McCain Does Something Right
# Erik Baard at The Village Voice - Quantum Leap - from December of 1999. Randell Mills of Blacklight Power has been telling his hydrino story since 1991. Still nothing to show for it but lots of money in his pocket from investors. [smith2004]
"It's the American story," says Dr. Robert Park of the American Physical Society. "But he's still wrong."
Park has concluded that the hydrino theory is wrong in his upcoming book, Voodoo Science: The Road From Foolishness to Fraud. Park is not alone is being rankled by hydrinos. The hydrogen atom is the simplest, most common, and most tested element. It's nearly universally agreed that a free-floating hydrogen atom is in what's called "the ground state"?you can't bring its electron closer into its nucleus. Telling physicists that they've got that wrong is like telling mothers across America that they've misunderstood apple pie. It's that fundamental.
"If you could fuck around with the hydrogen atom, you could fuck around with the energy process in the sun. You could fuck around with life itself," claims Dr. Phillip Anderson, a Nobel laureate in physics at Princeton University. "Everything we know about everything would be a bunch of nonsense. That's why I'm so sure that it's a fraud."
Dr. Michio Kaku, a theoretical physicist based at City University of New York, adds that "the only law that this business with Mills is proving is that a fool and his money are easily parted." Kaku is a cofounder of "string"-field theory, which posits that all matter and energy are actually manifestations of vibrations occurring in 11 dimensions. String-field theory, considered radical when it was introduced, is now pretty much the only game in town for mainstream physicists seeking a grand unified theory.
# Nathan Sharpe at The Manitoban - Pot activist Marc Emery deconstructs his drug kingpin status - nothing new here, but it keeps the story alive. [google]
"Probably got about two years before I get extradited if it all goes according to the government plan," he said, exhaling.
The very fact that he can openly smoke pot in the store on Hastings St. in Vancouver's East Side is testament to how far marijuana activism has come in a relatively short while. When Emery first started, literature on marijuana that encouraged use was illegal, as was the popular magazine "High Times," which he sold illegally in the early 1990s.
# Jerry Pournelle - Civil War in France and Denmark? - email about the "riots" in France, and Denmark. I had no idea it was so bad there, and has been for a long time. [clairefiles]
# John Hendren at The Los Angeles Times via Arizona Central - McCain vows to add torture ban to all major Senate legislation - I'm no fan of John McCain, but I salute him for this. How the Busheviks can continue to fight for the authority to torture prisoners is beyond me. I guess they really aren't human. [clairefiles]
Speaking from the Senate floor, McCain said, "If necessary - and I sincerely hope it is not - I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails. Let no one doubt our determination."
...
Opponents of the McCain language contend that setting no-torture ground rules would signal to prisoners that they have little to fear during interrogations, discouraging them from providing information.
# Ron Paul at The John Birch Society - A Report from Congress - mp3 of a speech given on October 29, 2005 at the National Council Dinner of The John Birch Society (JBS), Orlando, Florida. It's the second item on the JBS Review of the News Podcast page. [root]
I require my staff to read every bill far enough to find out if there's anything in there that's not constitutional, and if there is, then I'm not going to vote for it.
