] A vaccine using a harmless relative of the West Nile
] virus could offer a way to protect people against the
] disease, researchers in Australia said on Monday.

West Nile vaccine

"LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (AP) -- It smells like rotten eggs at best, decomposing flesh at worst. It looks like the pods from "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
"It's frightening," said Eileen Masterson. "We can't swim because the odor is so horrible and we won't crab here because we don't know whether it's safe"
" The substance, which was noticed about two weeks ago, consists of jelly-like bulbs that undulate with the waves just below the surface. "

What is it...These things just keep popping up...Figures the one from jersey smells like shit.

Another gelatinous blob, but this one stinks

"A man has been jailed for 50 days for dissecting his daughter's guinea pig believing it was a government spy."
""It's not often you have someone this paranoid from using drugs that they think a guinea pig is spying on them for the government," Deputy District Attorney Tom Connors said. The paranoia was apparently a byproduct of Zavala's methamphetamine use, not mental illness."

Its the government I tell you... They're in it with the hamsters and the mice!!!

Man jailed for killing guinea pig he thought was a spy

] The remains of as many as 1,000 people lost in the World
] Trade Center attack might never be identified, according
] to the forensic biologist leading the monumental DNA
] identification project.
]
] The city medical examiner's office has identified
] slightly more than half of the 2,792 people killed in the
] attack -- only about 100 of those in the last year, as
] technicians struggled with DNA degraded and damaged by
] fire and the elements.
]
] Robert Shaler, chief of forensic biology, had once hoped
] to reach 2,000 identifications, but he told The
] Associated Press he no longer considers that a realistic
] goal.
]
] Now, Shaler said he hopes for about 1,700 identifications
] -- 1,800 at the outside -- by the time the office
] exhausts available DNA matching methods within a year.
] City officials recently notified victims' families of the
] outlook.
]
] "I think once we've done all of the testing on all of the
] remains using the technology we have, I think we're
] finished," Shaler said.
]
] He cautioned that he doesn't mean the trade center DNA
] effort would be closed forever, but said it couldn't
] continue until new DNA processes were developed.
]
] "If three years from now somebody comes up with something
] ... that really looks like it's going to work, then we're
] going to be poised to go after it," he said.

This is sad news for the families looking for closure.

LB

Remains of up to 1,000 victims of WTC attack might never be identified

"Scientists running a pioneering experiment with "living robots" which think for themselves said they were amazed to find one escaping from the centre where it "lives"."

I am Not a Number!!! Well, maybe Number 5...

Robot on the run

] Like many teenage girls in Minneapolis, 17-year-old
] Stacey liked to hang out after school at the Mall of
] America, Minnesota's vast shopping megaplex. Cute,
] blond and chatty, she flirted with boys and tried on
] the latest Gap fashions. One day last summer, Stacey,
] which isn’t her real name, says she was approached by
] a man who told her how pretty she was, and asked if he
] could buy her some clothes. “He was an older guy,
] dressed really well,” she recalls. “He said he just
] wanted to see me in the clothes.” Stacey agreed, and
] went home that night with a $250 outfit.

Newsweek - This Could Be Your Kid

] Unabomber Ted Kaczynski has asked the U.S. government to
] return his personal papers and other materials, including
] a bomb confiscated by the FBI seven years ago.
]
] In papers filed at federal court in Sacramento, Kaczynski
] asked that the government ship the materials to a
] University of Michigan archive that already contains more
] than 15,000 of his papers.
]
] Those items include a pipe bomb and tons of documents
] including his voluminous autobiography, according to R.
] Steven Lapham, one of the federal prosecutors who tried
] the case. Also on the list: Kaczynski's tools, a can of
] matches, a pair of tweezers and a hatchet, which were
] confiscated when he was arrested at his Montana cabin.\

"GIMME BACK MY BOMB! Of course I promise not to detonate it in my cell."

Laughing boy

Unabomber seeks return of papers, bomb

] Police in Florida are creating a counterterrorism
] database designed to give law enforcement agencies around
] the country a powerful new tool to analyze billions of
] records about both criminals and ordinary Americans.

Mini-TIA?

The problem with systems like this is not so much the information they have but the sort of questions you are allowed to ask them.

Asking who has brown hair and a red truck within a 20 mile radius, in the context where this is a suspect description in a murder, is a standard question that police ask all the time. Having this information more readily available is probably a good thing (unless you're an anarchist).

However, if you run a correlation which shows that people who have brown hair and red trucks are 30 percent more likely to commit murders then average, and subsiquently decide to submit people fitting that profile to additional scrutiny at airport security, you've crossed into pre-crime, and that is where the policy debate lies.

This question is going to continue to be raised. Poindexter, for all his faults, is a leader. He is way ahead of the curve. We'll see a lot more of this over the next 20 years from all kinds of directions, just as we are seeing similar techniques used in unrelated fields (Customer Relationship Management).

Objective research into the effectiveness of pre-crime, and the impact of it upon innocents, is sorely needed. Unfortunately, finding objective researchers is going to be damn near impossible. On the one side we've got arms dealers and drug smugglers, and on the other side we've got civil liberties advocates. Much like the studies on RF related cancer, the truth is probably only going to be found somewhere in the dialog between them, in an environment where both sides are given the resources they need to do the studies they want to do, and there is absolutely no political pressure to rush things into application.

U.S. Backs Florida's New Counterterrorism Database (TechNews.com)

crankymessiah wrote:
] ] LONDON, England (Reuters) -- An armada of small, faded
] ] yellow toy ducks is expected to make landfall in Britain
] ] within weeks at the end of an epic 11-year voyage from
] ] the Pacific Ocean.
] ]
] ] They are the survivors of a consignment of 29,000 bath
] ] toys washed overboard from a container ship in 1992 that
] ] have since floated across the ocean, round the United
] ] States, through the Arctic and past Greenland.

Amazing that these could remain floatsam for 11 years... Coming soon to an Ebay auction for you.

LB

RE: CNN.com - England braces for rubber duck invasion - Jul. 26, 2003

] "The action we are taking is intended to protect the
] privacy rights of our customers," SBC spokesman Larry
] Meyer said.
]
] "It's about the fact that anyone can without any effort
] obtain one of these DMCA subpoenas," said Meyer,
] referring to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

SBC Sues RIAA to stop subpoenas