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Sci-Fi

Submission + - Cold fusion by US Navy breakthrough

Submitted by
Tjeerd
Tjeerd writes: "Gordon's plastic wafer is the product of the latest in a long line of "cold fusion" experiments conducted at the US navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego, California. What makes this one stand out is that it has been published in the respected peer-reviewed journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Konrad Lorenz among its eminent past authors (DOI: 10.1007/s00114-007-0221-7). More can be read at New Scientist."
Space

Submission + - A Hostile and Violent Moon

Submitted by
nlhouser
nlhouser writes: "Temperatures on the moon have a tendency to go down to minus 170 degrees in the darker side of the moon, with temperatures on the sunny side climbing to 100 degrees. At the same time, hostile and dangerous, the moons electrical charging builds up every 18 years due to the orientation of the its orbit. When this orientation begins to peak every couple of years, the orbit of the moon will intersect the plasma sheet of Eartha thin region that contains many electrically charged articles from the moon. A very little known danger on spaceflight, the surface of the moon will change about every 18 years, with a geometric analysis of the moons orbital changes showing us some dangerous events developing. Govert Schilling, writer at ScienceNOW Daily News, April 18, 2002, has written an article which says that Static Electricity Could Short-Circuit Moon Missions. Of course, this article brings also to mind that many people, astronauts, space agencies, and private businesses will be moving onto the moons surface with people and space robots in the very near futurebeing physically and mentally placed in the middle of this electrical charging pool. Scientists feel that the electrical dust is developing into a hazardous venture while being transformed into a dangerous influence due to the sensitive electronics and to people, with these particles sticking to any surface texture and causing lots of damage. Research by the University of Edinburgh, UK, is simulating lunar evolution at a high rate, bringing to the forefront the mystery of the cooling magna and how it has evolved to the present day white highlands on its surface and dark valleys. Researchers have created their own version of lunar rock that is based on Apollo mission samples, heated down in 1,500 degree Celsius furnaces to the point of melting. They let this sample cool down and crystallize for in-detail examinations, in order to better understand how the rock became the Moons main sold rock framework. Observations of these rocks and data brought back from the Moon shows us that the darker rocks on the Moon surface proves to us that an intensive meteorite shower has occurred there, throwing the darkened rocksoriginally sank into the magma oceanshas come to the surface. Our neighboring red planet will possibly soon become our home, in order to go onto Mars or Venus, so knowing the Moon and its little tendencies and quirks should become a priority of ours before this happens. Of course, we could wait until we set up temporary shelters and a possible futuristic colonization up there but that would be extremely expensive and dangerous, as seen in past Mars Odyssey reports."
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Six-legged hermaphrodite calf born in Nebraska

Submitted by
Skidge
Skidge writes: "A calf born several days ago on a central Nebraska farm is just as frisky as the rest of the newborns there, only the farmer say, "He's a real freak." That's because it was born with six legs and two sets of sex organs. Likely a product of the fusion of twin embryos, cows born like this are rare and generally suffering from many internal problems. This one seems to be fine so far, however. "I'm curious to see what happens," the farmer said."
Editorial

Submission + - 2001 - 2007: LAPD's Reign of Terror Unchecked

Submitted by
Kelly McSwain
Kelly McSwain writes: "2001 — 2007: LAPD's Reign of Terror Unchecked Ending LAPD's Reign of Brutality & Terror : Remove LA Prosecutor Steve Cooley & Fire Bratton Los Angeles, May 4, 2007 — The brutal rampage by LAPD in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was culmination of a 6-year old secret but intricate policy by the Bush administration and local forces of the extreme right in reversing attempts to reform LAPD after Rodney King Beating and Rampart Corruption Scandal. In early 1999, the US Department of Justice under then-US Attorney General Janet Reno began an aggressive plan to impose reform upon LAPD. By the time the LAPD's Rampart Corruption Scandal became public in 1998, the Clinton Administration had learned that previous attempts to reform one of the largest police departments in the World had largely failed. In June 1999, rumors began to circulate within the ranks of the LAPD and its powerful union (Police Protective League — PPL) that President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno were about to implement drastic anti-corruption measures against LAPD. At the time, the LAPD and PPL complained that these acts represented the federal government's attempt to "violate the LAPD's 10th amendment rights" and interfere in LAPD's "internal affairs." These rumors, however, were not baseless. During 1999, Ms. Reno's Assistant US Attorneys in Washington, D.C. were busy drafting a historical federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD in which the Clinton administration was charging LAPD with "endemic corruption and systematic violation of constitutional rights of residents of Los Angeles." Additionally, at US DOJ headquarters at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C., serious discussions were taking place about using the federal funding of the LAPD as a leverage in imposing anti-corruption reform upon LAPD. Sensing the warnings of the incoming tsunami from Washington in their direction, the LAPD and its PPL began to brace for a defensive position by attempting to secure the local front. Securing their local front meant getting rid of Gil Garcetti, the Los Angeles County District Attorney (DA) who in the post-Rampart LA politics had begun criminal investigation and prosecution of a large number of LAPD officers for corruption and other crimes. Garcetti's public statements at the time, such as, "I can't tell you whether we will wind up with three, four or five dirty cops or 25 or more," were making LAPD and PPL extremely frightened. In a desperate attempt to shield corrupt LAPD officers from Garcetti, LAPD and PPL funded and fielded Republican Steven Lawrence Cooley, an LAPD Reserve Officer, as their own candidate to run against Garcetti for the LA DA position. Public court records from the United States District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco show that at the same time the PPL-sponsored Cooley was campaigning to unseat Garcetti, PPL, through its high-powered lawyers, was filing multiple motions and appeals against Attorney General Janet Reno's attempts to impose a federally mandated reform program upon LAPD. The above multiple attempts by PPL to prevent the Clinton administration from initiating its anti-corruption program proved to be legally frivolous since the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit denied all of them. In September 1999, the Republican Cooley began his PPL-funded campaign to unseat DA Garcetti. PPL was against Garcetti's criminal prosecution of LAPD officers. In his 1999-2000 campaign against Garcetti, Cooley received more than $1 million from PPL while publicly speaking against LAPD's Rampart Corruption Scandal and criticizing Garcetti for not being forceful and efficient enough in his criminal prosecution of the corrupt officers. Of course, Cooley was engaging in blatant public deception since he knew that he had received the $1 million from PPL to unseat Garcetti and thus shield the corrupt LAPD officers from any further criminal prosecution. History would show that Cooley's 1999-2000 campaign against Garcetti for the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office was one of the biggest frauds brought against the voters of Los Angeles since at the same time PPL was waging federal court battles against President Clinton's attempts to fight corruption in LAPD, PPL was paying for Cooley's campaign and commercials which depicted Garcetti as not forceful enough in fighting the LAPD's corruption. On the federal level, significant developments were taking place. Attorney General Reno was putting her final touches on the draft of the federal civil rights lawsuit against LAPD. About three weeks before the document was filed in the federal court, on October 11, 2000, then-Governor George W. Bush made the following statement in his televised debate with Al Gore in North Carolina: "One of my concerns, though, is I don't want to federalize the local police forces. I want to — obviously in the egregious cases we need to enforce civil rights law, but we need to make sure that internal affairs decisions at the local level do their job and be given a chance to do their job. I believe in local control of governments, and obviously if they don't there needs to be a consequence at the federal level." Bush, however, knew well that according to the Christopher Commission's Report, the LAPD's "Internal Affairs" was a source of corruption in itself. On November 2, 2000, Attorney General Janet Reno filed her historical anti-corruption lawsuit against LAPD in federal court in Los Angeles. LAPD was charged with systemic violations of civil rights, including, "having established a pattern of violating the people's constitutional rights and arresting residents of Los Angeles without probable cause." SEE page 2 of the Complaint at: http://www.freemarje.com/US%20Fed%20Lawsuit%20v%20 LAPD%2011-03-00.pdf Nevertheless, two significant historical events followed which reversed the course of anti-corruption attempts at LAPD for the following six years. In fact, these two historical events resulted in emboldening, empowering, and expanding the forces of corruption within the ranks of the LAPD on a gigantic and unprecedented scale. On November 7, 2000, Reserve LAPD Officer Cooley (Republican), with substantial backing from PPL, defeated Gil Garcetti. On December 12, 2000, George Bush was declared as the new President of the United States. On January 1, 2001, Cooley took office as the new District Attorney of Los Angeles. According to the recorded statement of one of the senior Deputy District Attorneys of Los Angeles, within two weeks after taking office, Cooley walked into the six-man office of Rampart Task Force which Garcetti had set up within the Special Investigations Division of the DA Office and simply said: "wrap it up!" Shortly thereafter the office was closed and all Rampart Corruption Scandal investigations in DA office ended. The above two historical events had drastic and severely detrimental consequences for the people of Los Angeles. On the federal front, Shortly after taking office on January 20, 2001, the Bush administration brought the federal litigation against LAPD to a screeching halt. The management of the Federal Consent Decree by John Ashcroft and later by Alberto Gonzales became a practice in public deception. All federal efforts to reform LAPD were abandoned and the Bush administration became LAPD's "partner in war on terror." Having realized it was now a major force in Los Angeles politics and having successfully rolled back attempts to "interfere in its internal affairs" by both Reno and Garcetti, LAPD and PPL's tentacles began to rapidly grow into the only remaining component of the Los Angeles County Criminal Justice System, the Criminal Division of Los Angeles County Superior Court system. With full support from the Bush administration, police brutality, misconduct, deception, fraud, perjury, criminal conspiracy, fabrication of evidence, and criminal activities by police officers became institutionalized and achieved new high marks in the history of Los Angeles. On local level, Cooley shielded corrupt LAPD officers from any and all criminal prosecution. No more LAPD officers were prosecuted. Even when an LAPD officer fired multiple shots at a black 13-year-old boy (Devin Brown) backing a car at 2 miles-per-hour, the prosecutor Cooley refused to prosecute the liable LAPD officer for the boy's killing. When the LAPD's 250-lb. white Edward Larrigan shot a frail 5'1" 102-lb. 55-year-old mentally ill homeless African-American woman (Margaret Mitchell) in the chest from a distance of several feet away and killed her, Cooley, without ever requesting to examine the six boxes of relevant documents in possession of the attorney for the family of Ms. Mitchell under a federal protective order, said the killing was justified and refused to prosecute even though the Police Commission, on a 3-2 vote, had disagreed. When a disabled black teenager (Donovan Jackson) was beaten up by white LAPD officers on national TV, Cooley and LAPD conspired to prevent a Rodney King type of reaction from the public by deceptively putting the officers on a bogus circus-style criminal trial while at the same time undermined the chances of their conviction by removing a seasoned prosecutor and assigning a young lawyer with no experience in such prosecutions. Cooley further allowed the officer's seasoned defense lawyer to put up evidence before the jury that the "beating" was a "training issue" and not a criminal act. By botching the trial, Cooley guaranteed that LAPD officers Jeremy Morse and Bijan Darvish would not be convicted. Cooley proved to be a loyal puppet of LAPD. He also began to aggressively bring criminal charges against victims of police misconduct, knowing that winning criminal convictions against victims of LAPD misconduct prevented them from filing future civil rights lawsuits and forever closed chances of investigation for these cases. In his reelection campaign in March 2004, Cooley received more than $1.5 million in campaign contributions, mostly from the LAPD's PPL. Thomas Higgins, his most serious challenger, had collected $25,000 in campaign contributions. With enough PPL money to send colorful brochures to every LA voter and substantial TV commercials, Cooley easily won his reelection to a second-term as the LA's District Attorney. During the 2001-2007 Bush-Cooley's reign of terror in Los Angeles, hundreds of victims of police brutality and police misconduct cases were charged with baseless and fabricated criminal charges. Cooley and LAPD worked together on fabrication and manufacturing of false evidence against the victims. At the same time, LAPD's PPL, having flexed its political muscles and having realized the extent of its power, began to more actively finance the reelection of those Superior Court judges whom Cooley and PPL viewed as valuable assets in the complex political empire they had built. With federal protection for residents of Los Angeles evaporated under George W. Bush, hundreds of innocent victims were falsely convicted and sent to prison. State convictions guaranteed that LAPD was shielded forever from future civil rights lawsuits. During the above period, no LAPD officers were ever charged with any crime arising from fabrication and manufacturing of false evidence. An example of this institutionalized policy of terror and criminal activities is in the case of a Swedish woman and mother who was held in pretrial detention for more than four years (2002-2006) based on evidence fabricated by Cooley's DA office and LAPD. Despite four years of incarceration, the woman refused to plea guilty to the charges fabricated by LAPD and Cooley. The case had begun as a police misconduct case when LAPD officers had entered the woman's home without a warrant and by mistake had arrested her while she was unconscious from a wrongly prescribed prescription medication. The officers had wrongly assumed the woman was suffering from an illegal drug overdose. Cooley filed criminal charges against the woman in order to cover up the LAPD's initial misconduct. Further information on this case and the inner workings of Cooley-LAPD's empire can be viewed at www.freemarje.com. What happened in McArthur Park on May 1, 2007 was the culmination of LAPD's reign of terror under Bush-Cooley policy during 2001-2007. During the above period, the residents of Los Angeles were left defenseless against forces of the extreme right which implemented an institutionalized policy built on deception, fraud, perjury, and criminal activities. The events of May 1, 2007 showed that LAPD with the help of its DA Cooley and under the protection of the Bush administration has succeeded in establishing a police state in the most populous county of the United States. As the video footage of the rampage shows, LAPD officers engage in criminal acts against the population with impunity. The message from the video footage of the assault is clear: LAPD and its thugs exerting undue influence over the largest metropolis of the United States with an iron fist. It is clear that with substantial support from George W. Bush and the local forces of the extreme right, the LAPD, PPL, and Cooley have succeeded in transforming the 4,000-square-mile Los Angeles County to an autonomous police state where a brutal junta composed of the LAPD, Cooley, and an army of 600 mostly corrupt judges who owe their reelections to financial contributions from LAPD's PPL rule. For further information on how various intricate components of this police junta operate in tandem, SEE pages 19-26 at http://www.freemarje.com/Federal%20Complaint%20Fil ed%20Against%20Defendants.pdf"
Communications

Submission + - AT&T Dumps VOIP Customers

Submitted by Proudrooster
Proudrooster writes: In the past two-weeks AT&T sent out disconnect letters to VOIP customers in big rude red letters, stating that VOIP service would be suspended in 30-days and permanently disconnected in 60-days. AT&T cited E911 service as the reason. Many AT&T VOIP customers have found that they are unable to transfer their AT&T VOIP phone numbers to a new provider. Further, AT&T is unwilling to provide a forwarding message directing callers to a new phone number for those that are unable to transfer their old AT&T VOIP phone numbers. In effect, AT&T has told many long-term VOIP subscribers, we are turning off your phone in 30-days, goodbye, and good luck. AT&T does not appear a corporation that values customer loyalty, especially of those who hung on during the experimental days of the AT&T VOIP service

Many longterm subscribers are extremely upset at the AT&T cold shoulder and short notice. It is also interesting AT&T is unable overcome this E911 technical hurdle, since AT&T is also the local landline company (SBC/AT&T) in many areas where VOIP cancellation notices are being received.

Comment Liquid Fuel Rocket Engine (Score 1) 535

by Spikeorama (#17080818) Attached to: What's the Coolest Thing You've Ever Built?
I'm working on a regeneratively cooled LOX/Kerosene rocket engine.
When I was 15, I built a Z-80 computer from my own design. I entered it in the science fair but the judges thought it was a kit so it got disqualified. I guess I did too good of a job wire wrapping it. I'll never forget the experience of hand-entering the bytes for my "operating system" into the EPROM burner at the local computer store. Needless to say, it didn't work the first time...

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