Winckel

A detainee at Guantánamo was found dead in his cell on Saturday, according to camp officials. He is the ninth person to die at the camp since it was opened more than ten years ago. As former Gitmo guard Brandon Neely pointed out Monday, more detainees have died at the camp (nine) than have been convicted of wrongdoing by its military commissions (six). This is the fourth detainee who has died at the camp since Obama's inauguration. Although the detainee's identity has not been disclosed, a camp spokesman acknowledged that he "had not been charged and had not been designated for prosecution". In other words, he has been kept by the US government in a cage for many years without any opportunity to contest the accusations against him, and had no hope of leaving the camp except by death. Indeed, dying in due process-free captivity now appears to be the only way for many of these detainees to leave. The last person to leave the camp via death was a 48-year-old Afghan citizen, Awal Gul, who died in February 2011 of an apparent heart attack. Gul, the father of 18 children, was accused by the US of being a Taliban commander – a charge he vehemently denied because, as his lawyer put it, "he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse." But the due process-free indefinite detention policy still in place at the camp meant that those conflicting claims were never resolved, and he died after more than nine years in captivity – thousands of miles from his family, in the middle of a foreign ocean – despite never having been convicted of anything. In the hierarchy of evil, consigning someone who has been convicted of nothing to a cage year after year after year, until they die, is high up on the list. And in that regard, this latest episode demonstrates not only the ongoing travesty of the US's war on terror policies, but also the dishonesty of the attempt to exonerate Obama for those policies. What has always made Guantánamo such an assault on basic notions of justice, and what still makes it so, is not its physical location in the Carribean sea. Its defining evil is its system of indefinite detention: that human beings are imprisoned indefinitely, sometimes for life, without the obligation to prove they are guilty of anything. Notwithstanding the authoritarian eagerness on the part of many to blissfully assume that people in Gitmo must be guilty terrorists because the US government says so, punishing people without trials or charges is as tyrannical as it gets, and it continues in full. To the extent they ever address any of this at all any more, Obama defenders love to point out that he tried to fulfill his promise to "close Gitmo", but was thwarted by congressional opposition from both parties. That claim is true as far as it goes, but it does not go very far at all. That's because Obama's plan was not so much to "close Gitmo" as it was simply to relocate it a few thousand miles north onto US soil, with its system of indefinite detention – which makes the camp so odious – fully preserved. That is why civil liberties groups such as the ACLU harshly denounced Obama's plan as "Gitmo North". As the ACLU explained, long before Congress obstructed what Obama wanted to do, "the administration plans to continue its predecessor's policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location." Indeed, as I documented several months ago, the system of indefinite detention from the start has been central to Obama's plan for these detainees. Put another way, even if Congress had given Obama everything he wanted, the system that means that death is the only way out for many detainees would have been fully preserved. The excuse-making for Obama – "oh, he tried to close the camp but Congress would not let him" – is simply a deceitful tactic Democrats have concocted to justify their total silence about a grave injustice they once pretended to find so appalling and their raucous swooning for a president who supports it. There is, however, one one significant difference in this regard between Bush's and Obama's policies. Whereas Bush preferred to detain people without due process or judicial review, Obama simply kills them. Bush's former NSA and CIA director, General Michael Hayden, spoke this week at the University of Michigan and, as he (yet again) heaped praise on Obama for continuing the crux of the Bush/Cheney approach to terrorism, he made this precise point, as reported by Wired [my emphasis]: "President Barack Obama has closely followed the policy of his predecessor, President George W Bush, when it comes to tactics used in the 'war on terror' – from rendition, targeted killings, state secrets, Guantánamo Bay to domestic spying, according to Michael Hayden, Bush's former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. "'But let me repeat my hypothesis: Despite the frequent drama at the political level, America and Americans have found a comfortable center line in what it is they want their government to do and what it is they accept their government doing. It is that practical consensus that has fostered such powerful continuity between two vastly different presidents, George W Bush and Barack Obama, when it comes, when it comes to this conflict,' Hayden said Friday while speaking at the University of Michigan … "'And so, we've seen all of these continuities between two very different human beings, President Bush and President Obama. We are at war, targeted killings have continued; in fact, if you look at the statistics, targeted killings have increased under Obama.' "He said that was the case because, in one differing path between the two presidents, Obama in 2009 closed CIA 'black sites' and ratcheted down on torturing detainees. But instead of capturing so-called 'enemy combatants', President Obama kills them instead, Hayden said. "'We have made it so politically dangerous and so legally difficult that we don't capture anyone anymore,' Hayden said. 'We take another option, we kill them. Now. I don't morally oppose that'". Of all the pretzels of hypocrisy Democratic partisans have twisted themselves into, in order to defend their leader, this has to be the most extraordinary. They spent years screaming bloody murder because Bush and Cheney merely wanted to eavesdrop on and detain people, including Americans, without any judicial review: a shredding of our constitution, an assault on our values, a blight on our nation, they bellowed. During the Bush years, I echoed those same sentiments. Yet now, when their own party's leader seizes the power to target people (including their own fellow citizens), with no judicial review, not for mere eavesdropping or detention, but for assassination, they have nothing to say – except to express their approval and even admiration for his "toughness". Identically, that Obama sought to continue the wretched system of indefinite detention that causes people like this latest detainee to spend his entire life in a prison camp with no charges could not be less of an issue to them and, therefore, continues with little opposition. - Winckel

Not Democrats', Americans'. Happy 11/9 boys. - Winckel

:-) - Winckel

I laughed at that title earlier today. :) - Jemm

'These Games have changed us all forever,' said International Paralympic Committee president, Sir Philip Craven as he declared the 2012 Paralympics closed last night. And as the sun set on the Olympic Park media commentators from around the world were already reflecting on the legacy of the Paralympic Games. Some 2.7 million tickets were sold for the Games and although the amount of media and television coverage is not yet as big as the Olympics, there was definite surge in interest. The Washington Post hailed last night's closing ceremony as a 'three-hour party' giving 'the biggest-ever Paralympic Games a rousing send-off, wrapping up an unforgettable summer of sports in Britain.' China's Xinhua news agency said: 'London has pushed the Paralympics to a new height after taking over the legacy of the Beijing Paralympics.' Bahrain's Gulf Daily News said the Paralympics 'have swiftly taught us to look beyond disability towards achievement.' Canada's Vancouver Sun reflected on the country's performance saying: 'The most watched and most competitive Paralympic Games in history have wrapped up with Canada leaving London following its worst showing ever.' Australia's Canberra Times said: 'The London Organising Committee (LOCOG) fulfilled its pledge to not treat the Paralympics as a poor cousin to the Olympics and the athletes themselves put on 11 days of not only enthralling sporting contests but inspiring stories. The Tripoli Post hailed the sporting event as the 'greatest ever Summer Paralympic Games.' On their website France 24 wrote: 'Organisers have won plaudits for the efficient running of both events, with packed venues and vocal crowds, defying naysayers who predicted chaos and a lack of enthusiasm.' The Wall Street Journal put together a photo gallery to commemorate 'a summer of elite sport.' In The New York Times, Joshua George wrote: 'In London, Paralympians are seen as amazing for their feats on the field, and it could not be more refreshing. I hope that one day the United States decides to join the party.' Nigeria's Vangaurd wrote: 'Paralympics have given humanity an opportunity to push the limits of human capacity to adapt as evident in the stunning performances of disabled athletes in various sporting events.' German paper Der Tagesspiegel, left, hailed Rhianna's performance as 'spectacular.' Website Deutsche Welle said: 'It was an event that not only drew millions of viewers but also helped change audiences' perceptions of disability. 'For most, the lasting memories of the London 2012 Paralympics will be of sporting achievement and an electric atmosphere inside packed out venues.' - Winckel

A parade of champions from Mansion House in London at 1pm on Monday will offer one last chance to share in the glories that kept the country entranced from the moment Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony gave birth to a new national mood. David Weir’s fourth gold medal of the Paralympics, in Sunday’s wheelchair Marathon, was the perfect final statement from an army of British athletes who excelled in tandem with London 2012’s organisers. Then the Olympic Stadium swelled one last time as Coldplay were joined by JAY Z and Rihanna and a cast of 1,336 performers. The Union flag was hung by Captain Luke Sinnott, who lost both legs in an IED blast in Helmand province. Like the Olympic curtain-dropper, this one imitated one of the music festivals that pepper the British summer landscape. When the sport stops here, out comes the jukebox. London 2012 has turned even Britain’s great musical industry into a support act. When the action finally ceased, the country’s Paralympians had piled up 120 medals: 34 of them gold. Though they fell from second in Beijing (2008) to third in the medal table, behind China and Russia, they easily surpassed the 102 medals of four years ago. In the Olympics, Britain won 65 medals and 29 golds to finish third to USA and China: easily their best performance. With only tickertape and bunting left to roll out, with Monday’s huge convoy of champions to Trafalgar Square, everyday reality crashes back in. Well, almost. There is still the potential delight of Andy Murray’s US Open final against Novak Djokovic in New York. Sport-haters will feel there is no end to their torment. The 70,000 volunteers return to work and college and perhaps unemployment with the gratitude of athletes, spectators and politicians. The Mayor London, Boris Johnson, called the two events a “mind-boggling success” and talked of the “Golden Games". This kind of euphoric rhetoric will arrive by rote. But to most of us the summer is captured more by a feeling than a set of labels. The kind of patriotism that energised the venues was benign, considerate, polite and appreciative. Even the most sober commentators acknowledged a surge in positive feeling about the country we inhabit. Austerity, corruption and ineptitude turn out not to be the main picture. The mass of British people still believe in the civilizing virtues of friendliness, enthusiasm and respect for the achievements of others. Those who were unable to buy Olympic tickets rushed to the Paralympics instead and treated the athletes just the same. No wonder disabled sport is euphoric. Across the wider picture there has been no greater sport for summer in these islands. The start was Manchester City winning the English league title for the first time since 1968 with virtually the last kick of the season. Then Chelsea won the Champions League for the first time in a penalty shoot-out against Bayern Munich. Bradley Wiggins becoming the first British rider to win the Tour de France was another seminal moment; then Andy Murray became the first men’s Wimbledon finalist since Bunny Austin in 1938. On the racecourse, Frankel, the wonder horse, remained unbeaten, and Rory McIlory’s thumping victory in the US PGA golf enhanced his standing as the heir to Tiger Woods. In the same sport, the Ryder Cup between Europe and America is still to come later this month. But London 2012 has been the biggest playground: the transforming event. Pre-Olympic pessimism was put to flight by the fervour of the crowds and volunteers and the soaring achievements of Britain’s athletes, who recovered from a slow start to electrify the third Olympics to be held in London. Paralympians spoke of wanting to emulate those feats and the hordes in the Olympic Stadium whipped up as much noise as they had for Mo Farah or Jessica Ennis. In 11 days of Paralympic competition disabled sport made its great leap forward. For the first Games in Rome in 1960, 5,000 watched the opening ceremony. Here in London 80,000 packed the main arena for both shows. Ticket sales reached 2.7m and a generation of Paralympic stars vied for attention with Farah, Ennis, Wiggins and the other icons of the Olympic Games. Weir, Sarah Storey (cycling), Ellie Simmonds (swimming), Sophie Christiansen (equestrianism) and Jonnie Peacock (the world’s fastest blade runner) are among those who leave here as household names. Storey and Weir carried in the Paralympic flag. Locog claim that three-quarters of the British population followed their sport. Both fiestas laid on special days. In the Olympics, no-one will forget the night Ennis won the heptathlon, Farah seized the first of his two golds and Greg Rutherford won the long jump. Farah’s second gold a week later in the 5,000m was another spectacular occasion. The Paralympics answered with a so-called 'Thrilling Thursday’: an 11th gold for Storey and victories on the track for Weir and Peacock. Plainly the Olympic momentum carried over into the second half because people wanted more. They could not let go of those positive feelings and another set of athletes came along to satisfy their cravings. “Para” means alongside, not paraplegic, and the 4,200 athletes from 165 countries asserted their right to be treated as elite sportsmen and women rather than disabled people seeking therapeutic outlets. The Prime Minister, David Camerson, whose disabled son Ivan died in 2009, said: “I think back to Ivan. As every parent, you think about all the things they can’t do, but at the Paralympics they are superhuman, you see all the things they can do.” A cynic might say Britain achieved this turnaround in Olympic sport through a massive programme of financial doping, via Lottery Funding, but this conceals the improvements in sports administration and the emergence of gifted athletes with winning mentalities. Some of us still have memories of covering Britain’s one Olympic gold in Atlanta in 1996: the nadir that produced a transformation in funding and strategy. Lord Coe, who said he would be enjoying a “family-size beer” to celebrate, spoke of an internal journey across the “British Isles of Wonder” and a “Green and Pleasant Land.” He reminded the audience that the Paralympics were returning to their “spiritual home and birthplace, a Movement that was born 64 years ago after the first Stoke Mandeville Games as the world’s second biggest sporting event.” Running through the seasons, this ceremony had the feel of a giant garden party or fete, with fold-up seating on the pitch and disabled athletes arriving before the start. It closed with a projection on the Houses of Parliament: “Thank you London, thank you UK,” – a flagrant example of politicians seizing credit for a success. During Coldplay’s final song, 'Every Teardrop is a Waterfall’, water from fountains symbolised the dousing of the Paralympic flame, which was extinguished by 17-year-old Simmonds, who was born with achondroplasia, and Peacock, 19, who lost the lower half of his right leg at five-years-old to a meningitis-related infection. Autumn’s challenge is to never forget how this summer felt. - Winckel

spent today looking at the ceramics at the V&A - they have a great paddling pool too by the cafe (and a mini grand piano). It's free to get into too. It's one of the thousand reasons we love living in London :-) - Winckel

I've been to the V&A many times but I have never managed to see everything, it's an amazing place. - M F

Love that place - Iphigenie

"The ACLU has sued the District of Columbia and two police officers for allegedly seizing the cellphone of a man who photographed a police officer allegedly mistreating a citizen, and for then stealing his memory card. The suit, filed in federal court (.pdf) in Washington, D.C., alleges that the police officer violated Earl Staley, Jr.’s First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights by improperly searching and seizing his property while he was exercising his right to photograph the police performing their duty. The incident occurred July 20 when Staley, on his way to a bus stop with a friend, pulled out his phone to record police after he saw an officer hit a man on a motorbike. Two police officers then allegedly punched the man on the ground as he bled. Staley pulled out his phone to take photos when police also allegedly began “chest bumping” bystanders who would not leave the scene. Officer James O’Bannon seized Staley’s smartphone from his hand when he saw Staley take a photo of another officer and told Staley that he had broken the law in photographing the officer, according to the complaint. O’Bannon told Staley he was seizing the phone as evidence and threatened to arrest Staley if he didn’t leave the scene. When Staley was later given back his phone by police, his memory card was missing. The police have still not returned the card, which Staley says contained several years’ worth of personal data, including family photos, passwords, financial account data and music files. “That memory card had a lot of my life on it,” Staley said in a statement. “I can never replace those photos of my daughter’s first years. The police had no right to steal it. They’re supposed to enforce the law, not break it.” The incident occurred a day after the D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department issued a General Order informing officers that the public has a First Amendment right to photograph or record police officers performing their duties in public. That’s also the legal opinion of the U.S. Justice Department. Per the D.C. order, police cannot “[i]n any way threaten, intimidate or otherwise discourage an individual from recording members’ enforcement activities,” and prohibits officers from seizing cameras unless an “official with supervisory authority” is present at the scene. “Officers must learn that people have a right to photograph them in public places, and that trying to cover up police misconduct is worse than the initial misconduct,” said Arthur B. Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU’s D.C. chapter, said in a statement. “The officer’s actions here will have consequences.”" - Winckel

"FOR Shakespeare it was a “detested, dark, blood-drinking pit”; to Henry Miller, “that bushy twat”. That special place between a woman’s legs has been a “Heavenly Gate” to Chinese Taoists, and a “gash” or worse in contemporary slang. Each term is a cultural Rorschach test, writes Naomi Wolf, conveying a mess of anxiety and desire about the female sex and informing the way women view themselves. The problem, she argues in “Vagina: A New Biography”, is that despite decades of so-called sexual liberation, “the vagina is not nearly as free today in the West as we are led to believe.” In this section Female muscle »Tunnel of love Feat of clay The curse of machismo Epitaph for a poet Failure of imagination Reprints Related topics Health and fitness Women's health Arts, entertainment and media Media Books and literature A practised provocateur, Ms Wolf is never content simply to write a book. Her métier is the call-to-arms, laying bare the injustices of womanhood and contemporary life. So it is with “Vagina”, an ambitious and sprawling lament for the female sex organ, which she claims is both “seriously misunderstood” and disrespected. As evidence, she points to widespread sexual malaise among Western women, who complain of fading libido and an inability to reach orgasm, despite a surfeit of opportunities. The trouble, she writes, is not only that conventional wisdom about female sexuality is “badly out of date”, but also that the needs of women are very different from those of men. Ms Wolf’s “journey” to understanding the female body better began after she discovered a problem with her own orgasms. They still felt good, mind you, but were less meaningful somehow—she reports that she saw fewer colours, felt fewer dimensions. It turns out that she needed spinal surgery. The female pelvic neural network is surprisingly complex, she learns; more so than men’s. The neural pathways that connect a woman’s clitoris, vulva and vagina to the spinal cord—and from there to the brain—are unique to every woman. This means that women receive pleasure in different ways, despite what has been a long history of shame-inducing theories about what part of the vagina should deliver orgasm (the vulva, said Freud; the clitoris, said 1970s feminists). The fashion today is to shore up most theories of human behaviour with a bit of neuroscience, and Ms Wolf obliges. This “new science” of female sexuality leads her to some giddy revelations, such as “dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female brain”; when it is released during sex, it makes women feel more confident and creative. Indeed after conversations with gynaecologists and scientists, tantric healers and other women, Ms Wolf concludes that there is a “profound brain-vagina connection”. The “well-treated vagina”, Ms Wolf writes, “is a medium that releases, in the female brain, what can be called without exaggeration the chemical components of the meaning of life itself.” This book is entertaining and appalling in turns, with language that tends towards the outlandish (“The vagina may be a ‘hole’; but it is, properly understood, a Goddess-shaped one.”). Ms Wolf also has a habit of stretching concepts past their breaking point—such as her theory that women are more prone to mysticism than men, owing to the fact that they are capable of producing more dopamine during sex. Some women may bristle at the notion that they are “more easily addicted to love and to good sex” than men are. And men may grimace at Ms Wolf’s proposed solution for the problems of this sexually anxious age: “a sweeping change in how most straight men behave in bed with most straight women.” But there are also some worthy ideas to salvage here. At a moment when a politician has been making absurd pronouncements about a woman’s natural defences against “legitimate rape”, Ms Wolf offers a handy and often unsettling primer for the ways the vagina has been an ideological battleground throughout history. From early Christian views of the vagina as “a temple built over a sewer” to more recent mandatory vaginal examinations for female protesters in Egypt during the Arab spring, the vagina has long been a target for unwieldy ideas about a woman’s place in the world. Surely there is room for some of Ms Wolf’s own theories about its importance as a locus of pleasure, too." - Winckel

That special place between a woman’s legs has been a “Heavenly Gate” ++++ - Serpico

i wish she remove her hands .i love to see wht she has hidden - دلسرد

jooooooooooooon - دلسرد

"American novelist Philip Roth is so famous that there's a Wikipedia page about his life and numerous Wikipedia articles about individual books he's written. But by the sometimes strict editing process enforced at the collaboratively edited online encyclopedia, Roth himself was recently unable to fix what he calls a glaring error in the Wikipedia page about his novel The Human Stain. Roth's complaint was detailed by Roth himself today in "An open letter to Wikipedia" published by The New Yorker (a sister publication of Ars). Roth tried to fix the error that his novel was "allegedly inspired by the life of the writer Anatole Broyard.” In reality, Roth explains, the book's story was inspired by an event in the life of Roth's friend, Princeton professor Melvin Tumin. Tumin was trying to track down a couple of students who had never attended class, and asked if they were "spooks." The two students were black, leading to accusations of racism against Tumin. When Roth tried to give Wikipedia the true origins of the novel, he says he was told by a Wikipedia administrator on Aug. 26 "that I, Roth, was not a credible source." “I understand your point that the author is the greatest authority on their own work, but we require secondary sources," were the exact words of the Wikipedia administrator, according to Roth. Wikipedia's rules, of course, are intended to prevent people from excising uncomfortable yet true facts from their articles. All facts must be backed up by references to specific sources. As it turns out, the open letter Roth wrote today seems to count as a secondary source. Edits made to the article today add a reference to his open letter, including the explanation that Tumin's problem inspired the book. A further series of edits have decreased references to Anatole Broyard, although the article does still contain a statement that "critics saw parallels in the book to the life of Anatole Broyard." Broyard was a literary critic and editor for The New York Times. Roth notes that since he barely knew Broyard when he wrote The Human Stain, there was no way he could have inspired the novel. Roth notes in his New Yorker piece that "[t]he precise language has since been altered by Wikipedia’s collaborative editing, but this falsity still stands." The further edits made today, we think, should fix things for good." - Winckel

silly Wikipedia - Winckel

"Dell, the company started by Michael Dell in his college dorm room, at one time was synonymous with the PC market. During the nineties, I reported on the company’s meteoric rise. Not a day passed when people didn’t extoll the virtues of the Dell way: a just-in-time production model that essentially wrung any and all efficiencies out of the PC ecosystem. Dialing into quarterly conference calls was like tuning into a sports fan network, except Michael Dell was the star of the show. I was a loyal (and repeat) Dell customer. Like clockwork, I would buy a new Dell desktop or laptop, mostly to keep up with Microsoft’s Windows OS. And I never really had a problem with Dell machines — they were solid and lasted forever. Except when Apple launched the Titanium Powerbook, I switched and never looked back. I think it was frustration with Windows more than Dell. What is Dell? Earlier this morning when I was reading various analyst reports about the company’s most recent quarter – a disaster to say the least — I was left wondering what really happened to Dell. A few days ago, UBS analyst Steve Milunovich asked the question: “what does the HP brand stand for since being all things to all people means standing for nothing?” You can pretty ask the same question of Dell. What does the Dell brand really stand for these days? If you read this statement by chairman and CEO Michael Dell, you can see what I mean. “We’re transforming our business, not for a quarter or a fiscal year, but to deliver differentiated customer value for the long term. We’re clear on our strategy and we’re building a leading portfolio of solutions to help our customers achieve their goals.” A decade ago you could point to it and say, Dell makes computers — lots of them. Today, it has lost its grip on the PC business. The company paints a picture of an enterprise company, but it is hard to totally buy into that vision. The growing popularity of on-demand services such as Box.net plus growth in the infrastructure-as-a-service offerings from the likes of Amazon Web Services is turning the hardware business on its head. Can Dell win there? Who knows! When I read through the transcript of Dell’s quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts, I was left wondering why they didn’t rake Dell over the coals for blowing the massive shift to mobile. Dell is mostly a non-player when it comes to tablets and smartphones, essentially two new form factors for what was Dell’s core offering: client computers. Dell, in fact, is no different than HP which also has blown the shift to mobile and now is trying to do a comb-over by using cloud and enterprise as its areas of focus. HP’s second quarter of 2012 earnings read like a page out of a horror novel. It is bleeding in the PC business. Here is HP CEO Meg Whitman: “HP is still in the early stages of a multi-year turnaround, and we’re making decent progress despite the headwinds.” Caught Looking So the chief executives of two companies who have so far blown the mobile shift are talking about trusting them to get it right in the long term. Dell and HP, for me, are to the PC business what RIM and Nokia are to the phone industry — incumbents that fell so in love with their core products and their form factors that they decided it was okay to ignore the behavioral shift in computing. That said, I would give Dell full marks for dipping its toes into the smart phones and tablets business with a few Android products. I would applaud them for trying and failing. However, they get no sympathy from me for not persisting. HP and Dell (or Dell & HP) essentially rolled over and handed the PC market to the likes of Lenovo and Asus, who know how to play the game of lower-prices better than the two giants. They don’t have too many expensive executives to compensate with fat checks. Samsung is making a strong push in all sorts of client devices – laptops, tablets and most importantly, smartphones. The problem is not the desire, but the ability. Dell’s attempts to play in the smartphone business have failed because they didn’t have the channel to compete in the market. They hired Ron Garriques, a big time mucky muck from Motorola and that didn’t work out. [Related: Why does anyone believe that hiring a Nokia guy would magically make HP a mobile player?] The DNA problem They are tied at the hip with Microsoft and its operating systems and as a result they cannot look beyond Microsoft. The fact is that both Dell and HP have offered consumers pretty much nothing in terms of innovation when it comes to PCs. Compare that with Apple and Samsung and you start to see that these two PC giants have been essentially twiddling their thumbs. I have often argued that companies have a certain DNA and it is very hard to change that DNA. Dell, at the end of the day, is a logistics company and as a result cannot invent products and markets. Unfortunately, the Asian manufactures have figured out the game of making computers that fit the pockets of PC buyers in some of the faster-growing markets, such as Brazil and India. People see no reason to pay a premium for Dell or HP when Asus and Lenovo offer up similar machines. Dell is betting that the new Windows 8 and Window RT tablets are going to be its savior. To answer that I will channel my colleague Kevin Tofel, who earlier this month didn’t mince words when he  pointed out that tablets are essentially a consumer-driven market and Dell’s lack of previous success leaves them skating on very thin ice. To paraphrase an old ad: Dude, I am so not buying a Dell! Or an HP — and neither are most other people." - Winckel

"As if faking the video wasn’t bad enough. This is a still from Nokia’s new product promo video. It’s showing off their apparent Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) on their new device, the Lumia 920. Being a Finnish company, Nokia shot these scenes in Helsinki of course. I’ve lived in Helsinki, and where these photos were taken, there’s no lighting like this. Pretty much all street-lighting in Helsinki originates high from the center of roads. It’s ambiently diffused, not spot, as this video would have you believe. When you live through 20 hours of daily darkness in the winter, you start to notice these sorts of things. I decided to do a bit more research based on the data we have at hand. Going by these still images it’s hard to tell what device really took the photos. We don’t have the EXIF data because these are part of a video, and there’s no cheeky reflections we can zoom in and enhance. However, there is one thing, that once seen can’t be unseen. Diffractions. Diffractions are the sparkle affect generated around the bright lights in the background." - Winckel

really bad product launch, I really can't believe how amateurish these people are. They obviously believe they can't possibly go out of business. I think consumers might disagree. - Winckel

"The Boneyard, Tucson, Arizona Adjacent to the PIMA Aerospace Museum, outside Tucson Arizona, is the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Here at any time, around 4000 planes, valued at an estimated $33 billion, wait to be sliced, shredded and recycled for parts, earning it the name The Boneyard. Visitors tour the site by bus and are greeted by the magnificent sight of a sea of tail fins, eviscerated engines and bisected fuselages stretching from horizon to horizon. The planes here date from the Vietnam era or newer and many of them represent models still in active service, like the venerable C-130 Hercules transporter, which has seen around 60 years of duty. Most of the planes have seen surgery of some sort, either at the sharp end of the giant guillotine that slices them cleanly into sections, or have had specific components removed, their wounds covered in what look like white plastic bandages." - Winckel

First posted in December, I just watched this excellent video of a Vietnam war veteran speaking with Mitt Romney about marriage equality. The vet was undecided about who to vote for before he spoke face-to-face with Romney, and by the end of the conversation he decided Romney's reprehensible homophobia made him unsuitable to be President. - Winckel

"Eleanor "Ellie" Simmonds MBE (born 11 November 1994 in Walsall, West Midlands)[1] is a British Paralympian swimmer who has achondroplasia. Personal life Born in Walsall, she grew up in neighbouring Aldridge, and attended Aldridge School. She now lives part time in Swansea and trains for two hours at a time in nine training sessions per week at the Wales National Pool. Before moving to Swansea, she swam for Boldmere Swimming Club in Sutton Coldfield, under Head Coach Ashley Cox and several other coaches. In 2008, following her success in Beijing she was made a life member of the club. To this date she still maintains her links with Boldmere Swimming Club, swimming at the annual Club Championships and occasionally attending training sessions when she returns from Swansea. She also took part in All Star Family Fortunes which was broadcast on 29 November 2009, which made her the youngest team captain they ever had on the show. She played the game with her aunt, trainer, cousin and brother and won £1,520 for her chosen charity. In August 2012, Ellies former school, Cooper and Jordan, in the Green, Aldridge have renamed their Swimming Pool after the Paralympian following her gold medals at London 2012. [edit]Career At the age of 13, Simmonds was the youngest British athlete[2] at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, competing in the 50m, 100m and 400m freestyle, 50m butterfly, and 200m Individual Medley.[3] She won gold medals in the 100m and 400m freestyle events.[4] On 1 September 2012, Simmonds repeated her Gold performance to win the 400m freestyle at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, in which she took five seconds off the World Record time[5]. Two days later, on the evening of 3rd September, she took Gold in the 200m Individual Medley, breaking the World Record that she had set in the qualifying round that morning.[6] In addition, Simmonds has won ten gold World Championship titles.[7] She swims in the S6 disability category. [edit]Honours and awards She won the 2008 BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year award. Simmonds was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2009 New Year Honours.[8] At 14 years old, she became the youngest person ever to have received this honour.[9] She received the honour from Queen Elizabeth II on 18 February 2009.[10] In March 2012, in the 200 m individual medley, she became the first swimmer to break a world record at London's Aquatics Centre. Her victory in a time of 3:08.14 broke her own previous best time by over half a second.[11] In 2011, Simmonds won the award for 'Best British Sporting Performance for an Athlete with Disability' at the Jaguar Academy of Sport Annual Awards.[12] She has broken her Personal Best and 2 World Records." - Winckel

an impressive girl - Winckel

:-) - Winckel

aaawwww! :) #yirim - grizabella

Amazing. I haven't seen him miss yet. - Greg GuitarBuster

:-) - Winckel

:)) - mina_sydney

"It is with great sadness that we can confirm that Robert Peston's beloved wife Sian Busby has passed away after a long illness. Our thoughts are with him and his family at this tragic time. "Robert will take a short leave of absence from the BBC to return at a later date. We ask that you respect his and his family's privacy at this difficult time." - Winckel

This is very sad. - Son of Groucho

"For years it seems impregnable, then suddenly the citadel collapses. An ideology, a fact, a regime appears fixed, unshakeable, almost geological. Then an inch of mortar falls, and the stonework begins to slide. Something of this kind happened over the weekend. When Desmond Tutu wrote that Tony Blair should be treading the path to The Hague, he de-normalised what Blair has done. Tutu broke the protocol of power – the implicit accord between those who flit from one grand meeting to another – and named his crime. I expect that Blair will never recover from it. The offence is known by two names in international law: the crime of aggression and a crime against peace. It is defined by the Nuremberg principles as the "planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression". This means a war fought for a purpose other than self-defence: in other words outwith articles 33 and 51 of the UN Charter. That the invasion of Iraq falls into this category looks indisputable. Blair's cabinet ministers knew it, and told him so. His attorney general warned that there were just three ways in which it could be legally justified: "self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UN security council authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case." Blair tried and failed to obtain the third. His foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told Blair that for the war to be legal, "i) there must be an armed attack upon a state or such an attack must be imminent; ii) the use of force must be necessary and other means to reverse/avert the attack must be unavailable; iii) the acts in self-defence must be proportionate and strictly confined to the object of stopping the attack." None of these conditions were met. The Cabinet Office told him: "A legal justification for invasion would be needed. Subject to law officers' advice, none currently exists." Without legal justification, the attack on Iraq was an act of mass murder. It caused the deaths of between 100,000 and a million people, and ranks among the greatest crimes the world has ever seen. That Blair and his ministers still saunter among us, gathering money wherever they go, is a withering indictment of a one-sided system of international justice: a system whose hypocrisies Tutu has exposed. Blair's diminishing band of apologists cling to two desperate justifications. The first is that the war was automatically authorised by a prior UN resolution, 1441. But when it was discussed in the security council, both the American and British ambassadors insisted that 1441 did not authorise the use of force. The UK representative stated that "there is no 'automaticity' in this resolution. If there is a further Iraqi breach of its disarmament obligations, the matter will return to the council for discussion as required in paragraph 12." Two months later, in January 2003, the attorney general reminded Blair that "resolution 1441 does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council". Yet when Blair ran out of options, he and his lieutenants began arguing that 1441 authorised their war. They are still at it: on Sunday, Lord Falconer tried it out on Radio 4. Perhaps he had forgotten that it has been thoroughly discredited. The second justification, attempted again by Blair this weekend, is that there was a moral case for invading Iraq. Yes, there was one. There was also a moral case for not invading Iraq, and this case was stronger. But a moral case (and who has launched an aggressive war in modern times without claiming to possess one?) does not provide a legal basis. Nor was it the motivation for the attack. In September 2000, before they took office, a project run by future members of the Bush administration – including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz – produced a report which said the following: "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Their purpose, they revealed, was "maintaining American military pre-eminence". The motivation for deposing Saddam Hussein was no more moral than the motivation for arming and funding him, two decades before. But while the case against Blair is strong, the means are weak. Twenty-nine people have been indicted in the international criminal court, and all of them are African. (Suspects in the Balkans have been indicted by a different tribunal). There's a reason for this. Until 2018 at the earliest, the court can prosecute crimes committed during the course of an illegal war, but not the crime of launching that war. Should we be surprised? Though the Nuremberg tribunal described aggression as "the supreme international crime", several powerful states guiltily resisted its adoption. At length, in 2010, they agreed that the court would have jurisdiction over aggression, but not until 2018 or thereafter. Though the offence has been recognised in international law for 67 years, the international criminal court (unlike the Rwanda and Yugoslavia tribunals, which hear cases from before they were established) will be able to try only crimes of aggression committed beyond that date. The other possibility is a prosecution in one of the states (there are at least 25) which have incorporated the crime of aggression into their own laws. Perhaps Blair's lawyers are now working through the list and cancelling a few speaking gigs. That the prospect of prosecution currently looks remote makes it all the more important that the crime is not forgotten. To this end, in 2010 I set up a bounty fund – www.arrestblair.org – to promote peaceful citizens' arrests of the former prime minister. People contribute to the fund, a quarter of which is paid out to anyone who makes an attempt which meets the rules. With our fourth payment last week, we've now disbursed more than £10,000. Our aim is the same as Tutu's: to de-normalise an act of mass murder, to keep it in the public mind and to maintain the pressure for a prosecution. That looked, until this weekend, like an almost impossible prospect. But when the masonry begins to crack, impossible hopes can become first plausible, then inexorable. Blair will now find himself shut out of places where he was once welcome. One day he may find himself shut in." - Winckel

I hope so. I think it would strengthen us colossally to show that the rule of law applies equally to all. - Winckel

It might be good for people like Demond Tutu to say things like that, but it would also seem like a phenomenal waste of time, money, energy and attention - a huge sink and a huge detour, if you want - when there are so many more important challenges around. Oh and could we get Dick Cheney instead? - Iphigenie

"Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, has sharply criticised the government's "snooper's charter", designed to track internet, text and email use of all British citizens, as "technologically incompetent". He said Wikipedia would move to encrypt all its connections with Britain if UK internet companies, such as Vodafone and Virgin Media, were mandated by the government to keep track of every single page accessed by UK citizens. The entrepreneur said he was confident there would be a general move to encryption across the internet if British-based communication service providers were required to collect and store data for 12 months from overseas companies, such as Google and Facebook, for possible access by the police and security services. He said the British government would have to resort to the "black arts" of hacking to break encryptions: "It is not the sort of thing I'd expect from a western democracy. It is the kind of thing I would expect from the Iranians or the Chinese and it would be detected immediately by the internet industry," he told MPs and peers. His intervention came as leading UK internet companies, including Vodafone and Virgin Media, also raised concerns about the responsibility for retaining and storing sensitive data from overseas third-party companies, which, they said, would damage their commercial relationships and entail a competitive disadvantage. The internet industry, which is giving evidence to a parliamentary special select committee on the draft communications data bill, said the legislation could create new opportunities for hackers and "malicious agents" wanting sensitive private information about individuals. The London Internet Exchange (Linx), told MPs it had serious concerns that the proposals would create a "profiling engine", a filtering system that would produce detailed profiles on all users of electronic communications systems and allow sophisticated data mining. In a written submission Linx said it would be a challenge to safeguard this profiling engine, and that a breach would be "a significant threat to national security". The organisation stated that the profiling engine amounted to "an enormously powerful tool for public authorities". Its submission said: "Its mere existence significantly implicates privacy rights, and its extensive use would represent a dramatic shift in the balance between personal privacy and the capabilities of the state to investigate and analyse the citizen." The £1.8bn scheme will require UK-based internet and phone providers to retain and store for 12 months the "traffic data" – who sent what, to whom, from where – of every British citizen's internet, text and mobile phone use. The move would exclude the contents of messages. The Home Office has admitted it cannot force foreign companies like Google and Facebook to store and hand over sensitive personal data. Instead it is hoping for voluntary agreements. But the legislation includes powers to require British communication firms to collect and store third-party data that cross their networks. Home Office security officials estimate that the rapidly evolving nature of the internet stops them tracking up to 25% of communications data despite such information being used as evidence in the majority of terrorist and serious crime cases. Internet and phone companies currently only keep data collected for their own business billing. The Internet Service Providers Association said the government estimated that this "gap" could be cut by 10% and questioned whether this was sufficient to justify the proposals or whether it represented value for money." - Winckel

And this charter was brought by the UK on pressure by the US after 9/11, so they cant blame the EU for it like they like to do... - Iphigenie

And this crazy project is not cheap, remember that we are the country with no money (when it suits them) - M F

"Einstein's Dreams[1] is a 1992 novel by Alan Lightman that was an international bestseller and has been translated into thirty languages. It was runner up for the 1994 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Einstein's Dreams was also the March 1998 selection for National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" Book Club. The novel has been used in numerous colleges and universities, in many cases for university-wide adoptions in "common-book"[2][3] programs. Einstein's Dreams was first adapted for the stage by David Gardiner and Ralf Remshardt and performed at the University of Florida in 1996. An off-off-Broadway production of this stage version ran briefly at the New York Fringe Festival in 2001; it has also been performed in Beijing (2009). [edit]Plot The novel fictionalizes Albert Einstein as a young scientist who is troubled by dreams as he works on his theory of relativity in 1905. The book consists of 30 chapters, each exploring one dream about time that Einstein had during this period. The framework of the book consists of a prelude, three interludes, and an epilogue. Einstein's friend, Michele Besso, appears in these sections. Each dream involves a conception of time. Some scenarios may involve exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity, and some may be entirely fantastical. The book demonstrates the relationship each human being has to time, and thus spiritually affirms Einstein's theory of relativity." - Winckel

just bought this - Winckel

reading it now, together with a biography of Paul Dirac. I kinda feel that I should have known about someone like Dirac when I was at school - Winckel

"An Iranian athlete refused to shake the Duchess of Cambridge's hand after she presented him with his discus silver medal on Sunday. The Royal was warmly received on the podium by Paralympic GB's gold medal winner Aled Davies and Chinese bronze medallist Lezheng Wang. But when it was Mehrdad Karam Zadeh's turn to step up, the 40-year-old failed to offer a hand to the Duchess, clutching them close to his chest." - Winckel

interesting to hear that view Nemo, as a foreigner I would certainly share your opinion that Iran is a country taken hostage by lunatics - Winckel

پراگ دست نیافتنی - غضروف

prague clock - Winckel

In the past few weeks, the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has fired the chief of his air force and border guard patrol; has shut down the Swedish Embassy in the country and kicked out the ambassador; and just last week fired his long-serving foreign minister. The reason? Teddy bears. In early July, Tomas Mazetti, a marketing executive with the Swedish firm Studio Total, took off in a single- engine propeller plane from an airfield in Lithuania, donned a furry bear mask, and headed for Belarus. When his plane was inside the country, known as the last dictatorship in Europe, he released his cargo: several hundred teddy bears carrying slogans calling for democracy and increased freedom of expression. After nearly 90 minutes inside Belarusian airspace, he turned and headed back towards Lithuania, unmolested by the country's air defences. Initially, the Belarus authorities denied it had ever happened, but when photographs started appearing on the internet, all hell broke loose. "Was this the stupidity of specific actors or systemic mistakes in the defence of the airspace?" Mr Lukashenko raged at a meeting of his security chiefs, demanding to know why the plane had not been shot down. Perhaps the most disturbing victims of the teddy bear raid, however, are not the Swedish diplomats or Belarusian officials, but two locals who on the surface appear to have had very little to do with the Swedish stunt. Anton Suryapin, an ambitious 20-year-old photographer who had started his own news agency, was sent photographs of the teddy bears landing near a Belarusian village. He published the photos on his website, realising it was a journalistic coup. There was lots of discussion online about the pictures, but nothing more happened for more than a week. Then on 13 July, the police and KGB, as the security services are still known in the country, arrived at his apartment. They searched the place for incriminating evidence that Mr Suryapin had been personally involved in the drop, and whisked him off to the infamous Amerikanka prison, where he was to spend the next month. He was charged under Article 371 of the Belarus criminal code, "illegal crossing of the state boundary". "I am a quiet, peaceful person," said Mr Suryapin, who was released from jail two weeks ago. "I am not political, I just want to do independent journalism, as much as that is possible in Belarus." That is now even harder than it was. His camera, laptop and mobile phone are still with the KGB, and he has been banned from leaving the small town of Slutsk, where his parents live. Even if he raises funds for a new camera he will not be able to do his job, as he cannot travel to Minsk. Mr Suryapin says he knew when he posted the photographs that it would be a scandal, but he did not imagine that he could be arrested merely for doing his job. "I had the first pictures, and it was my duty as a journalist to publish them," he says. "I had no contact with these Swedes or with any other Swedes. Ever." Sergei Basharimov, an estate agent, was jailed for renting an apartment in Minsk to Studio Total. Mr Mazetti says he did not tell either of the arrested men, or any other Belarusians, about his plans. While both men have now been released, they could still be jailed for up to seven years. The KGB has demanded that Mr Mazetti and his colleagues at Studio Total appear in Minsk for questioning, a request that was met by Mr Mazetti and his partners with ridicule, in an open letter in which they called Mr Lukashenko an "armed clown". Mr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994, and is banned from travelling to the EU under sanctions against him and his inner circle. In 2010, he won presidential elections that Western observers said were rigged, and riot police dispersed tens of thousands of protesters and jailed most of those who stood against him. "The EU has condemned and pressured Lukashenko for 20 years and nothing has really happened," Mr Mazetti said. "We work with brands to help get the media talking about them, so we decided to use our experience on something that we care about, to get people thinking about Belarus." While some in the Belarusian opposition think it was a good way to show up the absurdity of Mr Lukashenko's regime, not everyone was impressed with the stunt. "They crossed the state boundary from a Nato state; can you imagine if something similar had happened over US territory?" asked Alexander Feduta, a political analyst who spent part of last year in jail for backing a rival candidate to Mr Lukashenko in 2010. "It's a phenomenal example of idiocy, and they are lucky they didn't get shot down and killed." Indeed, Mr Mazetti was fortunate: in 1995, Belarusian air defences had no qualms about shooting down and killing two Americans who had unwittingly drifted into the country's airspace in a hot air balloon. Mr Mazetti feels that the response from the Belarusian leader shows that he is rattled, and helps show the full absurdity of the regime to the country's citizens. "Lukashenko is starting to behave irrationally," he says. "When a dictator starts doing this, as we've seen this year in lots of other countries across the world, the only way is downhill. It's only a matter of time." - Winckel

this story seems to want to run and run - Winckel

"With its dramatic cover art and fantastical story plots, science fiction dared readers to dream of amazing possible futures filled with aliens, robots, and all sorts of gadgetry. Now, ironically, some of the earliest books of the genre find themselves precariously near extinction, never to make it to the future they describe. Until Singularity & Co came onto the scene, that is. Lawyer Ash Kalb, musician-anthropologist Cici James, stylist-writer Jamil V Moen, and former Gawker media community manager Kaila Hale-Stern are the intrepid crew behind the Brooklyn-based bookshop. Each month, Singularity & Co—with the help of its community—chooses one great out-of-print or obscure science fiction novel, tracks down the copyright holders and makes that work available in DRM-free PDF, Epub, and Mobi format for subscribers. Founded in April, after a massively successful Kickstarter campaign that earned them 350 percent of their $15,000 (£9,500) goal and kudos from authors like Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow and Ken McLeod, Singularity & Co hasn't always had the easiest time unraveling vintage sci-fi's copyright issues. "We knew it would be difficult to track down the legal status of the books, but it's simply much harder than we though it would be," said James. Books get lost along the way for a variety of reasons. There could be no perceived demand for it, publication rights become muddled, or the books are simply forgotten. Sometimes, things get political. "It's really sad because a lot of really great books get lost not because nobody wants them but because people with lots of money who claim they have the rights are stopping people who have the rights from actually doing things. We hope to help these people down the road," said Kalb, the lawyer of the group, who takes charge of helping authors and author estates untangle the copyright mess. Since April, Singularity & Co moved into a high-ceilinged space that doubles as the team's work area for their respective personal pursuits in Brooklyn's Dumbo (down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass) neighborhood. "We call it the bookshop at the end of the Universe because we're on the edge of Dumbo, where it becomes Vinegar Hill," said Kalb, "We're surrounded by scenery that wouldn't work for anybody else, but it's perfect for us." Views of power grids greet visitors alongside shelves of sci-fi books arranged chronologically, instead of alphabetically. It has also published two books: A Plunge Into Space by Robert Cromie and The Torch by Jack Bechdolt, both with fresh cover art reimagined by artists today (in the future, Singularity & Co's plans to find original cover artists and secure rights for reprinting their illustrations). For its soon-to-be-released third book, Mr Stranger's Sealed Packet by Hugh MacColl, the team tracked down the lone copy out of university archives and went on a thousand-mile drive just to scan it. Despite being out of copyright, none of the universities who owned a copy of Mr. Stranger's Sealed Packet permitted scanning. "If you're part of that university or that consortium then you have access to that book. If you don't then you don't," said James. "Which is sad," added Kalb, "the default position of the organisation seems to be, 'I don't know if this is valuable but, just in case it is, I want to make sure nobody else gets their hands on it.'" As expected, authors and author estates are quite happy to get the call from Singularity & Co—not only because it means revived readership, but also, surprisingly, a better business deal. "We negotiated our first couple of deals based on what we thought was fair as opposed to what was normally done in the publishing industry," said Kalb, "As a result—especially for backlist stuff—we're offering just a much better deal. That's because we know we can do things efficiently and make enough to keep going that way. We also want to make sure that we're fair to everyone that we work with." It's that benevolent business spirit that has earned Singularity & Co praise from the community. "This project is about what it appears to be about," said Kalb, "We're not in this business to make a ton of money. It'd be great if we can bring some value to the people that own this stuff and also bring the books back to the world." The bookshop works with a socially responsible enterprise framework—one that doesn't aim for astronomical profits, but simply wants to keep the lights on and the scanner running. Flush with success, Singularity & Co's looking to extend its service by carrying new sci-fi books in its Brooklyn shop; opening an e-store that offers sci-fi cover art-inspired merchandise; and further along in the future, launching another imprint in charge of reviving books from another genre. Could world domination be next? Learn more about Singularity & Co here, and you can subscribe to their service here." - Winckel

a great idea - Winckel

my favorite season. still a month away :-) - Winckel

The last few years we had a very mild fall with relatively warmer weather right before winter. Just not warm enough to continue summer activities. It's when cutting trees, splitting logs and winterinzing takes priority over recreational activities. And then the 6 months of misery start. :) - Stephan Planken

"Radioactive decay is supposed to be the ultimate random process, immutably governed by an element's half life and nothing else.  There is no way to determine when a single radioactive atom will decay, nor any way to speed-up or slow down the process.  This iron clad certainty has always been the best argument of opponents to conventional nuclear fission power generation, as it means that the inevitable nuclear waste will have to be kept isolated from the biosphere for million of years (notwithstanding recent research attempts at stimulated transmutation of some of the longer lasting waste products.) When plotting the activity of a radioactive sample you expect a graph like the following, a smooth decrease with slight, random variations . Detected activity of the 137Cs source. The first two points correspond to the beginning of data taking. Dotted lines represent a 0.1% deviation from the exponential trend. Residuals (lower panel) of the measured activity to the exponential fit. Error bars include statistical uncertainties and fluctuations. (This graph stems from a measurement on the Beta decay of 137CS and was taken deep underground). What you don't expect are variations that follow a discernible pattern in the decay rate of a radioactive element, nor any correlation with outside events. But this is exactly what Jere H. Jenkins et al. found: Plot of measured 36Cl decays taken at the Ohio State University Research Reactor (OSURR). The crosses are the individual data points, and the blue line is an 11-point rolling average. The red curve is the inverse of the square of the Earth–Sun distance. (Error bars are only shown for a limited number of points). And now this surprising result of the sun's influence has been corroborated. The latest research was a collaboration of Stanford and Purdue University with the Geological Survey of Israel, rather reputable research power-houses that make these results difficult to dismiss. Their paper contains the following contour graph for the  measured gamma decay during the day plotted over several years. When comparing this with the same kind of graph of the sun's inclination during the observed date range the correlation is quite obvious:" - Winckel

I've long held the view that it's entirely wrong to teach to children things that are absolutely and fundamentally at odds with reality. I look forward to the time we can hold these parents and teachers criminally liable for their misdeeds. - Winckel