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See the full article for illustrations.

Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers.

The experiments, described in the Science journal, offer a scientific explanation for a phenomenon experienced by one in 10 people.

Two teams used virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking the body was located elsewhere.

The visual illusion plus the feel of their real bodies being touched made volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.

The researchers say their findings could have practical applications, such as helping take video games to the next level of virtuality so the players feel as if they are actually inside the game.

Clinically, surgeons might also be able to perform operations on patients thousands of miles away by controlling a robotic virtual self.

Teleported

For some, out-of-body experiences or OBEs occurs spontaneously, while for others it is linked to dangerous circumstances, a near-death experience, a dream-like state or use of alcohol or drugs.

We feel that our self is located where the eyes are

UCL researcher Dr Henrik Ehrsson 

One theory is that it is down to how people perceive their own body - those unhappy or less in touch with their body are more likely to have an OBE.

But the two teams, from University College London, UK, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, believe there is a neurological explanation.

Their work suggests a disconnection between the brain circuits that process visual and touch sensory information may thus be responsible for some OBEs.

In the Swiss experiments, the researchers asked volunteers to stand in front of a camera while wearing video-display goggles.

Through these goggles, the volunteers could see a camera view of their own back - a three-dimensional "virtual own body" that appeared to be standing in front of them.

When the researchers stroked the back of the volunteer with a pen, the volunteer could see their virtual back being stroked either simultaneously or with a time lag.

The volunteers reported that the sensation seemed to be caused by the pen on their virtual back, rather than their real back, making them feel as if the virtual body was their own rather than a hologram.

Volunteers

Even when the camera was switched to film the back of a mannequin being stroked rather than their own back, the volunteers still reported feeling as if the virtual mannequin body was their own.

And when the researchers switched off the goggles, guided the volunteers back a few paces, and then asked them to walk back to where they had been standing, the volunteers overshot the target, returning nearer to the position of their "virtual self".

Dr Henrik Ehrsson, who led the UCL research, used a similar set-up in his tests and found volunteers had a physiological response - increased skin sweating - when they felt their virtual self was being threatened - appearing to be hit with a hammer.

Dr Ehrsson said: "This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel that our self is located where the eyes are."

Dr Susan Blackmore, psychologist and visiting lecturer at the University of the West of England, said: "This has at last brought OBEs into the lab and tested one of the main theories of how they occur.

"Scientists have long suspected that the clue to these extraordinary, and sometimes life-changing, experiences lies in disrupting our normal illusion of being a self behind our eyes, and replacing it with a new viewpoint from above or behind."

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/6960612.stm

Published: 2007/08/24 13:55:48 GMT

They had no government, police, army.

probably why they disappeared.

might well be he was wearing a yellow star. am gonna look into the story later to see if he was in an area already controlled by the germans which would make the wearing of the yellow star of david on his clothing mandatory.

They came night after night in their very slow biplanes, and for some periods they wouldn't give us any sleep at all.

:2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny:

but to get my mind back out of the gutter...

schindlers list wouldn't really make my need to watch list for my son. not the top of it anyway. more the kind of movie that shows that all war, no matter what the cause, is hell.

the longest day

a bridge too far

blackhawk down

flags of our fathers

letters from iwo jima

full metal jacket

terminator 1 and 2

bridge on the river kwai

I heard that those LED Screens are suppose to look amazing.  They installed an 84 foot LED High Definition Screen and the Football Stadium here in Buffalo.  I'm looking forward to going out there for a game to see how it looks.

that will be the type that uses clusters of leds to display each pixel. it has nothing to do with a tft lcd display that is backlit by leds.

the point of having an led backlit display is that in a standard lcd display all the light comes from a single light source at the top or bottom of the display that is spread to cover the screen by an array of reflectors. with an led backlight there are  number of leds backlighting the display spread out over the entire area. this gives better light distribution, more brightness depending on the number of leds used and usually less power consumption.

this is opposite to the large scale led display you mentioned. that eats a buttload of power for cooling of the embedded circuits controlling the board. and if a pixel goes out, you're in trouble. it means climbing into the bastard from behind. and you can't really tell where on the board you are from there. so you have to have somebody on the ground guide you in. that means shutting off an area and having him tell you higher, lower, left, right, until you find the offending circuit. and on a display that large the circuitboard for a pixel is probably several inches by several inches with dozens of leds on it.

i like the engine braking / power storage with the compressed air part. a lot better than those damned battery hybrids. you can even use that as an a/c. cool the compressed air down to ambient and then bleed it into the passenger compatment. the decompression cools it off. voila. a/c.

the presentation on the design on the scuderigroup site is well done. did you watch it? they also have a pdf on there that explains the principle.

Listen

www.scuderigroup.com

All Things Considered, August 18, 2007

Video

By Nick Bryant

BBC News, Melbourne 

Alex Kurzem came to Australia in 1949 carrying just a small brown briefcase, but weighed down by some harrowing psychological and emotional baggage.

Tucked away in his briefcase were the secrets of his past - fragments of his life that he kept hidden for decades.

In 1997, after raising a family in Melbourne with his Australian bride, he finally revealed himself. He told how, at the age of five, he had been adopted by the SS and became a Nazi mascot.

His personal history, one of the most remarkable stories to emerge from World War II, was published recently in a book entitled The Mascot.

"They gave me a uniform, a little gun and little pistol," Alex told the BBC.

"They gave me little jobs to do - to polish shoes, carry water or light a fire. But my main job was to entertain the soldiers. To make them feel a bit happier."

Painful memories

In newsreels, he was paraded as 'the Reich's youngest Nazi' and he witnessed some unspeakable atrocities.

But his SS masters never discovered the most essential detail about his life: their little Nazi mascot was Jewish.

"They didn't know that I was a Jewish boy who had escaped a Nazi death squad. They thought I was a Russian orphan."

His story starts where his childhood memories begin - in a village in Belarus on 20 October 1941, the day it was invaded by the German army.

When the shooting stopped I had no idea where to go so I went to live in the forests, because I couldn't go back. I was the only one left

"I remember the German army invading the village, lining up all the men in the city square and shooting them. My mother told me that my father had been killed, and that we would all be killed."

"I didn't want to die, so in the middle of the night I tried to escape. I went to kiss my mother goodbye, and ran up into the hill overlooking the village until the morning came."

That was the day his family was massacred - his mother, his brother, his sister.

"I was very traumatised. I remember biting my hand so I couldn't cry out loud, because if I did they would have seen me hiding in the forest. I can't remember exactly what happened. I think I must have passed out a few times. It was terrible."

False identity

"When the shooting stopped I had no idea where to go so I went to live in the forests, because I couldn't go back. I was the only one left. I must have been five or six."

"I went into the forest but no-one wanted me. I knocked on peoples' doors and they gave me bits of bread but they told me to move on. Nobody took me in."

He survived by scavenging clothes from the bodies of dead soldiers.

After about nine months in the forest, a local man handed him over to the Latvian police brigade, which later became incorporated in the Nazi SS.

That very day, people were being lined up for execution, and Alex thought he, too, was about to die.

"There was a soldier near me and I said, 'Before you kill me, can you give me a bit of bread?' He looked at me, and took me around the back of the school. He examined me and saw that I was Jewish. "No good, no good," he said. 'Look I don't want to kill, but I can't leave you here because you will perish.

"'I'll take you with me, give you a new name and tell the other soldiers that you are a Russian orphan.'"

Joining the circus

To this day, Alex Kurzem has no idea why Sergeant Jekabs Kulis took pity on him. Whatever his motives, it certainly helped that Alex had Aryan looks. And together, they kept the secret.

"Every moment I had to remind myself not to let my guard down, because if ever anyone found out, I was dead. I was scared of the Russians shooting me and the Germans discovering I was Jewish. I had no-one to turn to."

Young Alex saw action on the Russian front, and was even used by the SS to lure Jewish people to their deaths.

Outside the cattle trains which carried victims to the concentration camps, he handed out chocolate bars to tempt them in.

Then, in 1944, with the Nazis facing almost certain defeat, the commander of the SS unit sent him to live with a Latvian family.

Five years later, he managed to reach Australia. For a time, he worked in a circus and eventually became a television repair man in Melbourne.

All the time, he kept his past life to himself, not even telling his Australian wife, Patricia.

"When I left Europe I said 'forget about your past. You are going to a new country and a new life. Switch off and don't even think about it.'

"I managed to do it. I told people I lost my parents in the war, but I didn't go into detail. I kept the secret and never told anyone."

It was not until 1997 that he finally told his family, and along with his son, Mark, set about discovering more about his past life.

After visiting the village where he was born, they found out his real name was Ilya Galperin, and even uncovered a film in a Latvian archive of Alex in full SS regalia.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/6945847.stm

Published: 2007/08/21 00:19:05 GMT

hm. get a sata 1 drive cuz it's gonna be cheaper than a newer model drive and probably fast enough?

hey now just get the mac and dual boot mac osx and windows not that hard

like i said. best of both worlds.

mac.

mac.

mac.

who cares about exact specs? mac is sleek. it's cool. it lets you run macos and windows and linux. it looks sweet. it looks pricey. (well, it IS expensive. but it has a certain coolness factor you won't get from any other vendor.

do a tracert here or somewhere else. usually the point where the connection gets handed over to one of the major backbone providers is the point where your isps central systems are located and that is the location that the ip will be registered to. the fact that you are using a wireless connection that could theoretically be located doesn't change that. the provider may keep track of the origin of your signal but that info will ot usually be available to someone looking up the ip from the net. they will just see the whois info. do a reverse whois on the ip and it should give you you isp with his location as the owner. just to reassure you, there is nothing weird going on.

the internet provider you areusing is probably registered at that location. the provider "owns" the ip and "leases" it to you. if someone looks it up it shows up as him however.

obviously it wasn't built as well. how can you tell? the front fell off. rotflmbfhao.

now i don't know if this is a spoof or not, but it is funny as hell.

every provider has a bandwidth cap. it's wether or not they have a volume cap that is the point

i was spending the week at an undisclosed location with only dialup access that had such poor line quality that it maxed out at 16.8 kbps. so aside from tracking dean i was pretty much offline.

:2funny: :2funny: :2funny: :2funny:

sorry, i thought the so you're saying it's just a rumor was referring to my post about the mayor screwing around.

lol, so you are saying it is just a rumor?

well, i heard it from a 3rd party, so i call it rumor. have you heard of it?

UPDATE

Q&A: Sierra Leone election

Voters in Sierra Leone go to the polls on 11 August to elect a new president and members of parliament.

A large voter-turnout is expected.

By March, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) had registered over 2.6 million voters, accounting for 91% of the estimated voting population.

What is the background?

Outgoing President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah won the first post-war polls in 2002 with a landslide victory, receiving 70% of all votes cast. His Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) won 83 of the 112 parliamentary seats.

President Kabbah's victory followed a brutal decade-long civil war during which 50,000 people were killed and thousands more had their bodies mutilated.

British intervention in 2002 led to the official end of the war. It made way for the disarming of tens of thousands of rebels and militia fighters by UN peacekeepers, who withdrew in December 2005.

How does the system work?

Sierra Leone has a single-chamber parliament with 124 seats. Of these, 112 are held by elected members. The remaining 12 are reserved for traditional chiefs.

Members of parliament serve four-year terms.

Parliamentary candidates must be Sierra Leonean citizens by birth and be at least 21 years old.

The constitution demands that parliamentary candidates be able to speak and read English "with a degree of proficiency, sufficient to enable them to take an active part in the proceedings of parliament".

What about the president?

The president's tenure in office is limited to two five-year terms.

Aspiring presidential candidates must be Sierra Leone citizens and belong to a registered political party. They must be at least 40 years old.

To win the presidential race, a candidate must receive 55% of the votes cast.

If there is no clear winner, a run-off will be held after two weeks.

Who is leading the race?

Seven parties have been cleared for the elections. The main contenders in the presidential race belong to the leading three parties.

1. Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP)

Vice-President Solomon Ekuma Berewa, the head of the SLPP, is the front-runner in the race. Mr Berewa, 71, served as attorney-general and justice minister between 1996 and 2002.

The SLPP gets most of its support from the south, where it also faces stiff competition from the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC).

2. All People's Congress (APC)

The APC presidential candidate, Ernest Bai Koroma, is running for the second time. He came second in the 2002 presidential race, receiving 22.3% of the votes cast. His party holds 27 seats in parliament.

The APC governed the country between 1968 and 1992. In 1978, it introduced a one-party system, which remained in place until 1992.

Many voters continue to associate the party with mismanaging the country and precipitating the civil war.

3. People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC)

The PMDC is a breakaway faction of the SLPP. It was officially registered in January 2006.

PMDC's presidential candidate, Charles Francis Margai, hails from a prominent political family. His father, Albert Margai, served as premier from 1964 -1967. His uncle, Milton Margai, was Sierra Leone's first prime minister, who led the country to independence in 1961.

What are the main issues?

1. Role of military

The army has been a key player in the politics of the country, whose post-independence history is peppered with coups and years of military rule.

This year, the armed forces have pledged neutrality in the elections. The deputy chief of defence staff, Brig-Gen Nelson Williams, said the armed forces will only intervene if the police are unable to handle the security situation during polling.

2. Reconstruction/corruption

The governing party's manifesto focuses on the consolidation of peace and on the country's reconstruction. Opposition leaders however accuse the party of having failed in this respect.

In 2006, the UN ranked Sierra Leone 176 out 177 in the UNDP Development Index.

The opposition APC says government officials have misappropriated millions of dollars from donor funding. The IMF has also raised concerns over alleged corruption within the government.

3. Mineral exploitation

The illegal trade in diamonds from Sierra Leone not only funded the country's civil war but is believed to have helped fuel conflicts in other African nations.

The government has launched a major campaign to crackdown on the trade in so-called "blood diamonds". It says the crackdown is necessary to improve the diamond mining industry's image and attract much-needed foreign investment in the mining industry.

Despite these efforts, most Sierra Leoneans remain poor, and have not yet benefited from the exploitation of the country's abundant forestry and mineral wealth.

4. Election violence

Acts of violence escalated in the run up to the polls, especially in the capital, Freetown, and the south-eastern towns of Bo and Kenema. In July, police arrested scores of people after clashes in the south between SLPP and PMDC supporters.

Who are the observers?

The National Election Watch (NEW) is a coalition of 75 local civil society organizations that has trained some 150,000 monitors. The group says its mission is to ensure "free, fair and transparent elections".

The Council of Churches in Sierra Leone, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the US-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) will also be monitoring the elections.

BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad.

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/6937501.stm

Published: 2007/08/09 10:28:58 GMT

yeah. it was hot today. had to turn up the a/c to keep it at 70...

maybe he had his mouth full?

For the illustrations that go with the article go here.

To listen to the full audio version, go here.

All Things Considered, August 9, 2007

it animates me to do all sorts of dirty when you click on it to view it.