A new equity law passed by President Robert Mugabe to ensure the population gets a majority stake in public-owned firms will plunge Zimbabwe into deeper economic woes, analysts predicted on Monday. “It will entail the destruction of the economy,” Harare-based economist Godfrey Kanyenze said.
Warning sounded over Zim equity law
Fanuel Jongwe
Tue, 11 Mar 2008 05:12:00 GMT
A sad day with my thoughts going to the man who, in my opinion, created the greatest game in the world and filled my developmental years playing in worlds contained wholly in the mind and limited only by the bounds of imagination. RIP Gary.
I wish more kids would get off the inane World of Warcraft and give Dungeons and Dragons a go, D&D version 4 is soon to be released.
According to a post on Troll Lord Games, the company that had published his most recent work, Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away. In 2003, on the now defunct kcgeek.com, we ran an interview with Gygax. I have republished it over on Gadgets. Tiamat consume you fully, Gary. You brought untold amount of fun and joy into my life. This excerpt tickles me:
Q. As far as you know, what was the basic evolution of polyhedral dice? If they existed prior to the creation of Dungeons & Dragons, what were they used for?
To the best of my knowledge I introduced them to gaming, en masse, with D&D in 1974. I found sets of the five platonic solids for sale in a school supply catalog back in 1972, and of course ordered them, used them in creating the D&D game.
Link to interview with discussion [BBG]
Thomas Hawk sez, “In what I can only view as troubling and a move surely to invite more backlash against photographers, London’s Metropolitan police has launched a new counter-terrorism PR campaign complete with anti-photography propaganda. The campaign is meant to encourage people to turn in ‘odd’ seeming people that they see taking photographs.”
“Thousands of people take photos every day,” reads their advertisement being run in London’s major newspapers. “What if one of them seems odd?”
A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has discovered a gene that is able to block HIV, and in turn prevent the onset of AIDS.Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus.”When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus,” said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. “This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.”
Researchers discover gene that blocks HIV
Tags: science, medicine, HIV, research, cutting-edge
The last two years running I have been fortunate enough to do a 3 day walking trail in the Kruger National Park and find the time to step away from cell phones, meetings, traffic and the rat-race in general. These walks provide me much opportunity for friendship, enjoyment, introspection and re-connecting with nature and my place within it. The Kruger Park is an immense wildlife sanctuary in South Africa where game roams free and wild and the natural order prevails; it is roughly the size of Wales and covers nearly 19,000 square kilometers. We drove up to Kruger on Wednesday and entered through the Malelane gate near the bottom of the park. From there we took a slow 2 hour drive up to Skukuza camp where we were to meet the rangers who were to take us the final leg of our journey into the private wilderness areas to Metsie Metsie and our bush camp for the next few days.
The rangers, Steve and Abel, arrived with a big open top Nissan and loaded all our belongings into a trailer and we set out for a scenic one and a half hour drive to Metsie Metsie. A short distance into the wilderness area, where the general public is not allowed, we happened upon this herd of buffalo next to the road. On the whole they were pretty chilled and watched us cautiously, kicking up clouds of dust as they jostled around. There were two buffalo that amused me no end as seen in the picture below, the one on the left just looked old and grumpy and fixed us with a drop-dead Walter Mathau stare while the one on the right was more content with chewing his cud and seemed content to watch the car full of excited pink primates.
We also saw giraffe, elephant and the ever pervasive Impala.
We arrived at our bush-camp which consisted of 4 A-frame sleeping huts raised off the floor away from night-prowlers, snakes and scorpions; a thatched boma where we would eat our main meals, a camp fire area, a kitchen unit with fridge to keep the beers cool, ablution facilities and a bird/game hide overlooking a river and game trail.
As we were driving in through the gates we all noticed one lone hut nearest the gate and quite isolated from the rest of the camp and for some reason this was nicknamed broke-back hut to much hilarity. As the car stopped there was a mad dash by all to not end up being the two sleeping in broke-back hut and thus Chris and I found ourselves carrying out stuff out to ‘broke-back’; this ended up being a theme of much ragging and good humour for the remainder of the stay. After unpacking we settled in around the fire and watched the sun float gently down to the horizon; dinner was served and we retired back to the campfire. I am always over-awed by how loud almost total silence can be; The only sounds after the banter had died down was the pop and crackle of the wood as it was consumed in a quiet roar of heat, the occasional call of nearby hyena and the splintering of trees as the great lone bull elephants foraged in the darkness. The orange flicker of the flames becomes your entire universe, the stresses and importance of modern life suddenly seem a million miles away. Bruce Bryden said it best in his wonderful book A Game Ranger Remembers:
“Imagine you’re sitting somewhere in the Kruger National Park a little after nightfall, and enjoy the stories. Everybody knows that the best ones are told around a campfire, when the world is bounded by the flickering edges of the fire’s light and you sit on a rickety folding chair, wriggling toes that are sore from a day’s walking, your well-worn jersey keeping the cold away from your sweated-out body, a can of ice-cold beer sending frissons down your face as you roll it against your forehead. That’s when the good tales come creeping out, while the night creatures sing their unforgettable accompaniment from somewhere out in the great darkness that falls so swiftly over Africa when each day’s sun has set.”
The next morning we were woken at 5:30 by the banging of an African drum and Abel bringing a wash basin with hot water to the front of each hut. After a quick face wash we all met round the camp-fire as the first light of day painted the sky in beautiful gradients of colour; A cup of coffee and a rusk and then we set offon our first mornings walk.
The walk took us up alongside a mostly dry river, small pools of water had collected in little pools where wither the clay soil permitted excellent water retention or where natural springs fed the pools. Bounded on both sides by rock walls we followed the river’s contour up to the big pools where hippo had taken sanctuary from the dryness of winter. The river bed itself was fascinating in it’s rock formations and plant life; the wonderful diversity of rocks made me wish that I’d taken Geology as a subject in university.
In due course our guides brought us to a halt and said that we were getting to the hippos and we should proceed quietly and in single file. We saw the pool from a distance and had circumvent the pool to a viewing point above and the the back of a pool, where a sheer rock wall provided us a safe vantage point to view these magnificent animals. The pool itself was muddy and covered in a frothy scum, the hippos seemed perfectly happy and would break the surface of the scum to look at us, wave their tiny ears and then plunge with much exaggeration and puffing back beneath the water.
After about half an hour of watching the hippo we set out again and we were immediately greeted by a beautiful green pool so out of character with the rest of the surroundings as to be startling; the green colour was due to an algae growing in the water. The water between the algae looked clean, more so than the muddy grime of the hippo pool and it was this that that our guide said lured many animals to drink at pools like this and then ultimately perish. The algae apparently causes the water to become toxic, a death-sentence to any person or animal drinking from it.
A steep and intense climb out of the river and up the side of the mountain brought us breathless and pouring perspiration to our morning breakfast spot. Breakfast was at about 9am and consisted of provita, cheese, dried fruit, cold boerewors (spiced sausage) and fruit juice. It was a nice little spot in the shade with a view.
The rest of the walk was in the fierce heat of the day, the sun was relentless and the terrain quite difficult ranging in extremes from ankle-breaking rocks to soft river sand. Walking along the river we came to an enormous boulder sitting like a giant in the middle of nowhere; Paul didn’t pass up an opportunity for a little climbing practice.
An interesting bit of bug-lore belonged to the communal web spiders that bind leaves together to make their dwellings. Hundreds to thousands of these little spiders then live inside these structures safe from the fierce heat of day and emerge to hunt in the evening. Steve told us that small birds sometimes get caught in the webs and fall foul to a thousand tiny bites.
By 11:30 we were all thankful to be back at the vehicle for a short drive back to camp; Steve put the windscreen of the vehicle down which provided wonderful cooling air for our ride home. On our return to camp we were fortunate in having two elephant coming to drink near the hide. We sat and watched them, sipping cold beer and cool drinks, until lunch was served. The one elephant seemed in a jolly mood and let loose with all 40kg’s of erect elephant penis. We watched in awed silence as he proceeded to waggle it around and scratch his belly with it.
After a feast of a brunch we all retired to a sleepy siesta out of the sweltering heat. The drum went at 3:30pm and it was time to head out again. After another short drive we came to a watering hole with a large reservoir about 100m to the left of it. Elephants started emerging silently from the bush to drink. Elephants are apparently quite fussy about the quality of their water and the larger ones would poke their trunks over the top of the reservoir, fill them with nice clean water and squirt it into their mouths. We were quite unprepared for the size of the elephant herd coming to drink and they numbered anywhere from 50 – 80 elephants. There were a number of babies in the herd and the females accompanied them down to the water where they drank and then wallowed in the mud.
One of the babies was very curious about a lone crocodile at the far side of the watering hole and crept round for a better look. He tried on a number of times to get close to the croc but each time his ear-flapping nerve failed him and he was forced to retreat. It all came to a head when on the final attempt he got too close and the croc opened his cavernous maw; this proved too much for the baby ellie who made a hasty retreat back to the safety of the herd.
I was fortunate enough to have my tripod with me and was able to take a number of really nice sunset pictures and capture the slow unhurried return of the now-satiated elephants back to the sanctuary of the bush.
We returned to camp after the sun had fully set and given sway to the silent blackness of night. We had a wonderful dinner and retired to the warmth and comfort of the campfire where we sat initially sipping port,talking and joking and then slowly conversation ebbed away and a peaceful stillness settled over us as we watched the flames and the majestic stars in their full splendor turned slowly overhead. Dennis had brought his telescope with him and earlier we were lucky enough to see the binary stars of Alpha Centauri and Jupiter and 4 of its moons. We all soon drifted off to bed, foot sore and weary but looking forward to another day of adventure. (days 3 and 4 to follow ..\)
Technorati Tags: South Africa , Kruger Park , Nature , Bush , Bushveld , Trees , Animals , Wildlife , Photography , Elephant , Spiders , Hippopotamus , Hippo , Sunset , Water , Campfire , Watering Hole
Thanks to the awesome TWIT (This week in tech) podcast I discovered the Tumblr website (www.tumblr.com)
Tumblr is a blog-lite if you will; a place to collect and share posting stuff such as videos, captions, pictures and general web-content. For so long I have wanted a place to post these snippets without diluting what I am trying to achieve in terms of content and debate on the thoughtmenagerie.
Tumblr is just that sort of place and thus my new collections and interest blog Mark of Insanity is born.
Mail & Guardian Online
Hainuallah’s days in a destitute border village in Pakistan all seemed exactly the same: a trip to the madrasa (religious school), the return home, dinner, and then creeping into bed. Of course it was boring, says the Pakistani teenager from the border province of Waziristan. Then one day, a preacher told him about a way out of the boredom — a sure ticket to a paradise filled with voluptuous virgin nymphs and milk and honey running under fruit-laden trees. “I came to Afghanistan to carry out a suicide attack on Americans,” Hainuallah, who uses only one name, told an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter. “The mullah said it would earn me entry into Paradise where you live with houris [virgin nymphs] and streams of milk and honey forever.”
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully directed adult stem cells from mice to develop into bone and muscle cells with the aid of a custom-designed ink-jet printer. They say it’s a first step toward better understanding tissue regeneration, which may one day lead to therapies for repairing damaged tissues, as occurs in osteoarthritis. For years, tissue engineers have used souped-up printers, and in some cases off-the-shelf models, to print "bio-inks." These inks consist of anything from proteins to individual cells printed in microscopic patterns. By printing layer upon layer of cell patterns, scientists may one day be able to "print" whole tissues or organs for replacement therapies.
In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians. Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas. “I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. “Mice with diabetes suddenly didn’t have diabetes any more.”
The researchers caution they have yet to confirm their findings in people, but say they expect results from human studies within a year or so. Any treatment that may emerge to help at least some patients would likely be years away from hitting the market. But the excitement of the team from Sick Kids, whose work is being published today in the journal Cell, is almost palpable. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Dr. Hans Michael Dosch, an immunologist at the hospital and a leader of the studies. “In my career, this is unique.” Their conclusions upset conventional wisdom that Type 1 diabetes, the most serious form of the illness that typically first appears in childhood, was solely caused by auto-immune responses — the body’s immune system turning on itself.
They also conclude that there are far more similarities than previously thought between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes, and that nerves likely play a role in other chronic inflammatory conditions, such as asthma and Crohn’s disease. The “paradigm-changing” study opens “a novel, exciting door to address one of the diseases with large societal impact,” said Dr. Christian Stohler, a leading U.S. pain specialist and dean of dentistry at the University of Maryland, who has reviewed the work.
As the world’s greatest chess player, Garry Kasparov employed his
formidable intellect to outwit rivals before seizing on a weakness to
crush them. The Russian grandmaster is now applying those skills to a
new game of strategy aimed at defeating his toughest opponent of all —
President Putin. At stake, he argues, is the fate of Russian democracy.
Mr Kasparov has devoted himself to politics since retiring from
professional chess last year. He regards Mr Putin as a dictator whose
authoritarian rule threatens to return Russia to a dark past.
photo by Santosh Korthiwada.
Seven thousand fewer girls are born in India each day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex-determination tests, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said on Tuesday.
The problem of female foeticide has significantly worsened since 1991, Unicef said at the India launch of its State of the World’s Children 2007 report.
Out of 71 000 children born every day in India, just 31 000 are girls — giving a sex ratio of 882 girls to 1 000 boys.
But the global sex ratio — which is 954 girls to 1 000 boys — suggests that 38,000 girls should be born in India every day.
Despite laws banning sex-determination tests, female foeticide is common in much of India, where families view boys as being a better asset than girls.
"It feels like the skin is being ripped from your face, but the military says it’s perfectly safe."
The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you’ve been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. You’ve just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq — even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects. According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force’s Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games. The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
..snip..
The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million [of your taxpayers dollars]. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military’s claims. The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72134-0.html?tw=rss.index
What to You Think?
A 15-year-old girl’s effort to start a Caucasian Club at her California high school has won her some support — and an avalanche of anger.
Freshman Lisa McClelland gathered about 250 signatures from students and adults to start a club at Freedom High School in Oakley, Calif., that would focus attention on European heritage and history.
Her campaign has won the support of many students, not all of them white, who say such a group would be no different from the school’s other ethnic clubs, which include the Black Student Union, the Latinos Unidos and the ALOHA club for Asian-American students.”I applaud Lisa McClelland. She should be allowed to be proud of her heritage and want to know more about it just like anyone else,” said one student on the high school’s e-mail forum. “What a bunch of hypocrites when people start using the word ‘racist.’ Why isn’t the Latino club racist? Or the Asian or African-American club?”
But the Caucasian Club has run into opposition from those who accuse the club of fueling racial tension.
more …
A ship carrying some 3,000 metric tonnes of toxic waste has arrived in the French port of Le Havre from the main Ivory Coast city, Abidjan.
The waste, which is to be neutralised, was dumped in Ivory Coast in August, and has been blamed for causing the deaths of 10 people there.
In addition, more than 60 people were taken to hospital and up to 100,000 had vomiting and breathing problems.
Ivory Coast has begun an inquiry into the waste, shipped by a Dutch firm.
The ship, the MN Toucan, arrived in Le Havre after a 10-day journey from Abidjan with 141 sealed containers on board.
France’s Ecology Minister Nelly Olin said Ivory Coast had asked for French help because it “was not able to treat” the waste.
The Chinese military is on a campaign to acquire Australia’s military secrets. There are massive implications if the information gets out.
A special investigation by Sunday reveals that representatives of the People’s Liberation Army of China have made at least four separate attempts to acquire secret, high-tech weaponry.
“Metal Storm” is the name given to a deadly weapon being developed by a Brisbane based company. The weapon has been identified by the US Department of Defence as a technology so deadly that it must not be allowed to get into the hands of America’s enemies.
In one instance, a Chinese-Australian man on a trip to China was approached by a powerful bureaucrat with a secret proposition. The Chinese army needed someone to help them get their hands on “Metal Storm” weapons technology. Money was no object and a multi-million-dollar commission was the reward.
In another audacious approach to acquire the weapon, there was an attempt to lure the inventor of the technology to Beijing in return for a huge cash payment: “They said we don’t want metal storm weapons, we don’t want the paper work, we want you in Beijing.”
The Chinese were so persistent that the Brisbane man feared for his safety and contacted the Defence Department’s security service for protection: “What I was expected to do in Beijing was to divulge all the knowledge I had to enable prototypes to be built for the weapons system to be developed.”
more…
The Economist
BY HIS own standard George Bush is failing in his pledge, set out in
the state-of-the-union address in 2002, that “the United States of
America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten
us with the world’s most destructive weapons”. Of the three countries
he named at the time as part of the “axis of evil”, Mr Bush invaded
Iraq but found no nuclear programme and he has been unable to stop Iran
from rushing ahead with uranium enrichment that many fear is designed
to make atomic bombs. This week, he proved powerless to stop North
Korea from carrying out what it claimed was its first nuclear test.Given the relatively small size of the underground explosion, there
are doubts that North Korea really succeeded in detonating a nuclear
bomb. Some experts now suggest it was a “fizzle”—conventional
explosives around the core detonated, but failed to set off a full
nuclear explosion. Either way, it shows that North Korea really is
determined to count itself as a member of the nuclear club, which may
tempt Japan, South Korea or even Taiwan to join too. Similarly, a
nuclear Iran might prompt Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria or Egypt to
follow suit.
Norwich – Global warming over the coming century could mean a return of
temperatures last seen in the age of the dinosaur and lead to the
extinction of up to half of all species, a scientist said on Thursday.
Not only will carbon dioxide levels be at the highest levels for 24
million years, but global average temperatures will be higher than for
up to 10 million years, said Chris Thomas of the University of York.
Between 10 and 99 percent of species will be faced with atmospheric
conditions that last existed before they evolved, and as a result from
10 to 50 percent of them could disappear.
“We may very well already be on the breaking edge of a wave of mass
extinctions,” Thomas told the annual meeting of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science.
I get spam, a lot of it – every day I sit and have to sift
the Viagra and penis enlargement operations from my regular email. To say
it irritates me would be an understatement. We have spam assassin on the
server but it still seeps through. Outlook and Thunderbird had built in
filters but every day little stunted fu@##$%$%kers are working round the clock to ensure that their latest efforts beat them.
Now in an effort to fight back the never-ending
deluge of rubbish and advertising I am trying a program called
Spamhilator. It is easy to set up and configure and sits between the
server and my mail client. So far I am impressed, we’ll see in the
morning when the spam tide rises somewhat.
Get it here: http://www.spamihilator.com/
The gangly professor finally stood up and went downstairs where two of his students had just started working in the computer lab. “We’re beating Jacqueline,” Drake announced, explaining he had spent the past 12 hours reworking a key algorithm in their Go-playing computer program, Orego.
For the past four years, Drake and his students have tried nearly every novel approach out there: neural networks, cellular automata and genetic algorithms. Their victory with this ingenious algorithm marked a turning point for Orego and was the latest application of a promising new strategy in artificial intelligence.
A new breed of architect are working to create buildings that are able to alter their physical structure depending on conditions like varying wind, changing light conditions and the number of people moving through them. The buildings will use a system of rods and wires manipulated by pneumatic muscles forming the framework of the buildings walls. Connect all of this to “intelligent systems” and the structures will be able to change their shape quite drastically with little energy expenditure. Let’s hope those intelligent systems aren’t prone to viruses.
StuartForsyth.com
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