Tackling hurricanes before they make landfall by calming them down or steering them off course may be a good way to prevent a storm striking a city. Experts are working on numerous ways to do this but it may take some time – and it has never been done before.

Hurricanes are fuelled by the warm waters they pass over. So hurricane mitigation strategies all focus on depriving hurricanes of this fuel.

In April 2005, Moshe Alamaro at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, outlined a plan to use an array of floating jet engines to trigger miniature cyclones in the atmosphere ahead of a hurricane. The idea is to drain the ocean and atmosphere of energy before the hurricane arrives….

Another strategy is to cover the ocean ahead of the hurricane with a thin layer of fish oil that disrupts the flow of energy into the atmosphere.

Then there is the idea of triggering storms with soot…

Emanuel says the best idea may be to exploit the chaotic features of weather systems to steer them away from populated centres, an idea put forward by Ross Hoffman, a researcher at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, a research and development company based in Lexington, Massachusetts. Meteorologists first need better hurricane measurements and models to forecast the effect of any “nudge”. They also need a way to do the nudging, possibly with space-based reflectors to heat up the atmosphere; something that Hoffman believes is a long way off.

But nudge a hurricane and the danger is that scientists may get blamed and sued wherever it goes…

Screenwriter Josh Friedman tells of the day he sold his big spec script, which is also the day his actress girlfriend, daughter of a rich man — “I’m gonna be rich and you can stop worrying I’m dating you for your dad’s money” — dumps him:

And as far as the Actress is concerned…well, there’s a happy ending there. I got a phone call from her the day my sale was in the paper. This is exactly what happened:

ACTRESS: Hi, it’s me. Actress.
ME: Hi.
ACTRESS: Look…I don’t know how to say this but…did you shellack your Variety article to my apartment door?
ME: What?
ACTRESS: Just tell me. Did you or did you not polyurethene your Variety article to my apartment door?
ME: I did not.
ACTRESS: Well I’m a little freaked out. Do your friends know where I live? Did you tell them?
ME: I have nothing to do with it. I swear to God.
ACTRESS: All right. Gotta go…

…but she did find out who pasted my Variety article on her apartment door:

Her father.

Now that’s some parenting I can get behind.

Planned Parenthood, in Philadelphia over in the USA, have had a brilliant idea:

Every time protesters gather outside of our Locust Street health center, our patients face verbal attacks from them. They see graphic signs meant to confuse and intimidate. They are sometimes blocked from entering the building and occasionally they are videotaped. They are offered anti-choice propaganda and free rides to the closest “crisis pregnancy
center.”

Staff and volunteers are also seen as targets. We are all called murderers, are lectured to about committing sins, and are told we will pay the “ultimate price” for our actions.

You can stand with others in the community against these acts of intimidation and harassment.

Here’s how it works: You decide on the amount you would like to pledge for each
protester (minimum 10 cents). When protesters show up on our sidewalks, Planned
Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania will count and record their number each day from October 1 through November 30, 2005. We will place a sign outside the health center that tracks pledges and makes protesters fully aware that their actions are benefiting PPSP. At the end of the two-month campaign, we will send you an update on protest activities and a pledge reminder.

Example: If you pledge 30 cents per protester, and PPSP has 100 protesters in October and 160
protesters in November, your donation would be 78 dollars for the entire two-month campaign…

Go to the link to get involved. Tell people about it.

“First off, your client has no legal basis for this, and it’s clear you’re just trying to bully me. Secondly, this is going to make your client look extremely out of touch. I’ll even write the headline for you: ‘Liberal Comedian Sues Blogger.’ Do you really want that?”

Webcomics creators should head over to THE ENGINE, looking particularly for this thread, in order to tell more than 2200 registered members of the forum about their webcomics. Captive audience.

An adult movie left in a DVD player was enough for the cops to track down a man who has confessed to killing a woman he didn’t know, but whose body he stayed with for at least some time after she was dead.

Kanagawa Prefectural Police investigators thought there was something amiss when nobody had seen Kayoko Matsubara for days, prompting them to accompany her brother to her Sagamihara apartment.

They made the ghastly find of the 22-year-old woman’s body, but there were signs that somebody else had been in the room with her corpse. Telltale signs hit the police in the face — cigarette butts were found throughout the apartment though Matsubara had been a non-smoker; leftovers were discovered; and, a dirty movie remained in her DVD player.

A journeyman, sometime day laborer called Takanori Maeda was arrested last week on theft charges and police say he has since told them he killed Matsubara.

…As August moved into September, Matsubara’s workmate received a series of e-mails from the young woman saying that she had been feeling ill and would not be coming into work until she got better. But suspicions were aroused when a co-worker offered to visit Matsubara’s apartment to check up on her only to receive the reply: “I don’t want you to look for me.”

“It looks like Maeda stayed in Matsubara’s apartment for a few days after he killed her and kept sending e-mail in her name to make it look as though she were still alive…”

Maeda’s fingerprints were found throughout Matsubara’s apartment, most tellingly on the adult movie found in the DVD player, which police learned Maeda had recently rented out from a local store. Maeda apparently lay down beside Matsubara’s body as he watched the adult movie. But the 22-year-old Maeda did not previously know Matsubara.

“I only sneaked into her room to steal something, but she saw my face, so I had to do her in…”

The Pentagon has drawn up a new strategy, built on the 2002 “Bush doctrine” of pre-emptive military strikes, that would allow the US to make first use of nuclear weapons to thwart an a WMD attack against the country.

Under the scheme, developed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff but yet to be ratified by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, commanders would be able to request permission from the President to use nuclear weapons in a variety of scenarios.

According to the Washington Post, one possibility is an enemy that is using, or “is about to use” weapons of mass destruction against US military forces or civilian population. Another is where nuclear weapons could be used against biological weapons that an enemy was close to using, and which could only be safely destroyed by nuclear weapons and their after-effects…

“Petrol Retailers Association director Ray Holloway said there was no panic-buying or shortage of fuel.”

Funny: the traffic into petrol stations that’s currently choking almost the whole of Southend must be people popping in to buy a fucking Mars bar.

Scientists have developed a backpack that makes “power walking” a reality. Described today in the journal Science, the novel device translates the regular up and down movement of a walker’s hips into electrical energy. The contraption could conceivably help provide power to soldiers, relief workers, scientists and others on remote trips…

A restaurant in northeastern China that advertised illegal tiger meat dishes was found instead to be selling donkey flesh — marinated in tiger urine, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The Hufulou restaurant, located beside the Heidaohezi tiger reserve near the city of Hailin, had advertised stir-fried tiger meat with chilies for $98 as well as liquor flavored with tiger bone for $74 a bottle, the China Daily reported.

Raw meat was priced at $864 per kilogram.

The sale of tiger parts is illegal in China and officers shut down the restaurant, only to be told by owner, Ma Shikun, that the meat was actually that of donkeys, flavored with tiger urine to give the dish a “special” tang, the newspaper said.

The report didn’t say how the urine was obtained.

Authorities confiscated the restaurant’s profits and fined Ma $296 it said. It wasn’t clear what Ma was fined for. Selling donkey meat is not illegal in China and it is widely consumed in the northeast.

Ma had initially claimed that the meat came from dead tigers sold to him by the management of the Heidaohezi reserve, but later changed his story, the report said.

While Heidaohezi’s director denied that claim, the reserve, with about 150 tigers, has been involved in similar controversies in the past.

Until China outlawed the trade in 1993, the reserve received most of its revenue from the sale of tiger skins, bones and other body parts, which are believed by Chinese to imbue vigor and sexual prowess.

I know nothing about Lack of Talent other than that the two-minute-long track “Bald Puppies” is sort of like Godspeed! You Black Emperor jamming with The Polyphonic Spree and Konono No 1. And it’s downloadable.

It is not my fault.

For the FELL readers: Michael O’Neil has opened a “Snowtown Tag” tag on Flickr:

The United Nations official in charge of investigating instances of torture around the world has arrived in Nepal for a week-long visit. The visit by Manfred Nowak comes as concern grows at the increasing incidence of the practice in the violence-stricken kingdom.

A leading Nepali organisation, Centre for the Victims of Torture or C-Vict, says nearly 5,000 cases of physical or psychological torture were reported to it last year. But it adds that victims are now getting more afraid of coming forward. It also says it is having problems funding professional treatment and sending its experts into conflict-hit areas.

Nepal has the world’s highest rate of fresh political disappearances, and C-Vict says that people who disappear have often been tortured to death…

My hobby for the month of September: taking control of the Top Tracks This Week front-page listing at music preview/download site Mperia.com.

I’m two for two: Theory Anesthetic and Full Moon Day are now on there.

Combat my internautics if you can. I am Swami now.

(I once actually forced my poor film/tv agent to refer to me only as Swami for a full week.)

(Thanks, Jhayne)

A February 16 note may be Hunter Thompson’s final written words. It reads:

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.”

Hunter left the note for his wife, Anita. He shot himself four days later at his home in Aspen, Colorado, after weeks of pain from a host of physical problems that included a broken leg and a hip replacement.

Written in black marker, the note was titled, “Football Season Is Over.”

Full Moon Day: their “Empty Headed” is supercooled, slowed-down psychedelic dreampop, ideal for these late-summer days.

Four-page preview here.

Organisers of the world testicle cooking championships were left out of pocket after a hoaxer claimed to be Australia’s top testicle cook.

A man claiming to be Australian chef Nibel Bevan rang the World Testicle Cooking Championship in Serbia, asking to take part. Organiser Gornji Milanovac said they imported kangaroo testicles especially for the Australian team – but nobody turned up.

He said: “The caller told us cooked kangaroo testicles were a popular delicacy in Australia, and gave us the details of where we could get kangaroo testicles from so we could have them ready when Mr Bevan and his team arrived. We were disappointed when no Australians arrived, we even had a band ready to welcome them.”

Ljubomir Erovic, who arranged a VIP reception for ‘Mr Bevan’, added: “We are sorry Mr Bevan could not make it, and hope he might still turn up next year once he realises that jokers have been pretending to be him. We would like to compare the testicles of a kangaroo to those of wild boars and bulls. That would really make our unique competition the World Championships.”

(Testicle Chefs = new band name)

Novelist Chiren Misawa fell to his death from his eight floor apartment in Yokohama on Wednesday, and local police believe he committed suicide. He was 46.

Misawa, whose real name is Tetsuo Takahashi, was arrested in 1982 over his involvement in a murder case while he was a member of a right-wing organization. While he was serving his 12-year prison term, he released a novel, “Tenno Gokko” (Playing Emperor), in 1994, for which he won the Shin-Nihon literary prize.

Misawa is also known for his novel, “Choritsu-no-Teikoku” (The Empire of Tuning) describing prison life.

Scientists have developed an ultra-light limb that they claim can mimic the movement in a real hand better than any currently available.

At present, prosthetic hands either do not move at all or have a simple single-motor grip. But the University of Southampton team has designed a prototype that uses six sets of motors and gears so each of the five fingers can move independently.

…at 400g it is lighter than the average human hand. Heavy prosthetics can be extremely uncomfortable and cause injury to the area where it joins with the arm…

My photographer friend Siege has finally located his mother and brother in New Orleans. They, and the rest of their family in the LA/MS area, are homeless.

He’s therefore selling a time-limited edition of prints at this link to attempt to care for and rebuild for his family.