TV Game of Death

Who's Getting Rich From the Naked Full-Body Scanner Boom?

"The TSA has a dismal record of enriching private corporations with failed technologies. Will the 'digital strip search' device just bring more of the same?"

Scan, baby, scan. That’s the mantra among politicians at all levels in the wake of the thwarted terrorist attack aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet. According to conventional wisdom, the would-be “underwear bomber” could have been stopped by airport security if he’d been put through a full-body scanner, which would have revealed the cache of explosives attached to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s groin.
Within days or even hours of the bombing attempt, everyone was talking about so-called whole-body imaging as the magic bullet that could stop this type of attack. In announcing hearings by the Senate Homeland Security Commitee, Joe Lieberman approached the use of scanners as a foregone conclusion, saying one of the "big, urgent questions that we are holding this hearing to answer" was "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" Former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told the Washington Post, "You’ve got to find some way of detecting things in parts of the body that aren’t easy to get at. It’s either pat downs or imaging, or otherwise hoping that bad guys haven’t figured it out, and I guess bad guys have figured it out."...more

Video of what  the 'digital strip search' device shows

 

Church Management Software Provider Shelby Systems Selects M2SYS for Biometric Fingerprint Recognition Solution

Leading Provider of Faith-Based Software Solutions to Offer M2SYS Fingerprint Readers and Biometric Software for Membership Management

'We are thrilled to provide this fingerprint recognition technology through our new relationship with M2SYS,' said Frank Canady, president of Shelby Systems. 'The integration with M2SYS is the latest example of how Shelby Systems strives to equip churches and other faith-based organizations with the best technology for improved security and streamlined operations. The biometrics solution will significantly benefit the check-in process for the ministries that we serve."...more

EU funding Orwellian artificial intelligence plan to monitor public for "abnormal behaviour"

"A five-year research programme, called Project Indect, aims to develop computer programmes which act as 'agents' to monitor and process information from web sites, discussion forums, file servers, peer-to-peer networks and even individual computers.

Its main objectives include the 'automatic detection of threats and abnormal behaviour or violence'

Project Indect, which received nearly £10 million in funding from the European Union, involves the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and computer scientists at York University, in addition to colleagues in nine other European countries.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of human rights group Liberty, described the introduction of such mass surveillance techniques as a 'sinister step' for any country, adding that it was 'positively chilling' on a European scale." ...more
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Using RFID to Direct Employees - RFID Journal

"The technology alerts unskilled workers when routine tasks need to be performed, and also enables managers to confirm they've been completed properly."

By Mark Roberti

Sept. 7, 2009—Anyone who has run a retail store, factory or warehouse knows that it's often very difficult to get workers to do exactly what they're supposed to do—and it's even harder to confirm that they've done it. Managers can train low-wage employees who often work part time all they want, but with no way to monitor them, it's difficult to get them to comply. Radio frequency identification has the potential to change that in a powerful way.

Right now, most companies aren't thinking about using RFID in this way. They are stuck on the idea that it's simply a tool to track goods and assets. One firm that has deployed RFID to improve workers' productivity is the Australian tomato grower, d'Vineripe. The company is employing RFID technology to ensure workers perform a variety of tasks each day, including pruning, pollinating, de-leafing, pest and disease control, and picking (see RFID Helps Improve Agricultural Worker Productivity).


As each worker is given his or her daily assignment, the greenhouse's station manager reads an RFID tag specifically identified for the task using a handheld interrogator. The manager then reads another tag designated for the row or rows in which the laborer will work, linking that individual to that task and row. At the conclusion of the employee's task or shift, his or her tag is scanned to indicate that individual is finished working. The data is downloaded into the company's back-end system, where it can be compared against best practices for each task. This enables the managers to address particular problems, such as training or other issues related to a specific employee not working efficiently."...more
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Go-ahead signalled for animal-human embryos -

British scientists will be allowed to create part-human, part-animal embryos for research into potentially life-saving medical treatments, the Government signalled yesterday.

Caroline Flint, the health minister, is considering removing a ban on such work from a draft bill that will form the basis for new laws on fertility treatment and embryo research.

Two teams of British researchers have applied for permission to create "cybrid" embryos that would be around 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent rabbit, cow, pig, sheep or goat to produce embryonic stem cells – the body's building blocks that grow into all other types of cells.

They want to use the stem cells to understand and provide new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, cystic fibrosis, motor neurone disease and Huntington's. ...more

Mad Scientists (transhumanism)

Interspecies blends walk razor's edge

Science and technology continue to stretch the conventionally acceptable boundaries for research, especially in genetic engineering. Bioethicists sometimes allude to the “yuck factor,” wherein the description of a research study lying at – or beyond – these boundaries may generate revulsion or disgust among the public.

Researchers at Newcastle University in England recently announced they had successfully replaced the original DNA in eggs taken from cow ovaries with human DNA, producing human-cow embryos that survived for three days. Electrical impulses were used to stimulate division of the cells in the embryos, and these stem cells then were harvested.

The long-term objective of this research is to develop a method to supply human embryonic stem cells that can be used in the development of drug therapies and for the treatment of such diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s but without the need to rely upon the relatively scarce human eggs that are gathered from fertility treatments.

The chimera of Greek mythology, as described in Homer’s “Iliad,” was a creature with the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent and the body of a goat. By blending cells and embryos from two animals, interspecies chimeras have been artificially produced, such as the geep spawned in 1984 by uniting the embryos of a sheep and a goat. Such an animal has four parents, because each of its individual cells retains the characteristics of either one species or the other, with two distinct sets of these cells forming the organism....more

Human-animal hybrid embryos should be legal says Catholic Church -Times Online

The Roman Catholic Church has called for women to be allowed to give birth to human-animal hybrids created in the laboratory.

Embryos injected with animal cells, or chimeras, should be treated as human beings where they have a preponderance of human genes, the bishops say in a sumbission to a Government committee.

And there should be no ban on implanting such hybrid embryos in the womb of the woman who supplied the original egg, they say in their submission on the Draft Tissue and Embryos Bill.

“Such a woman is the genetic mother, or partial mother, of the embryo; should she have a change of heart and wish to carry her child to term, she should not be prevented from doing so,” the bishops say.

The Bill proposes overhauling the regulation for embryo research and fertility treatment.

At present it is illegal in Britain to create embryos using a mix of human and animal genetic material, but the government is proposing to allow scientists to create human-animal embryos for research as long as they are destroyed within two weeks.

In their submission, the bishops say that most of the procedures covered by the bill should not be licensed under any circumstances. They argue that this is because they violate human rights.

Under the proposed legislation, scientists would be allowed in principle to produce “cytoplasmic” hybrid embryos that are 99.9 per cent human and 0.1 per cent animal.

It would also give permission for human embryos to be altered by the introduction of animal DNA and would allow human-animal “chimeras” - human embryos that have been physically mixed with one or more animal cells.

In all cases it would be illegal for embryos to grow for more than 14 days - beyond the size of a pinhead - or be implanted into a womb.

The Bill would ban the creation of “true hybrids” by fusing the egg and sperm of humans and animals.

In a letter sent in with the submission, the Most Rev Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, says the Catholic Church was opposed in principle to “destructive experimentation” on human embryos.

The government initially proposed to ban the creation of chimeras but changed its mind earlier this year under pressure from the scientific community.

The Pope today backed the use of adult stem cell research distinguishing it from the manipulation of stem cells from human embryos, which the Roman Catholic Church condemns.

Speaking at the end of his weekly general audience, the Roman Catholic leader referred to the use of adult stem cells to treat heart problems, being discussed at a global conference in Rome. “On this matter the position of the Church, supported by reason and by science, is clear,” he said, “Scientific research must be encouraged and promoted, so long as it does not harm other human beings, whose dignity is inviolable from the very first stages of existence.”

Human-animal hybrid embryos should be legal says Catholic Church -Times Online

Meet the women who won't have babies - because they're not eco friendly | the Daily Mail

Had Toni Vernelli gone ahead with her pregnancy ten years ago, she would know at first hand what it is like to cradle her own baby, to have a pair of innocent eyes gazing up at her with unconditional love, to feel a little hand slipping into hers - and a voice calling her Mummy.

But the very thought makes her shudder with horror....read more