The Toronto academic researchers who are reporting on the spying operation dubbed GhostNet include, from left, Ronald J. Deibert, Greg Walton, Nart Villeneuve and Rafal A. Rohozinski. __________ A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai [...]
Archive for March, 2009
Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries
Posted in Computers on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Conjuring Slydini
Posted in Popular culture on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
I made more money in high school than I ever have since. Or so it seems. Entranced by a pitchman at the Nebraska State Fair when I was 11, I bought a trick deck of cards, known to magicians as a “Svengali deck.” It set me back a dollar and a quarter and before I [...]
“I’m smooth.”
Posted in Law on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
‘Dumb’ thief picks police summit A man in the US state of Pennsylvania accused of a robbery at a narcotics police convention has been described as probably the state’s dumbest criminal. Retired police chief John Comparetto was attending the meeting of 300 officers when he was allegedly held up at gunpoint in the men’s toilets. [...]
‘In a global era, we need our roots more than ever’
Posted in Politics on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
But when Brown starts talking about the danger of a generation sinking into hopeless unemployment, with all the implications for social cohesion and national confidence, the verbiage vanishes and his voice changes. In the days leading up to the G20 summit, the PM is wrestling inwardly with the impact this deep recession will have upon [...]
The Russia Opportunity
Posted in Politics on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Pushing the button: It won’t be easy to reset after 16 years of failed Russia policy. __________ Washington and Moscow don’t have to be enemies. Barack Obama has an opportunity to establish a new relationship with Russia that will make the world a safer place. With ties between the two countries being the most strained [...]
Learning the hard way
Posted in Politics on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
HILLARY CLINTON’S most effective quip, in her long struggle with Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination last year, was that the Oval Office is no place for on-the-job training. It went to the heart of the nagging worry about the silver-tongued young senator from Illinois: that he lacked even the slightest executive experience, and that [...]
Will there be blood?
Posted in Politics on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The revival of American populism is partly synthetic, but mostly real A WEEK or so ago America was seized by a spasm of fury over the bonuses paid to executives at AIG, a troubled insurance company. Across the country Americans were enraged that people who had helped to cause the financial meltdown were being rewarded [...]
Fifteen tips on how to live to 100
Posted in Health on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Follow this checklist of 15 tips and you could add up to 77 years to your life. Sound too good to be true? Not according to new research from Norwich Union. The insurer’s actuarists have crunched some numbers that shows simple things like enjoying a good laugh and eating well can give a huge boost [...]
‘Computer tan’ website scores hit
Posted in Popular culture on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
A website ironically claiming to offer users an all-year tan through their computer screens has received more than one million hits in two months. The website Computertan.com was set up by Nottingham-based skin cancer charity Skcin to help raise awareness of the dangers of sun beds. The site says users can download software which enables [...]
Michelle Obama’s no-win role
Posted in Politics on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
I’m having a hard time forming an opinion about First Lady Michelle Obama, mostly because there are already so many out there, and they’re almost uniformly inane. There’s the constant clucking about her wardrobe: the election night “lava lamp” dress, the Great J. Crew Debate, this week’s minor eruption (discussed at some length on Slate.com) [...]
Students Give Up Wheels for Their Own Two Feet
Posted in Health on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Gianfranco Frizzera, a volunteer in a program aimed at reducing vehicle emissions, walked children to school through a cemetery in Lecco, Italy. __________ Each morning, about 450 students travel along 17 school bus routes to 10 elementary schools in this lakeside city at the southern tip of Lake Como. There are zero school buses. In [...]
Dead Body of Knowledge
Posted in Health on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
__________ AT the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy, I would like to say that sometimes, medical imaging isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. As a resident in psychiatry, I depend on the technology to treat my patients. From countless computers in the hospital’s hallways and at nurses’ stations, I call up images of [...]
Pun for the Ages
Posted in Language on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
__________ THE inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t make us laugh, but groan. It is said that Caligula ordered an actor to be [...]
Amid Abuse of Girls in Brazil, Abortion Debate Flares
Posted in Law on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The waiting room at Pérola Byington Hospital resembles a small day care center many days. Young girls play on the cold tile floors or rock hyperactively in plastic chairs, while their mothers stare pensively at the red digital readout on a wall, signaling their place in line. But this is a women’s health clinic specializing [...]
A Telescope to the Past as Galileo Visits U.S.
Posted in History, Physical sciences on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
It looked like the kind of toy telescope a child might have made with scissors and tape — a lumpy, mottled tube about as long as a golf club and barely wider in girth, the color of 400-year-old cardboard, burning with age. But near one knobby end was a bit of writing that sent Derrick [...]
Newspapers Without Words
Posted in Media on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
I am loathe to criticize the hard work of colleagues in this beleaguered newspaper industry, but it would seem to me, having seen this rollout of the new Orlando Sentinel design, that they think newspapers no longer need words. The assumption seems to be that people are too busy these days to read anything beyond [...]
Hidden clue to composer Ravel’s passion
Posted in Arts on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
Misa Sert, painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1904. The painting can currently be found in Room 43 of the National Gallery. © National Gallery, London. __________ The French composer, Maurice Ravel may have left a hidden message – a woman’s name – inside his work. A sequence of three notes occurring repeatedly through his work spells [...]
Longer schooling ‘cuts dementia’
Posted in Health on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The time spent in education impacts of mental ability later on. The raising of the school leaving age to 15 over 50 years ago could go some way to reducing dementia rates in the elderly, a study has suggested. A Cambridge University team compared the mental abilities of elderly people, and found those born after [...]
US warns Pakistan on Taliban link
Posted in Conflicts and wars on March 28, 2009 | Comments Off
The US is concerned about militants in border areas The US military says it has evidence elements within Pakistan’s military intelligence, the ISI, continue to provide support for the Taleban. Officials said that this support for militants had to end. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said the ISI had links with [...]
A Summers tale
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The modish nonsense word of the moment is “narrative.” “The bailout narrative is changing on Capitol Hill”; “The narrative of the black politician has been altered forever”; and so on. It means “story” or “story line” and is often used in tandem with the vaporous Hollywood nonsense word “arc.” This column concerns the Larry Summers [...]
Wind-powered car breaks record
Posted in Physical sciences on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Wind powered Greenbird reached speeds of 126.1 mph A British engineer from Hampshire has broken the world land speed record for a wind-powered vehicle. Richard Jenkins reached 126.1mph (202.9km/h) in his Greenbird car on the dry plains of Ivanpah Lake in Nevada. Mr Jenkins told the BBC that it had taken him 10 years of [...]
Online dating proves success for gorillas
Posted in Natural sciences on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Buu and Damisi with their son. __________ Chessington Zoo was today celebrating the birth of a baby gorilla following the successful use of online dating. Western Lowland gorillas Buu and Damisi were introduced last summer after Damisa was identified as a breeding male for Buu. Zookeepers used the Stud Book, the equivalent of an [...]
Anti-cancer benefits of fruit and veg are underlined
Posted in Health on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The salicylates in fruit and vegetables may in fact play a bigger role in protecting against cancer than the antioxidants on which research has focused until now. __________ A diet high in fruit and vegetables, especially organically grown ones, may protect against cancer and heart disease and could be equivalent in this respect to [...]
Breakthrough in ‘stem cells from skin’ study
Posted in Health on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
The prospect of transforming a patient’s own skin cells into a life-saving therapy to treat incurable conditions such as Parkinson’s disease has come a step closer. Scientists have devised a safe way of producing stem cells for transplant surgery from skin cells without using either human embryos or the potentially harmful viruses normally used to [...]
As drug war drags on, U.S. needs new strategy
Posted in Law on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Why have billions of dollars and thousands of anti-narcotics agents around the world failed to throttle the global traffic in cocaine, heroin and marijuana? Blame wrong-headed policies and what experts call the balloon effect. Squeezing a balloon in one place makes it expand in another. Destroy drug crops in one region and cultivation moves to another. [...]
In Washington, the guy with the beer? Yep, it’s probably Obama
Posted in Politics on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
GO BULLS! President Obama’s team lost; it may not have bothered 5-year-old Nick Aiello. __________ It has been only two months since the Obamas moved into the White House, but here in the nation’s capital, some people are already asking: Have you bumped into your president and first lady yet? This is no idle question. In [...]
Head injuries: Looking for signs and acting quickly
Posted in Health on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Skiers, some wearing helmets, and others without at Ski Sundown ski area in New Hartford, Connecticut. __________ The 18-year-old runner was rounding third base for home so fast that his batting helmet flew off. The infielder rifled the ball to the catcher, but it caught the runner instead, hitting his suddenly bare head. He scored, [...]
The strange tale of a Chinese emperor’s French prints
Posted in History on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Works from a collection of Emperor Qianlong’s prints include an etching reworked with burin by Jean-Denis Attire. __________ Of all the East-West encounters, few are as strange as the story at the heart of the Louvre show of 44 French 18th-century prints on view until May 18, under the title “The Chinese Emperor’s Battles: When [...]
The market mystique
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
On Monday, Lawrence Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, responded to criticisms of the Obama administration’s plan to subsidize private purchases of toxic assets. “I don’t know of any economist,” he declared, “who doesn’t believe that better functioning capital markets in which assets can be traded are a good idea.” Leave aside for a [...]
Where old airplanes go to die
Posted in Economy and business on March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Commercial planes at the Bartin Recycling Group dismantling site at Chateauroux’s airport. __________ A windswept plateau in the center of France is an unlikely place to assess the health of the world’s airline industry. Yet nowhere are the fortunes of global aviation displayed as starkly as on this remote stretch of pavement, which was one [...]
