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Taleban's
Last Stand
Excerpt
from article detailing the last days of faltering power for
those who have striven to destroy America, human rights, freedom,
and all that is worth living for:
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Opposition
forces said they have captured senior Taliban leaders as American
and allied forces closed in on terror suspect Osama bin Laden
and his al-Qaida network.
"We
are tightening the noose, it's a matter of time," said
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command.
Franks
said fighting continued in and around the town of Kunduz which
was "heavily infested with some of the more hard-core people"
fighting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
There
are also reports of air attacks near Kandahar.
War
Status as of 11/15/01
(click for large size image)
Northern
Alliance opposition forces apparently captured some senior Taliban
leaders in Afghanistan, a senior U.S. official said Thursday
evening.
"We
have heard that the Northern Alliance may have come into possession
of some Taliban leadership earlier today," the official
told Reuters, adding that the group did not include senior Taliban
leader Mullah Omar or Saudi-born fugitive bin Laden.
...
Despite a series of setbacks that cost the Taliban their grip
on the capital and deprived them of huge swaths of territory,
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar remained defiant
in a BBC interview broadcast Thursday, saying he'd rather die
than "join an evil government" with the country's
former leader.
...
"If God's help is with us, this will happen within a short
period of time — keep in mind this prediction," he
said. "The real matter is the extinction of America, and
God willing, it will fall to the ground." ...
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Source:
Musicians'
Brains are Wired Differently
Excerpts
from article detailing the manner in which professional musicians
are able to access capabilities beyond those possessed by the
non-musically blessed among us:
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The
brain waves of professional musicians respond to music in a
way that suggests they have an intuitive sense of the notes
that amateurs lack, researchers said.
Neuroscientists,
using brain-scanning MRI machines to peer inside the minds of
professional German violinists, found they could hear the music
simply by thinking about it, a skill amateurs in the study were
unable to match.
The
research offers insight into the inner workings of the brain
and shows that musicians' brains are uniquely wired for sound,
researchers said yesterday at the annual meeting of the Society
for Neuroscience.
Neuroscientists
often study how we hear and play music because it is one of
the few activities that use many functions of the brain, including
memory, learning, motor control, emotion, hearing and creativity,
said Dr Robert Zatorre of the Montreal Neurological Institute.
"It
offers a window onto the highest levels of human cognition,"
Zatorre said.
In
a study by researchers at the University of Tuebingen, the brains
of eight violinists with German orchestras and eight amateurs
were analysed as they silently tapped out the first 16 bars
of Mozart's violin concerto in G major.
Brain
scans showed professionals had significant activity in the part
of their brains that controlled hearing, said Dr Gabriela Scheler
of the University of Tuebingen.
"When
the professionals move their fingers, they are also hearing
the music in their heads," Scheler said.
Amateurs,
by contrast, showed more activity in the motor cortex, the region
that controls finger movements, suggesting they were more preoccupied
with hitting the correct notes, she said.
Scheler,
a former violinist with the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra,
said the findings suggested that professionals have "liberated"
their minds from worrying about hitting the right notes.
As
a result, they are able to listen, judge and control their play,
Scheler said. ...
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Source:
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The Enemy Below
Article/Flash
presentation describing the nature of the underground hiding
places present in Afghanistan:
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During
the Soviet-Afghan war the mujahedein built a broad network of
caves to use as hideouts and attack bases. Then, during the
'90s, bin Laden built even more sophisticated bunkers and re-engineered
existing caves.
Tour
the Taliban's underground bases in this animated interactive,
narrated by one of the few Westerners who has actually studied
these subterranean forts.
(click for Flash presentation with audio)
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Source:
Tiny
'Smart Bomb' Can Invade, Kill Cancer
Excerpts
from articles describing an experimental method being developed
as a possibility to be used in the fight against cancer:
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A
microscopic cancer "smart bomb" powered by a single
radioactive atom is able to find and kill tumor cells in laboratory
experiments. Researchers hope to test the technique on human
patients next year.
Dr.
David A. Scheinberg of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
in New York said tests of the technique in mice show that it
selectively kills cancer cells and substantially prolongs the
life of lab animals with tumors.
"You
could inject several million of these molecules and they would
circulate around, find their targets cells, be taken inside
and then kill the cells," said Scheinberg. "These
are extraordinarily potent drugs."
...
A tiny nuclear bomb planted inside cancer cells blows them apart.
US researchers are turning nuclear waste into potent weapons
to target tumours.
Currently,
the radiation used to kill cancerous cells is difficult to aim
and can hit surrounding healthy tissue. Using antibodies that
recognize cancer proteins and are taken up into cells, researchers
at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York are
sneaking radioactivity directly into cancerous cells. ...
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Sources:
Smite
Not the Disbeliever
So,
as all the parade of faith and worship and god fear percolates
throughout our culture, especially since the god-steeped fanatics
from muslim binladenized fame wreaked havoc on our shores, what
have the leaders of the world had to say about the merits of
disbelief?
______________________________
Putin,
of formerly(?) atheistic Russia, offers forth, in a cozy get
together with Pastor Bush in Texas, something to the effect
that some believe god directly intervenes and some believe god
leaves it up to humans to control their own destinies. Understandably,
trying to play the game the western way, he has nothing to offer
regarding the merits of disbelief.
So,
amongst the leaders in the world today, who speaks for the merit
of disbelief? Who is brave enough to make a stand and say that
the manner in which faith and religion seduces its followers
into brainwashed submission to authority is nothing but begging
for the likes of bin Laden, mullah Omar, and their followers
to curse America with massive quran-inspired genocide by the
almighty will of god?
To
be sure, bin Laden and mullah Omar are not shy about voicing
their plans for god-inspired horror upon America, plans in the
works for years.
Yet,
in opposition to their religious-inspired insanity, all the
leaders of the free world speak of is uniting against terrorism
and the evildoers, speaking in terms of those at the core of
the problem being somehow apart from the god of the good guys
or Putin's god of whatever people wish to treat god as.
I
read an article today which stated that god following wasn't
the problem, for folks who did not believe in god invoked horrible
evil on humankind, so the problem must be apart from the following
of god.
I
would reply to that weak defense of faith in the following way:
When one is threatened and commanded to suspend doubt, to follow
or else, all is forfeit, all is lost, this life, this one and
only *sure* chance at existence we all know and share.
Be
it god-fear, religion, ideology, or country, "believe or
else" demands slavery and yields a predisposition to human
harm, for in the "or else", the first cause of anti-humanism
has been invoked, and all that can proceed from that is an effort
opposed to human freedom.
The
primary offenders in the current day remain the ancient faiths.
Residing beneath the surface of that offense to human freedom
is the effort by those of ancient faiths to guilt-trip and demonize
any activity which is not consistent with the ancient faiths.
To
aspire to human freedom and liberty is to turn one's back on
that which has been and continues to be the insanity of submission
to "believe or else" slavery, be it from god-fear,
religion, ideology, or country.
Source:
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