Giant viruses open Pandora's box
Chantal Abergel/Jean-Michel Claverie Pandoraviruses infect amoebae and are larger than some bacteria. The organism was initially called NLF, for “new life form”. Later, after the researchers discovered a similar organism in a pond in Australia, they realized that both are viruses — the largest yet found. But these viruses, described today in Science1, are more than mere record-breakers — they also hint at unknown parts of the tree of life. “What the hell is going on with the other genes?” “This is a major discovery that substantially expands the complexity of the giant viruses and confirms that viral diversity is still largely underexplored,” says Christelle Desnues, a virologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Marseilles, who was not involved in the study. Claverie and Abergel have helped to discover other giant viruses — including the first2, called Mimivirus, in 2003, and Megavirus chilensis, until now the largest virus known3, in 2011.
It's business that really rules us now | George Monbiot
It's the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It's the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It's the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. Most of the scandals that leave people in despair about politics arise from this source. On the same day we learned that a government minister, Nick Boles, has privately assured the gambling company Ladbrokes that it needn't worry about attempts by local authorities to stop the spread of betting shops. Last week we discovered that G4S's contract to run immigration removal centres will be expanded, even though all further business with the state was supposed to be frozen while allegations of fraud were investigated. The monitoring which was meant to keep these companies honest is haphazard, the penalties almost nonexistent, the rewards can be stupendous, dizzying, corrupting.
MurphyBinkings comments on Greece in WW2
Digital Necromancy: Advertising with Reanimated Celebrities
The screen fades in on a man observing the Shanghai skyline from his penthouse apartment. “Water. It’s like the instincts,” he says. “Be water, my friend.” Then the iconic Johnnie Walker logo flashes across the screen. It is a typical, if especially poetic, ad for the British liquor brand. Except, one aspect of the spot isn’t so typical. Johnnie Walker’s Bruce Lee obviously isn’t the real thing, but you could be forgiven for being confused. (MORE: Mobile Mojo: Facebook Tops $38 as Social Stock Finally Hits IPO Price)The process of using a dead to sell contemporary wares is far from new. While pioneering, Coke’s efforts look amateur by today’s standards. Thanks to the work of men like Ed Ulbrich, who led the team behind Benjamin Button’s revolutionary facial animations, ‘delebs’ (as they are referred to by academics) can come back in more vivid detail than ever. At least for now, though, such realism is reserved only for those with multi-million dollar budgets. Another factor is cost.
Reality Denial: Steven Pinker’s Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence | Public Intellectuals Project
By Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Whereas in Pinker’s view there has been a “Long Peace” since the end of the Second World War,[7] in the real world there has been a series of long and devastating U.S. wars: in the Koreas (1950-1953), Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia (1954-1975), Iraq (1990-), Afghanistan (2001- or, arguably, 1979-), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (1996-), with the heavy direct involvement of U.S. clients from Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Uganda (Yoweri Museveni) in large-scale Congo killings; and Israel’s outbursts in Lebanon (1982 and 2006), to name a few. In the same time frame as Pinker’s “New Peace,” alleged to have begun with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, the Warsaw Pact, and of the Soviet Union itself (1989-1991), we have also witnessed the relentless expansion of the U.S. “Among respectable countries,” Pinker writes, “conquest is no longer a thinkable option. Pinker’s “Cold War” Consider this example: Vietnam and the Antiwar Protests
When You Get Another Day | lauren zuniga
YSK that MIT offer tonnes of FREE courses online. : YouShouldKnow
Surveillaince, and the construction of a terror state
In Which We Get You Writing Something Dark And Very Disturbed
Why and How To Write Ever since I began my full-length memoir Jesus Was A Pale Imitation of Myself I have been deluged with responses from fans asking me how I start writing. That's a great question, but I usually don't give writing advice for free, just the actual writing. Still many authors have weighed in on this subject and we can learn much from their instruction. This is the first of a four part series. Part One (Joyce Carol Oates, Gene Wolfe, Philip Levine, Thomas Pynchon, Gertrude Stein, Eudora Welty, Don DeLillo, Anton Chekhov, Mavis Gallant, Stanley Elkin) Part Two (James Baldwin, Henry Miller, Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Margaret Atwood, Gertrude Stein, Vladimir Nabokov) Part Three (W. Part Four (Flannery O'Connor, Charles Baxter, Joan Didion, William Butler Yeats, Lyn Hejinian, Jean Cocteau, Francine du Plessix Gray, Roberto Bolano) Joyce Carol Oates Stories come to us as wraiths requiring precise embodiments. My method is one of continuous revision. Gene Wolfe Be direct.
P. N. Oak
Purushottam Nagesh Oak (2 March 1917 – 4 December 2007), commonly referred to as P. N. Oak, was an Indian writer, notable for his Hindu-centric brand of historical revisionism. Life[edit] Oak was born in 1917 at Indore in erstwhile Princely State of Indore, British India. "From 1947 to 1974 his profession has been mainly journalism having worked on the editorial staffs of the Hindustan Times and The Statesman, as a Class I officer in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India; and as editor in the American Embassy's Information Service." [5][dead link] In 1964, he started an organisation called 'Institute for Rewriting Indian History' Dozens of blogs and websites refer to him as "Professor" P. He died on 4 December 2007, at 3.30 am at his Pune residence aged 90. Revisionist theories[edit] Academic and Government response[edit] Christianity as Vedic Chrisn-nity or Krishna-neeti Theory[edit] Taj Mahal Theory[edit] Kaaba Theory: Vedic origins[edit] Books written[edit] Books in Hindi[edit]
