gregladen | November 12, 2008The head of UN peacekeeping has asked the UN Security Council for more than 3,000 extra troops to protect civilians in the eastern DR Congo.
Alain Le Roy said current peacekeeper numbers were not enough to protect civilians from violence perpetrated by rebel groups and the Congolese army.
There are 9,000 UN peacekeepers in the region, out of 17,000 nationwide.
The latest crisis began in August when rebels advanced towards Goma, which is now ringed with refugee camps.
Read the rest: BBC
gregladen | November 12, 2008Or is "cheetos" singular ... I'm not sure.
But wait, there's more...
And now, a word from Joe the Plumber...
gregladen | November 12, 2008 The name of Allah is written in this eggplant. (source) ... in Western Europe.
Currently, strange shaped veggies ... carrots that look like human sex organs, potatoes that look like Mr. Potato head wearing glasses, and of course, rutabagas in the shape of the Virgin Mother Mary cannot be legally sold in Western Europe. That regulation is about to be lifted.
Currently, for instance,
Class I cucumbers must "be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber)". Class II "slightly crooked cucumbers may have a maximum…
gregladen | November 12, 2008It is hard to kill fungus. Well, not really. They can't handle being burned and chlorine does them in and lots of other chemicals are bad for hem. But when a fungus infects a person ... like with Aspergillos, an infection with Aspergillus in the lungs, fungi are tricky. To kill an infectious agent, one typically poisons it somehow, but to ingest, inject, inhale, or even topically apply a chemical may also affect the person. The reason it is relatively easy to kill an infecting bacterium than it is to kill an infecting fungus is, in part, because fungi are phylogenetically more closely…
gregladen | November 11, 2008The Al Franken campaign seeks volunteers to help with the recount starting next week. There is a training session this Saturday and people are being asked to commit a day or more (but in units of whole days) to the effort some time over the subsequent weeks, on weekdays. (There are logistical reasons for this.)
Let me know if you want to help. Email me your name and phone number and I'll pass it on to a person who will contact you.
gregladen | November 11, 2008Today, French and other European dignitaries gathered at the site of Verdun, where an eight month battle between the French and Germans was carried out during World War I, also known as the Great War, or the War to End All Wars. This is Armistice Day, marking the end of that war.
There were no veterans from the Battle of Verdun present because none survive. In fact, there are hardly any veterans from World War I alive anywhere in the world today. There are ten verified veterans from World War I combat, and a handful of others who claim to be veterans but probably are not, or who were in…
gregladen | November 10, 2008 Cute baby lion kittens. When they grow up, they will want to eat you. I'll never forget the first wild lion I ever saw. It was a pitch black night, on the savanna in the Western Rift Valley. I had climbed on top of the hood of the Land Rover, engine off, but headlights on. My plan was to search the horizon for lights indicating the presence of the research camp I was trying to find. Once I was on the hood, I was about to tell my colleague, still in the vehicle, to cut the headlights so I could see better. That's when she walked into view.
She was a fully adult lioness. Eventually…
gregladen | November 10, 2008God Poll: This looks like a nice AJAX application that happens to ask some interesting questions. I'm showing it to you because of the technology, not because of the content. Not to encourage you to crash a poll or anything. Just because PZ does that.
gregladen | November 10, 2008
Ricci's mug shot " Jonathan Ricci [of] Florida ... was arrested Saturday morning after he allegedly tried to steal "a handful of communion wafers" from a priest at a Catholic church in Jensen Beach. Ricci, 33, sought to swipe 15 wafers valued at $1 .. 9 AM, Ricci accepted a wafer on the Communion line, but "walked away without taking the communion into his mouth." After refusing a priest's requests to "accept" the wafer, Ricci "turned to the priest and grabbed a handful of the wafers from the plate and attempted to leave" ... "Due to the religious significance of the holy…
gregladen | November 10, 2008So, you've heard that the Obama Transition Team is an A in GLBTA. Good. Now, for some other mostly positive news:
3rd Episcopal diocese splits from church over gays
A third theologically conservative diocese has broken away from the liberal Episcopal Church in a long-running dispute over the Bible, gay relationships and other issues.
The Diocese of Quincy, Ill., took the vote at its annual meeting that ends Saturday.
Two other dioceses - San Joaquin, based in Fresno, Calif., and Pittsburgh - have already split off. Next weekend, the Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, will vote whether to follow…
gregladen | November 10, 2008Like Jerry the Goldfish, whom I found doing the old back paddle this morning, the Mars Phoenix Lander has ceased communications after five months of operation. This is the seasonally dark time in arctic Mars, and there is a lot of dust in the air for some reason, so there is no longer enough power for Phoenix to keep alive. Engineers received the last signal from the lander on November 2nd.
It is possible, but unlikely, that Phoenix will 'phone home' again over the next couple of weeks, and NASA will be listening just in case.
Farewell sweet robot.
Details here
gregladen | November 10, 2008You have time but time can go by very quickly and suddenly Thanksgiving is upon you. This repost from one year ago may help you plan your turkey-day meal.
My daughter, Julia, is named after two people. One of them is Julia Child. I happen to think Julia Child has had more influence on American society than most other people, by helping to make varied and interesting cuisine part of American culture.
One day when Julia was a very young child (my Julia, not Julia Child), I was out walking her in her carriage. I turned the corner around the Van Serg Building on the Harvard Campus and…
gregladen | November 10, 2008The 'lead' held by Republican Senator Norm Colman over Democratic Party Candidate, Radio Talk Show Host, SNL Star, Satirist, Author and Cartologist Al Franken has dropped to 204 points.
You may be wondering how this could happen.
Well, up to today, and depending on which report you read, through the rest of the week, various precincts are double checking the numbers on their vote counts and reporting them to the Secretary of State. The original counts were quick and dirty ... generally pretty accurate and certainly good enough to declare a winner where the percentage difference is five or so…
gregladen | November 10, 2008Sandy Porter at Discovering Biology in a Digital World has got an interesting offer:
Want to learn more about Parkinson's disease? See why a single nucleotide mutation messes up the function of a protein?
I have a short activity that uses Cn3D (a molecular viewing program from the NCBI) to look at a protein that seems to be involved in a rare form of Parkinson's disease and I could sure use beta testers.
If you'd like to do this,...
... the click here and get going on it!
gregladen | November 10, 2008From the BBC:
US President-elect Barack Obama will seek to reverse Bush administration policies when he enters office on 20 January, his transition chief has said.
John Podesta said executive orders by President George W Bush on issues such as stem cell research and oil drilling were at odds with Mr Obama's views.
Plans to pass a raft of last-minute regulations are also being watched. ...
Read the rest here.
gregladen | November 9, 2008Anyone who has wondered what it might be like to dive into a pool of millions of distant galaxies of different shapes and colours, will enjoy the latest image released by ESO. Obtained in part with the Very Large Telescope, the image is the deepest ground-based U-band image of the Universe ever obtained. It contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observations with the VIMOS instrument.
Read it here