Dragons | Jane Austin > Jo Walton, Tooth and Claw.
[English translation: Dragons Jane Austinified results in Jo Walton's delightful Tooth and Claw. Slight, yes, but lots more fun than “Little Women”.]
Note: the Amazon link embedded above sends the commission to ICANNWatch.org.
Chemical in carrots keeps cancer at bay.
A chemical found in carrots [falcarinol] has been found to reduce the risk of cancer in laboratory rats by a third.
But it seems the carrots should be fresh and raw to get the full effect. And, don't worry about the beta caroten,
Carrots have been somewhat unpopular for some time, since it was found that the substance beta caroten found in carrots increases the risk of cancer. According to the researchers at Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, however, this will never become a problem, since one would have to eat 2 3 kilos of carrots every day, or eat pure beta caroten in the shape of pills, in order to be at risk.
Amazingly rare that something I like is good for you.
(Google assures me that falcarinol is also found in English Ivy and in Ginseng.)
That “fix” I blogged about yesterday for the Shmoo Group's Firefox exploit gets unfixed when you close and re-open your browser.
Information on a more permanent but alas more complicated fix can be found at tech.life.blogged.
UPDATE: This item was originally posted at 7:22am this morning. Some time between then and now, Firefox posted an update which fixes the problem. Quick work! [For the windows users who wrote me with their worries, the file you want is: firefox-1.0.en-US.win32.installer.exe . Just download it, then run it.]
A reader writes in to say,
You MUST read Jane Mayer's “Outsourcing Torture” in the New Yorker. Get a load of what Yoo's saying now:
Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation¡'s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn't have the power to “tie the President's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It's the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can't prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush's victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”
In other words, “a vote for Bush is a vote for torture.” Jesus H. Christ, he actually SAID it.
As Constitutional doctrine it's not just offensive, it's also fairly silly. Congress has several Article I powers, not least the power to regulate the armed forces, which make it clear that it has the power to prevent torture. And then there's the power to implement treaties, which the Constitution itself says are the highest law, equivalent to the Constitution itself….
(Note to fellow lawprofs — who ever thought the right wing would be embracing Ackerman's theory of amendment via 'constitutional moments' so quickly?)
Juan Cole lives up to the title of his blog, Informed Comment, but it's sad it needed to be said.
One of those “just read it” links, as Cole demolishes some Goldberg person who apparently is a conservative pundit sponsored by the louche National Review.
BBC News reports Moroccans claim Guantanamo abuse:
The five defendants claim that on numerous occasions while in detention at Guantanamo Bay, they were stripped naked and handcuffed before having dogs set upon them.
…
All five defendants plead not guilty to having links with al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, or to having undergone military training in Afghanistan.
When asked by the judge at Rabat's appeal court why they had signed testimonies to the contrary, they replied that they had been blindfolded for much of their time at Guantanamo and were still blindfolded when they were told to sign testimonies once in Morocco.
The Moroccan judge, the article makes clear, doesn't want to hear about it.
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