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  • Woodpecker takes on 10ft snake in heroic struggle for nest

    A woodpecker has been photographed repeatedly attacking a 10ft snake which invaded its nest in the Amazon.
    The crimson crested woodpecker made repeated attempts to drive the snake out of the tree and was bitten by the snake five times.
    On each occasion the snake, thought to be an olive whipsnake, held the much smaller bird in its mouth and then let it fall to the ground below.

    After a fight lasting about four minutes, the wounded bird left the area and is likely to have died of its injuries or been killed by a predator.
    Assaf Admoni, 38, an engineer from Herzelia in Israel, took the pictures while holidaying on the Yarapa River in Peru in June.
    “We think it [the snake] was looking for eggs or chicks and the woodpecker arrived to find it had moved in while she was away,” he said.
    “It really looked like the female was acting frantically out of maternal instinct. She just kept racing up the tree and attacking the snake on its side.
    “The snake wasn’t very happy about that. It kept lunging at her and it landed its strike every time.”
    He said he had been impressed by the bird’s persistence.
    “What amazed me most was that she completely seemed to sacrifice herself for the chicks we think were inside,” Mr Admoni said.
    “It seemed like she would do anything to try and get this thing out of her nest.”
    But he added: “The woodpecker eventually left. She looked very hurt. Our guides told us she was doomed because smelling of blood would make her an easy target other predators. We don’t know what happened to her in the end.”
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6852402/Woodpecker-takes-on-10ft-snake-in-heroic-struggle-for-nest.html

  • Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia

    Revolting, to say the least.Could not have taken place without Wiki’s knowledge9?).
    By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: December 22nd, 2009
    241 Comments Comment on this article
    If you want to know the truth about Climategate, definitely don’t use Wikipedia. “Climatic Research Unit e-mail controversy”, is its preferred, mealy-mouthed euphemism to describe the greatest scientific scandal of the modern age. Not that you’d ever guess it was a scandal from the accompanying article. It reads more like a damage-limitation press release put out by concerned friends and sympathisers of the lying, cheating, data-rigging scientists
    Which funnily enough, is pretty much what it is. Even Wikipedia’s own moderators acknowledge that the entry has been hijacked, as this commentary by an “uninvolved editor” makes clear.
    Unfortunately, this naked bias and corruption has infected the supposedly neutral Wikipedia’s entire coverage of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. And much of this, as Lawrence Solomon reports in the National Post, is the work of one man, a Cambridge-based scientist and Green Party activist named William Connolley.
    Connolley took control of all things climate in the most used information source the world has ever known – Wikipedia. Starting in February 2003, just when opposition to the claims of the band members were beginning to gel, Connolley set to work on the Wikipedia site. He rewrote Wikipedia’s articles on global warming, on the greenhouse effect, on the instrumental temperature record, on the urban heat island, on climate models, on global cooling. On Feb. 14, he began to erase the Little Ice Age; on Aug.11, the Medieval Warm Period. In October, he turned his attention to the hockey stick graph. He rewrote articles on the politics of global warming and on the scientists who were skeptical of the band. Richard Lindzen and Fred Singer, two of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists, were among his early targets, followed by others that the band especially hated, such as Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, authorities on the Medieval Warm Period.
    All told, Connolley created or rewrote 5,428 unique Wikipedia articles. His control over Wikipedia was greater still, however, through the role he obtained at Wikipedia as a website administrator, which allowed him to act with virtual impunity. When Connolley didn’t like the subject of a certain article, he removed it — more than 500 articles of various descriptions disappeared at his hand. When he disapproved of the arguments that others were making, he often had them barred — over 2,000 Wikipedia contributors who ran afoul of him found themselves blocked from making further contributions. Acolytes whose writing conformed to Connolley’s global warming views, in contrast, were rewarded with Wikipedia’s blessings. In these ways, Connolley turned Wikipedia into the missionary wing of the global warming movement.
    Connolley has supposedly been defrocked as a Wikipedia administrator. Or so Wikipedia claimed in its feeble, there’s-really-not-much-we-can-do response to anxious questions from one of Watts Up With That’s readers.
    In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming.
    If this is true, it doesn’t seem to have made much difference to his creative input on the Wikipedia’s entries. Here he is – unless its just someone with an identical name – busily sticking his oar in to entries on the Medieval Warm Period (again) and the deeply compromised, soon-to-be-leaving (let’s hope) IPCC head Dr Rajendra Pachauri. And here he is again just three days ago, removing a mention of Climategate from Michael Mann’s entry. And here is an example of one of his Wikipedia chums – name of Stephan Schulz – helping to cover up for him by ensuring that no mention of that embarrassing Lawrence Solomon article appears on Connolley’s Wikipedia entry. And here he is deleting criticism of himself.
    Connolley, it should also be noted, was one of the founder members of Real Climate – the friends-of-Michael-Mann propaganda outfit (aka “The Hockey Team”) which, in the guise of disinterested science, pumps out climate-fear-promoting hysteria on AGW and tries to discredit anyone who disagrees with the ManBearPig “consensus”.
    Here he is, for example, being bigged up in a 2006 email from Michael Mann:
    >> I’ve attached the piece in word format. Hyperlinks are still there,
    >> but not clickable in word format. I’ve already given it a good
    >> go-over w/ Gavin, Stefan, and William Connelley (our internal “peer
    >> review” process at RC), so I think its in pretty good shape. Let me
    >> know if any comments…
    >>
    and here are some of his associates:
    From: Phil Jones
    To: William M Connolley ,Caspar Ammann
    Subject: Figure 7.1c from the 1990 IPCC Report
    Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 13:38:40 +0000
    Cc: Tom Crowley ,”Michael E. Mann” , “raymond s. bradley” , Stefan Rahmstorf , Eric Steig ,gschmidt@giss.nasa.gov, rasmus.benestad@physics.org,garidel@marine.rutgers.edu, David Archer , “Raymond P.” ,k.briffa@uea.ac.uk, t.osborn@uea.ac.uk, “Mitchell, John FB \(Chief Scientist\)” , “Jenkins, Geoff” , “Warrilow, David \(GA\)” , Tom Wigley ,mafb5@sussex.ac.uk, “Folland, Chris”
    Get that? The guy who has been writing Wikipedia’s entry on Climategate (plus 5,000 others relating to “Climate Change”) is the bosom buddy of the Climategate scientists.
    Nope, this isn’t a problem that is going to go away. Wikipedia may well be beyond redemption – as this useful resource site for Wiki-inaccuracies would seem to suggest. Like so many hippyish notions, Jimmy Wales’s idea of a free encyclopedia for everyone was a noble intention which has been cruelly and horribly abused by some very ugly people.
    Do you want to know just how ugly? I’ve been saving the worst till last. Here it is: William Connelley’s Wikipedia photograph.
    http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020515/climategate-the-corruption-of-wikipedia/

  • Convert Cassettes to MP3

    Cassette tapes may not have the high quality sound that you’re accustomed to with CDs and other digital formats, but analog does have its virtues.
    Witness the resurgence of LPs, which have a warmer sound than digital tracks, and often reveal a different, more subtle side of the music. Since many cassettes were recorded from LPs, some of that magic has been preserved on tape. Cassettes were the format of choice for us kids who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, so there are still plenty of them floating around in attics, basements and thrift shops.
    If you want to preserve music that’s on cassette, transferring them to a digital format is the way to go.

    Ingredients

    One cassette player – any kind will do, from an old Walkman to a cassette deck
    One computer with a sound card and input jack
    One male-to-male 1/8-inch mini-jack cord (or an RCA-to-mini-jack cord)
    One digital audio recording program

    Software

    There are a variety of audio recording and editing programs you could use – some free, some not – but for the purposes of this exercise, let’s assume you’re using Audacity, one of the most popular freeware recording programs available on the web.
    Audacity is an open-source audio recording and editing program that works on both Macs and PCs, and creates raw WAV files that you can edit and mix to your heart’s delight. You can also use it for burning CDs and creating podcasts or soundtracks. If you want to convert your WAV files to MP3s, you’ll need the LAME MP3 encoder, a separate plug-in that works with Audacity.
    Recording Steps

    Regardless of which audio recording software you’re using, these steps should work pretty well (there are minor differences in menus and terminology from program to program):
    Hook your tape player up to the computer using a mini-jack cord. There should be a headphone or line-out jack on the cassette deck, and a line-in input on your computer’s sound card.
    Go into the Control Panel and make sure the Line In Source is checked. In Windows, the menu path is Control Panel/Multimedia/Multimedia Properties/Devices. You should also check the input panel in your audio software. In Audacity, it’s the I/O tab in the Preferences dialog box. Also make sure the output is set to go through your sound card.
    Check the recording settings in your software program. If you are recording music, check the Record in Stereo box (for voice recordings, that’s not necessary). Under the Quality tab you need to set the sample rate – the higher, the better. For CD quality, use 44,100 Hz.
    Now that your settings are dialed in, press play on your cassette deck, and press the record button in your software program. Audio should be coming from your PC speakers, if you have them connected. Now click the input level meter and enable Start Monitoring to see a recording meter. Adjust the volume to your liking, and then restart the recording.
    When you stop the recording, go to the file menu and save the file to your hard drive. From here you can edit and convert the file to MP3.

    WAV to MP3

    In order to turn a WAV file to MP3, you need MP3 encoder software, such as LAME. Before doing that, however, you may want to split up the tracks in your recording. In your audio editing software, there will be instructions on how to do this – basically, you look for the flatline (silence) in the sound waves between tracks and manually split it there. Select the flat areas with the mouse, and select “Cut” from the “Edit” menu to remove them.
    Once you have MP3 files saved, you can use a MP3 tagger program to apply tags that will be read by whatever MP3 player you play the tracks on.
    In the Future

    There are already cassette and record players that you can buy with USB outputs, which can be used to record audio directly to your computer without the need for a sound card. Next you will see cassette and record players with built-in hard drives, eliminating the middleman.
    http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Convert_Cassettes_to_MP3?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))#Ingredients

  • Facebook sex scam US teenager makes plea bargain

    Ugly side of social networking.in India, it is used for promoting prostitution.
    A US teenager who blackmailed fellow students at his secondary school to have sex after using their Facebook images has agreed a plea bargain.
    Anthony Stancl, 19, who pleaded “no contest” to repeated sexual assault of a child – faces up to 50 years in jail.
    He allegedly posed as a girl online and then asked classmates in Wisconsin to send him their naked pictures – using them later to blackmail them for sex.
    Mr Stancl told the court he had been on medication for depression for years.
    The case came to light after a 16-year old told the authorities he was being blackmailed for sex.
    After exchanging explicit pictures of himself with Mr Stancl when he was 15, the boy had been told the images would be distributed around the school if he refused to have sex.
    The boy’s images were among about 300 such pictures and videos of other male students at New Berlin Eisenhower High School in south-east Wisconsin police found on Mr Stancl’s computer.
    Waukesha County district attorney Brad Schimel said he was satisfied with the plea deal, which spared victims from having to appear in court – a key factor in his negotiations, the Associated Press news agency reported.
    “I’ve never had a case where the victims and their families were more apprehensive about testifying,” Mr Schimel was quoted by AP as saying.
    “From the victims’ perspective, they’re relieved we’re doing this.”

  • Pakistan court orders ears and noses to be cut off


    Any more doubts on Pakistan slipping into middle ages and civilian government has no hold on the governance?
    A Pakistani court has ordered that two men have their ears and noses cut off, as punishment for doing the same to a woman who refused to marry one of them.
    The two brothers were found guilty of kidnapping 20-year-old Fazeelat Bibi, one of their cousins, in September.
    The judge in Lahore also sentenced them to life in prison.
    Sentence was passed on Monday under a rarely invoked Islamic law dating from the 1980s. In the past similar sentences have been revoked on appeal.
    ‘Eye for an eye’
    Government prosecutor Ehtisham Qadir said the punishment had been awarded in accordance with the Islamic principle of “an eye for an eye”.
    Sher Mohammad and Amanat abducted Fazeelat Bibi as she returned home from work at a brick kiln in the Raiwind area of Lahore, the court heard.
    “They put a noose around her neck, and then cut off her ears and nose,” Mr Qadir told the BBC.
    Three alleged accomplices are still being sought by police.
    The crime was committed after Fazeelat Bibi’s parents refused to give her hand in marriage to Sher Mohammad, Mr Qadir said.
    Islamic laws were introduced in Pakistan during the military regime of General Ziaul Haq in the 1980s.
    The BBC’s M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says punishments prescribed under the laws have rarely been awarded, and never carried out.
    Pakistani human rights activists have long campaigned for more to be done to stop attacks against women, which often include facial disfigurement.
    However, they also disagree with the type of punishment handed out in Lahore, correspondents say.
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8425820.stm