Persona Non Grata, Govnah

In retaliation for the storming of the British Embassy in Tehran, the British Parliament has given all Iranian diplomats in the UK 48 hours to vacate the country.

Foreign Secretary William Hague told the House of Commons that Britain had also withdrawn its entire diplomatic staff from Iran after angry mobs hauled down Union Jack flags, torched a vehicle and tossed looted documents through windows.

The rare move to kick out a country's entire diplomatic corps marks a significant souring of ties between Iran and the West, amid deepening suspicions over Tehran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. Tensions were heightened in October when U.S. officials accused agents linked to Iran's Quds Force — an elite wing of the powerful Revolutionary Guard— of a role in an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S.

Germany, France and the Netherlands all recalled their ambassadors from Iran late Wednesday for consultations on further action in response. Norway closed its embassy in Tehran as a precaution.

For many, the hours-long assault Tuesday on the British embassy in Tehran was reminiscent of the chaotic seizure of the U.S. embassy there in 1979. Protesters replaced the British flag with a banner in the name of a 7th-century Shiite saint, Imam Hussein, and one looter showed off a picture of Queen Elizabeth II apparently taken off a wall.

"The idea that the Iranian authorities could not have protected our embassy or that this assault could have taken place without some degree of regime consent is fanciful," Hague told lawmakers.

Iran currently has 18 diplomats in Britain, according to Britain's foreign ministry.

Not for much longer.   Iran of course plans to return the favor.  And with zee Germans, the Dutch, and the French all withdrawing their ambassadors from Tehran for "consultation" it looks to me that things are pretty bloody awful right now, diplomatically.  Pakistan is still fighting mad.  The Saudis aren't returning our calls.  Violence is on the rise in Iraq.  Japan is still suffering a nuclear nightmare.  The eurozone is on the verge of currency breakdown, and now this mess in Iran getting worse by the day.

Cooler heads need to prevail right now or it's going to turn into a carnage-filled carnival.

Now THAT'S How You Use A CAT Scan

A Stradivarius violin has been "recreated" using an X-ray scanner normally used to detect cancers and injuries, according to researchers.

The US-based group used a computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanner on the 307-year-old instrument to reveal its secrets.

They then used the data recovered to build "nearly exact copies".

The team said the technique could be used to give musicians access to rare musical equipment.

Their findings have been presented to the Radiological Society of North America at a conference in Chicago.

A thousand scans later, they were able to measure the things that make a Strad a Strad. Wood density, touches from the craftsman, even dings and the wear of the strings over the centuries shape the instrument. They were able to get respectable copies, and violinists were able to coax a superior sound from the product.

This is an amazing gift. Students may someday have access to a reasonably priced superior instrument. I paid dearly for mine for years, and it is average. A serious musician usually has to seek sponsors and investors to help finance an instrument. It's hard to get money from millionaires so you can really make that high E scream. It will allow talent to flourish and give more opportunities for people to learn how to play a variety of instruments.

It is also a chance for us to rediscover the art of crafting violins. This study also looked at other string instruments and gathered data. There are still master luthiers in our day and time, but we could learn about how violins were made hundreds of years ago and compare it to now. We may even learn some things that died with the original masters.

Renowned luthier Samuel Zygmuntowicz noted that violin makers have long studied Stradivari, Guarneri and other classic instruments to match their sound.

He said Dr Sirr's work may have helped democratise the process by making it possible for more people to study such antique violins. But he added that the most highly skilled luthiers would remain in demand.

"This process will streamline that effort to copy an instrument," said Mr Zygmuntowicz.

"But the very last stretch - the very last 2% - still involves exact judgements about relative thicknesses of the wood, the exact strength of the bracing, the exact varnishes and wood preparations and general optimising of the whole form.

So I would say a skilled maker with this in his hands could save himself a lot of work, and an unskilled maker would save himself a certain amount of education."

Nothing can replace the originals, but letting more people enjoy the feel of a near replica would be a wonderful treat.  Violins really do have individual voices.  I can tell in a second if I'm listening to Lucia Micarelli or Vanesssa Mae.  Their primary instruments are as distinctive as my husband's voice when I hear him in a crowded room.  The technique of the musician and the composer make a difference, but in the end the sound relies largely on the instrument and the tiny things that make it different from any other.  Thanks to this breakthrough, we can now get a better understanding of how that happens.

U.S. Invasion By Ants Underway. Yes, Ants.

I try not to get all bent out of shape when the world changes around us.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting endangered animals and plants, but I also see that change is inevitable and often suits a bigger picture that we can't see.  In the end, I have to hope that natural selection is smarter than we are, because that's how the chips are falling.  This article has some pretty cool information about species that are taking over and the changes they may bring.  The ants is the one that horrifies me the most.  It makes me think of nature fighting technology, which is a horrifying thought.  If history has taught us anything, it's that nature wins.  The link above takes you to the whole article, but I quoted the part I found most interesting.

The latest addition to the list of non-native creepy-crawlies is the hairy crazy ant. The tiny foragers are believed to have come from South America. They first got to the Caribbean in the late 19th century and are working their way through Florida and the Southeast.
First discovered in 2002 in Texas by exterminator Tom Rasberry, they are now also in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, says Jim Fredericks, director of technical services for the National Pest Management Association in Fairfax, Va. According to Texas A&M University, the ants are semitropical, so cooler temperatures as they move northward should eventually stop them.

When the insects encounter another colony of crazy ants, they become a supercolony and "can overrun an area — hundreds of thousands of ants can darken a sidewalk or a building," Fredericks says. "When they get into folks' homes, it's like a scene out of a horror movie." The ants can bite, but the biggest danger is that they're attracted to circuit boxes. The reason isn't known but their sheer numbers can create an ant bridge between connections, shorting out entire electrical systems.

Yeah. Sleep tight knowing that.

Giant Tesla Coils? Lighting On Demand? Hell Yeah, We Got That.

Sometimes, all it takes to push the boundaries of science is a wacky idea and a machine to prove it. Greg Leyh, founder of Lightning On Demand (LOD), may do just that, with plans to build two, ten-story-tall Teasla coils that can shoot hundreds of feet of lightning.

“Historically, new scientific machines produce unexpected discoveries,” said Leyh in an e-mail interview. “Many new discoveries are viewed as problems, where others provide fascinating new insights.”

But theories, and an experimental accident of the Siberian Institute for Power Engineering, found “laboratory-scale electric arcs start to gain lightning-like abilities once they grow past about 200ft in length,” according to the website.

Thus, the team at LOD aims to build two Tesla coils at the scale needed to generate electric arcs large enough to mimic natural lightning.

These will be the largest Tesla coils ever built, and will run at full output—around 4 million watts—to fill a football field with continuous bolts of lightning. They then plan to increase the voltage to 14 million volts and change the distance between the towers “to explore this mysterious region where normal electric arcs transform into lightning,” according to the project website.

I don't know how much of this is solid experimentation and how much is a Mythbusters-like mad scientist binge, but who cares? Lightning on demand to perfect testing and learn more about something that has taken hundreds of years because we can't just make it happen when we're ready?

Giggity.

Tick Tock, Euro Clock

Not a few days after the Financial Times's Wolfgang Munchau warned that the EU had basically until the end of next week to get a solution in place or the euro is done then we see the EU's money man, Oli Rehn, is warning of the same thing.

Europe faces a crucial 10 days to save the euro zone after agreeing to ramp up the firepower of its bailout fund but acknowledging it may have to turn to the International Monetary Fund for more help to avert financial disaster.

"We are now entering the critical period of 10 days to complete and conclude the crisis response of the European Union," Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said on Wednesday as EU finance ministers met.

Euro zone ministers agreed on Tuesday night on detailed plans to leverage the European Financial Stability Mechanism (EFSF), but could not say by how much because of rapidly worsening market conditions, prompting them to look to the IMF.

Italian and Spanish bond yields resumed their inexorable climb towards unsustainable levels on Wednesday, as markets assessed the rescue fund boost as inadequate.

Stocks fell and the euro weakened after ratings agency Standard & Poor's hit some of the world's leading banks with a credit downgrade.

And yes, yesterday's mass banking sector ratings agency downgrade hit banks like Goldman Sachs,  Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.  The contagion scenario from a euro collapse is guaranteed.  All of that explains this morning's stunning announcement from the Fed:

Central banks from the world's leading developed economies said on Wednesday they will take coordinated steps to prevent a lack of liquidity in the global financial system.

The U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the central banks of Canada, Britain, Japan and Switzerland said in a joint statement they had agreed to lower the cost of existing dollar swap lines by 50 basis points from December 5, as well as take other measures.

Woot, "other measures" are always fun.  Helicopter Ben's Magic Printing Press has gone international.  Hello, QE3!  The roller coaster is back folks.  Time to ride.

Cain Unable, Part 11

Herman Cain will here in Cincinnati this morning on the "campaign trail", which apparently means "the slow, agonizing death of his run for President where everyone but Herman Cain himself admits it's over."  His first stop this morning:  Orange Julius country up in the northern suburbs.

Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain will appear at a 9 a.m. rally Wednesday at the Marriott Hotel off Interstate 75 and Union Centre Boulevard.

The former pizza company executive is making a three-city swing through the state. West Chester is in a key Republican belt in Ohio, typically a pivotal swing state in presidential elections

The longtime married man has denied allegations in recent days he had a 13-year affair with a Georgia businesswoman. The allegations come after several women alleged he sexually harassed them.

Speculation swirled in the national media Tuesday night that he may quit the race. But Cain has said he will not quit unless his wife tells him she no longer believes in him.

Good god, Gloria Cain.  Spare the country this nonsense, tell him it's over, and let's get back to the GOP doing something insane like nominating Newt Gingrich, assuring an Obama win. I mean at this point, Team Cain Unable has even lost J-Mart:

Herman Cain is in the midst of “reassessing” whether to continue his 2012 bid, but its legacy is already settled: His campaign will go down as one of the most hapless and bumbling operations in modern presidential politics, setting a new standard for how to turn damaging press coverage into something far worse.

We've got work to do to get him to leave, I guess.

StupidiNews!

• New figures show that three out of four people with HIV in the US still don't have their infection under control.
• The Senate defeated an amendment to this year's defense authorization bill that would have limited detention of terror suspect without charges, setting up a veto fight with the White House.
• Vice President Biden made a surprise stop in Iraq to greet departing troops withdrawing from the country, thanking them for their service.
• Pakistan's latest protest against NATO involves boycotting a meeting of coalition forces involving neighboring Afghanistan.
• It's a squid, it's a robot, it's both.  Researchers have created a "soft-bodied" robot that maneuvers its way around obstacles.

Last Call

I've seen the future...and it is a silly place.

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.

Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening." 

Damn you Higgs boson and your army of time travel lunatics!  Will we ever be rid of you?

On the other hand, free chocolate!

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 43

Time for another update on Japan and the fallout from Fukushima Daiichi disaster, and the latest figures from Japan's science ministry are devastating: some 8% of Japan's total land mass has been irradiated, including basically all of Fukushima prefecture, as well as significant parts of neighboring Gunma and Tochigi prefectures.

Japan’s science ministry says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.

It says more than 30,000 square kilometres of the country has been blanketed by radioactive cesium.

The science ministry defines places with a concentration of more than 10,000 becquerels per square meter as “areas affected by the nuclear accident”….  The science ministry fine-tuned its methods by subtracting levels of naturally existing background radiation.

This is pretty grim and devastating stuff.  Fukushima is going to be uninhabitable for generations and there's basically nothing anyone can do about it to fix it.  At some point Japan is going to have to bite the bullet and just write the prefecture off, and I don't think that will be long in the offing.

My heart goes out to Japan.  They're going to need a lot of help to get through this.

The Banana, Splits

Chiquita International is leaving Cincy for Charlotte, complaining it's just too far to fly to its Central and South American bases of operaations from Ohio.

Multiple media outlets in Charlotte are reporting that Chiquita Brands International is moving its corporate headquarters and more than 300 corporate jobs to that city.

Chiquita officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Meg Olberding, spokeswoman for City Manager Milton Dohoney, said she did not know if Chiquita had made a decision to leave.

"I don't have any information confirming that right now," she said.

The city had presented the company with its proposed incentives some time ago, she said, and has been waiting for a response.

P.G. Sittenfeld, who will be sworn in Thursday to Cincinnati City Council, said he got a text from a friend this morning saying it appeared his unusual effort to keep the company hadn't worked.

During his campaign, Sittenfeld passed out Chiquita bananas on Fountain Square. On the bananas were stickers that said, "Chiquita, don't give Cincinnati the slip!"

And that's exactly what Chiquita did.  The reason?

Charlotte has reportedly offered Chiquita a $4 million city, county and state incentive package to move. Miami was also trying to attract the company.

 $13,333 a job or so.  All's fair in love and war.  Considering the company's stock has lost nearly 45% this year, I'm not surprised they bolted.  It also means Chiquita's human rights issues are North Carolina's problem and not Ohio's now, so I'm not too terribly broken up to see them go.

Still, this kind of thing happen too often.  It's why red states like Florida are trying to eliminate corporate taxes to take as many jobs from other states as possible, rather than creating new ones.  We're cannibalizing ourselves in an interstate race to the bottom rather than working together to create jobs at a national level and the corporations are reaping the largesse.

You'd think somebody would notice.

Eschewing The Fat

CLEVELAND -- An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn't doing enough to control his weight.

The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster care strictly for a weight-related issue.

Lawyers for the mother say the county overreached when authorities took the boy last week. They say the medical problems he is at risk for do not yet pose an imminent danger.

There are a few things to consider here. First and foremost, the physical health of the child. 200 pounds at eight years old is dangerous. His body is developing, and his weight can negatively affect several things, from blood sugar to muscle development. There is also the emotional and mental health of the child to consider. If he is physically healthy, does he have an eating disorder or behavioral issue that can be treated? Something is amiss here, and this child deserves the best care to find it and help him live healthier. I disagree with the lawyers who say his weight doesn't post an immediate risk.

I also find the phrasing above curious. It says the mother didn't do enough to control his weight. What she has done would be important. Did she not do enough, did she refuse to do anything at all, or did she try everything and hit a wall? It's clear the boy needs a check-up at best, and a lot of help at worst, but without a description I don't know if taking him from the mother was for his benefit or to make a point.

What do you think, guys?

Mad Cow Disease Affecting Classical Music

Regulations which tightly control the use of certain types of animal tissue are unwittingly threatening the centuries-old technique of making musical instrument strings out of beef gut.

The craft is covered by the same strict controls on raw materials from cows, even though campaigners say that to catch Creutzfeldt – Jakob disease, (CJD) – the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy – from violin or cello strings from an infected animal you would need to eat several metres of them.

The musicians warn that regulations are threatening the industry and could force gut string manufacturers to close, with disastrous consequences for the 'period orchestra' movement, which aims to recreate every aspect of music as it was first performed in the years 1650-1750.
Without gut strings, they argue, it would be impossible to play the music of Purcell, Handel, Vivaldi and Bach as the composers intended it to be heard.

This is the stuff I find fascinating. I never expected this to come in on my violin news alerts. It's interesting, but I wonder if it can be changed in a way that accomplishes the goal while protecting the production of strings. It's important to reproduce the strings exactly to get the intended sound.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Hey, they know who their base is.  That base needs motivation.  Best way to do that is the FOX way: a steady diet of red meat and Obama Derangement Syndrome.  That's how, as Dave Weigel points out, this NY Times article:

Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate.

..becomes this FOX Nation headline:



"Because Obama Hates White People" is the official campaign slogan of the GOP in 2012, folks. And this will go on for another year, minimum.

En-Tire-Ly Too Much Fail

Things that are difficult to hide from Google Earth #7461:  A quarter of a million discarded tires covering nearly 50 acres.  Treehugger:

Chances are that at some point, you've procrastinated by looking for your house on Google Earth. Now we can speculate if Michael Keitt, Jr. of New York ever zoomed in the lot he owns in Calhoun County in rural South Carolina and wondered about the clearly visible, giant pile of tires. Although the lot has no address, it couldn't have taken him too long: It measures 50 acres and is home to more than 250,000 discarded tires.

The tire pile was first brought to the county's attention about a year ago. Under normal circumstances, the maximum fine for littering would be $475, but fortunately the state Department of Health and Environmental Control has taken over the case and is pursuing a case against an Easley, SC man, George Fontella Brown, 39. The charges of violating the state's solid waste act carry four-digit fines and up to a year in prison.

Besides the obvious issue of an enormous pile of un-recycled (and thus wasted) rubber, the tires collect water and form a mosquito breeding ground. A Florida company has been contracted to collect and properly dispose of the tires (not that hard, it turns out).

Just...really?  You didn't think anyone would notice over 250,000 discarded tires, such a large amount that it was visible from satellite?



This guy should get prison time just on general principle.

EPIC FAIL.

StupidiNews!

• Federal law enforcement officials announced a Cyber Monday crackdown shutting down more than 150 web sites selling "tens of millions" in counterfeit goods.
• Oscar Ortega-Hernandez, the man charged with the attempted assassination of President Obama, has been declared fit enough to stand trial.
• Baghdad violence is on the rise as the drawdown of US forces concludes and security is fully handed over to the Iraqi people.
• Facebook may finally make its long-rumored stock IPO before the end of the year, with the company valued at $100 billion dollars.
• After Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York made some inquiries, malls are no longer using cell-phone triangulation to track shopper habits...for now.