Rat Brains Rule!

Brain Grown From Rat Cells Learns To Fly Jet
By Philip Sherwell in Washington 12-6-4

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction: a brain nurtured in a Petri dish learns to pilot a fighter plane as scientists develop a new breed of "living" computer. In ground-breaking experiments in a Florida laboratory, however, that is exactly what is happening.
The "brain", grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a single rat embryo, has been taught to fly an F-22 jet simulator by scientists at the University of Florida. They hope that the remarkable research into neural computation will help them develop sophisticated hybrid computers, with a thinking biological component.

The brain-in-a-dish is the idea of Thomas DeMarse, a 37-year-old assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. His pioneering work has been praised as a significant insight into one of the universe's most complex devices - the brain - by leading American academics and scientific journals.
The 25,000 rat brain neurons were immersed in a specialised liquid suspension to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish, measuring only about an inch across. In the most striking experiment, the brain was linked up to the jet simulator. Manipulated via the electrodes and a desktop computer, it was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds. "When we first hooked them up, the plane 'crashed' all the time," said Dr DeMarse. "But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory."

An Open Letter to Al Gore

From Andy Ostroy's Blog

If you've payed attention at all to Al Gore in these intervening years, then I know you long for high intellect and reasoned perspective that he's displayed. If only he'd been President, I suspect the world would not hate us and Osama would be dead or behind bars; might even have 2000 less dead.

Go sign the petition after you've read the letter!

Dear President Gore:

We the people of the United States of America are frustrated and angry with the present Republican leadership, and believe the country is headed dangerously in the wrong direction. There's been one colossal policy failure after another, and the current administration has perpetuated a culture of cronyism and corruption. We need to restore honesty, respect, integrity and accountability to the White House. And we need thoughtful, innovative, intelligent and moral leadership.

In 2000 you won the popular vote, and many believe the electoral college as well had it not been for political and judicial chicanery both in Florida and in the Supreme Court of the United States. Millions of us still think of you as our rightful president.

The country has changed drastically since 2000. The Iraq war has squandered $200+ billion, thousands of American lives, and untold political capital, with no end in sight. You were solidly anti-war from the get-go. The economy is challenged by unemployment, inflation, historic deficits and debt, skyrocketing gas and oil prices, declining consumer confidence and rising interest rates. You and President Clinton presided over one of the strongest economies in U.S. history. We've been shamed and embarrassed by woefully inadequate natural disaster and terror preparedness. You've been sounding the global warming alarm for years, and have worked hard to protect our precious environment. Your message would resonate quite well with a post-Katrina electorate. And we've been burdened by mounting moral, ethical and legal scandals from the current Republican leadership. Your character, integrity and family values speaks for itself.

There has been overwhelming grass-roots support for your candidacy, Mr. President. America is desperate for change. We want you to finish the successful mission that you and Bill Clinton began in 1992. We've started an online Draft Al Gore petition and we'll be amassing e-signatures from Americans nationwide who are very excited at the prospect of your candidacy. We'll contact you again shortly and keep you appraised of our progress.

Mr. President, America needs you. Please consider our urgent call for 2008. Thank you on behalf of Americans everywhere.

Andy Ostroy
Editor & Publisher
The Ostroy Report
New York, NY

CLICK HERE To Sign the Draft Al Gore Petition

*AOL users: open in MSN Internet Explorer (http://new.petitiononline.com/AG2008/petition.html)
if signature page fails on AOL

WTFU

Most military people are familiar with such acronyms as WTF, SNAFU and FTN (What the Fuck, Situation Normal All Fucked Up, Fuck The Navy). So, I'd like to create a new one: WTFU.

Wake The Fuck Up!!

For all the mindless masses out there, read what the good Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has written, where he has meticulousy identified 50 false news stories
created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus, also known as WHIG (White House Iraqi Group -- Dick Cheney, Condolezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Lewis Libby, Karl Rove and other playmates).

Now, WTFU and consider the hell we have reaped because of it.

Republicans != Traitors
Bush Supporters = Traitors

Truth Part 1
Truth Part 2
Truth Part 3
Truth Part 4
Truth Part 5
Truth Part 6

And from Marion Delgado:

This consortium of neocons, mafia, corporations, religious hucksters, liars, rednecks, military monomaniacs, greedy power sycophants, mooney eyed arm waving death cult christian delusionists, racketeers, amoral opportunist politicians, and their wilfully ignorant acolytes who reflexively believe any propaganda that the collective anus of the above mentioned cast shits on them are the pathological power nexus that rules this nation this day.
Our country is no longer a democracy, nor is it the land of the free and the brave. We are not good, exemplary, inspirational, or any of the adjectives that were heralded by our civics teachers to make us proud to be American. These onetime descriptors of a nation we believed ourselves to be, have lost their meaning. They have become vapid platitudes uttered by black tongued reptilian death merchants not as ideals to live by, but as parsing tools and brand recognition devices to separate and label the public, to turn us against each other and provoke mindless nationalism.
We have become a rogue terrorist nation pretending to be something else, fooling no one but ourselves. We have in five short years become the most reviled and loathed nation in the world. We export more weapons than any other nation. We spend more on our military than all the rest of the world put together. Even so, our bought and paid for shills for the defense industry, I mean, our high minded representatives in congress allocate more and more taxpayer money to this unending black hole.
We have gone from a two party representative democratic republic to a one party menagerie of psychopathic relatively stupid but monied whores and opportunists called Republicans and their fake opponents the jellylike emasculated and equally bought Democrats, all lapping at the feet of private wealthy controllers who want what is yours. Wealth rules this nation now. It always has but now it is touted as the way things should be and is idealized. Everything is to be subordinated to private wealthy interests. The gap between rich and poor is growing annually. The middle class is shrinking as the wealthy elite in this country discovered they have something in common with the pigs that rule third world nations; cheap exploitable labor.
The propaganda this voracious weathy class of pigs produces is amazing in its audacity and arrogance. Aggressive imperial preemptive war and occupation for control of resources is called promotion of democracy nevermind the once vaunted principle of democracy that a people have the right of self determination. We will impose democracy whether they like it or not just so long as that democracy is controlled by us and strictly adheres to the ridiculous and untenable principles of free market capitalism, that is, easily exploited by the wealthy.WMDs, aluminum tubes, yellow cake, Al Queda-Saddam complicity, giant caches of bio or chemical weapons, cartoons of mobile laboratories and drones capable of delivering mass terror to our shores in less than an hour all an elaborate ruse to get the public behind them.In other words they lied to you and manipulated you and have so far soaked you about 350 billion dollars. They have killed 100,000 Iraqis and 2000 of your kids. Hey look at the bright side, Dick Cheney's stock options in Halliburton are worth 3160% more because of those handy no bid contracts they got from him over in Iraq. He sure likes the military at times like these. He didn't like it so much when on three different occasions he wormed deferments from the draft when the Viet Nam war was happening.
Who are these neocons we hear so much about? A bunch of them are ex-Trotskyists who after becoming disillusioned at the prospects of being commisars in the permanent revolution gave up the trappings of leftwing utopia for the wealthier and more promising positions as commisars of the righwing permanent war on terror. Give up the ideology but keep the desire for power and dominance. The other half of the neocons are the pasty inbred spawn of the zionist contingent of the ruling class bent on U.S. imperialism through military aggression to protect and consolidate their wealth and be Israels proxy in the middle east.

I don't agree with everything he states, especially the anti-semitic blather. I also disagree with his decidely socialist view of capitalism...he lives in a wonderland that can not be achieved given the nature of such base, human emotions as greed and jealousy. But, other than that, Yeah!! What he said.