AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands.

"Our dollar is worth maybe zero over here," said Mary Kelly, an American tourist from Indianapolis, Indiana, in front of the Anne Frank house. "It's hard to find a place to exchange. We have to go downtown, to the central station or post office."

That's because the smaller currency exchanges -- despite buy/sell spreads that make it easier for them to make money by exchanging small amounts of currency -- don't want to be caught holding dollars that could be worth less by the time they can sell them.

The dollar hovered near record lows on Monday, with one euro worth around $1.58 versus $1.47 a month ago.


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Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails made headlines again this week as he released his new, four-part instrumental album Ghosts I-IV, at a variety of price points, including a $300 super-deluxe package. He's also giving away Ghosts I at no charge, even throwing the tracks up on The Pirate Bay for anyone to download. And it appears to be working quite well for Reznor, who has managed to sell all 2,500 copies of his $300 package without major label backing or much in the way of splashy marketing. If Reznor's earlier experiments in digital distribution failed to recoup their costs, he's clearly learned his lesson: grossing $750,000 in the space of three days isn't a bad haul for any businessperson.

In covering the story, the New York Times noted that "one option Mr. Reznor is not offering fans is a way to obtain the entire collection free," but Ghosts I-IV is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license that does allow noncommercial redistribution.

Reznor gains something valuable from every transaction, even if downloaders elect not to pay; he harvests the e-mail addresses of fans interested in his music. These addresses are obviously marketing gold, but Reznor makes sure to treat his fans with respect, even when asking for their information. "We hate spam as much as you do, if not more so," he writes.

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High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil's Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.

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Jamaica is considering the legalisation of marijuana, a drug revered by members of the island's large Rastafarian population who say smoking it is part of their religion.

A seven-member government commission has been researching possible changes to the Caribbean nation's anti-drug laws, which some police complain are clogging courts and jails with marijuana-related cases, a government official said.

"We have discussed it, and we are preparing a report to present to the prime minister," said Deputy Prime Minister Kenneth Baugh.

In 2003, a government commission recommended legalising marijuana in small amounts for personal use.

But lawmakers never acted, saying legalisation might entail loss of their country's US anti-drug certification. Countries that lose it face economic sanctions.

A US State Department report on Friday said Jamaica is the largest producer of marijuana in the Caribbean and a major hub for drugs bound for the US.

Members of the Rastafarian movement, which emerged in Jamaica in the 1930s out of anger over the oppression of blacks, have long lobbied for the legalisation of the drug that they say brings them closer to the divine.

There are an estimated 700,000 Rastafarians in the world, most of them among Jamaica's 2.6 million people.

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So much for Judgment Day. The Terminator has been assigned a new target: May 22, 2009.

That's the date Warner Bros. has scheduled to unspool its heavily anticipated Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins, per the trades.

The sequel, which will also serve as the first installment of another planned trilogy in the fabled man vs. machine sci-fi tale, picks up shortly after the first Terminator trilogy left off. Christian Bale plays the adult John Connor, leading a rebellion against the sentient computer network known as Skynet that seeks to wipe out all of humanity.

The studio will distribute Terminator Salvation in North America after securing a pact with Halcyon Co., which owns the franchise rights. Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group will control international distribution.


Könnte interessant werden...


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For the first time last year, nearly half of all teenagers bought no compact discs, a dramatic increase from 2006, when 38% of teens shunned such purchases, according to a new report released Tuesday.

The illegal sharing of music online continued to soar in 2007, but there was one sign of hope that legal downloading was picking up steam. In the last year, Apple Inc.'s iTunes store, which sells only digital downloads, jumped ahead of Best Buy Co. to become the No. 2 U.S. music seller, trailing Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

That could be hopeful news for the music industry, which has been scrambling in recent years to replace its rapidly disappearing CD sales with music sold online. The number of CDs sold in the U.S. fell 19% in 2007 from the previous year while sales of digital songs jumped 45%, Nielsen SoundScan said.

Man mag mich naiv nennen, aber warum sollte man auch CDs kaufen?
Wenns draußen regnet, lauf ich bestimmt nicht los.
Das Personal hat überhaupt keine Ahnung was Musik angeht. (Wie übrigens in jedem anderen Fachgeschäft auch)
Es ist viel zu teuer und sobald die CD im Autoradio liegt, kann ich sie wegen dem dummen Kopierschutz nicht abspielen.

Wir können ohne die Plattenindustrie - Kann die Plattenindustrie ohne uns?

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It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don’t get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become “immortal”, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

Warum kommen solche Sachen eigentlich nie in den Nachrichten?

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Former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra has torn into the RIAA, likening them to the mafia, threatening to leave a horse’s head in the beds of old women and children alike, whilst destroying the education of student file-sharers. Don’t even get him started on the media: “Goebbels would be proud” he said.

Born Eric Reed Boucher in 1958, Jello Biafra is no stranger to controversy. He first became well known as songwriter and lead vocalist with the band Dead Kennedys. The band split in 1986 but 1998 saw the start of a six year battle over the royalties to the band’s music. No doubt this was a miserable experience, so maybe Biafra’s outburst this week was to be expected.

In a translated interview with Norway’s Aftenposten entitled “Goebbels Would Be Proud”, Biafra tells us a little bit about how he feels about the RIAA, big record labels and even the media. He isn’t pulling any punches either.

“I have two different opinions on file-sharing” says Biafra, drawing a metaphorical line in the sand - with good (small labels) on one side, and bad (big labels) on the other.

“You may take from the big labels,” he orders, “because the only thing they do is steal from both the artists and the audience.” Not many would disagree with you there, Jello.

The ‘good’ side are the small guys, explains Biafra to potential file-sharers: “Don’t take from the smaller, independent labels. Then fantastic bands would have to surrender way too early, because they can’t afford it,” he says, whilst completely forgetting that popularity fills concerts and downloads are a good way to achieve that these days. According to MAMA Group who manage the Kaiser Chiefs and Franz Ferdinand, future profit is there to be unlocked - and it lies in the live concert. Popularity through free downloads could be the key to these, time will tell.

“Support the independent labels, but the big ones –fuck’em. Anyways, I haven’t found anything in many years which come from a large label worth buying” says Biafra, as he tosses aside his attacks on singular big labels and gets his teeth into the collective might of the RIAA:

“The RIAA reminds me most of the Godfather,” Biafra says, tipping his head to the side and changing his voice to Marlon Brando mode:

“We will sue you. If you want out of this without going to court, we can make an arrangement: Give us $5000. If not, you will find a horses head in your bed.”

Suddenly he is back to being Jello Biafra again, and talks about why RIAA action against file-sharers is wrong: “They are doing this to 12 year old girls, they are doing it to 80 year old women, and they do it to students. There are plenty of examples that show people having to quit school because they had to give all their money to the recording industry instead,” he says gravely.

Biafra then explains that he doesn’t do any downloading himself as he doesn’t have a computer before launching himself at the media: “It’s so dumb, that even the American edition of CNN is just a bunch of right-twisted parrots babbling about the primary elections, letting the war in Iraq pass in silence. Then it is up to the artists to fill the void.”

Then, in a final show of support for the small guy, Biafra concludes: “When smaller performers express their political views they are gagged. But when Mel Gibson or Arnold Schwarzenegger does it, then it’s okay. Because they fit better into the media profile.”

“Goebbels would be proud.”

For those who haven’t seen it yet, here’s a RIAA training video, that may give some insight into the organization.

Wie kann man denn die RIAA mit Goebbels vergleichen? Der arme Mann wird im Grab rotieren.

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There are plenty of parties here at the conference, and they're usually not the best source of news. So imagine our surprise when we read this morning that Valve used their party on Wednesday night to let it slip that Jonathan Coulton's brilliant song "Still Alive" would be available as DLC on Rock Band.

As if that weren't face-meltingly cool enough, the announcement was made by Harmonix staffers who took to the stage to play the song on their Rock Band instruments alongside Coulton himself. When is it coming? We don't know. Will it been soon enough? No. It will not.

This was a triumph
I'm making a note here:
HUGE SUCCESS.



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What is intelligence, anyway?

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me.

(It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too.

Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand.

"The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them."

Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you."

"Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

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Der Witz ist der totale Bringer lol