Video: Constitutionality of Health Care Law

Judge Andrew Napalitano discusses why the Federal government cannot direct State-raised tax dollars, and why this is a power grab by the Federal government.
This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

The Next Big Thing in Hosting: The Hostatulator

Kevin HazardHere at The Planet, work has been proceeding in order to bring reliability, scalability and burstability to the crudely conceived idea of a hosting and communication platform that would not only supply inverse binary data for use in an internet protocol transfer request, but would also be capable of automatically and redundantly synchronizing cardinal base-qualifiers to streamline the load times of a business’s Web site. Such a configuration is commonly known as the hostatulator.

The original infrastructural configuration had an internal architecture of prefabricated aluminum cabinetry, surmounted by a malleable logarithmic casing in such a way that the pentametric fans in devices in close geographic proximity would exhaust rectified cooling agents multidirectionally … The primary consumption involved uncompressed lotus-o-delta rays reconfiguring the standard operation of the panendermic semi-boloid coded computing sector, but inefficiencies were noticed when the thermodynamic coupler connected to the nonreversible sonic transfiber caused the differential components to misdiagnose the ‘up’ end of the RAM modules. By sequentially incorporating a combination of hostatulators and retro-serverations, amazing results have been observed [see schematic below for preliminary calculations].

Hostatulator Schematics

Basically, by reengineering the way the seventy-four cloud accelerators navigated the channels of the Cisco grouting router drives, a simple operating system reload brought about unbelievable improvement in per-core output and rotor slipstream variance … The consolidated, hardware-independent dependencies were all but eliminated.

While our slight modifications involved the forced diathetical retrograde of the data center’s coefficient of efficiency and its temperature phase disposition, the annular network bandwidth deviation was kept below four exabytes during peak usage. This traffic was measured with the aid of a Dell metapolar refractive hypervisor, and with the latest beta firmware release, the transcendental hopper dadoscope’s KVM output completely modified the terminal response and alleviated any need for conversion by the quadratic requantifier. By restoring the fundamental database with an emergency serial loop, the hierarchy immediately became an oligarchy, and the workload was redistributed much more efficiently.

Undoubtedly, the hostatulator has now reached a very high level of technical development, and they are immediately available for custom solution provisioning at the low price of $43,234.44 per server per month.

Thank you.

-Kevin

P.S. We’re looking to spread the word about this unbelievable technological innovation. The first person to record a video of with the above content will get an awesome T-shirt! Post the video on YouTube and link to it in a comment here. That is all.

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California Libertarian: Sarah Palin only hope to Save America from Obama/Soros Tyranny

SPECIAL GUEST EDITORIAL

by Mike Zeldis, fmr. State Treasurer, Libertarian Party of California

I have been a Libertarian for over 30 years and many years ago was the CA Libertarian Party Treasurer.

I am also a big supporter of Palin for reasons to be explained below.

These are very dangerous times for America. Obama is an extremely dangerous person for all those who believe in America and the principles on which it was founded.

It is my opinion that Obama is a front for George Soros who wants to establish a one-world government dominated by left wing socialist thinkers and policies. You can check the Net to find the Soros-Obama links including moveon.org.

Please view these videos at the link of EU proceedings.

It seems to me that Soros is using Obama to try and take away America's sovereignty. He is trying to do this by having Obama explode the deficit which as we know will lead to hyper inflation and the crash of the U.S. dollar. Remember how Soros made hundreds of millions if not billions as a direct result of his destruction of the British pound. At that point Obama and his administration will push for America to give up the U.S. dollar and accept a one-world currency which could initially be the Euro. Soros tried this with Great Britain but so far has not succeeded. The next step would be to replace the U.S. Constitution, not that the Democrats or even Republicans adhere to it, with the EU Constitution as the governing law in the U.S.

Based upon what I have observed Palin is the one person, if she gets elected as POTUS in 2012 who could stop this if it hasn't happened by then. Soros/Obama will stop at nothing to win the 2012 election.

As Stalin wrote. It is not the votes that count but who counts the vote that matter. See the recent election in Iran for the latest example of this law.

To that end Soros has set in place an Attorney's General program, which can be Googled, whose goal is to get as many of his people elected to the State Attorneys General position as is possible. In addition news has already surfaced that auditors of the 2010 IT Census program have found all kinds of irregularities in the program. Some of which could very well be used to gerrymander the 2010 and 2012 election results in favor of the Soros/Obama agenda. In addition there has been a bill introduced in Congress to give all U.S. felons, almost all of which are Democrats and number about four million the right to vote. Then there is the Obama's illegal immigration agenda which would add more millions to the Democrat voter rolls.

These are indeed very perilous times for Americans who value their freedom and it is only going to get worse.

It seems to me that Palin is the only person that for the most part represents a true U.S.Constitutional position as envisioned by our founding fathers who could get elected in 2012 and have a chance of stopping and reversing this tyrannical destruction of the U.S that is being advanced by Soros/Obama.

Sarah Palin can save us from the Soros/Obama tyranny.

Editor's Note - Mike Zeldis is a regular reader of LR. He was deeply involved in the California Libertarian Party in the lates 1970s and 80s working closely with California LP Chair and 1984 Libertarian Presidential candidate David Bergland.

NYC’s Conservative Punk Todd Seavey hired by Fox News??

HOT RUMOR!!

Just breaking...

Todd Seavey (photo 2nd from left) of ToddSeavey.com "Conservatism for Punks," and the longtime science writer/editor for American Council on Science and Health, may be going to Fox News.

Libertarian Republican received a tantalizing notice that Seavey "may be going to work for the fairest cable news organization in all the land." Though, the name of the media outlet was ommited.

Seavey has worked with Fox in the past, mostly in defending the rights of cigarette smokers; John Stossel show from FoxBusinessNews.com. He is a longtime participant and speaker at libertrian events such as Americans for Limited Government, Sam Adams Alliance, Cato, Reason, and the Manhattan Libertarian Party.

He recently sent out an email notice for his regional tour promoting Ayn Rand's individualist treatise.

As journalists everywhere should be documenting, I am trekking to three campuses this year to give Ayn Rand's speech "Faith and Force: Destroyers of the Modern World" on the fiftieth anniversary of her delivery of it in these places (beginning with Yale and ending with Columbia). This Sunday (coincidentally Easter), April 4, 2010, at 11am, I will give the speech (followed by Q&A) on the steps of the library of Brooklyn College, facing the main green. Join me there or travel with me from Manhattan on the F train by rallying at precisely 10am that morning on the western steps of Bryant Park. Nothing can poszibley go wrong.

Editor's Note - our source assures us this is no April Fool's joke. Seavey indeed really is in line for a big promotion.

Pharma Planning to Dump Experimental and Controversial Vaccines in Public Schools

The golden calf of public health was smashed in this recent flu season as many in the United States outright rejected the H1N1 vaccine. Pharmaceutical companies are now holding the bag, as millions of doses of the vaccine are rotting on shelves or being discarded as hazardous waste. Or are they? The manufacturer may find it more cost effective to dump them into the arms of our public school systems.

Parents would revolt if they knew that the pharmaceutical industry, the Department of Health and Human Services, and Centers for Disease Control have allocated millions of dollars in funding to establish vaccine clinics in the public schools. Pumping children with experimental vaccines in public school is about to be pursued as a matter of policy.

Denver Public Schools the Target
Recently, a news article (http://www.denverpost.com/commented...) in the Denver Post highlighted two grants issued by the Centers for Disease Control totaling $1.6 million dollars to vaccinate students attending Denver Public Schools (http://communications.dpsk12.org/an...).

One grant (http://communications.dpsk12.org/an...) funds an effort to establish a sustainable school-based vaccination program utilizing the yearly influenza and experimental H1N1 vaccine. The hope is to create a partnership between public health (Denver Health), school personnel (Denver Public Schools), and an entity (Kaiser Permanente) that would bill third party payers.

The second grant (http://www.cdc.gov/od/pgo/funding/I...) provides cash for vaccinating children with the newly approved diphtheria toxoid and acellular pertussis vaccine (Tdap), meningococcal conjugate vaccine (MCV4), and human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV). The new vaccines for adolescents are among the most expensive vaccines (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/program...) recommended today for any age group.

Lead investigator of Denver In-School Immunization Project, Dr. Judith Shlay, of Denver Health, readily admits that if all goes well, plans are in place to implement school-base vaccine clinics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHji... ) nation-wide (a high level overview of this plan (http://www.nasbhc.org/site/c.jsJPKW...) was presented to the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care by Dr. Shlay).

School Based Health Clinics As the Conduit
The Denver In-School Immunization Project (http://denverhealth.org/portal/Serv...) has long been in the works. It was paved in the late 1970s and early 1980s by incrementally creating School-Based Health Clinics (SCHC). In 1978, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), a non-profit organization funded by the Pharmaceutical Company, Johnson and Johnson (http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/d...), contributed $2.3 million dollars to the state of Colorado, (http://www.rwjf.org/reports/grr/032...) making SBHCs a reality.

Illnesses such as ADD/ADHD, Cervical Cancer, diabetes, asthma, obesity, and learning disabilities were of little consequence in the '70s. However, these disabling syndromes and the medications aimed at treating them have all reached epidemic proportions and astronomically profitable sales.

In the past, parents have discovered challenging a school-based medical model can be extremely dangerous. In September, 2000, Ms. Patti Johnson, a former Colorado State education board member, testified before Federal Congress (http://www.politicalwatchdog.com/ps...) concerning Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). In the 1990s, the much-hyped drug, Ritalin, was maneuvered into public schools to address the growing epidemic of hyperactivity. Mrs. Johnson testimony was prophetic and foreshadowed a future scenario where parents could be charged with medical neglect if they refused to medicate their child per the school's request.

Vaccines for All School Children is the Goal
If School Based Health Clinics are being used as the conduit to vaccinate children, the federally-funded Vaccines For Children (VFC) (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/program...) program and third party insurance coverage provide the finances. According to the grant approved by the CDC, the VFC program would provide "free" vaccines to an estimated forty percent of children in the United States who are not covered by third party insurance plans.

"The goal is for this (Denver In-School Immunization Project) to be a sustainable program that can immunize all children in the schools regardless of their insurance. And we need to see at the end of the day, when all the dust settles at the end of this school year, whether the amount that was reimbursed for all these different insurance companies, adds up to the amount of time and effort it took to actually have the clinic." (Emphasis added)

Dr. Matthew Daley
Evaluator of the Denver In-School Immunization Project
Kaiser Permanente
Colorado Public Radio Interview
February 17th, 2010
(http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?optio...)

Put into context, the implications of the Denver In-School Immunization Project are enormous. We are speaking of a captured market for vaccine manufacturers (guaranteed purchase of vaccines), insurance companies (guaranteed rise in premiums), and government funding (VFC) all footed by taxpayer dollars. The total price per vaccinated adolescent in the private sector is approximately $500 (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/au...). That's a lot of cash.

What Does Pharma Know?
Dr. Matthew Daley is very aware that a paltry 1/3rd of adolescents receive their yearly influenza vaccine, for example. In a semi-recent presentation, (http://www.preventinfluenza.org/NIV...) Dr. Daley shows obtaining parental consent is a barrier to mass vaccination in a school setting. Furthermore, the presentation suggests improved financial incentives for providing influenza vaccinations. Dr. Daley must be sharing his notes with RAND Corporation because it is almost the exact message RAND pitched to the pharmaceutical giant, Sanofi Pasteur.

In 2007, a study performed by RAND Corporation, funded by Sanofi Pasteur, investigated the most efficient way to vaccinate (http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented...) low-income adolescents. Nicole Lurie,(http://www.opensecrets.org/revolvin...) one authors of the white paper, is now an adviser to Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Human Health Services (HHS). Mrs. Lurie has a long history of traversing the revolving door between private industry, government duties, and academic appointments (there is no difference from the former head of the CDC, Julie Gerberding, (http://vactruth.com/2010/01/04/juli...) becoming President of Merck Pharmaceuticals Vaccine Division).

RAND's report identifies barriers that would obstruct "alternative vaccination campaigns," otherwise known as "in-school vaccination programs." The list of legal issues includes parental consent laws, absence of a reliable medical home (where an adolescent receives medical treatment such as a doctor's office), and access to vaccine registration information.

That's right, mom and dad. Your current ability to refuse vaccines, which is protected by most state laws, is considered a barrier to Pharmaceutical Interests!

*As a side note, many states are taking steps to move parents out of the way and allow public officials the right to vaccinate children, without parental consent. By example, legislation is being considered in New York that would give absolute authority to health professionals to vaccinate children under 18 years old without the parental consent. Another bill in New York (http://vactruth.com/2010/02/12/new-...) seeks to mandate the controversial HPV vaccine (Gardasil) for school entry.

With Public Relations at the foreground, The RAND paper further recommends that Sanofi Pasteur create "Vaccine Champions" or "Registration Champions." Vaccine champions are "ardent supporters of a cause … They can bring about change by educating those around them and spurring others into action through local events, meetings, or publications." Coincidentally, non-profit organizations such as The Immunization Partnership are following lockstep with the RAND Corporation's group-think. It also has "Immunization Champions." (http://www.immunizeusa.org/iz-champ...)

If vaccines are mandated for public school attendance, and most likely they will be, you can bet that it won't matter whether the vaccine is experimental or not. With rising awareness of the chronic effects of mass vaccination, public skepticism and outcries will likely be countered with fear mongering (http://www.scribd.com/doc/19212191/...) by fanatical vaccine advocates and lobbying groups funded by Big Pharma interests. The only real way to protect the safety of our children is to fiercely safeguard state exemption laws that uphold parents' freedom to choose whether to vaccinate or not.

Yet, by blending society's Federal Educational Framework with a superficial medical model, vaccine proponents have a road map to overcome any damaging future resistance to experimental vaccines. Could it be any clearer that if left unchecked, the pharmaceutical industrial complex soon will be calling the shots instead of parents?

About the author: Jeffry John Aufderheide is the father of a child injured as a result of vaccination. As editor of the website http://www.vactruth.com he promotes well-educated pediatricians, informed consent, and full disclosure and accountability of adverse reactions to vaccines.

Oligarchy’s WWF Goal: Destroy South Africa

by Douglas DeGroot

[PDF version of this article]

June 4—Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is going on the offensive against South Africa, dictating that the WWF's depopulation policies be implemented in South Africa. The anti-South African offensive was signaled by the June 1 announcement of a campaign against industry by the South African branch of the WWF, using the fraudulent pretext of the danger of a carbon dioxide buildup.

The goal of the WWF and the British Imperial financial cartel, is to use the anti-scientific CO2 ruse to force South Africa to dump its goal of developing advanced-technology power generation as a means of industrialization. The alternative being offered, is to reduce energy consumption, and use inadequate "renewable energies." Prince Philip and his cohorts in the London-based imperial financial cartel are the top culprits who are pushing these racist, Nazi-style policies to depopulate the globe.

The implicit target of the WWF is the South African Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project, which is a world leader in developing a fourth-generation, high-temperature, gas-cooled, pebble bed reactor. Successful development of the PBMR project would defeat Philip and his like-minded Neanderthals who are intent on preserving their old order by imposing a policy of technological apartheid on Africa and the rest of the yet-to-be developed nations of the world. The defeat of these fanatics would destroy all the scenarios now being cooked up to eliminate South Africa as the continent's leading industrial nation.

Crucial to that defeat is a shift of policy in the United States. The British population-reduction policy was brought to the United States by Henry A. Kissinger in 1974, when he initiated the process that made genocidal population reduction a required tenet of U.S. policymaking.[1] The U.S. thus joined the British in seeking to prevent the ex-colonial sectors from using their resources, considered "strategic" by the policy's promoters, to encourage population growth by modernization and industrialization. The time is more than ripe for the U.S. to break from British imperial policy.
WWF Calls for War

The call for green fascism in South Africa was announced in a June 1 interview with Saliem Fakir, the head of WWF's Living Planet unit. He called for lowering carbon dioxide emissions, and developing solar power technology in South Africa, and said that the WWF will target ten companies over the next five years to be involved in the Fund's "Climate Savers' " initiative. (See the fraudulent carbon dioxide argument against development exposed as a hoax in the interview with Lord Christopher Monckton.)

As a result of the bankruptcy of the globalized monetarist system, South Africa is in the throes of its worst economic crisis since 1992. The WWF picked this moment of vulnerability to launch its offensive, less than a month after Jacob Zuma was inaugurated as President of South Africa, on May 9.

Zuma, as the African National Congress (ANC) candidate, ran a populist campaign, promising to reduce poverty, and he continues to pledge more jobs. However, in the first quarter of this year, mining production has dropped by 32.8%, and manufacturing output plunged 22.1%, the biggest fall in these two sectors since records began to be kept in 1960. Zuma is now trapped. He cannot deliver on his promises.
British Fabian Society Assets

The core of Zuma's support is the Cosatu trade union federation and its close ally, the South African Communist Party (SACP), an alliance going back to the fight against apartheid. The leaders of this alliance are assets of the British Fabian Society. Cosatu has 21 affiliated unions, and a combined membership of over 1.9 million. The SACP has 37 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly.

Cosatu is demanding protection from the economic crisis by means of more social spending and protectionism, but the globalized business sector isn't going to see South Africa as "business friendly" if it turns to protectionism. South Africa risks being destroyed by the conflict between these two opposing forces.

Trying to buy some maneuvering room, Zuma said in his inaugural State of the Nation speech yesterday, that job creation and fighting poverty will be his main focus. He announced that the South African Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) has developed a program to fund South African companies that are in trouble because of the global collapse, to protect jobs. He vowed to create 500,000 job opportunities by the end of the year, and 4 million jobs by 2014. South Africa's unemployment rate has climbed to 23.5% in the first quarter this year, from 21.9% in the last quarter of 2008.

But, indicative of the trap he is caught in, Zuma also sought to dampen expectations of what his government could do to alleviate poverty and create more jobs: he said that the economic crisis calls for prudent spending.

On June 1, two days before Zuma's State of the Nation speech, Irvin Jim, the general-secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers, one of the three biggest trade unions, threatened mass strikes to force interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank (the central bank): "If matters are not resolved, we will have mass rolling action." In response, Jessie Stuart, spokesperson for the ANC, urged caution: "What will have to happen," she said, "is an understanding that during a recessionary time there is a slight difference, that we might as a ruling party have to mediate and talk about all of us taking responsibility that the recession doesn't deepen."

Cosatu leaders approved of Zuma's speech yesterday, but the honeymoon didn't last long. Today, Cosatu backed the metalworkers' call for strikes to demand deeper interest rate cuts, as a way of fostering economic growth, and thus save jobs. Cosatu general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said: "We fully endorse that we must engage in mass action." Cosatu also said today that it would not support the renewal of Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni's contract, which expires in August.

The Cosatu-SACP alliance played a key role in dumping former South African President Thabo Mbeki, who was forced to resign last Sept. 20. This opened the way for the election of Zuma. It was the legwork carried out by Cosatu which ousted Mbeki and gave Zuma his April electoral victory, setting him up for his no-win trap. Now, the Cosatu-SACP alliance, not comprehending the nature of the crisis, is being played against Zuma. It is telling the Cosatu membership that it is payback time for them, for having ousted Mbeki and his backers. The Fabian Society-manipulated Cosatu-SACP alliance is now is a position to destroy the nationalist institutions of the ANC.

The British imperial Fabian Society will use its assets to pressure the South African government to dump the PBMR project, or cut it way back, and instead use the financial resources for programs to alleviate the immediate effects of the economic crisis.
The WWF and South Africa

There is a long, deep, and intimate connection between the WWF and South Africa. The British imperial elites and like-minded elements amongst the South African elites of British and Afrikaaner extraction were, and still are, intent on stopping human development and progress, and greatly reducing the world's population. If they don't succeed, they will not be able to maintain their control in the world.

The WWF was founded in 1961, at the time many former European colonies in Africa were gaining nominal independence; it was an initiative of Julian Huxley and Edward Nicholson, and was dedicated to preserving a "natural order" undisturbed by humans. Huxley approvingly reported, for example, his discovery on a trip to British colonial Tanganyika, that the wildlife on the Serengeti plain was almost undisturbed, because the tsetse fly (the vector for the trypanosome parasite which causes sleeping sickness in humans) prevented human settlement there.

Nicholson was a longtime intimate of the British imperial order. He accompanied Winston Churchill to the Yalta summit, before the end of World War II, and also accompanied him to the post-war meeting with Josef Stalin and Harry Truman in Potsdam, among his other services to the British imperialist cartel.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands was WWF president from 1962 to 1976, when his involvement in the Lockheed scandal became public. Prince Philip was president 1981-96. Both princes were from not very distinguished European royal families, and only acquired their more elevated status when they married their respective spouses, both of whom later became queens.

Although the WWF was set up to raise money to preserve the old order in South Africa by pushing population-reduction policies, it reportedly was not very successful until South African businessman Anton Rupert joined the board. Rupert was one of the richest men in South Africa, rivaled only by Harry Oppenheimer, the gold and diamond magnate. Rupert made his initial fortune in tobacco and alcohol. According to reports, Rupert came to the rescue of the WWF by coming up with the idea of the 1001 Club, which gathered together wealthy individuals who were expected to give substantive contributions.

An inordinately large proportion of the 1001 were South Africans. The percentage of South Africans, relative to its total white population, was higher than the percentage of any other country in the WWF. Of course, black Africans were not counted. The imperial cabal only counted them as an indicator for determining where populations were getting too large.

Rupert appointed an employee of his, Charles de Haes, as a personal assistant to Prince Bernhard, for WWF fundraising. After two years, de Haes was put in charge of the WWF, paid by Rupert.

The South African group in the WWF saw eye-to-eye with Princes Bernhard and Philip, agreeing that the "natives" should not be allowed to disturb the natural order by becoming "uppity" and thinking that they should have the right to industrialize their countries to provide for, and benefit from the growing population. Hence, the fixation of Prince Philip et al, on depopulation (see "In Their Own Words," p. 27).
PBMR Is the Only Option for a Future

South Africa is at the forefront of developing fourth-generation nuclear power plants for the 21st Century. With a 700-member team, PBMR has one of the largest nuclear reactor design teams in the world. This is a notable accomplishment, because the ability to design civil nuclear power reactors is not widespread.

Successful development of this technology has enormous implications for Africa and the rest of the world. Africa has about 15% of the world's population, but only generates 4% of the world's electricty. South Africa is about 75% electrified, but only 10% of the 700 million people on the continent have access to regular electricity. Presently, 90% of South Africa's power is produced in coal burning plants.

The high energy flux-density of power that would be produced by the direct cycle gas-cooled PBMR reactors could provide the cheap power needed to develop South Africa and the rest of Africa.

It is critical to keep this project going. South Africa's electrical power generation parastatal, Eskom, owns 41% of the project, the IDC owns 14%, and the South African government holds a 30% direct interest in the project. U.S.-based Westinghouse also has a 15% stake.

The PBMR project will run out of money next March. Therefore, PBMR is currently shifting the reactor design from a direct cycle, helium gas-turbine concept for direct production of electricity, to the more quickly marketable indirect, steam-turbine concept that can generate electricity or be used for process-heat applications. This application would involve using the helium coolant gas that becomes super-heated, to create high temperature steam.

Because of rapidly growing interest from petrochemical groups and tar sands companies in applying the PBMR to activities requiring process heat, the pebble bed project is now busy modifying the PBMR design. PBMR's Tom Ferreira said that "given the limited funding available, we are considering whether we could build a more versatile reactor that could do both electricity and process heat. The same basic machine for both applications."

In this variation of the project, the gas is used to generate steam, which can be used for heavy oil recovery in oil sands; for reforming methane to produce hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol; water splitting; coal to liquids and coal to methane; and desalination. As a result, there are more commercial applications with this approach, rather than limiting it to direct production of electrical power. The PBMR project team hopes this will keep the project alive, despite the global financial collapse.

[1] On Dec. 10, 1974, National Security Advisor Henry A. Kissinger issued National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), which linked what it termed "overpopulation" to U.S. national security interests. After Kissinger became Secretary of State, his NSC successor, Brent Scowcroft, issued National Security Decision Memorandum 314, which adopted NSSM 200 as official (covert) U.S. policy on population matters. See EIR April 18, 2008, for excerpts of NSSM 200. [Full text of NSSM 200]

Lunokhod 2 Found!

The Lunokhot 2 has been found. Click for a larger image. Image: University of Western Ontario / LRO

Finally!  Way back in 1973 the Soviet Union launched a lunar rover.  Truth is they launched a couple rovers, this particular one was called Lunokhod 2.

The rover was very successful, operating for over four months sending back: 86 panoramas, over 80,000 TV images, conducting many lunar surface and other tests, and traveling over 22 miles (35 km) in the process.  Then sadly the rover met its demise.  Apparently the open lid containing solar cells touched a crater wall at some point and got moon dirt in it.  When the lid closed for the night, the dirt went down into the radiators and the next day when the lid was opened the radiators could no longer cool the rover because of the insulating value of the dirt and basically cooked it.

I’ve been off-and-on looking at the LRO data for signs of these rovers for a while now without any luck.  Seems every place I wanted to look at didn’t have data.   As it turns out a fellow named Phil Stooke, a professor from the University of Western Ontario has found the Lunokhod 2.  YAY!  How did he do it?  He used images released just days ago from the LRO and maps from his own.  As I found out the “maps of his own” bit was a really important part.  The maps are needed to be able to pinpoint surface features were needed to be able to zoom in on the surface image someplace close to the target – I found out it was nearly impossible to find very small features any other way.

Here’s the time line of Lunokhod 2 (and Luna 21) from Zarya.

Read the press release from the University of Western Ontario.

After successfully solving a 37 year old mystery of Lunokhod, it sounds like Professor Stooke is turning his attention to Mars.  I hope he goes looking for the Beagle 2!!

The ways of the forefathers & foremothersGene Expression

Fascinating post by Bayes, Phylogenetics, cultural evolution and horizontal transmission:

For some time now, evolutionary biologists have used phylogenetics. It is a well-established, powerful set of tools that allow us to test evolutionary hypotheses. More recently, however, these methods are being imported to analyse linguistic and cultural phenomena. For instance, the use of phylogenetics has led to observations that languages evolve in punctuational bursts, explored the role of population movements, and investigated the descent of Acheulean handaxes. I’ve followed the developments in linguistics with particular interest; after all, tracing the ephemeral nature of language is a daunting task. The first obvious road block is that prior to the invention of writing, the uptake of which is limited in geography and history, language leaves no archaeological record for linguists to examine. One particular note I’d like to make is that when Charles Darwin first formulated his theory of natural selection, he took inspiration from linguistic family trees as the basis for his sketch on the evolutionary tree of life. So it seems rather appropriate that phylogenetic approaches are now being used to inform our knowledge regarding linguistic evolution.

Like many other attempts applying evolutionary thinking in culture, phylogenetic approaches are, at times, met with contempt. This stems from assertions that cultural evolution and biological evolution differ greatly in regards to the relative importance of horizontal transmission….

I guess the general points to take away from this post are: 1) Do not necessarily assume horizontal transmission is dominant in shaping culture; and, 2) Even with certain levels of reticulation, it does not necessarily invalidate a phylogenetic approach in investigating cultural and linguistic evolution.

I think the point that horizontal transmission may be less important relative to vertical transmission than we’d previously thought in regards to the spread and diffusion of cultures may explain some of the recent findings from DNA extractions which suggest that hunter-gatherers were replaced in Europe by farmers. The standard model before the recent wave of extractions was that farming spread through cultural diffusion, with a minority view championed by L. L. Cavalli-Sforza of “demic diffusion” whereby demographic growth from the point of origination spread a culture, though the initial distinctive genetic signal became progressively weaker through dilution via admixture. But if cultural practices such as agriculture were much more vertically transmitted, from parent to child, rather than horizontally across societies, the genetic pattern of replacement becomes more comprehensible.

Of course, the main caveat is that intermarriage has been very common between neighboring groups. The rape of the Sabine women may reflect a common practice on the part of migratory males; the Greek colonization of the western Mediterranean was almost all male, so the subsequent generations were biologically the products of Greek men and native women (though culturally they were fully Greek, as evidenced by the term “Magna Graecia” to refer to Sicily and southern Italy). It is not atypical for vertical transmission of culture to occur from one parent, and in particular one sex. More recently the descendants of the pairings of Iberian men and indigenous women in Latin America tend to speak Spanish and avow the Christian faith. Though aspects of local identity, such as cuisine and clothing, may retain an indigenous stamp it is no coincidence that these populations are labelled “Latin American” despite their mixed genetic provenance.

Note: In the United States children have traditionally been more often raised in the denomination of their mother than father, so there isn’t always a male-bias in vertical transmission when the parents are not concordant for a cultural trait.

The sexual straightjacketGene Expression

Earlier I pointed to the possibility of biophysical constraints and parameters in terms of inheritance shaping the local trajectory of evolution. Today Olivia Judson has a nice post [link fixed] on how the existence of two sexes in many species results in a strange metastable tug-of-war in terms of phenotypic evolution:

In sum, the traits that make a “good” male are often different from those that make a “good” female. (Note: I’m only talking about “good” in evolutionary terms. That means a trait that improves your chance of having surviving offspring.) Since many of these traits have a genetic underpinning, male and female genes are thus being sculpted by different forces.

But — and this is the source of the tension I mentioned — males and females are formed from the same underlying set of genes. After all, in humans, whether you’re a boy or a girl comes down to whether you have a Y chromosome or not: boys do, girls don’t. The rest of the genes occur in both sexes.


The X choromosome in mammals spends about 2/3 of its time in females and 1/3 in males.* And obviously the Y is found only in males. But the rest of the genome is found in both males and females. Judson notes that traits which may be attractive in males may not in females, and which may be attractive in females may not in males. There’s a fair amount of evolutionary psychological work in humans in this vein in regards to the heritability of testosterone and estrogen levels in females and males and how it effects the same and opposite sex (in short, there is suggestive data that “sexy” individuals of one sex, those who exhibit strong secondary sexual characteristics, may be prone to having less sexy offspring of the opposite sex).

Of course you can overcome the balancing tug of war; that’s why you have sexual dimorphism in things like size or facial proportion. But these sorts of traits emerge very slowly because of the equilibrium described above, modifier genes and sex-specific gene expression have to slowly engineer around the overwhelming problem that males and females are genetically no different on a sequence level aside from the Y chromosome. Some estimates put the rate of evolutionary change of sexual dimorphism, that is, trait differences between sexes, between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude slower than conventional population level evolution. Ergo, one would expect that sexual dimorphism differences varying across populations have great time depth, and are probably more interspecific than intraspecific (for example, gorillas vs. humans).

There is naturally a whole field devoted to the study of the origin of sex. But whatever its ultimate rationale and utility an evolutionary context, its existence as a background condition in many taxa may result in a constraint of the exploration of phenotype space, as species divided into two sexes characterized by strong phenotypic differences dance between two sex-specific phenotypic optima.

* Sex determination varies by taxon.