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the military aid was worth less than $10 million and had been approved by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the National Security Council.

"We do not want to see Somalia become a safe haven for foreign terrorists," the official said.

link: U.S. Has Sent 40 Tons of Munitions to Aid Somali Government - washingtonpost.com

Iran: Fragile Calm

Rather than address the underlying issues that led to the most sustained, unexpected challenge to the leadership since the 1979 revolution, the government pressed its effort to recast the entire conflict not as an internal dispute that brought millions of Iranians into the streets, but as one between Iran and outside agents from Europe, the United States and even Saudi Arabia.

It was a narrative that spoke both to the leadership’s belief that it had beaten back the popular outburst, and to the fragility of the calm. “There has been too much violence to forget about it,” said an expatriate Iranian analyst who is not being identified because he has relatives in Iran and is afraid of reprisals against them.

link: Leaders Press End to Iranian Protest Over Election - NYTimes.com

Iran: Endgame for the Protests?

Security-services commanders have reinforced their already heavy presence in Tehran, a week after the beginning of a brutal crackdown that has reined in unrest following contested June 12 presidential elections. Authorities were reported to be continuing to detain, question and prepare legal proceedings against opposition supporters and those alleged to have participated in recent protests. And the country’s hard-line clerics have rallied behind Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in supporting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s declared landslide poll victory.

link: niacINsight