junkdesign :: web hackery, cynicism, etc

One of Saddam Hussein’s greatest acts of ecological destruction – the draining of the Mesopotamian marshes – has been reversed as birds and rivers return to the region.

Saddam Hussein’s draining of the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq – recorded as the Garden of Eden in the Bible – was one of the most infamous outrages of his regime, leaving a vast area of once-teeming river delta a dry, salt-encrusted desert, emptied of insects, birds and the people who lived on them.

But nearly two decades later the area is buzzing and twittering with life again after local people and a new breed of Iraqi conservationists have restored much of what was once the world’s third largest wetland to some of its former glory.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/09/iraq-marshes-reborn

A fatally wounded man left dying on a New York sidewalk was ignored for nearly two hours. Would you have stopped to help?

New York has been shaken by the murder of a 31-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, Hugo Tale-Yax, who was stabbed to death on a Queens street last week. What has really shocked people is not so much the fact of a homicidal assault, or even that Tale-Yax appears to have been killed while trying to come to the aid of a woman who was herself being attacked, but that more than 20 passersby walked past the dying man and nearly two hours passed before anyone did anything and the emergency services arrived.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/apr/27/new-york-slain-hero

Well, really it is the women’s fault, just like so many other things in the Muddle East, and other places like (watch out! don’t say anything politically incorrect!) –

insert favourite insane religious/political/cultural lash-up here.

No doubt after the government-ignored if not approved and religious authority-sanctioned repression and beatings, the world will be a safer place.

Now, why didn’t those Icelandians (?) just throw a few virgins into the volcano and have done with all this ash-related flight chaos, eh? Philistines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8631775.stm

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/minimalist

Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza means there are very few new cars in the territory – though some new cars have recently got through the tunnels under the Egyptian-Gaza border. But there are plenty of old ones.

Classic car enthusiast Mahfouz Caberetti restores vintage vehicles, despite difficulties getting hold of spare parts under the Israeli blockade.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8622121.stm

Bluebell Railway, worth the trip.

Babies with three parents may be key to preventing genetic disorders.

Meanwhile, we’re busy letting the ones born with disorders rot on the vine…great to see we have our priorities in order. Just what is the message here? That you’re somehow defective and need to be fixed? So what happens when all goes well and your genetically-altered perfect embryo somehow ends up being born prematurely with mild cognitive anomalies due to oxygen deprivation? Throw ‘it’ out and start fresh?

I’m all for alleviating unnecessary suffering. Tell me though, who decides what’s necessary, and what’s not?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/genetics/article7097547.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=797084

http://www.kittehroulette.com/

I like the way this guy thinks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2V7B7-gdRA&feature=related

In their quest to convince voters that America is in danger, Republicans are lying about 9/11 and baldly denying history

Megan Carpentier – Guardian

More than 150 years ago, a disparate group of anti-immigrant, conspiracy-minded Americans became sick of traditional politicians and started a grassroots movement to take political power from the hands of those they no longer trusted. When asked by outsiders what their movement was called, they were ordered to answer, “I know nothing,” leading others to call them the Know Nothing party. The movement, however, was co-opted by the traditional parties and undermined by policy disagreements, and many members eventually folded into the Republican party. Some things, apparently, don’t change as much as we’d like to believe.

Republican leaders, and the 20-somethings crafting their made-for-television talking points, are apparently counting on the fact that their base still knows nothing, or is at least willing to forget what they do know. Not content to blame the Bush-led Wall Street bailouts on President Obama, or the shoe-bomber reprise on Obama’s security and intelligence policies that were nonetheless instituted by his predecessors, Republican thought-leaders like Mary Matalin, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani have decided that there is one big thing that just couldn’t have happened on the Republicans’ watch: 9/11.

Read it all >

http://www.lowanthem.com

Knut Haugland, the Norwegian commando and explorer who died on Christmas Day aged 92, took part in two of the most adventurous and celebrated exploits of the last century – a daring raid on a suspected Nazi atomic weapons plant in war, and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki expedition in peace.

Haugland, who was the last survivor of the six-man Kon-Tiki crew, had met Heyerdahl in 1944 at a special forces training camp in England, and was selected to join the expedition on the basis of the experience he acquired during the conflict as a radio operator.

In typically nonchalant fashion, Heyerdahl had written to Haugland, whom he thought was bound to be “fed up hanging around at home by now, and would be glad to go for a little trip on a wooden raft”, to invite him on board.

“Am going to cross the Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru,” the invitation ran. “Will you come? Reply at once.” The response was positive”.

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