Earlier the Belgian SWIFT concern got into a muddle by stating that it had allowed the U.S. access to SWIFT transfer information based on warrants issued by the U.S., but refused to show the EU which warrants had been issued. They basically just maintained they had done nothing wrong and that was that.

Of course, the E.U. is going to roll over and not get anything done, but it’s nice to know that at least they’re concerned about our personal privacy – especially against the more and more dictatorial republik der Amerika.

This is an interesting A – Z on how retail stores make you stay in their stores longer and buy more. It’s not complete (such as it not having anything about the most expensive goods being on the right of the isle and the cheapest being on the bottom left), but it has a whole load of interesting tricks.

The UK is on guard after a huge database containing loads of trivial details of everyone under 18 and accessible to around 400,00 people is called ‘unsafe’ – duh.

At the same time the US is parading it’s huge counter terrorism database – which no one will ever hack. Really.

You’d have thought they’d have learnt what having these large databases can do after the Germans marched into the Netherlands and used the most comprehensive people registrar in the world (at the time) to round up all the Jews. Guess not.

One complaint is all it took for Turner to review Tom and Jerry cartoons and decide to edit out most instances of them smoking. This really reminds me of the good old Stalinist days where Trotsky and any other ex-ranking member who had displeased the iron man was edited out of any movies or photographs they appeared in.
It’s America, the land of the free. Rewriting history. Am I surprised? Not any more.

Well done, Tammie Marson fought the giants and won!
She claims that allthough there were illegal files on her computer that had been downloaded over her internet connection, there was simply no way that they could prove it was her who had downloaded the stuff. Anyone else of the hundreds of cheerleaders that came into her house on a daily basis could have done it. Quite so – settlement out of court.

In an earlier post, I vented my frustrations about smoking studies – few of them are available and the ones that are are flawed: there are very few indeed with a sample size larger than 15 (which is surprising considering the millions of smokers out there) and the one (and only one!) I’ve been pointed to so far has been far from conclusive (putting it mildly).

Now I’ve found a few websites dedicated to telling you a few truths – they also find the studies they have access to are full of shit, especially those regarding passive smoking.

The Smokers Club, inc.

FORCES

The Truth Is A Lie

We are Americans Too!

The Smokers Rebellion

The only claims they refute that I simply can’t agree with is that smoking is non-addictive. Having smoked for quite some time, I can tell you that it damn well is.

What they do show is the conspiracy of the anti-smoking lobby having successfully inundated the population with their fairy tales and spin which grows larger and more all encompassing (eg. that smoking affects appearance).

I’m glad to see there is some movement to grant us our rights!

And because their LRO rocket had quite a bit of extra space on it, they decided to crash it into the moon, causing an explosion that should create a 17 foot crater and a 30 mile high plume. Yay science!

Here we go – it’s the second time the CCTV camera’s being set up in the home surveillance capital of the world, the UK, has been caught misusing the material captured on camera. The first time the cops were watching people undress at home, now they’ve gone a step beyond and are selling footage of 1500 naked people wandering about as part of Spencer Tunick’s photo shoot.

Which the apple founder raised by going public with a company who’s charter states that it’s a ‘blank-check’ company – ie. one that doesn’t have to do anything.
Oh and on the share issue, the company has allready run a $30m profit!

The Guardian has an odd article on how the Iranians think that anything and everything that happens in their country is due to the chicanery and sly dealings of the British. This apparently is the one thing that unites all Iranians.

Well, I’ve been looking for medical proof the past 8 years that smoking really is that bad for you, but have never been able to find it – all I’ve found is conjecture, sensationalism and bad quotes by reverends and law professors. Statistical studies containing only 8 or 12 subjects are bad science, so I’ve looked long and hard for hard science on the matter containing (and I’ve frequently stated I’ll reject many scientific requirements) at least N > 100!
Now you’d think with the witch hunt going on against smoking and everybody just knowing that it’s bad for you (just like we knew the world was flat, yeah?) there’d be plenty on the matter all over the web. I’ve defied plenty of people to find it for me, and after 8 (!!!!!) years someone has found something for me:

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/309/6959/901
(Mortality in relation to smoking: 40 years’ observations on male British doctors
R Doll, R Peto, K Wheatley, R Gray, I Sutherland)

Looking at this study, I found this quite
interesting:

In table I the first 2 columns indicate that he had about twice as
many smokers as non-smokers in the study in 1951. Which is,
coincidentally, about the same ratio of non smoker to smoker deaths by cancers etc
in the table III! Egads – this result is neatly replicated in table
IV.

They then make some pretty pictures, which actually make it look like
there might not be so much difference between smokers / stopped
smokers / non smokers.

The appendix table is interesting, as it shows what a load of bollocks
statistics are:
non smokers seem to almost never die of lung cancer, BUT (especially
considering the ratio of 1:2) they seem to die a lot more than smokers
of ‘other cancers’ at all ages as well as having higher probabilities
of vascular diseases, cirrhosis, ‘other medical’, non-medical deaths.
Finally, it looks like in ‘all causes’ non-smokers (still considering
the 1:2 ratio of the study) die more at all ages, except at 70-74 and
especially at 65-69 (just after they’ve retired!).

So there we go – smoking is actually quite good for you 🙂

For a secret service, it’s quite amazing how they now have a website for the world to see! Together with neat marketing corporate logo’s and all!

The Register has had a fantastic competition to use Google Earth to find weird stuff in the system – and readers have responded! 11 pages of fantastic satellite imagery…

Microsoft had nothing better to do on the 17th, so it decided to patent the address book!

nasty

http://www.atcsd.com/PressReleases/02_26_04.html

Used on their own people in the US:
http://www.infowars.com/print/ps/soundcannon_photos.htm

Used in Iraq:
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040307-120634-6220r.htm

— Zathur

The Greeks have developed a cream / mud which allows you to be just that.

.. and how long has the current (aggressively pro-GM) US President been in office again? Since 01/2001 .. you do the math ..

All imports of United States corn have been stopped at British ports following the discovery that the US has been illegally exporting a banned GM maize to Europe for the past four years.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=630186

What’s it going to be? Asteroid impact, World War III, Global Warming, Global Dimming, Biowarfare or is it just a minor die off post Global Peak Oil?

Consider Voluntary Human Extinction as a more humane alternative.

Apparently Googlebar browsers display content Google wants you to see on a site and not what the sitemaker had in mind…

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/highlights_march/march1/default.htm

http://www.xenu.net/archive/so/index.html

Scientological sailors