Michael Jackson dies at 50

I found out within 10 minutes after the LA Times reported it.  Amazing how fast information travels.  Farrah Fawcett Majors (62) and Michael Jackson (50) in one day! RIP. Wikipedia has a daily death list here. Perhaps we should do something about this whole death problem. Well, some people are working on it:

It is not known that human physical immortality is an unachievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations — for example, their fragility and slow adaptability to changing environments, which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering. As of 2009, natural selection has developed biological immortality in at least one species, the jellyfish Turritopsis nutricula,^[4] one consequence of which is a worldwide population explosion of the organism.^[5]

Certain scientists, futurists, and philosophers, such as Ray Kurzweil, advocate that human immortality is achievable in the first few decades of the 21st century, while other advocates believe that life extension is a more achievable goal in the short term, with immortality awaiting further research breakthroughs farther into an indefinite future. Aubrey de Grey, a researcher who has developed a series of biomedical rejuvenation strategies to reverse human aging (called SENS), believes that his proposed plan for ending aging may be implementable in two or three decades.^[6] – wikipedia

Great, because being dead sounds boring. Has a single ghost ever been scientifically proven to be the returning spirit of someone who has died? I think not. Here is some stuff about Jackson:

At 3:24 pm Pacific time today, the LA Times reported that Jackson was dead. The New York Times already has a minute-by-minute account of what happened, starting with a 12:21 pm PST call to the parademics.  – lat

On a magical night in 1983, Michael Jackson struck a pose on stage, clasping the black fedora on his head with his white sequined glove. His black jacket and silver vest glittered as white socks showed under his high-water black pants. Then he erupted into a flurry of fluid dance moves in a performance of Billie Jean that would catapult the former child singing sensation into full-blown superstardom.

Probably no celebrity has been as revered and reviled over the past 40 years as Jackson, 50, who died Thursday in Los Angeles. The troubled, reclusive star was rushed to UCLA Medical Center by paramedics responding to a call from his home at about 12:30 p.m.

Jackson had been scheduled next month to begin the first of 50 sold-out concerts at London’s O2 Arena, a testament to his enduring popularity with fans around the world, a love affair that reached a peak on that March evening 26 years ago.

The occasion was the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today and Forever television special that celebrated a milestone for the legendary label, but it was also a seminal moment for the King of Pop. A then-record 47 million people watched in awe as Jackson unveiled the moonwalk with an electrifying performance. Other Motown greats performed that night and Jackson himself had reunited with brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Randy for a walk down memory lane with the Jackson 5.

But in that moment, Jackson stood alone in the spotlight, a singular figure riding a wave of popularity rarely seen anywhere. His groundbreaking Thriller— still the biggest selling album of all time — was dominating the charts and Jackson was in the process of reshaping the musical landscape with his videos and celebrity. There were still millions of records to be sold, acclaimed videos to be filmed and record-shattering concert tours to undertaken.

It was also before years of tabloid exposes, bizarre behavior, artistic flops, financial crises, health issues and child sex abuse scandals tarnished his image. His run of triumphs in the 1980s, in addition to Thriller, included the blockbuster albums Off the Wall and Bad.

Since he first arrived on the scene in 1969 as the cherubic 11-year-old phenom leading the teen heartthrob J5 singing I Want You Back, Jackson has been at the forefront of pop culture.

He transformed pop music, becoming the first African-American singer to gain mass crossover appeal. The premiere of videos for songs likeBeat It, Billie Jean, Thriller, Bad andSmooth Criminalwere major events and he helped popularize the then-fledgling MTV. It, in turn, brought him into millions of homes daily.

Thriller won a record eight Grammy Awards in 1984. Virtually every song became a hit single and it changed the industry’s thinking about how albums were put together and marketed. It also opened the door for artists to have more creative freedom and higher royalty returns. At the same time, he inspired legions of imitators and a line of dolls and accessories.

He spent his life under the glare of paparazzi flashbulbs, but in recent years, he has more often been the subject of negative news about his eccentricities and personal life. Jackson’s seemingly charmed life started to change when a pyrotechnics accident during the filming of a Pepsi ad set his hair afire and burned his scalp. He got outpouring of sympathy after that and won a $1.5 million settlement from Pepsi, which he donated to charity.

But his health also became a public fascination, especially as he began to change his appearance through plastic surgery. He had several nose jobs, his lips thinned, and chin clef put in, among other alterations. Meanwhile, Jackson’s brown skin grew progressively lighter, rumored to be the result of skin bleaching, but later diagnosed as vitiligo. The skin disorder causes a loss of pigment.

Jackson himself fueled gossip column by leaking false stories that he slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, reportedly to slow the aging process, or next to the bones of Joseph Merrick, the 19th century Englishman known as “The Elephant Man” because of his congenital deformities.

He addressed many of these issues in his 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk, in which he also revealed that he had been physically abused as a child. That same year, he built his $17 million Neverland Ranch near Santa Ynez, Calif., replete with an amusement park and exotic animals.

And while none of his post-Thriller albums matched its success, 1987′s Bad, 1991′s Dangerous and 1995′s HIStory were still commercial successes. Jackson reminded the world again of his power as a artist with an exhilarating halftime performance at 1993′s Super Bowl XXVII before a U.S. TV audience of more than 135 million.

via – USAtoday

Homeless Guy Smashes Other Homeless Guy Upside Head With Skateboard During Quantum Physics Argument

Bell’s Theorem and the Death of Locality? Or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Argument? We may never know what the beef was, but an argument between two homeless men about the splitting of atoms resulted in the splitting of lip:

A homeless man is on trial in San Mateo County on charges that he smacked a fellow transient in the face with a skateboard as the victim was engaged in a conversation about quantum physics, authorities said today.

Jason Everett Keller, 40, allegedly accosted another homeless man, Stephan Fava, on the 200 block of Grand Avenue in South San Francisco at about 1:45 p.m. March 30.

At the time, Fava was chatting with an acquaintance, who is also homeless, about “quantum physics and the splitting of atoms,” according to prosecutors.

Keller joined in the conversation and, for reasons unknown, got upset, authorities said. He picked up his skateboard and hit Fava in the face with it, splitting his lip, prosecutors said.

Physics discussion ends in skateboard attack (SF Gate, image via Computer Science for Fun)

via Homeless Guy Smashes Other Homeless Guy Upside Head With Skateboard During Quantum Physics Argument – Boing Boing.

Drugs Won the War

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

“We’ve spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs,” Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. “What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It’s a dismal failure.”

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

First, we have vastly increased the proportion of our population in prisons. The United States now incarcerates people at a rate nearly five times the world average. In part, that’s because the number of people in prison for drug offenses rose roughly from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. Until the war on drugs, our incarceration rate was roughly the same as that of other countries.

Second, we have empowered criminals at home and terrorists abroad. One reason many prominent economists have favored easing drug laws is that interdiction raises prices, which increases profit margins for everyone, from the Latin drug cartels to the Taliban. Former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia this year jointly implored the United States to adopt a new approach to narcotics, based on the public health campaign against tobacco.

Third, we have squandered resources. Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, found that federal, state and local governments spend $44.1 billion annually enforcing drug prohibitions. We spend seven times as much on drug interdiction, policing and imprisonment as on treatment. (Of people with drug problems in state prisons, only 14 percent get treatment.)

I’ve seen lives destroyed by drugs, and many neighbors in my hometown of Yamhill, Oregon, have had their lives ripped apart by crystal meth. Yet I find people like Mr. Stamper persuasive when they argue that if our aim is to reduce the influence of harmful drugs, we can do better.

via Op-Ed Columnist – Drugs Won the War – NYTimes.com.

Seems we’d do better to strike at the root of the problem: people turning to addictions to cope with stress, depression, disconnection, etc.

Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer

GREY hair may be unwelcome, but the processes that produce it are now better understood and could be protecting us from cancer.

Cells called melanocytes produce the pigments that colour hair and their numbers are kept topped up by stem cells. Hair goes grey when the number of stem cells in hair follicles declines. Now Emi Nishimura of Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan and colleagues have found what causes this decline in mice.

When the researchers exposed mice to radiation and chemicals that harm DNA, damaged stem cells transformed permanently into melanocytes. This ultimately led to fewer melanocytes, as it meant there were fewer stem cells capable of topping up the melanocyte pool. The mice also went grey (Cell, vol 137, p 1088). Nishimura’s team proposes that the same process leads to the reduction in stem cells in the follicles of older people, especially as DNA damage accumulates as we age.

David Fisher, a cancer researcher at Harvard Medical School, suggests such processes may help protect us from cancer, by discouraging the proliferation of stem cells with damaged DNA, which could pass on mutations. “One likely beneficial effect is the removal of potentially dangerous cells that may contain pre-cancerous capabilities,” he says.

via Grey hair may be protecting us from cancer – health – 21 June 2009 – New Scientist.

Paleolithic Bone Flute Discovered: Earliest Musical Tradition Documented In Southwestern Germany

Researchers in Germany have unearthed new evidence for Paleolithic music in the form of the remains of one nearly complete bone flute and isolated small fragments of three ivory flutes. The discovery suggests the musical tradition was well established when modern humans colonized Europe over 35,000 calendar years ago.

Excavations in the summer of 2008 at the sites of Hohle Fels and Vogelherd produced the new evidence. The most significant of these finds, a nearly complete bone flute, was recovered in the basal Aurignacian deposits at Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley, 20 km west of Ulm. The flute was found in 12 pieces. The fragments were distributed over a vertical distance of 3 cm over a horizontal area of about 10 x 20 cm. This flute is by far the most complete of all of the musical instruments thus far recovered from the caves of Swabia.

“These finds demonstrate the presence of a well-established musical tradition at the time when modern humans colonized Europe, more than 35,000 calendar years ago,” the authors write in the journal Nature. “Other than the caves of the Swabian Jura, the earliest secure archaeological evidence for music comes from sites in France and Austria and post-date 30,000 years ago.”

via Paleolithic Bone Flute Discovered: Earliest Musical Tradition Documented In Southwestern Germany.

‘Misty caverns’ on Enceladus moon

Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft has obtained strong evidence that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus retains liquid water.

The probe has detected sodium salts in the vicinity of the satellite, which appear to spew from its south pole.

Liquid water that is in prolonged contact with rock will leach out sodium – in exactly the same way as Earth’s oceans have become salty over time.

Scientists tell Nature magazine that the liquid water may reside in caverns just below the surface of the moon.

If confirmed, it is a stunning result. It means the Saturnian satellite may be one of the most promising places in the Solar System to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

“We need three ingredients for life, as far as we know – liquid water, energy and the basic chemical building blocks – and we seem to have all three at Enceladus, including some fairly complex organic molecules,” commented John Spencer, a Cassini scientist from the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

“That’s not to say there is life on Enceladus but certainly the ‘feedstock’ is there for life to use if it does exist,” he told BBC News.

Scientists have been looking for sodium near Enceladus since the discovery in 2005 that this 500km-wide moon was active and hurling water vapour and ice particles into space.

The vapour and ice particles emerge in super-fast jets from a series of “warm” surface cracks referred to as “tiger stripes” because of their resemblance to the big cat’s coat markings.

Researchers speculated that the jets could be being fed by a large sub-surface body of liquid water, even an ocean. But the best indicator remained frustratingly elusive.

If it existed, such a mass of water in contact with rock deep within Enceladus would acquire a range of dissolved salts over time and these ought to be detectable in the jets by Earth telescopes.

Indeed, sodium (which in Earth’s oceans forms the dominant sea salt, sodium chloride) is one of the easiest elements for observatories to spot in space.

However, even mighty telescopes like the Keck on Mauna Kea in Hawaii could never see sodium when they looked towards Enceladus.

The latest Cassini data appears to solve this conundrum.

The Nasa spacecraft has been flying through Saturn’s outer E ring which is sustained by the constant stream of material coming up from the tiger stripes.

Using its Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA), Cassini has analysed thousands of ice grains and directly “tasted” the missing salt – principally sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate (“baking soda”).

The amounts, though, are tiny – less than 2% of the mass of the sampled grains.

The low abundance helps explain why the telescopes had overlooked the salt. The fact that the sodium is bound into the water-ice molecules also effectively hides its light signature from the observatories’ instruments.

However, scientists say the Cassini and telescope observations taken together give hints about what the water reservoir on Enceladus might look like.

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | ‘Misty caverns’ on Enceladus moon.

‘Ark of the Covenant’ about to be unveiled? (Update: No, it isn’t.)

The patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia says he will announce to the world Friday the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, perhaps the world’s most prized archaeological and spiritual artifact, which he says has been hidden away in a church in his country for millennia, according to the Italian news agency Adnkronos.

Abuna Pauolos, in Italy for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI this week, told the news agency, “Soon the world will be able to admire the Ark of the Covenant described in the Bible as the container of the tablets of the law that God delivered to Moses and the center of searches and studies for centuries.”

The announcement is expected to be made at 2 p.m. Italian time from the Hotel Aldrovandi in Rome. Pauolos will reportedly be accompanied by Prince Aklile Berhan Makonnen Haile Sellassie and Duke Amedeo D’Acosta.

“The Ark of the Covenant is in Ethiopia for many centuries,” said Pauolos. “As a patriarch I have seen it with my own eyes and only few highly qualified persons could do the same, until now.”

- via WND

The Ark above is the Hollywood version from the Indiana Jones movie.  Are you sure you want to look at the real one? Here is what happens when you look at the Hollywood Ark:

Well, good thing that it won’t be unveiled after all.  Just think if something like this fell into the wrong hands, entire wax museums could get melted.

“Dog-kangaroos” turn heads in the Philippines

Dog lovers, meet Cute and Bambi, who have been dubbed “dog-kangaroos” by those who have encountered the pair in Quezon City, Philippines.

Cute and Bambi were apparently both born with only their two rear legs and are the pets of Lope Tulipas, a Quezon City street vendor. Many passersby are understandably taken by the pair — some have even offered to buy them, but Tulipas has turned down all offers.

– Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Alanah Torralba / European Pressphoto Agency

via “Dog-kangaroos” turn heads in the Philippines | L.A. Unleashed | Los Angeles Times.

Dead Sea peril: sinkholes swallow up the unwary

Eli Raz was peering into a narrow hole in the Dead Sea shore when the earth opened up and swallowed him. Fearing he would never be found alive in the 30-foot- deep pit, he scribbled his will on an old postcard.

After 14 hours a search party pulled him from the hole unhurt, and five years later the 69-year-old geologist is working to save others from a similar fate, leading an effort to map the sinkholes that are spreading on the banks of the fabled saltwater lake.

These underground craters can open up in an instant, sucking in whatever lies above and leaving the surrounding area looking like an earthquake zone.

The phenomenon, Raz said, stems from a dire water shortage, compounded in recent years by tourism and chemical industries as well as a growing population. “This is the most remarkable evidence of the brutal interference of humans in the Dead Sea,” he said.

The parched moonscape, famous as the site of biblical Sodom and Gomorra, is the lowest point on earth and runs more than 60 miles through Israel and the West Bank.

Large sections of the coast are fenced off and signposted in Hebrew and English: “danger, open pits” and “sinkhole area ahead.” But it’s too expensive to inspect every place for danger. Just two months ago an Israeli hiker wandered into an area that had no warning signs and was critically injured when he fell into a sinkhole.

While such accidents are rare, Raz says there are up to 3,000 open sinkholes along the coast and likely just as many that haven’t burst open yet. And they’re having a big impact on Israeli development plans.

The collapsing terrain has forced authorities to close a campground, date groves and a small naval base, and to scrap plans for 5,000 new hotel rooms, said Galit Cohen, director of environmental planning at the Ministry of the Environment.

The holes, also found on the Jordanian side of the sea, are the result of the Dead Sea having shrunk by a third since the 1960s when Israel and Jordan built plants to divert water flowing through its main tributary, the Jordan River.

The holes form when a subterranean salt layer that once bordered the sea is dissolved by underground fresh water that follows the receding Dead Sea waters.

via Dead Sea peril: sinkholes swallow up the unwary – Yahoo! News.

Charlie’s Angels pin-up actress Farrah Fawcett dies

Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett today lost her two-year battle with cancer.

The 62-year-old actress, who became an icon to millions during the 1970s, died in a hospital in Los Angeles surrounded by her family and friends.

A devout Catholic, the Charlie’s Angels star was read the last rites this morning.

It had been her last wish to marry actor Ryan O’Neal, who she had a son with during a stormy relationship that lasted for 27 years.

But the wedding was unable to take place due to the amount of medical care she needed.

The couple had been waiting months for her condition to improve in hospital to go through with the bedside ceremony.

O’Neal, 68, was at her side throughout her final days and was seen leaving the hospital this morning in tears.

Asked how he was, he quietly replied: ‘No, I’m not ok,’ before walking to his car and driving away.

In a statement O’Neal said: ‘After a long and brave battle with cancer, our beloved Farrah has passed away.

‘Although this is an extremely difficult time for her family and friends, we take comfort in the beautiful times that we shared with Farrah over the years and the knowledge that her life brought joy to so many people around the world.’

Later, he told U.S. magazine People: ‘She’s gone. She now belongs to the ages.

via Charlie’s Angels pin-up actress Farrah Fawcett dies with Ryan O’Neal at her side after losing her battle with rectal cancer | Mail Online.