Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, who in 1943 accidentally discovered the hallucinogenic effects of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), has died at the age of 102, Reuters reports.
April 30 is Walpurgis Nacht; Night of the Witches which corresponds to Samhain; Halloween, October 31 as both days herald a major year changing festival.
Once again the Department of Foreign Affairs fails another Canadian, it is not only dysfunctional and incompetent in this case it is criminally negligent."Brenda Martin failed to receive any of this from the Canadian consulate. The inaction of the Canadian consulate contributed to the problem."
Martin eventually hired a lawyer from a list provided by the Canadian consulate. He turned out to be a "mercantile" lawyer, rather than a criminal defence lawyer. Family in Canada and friends in Puerto Vallarta raised $10,000 to pay the lawyer who promptly disappeared with the money and did nothing for Martin.
If she would have had an experienced criminal defence lawyer, that lawyer would have simply paid a bribe to justice officials at the local level to secure her release before her formal arrest warrant was filed.
Free Brenda Martin Now Petition
Ex-NHLers square off with troops in Kandahar
He his lauded for his debating skills, the laconic eyebrow that would rise, the Bostonian drawl all a pretense aimed at creating the illusion that he was the master debater. Like his Catholicism, it was all for show.The fact of the matter is that Buckley, far from being the father of anything resembling true conservatism (as best exemplified by Senator Robert Taft, who was denied the Republican nomination in 1952 by Buckley's philosophical brethren), was merely a very capable quarterback for a team of neoconservatives (neocons) who had graduated from the World War II-era OSS into the CIA, bringing their anti-Stalinist, but definitely Trotskyite, ideas with them. The repackaging of this anti-American philosophy as "neoconservatism" rivaled any campaign Madison Avenue ever concocted for a "new" detergent that would get your clothes whiter and brighter.
The original OSS/CIA neocons, including the aforementioned Willmoore Kendall, spotted young Bill Buckley when he was on the staff of the Yale Daily News, and tagged him as a likely rising star of their movement. (Buckley, of course, was also tapped to join the secretive Skull and Bones society while at Yale, as had both presidents Bush and Senator John Kerry.) At Kendall's urging, Buckley joined the CIA after graduating from Yale. Through Kendall, Buckley became acquainted with James Burnham, another OSS/CIA veteran who would become a prominent figure at National Review. So strong was the CIA connection that the brilliant economist and former contributor to Buckley's magazine, Murray Rothbard, said in 1981: "I'm convinced that the whole National Review is a CIA operation."
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magicWhich of course was the logic behind the Technomages on Babylon 5, who quoted Clarke to explain their magick; "using technology to create the appearance of magic". Ah yes Babylon 5 one of the best SF TV programs ever.
Clarke's brother was traveling to Sri Lanka for his burial, due in Colombo's general cemetery later this week. Clarke left written instructions that his funeral be private and secular.
"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.
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In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realised 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.
Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres above the Equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.
May he join the stars in his passing unto the duat.Space expert Robin Scagell told Sky News: "He was very much a scientist and science was at the heart of his work.
"As well as predicting satellites, he saw that rockets would go into space."
Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore paid tribute to his friend.
"He was a great visionary, a brilliant science fiction writer and a great forecaster," he said.
"He foresaw communications satellites, a nationwide network of computers, interplanetary travel - he said there would be a man on the moon by 1970, while I said 1980 - and he was right."
Childhood's End is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1953, and a version with a new first chapter was released in 1990 due to the anachronistic nature of the opening chapter (the first attempts to launch rockets into orbit by both the Americans and Russians are in progress but aborted suddenly when aliens arrive, with a sense of the death of a dream). This story was originally a short story dubbed Guardian Angel which Clarke first published in 1950 for the Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine. It is basically the novel's section after the prologue, Earth and the Overlords but with some different text in certain places.
Clarke struck notes that were poignant and challenging, as with this final, anguished question which ends "The Star":
"There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?"
My libertarian science fiction opera loving uncle Phil Smith, a bread truck driver, turned me on to sci-fi as a kid. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Andre Norton, the books he read he passed on to me. And we both shared our love of sci-fi with lots of political debate as well as I became a radical teen ager. He was right wing libertarian and I was a left wing anarchist, yet we agreed more often than disagreed. My favorite memory of my uncle was the two of us seeing 2001 together.I got to help him pass into the duat when he died of cancer.
"Term of all that liveth, whose name is Death and inscrutable, be thou favorable unto us in thine hour. And unto him, from whose mortal eyes the veil of physical life hath fallen, grant that there may be the accomplishment of his True Will. Should he will absorption in the Infinite, or to be united with his chosen and preferred, or to be in contemplation, or to be at peace, or to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation on this planet or another or in any star, or aught else, unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his true will."
Wall Street fears for next Great DepressionIndependent
But there's no mistaking the mood within the US Federal Reserve at the moment. Pessimism was replaced by fear months ago. While the economy is moving inexorably towards a slowdown, a high-speed train wreck is taking place on Wall Street.
It is that combination that has scared the living daylights out of the Fed's hierarchy and prompted them into a history-making bail-out of the Wall Street broker Bear Stearns. To put the weekend's action into context, this is the first time since the Great Depression that the US central bank has funded the rescue of a financial institution that wasn't a regulated, deposit-taking bank.
Financial markets turmoil stirs economists' memories of 1929 crash
"The threat of contagion and wholesale breakdown on a scale of 1929 is real," said University of Maryland business professor Peter Morici."The real questions are - which of the big banks will be next to fail? How many more banks will fail? Will the whole system turn to panic if Citigroup (another troubled bank) unwinds?"
Harvard economist Martin Feldstein said the U.S. economy could suffer the worst recession since the Second World War.
Many economists now believe the U.S. economy has already slipped into negative territory,
Ben Bernanke has likened the Great Depression to the Holy Grail of macroeconomics – an experiment in unravelling the mysteries of global economic collapse.
As an academic specializing in the Dirty Thirties, the former Princeton University economist ultimately concluded that U.S. banking authorities botched the Depression by letting panicked runs on banks wreck the real economy.
Years from now, a new generation of academics may similarly try to draw lessons from how Mr. Bernanke, now the U.S. Federal Reserve Board chief, handles the great credit collapse of 2007-08.
By running to the rescue of investment banks and opening up the interest rate spigot, Mr. Bernanke is eager to avoid the same problems he dissected in his seminal 1983 paper, “Non-monetary effects of the financial crisis in the propagation of the Great Depression.”
Dion mum on election plans after byelection wins
