In the News v 2.0

[Kenny_C.002]

America to send aid to South Korea

So here we go. South Korea gets artillery'd by North Korea. That can't possibly end well for either side. For the US, they'll be adding onto the already pounding debt. I'm wondering about this series of attacks being Kim Jong Un though. Interesting thing to think about, since at the moment it looks like NK's not going to go for all-out invasion/war.

[karmachameleon]

Father loses custody of his children for being agnostic

I'm guessing there is more to the story than just that (I'm 100% sure the basis of the mother's case wasn't his beliefs, and wouldn't be surprised if the judge's comments were taken completely out of context), but still, it goes against the First Amendment and the whole separation of church and state thang we have going on.

[Hassan_Descartes_AbdAllah]

I cannot believe Im the first one to post this.

Wikileaks has just released its latest coordinated "radical transparency" document dump of 250,000+ US State Department diplomatic cables, with partnered coverage in the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel (which also includes a cool visual interactive atlas of the cables). In addition, Wikileaks has expanded its partners to include El Pais and le Monde.

http://freegovinfo.info/node/3132

Check out the contents of classified documents, they are given in the link.

Thing is, after reading Dan Brown's Deception Point, I dont and cannot really feel comfortable to form any opinion on what the media says.

[Kenny_C.002]

NASA announced that there is life that lives on arsenic in a press conference. In other news, human collective minds have been blown. To be clear, it's using arsenic instead of phosphorus. To the knowledgable mind we begin to wonder: phosphorus is a HUGE part of our life (we need it for energy in the form of ATP, we use it for our DNA and RNA backbones, etc.) and it's replaceable. What else? We already know that life doesn't need water (archaebacteria can use H2S instead of H2O, for example), and this breaks another one of our self-imposed rules. Nice.

This means we have to revise one of the fundamental assumptions we make: extraterrestial life requires all of the conditions that we have for it to be viable. It doesn't. Therefore finding life is simultaneously easier and harder. Easier in a sense that less of our own criteria would be required for planets to be considered viable and therefore we wouldn't dismiss some viable planets we otherwise would have. Harder in it that a lot more planets fit the criteria.

source Here too