povapomahro

Comedian Bill Maher likened conservative media personality Glenn Beck to the founder of the Church of Scientology Sunday.

“I think he’s doing what some people before him have done, like — L Ron Hubbard was a novelist and decided, ‘You know what? It’s a much easier gig to be a religious leader,’” Maher, the host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, said.

“And tax exempt,” Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN’s GPS, quipped.

“Tax exempt, and you already have people — I mean, there’s a reason they call them the flock,” Maher added, ‘”because they are the sheep and they’ll believe anything.”

Zakaria brought up Beck’s religiosity to Maher in the context of Beck’s rally, which the CNN host described as “being mostly about religion.”

“I think Glenn Beck is segue-ing from what he was, which was mostly a political preacher, to a preacher-preacher,” Maher, the star of the film “Religulous,” said. “It is an easier gig and you make more money — Jim Bakker kind of money.”

Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally took place at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visionary ’I Have a Dream’ speech.

Rev. King, who received the Nobel Peace Prize for using nonviolent civil disobedience to help end racial segregation in the US, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, while supporting the unionized black sanitation workers on strike for higher wages and better conditions.

Beck has been criticized by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann before for using religious-based symbols and mannerisms to sell precious metals through Goldline International.

“Pat and I both went home and prayed,” Beck went on portentously in April. “We both opened our Bibles, and we found something the next day that I think is important for you today to understand. He found one thing. He found the first piece, I found the second piece. The message was the same, but I think the message is for you today.”

But instead of actually revealing his message from God, Beck glanced to one side and quickly switched gears, saying, “I’ll give that to you in one second. First I have to break for our sponsor, Goldline.”

“That’s the plan!” Olbermann laughed. “Buy more gold over the Internet. Hallelujah! We’re saved!”

Beck has also attacked progressive religious activists, such as Dan Nejfelt, a communications associate with advocacy group Faith in Public Life, for running Christian radio ads quoting scripture as a way of encouraging believers to stop paying attention to the right-wing Fox News personality.

“Not only are you wrong, the vast majority of people of faith know that you’re wrong,” Nejfelt said, lobbing his words directly at Beck in an exclusive interview with RAW STORY. “We’re going to keep doing what God tells us to do. We’d appreciate it if you’d stop doing what you’re doing.”

Barack Obama has urged China’s president Hu Jintao to condemn North Korea’s military provocations as “unacceptable” as tensions on the Korean peninsular remained high following more South Korean live-fire military exercises.

Speaking to Mr Hu by telephone, Mr Obama asked China to “to send a clear message to North Korea that its provocations are unacceptable,” the White House said.

China has pointedly refused to condemn the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-il after it launched an artillery bombardment against a South Korean village nearly two weeks ago, killing two marines and two civilians, instead urging all sides to return to stalled disarmament talks.

Mr Hu said China, which last week opposed the deployment of a US aircraft carrier to the Yellow Sea as a provocation, wanted a “calm and rational response” from all sides.

“The fragile security situation on the Korean Peninsula, if not properly handled, could lead to further escalation of tension, or even run out of control, which is not in the common interests of all parties concerned,” the state-run Xinhua quoted Mr Hu as saying.

The telephone call between the two leaders came as diplomatic divisions between China and the US over how to handle North Korea showed little sign of narrowing.

The US secretary of state was on Tuesday due to host the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea in a meeting aimed at hammering out a strategy to deal with North Korea’s increasing belligerence.

The US and its two allies have rejected a Chinese call for an emergency meeting of the Six Party talks as impossible until North Korea shows it is serious about embarking on the road to disarmament.

Their discussions will take place against the backdrop of continuing tensions on the Korean peninsula where South Korea conducted live fire artillery exercises from more than 20 locations on Monday, including five islands on its disputed sea border with the North.

Pyongyang reacted angrily to the five-day drills, with its official news agency again warning that South Korea was taking the peninsula to the brink of war.

“The frantic provocations on the part of the puppet group [the South Korean government] are rapidly driving the situation on the Korean peninsula to an uncontrollable extreme phase,” the official news agency said.

South Korea’s government, which has been attacked at home for failing to respond fiercely enough to the North’s bombardment, dismissed the North’s threats.

“I don’t dwell on North Korea’s response as it does not deserve even a little consideration,” said the South’s new Defence Minister Kim Kwan-Jin, who last week said Seoul would not hesitate to order retaliatory air strikes if the North attacked again.

Silicone rubber is used in many applications in which a material is required to remain rubbery over a wide temperature range, since it retains its properties over the approximate range of -55°C to 300°C. Now a new material made of carbon nanotubes has been developed that retains its viscoelastic properties over a temperature range almost five times larger.

Scientists at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Tsukuba, Japan created the nanotube material using chemical vapor deposition. The material has elastic properties of recoverable stretchiness, and viscoelastic properties that give it a thick-honey-like consistency, and allows it to stretch slowly and then spring back to its original shape. It retains these properties over the range of -196°C to 1000°C.

The research team, led by Dr. Ming Xu, has previously worked on carbon nanotube “forests,” and development of the new material was the accidental product of an extension of this work. In the “forest” the long nanotubes grow upwards, but when the team modified the catalysts used in the process they found they could make the alignment of the nanotubes much less regular, and were able to create a random network of interconnected nanotubes, which Xu likened to a tangle of jungle vines.

They then investigated the properties of the new material and discovered it has similar viscoelastic properties to silicone rubber at room temperature, but unlike silicone rubber, which becomes brittle when cold and breaks down at high temperatures, the new rubber material remained flexible over a much larger temperature range and has excellent fatigue resistance properties. The researchers speculated the thermal stability could arise from energy dissipating as the carbon nanotubes zip and unzip at points of contact.

Until now, very little research has been done on the viscoelastic properties of carbon nanotubes, probably because they are difficult to make and because they oxidize readily at high temperatures. Xu said the research team is now looking for industrial applications for the new material, so they can further refine its properties to suit those applications. She also said she believed the temperature range could be extended much further, and the material could probably be made more elastic, stronger or softer, as required.

The material may find uses in space applications or rubbers for use in extremely hot environments, but the research is still at an early stage. The findings on the new material are published in Science.

More information: Carbon Nanotubes with Temperature-Invariant Viscoelasticity from –196° to 1000°C