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Archive for December 13th, 2007

mediated

DMCA Update: New bill won’t be introduced until at least January

The fine folks over at Boing Boing are reporting the Government of Canada’s new copyright bill may be on hold:

The roller coaster that is the Canadian DMCA has taken another turn. Sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, the government decided to hold off. At 10:00 am this morning, the introduction of new government bills came and went without a new copyright bill. The Industry Minister’s press secretary has advised journalists that the bill will not be introduced today or tomorrow. Since the House of Commons will break at the end of the week, the Canadian DMCA will not be introduced until at least late January.

Good news. It gives us a little more time to prepare to fight this damaging legislation.

December 13th, 2007 by graeme | | no comments »

green bin

Scientists indulge their inner Frankenstein

Gotta love humanity. Our ’we can do something, so we should do something’ spirit is so darn entertaining. And Mother Nature is just one big, giant playground for screwing with evolution.

Japanese researchers have announced that they have bred a mouse that is not afraid of cats, forever shifting the feline-rodent balance of power from ‘tense stand-off’ to ‘all you can eat buffet’. Apparently, by manipulating certain genes, the mice will no longer cower from the smell or presence of cats. This is an interesting demonstration of how mammalian fear is hard-wired and not learned. Take that, nurture! Although it strikes me as a little odd that the scientists didn’t simultaneously engineer the super mice to taste really bad. Those mice are so getting eaten.

But even if the mice aren’t afraid of cats, they will be able to see them in the dark. A South Korean team has engineered two Turkish Angorra cats to glow under black light. Why, we don’t know. But work of this nature is sure to be a boon for people who enjoy cats and live in unlit basements, caves, or the infinite blackness of deep space.

Science at work, ladies and gents. Suicidal mice and glowing cats. What an age of wonders.

“Honey, have you seen the cat? Oh, never mind. I can see it glowing under the chesterfield.”

December 13th, 2007 by graeme | | 1 comment »

green bin

Military Dog Goes Home

You’ll have to excuse this post, as I fear the potential for schmaltz is alarmingly high. But I have a thing for ‘boy and dog’ stories, so deal with it.

Lex, an eight-year-old bomb-sniffing dog for the US Marines, is finally going home. Lex’s handler, Cpl. Dustin Jerome Lee, was killed almost nine months ago during a mortar attack in Iraq. Although seriously wounded by the blast, Lex refused to leave the side of his dead master and had to be carried away.

Cpl. Lee’s family lobbied hard to adopt Lex, even though he had two years of military service left. And yesterday, the USMC agreed to let the German Shepherd go to his new family. Said Dustin’s father:

“We knew that’s what Dustin would have wanted out of this. He knew that we would take care of Lex and love him, just like our own.”

This might sound silly, but this is kind of beautiful little moment. Out of all the suffering and loss that has come out of Iraq, it’s nice that something as simple as a loyal dog can help one family heal.