The parents of 24,000 children refused to allow health workers to administer polio vaccine. Aid workers are being targeted due to the “vaccines are evil American plot” idea. Fatwa on employees of the UN, WHO and all other foreign organizations: “Killing their employees is in line with the teachings of jihad in Islam,” said a notice.
First Commercial Quantum Computer
D-Wave just demonstrated the first commercial quantum computer. I think it’s too early to say whether the current quantum computing technology is practical, but a promising commercial effort is a good sign.
Quantum computers could represent the sixth generation (electromechanical, relay, vacuum tube, transistor, integrated circuit) of digital computing. They are unlikely to ever replace integrated circuits, but will function as specialized processors for certain (NP-complete) types of problems common in simulating real life and encryption. (Incidentally, quantum computing may one day break all current methods of encryption, but also to introduce theoretically-unbreakable encryption – which has the Feds sniffing.)
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.
New article on Environmentalism on the Objectivism Wiki
I’ve started a wiki article on the Objectivism Wiki to serve as a resource on environmentalism. Here is the introduction:
Philosophically, the essential principle of the ideology of environmentalism is the belief that “nature” has inherent moral value, and therefore the influence of man, and especially that of industrial civilization, is evil. Politically, this means the advocacy of various limits on industrial civilization, since all productive human activity has some kind of byproduct. While few (but alarmingly many) advocates of environmentalism recognize it as such, the ultimate goal of the environmentalist movement is the total destruction of industrial civilization, and the vast majority of the human race whose existence is made possible by it.
Please contribute!
Digg: Chavez fixes prices,profit motive evaporates,Result: massive food shortages
CARACAS, Venezuela — Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.
But who guards the guards?
120 prisoners escaped from a North Korean concentration camp yesterday. They were imprisoned for the crime of .. trying to escape from North Korea.
In related news, an entire platoon of border guards (one of the most lucrative jobs in that country) escaped the next day.
Both groups were risking their lives to escape to Manchurian China, which is a very poor and totalitarian area itself, and which helpfully returns escapees to North Korea for continued torture and starvation.
Aren’t you glad that the U.S. government has sent the North Korean slavemasters over $1 billion in aid since 1995?
Whenever I read these stories, I think of Ayn Rands words: “If they ask you, in America—tell them that Russia is a huge cemetery and that we are all dying slowly.”
The earth is going to explode…
… because of global warming. Next week: boils, locusts, darkness, and your firstborn.
Global Warming Alert
Global warming is causing a porcupine to loose his prickles. If you’re not in hysterics about global warming, you hate porcupines. You don’t hate cute little porcupines, do you?
More things blamed on global warming.
When you attack atheists, try not to be an ignorant idiot
John Kasich of Fox News demonstrates the intellectual idiocy of mainstream media:
St. Peters Checklist
Thanks to Diana for finding this. See Luke 14:26-33, 18:18-22 for the scripture in in the comic. 
Blame interventionism, not capitalism
There is much discussion on Slashdot about a new cancer drug that may never get on the market because it’s not eligible for a patent. Because getting a drug past the FDA costs up to a billion dollars, no drug company is willing to put up the costs when it can’t secure a monopoly. Most readers blamed capitalism for this. My response:
The problem is that drug approval costs so much. The major drug companies are happy with this – a billion dollars is too much for any innovative new startups to get to market. This is not the fault of capitalism, but the opposite – of government interventionism. In a free market, competing private organizations would decide when products are safe, and consumers would be free to choose what risks to take.
By contrast, the FDA creates giant monopolies that exclude competition by lobbying the government for more regulations and “safety controls” to raise barriers to entry, while millions of people die because innovative new medicines and treatments never had a chance.