HIFANA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2QclFMoxhE

My favorite Madcow pic on the net.

my special thanks to "httpnopaper.netspaceThe+Farm"

Audi Dominates!

As expected Audi won Le Mans this year with its new R10 diesel powered racer. So far this year in American Le Mans Series it has continued unbeaten. See my SpeedArena.com for the latest news.

See this movie!

Dont get the chance to see movies much anymore. But I had the chance to see my first film here in a Japanese theater. So you must see this one. As usual of a Micheal Mann movie it is a wonderful audio visual experience.

This one bears repeating.

BBC Coming to -- (Wait For it!) -- Xbox!

Near the bottom of a bland "Memorandum of Understanding" press release issued yesterday by the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) and Microsoft, was a line that almost made me spray my beverage. BBC Director of New Media and Technology Ashley Highfield was quoted as saying, "Microsoft is... a key gateway to audiences that the BBC needs to reach through... hardware such as Xbox..." WTF?

Another Robot Suit Rises From Slab

Japanese scientists unveiled another ROBOT SUIT PROJECT -- actually a second generation of its Stand-Alone Power Assist Suit (SAPAS) -- designed to give the wearer SUPER STRENGTH. The battery-operated garment uses tiny body sensors to detect when the wearer's muscles are flexing and air pumps to augment the work of the wearer. SAPAS is envisioned as something nurses would wear to carry old people from one place to another. Other robotic exoskeleton projects include the Berkeley Lower Extremity Exoskeleton (BLEEX), the Yobotics project, Robotics and Energetic Systems Group's "Human-Amplifying Machines," University of Tsukuba's Cyberdyne, Inc. Cybernetics projects, and the University of Michigan's pneumatically powered lower limb exoskeletons,

Well, I guess this may not really be all that far away...

Now these two articals make me go "Hmmmm", on ther other hand maybe the author has this apology thing going on.

Apologies Accepted? It Depends on the Offense
By Shankar VedantamWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, September 25, 2006; A02
When freedom fighters in India inspired by Mahatma Gandhi turned violent in a clash with police in 1922, the nonviolent leader took personal responsibility, called off nationwide protests and starved himself for five days in a penitential fast. Gandhi was nearly alone in thinking an apology of such magnitude was called for.
Nowadays, people offended by public leaders rarely feel that the apologies they receive are sufficient. In recent days, the Islamic world has rejected the pope's repeated apologies for quotations linking Islam with violence. In recent weeks, Democrats and many people of color have skeptically received the apologies of Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) for using the term "macaca" to describe a member of his opponent's staff. And Republicans have termed President Bill Clinton's apologies for the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal inadequate.
Apologies, which are supposed to come from the heart, have been turned into an art form. We now have advisers who craft apologies, commentators who analyze apologies and a distrustful public that weighs apologies for accuracy, completeness and sincerity. This has caused the phenomenon of the ratcheted apology, where public officials go from denial to groveling in a matter of weeks. Nearly everyone is upset by the end: Supporters of the officials feel that minor transgressions have been blown out of proportion for political gain, while those who are offended feel pacified rather than healed.
Experts say all this is merely an outgrowth of our natural predilections. Human beings seem hard-wired to trade in apologies, which lubricate the cogs of human relationships like engine grease.
Children as young as 3 seem able to understand that an apology can rebuild trust. By the time they are 8, children are rapidly learning the role of mitigating factors and the complex calculus by which we find a balance between the extent of a wrong and the extent of the apology needed to rectify it.
People seem to have an astonishing ability to keep track of who has done what to whom. A bump into someone merits an "excuse me." When another driver cuts us off on the road without a backward glance, we are furious; studies have shown that more florid apologies are needed to rectify such serious misdeeds.
A growing body of research has unearthed fascinating new insights into the nature of apologies. Contrary to the popular view that honesty is always the best policy when it comes to making amends for wrongdoing, experiments show that apologies for only certain kinds of offenses lead to a repair of trust.
The research speaks to a central paradox of the apology: People who apologize are confirming they did something wrong, and therefore should be trusted less. But the fact that they are coming clean means they should be trusted more.
Apologies can take confessors in either direction, said Peter Kim, an organizational psychologist at the University of Southern California who has studied which apologies increase trust and which ones do not. Much seems to depend not on the error, but on what is seen to be the motive behind it.
In a series of experiments, Kim and his colleagues found that when errors are presented as incompetence, apologies are accepted and trust can be restored. When an accountant makes an error in a calculation or a baseball player makes an error that loses a game, such lapses are not seen as deliberate. We tell ourselves that the accountant and the athlete can do better next time.
But when lapses are seen as intentional, an apology can become grounds for mistrust, because deep down we believe that deliberate wrongdoing reflects a flaw in character and that such flaws are permanent. We see the accountant who knowingly falsifies his numbers or the ballplayer who accepts a bribe as lacking in integrity. Although many people who do bad things can mend their ways, our brains seem programmed to see such people differently.
This is why public officials nowadays try to frame their lapses as incompetence -- and why their critics frame errors as matters of integrity. Both the pope and Allen, for instance, said they meant no offense; had they known how their comments would be perceived, they said, they would never have said such things.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger was accused of sexual harassment on the eve of the 2003 California gubernatorial election, Kim said, the candidate successfully turned a concern over integrity into a question of incompetence: "He said, 'I had no idea. I thought we were just playing around. Had I realized [it was wrong], I would never have done it.' "
"He was claiming social ineptitude," Kim said.
Kim has also found that officials who come clean and apologize for deliberate wrongdoing are seen as no better than officials who deny such crimes but then recant when the allegations prove true. So if people are unhappy with the way public officials apologize, Kim argues, at least part of the problem lies with the public.
"If we want people who perform nefarious acts to apologize, we need to create the incentive to do that," he said. "But here we ask them for their apology, and they apologize, and then we hate them just as much."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400765_pf.html



Sorry, Jane, Apology Not Accepted
by Allan H. RyskindPosted Apr 08, 2005
Jane Fonda wants the country to forgive her for her trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam war. But I say, "not yet." The reason: she's not really sorry! Read her new book, My Life So Far. Here's what she says about her terrible visit to the enemy's camp in July of 1972, when Richard Nixon had already begun pulling American troops out of South Vietnam and was trying to get the South Vietnamese to take over the fighting and working to bring our prisoners of war home: " . . .I do not regret that I went. My only regret about the trip was that I was photographed sitting in a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun site." (See page 291.) Well, if she doesn't regret making that trip, how can anyone forgive her? She admits that the photograph made it look as if she were merrily willing to gun down American pilots. And she's "sorry" for the disturbing, but supposedly false, impression it gave. Her only objective, she insists, was to meet with the North Vietnamese to help end the war. But this excuse is nothing new, as the media are suggesting. She's been saying virtually the same thing since her "20/20" interview with Barbara Walters in June of 1988. (See HUMAN EVENTS, July 2, 1988, issue.) But that picture--dreadful as it was--was hardly the only appalling thing about that trip and the truth is she probably was ready and willing to shoot down American pilots. At the time she was in Hanoi, Fonda, for all practical purposes, was a Communist herself. She was certainly rooting for Ho Chi Minh's military to defeat the "imperialist" United States of America involved in the supposedly "criminal" war against that lovely Red regime in the north. She fully embraced Communists, communism and revolutionaries in 1972 and way beyond that date. Her heroes were Black Panther thugs such as Huey Newton and Red dictators such as Fidel Castro. We know of her revolutionary ardor because she used to run off at the mouth about her views. The Detroit Free Press, for instance, quotes her as saying in a Nov. 22,1969, Michigan State University speech: "I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would someday become Communist." That statement has been quoted for years (in HUMAN EVENTS among other places) and has never been denied and is certainly not apologized for (or explained away) in her new memoir. Here's another Fonda gem. On July 18, 1970, the People's World, the West Coast's Communist Party publication, carried a telephone interview with Fonda in which she said: "To make the revolution in the United States is a slow day by day job that requires patience and discipline. It is the only way to make it. . . . All I know is that despite the fact that I am one of the people who benefit from a capitalist society, I find that any system which exploits other people cannot and should not exist." Karen Elliott in the Dec. 11, 1971, Dallas Morning News reported that Fonda said at the University of Texas: "We've got to establish a Socialist economic structure that will limit private profit-oriented businesses. Whether the transition is peaceful depends on the way our present governmental leaders react. We must commit our lives to this transition. . . . We should be very proud of our new breed of soldier. It's not organized but it's mutiny, and they have every right." (Emphasis added.) Her broadcasts from Hanoi to U.S. and South Vietnamese soldiers were not designed to "end the war," as she pretends, but to give the Communist North Vietnamese a sweeping victory. She didn't care a fig about the American soldiers or our POWs, as she now insists. In fact, she hurled the most venomous kinds of attacks upon her own country and threatened American GIs with war crime trials and executions if they tried to shield the South Vietnamese from a Communist takeover. We know this because the House Internal Security Committee (HISC) compiled her 1972 broadcasts to U.S. and South Vietnamese servicemen. (That compilation and other Fonda statements can be found in Henry Mark and Erika Holzer's well documented 2002 book, Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.) Here's just a small sampling of her Leninist polemics against America:To South Vietnamese soldiers she said: "We understand that Nixon's aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression, that the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man's war. . . " And then: "We deplore that you are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism."To Saigon students: "A growing number of people in the United States not only demand an end to the war, an end to the bombing, a withdrawal of all--all U.S. troops and--an end to the support of the Thieu clique, but we identify with the struggle of your people. We have understood that we have a common enemy: U.S. imperialism. We have understood that we have a common struggle and that your victory will be the victory of the American people and all peace-loving people around the world."Again, to the students: "As an American woman, I would like to tell you that the forces that you are fighting against go far beyond the bombs and the technology. In our country, people are very unhappy, People have no reason for living."To U.S. servicemen: "I don't know what your officers tell you that you are dropping on this country. I don't know what your officers tell you, you are loading, those of you who load the bombs on the planes. But, one thing that you should know is that these weapons are illegal and that's not, that's not just rhetoric. They are outlawed, these kinds of weapons, by several conventions of which the United States was a signatory. . . . And the use of these bombs or the condoning the use of these bombs makes one a war criminal. "The men who are ordering you to use these weapons are war criminals, according to international law, and, in the past, in Germany and in Japan, men who were guilty of these kinds of crimes were tried and executed."Jane Fonda tapes were played repeatedly to our POWs, many of whom expressed their outrage to the Holzers for having been branded "war criminals" and accused of "gratuitously killing innocent civilians." "It's difficult to put into words," one ex-POW told the authors, "how terrible it is to hear that siren song that is so absolutely rotten and wrong."Having examined the content of her remarks, the late Brig. Gen. S. L.A. Marshall informed the HCIS: "There is no question about the intent of the Fonda broadcasts. The evidence prima facie is that the purpose is to demoralize and discourage, stir dissent and stimulate desertion." Does Fonda express regret for any of this? Not in her book. Nor in her April 3 interview with Leslie Stahl on CBS's "60 Minutes." Did she have a "lapse of judgment," Stahl wanted to know, in meeting with seven POWS in North Vietnam, "giving the appearance of a staged event at their expense?" Fonda: "No." Nor, said Stahl, "does she apologize for making broadcasts on Radio Hanoi."She also does not honestly address the immense human tragedy that took place after the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam and Pol Pot conquered Cambodia. Other anti-war activists had been bothered by what happened. Singer Joan Baez took out full-page newspaper ads in May1979, condemning Vietnam's Communist rulers in the harshest language, urging them to "end the imprisonment and torture" of innocent men, women and children in the South. In addition to the ads, Baez sent out special packets to reporters detailing the horrors that had been documented in such publications as Le Monde and Le Figaro.When this reporter asked Peter Necarsulmer, a Baez publicist, whether Fonda had been contacted on the mater, Necarsulmer said that Baez had twice tried to reach her by letter, one a "long and detailed" report explaining the situation. Unfortunately, said Necarsulmer, Jane never did respond. This incident, of course, is not even mentioned in Fonda's book, let alone apologized for.In short, Jane Fonda hasn't really shown she's sorry for anything, other than being "caught on camera" in a pose she almost certainly intended as an act of defiance against her own country.
Mr. Ryskind, HUMAN EVENTS Editor at large, is writing a book on Communism in Hollywood
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7093

18 Tricks to Teach Your Body

Madcow...sometimes I wonder where people come up with this stuff...I think some magazines write these articals just to get peoples attention. I am going to try this one just to see if its all just a bunch of crap. So here it goes...


Lovingly stolen from Mens’ Health to preserve it.By: Kate Dailey, Photographs by: Michael Cogliantry, Illustrations by: Headcase Design & Zohar LazarPosted on 10/24/2005


1. If your throat tickles, scratch your ear!
When you were 9, playing your armpit was a cool trick. Now, as an adult, you can still appreciate a good body-based feat, but you’re more discriminating. Take that tickle in your throat; it’s not worth gagging over. Here’s a better way to scratch your itch: “When the nerves in the ear are stimulated, it creates a reflex in the throat that can cause a muscle spasm,” says Scott Schaffer, M.D., president of an ear, nose, and throat specialty center in Gibbsboro, New Jersey. “This spasm relieves the tickle.”
2. Experience supersonic hearing!
If you’re stuck chatting up a mumbler at a cocktail party, lean in with your right ear. It’s better than your left at following the rapid rhythms of speech, according to researchers at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. If, on the other hand, you’re trying to identify that song playing softly in the elevator, turn your left ear toward the sound. The left ear is better at picking up music tones.
3. Overcome your most primal urge!
Need to pee? No bathroom nearby? Fantasize about Jessica Simpson. Thinking about sex preoccupies your brain, so you won’t feel as much discomfort, says Larry Lipshultz, M.D., chief of male reproductive medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. For best results, try Simpson’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking” video.
4. Feel no pain!
German researchers have discovered that coughing during an injection can lessen the pain of the needle stick. According to Taras Usichenko, author of a study on the phenomenon, the trick causes a sudden, temporary rise in pressure in the chest and spinal canal, inhibiting the pain-conducting structures of the spinal cord.
5. Clear your stuffed nose!
Forget Sudafed. An easier, quicker, and cheaper way to relieve sinus pressure is by alternately thrusting your tongue against the roof of your mouth, then pressing between your eyebrows with one finger. This causes the vomer bone, which runs through the nasal passages to the mouth, to rock back and forth, says Lisa DeStefano, D.O., an assistant professor at the Michigan State University college of osteopathic medicine. The motion loosens congestion; after 20 seconds, you’ll feel your sinuses start to drain.
6. Fight fire without water!
Worried those wings will repeat on you tonight? “Sleep on your left side,” says Anthony A. Starpoli, M.D., a New York City gastroenterologist and assistant professor of medicine at New York Medical College. Studies have shown that patients who sleep on their left sides are less likely to suffer from acid reflux. The esophagus and stomach connect at an angle. When you sleep on your right, the stomach is higher than the esophagus, allowing food and stomach acid to slide up your throat. When you’re on your left, the stomach is lower than the esophagus, so gravity’s in your favor.
7. Cure your toothache without opening your mouth!
Just rub ice on the back of your hand, on the V-shaped webbed area between your thumb and index finger. A Canadian study found that this technique reduces toothache pain by as much as 50 percent compared with using no ice. The nerve pathways at the base of that V stimulate an area of the brain that blocks pain signals from the face and hands.
8. Make burns disappear!
When you accidentally singe your finger on the stove, clean the skin and apply light pressure with the finger pads of your unmarred hand. Ice will relieve your pain more quickly, Dr. DeStefano says, but since the natual method brings the burned skin back to a normal temperature, the skin is less likely to blister.
9. Stop the world from spinning!
One too many drinks left you dizzy? Put your hand on something stable. The part of your ear responsible for balance — the cupula — floats in a fluid of the same density as blood. “As alcohol dilutes blood in the cupula, the cupula becomes less dense and rises,” says Dr. Schaffer. This confuses your brain. The tactile input from a stable object gives the brain a second opinion, and you feel more in balance. Because the nerves in the hand are so sensitive, this works better than the conventional foot-on-the-floor wisdom.
10. Unstitch your side!
If you’re like most people, when you run, you exhale as your right foot hits the ground. This puts downward pressure on your liver (which lives on your right side), which then tugs at the diaphragm and creates a side stitch, according to The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Men. The fix: Exhale as your left foot strikes the ground.
11. Stanch blood with a single finger!
Pinching your nose and leaning back is a great way to stop a nosebleed — if you don’t mind choking on your own O positive. A more civil approach: Put some cotton on your upper gums — just behind that small dent below your nose — and press against it, hard. “Most bleeds come from the front of the septum, the cartilage wall that divides the nose,” says Peter Desmarais, M.D., an ear, nose, and throat specialist at Entabeni Hospital, in Durban, South Africa. “Pressing here helps stop them.”
12. Make your heart stand still!
Trying to quell first-date jitters? Blow on your thumb. The vagus nerve, which governs heart rate, can be controlled through breathing, says Ben Abo, an emergency medical- services specialist at the University of Pittsburgh. It’ll get your heart rate back to normal.
13. Thaw your brain!
Too much Chipwich too fast will freeze the brains of lesser men. As for you, press your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth, covering as much as you can. “Since the nerves in the roof of your mouth get extremely cold, your body thinks your brain is freezing, too,” says Abo. “In compensating, it overheats, causing an ice-cream headache.” The more pressure you apply to the roof of your mouth, the faster your headache will subside.
14. Prevent near-sightedness!
Poor distance vision is rarely caused by genetics, says Anne Barber, O.D., an optometrist in Tacoma, Washington. “It’s usually caused by near-point stress.” In other words, staring at your computer screen for too long. So flex your way to 20/20 vision. Every few hours during the day, close your eyes, tense your body, take a deep breath, and, after a few seconds, release your breath and muscles at the same time. Tightening and releasing muscles such as the biceps and glutes can trick involuntary muscles — like the eyes — into relaxing as well.
15. Wake the dead!
If your hand falls asleep while you’re driving or sitting in an odd position, rock your head from side to side. It’ll painlessly banish your pins and needles in less than a minute, says Dr. DeStefano. A tingly hand or arm is often the result of compression in the bundle of nerves in your neck; loosening your neck muscles releases the pressure. Compressed nerves lower in the body govern the feet, so don’t let your sleeping dogs lie. Stand up and walk around.
16. Impress your friends!
Next time you’re at a party, try this trick: Have a person hold one arm straight out to the side, palm down, and instruct him to maintain this position. Then place two fingers on his wrist and push down. He’ll resist. Now have him put one foot on a surface that’s a half inch higher (a few magazines) and repeat. This time his arm will cave like the French. By misaligning his hips, you’ve offset his spine, says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., co-owner of Results Fitness, in Santa Clarita, California. Your brain senses that the spine is vulnerable, so it shuts down the body’s ability to resist.
17. Breathe underwater!
If you’re dying to retrieve that quarter from the bottom of the pool, take several short breaths first — essentially, hyperventilate. When you’re underwater, it’s not a lack of oxygen that makes you desperate for a breath; it’s the buildup of carbon dioxide, which makes your blood acidic, which signals your brain that somethin’ ain’t right. “When you hyperventilate, the influx of oxygen lowers blood acidity,” says Jonathan Armbruster, Ph.D., an associate professor of biology at Auburn University. “This tricks your brain into thinking it has more oxygen.” It’ll buy you up to 10 seconds.
18. Read minds!
Your own! “If you’re giving a speech the next day, review it before falling asleep,” says Candi Heimgartner, an instructor of biological sciences at the University of Idaho. Since most memory consolidation happens during sleep, anything you read right before bed is more likely to be encoded as long-term memory.

Quantum computer works best switched off

22 February 2006
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues


Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running.
The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put a quantum computer into a “superposition”, a state in which it is both running and not running. It is as if you asked Schrödinger's cat to hit "Run".
With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works.
They send a photon into a system of mirrors and other optical devices, which included a set of components that run a simple database search by changing the properties of the photon.
The new design includes a quantum trick called the Zeno effect. Repeated measurements stop the photon from entering the actual program, but allow its quantum nature to flirt with the program's components - so it can become gradually altered even though it never actually passes through.
"It is very bizarre that you know your computer has not run but you also know what the answer is," says team member Onur Hosten.
This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. "A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten. That sentiment should have technophobes nodding enthusiastically.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 439, p 949)
From issue 2540 of New Scientist magazine, 22 February 2006, page 21

Invasion breeds more Terrorism?! Oh my, no!

What was it last week maybe? There was this big thing running around the media about some study? What ever it was, it said that the American invasion of Iraq actually spawned more terrorism and threat...my reaction?

Well duh!

I get the impression that this never occurred to anyone before. Maybe since it was some kind of official study the media took it more like it was some kind of admission and decided to make a big thing about it.

Ya know, I sometimes think that the only people listening to the media, may be themselves.

Another example in leadership

I just read this article about some lady that is part of the United States Army's Kentucky National Guard. Apparently this lady found it in her self to have all sorts of photo's taken of her in various stages of her uniform mostly without (naked!...Oh shocking) of course. Sometimes there were weapons involved in the posing...Though they never say what she is doing with all this falic weaponry? So it seems that some "232" of these photo's floated around her unit on a CD-ROM. There also seems to be some allusions that maybe other women of this unit may have had been photographed as well. All this happen not to long before they were supposed to deploy to you know where....I'm just upset that I didn't get to see these photo's myself. Oh! This article was done by someone that is too scared to put their name to their work Associated Press.

Ok...So what I am upset about is the very second paragraph in the article...

"This is not the kind of activity condoned by the command leadership of the Kentucky National guard." ...Well duh! My first reaction to this was "Its not our fault!". Yes I know I may be taking a bit out of context. Maybe the reporter asked "Do you or the Command Leadership of the National guard of Kentucky's condone this?"....though I find it doubtful. Still just the fact that it is said tells me they are doing the classic "its not me, don't blame me" line.

It irk's me.