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Monday, July 8, 2002 |
Face Morphing. Web-based application for morphing between two images.
4:07:38 PM 
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Pentagon Program Promotes Psychopharmacological Warfare. Straight from the pages of Stanislaw Lem's The Futurological Congress comes this...
"The Advantages and Limitations of Calmatives for Use as a Non-Lethal Technique", a 49 page report obtained last week by the Sunshine Project under US information freedom law, has revealed a shocking Pentagon program that is researching psychopharmacological weapons. Based on "extensive review conducted on the medical literature and new developments in the pharmaceutical industry", the report concludes that "the development and use of [psychopharmacological weapons] is achievable and desirable." These mind-altering weapons violate international agreements on chemical and biological warfare as well as human rights. Some of the techniques discussed in the report have already been used by the US in the "War on Terrorism".
The team, which is based at the Applied Research Laboratory of Pennsylvania State University, is assessing weaponization of a number of psychiatric and anesthetic pharmaceuticals as well as "club drugs" (such as the "date rape drug" GHB). According to the report, "the choice administration route, whether application to drinking water, topical administration to the skin, an aerosol spray inhalation route, or a drug filled rubber bullet, among others, will depend on the environment." The environments identified are specific military and civil situations, including "hungry refugees that are excited over the distribution of food", "a prison setting", an "agitated population" and "hostage situations". At times, the JNLWD team's report veers very close to defining dissent as a psychological disorder.
[a joshua tree in every pot...]
12:27:39 PM
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The Skeptic
column in the March, 2002 issue of Scientific American had a
good summary of pseudoscience titled Hermits and Cranks [sciam.com].
They quote Martin Gardner's characterization of the pseudoscientist.
Written in 1952, they are amazingly relevant 50 years later:
(1) He considers himself a genius.
(2) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant
blockheads....
(3) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against.
The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject
his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for
review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank
that this opposition may be due to error in his work....
(4) He has strong compulsions to focus his attacks on the greatest
scientists and the best-established theories. When Newton was the
outstanding name in physics, eccentric works in that science were
violently anti-Newton. Today, with Einstein the father-symbol of
authority, a crank theory of physics is likely to attack Einstein....
(5) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases
making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined. [don't blog from here]
9:25:45 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Jim Swanson.
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