Links I have been meaning to post

It has become very busy again, and I wanted to post these links I have been saving over the past week:

• Gaming for the United Nations

United Nations - Food Force review
Games reviews > Strategy game reviews > United Nations Food Force
disaster relief game from the UN (12/08/2005)

Believe it or not the United Nations World Food Programme has become a games publisher. Head to its Web site and you can download this game, Food Force, free of charge, although please note that it's 227MB for the PC version or 198MB for the Mac fraternity, so you'll need a Broadband connection.

And for those staying up late to play the above crap:

• Wonder drug beats sleep loss

By Mark Henderson, Science Correspondent

The clouding effects of sleep deprivation on the brain can be reversed by a new drug developed with funding from the United States military.

Tests on monkeys found that when the animals were denied sleep for the equivalent of three days in human beings, the drug, CX717, temporarily restored their performance at mental tasks to normal levels.

Now, for three on Illiegal Aliens from Mexico:

• Concerts set for illegals' amnesty - Mexican entertainers will sing shows to push for legalizing aliens
• Mexico, U.S. must solve immigration problem
• The case for annexing Mexico

And of Course, we will need to think about paying for all of this:

• One Simple Rate - A flat tax would unleash a stupendous economic boom.

But, is this really all neccessary, and are the facts true? Many times those with the supposed facts say so:

• When an Ounce of Prevention Is Not Worth a Pound of Cure

It appears to be all about science. After five days of WHO-think on health prevention at the Bangkok Global Conference on Health Promotion, it would be easy to conclude that science is the foundation for everything that the World Health Organization (WHO) does on health promotion. Wherever you look there are references to the scientific basis of health promotion and how everything that is done by WHO's health promoters meets the standards of modern medicine by being "evidence-based". But the scientific basis of WHO's health promotion is about as genuine and as sturdy as a Potemkin village. It makes impressive copy in all of WHO's conference press releases and it adds a veneer of respectability to the more controversial and dangerous of WHO's plans, but in reality it has little to do with real science or with medicine that is based on the evidence of best practices. That's because genuine science is fundamentally at odds with health promotion. Or to put it slightly differently, just as health promotion is a menace to the health of the developing world so it is a menace to real science. There are two reasons for this.

And if the above is true, and we are lied to all of the time, it really makes you wonder, just exactly what our masters- I mean selfless servants, are really trying to do:

• Judge loses patience with boy on gun charge

A judge infuriated by youth violence stunned a Boston court when he set bail for a 12-year-old boy accused of firing a gun on a street corner at $250,000 (£140,000).

But, then again, I am paranoid, and just see all of this as no more than manipulation:

• Machiavelli and U.S. Politics

During a much-quoted radio broadcast in October 1939, Winston Churchill commented on the surprise Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland ? an invasion that closely followed the German attack from the west, which triggered World War II. In his radio broadcast, Churchill said of Russia that it was ?a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.? Of course, it was only a mystery to Churchill because, until the invasion, he did not understand why the Soviets and Nazis had signed a pact that made partners of Stalin and Hitler. Using Churchill?s own words as a springboard, however, we can devise a parallel aphorism by blending in the advice given by Niccolò Machiavelli in his political treatise, The Prince. In our new Machiavellian aphorism, we may say that ?the practice of politics in the United States is a lie wrapped in hypocrisy inside a half-truth.? As we shall see, this neatly characterizes the behavior of most U.S. politicians for the past century.

I do not know about you dear reader, but I am truly disgusted with all of this crap...

--WP