Synthstuff - music, photography and more...

A quiet storm

'Monster' Typhoon Ioke Makes Direct Hit on Wake Island
Super Typhoon Ioke has made a direct hit on Wake Island, pounding the tiny U.S. Pacific territory with catastrophic winds of up to 300 kilometers an hour.

Ioke is the strongest central Pacific typhoon in at least 12 years. Forecasters expect the "monster" storm to submerge Wake Island and destroy everything on it that is not made of concrete.

Wake is home to a U.S. Air Force base and a scientific outpost, roughly midway between Hawaii and Japan.

The eye of the typhoon skirted the north edge of the coral atoll Thursday. The U.S. Air Force had already evacuated all of the island's 188 residents to Hawaii, 3,700 kilometers across the Pacific.

The residents - Air Force personnel and American and Thai contractors - left Monday aboard two U.S. C-17 Globemaster planes. It was the first time the territory was evacuated in nearly 30 years.

Super typhoon knocks out weather sensors
Typhoon Ioke knocked out Wake Island's weather sensors on Thursday as it lashed the isle with some of the central Pacific's fiercest winds in over a decade, the National Weather Service said.

Forecasters monitoring the 2.5-square-mile atoll's wind and temperature gauges from Hawaii said the instruments blew out as the storm approached with winds of up to 155 miles per hour and gusts of up to 190 mph.

An engine for a boat...

The Scream back home

Stolen Munch paintings found safe
Two masterpieces by artist Edvard Munch have been recovered two years after they were stolen from an Oslo museum.

The Scream and Madonna were found in a police operation. "We are 100% certain they are the originals. The damage was much less than feared," police said.

They had been missing since two armed men ripped them from the wall and threatened staff at the Munch Museum in the Norwegian capital in August 2004.

Three men were found guilty of charges relating to the theft in May.

"We felt it was a victory today when the pictures turned up," police chief Iver Stensrud told a press conference in Oslo.

How to tell time -- Italian Version

A good comeuppance

Painter Said to Be Focus of FBI Probe
The FBI is investigating allegations that self-styled "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade and some of his top executives fraudulently induced investors to open galleries and then ruined them financially, former dealers contacted by federal agents said.

Investigators are focusing on issues raised in civil litigation by at least six former Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners, people who have been contacted by the FBI said.

The ex-owners allege in arbitration claims that, among other things, the artist known for his dreamily luminous landscapes and street scenes used his Christian faith to persuade them to invest in the independently owned stores, which sell only Kinkade's work.

"They really knew how to bait the hook," said one former dealer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case. "They certainly used the Christian hook."

Kinkade has denied the allegations in the civil litigation.

Two former dealers told the Los Angeles Times that they had been asked to provide documentation of their business relationships with Kinkade's company. They said agents asked for copies of dealer agreements, retail sales policies, training materials from "Thomas Kinkade University" and correspondence, including e-mail.

Kinkade Co. spokesman Jim Bryant said Monday that the Morgan Hill, Calif.-based company was unaware of a criminal investigation and had not been contacted by the FBI or federal prosecutors.

"The Thomas Kinkade Co. asserts that there is no legitimate grounds for a federal investigation of any kind," Bryant wrote by e-mail.

Light posting tonight

Ethanol

Ethanol Production Reaches All-Time High
The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) has announced that U.S. ethanol production increased in June to 318,000 barrels per day (b/d), an all-time record. That is an increase of 25,000 b/d from May and a rise of nearly 28% from June 2005.

Demand for ethanol also rose to record levels in June at 395,000 b/d. That represents a 46,000 b/d jump from May and an increase of more than 42% from the same period a year ago.

“The U.S. ethanol industry has responded to the challenges of the President, the American public and the marketplace to increase the supply and availability of this cleaner-burning fuel,” said RFA President Bob Dinneen. “As a result, we are reducing our dependence on foreign petroleum, helping preserve air quality standards in America’s most polluted regions, and revitalizing economies in hundreds of rural communities around the country.”

Currently, 101 ethanol biorefineries nationwide have the capacity to produce more than 4.8 billion gallons annually. There are 42 ethanol refineries and 7 expansions under construction with a combined annual capacity of nearly 2.9 billion gallons.

The Battle between Food and Fuel
Exploding demand for ethanol could inflate the price of food and threaten the world's hungry

In 2005, Iowa grew over 2 billion bushels of corn. That's nearly 20 percent of the nation's crop, more than any other state, and many other countries, managed to produce.

Not content with accepting government subsidies to produce corn at cost, Iowa is increasingly trying to transform its cash crop into liquid gold by becoming a leading producer of ethanol. By the start of this year, Iowa produced more than a billion gallons of ethanol, and its production capacity is slated to expand by hundreds of millions of gallons. The state is turning corn into fuel so fast that by the end of next year, Iowa will actually suffer a crop shortage.

So huggable

Never hug a Swiss cow, hikers told
'Reports of unpleasant meetings' with cattle prompt new ground rules

Keep your distance. Avoid eye contact. And even if it looks cute, never hug a Swiss cow.

Responding to numerous “reports of unpleasant meetings between hikers and cattle” along Switzerland’s picture-perfect Alpine trails this summer, the Swiss Hiking Federation has laid down a few ground rules.

“Leave the animals in peace and do not touch them. Never caress a calf,” according to the group’s guidance, posted on the Web site www.swisshiking.ch.

“Do not scare the animals or look them directly in the eye. Do not wave sticks. Give a precise blow to the muzzle of the cow in the event of absolute need,” it advises.

Evelyne Zaugg of the Swiss Hiking Federation said that while there were no precise statistics on incidents involving cows, walkers are reporting more run-ins than a few years ago.

A look at Gaza

Blame placed upon Gaza
Official offers rare self-criticism

In an unusual instance of self-criticism, a well-known Hamas official has deplored the collapse of Gazan life into chaos and has said that much of the blame belongs to Palestinians themselves.

"Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs," wrote Ghazi Hamad, a former Hamas newspaper editor and the spokesman for the current Hamas government, in an article published Sunday in Al-Ayyam, the Palestinian newspaper.

After so much optimism when Israelis pulled out of Gaza a year ago, he wrote, "life became a nightmare and an intolerable burden."

He urged Palestinians to look to themselves, not to Israel, for the causes. But he appeared to be placing the blame elsewhere than on Hamas or the Palestinian Authority prime minister, Ismail Haniya of Hamas. He said various armed groups in the Gaza Strip -- most affiliated with Fatah, Hamas' rival -- were responsible for the chaos.

"We've all been attacked by the bacteria of stupidity," Hamad wrote. "We have lost our sense of direction." He addressed the armed groups: "Please have mercy on Gaza. Have mercy on us from your demagogy, chaos, guns, thugs, infighting. Let Gaza breathe a bit. Let it live."

Blockbuster -- Katrina, an analysis one year later

The Katrina Video Congress Didn't Want You To See
I'm going to warn you now. If you've only heard the news from the mainstream media, everything you think you know about Katrina flooding New Orleans is wrong. If you think you already know everything there is to know about Katrina, then you can safely ignore this post. - If the sum total of your interest in New Orleans flooding is to bash Nagin or Bush, then please... Go to where your intellect will be more appreciated. If you'd like to have your whole understanding of the Great Flood of New Orleans changed, hang on, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

We've all heard the story, in the early morning hours of Aug 29, 2005, the Category 4 Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, overwhelming the New Orleans levee system and flooding the city. If you read Wizbang, you've known since early October of 2005 this story was fatally flawed.

In the months since Katrina, we've learned that the storm was a Category 1 by the time she hit New Orleans. No "Super Hurricane," just an average storm. We've also learned that the New Orleans Hurricane Protection System was not overwhelmed by Katrina, it collapsed. Causing the Corps of Engineers to admit they flooded New Orleans not Katrina... An admission that got scant little media coverage. The Great Flood of New Orleans was not a natural disaster but a man made one.

The reason the Corps finally had to admit responsibility was that the floodwall that failed - flooding 70% of the city - basically collapsed under its own weight. It was undeniable. The Corps tried for months to claim the water came over the top of the floodwall and washed it away from the backside. (Which would make it Congress's fault) Everyone who has seen the break or looked at the surge data knew this was a lie; that the wall suffered a catastrophic failure before the water reached the top. Almost a year later, the Corps admitted that the floodwall suffered from multiple fatal design flaws and failed prematurely.

What was not really told to the public however is how high the water got up the walls before they failed. - This is an important question to a city rebuilding ~$250 billion in infrastructure. It is commonly assumed by the public that the water must have been quite high.

The question also has legal ramifications. Sovereign Immunity says citizens can not sue the government for damages unless there is negligence or Congress allows the government to be sued. If the public assumption is that Katrina was responsible for the flooding, Congress would never allow the government to be sued.

Perhaps that explains why Congress confiscated a video of the floodwall collapsing and refused to let the public see it until (a perfectly timed) 10 months after the storm. - Well after the storm passed but a few months before the current 1 year anniversary hype.

You've probably never seen it, but we have video taken by New Orleans firefighters as the 17th street canal floodwall was actually in the process of breaking during Katrina. It answers the question of just how prematurely the walls failed. The video was obtained by the National Geographic channel and aired a few weeks ago. (it took me a while to blog it, so sue me)

The video - if you understand it - is shocking. Sadly, no one at National Geographic or even the local TV station got the significance of the video. -- Because they were looking at the wrong thing.

I'm going to explain what is on the video that no one caught and I'll do my best to give you a good understanding of the whole thing.

Before I type their whole story, watch the firefighters' story as told by a local TV station a couple of months ago. As you watch the video, don't worry about the pictures for now, we'll get to them. For now, listen to the reporter and the firemen tell their story.

Jumping the Shark -- Tom Cruise GAY!

Tom Cruise Cuts New Deal
Tom Cruise has cut a deal with a group that includes the owner of the Washington Redskins to finance the overhead costs of his film production company, sources close to the negotiations said today.

Redskins owner Daniel M. Snyder, chairman of Six Flags Inc., is said to be a leading investor in an agreement that would give Cruise less than $3 million annually to finance staff and office expenses. In exchange, Snyder and the others will have the ability to finance movies developed by Cruise and his producing partner, Paula Wagner.

The two-year deal gives Cruise less than the $3 million a year that he reportedly turned down from Paramount Pictures to renew his longtime deal with the studio that expires Thursday.

Cruise and Wagner had been receiving an estimated $10 million annually from Paramount to cover their overhead under the soon to be expired deal.

When Cruise was publicly dismissed from Paramount by the studio's owner, Viacom Inc. Chairman Sumner Redstone, last week, Wagner claimed that the team had lined up financing from hedge funds to cover the much larger cost of developing movies. The team was seeking at least $100 million, according to sources. The name of the hedge fund remains unknown and Cruise's lawyer Bertram Fields said last week there was no hedge fund deal.

Several top banking sources said they had not heard of any deal struck by Cruise with a hedge fund.

Oops (with a grain of salt)

Hezbollah head says he didn't expect war
Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said in a TV interview aired Sunday that he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers if he had known it would lead to such a war.

Guerrillas from the Islamic militant group killed three Israeli soldiers and seized two more in a cross-border raid July 12, which sparked 34 days of fighting that ended with a cease-fire on Aug. 14.

"We did not think, even 1 percent, that the capture would lead to a war at this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11 ... that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not," he said in an interview with Lebanon's New TV station.

Dangerous place -- Spark Fun Electronics

One small step

One small step in hunt for moon film world didn't see
A reel of film held for 20 years in a Sydney vault could unlock the mystery of what happened to the original tapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The reel belongs to Australian film producer and rock video director Peter Clifton, who had all but forgotten a pristine 16-millimetre film of the moon landing was part of his vast personal film catalogue.

Mr Clifton had ordered the reel in 1979 for a rock film he was making about Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon but forgot he had it until seeing a news report on television recently.

The footage of Neil Armstrong's "one small step" is considered among the most important artefacts of the 20th century but the original NASA tapes have been mislaid somewhere in the US.

It is hoped documentation associated with Mr Clifton's reel will help direct researchers to the warehouse or museum where the missing tapes are stored - if they still exist.

The grainy black-and-white television images broadcast to 600 million viewers on July 20, 1969, were a photocopy of a photocopy of the original images captured on the moon's surface by a specially built camera.

Few people ever saw the high-quality original images shot at 10 frames a second and beamed back to the Australian tracking station at the CSIRO Parkes Observatory.

When the images reached the tracking station they were transferred onto a one-inch, 60-frame-per-second tape and sent to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, at Maryland near Washington, DC, for safekeeping.

The footage broadcast to the world was shot by a television camera pointed at a monitor receiving the images from the moon.

"What was broadcast to the world was nowhere near as good as what was received," said John Sarkissian, an engineer at the Parkes Observatory.

All the Apollo mission flights and moon landings were captured in this way and transferred onto one-inch tapes at Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek in Australia and the Goldstone Observatory in California. The tapes were stored in 2614 boxes containing five reels of tape each and held for years in the US National Archives.

By 1984 most boxes were recalled and sorted at the Goddard Centre, but only two of 700 original Apollo 11 tapes have been found.

NASA announced last week it was launching a formal search and is recalling all the paperwork associated with the tapes.

An AHA! moment

Alternate Energy - over-unity

Outside of the inescapable fact that it flat out ain't gonna happen nohow noway, what other hurdles would a successful first law thermodynamic challenge face?

~ Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.

~ It is up to the claimant to prove correctness, NOT up to others to prove them in error.

~ The foremost goal of any legitimate researcher when "too good to be true" results occur is to attempt to prove themselves wrong.

~ The thermodynamic laws are tested and retested millions of times every minute.

~ Student lab errors have long ago discovered any and every possible variation on normal groupings of magnets and related common components.

~ "Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck" gets them every time. Peer review done in credible journals counts more than costly paid ads in non scientific ones.

~ There's a half life of any perpetual motion claim in which the credibility and failure to duplicate drops something like twenty percent per week.

~ "Publish or perish" is alive and well. There are zillions of second tier researchers just sitting around for something they can glomb onto and run with.

~ Questions such as "where is one net watt" and "why cannot the output be connected to the input" must be convincingly answered.

~ The ultimate criteria is whether the item is not in Aisle 13 of Wal-Mart because they immediately sold out.

~ The odds against are overwhelming. It always pays to bet on the side of bogosity. While holding on to your wallet.

~ Any technical field has secret insider gotchas that absolutely guarantee outsiders will make fundamental stupid measuring errors. Not the least of which is correct RMS power measurement of unusual waveforms.

And, of course...

~ Any individual knowledgeable enough to propose a first or second law violation already knows that they will never do so.

Again, more on pseudoscience bashing here.

You Worry Me

YOU WORRY ME!
By American Airlines Pilot - Captain John Maniscalco

"I've been trying to say this since 9-11 - but you worry me. I wish you didn't. I wish when I walked down the streets of this country that I love, that your color and culture still blended with the beautiful human landscape we enjoy in this country. But you don't blend in anymore. I notice you, and it worries me. I notice you because I can't help it anymore. People from your homelands, professing to be Muslims, have been attacking and killing my fellow citizens and our friends for more than 20 years now. I don't fully understand their grievances and hate but I know that nothing can justify the inhumanity of their attacks.

On September 11, nineteen ARAB-MUSLIMS hijacked four jetliners in my country. They cut the throats of women in front of children and brutally stabbed to death others. They took control of those planes and crashed them into buildings killing thousands of proud fathers, loving sons, wise grandparents, elegant daughters, best friends, favorite coaches, fearless public servants, and children's mothers. The Palestinians Celebrated, The Iraqis were overjoyed as was most of the Arab world.

So I notice you now. I don't want to be worried. I don't want to be consumed by the same rage and hate and prejudice that has destroyed the soul of these terrorists. But I need your help. As a rational American, trying to protect my country and family in an irrational and unsafe world, I must know how to tell the difference between you, and the Arab/Muslim terrorist.

How do I differentiate between the true Arab/Muslim-Americans and the Arab/Muslims in our communities who are attending our schools, enjoying our parks, and living in OUR communities under the protection of OUR constitution, while they plot the next attack that will slaughter these same good neighbors and children? The events of September 11th changed the answer. It is not my responsibility to determine which of you embraces our great country, with ALL of its religions, with ALL of its different citizens, with all of its faults. It is time for every Arab/Muslim in this country to determine it for me.

I want to know, I demand to know, and I have a right to know whether or not you love America. Do you pledge allegiance to its flag? Do you proudly display it in front of your house, or on your car? Do you pray in your many daily prayers that Allah will bless this nation, that He will protect and prosper it? Or do you pray that Allah with destroy it in one of your "Jihads"? Are you thankful for the freedom that only this nation affords? A freedom that was paid for by the blood of hundreds of thousands of patriots who gave their lives for this country? Are you willing to preserve this freedom by paying the ultimate sacrifice? Do you love America? If this is your commitment, then I need YOU to start letting ME know about it.

Your Muslim leaders in this nation should be flooding the media at this time with hard facts on your faith, and what hard actions you are taking as a community and as a religion to protect the United States of America Please, no more benign overtures of regret for the death of the innocent because I worry about who you regard as innocent. No more benign overtures of condemnation for the unprovoked attacks because I worry about what is unprovoked to you. I am not interested in any more sympathy...I am only interested in action. What will you do for America - our great country -- at this time of crisis, at this time of war?

I want to see Arab-Muslims waving the AMERICAN flag in the streets. I want to hear you chanting "Allah Bless America ." I want to see young Arab/Muslim men enlisting in the military. I want to see a commitment of money, time, and emotion to the victims of this butchering and to this nation as a whole. The FBI has a list of over 400 people they want to talk to regarding the WTC attack. Many of these people live and socialize in Muslim communities. You know them You know where they are.

Hand them over to us, now! But I have seen little even approaching this sort of action. Instead I have seen an already closed and secretive community close even tighter. You have disappeared from the streets. You have posted armed security guards at your facilities. You have threatened lawsuits. You have screamed for protection from reprisals.

The very few Arab/Muslim representatives that HAVE appeared in the media were defensive and equivocating. They seemed more concerned with making sure that the United States proves who was responsible before taking action. They seemed more concerned with protecting their fellow Muslims from violence directed towards them in the United States and abroad than they did with supporting our country and denouncing "leaders" like Khadafi, Hussein, Farrakhan, and Arafat. If the true teachings of Islam proclaim tolerance and peace and love for all people then I want chapter and verse from the Koran and statements from popular Muslim leaders to back it up. What good is it if the teachings in the Koran are good and pure and true when your "leaders" are teaching fanatical interpretations, terrorism, and intolerance?

It matters little how good Islam SHOULD BE if large numbers of the world's Muslims interpret the teachings of Mohammed incorrectly and adhere to a degenerative form of the religion. A form that has been demonstrated to us over and over again. A form whose structure is built upon a foundation of violence, death, and suicide. A form whose members are recruited from the prisons around the world. A form whose members (some as young as five years old) are seen day after day, week in and week out, year after year, marching in the streets around the world, burning effigies of our presidents, burning the American flag, shooting weapons into the air. A form whose members convert from a peaceful religion, only to take up arms against the great United States of America, the country of their birth. A form whose rules are so twisted, that their traveling members refuse to show their faces at airport security checkpoints, in the name of Islam.

Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because our women proudly show their faces in public rather than cover up like a shameful whore? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we drink wine with dinner, or celebrate Christmas? Do you and your fellow Muslims hate us because we have befriended Israel, the ONLY civilized democratic nation in the entire Middle East?

And if you and your fellow Muslims hate us, then why in the world are you even here? Are you here to take our money? Are you here to undermine our peace and stability? Are you here to destroy us? If so, I want you to leave I want you to go back to your desert sandpit where women are treated like rats and dogs. I want you to take your religion, your friends, and your family back to your Islamic extremists, and STAY THERE! We will NEVER give in to your influence, your retarded mentality, your twisted, violent, intolerant religion. We will NEVER allow the attacks of September 11, or any others for that matter, to take away that which is so precious to us: Our rights under the greatest constitution in the world. I want to know where every Arab/ Muslim in this country stands and I think it is my right and the right of every true citizen of this country to demand it. A right paid for by the blood of thousands of my brothers and sisters who died protecting the very constitution that is protecting you and your famil y. I am pleading with you to let me know. I want you here as my brother, my neighbor, my friend, as a fellow American. But there can be no gray areas or ambivalence regarding your allegiance and it is up to YOU, to show ME, where YOU stand." "Until then .. you worry me" ""

Fauxtography

FAKE MODEL PHOTOGRAPHY
With a very little effort, you can take existing photographs of everyday scenes and make it look like they're actually of miniature models.

It doesn't take much to fool the mind of the viewer, but there are a few basic rules you can follow to help convince your audience that they're looking at a railway set rather than the real world; see the section on picking the right photo at the bottom of this page. You'll need a copy of Photoshop CS or later to follow this tutorial.

You are what you eat?

Doctors Rate New Salad Entrées Hyped by Chains
McDonald’s Chicken “Salad” Packed with More Fat and Calories Than a Big Mac

Offering a salad entrée is the latest marketing push for fast-food and quick-serve chains, but according to a new analysis by the nutrition experts at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), many fast-food salads are not any more healthful than a greasy burger. For example, McDonald’s Crispy Chicken Bacon Ranch Salad with dressing has a hefty 51 grams of fat and 660 calories while a Big Mac has 34 grams of fat and 590 calories. Surprisingly, this salad entrée also has just as much cholesterol, 85 milligrams, as the Big Mac.

All six of McDonald’s entrée salads are packed with fat and cholesterol, mainly from chicken and cheese, earning them all the lowest rating of one star. Other artery-clogging salads include Wendy’s Chicken BLT and Subway’s Meatball Salad. Two salads out of the 34 rated by PCRM earned five stars: Au Bon Pain’s Garden Salad and Subway’s Veggie Delite.

“We did not expect these new salad entrées to be so loaded with fat and cholesterol,” says Brie Turner-McGrievy, M.S., R.D., the clinical research coordinator at PCRM. “Americans thinking about getting in shape and heading to the beach this summer should steer clear of the heavily hyped ‘salads’ that are smothered with chicken, cheese and other fatty foods. Real salads with plenty of fresh veggies and chickpeas or beans for protein are best for heart health and slimming.”

Les Sayer
Sayer is a biology professor who replicated Spurlock's thirty-day experiment to teach his students about how the documentary medium can be abused to further a political agenda. The difference between Sayer and Spurlock: Sayer didn't deliberately double his daily calorie intake, nor did he stop exercising. He ate three meals per day at McDonald's, diversified what he ate, and was able to keep his calorie count between 2,000 and 3,000. Over 30 days, he lost 17 pounds. His blood pressure dropped. And his cholesterol basically remained the same. He suffered none of the effects Spurlock shows in Super Size Me.

McDonald's for a Year!
A quick summary of my blood tests show that all measurable results are within normal parameters. Eating McDonald's for a year has not had the deleterious effect that many people predicted. During the concluding minutes of the Super Size Me movie, Spurlock asked one of his physicians if he should eat McDonald's for a year, and in an unusually uninformed response from someone in his profession, he said no, wrongly assuming that Spurlock's weight gain and ill-health were a result of eating McDonald's food for a month.

Well, after McDonald's for a year, I am thoroughly satisfied that my hypothesis has been proven: McDonald's is not the issue, it's the lack of exercise.

My final weight on June 1st was 217 lbs (the same as it was in March 2005), and my blood pressure was 143/81 (taken by my college's registered nurse. It was 148/79 taken by the same person in March 2005).

Other blood work included: Cholesterol: 3.98 mmol/L (<5.20 mmol/L is normal); HDL (good cholesterol): 1.20 mmol/L (>0.90 mmol/L is normal); Sodium: 140 mmol/L (133-146 is normal); Triglyceride: 1.51 mmol/L (<2.30 mmol/L is normal).

Peaceful Purposes

Bush: B-2 Flights Over Tehran for ‘Peaceful Purposes’
Just hours after Iran opened a new plant capable of making plutonium “for peaceful purposes”, U.S. President George Bush assured his Iranian counterpart that any B-2 bombers that appear over Tehran in the near future would also serve peaceful purposes.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut the ribbon on the new heavy-water nuclear plant Saturday as part of a month-long Iranian tribute to the effectiveness of the United Nations.

Mr. Bush hailed Iran’s “transparent diplomacy” and said, “I called President Ahmadinejad today to congratulate him, and I told him that if he happens to notice one of them Stealth bombers going over his town at about 600 miles per hour, he can be assured that the pilot has only the best intentions in his heart for world peace.”

“There’s nothing like the B-2 when it comes to giving peace a chance,” Mr. Bush added.

South Park -- couldn't happen to a nicer guy

Saddam's cartoon torture
TOPPLED dictator Saddam Hussein is being tormented in jail – by being forced to watch HIMSELF in South Park.

The evil tyrant is portrayed in the movie version of the cult cartoon as the Devil’s gay lover.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was banned in Iraq on its launch in 1999 for showing Saddam as a homosexual.

The film featured him trying to take over the world with Satan.

He is currently behind bars in Iraq as he stands trial on charges of genocide.

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone yesterday revealed Saddam is made to watch the movie “repeatedly” by the US Marines guarding him.

Speaking at Edinburgh TV Festival, Matt said: “I have it on pretty good information from the Marines on detail in Iraq that they showed him the movie.

“That’s really adding insult to injury. I bet that made him really happy.”

The American animators also confirmed that Tom Cruise threatened to pull out of all publicity for Mission Impossible III unless Paramount, which also makes South Park, axed a repeat showing of an episode lampooning him.

It showed a Scientologist character called Tom Cruise struggling to come out as gay. Cruise was dumped by Paramount last week.

Alternate Energy

Nurturing my Inner Redneck

Penguins for sale -- update

Our highly responsible Main-Stream Media

FBI Video In Liberty City 7 Case Leaked Without Authorization
The U.S. attorney's office is asking a federal judge to investigate the unauthorized release of secret FBI surveillance video in the Liberty City Seven terrorism case.

The video involved a secret FBI undercover videotape of terrorism suspects allegedly planning to launch war on the United States, NBC 6's Jeff Burnside reported. The video also shows images taken by defendants, according to prosecutors, of the Miami-area buildings they allegedly considered blowing up.

The complete videotape was leaked to a local TV station. The leak has led the U.S. attorney back to court to file a motion with federal Judge Joan Lenard, urging that "the court should make inquiry regarding release to the media."

Mike Tein, who used to prosecute federal cases, is on the committee that makes rules for federal court. He said releasing evidence in advance of the trial risks tainting people who might become jurors.

"Because, a trial -- that's the show. That's the game. That's the time when the playing field is level and the judge is calling balls and strikes as she sees fit. What they've done -- whoever did this -- is put their thumb on the scale of justice before the trial has begun," Tein said.

Judge Won't Block CBS4 Liberty City 7 Reports
The Attorney For Narseal Batiste Wanted Use Of Undercover Video Banned
CBS4 has obtained Government Evidence In The Alleged Terror Case

A federal judge has denied a request for a temporary injunction which would have prevented CBS4 and CBS4.com from showing undercover surveillance video of 7 men implicated in a Liberty City terrorism scheme.

Attorney Ana Jhones had filed the request with Federal Court judge Joan Lenard at the US Courthouse in Miami, asking that CBS, and any other media outlet, be prevented from showing the undercover video showing her client, Narseal Batiste, the alleged ringleader of what prosecutors claim was a terrorist cell based in Liberty City.

The request was denied following a teleconference between Jhones, the judge, and attorneys for CBS.

The “Liberty City 7”, as they have been dubbed, face terrorism charges after government agents uncovered an alleged plot to blow up buildings including the Sears tower, the Miami Federal Courthouse, and the Miami FBI offices, as well as other structures.

The undercover video shows Batiste and others taking what prosecutors claims is an oath to the al Quaeda terrorist organization, as well as conversations in which Batiste tells and FBI undercover agent his plans for blowing up buildings.

A large Piano

Divorce Attorney advertisement

A modest checklist for Global Warming

The 10 final proofs of 'global warming'.....
You should believe in 'global warming' when.....

(1) apocalyptic academics stop flying round the world to conferences and for their extended summer holidays - er, sorry - 'field research';

(2) The Guardian and The Independent stop advertising cheap flights and holidays;

(8) politicians stop canvassing by helicopter, plane, and battle bus, and Al Gore finds it "inconvenient" to travel about lecturing on 'global warming'

The Emerald Hunter

Treasure hunter with a green thumb unearths huge crystal
Miner says gemstone may be a record-breaker

Jamie Hill, Alexander County's "emerald man," has done it again.

Known for unearthing large crystals at his mine about 55 miles north of Charlotte, Hill said he found a 10-inch, 591-carat emerald Wednesday that may break a North American record for size.

Hill, whose mine has produced several large emeralds since he found an 88-carat crystal in 1998, pulled out the latest wonder after spotting a quartz seam in granite Wednesday afternoon as he and his team prepared to dynamite some of the rock.

Quartz can signal precious stones underneath, so he used a jackhammer to create a trench beside the seam and take a closer look. Nothing.

Then he spotted another quartz seam about five feet away and started working on it. He used hand tools to pick away and look. "All of a sudden," he said, "it opened up into a cave."

And there, inside the cave, was a twin green crystal that took his breath away.

"I had a fit," the ever-energetic Hill said Thursday. "I about hyperventilated."

Hill called it a museum-quality piece, not one that would be cut for jewels, because of its unusual length and twin formation. "Every museum in the world would love to have such a neat piece," he said. "It would be real showy."

Michael Wise, a mineralogist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who has seen Hill's other emeralds, said a 10-inch crystal would be one of the largest ever found in the United States. He said he didn't have enough information to know if it breaks any records, though the discovery piqued his interest.

"I think I'd better get ahold of Jamie and get down there," he said by phone as he prepared for an already-planned trip to San Diego to give a lecture on the hiddenite gemstone for which Hill's hometown is named.

"He would have to find it just when I'm leaving town," Wise said. "Now I think I'd rather be in Hiddenite."

A change of Mnemonics

My
Very
Existance
May
Just
Screw
Up
Normal
People

Light posting last few days

Big Engineering Project -- Tacoma Narrows Bridge

August 22nd

August 22
Does Iran have something in store?

During the Cold War, both sides possessed weapons of mass destruction, but neither side used them, deterred by what was known as MAD, mutual assured destruction. Similar constraints have no doubt prevented their use in the confrontation between India and Pakistan. In our own day a new such confrontation seems to be looming between a nuclear-armed Iran and its favorite enemies, named by the late Ayatollah Khomeini as the Great Satan and the Little Satan, i.e., the United States and Israel. Against the U.S. the bombs might be delivered by terrorists, a method having the advantage of bearing no return address. Against Israel, the target is small enough to attempt obliteration by direct bombardment.

It seems increasingly likely that the Iranians either have or very soon will have nuclear weapons at their disposal, thanks to their own researches (which began some 15 years ago), to some of their obliging neighbors, and to the ever-helpful rulers of North Korea. The language used by Iranian President Ahmadinejad would seem to indicate the reality and indeed the imminence of this threat.

Would the same constraints, the same fear of mutual assured destruction, restrain a nuclear-armed Iran from using such weapons against the U.S. or against Israel?

There is a radical difference between the Islamic Republic of Iran and other governments with nuclear weapons. This difference is expressed in what can only be described as the apocalyptic worldview of Iran's present rulers. This worldview and expectation, vividly expressed in speeches, articles and even schoolbooks, clearly shape the perception and therefore the policies of Ahmadinejad and his disciples.

Even in the past it was clear that terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam had no compunction in slaughtering large numbers of fellow Muslims. A notable example was the blowing up of the American embassies in East Africa in 1998, killing a few American diplomats and a much larger number of uninvolved local passersby, many of them Muslims. There were numerous other Muslim victims in the various terrorist attacks of the last 15 years.

The phrase "Allah will know his own" is usually used to explain such apparently callous unconcern; it means that while infidel, i.e., non-Muslim, victims will go to a well-deserved punishment in hell, Muslims will be sent straight to heaven. According to this view, the bombers are in fact doing their Muslim victims a favor by giving them a quick pass to heaven and its delights--the rewards without the struggles of martyrdom. School textbooks tell young Iranians to be ready for a final global struggle against an evil enemy, named as the U.S., and to prepare themselves for the privileges of martyrdom.

A direct attack on the U.S., though possible, is less likely in the immediate future. Israel is a nearer and easier target, and Mr. Ahmadinejad has given indication of thinking along these lines. The Western observer would immediately think of two possible deterrents. The first is that an attack that wipes out Israel would almost certainly wipe out the Palestinians too. The second is that such an attack would evoke a devastating reprisal from Israel against Iran, since one may surely assume that the Israelis have made the necessary arrangements for a counterstrike even after a nuclear holocaust in Israel.

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

R.I.P. Joe Rosenthal

AP photographer who captured Iwo Jima flag-raising dies at 94
Joe Rosenthal, The Associated Press photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for his immortal image of World War II servicemen raising an American flag over battle-scarred Iwo Jima, has died. He was 94.

Rosenthal died Sunday of natural causes at an assisted living facility in suburban Novato, said his daughter, Anne Rosenthal.

"He was a good and honest man, he had real integrity," she said.

Rosenthal's iconic photo, shot on Feb. 23, 1945, became the model for the Iwo Jima Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. The memorial, dedicated in 1954 and known officially as the Marine Corps War Memorial, commemorates the Marines who died taking the Pacific island in World War II.

The photo was listed in 1999 at No. 68 on a New York University survey of 100 examples of the best journalism of the century.

Unclear on the concept...

BILL GATES 'CHARITY' FOUNDATION FINANCES NEWSPAPER PURCHASES
The BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION declares its noble mission is to bring "innovations in health and learning to the global community."

But the world's largest philanthropic organization also is among the organizations that collectively loaned nearly $400 million to MEDIANEWS GROUP INC. -- for the acquisition of newspapers in California and Minnesota!

"I thought this foundation was all about starving kids, not starving newspapers," mocked one Seattle insider.

Got Comics?

Holy windfall, Batman!
Tom Crippen knew he faced a daunting task after the death of his father, an inveterate pack rat who never threw anything out. It wasn't just the stockpiles of old opera programs, paper clips, Christmas cards, baseball caps, paperbacks or souvenir coffee mugs.

Mainly, it was the awesome collection of 11,000 comics that had colonized the family garage and basement.

“The shelves were just piled high with comics,” said Mr. Crippen, a freelance editor living in Montreal. “I knew they were worth money, but I thought, $50,000, maybe $100,000.”

Mr. Crippen was wrong. After painstakingly dusting off and cataloguing the comics — a process that took four months — he called in the experts to the family home outside New York.

And — Holy windfall, Batman! — the superheroes delivered.

The cache of vintage comics, many of them rare and in immaculate condition, were evaluated at $2.5-million (U.S.).

“When they told me, it just made my jaw drop,” Mr. Crippen said. “The comic books were literally worth more than the house itself.”

Unfortunately, this comic-book story does have a dark subplot. While he was poring over his father's comics, Tom Crippen noticed that, in such a methodical collection, vast numbers of copies were missing. The mystery began to unfold when the experts were called in. They told Mr. Crippen that, unbeknownst to the family, large numbers of his father's comics had been in circulation since the early nineties. Many bore distinctive marks, including a D on the front cover that earned them the name “D collection.”

No one is sure how the comics went missing. However, some of the comics were traced to a New York dealer who said he'd bought them in the early nineties from a man who'd entered his store. The Crippen family discovered that the seller's name was that of a contractor who'd been doing extensive renovations at the Crippen home at that time.

Finding a submarine

Lost submarine found off Alaska
Search for father may have turned up USS Grunion

There was no distress call, no indication of enemy depth charges exploding or bulkheads breached, just a dead silence that stretched from a few days into 60 years.

The USS Grunion disappeared in July 1942, leaving 70 American families grieving and the three sons of skipper Mannert L. "Jim" Abele without a father. Abele's boys -- who were 5, 9 and 12 and lived in Newton, Mass., when their father disappeared -- grew up and built their own lives. But they dwelt on the fate of their father.

At 2 a.m. Wednesday, a grainy sonar picture e-mailed via satellite appeared in Bruce Abele's in-box, appearing to show what they had searched for for much of their adult lives: the outline of an oblong object believed to be the Grunion deep in frigid Alaskan waters.

If the discovery is confirmed, it would signify a triumph of luck and perseverance, and put to rest a quest for clues that has spanned decades.

"It's big, very big," 76-year-old Bruce Abele, the eldest of the three sons, said Wednesday. "This mystery has been a part of my consciousness for as long as I can remember."

The Grunion, one of the Gato-class attack submarines commissioned early in World War II, was on its maiden operational voyage when it disappeared while patrolling the seas between Alaska's tip and Japan, according to a Navy Web site.

A break came in 2002, when a Japanese man, Yutaka Iwasaki, posted a translation of an article in an obscure Japanese shipping journal on one of several Web sites dedicated to the Grunion.

The article, written by a military officer on board an armed Japanese merchant ship, the Kano Maru, described an exchange of cannon fire and torpedoes with a U.S. submarine in an area where the Grunion would have been patrolling.

Iwasaki's involvement changed everything, John Abele said Wednesday. Not only did the brothers have a place to look for their father's submarine, but they also had newfound friends from the other side of the war.

They were so inspired by the cooperation they received from Iwasaki and others in Japan that they decided to expand the search to find two Japanese sub-chasers, SC-25 and SC-27, that the Grunion sank, along with the Arare, a Japanese destroyer that went down in the same area.

"This has been a very emotional thing for a lot of us," John Abele said.

Fun with Guns

Self-shooting leads to teens' arrest
Two teenagers who fled Oregon with two dozen stolen weapons were arrested here after one shot himself in the leg, apparently while twirling a handgun on his finger.

Emily Ann Whitehead, 18, and Christopher Stahl, a juvenile, were arrested at St. Patrick Hospital's emergency room Wednesday night after Whitehead brought Stahl there for treatment of a gunshot wound.

Court records said the teens stole 25 guns from Stahl's father in Terrebonne, Ore. They are also accused of stealing a Playstation 2, a DVD player and a video camera.

Whitehead was charged Thursday in Justice Court with obstructing a peace officer, deceptive practices and theft. All are misdemeanor charges. Stahl has not appeared in court. Whitehead is accused of hindering an investigation by lying to sheriff's deputies about the nature of Stahl's gunshot wound.

Stahl apparently shot himself near Seeley Lake, and Whitehead drove him to Missoula. Hospital staff are required by law to contact authorities when treating a gunshot wound.

Whitehead told deputies she rummaged through a mailbox in Seeley Lake and found a blank check from a credit-card company. Whitehead brought the check to the First Valley Bank in Seeley Lake, made it out to herself in the amount of $950, opened an account and withdrew $100.

Court records said she admitted taking the Playstation and the guns.

Chicken or Egg

Huhhhh?!?!?
I’ve heard the message before, but this is a new angle:

Sharpton: ‘Gangsterism’ Harming Blacks
Rev. Al Sharpton Says Potential Black Leaders Falling Under ‘Gangster Mentality’
By CLIFF BRUNT

INDIANAPOLIS Aug 18, 2006 (AP)— Many black youths fall under a spell of “gangster mentality,” preventing them from becoming leaders and making a positive impact in politics, the Rev. Al Sharpton said.

The civil rights activist faulted Hollywood and the record industry for making “gangsterism” seem cool and acceptable.

“We have got to get out of this gangster mentality, acting as if gangsterism and blackness are synonymous,” Sharpton said Thursday at the annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists.

I seem to remember that “Reverend” Sharpton was one of the black “leaders” who jumped down Bill Cosby’s throat for making similar remarks some time ago.

For some years I’ve noticed the big disconnect between the real black community’s image and the image portrayed by popular black culture. In the area where I live and work, it is impossible to find a job where one does not meet a racially mixed workforce. I find myself working with black as well as white engineers and electricians and operators, and there’s no noticeable difference in competence that can be correlated to skin pigmentation. We share the same goals: healthy families, job satisfaction, personal successes.

However, these sorts of black people are hardly the ones that get the media exposure. We get to see plenty of rap stars and hedonistic millionaire athletes instead.

Speed record

JCB DIESELMAX POWERS TO BONNEVILLE SPEED RECORD
The international diesel land-speed record for diesel-powered vehicles moved a step closer today as the JCB DIESELMAX broke the Bonneville Salt Flats course record with a measured-mile speed of 317.021mph.

Having already achieved a recorded average speed over a measured mile of 308mph in the late afternoon of Thursday 17 August, the JCB DIESELMAX needed to complete a second run within 24 hours at least matching this speed in order to take the record.

Today the second run was completed successfully achieving an average speed of 325mph. The average speed of the two runs was thus recorded as 317mph, thus establishing the JCB DIESELMAX as the fastest-ever diesel over the Bonneville course.

“Entering the Bonneville record books is a wonderful way to complete JCB’s participation in Speed Week and team confidence is high as we prepare the car for the record attempt next week,” said Project Director, Dr Tim Leverton, “the team has done a wonderful job but the biggest challenge is still ahead of us.”

Having achieved the course record, the JCB DIESELMAX team will now prepare the vehicle for its official FIA record attempt. The car will now be fitted with the 750bhp JCB444-LSR “record” engines.

For the world record attempt the JCB DIESELMAX will need to complete two runs within the space of one hour from entry of the measured mile on the first run to exit on the second.

What a way to go...

No posting tonight

Impulse Purchase

Digital Photography

"Normal"


HDR processed

FDR Tools
Photomatix from HDRsoft
HDR Shop from University of Southern California
(big wince factor on the price on this last one especially since a lot of it seems to run as JavaScript (S..L....O.....W......) and their "Feature List" contains the following:
The program should never 'lock up' when busy.)

Area 31

Not qUITE riTE

Polluter Scooters
What's worse: breathing the fumes of an SUV or a two-stroke scooter?

With temperatures rising like gas prices, scooters may seem the perfect mode of transportation.

You get up to 100 miles per gallon, on top of the hipster factor and the feel of the wind in your hair. But there's one imperfection to these sassy little two-wheeled machines: A March 2005 study by the Environmental Protection Agency shows most scooters on the road pollute more than SUVs.

That sounded so counterintuitive that WW decided to test a few scooters, with help from the crew at Esquire Motors in Goose Hollow, which donated its time and emissions-testing equipment.

Then came the hard part.

Telephone calls and emails seeking scooters to test from scooter shops and groups went unanswered; other scooter owners proved willing to talk—until the story's angle was revealed. Finally, however, we persuaded three scooter lovers to volunteer their vehicles.

Patrick Fitzgibbons, co-owner and founder of P-Town Scooters, let us test his vintage scooter, which established just how bad older models are. Although he knew his pride and joy wasn't the cleanest of motorized vehicles, Fitzgibbons was still surprised by the results.

"How bad is it?" he asked.

Pretty bad. His 1968 Piaggio Gran Turismo, with a two-stroke, 150-cc engine, registered 4,900 parts per million of hydrocarbons and 8.6 percent carbon dioxide emissions. That was 29 times the hydrocarbon levels and nearly three times the carbon dioxide rate of another scooter WW tested—a 2006 MotoFino 150T-10D with a four-stroke engine, courtesy of Prestige Motors in Southeast Portland. The MotoFino kicked out 168 ppm of hydrocarbons and 3.1 percent CO2.

Four-strokes tend to burn cleaner than two-stroke engines, which run on a mixture of fuel and oil. One of Fitzgibbons' customers, Shayne Weinstein, offered up for testing his more modern two-stroke, a 2005 Stella also made by Piaggio. Its levels of 1,100 ppm of unburned hydrocarbons and 7.1 percent CO2 fell in between the older two-stroke engine and the four-stroke.

As for the SUV, we borrowed WW publisher Richard Meeker's 2006 Subaru Tribeca. The six-cylinder engine in Meeker's SUV pumped out less than 10 ppm of hydrocarbons and 1 percent CO2. In other words, the two-stroke scooter WW tested produced about 490 times the hydrocarbons and more than eight times the Co2 of the SUV.

CO2       Hx  Vehicle
8.6    4,900  1968 Piaggio Gran Turismo
7.1    1,100  2005 Piaggio Stella
3.1      168  2006 MotoFino 150T-10D
1.0       10  2006 Subaru Tribeca

Some British Backbone

If you're a Muslim - it's your Problem
When will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted?

When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain's foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG?

Most of all, when will the Muslim community in this country accept an absolute, undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is THEIR problem? THEY own it. And it is THEIR duty to face it and eradicate it.

To stop the denial, endless fudging and constant wailing that somehow it is everyone else's problem and, if Islamic terrorism exists at all, they are somehow the main victims.

Because until that happens the problem will never be resolved. And there will be more 7/7s and, sometime in the future, another airplane plot will succeed with horrific loss of innocent life.

Equally important, those British politicians who have seemed obsessed with pandering to, and even encouraging, this state of denial, must throw off their politically-correct blinkers and recognise the same truth—that Muslim terrorism in Britain is the direct responsibility of British Muslims.

If only they would follow the lead of Home Secretary John Reid, whose tough, pragmatic, clear-sighted approach has been a breath of fresh air. Only then can they properly work out how to tackle it.

For instance, every airport in Britain is in chaos over the plane bomb-plot alert as every passenger is subjected to rigorous security checks. Why? They take lots of time, lots of staff, and are extremely expensive.

I'm a white 62-year-old 6ft 4ins suit-wearing ex-cop—I fly often, but do I really fit the profile of suicide bomber? Does the young mum with three tots? The gay couple, the rugby team, the middle-aged businessman?

No. But they are all getting exactly the same amount and devouring huge resources for no logical reason whatsoever. Yet the truth is Islamic terrorism in the West has been universally carried out by young Muslim men, usually of ethnic appearance, almost always travelling alone or in very small groups. A tiny percentage, I bet, of those delayed today have such characteristics.

This targeting of airport resources is called passenger profiling—the Israelis invented it and they've got probably the safest airports and airlines in the world.

In all my years at the front line of fighting terrorism, one truth was always clear — communities beat terrorists, not governments or security forces. But communities can't beat terrorism unless they have the will to do so. My heart sank this week as I saw and read the knee-jerk reaction of friends and neighbours of those arrested in this latest incident, insisting it was all a mistake and the anti-terrorist squad had the wrong people.

I have no idea whether those arrested are guilty or not. But neither have those friends and neighbours. They spoke as if it was inconceivable such a thing could happen in their community; that those arrested were all good Muslims; that Islam is a religion of peace so no Muslim could dream of planning such an act.

But we heard the same from the family and friends of the 7/7 bombers, didn't we?

Evolution of the desktop

MAC 1.0 - 1984


Windows 1.0 - 1985


Windows 3.0 - 1990


MAC 7 - 1992


KDE (Linux) - 2005

No posting tonight and little tomorrow

New website for Nuclear Information

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency a nuclear reactor which would supply the needs of a city the size of Amsterdam – a 1000MW(e) nuclear power station – produces approximately 30 tonnes of high level solid packed waster per year if the spent fuel is not reprocessed. In comparison, a 1000MW(e) coal plant produces 300,000 tonnes of ash per year.

A very happy birthday tomorrow

Entry Level
The IBU responsible for low-end minicomputers, The Entry Level Systems (ELS) IBU, was placed in IBM's sprawling facility in Boca Raton, Florida, and tasked with creating new machines that would advance the IBM brand. William Lowe was the first director of the Entry Level Systems IBU.

The two brand new products that the ELS IBU released were the IBM 5100 (released in 1975) and 5120 (released in 1980). Designed as data collection and analysis systems for small labs, the 5100 (above) had an integrated CRT, keyboard, and tape drive. It was capable of running popular software for IBM's mainframes in emulation.

The 5120 was a larger, more expandable version of the 5100 that did not have a built in CRT. Tens of thousands were sold, which was a big success for IBM.

'Skirt the Bureaucracy'
The only way to do this, according to William Lowe, was to skirt the IBM bureaucracy. He had two proposals. The first was to buy a microcomputer company outright (he mentioned Atari by name); the other was to create a brand new microcomputer.

The plan was submitted to IBM's Corporate Management Committee (CMC), and it was enthusiastically received. Microcomputers were gaining a foothold in the business world, so CMC asked that a prototype be built for review in a month's time. A small team was established in the ELS IBU to create the prototype.

Bill Snydes, the IBM 5120 manager, was selected to lead the hardware engineering team working on the prototype and was given a staff of 12 engineers. At the time, IBM had no microprocessor ready for release (the predecessor to POWER, the IBM 801, would not be ready for almost two years), so Snydes decided to use the Intel 8088 processor. Though it was a 16-bit processor (meaning that it could handle larger numbers than other microcomputers), it used an older bus design that slowed it down, unlike the more expensive 8086.

Snydes noted in the CMC review that other open and processing standards would be adopted to keep down costs.

The final IBM PC was released on August 12, 1981, and it changed the world. Computers with the power of mainframes of the 1960s were now available to small businesses and consumers.

The marketers predicted they would sell 250,000 units over five years, a huge success by IBM standards. By the end of 1983, IBM had sold 750,000 units.

Corrosion at British Petroleum

British Petroleum's "Smart Pig"
Is the Alaska Pipeline corroded? You bet it is. Has been for more than a decade. Did British Petroleum shut the pipe yesterday to turn a quick buck on its negligence, to profit off the disaster it created? Just ask the “smart pig.”

Years ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum’s management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan Natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, courageous government inspectors and pipeline workers were screaming about corrosion all through the pipeline. I say “courageous” because BP, which owns 46% of the pipe and is supposed to manage the system, had a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

Now let’s talk timing. BP’s suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shut-down of the line is the same corrosion Dan Lawn has been screaming about for 15 years. Lawn is a steel-eyed government inspector who has kept his job only because his union’s lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

Indeed, it’s pretty darn hard for BP to claim it is surprised to find corrosion this week when Lawn issued a damning report on corrosion right after a leak and spill were discovered on March 2 of this year.

Why shut the pipe now? The timing of a sudden inspection and fix of a decade-long problem has a suspicious smell. A precipitous shutdown in mid-summer, in the middle of Middle East war(s), is guaranteed to raise prices and reap monster profits for BP. The price of crude jumped $2.22 a barrel on the shutdown news to over $76. How lucky for BP which sells four million barrels of oil a day. Had BP completed its inspection and repairs a couple years back — say, after Dan Lawn’s tenth warning — the oil market would have hardly noticed.

But $2 a barrel is just the beginning of BP’s shut-down bonus. The Alaskan oil was destined for the California market which now faces a supply crisis at the very height of the summer travel season. The big winner is ARCO petroleum, the largest retailer in the Golden State. ARCO is a 100%-owned subsidiary of … British Petroleum.

BP could have fixed the pipeline problem this past winter, after their latest corrosion-caused oil spill. But then ARCO would have lost the summertime supply-squeeze windfall.

Enron Corporation was infamous for deliberately timing repairs to maximize profit. Would BP also manipulate the market in such a crude manner? Some US prosecutors think they did so in the US propane market. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) just six weeks ago charged the company with approving an Enron-style scheme to crank up the price of propane sold in poor rural communities in the US. One former BP exec has pleaded guilty.

Lord Browne, the imperious CEO of BP, has apologized for that scam, for the Alaska spill, for this week’s shutdown and for the deaths in 2005 of 15 workers at the company’s mortally sloppy refinery operation at Texas City, Texas.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because they were dumb enough to have the company’s name on the ship. But it was BP’s pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island. However, the reports were bogus, the equipment wasn’t there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volume’s worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Historical Production
Production from the Prudhoe Bay field began on June 19, 1977, with the completion of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. As of December 31, 2005 there were about 1,111 active producing oil wells, 33 gas reinjection wells, 82 water injection wells and 136 water and miscible gas injection wells in the Prudhoe Bay field. Production from the Prudhoe Bay field has declined over the past five years. The average well production rate was about 546 barrels of oil per day in 2001, 375 barrels per day in 2002, 350 barrels per day in 2003, 317 barrels per day in 2004 and 293 barrels per day in 2005.

Transportation of Prudhoe Bay Oil
Production from the Prudhoe Bay field is carried to Pump Station 1, the starting point for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, through two 34-inch diameter transit lines, one from each half of the Prudhoe Bay field. At Pump Station 1, Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, the pipeline operator, meters the oil and pumps it in the 48-inch diameter pipeline to Valdez, almost 800 miles (1,287 km) to the south, where it is either loaded onto marine tankers or stored temporarily. It takes the oil about seven days to make the trip. The pipeline has a capacity of approximately 1.4 million barrels of oil per day.

But in the meantime, there are still concerns about what this recent leak will mean for the short-term oil supply. Dean, the BP spokesman, said the company is working with suppliers to get replacement pipeline quickly to the site.

BP has approached the Japanese firm JFE Steel Corp. and other steel producers about buying 18-inch pipe to replace the corroded sections at Prudhoe Bay, said David Belvin, senior technology manager of sales and service at JFE's Houston office.

Belvin said the company, a unit of JFE Holdings Inc. that is one of the top steel pipe manufacturers, is asking for deliveries in September, which will be a challenge.

Gasoline use per capita

How Much Gas Do Americans Use?
The question seems obvious given all the news coverage related to the price of oil and the geopolitics related to its supply, not to mention the seemingly endless whining about SUVs on the roads of the United States from environmentalists, but really, how much gasoline is supplied to the average American, and how has that changed over time? Are individual Americans consuming more or less gas than they did in years past?

Backscatter

A simple design is most often best.

PowerGrips
Simple cheap toe clips



PowerGrips give most of the benefits of toeclips or clipless/cleat systems on bicycle pedals, without most of the downsides. The concept is simple: an asymmetrical strap of cloth that attaches securely to most bicycle platform pedals. The strap is attached in such a way that it loosens when you rotate your heel away from the bike, and tightens when you "heel-in". This gives you similar benefits of a clipless/cleat system; greater efficiency in pedalling, because you can pull on the pedals' upstrokes, rather than just being able to push down. They are just as easy (if not easier) to disengage from. The PowerGrips also have a couple of other benefits which fit well with all but the higher-end performance cyclists.

Streamlining airport check-in security

My Plan to Streamline Airport Screening
To speed up screening at airports, here is what we do. We have one line for the bulk of the populace, where you get probed, stripped, searched, and felt up. Then we have another line, where you walk straight onto the plane. IF you eat a piece of bacon first.

If you're a Jew, you can get around the bacon test by blowing your nose on a Koran.

Light posting tonight

Power, Romance, Adventure....and Chicken! Enjoy a fully escorted tour and boat cruise plus all-you-can eat crispy-baked chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, vegetarian spaghetti, vegetables, fruit gelatin salad, rolls and butter, beverage and home made pie ala mode.

Next time Mike -- don't leave town!

A few of us at work have been pranked one too many times by a certain coworker by the name of Mike. He was out of town for a few days and we had some extra cardboard laying around. This is what happens when you push creative IT workers too far! Enjoy your new office Mike!

R.I.P. - James Van Allen

James Van Allen dies
James Van Allen, a pioneer in space physics and longtime University of Iowa professor, died early this morning at University Hospitals, UI interim president Gary Fethke announced today.

Reading from a prepared statement, Fethke said until his death, Van Allen remained an active member of the faculty.

"We and I will miss him greatly," said an obviously shaken Fethke, his voice quivering, before the opening of the Iowa state Board of Regents meeting this morning in Iowa City. "We extend our sympathies to the Van Allen family."

Regents president Michael Gartner called Van Allen "an Iowa treasure."

"It's a sad day," he said.

Van Allen was responsible for no less than getting the United States into the space race at a time when the nation was terrified that the Soviet Union would conquer us from above.

It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the USSR launched Sputnik, a 183-pound, basketball-sized satellite that became the first man-made object in Earth orbit.

The Soviets' triumph struck fear in the heart of the United States, and the government immediately took action not only to bolster its own efforts to reach space, but to improve math and science education in public schools.

Van Allen was hailed as a national hero when the United States struck back. This line is from the NASA article "Sputnik and the Dawn of the Space Age:"

"On January 31, 1958, the tide changed, when the United States successfully launched Explorer I. This satellite carried a small scientific payload that eventually discovered the magnetic radiation belts around the Earth, named after principal investigator James Van Allen. The Explorer program continued as a successful ongoing series of lightweight, scientifically useful spacecraft."

The Van Allen Belts, as they are now known, remain a crucial area of study in space science, as evidenced by a recently announced, $100 million NASA project to study the effect of the belts on satellite communications and global navigation systems. The University of Iowa is the lead institution of the study.

The fact that UI remains at the forefront of space research is a testament to Van Allen as a teacher. As impressive as his own work is the work of UI space scientists Don Gurnett, Louis Frank and others who were all Van Allen protogés. Now, most of the university's top work is being conducted by a third generation of UI-grown space scientists.

During World War II, Van Allen worked for the Navy developing proximity shells at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

After the war, Van Allen returned to his real passion: the study of cosmic rays. A cache of almost 100 captured German V-2 rockets allowed the most sophisticated study of the cosmos possible up to that time. Van Allen traveled to White Sands, N.M., where he built intricate instruments for the rockets that could fly up to 100 miles above the earth. That work began to establish Van Allen’s reputation as an expert in rockets and the study of space.

His work prompted President Eisenhower to invite the Van Allens to the White House, and on May 4, 1959, Van Allen was on the cover of Time magazine.

“In the race into space, the Russians can claim bigger satellites and more powerful rockets,” Time declared. “If the U.S. can retort that it has a big lead in scientific achievement, the man most responsible is James Van Allen, whose instruments, designed and largely constructed in his basement laboratory, brought back from space discoveries the Russians never made.”

Later, Van Allen also built instruments for Mariners I and II, which flew by Venus; Mariner IV, which explored Mars; and Pioneers 10 and 11, the first human-made spacecraft to reach Jupiter and Saturn.

In his later years, he became known as a staunch critic of human spaceflight, arguing that the cost and the dangers to human life were too high, and all research of any real value could be conducted by machinery and robots.

NASA heard the call. In the 1990s, the administration put a greater emphasis on smaller, cheaper, unmanned missions that yielded greater science and were seen as less of a failure if something went wrong.

That attitude led to the incredibly successful Mars Pathfinder missions, and severe public criticism of the costly International Space Station and President Bush's call for a manned mission to Mars.

Van Allen also was a critic of the space shuttle program. Following problems that plagued the July 2005 flight of the shuttle Discovery and in the wake of the February 2003 destruction of the Columbia shuttle, Van Allen described the program as “too expensive and dangerous.”

“It’s a vastly difficult effort with almost no significant purpose,” Van Allen told The Associated Press.

Why did the BP pipeline corrode?

My Pipeline's Corroded
But I thought oil prevented rust.

Severely corroded pipelines will force BP to shut down its oil field at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, company officials said on Sunday. After a major spill in March, the company discovered stretches where the pipe had lost more than 70 percent of its mass to corrosion. Why does oil corrode a pipeline?

It has water in it. The crude oil that flows from Prudhoe Bay isn't the pure stuff we might use to stave off rust in our cars. When an oil company pumps crude out of the ground, it can also pump out a hot mixture of water, carbon dioxide, sulfur, and microorganisms. (Crude oil with lots of sulfur in it is called "sour," as opposed to "sweet.") If enough of these contaminants collect in a steel pipe, they'll work together to eat away at its inner surface.

Water is the main concern. If there's only a little bit of water in the oil, or if the oil is flowing fast enough, you generally won't have a problem. That's because the water will be dispersed in tiny droplets that are suspended in the flow. These suspended droplets won't react much with the steel surface of the pipes.

Problems can arise in stretches of pipeline that run at lower pressures. In these spots, water droplets can coalesce and fall out of the oil flow. They might inundate globs of sand or dirt that have also fallen out of the crude-oil mix and form a watery sludge on the edge of the pipe. Once a watery muck forms in one part of the pipe, the natural process of corrosion speeds up. The crude can also serve as a breeding ground for anaerobic bacteria, which form slimy, sulfur-producing colonies on the inside of the pipe.

To make matters worse, crude oil comes out of the ground hot, and the pipelines are insulated to maintain those high temperatures. Oil flows better when it's hot, but heat also exacerbates corrosion within the pipes.

Sometimes the oil companies introduce corrosive bacteria, water, or gas into reservoirs themselves. When an oil field gets old, it starts to lose pressure, and it becomes harder to draw out the remaining crude. Engineers can try to add pressure underground by putting in seawater or carbon dioxide. While this increases the field's output, it also sours the product and leads to more pipeline corrosion.

Star Trek Inspirational Posters

Page One
Page Two

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK
I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how awesome I am.

Memo to Heather McCartney -- you are not Princess Diana

Lady Mucca's war of lies
The McCartney divorce is going to be the most bitter high-profile split since Charles and Diana’s ten years ago.

Heather Mills, dubbed Lady Mucca after The Sun exposed her porno past, has hired the same lawyers used by the late Princess as she battles Macca for his millions.

Although she once claimed she had no interest in the former Beatle’s £800million fortune, ex-hooker Heather went to see top divorce firm Mishcon de Reya this week.

The Monday meeting she had with six of their top legal eagles went on for five hours.

A source close to the 38-year-old ex-model said: "They wanted to go through every minute detail about the marriage and forthcoming divorce."

"Heather now has a month to get her defence in before the divorce takes place."

She has ordered the London-based legal team to fight Sir Paul for an incredible £200million.

Heather now insists she is poverty-stricken, being forced to drive around in battered cars while crashing at her sister’s modest home in Hove, East Sussex, all as a result of Macca’s supposedly heartless actions.

The truth is she owns a £2million beachside mansion in Hove and a £550,000 barn in East Sussex, both courtesy of Sir Paul.

She also drives around in a top-of-the-range Porsche or a flash BMW X5 when she thinks the cameras are not on her.

Over the past two weeks Heather has stepped up her media campaign and has gone into publicity overdrive.

Sources close to her say she has been tipped over the edge because she has realised it will all soon come to an end — she will no longer be Lady McCartney and she fears disappearing into oblivion.

The Sun told on Monday how Macca had frozen their joint account because Heather had been taking out “obscene” amounts of cash.

She bought the barn with Macca’s money “on a whim” and is now telling friends she wants another house in Brighton.

Her team of advisors are known to tip off certain friendly photographers and newspapers about her every move in a bid to ensure positive and sympathetic coverage towards her.

Heather should remember one thing.

She may aspire to be the Queen of Hearts — but all she will ever be is the Queen of Tarts.

You're going to the moon, Alice!

Russians able to fake it like no one else
Always wanted to brag to your friends about your trip to Brazil, but couldn't afford to go? No problem.

For $500, nobody will believe you weren't sunning yourself last week on Copacabana Beach, just before you trekked through the Amazon rain forest and slept in a thatched hut. Hey! That's you, arms outstretched like Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic, on top of Corcovado.

Persey Tours barely was keeping bill collectors at bay before it started offering fake vacations last year. Now it's selling 15 a month — providing ersatz ticket stubs, hotel receipts, photos with clients' images superimposed on famous landmarks, and a few souvenirs for living-room shelves.

If the customer is an errant husband who wants his wife to believe he's on a fishing trip, Persey offers not only photos of him on the river, but a cellphone with a distant number, a few dead fish on ice and a lodge that — if anyone calls — will swear the husband is checked in but not available.

Of course, it's not the real thing. But in Russia, this is a distinction that easily can drift into irrelevance. If there is a world capital of audacious fabrication, it must be Moscow, where fake is never a four-letter word.

"To maintain a struggle with fakes in the market, you need to have a well-functioning system of law-enforcement organs, a good judicial system, a customs system. All of this is lacking," said Dmitry Yanin, head of the Confederation of Consumer Societies in Russia. "I think everyone understands that there will be no qualitative change on the market in fakes in Russia."

Dmitry Popov, founder and chief executive of Persey Tours, certainly hopes not. Last year, he made $2,000 helping a Siberian gas-station owner convince his friends that he had rented a ride on the Russian space shuttle to the moon.

Amphiphilic organosilane-directed synthesis of crystalline zeolite with tunable mesoporosity

Korean Scientists Create Magical Substance
A team of Korean scientists has created a new substance that can convert inexpensive intermediate crude oil to valuable gasoline in a very efficient fashion.

The team, led by Prof. Ryoo Ryong at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, yesterday said they had generated a new-type of zeolite that can be a petrochemical catalyst dozens of times more effective than today's norm.

"Zeolite is the most widely-used catalyst now in the petrochemical industry. It has many outstanding advantages but the hitch is that its efficiency was mediocre due to its slow reaction rate," Ryoo said.

"In comparison, our new-fangled zeolite shows a substantially advanced reaction rate, at 1.5 times to dozens of times better than the one currently available," the 50-year-old professor said.

Zeolite refers to a group of minerals that have a porous structure. It makes extremely active catalysts by confining molecules in small spaces with its crystalline pores.

In the value-added process of upgrading gas oils to gasoline, firms from around the globe widely resort to the substance as a significant catalyst.

Amphiphilic organosilane-directed synthesis of crystalline zeolite with tunable mesoporosity
Zeolites are a family of crystalline aluminosilicate materials widely used as shape-selective catalysts, ion exchange materials, and adsorbents for organic compounds1, 2. In the present work, zeolites were synthesized by adding a rationally designed amphiphilic organosilane surfactant to conventional alkaline zeolite synthesis mixtures. The zeolite products were characterized by a complementary combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD), nitrogen sorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The analyses show that the present method is suitable as a direct synthesis route to highly mesoporous zeolites. The mesopore diameters could be uniformly tailored, similar to ordered mesoporous silica with amorphous frameworks3. The mesoporous zeolite exhibited a narrow, small-angle XRD peak, which is characteristic of the short-range correlation between mesopores, similar to disordered wormhole-like mesoporous materials4, 5. The XRD patterns and electron micrographs of the samples taken during crystallization clearly showed the evolution of the mesoporous structure concomitantly to the crystallization of zeolite frameworks. The synthesis of the crystalline aluminosilicate materials with tunable mesoporosity and strong acidity has potentially important technological implications for catalytic reactions of large molecules, whereas conventional mesoporous materials lack hydrothermal stability and acidity.

Have I got a deal for you -- Software Licenses

Giant Robot Imprisons Parked Cars
The robot that parks cars at the Garden Street Garage in Hoboken, New Jersey, trapped hundreds of its wards last week for several days. But it wasn't the technology car owners had to curse, it was the terms of a software license.

The garage is owned by the city; the software, by Robotic Parking of Clearwater, Florida.

In the course of a contract dispute, the city of Hoboken had police escort the Robotic employees from the premises just a few days before the contract between both parties was set to expire. What the city didn't understand or perhaps concern itself with, is that they sent the company packing with its manuals and the intellectual property rights to the software that made the giant robotic parking structure work.

The Hoboken garage is one of a handful of fully automated parking structures that make more efficient use of space by eliminating ramps and driving lanes, lifting and sliding automobiles into slots and shuffling them as needed. If the robot shuts down, there is no practical way to manually remove parked vehicles.

In the days that followed, both sides dragged each other into court. Robotic accused Hoboken of violating its copyright. "This case is about them using software without a license," said Dennis Clarke, chief operating officer of Robotic Parking, in a telephone interview last week.

At the same time, Hoboken accused Robotic of setting booby traps in the code, causing the garage to malfunction. Then Robotic accused Hoboken of endangering its business by allowing a competitor into the garage.

In the meantime, many of the garage's customers simply couldn't get their cars out.

Have I got a deal for you -- Telecom version

'A basic rule of punctuation'
It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.

A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation.

The controversial comma sent lawyers and telecommunications regulators scrambling for their English textbooks in a bitter 18-month dispute that serves as an expensive reminder of the importance of punctuation.

Rogers thought it had a five-year deal with Aliant Inc. to string Rogers' cable lines across thousands of utility poles in the Maritimes for an annual fee of $9.60 per pole. But early last year, Rogers was informed that the contract was being cancelled and the rates were going up. Impossible, Rogers thought, since its contract was iron-clad until the spring of 2007 and could potentially be renewed for another five years.

Armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation, Aliant disagreed. The construction of a single sentence in the 14-page contract allowed the entire deal to be scrapped with only one-year's notice, the company argued.

Language buffs take note — Page 7 of the contract states: The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

Rogers' intent in 2002 was to lock into a long-term deal of at least five years. But when regulators with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) parsed the wording, they reached another conclusion.

The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point — the second comma in the sentence.

Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn't have applied to the first five years of the contract and Rogers would be protected from the higher rates it now faces.

“Based on the rules of punctuation,” the comma in question “allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year's written notice,” the regulator said.

Summer Drivers

Now that has to be a blow to one's ego... Nice clear warm day, smooth stretch of road. There were some curves coming up though as evidenced by the next photo.

Here is the long-shot -- notice the gradual drift off the road. No skid marks, nothing.

Simple Boats

A Fatwa upon them!

Saudi religious leader blasts Hizbullah
A top Saudi Sunni cleric, whose ideas inspired Osama bin Laden, issued a religious edict Saturday disavowing the Shi'ite guerrilla group Hizbullah, evidence that a rift remained among Muslims over the fighting in Lebanon.

Hizbullah, which translates as "the party of God," is actually "the party of the devil," said Sheik Safar al-Hawali, whose radical views made the al-Qaida leader one of his followers in the past.

"Don't pray for Hizbullah," he said in the fatwa posted on his Web site.

The edict, which reflects the historical stand of strict Wahhabi doctrine viewing Shi'ite Muslims as heretics, follows a similar fatwa from another popular Saudi cleric Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen two weeks into the conflict with Israel.

"It is not acceptable to support this rejectionist party (Hizbullah), and one should not fall under its command, or pray for its victory," bin Jibreen said at the time. That fatwa set off a maelstrom across the Arab world, with other leaders and people at the grass roots level imploring Muslims to put aside differences to support the fight against Israel.

"I believe that if this Israeli war on Lebanon goes on, it could contribute to creating new terrorists, and that of course would pose a new danger in the area," he told Egyptian magazine el-Mussawar.

Happy Birthday World Wide Web

From: Tim Berners-Lee
Date: Tues, Aug 6 1991 12:00 pm
Email: timbl@info .cern.ch (Tim Berners-Lee)
Groups: alt.hypertext
Not yet ratedRating:
In article <6...@cernvax.cern.ch> I promised to post a short summary of the WorldWideWeb project. Mail me with any queries.

WorldWideWeb - Executive Summary
The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system.

The project started with the philosophy that much academic information should be freely available to anyone. It aims to allow information sharing within internationally dispersed teams, and the dissemination of information by support groups.

Chinese economic train wreck?

China's economy is out of control
China is growing so fast -- using cheap money to build steel mills, highways and textile factories it doesn't need – that the coming crash grows uglier by the day.

In a train wreck, there comes the moment when it's no longer possible to avert disaster. Pull the brakes as hard as you can, the momentum of the train is so great that disaster is unavoidable.

I fear that China's economy passed that point of no return in the second quarter of 2006.

Today, I'm going to tell you why I think China's economy is headed for a train wreck. Not tomorrow, but in the reasonably near future. I'd say 2009.

And in my next column, I'll sketch out the likely effects of that train wreck on the rest of the global economy and the folks, like you and me, who invest in it.

If you've been following the debate in the U.S. about the likelihood that cheap money here has produced a bubble in housing prices, you're already familiar with the basic scenario for a train wreck in China. Cheap money makes it easy to borrow to buy assets. That produces an asset bubble -- in the United States, first in stocks and then in real estate. As the asset bubble grows, borrowers get in over their heads as their judgment is overwhelmed by the excitement of rising prices. And lenders under the influence of similar emotions make loans to unqualified borrowers.

When the asset bubble starts to deflate, overextended borrowers default on their loans, putting pressure on lenders, who respond by tightening their lending standards, reducing the amount of money available to all borrowers. That sends the economy into a slowdown or worse.

Testing for BSE - more

Mad cow watch goes blind
Creekstone Farms, a Kansas beef producer, wants to reassure customers that its cattle are safe to eat by testing them all for mad cow disease. Sounds like a smart business move, but there's one problem: The federal government won't let the company do it.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture -— invoking an obscure 1913 law intended to thwart con artists from peddling bogus hog cholera serum to pig farmers -— is blocking companies from selling the testing kits to Creekstone.

USDA is doing the bidding of large cattle barons afraid that Creekstone's marketing will force them to do the same tests to stay competitive. It's true that the incidence of mad cow disease is quite low. But there's little logic in stopping a company from exceeding regulations to meet the demands of its customers, or protecting its rivals from legitimate competition.

Not only is USDA blocking Creekstone, the department said last month that it's reducing its mad cow testing program by 90%. The industry and its sympathetic regulators seem to believe that the problem isn't mad cow disease. It's tests that find mad cow.

The department tests only 1% of the roughly 100,000 cattle slaughtered daily. The new plan will test only 110 cows a day.

By cutting back on testing, USDA will save about $35 million a year. That's a pittance compared with the devastation the cattle industry could face if just one human case of mad cow disease is linked to domestic beef.

Scientists don't know the exact cause of BSE but think it's spread when cows are fed ground-up parts of cattle and other cud-chewing animals. The government has tightened cattle-feed rules, but loopholes still permit cattle blood as a milk substitute and chicken waste as a protein supplement.

Sixty-five nations have full or partial restrictions on importing U.S. beef products because of fears that the testing isn't rigorous enough. As a result, U.S. beef product exports declined from $3.8 billion in 2003, before the first mad cow was detected in the USA, to $1.4 billion last year. Foreign buyers are demanding that USDA do more.

"In a nation dedicated to free market competition," says John Stewart, CEO of Creekstone, which is suing USDA, "a company that wants to do more than is required to ensure the quality of its product and to satisfy customer demand should be allowed to do so."

When regulators disagree with reasoning like that, you know the game is rigged.

Whoooo Hoooo!!!

Laurie Lipton

Facelift


Hope


Just one of those days...

In the doghouse

Dog destroys Elvis' teddy bear at museum
A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children's museum.

"He just went berserk," said Daniel Medley, general manager of the Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.

Barney ripped the head off a brown stuffed bear once owned by the young Presley during the attack, leaving fluffy stuffing and bits of bears' limbs and heads on the museum floor. The bear, named Mabel, was made in 1909 by the German manufacturer Steiff.

The collection, valued at more than $900,000, included a red bear made by Farnell in 1910 and a Bobby Bruin made by Merrythought in 1936.

The bear with Elvis connections was owned by English aristocrat Benjamin Slade, who bought it at an Elvis memorabilia auction in Memphis, Tenn., and had loaned it to the museum.

"I've spoken to the bear's owner and he is not very pleased at all," Medley said.

A security guard at the museum, Greg West, said he spent several minutes chasing Barney before wrestling the dog to the ground.

Computer Vision resources

Get Rich Slowly

Geothermal Energy

Abundant Power from Universal Geothermal Energy
An MIT chemical engineer explains why new technologies could finally make "heat mining" practical nearly anywhere on earth.

The answer to the world's energy needs may have been under our feet all this time, according to Jefferson Tester, professor of chemical engineering at the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Tester says heat generated deep within the earth by the decay of naturally occurring isotopes has the potential to supply a tremendous amount of power -- thousands of times more than we now consume each year.

So far, we've been able to harvest only a tiny fraction of geothermal energy resources, taking advantage of places where local geology brings hot water and steam near the surface, such as in Iceland or California, where such phenomena have long been used to produce electricity. But new oil-field stimulation technology, developed for extracting oil from sources such as shale, makes it possible to harvest much more of this energy by allowing engineers to create artificial geothermal reservoirs many kilometers underground.

Tester calls it "universal geothermal" energy because the reservoirs could be located wherever they're needed, such as near power-hungry cities worldwide.

Have I got a deal for you...

The TV Deal the NBA Wishes It Had Not Made
The Silnas of the ABA's St. Louis Spirits still cash in on the contract that began with the merger in 1976.

Roughly once a month, the NBA cuts 31 checks to NBA teams as revenue from its multibillion-dollar national television contract.

There are only 30 NBA franchises, so who gets the extra check?

The money goes to brothers Ozzie and Dan Silna, co-owners of the long-forgotten ABA team, the Spirits of St. Louis.

Thirty years ago, Ozzie Silna, with attorney Donald Schupak, negotiated a deal that cleared the way for the ABA to merge with the NBA. It ranks as one of the best sports deals in modern times, one that has paid the Silnas about $168 million and continues to pay off.

"I would have loved to have an NBA team," said Ozzie Silna, 73, a Malibu resident and environmental activist. "But if I look at it retrospectively over what I would have gotten, versus what I've received now, then I'm a happy camper."

Part of the Silnas' deal called for them to receive one-seventh of the annual TV revenue from each of the four ABA teams entering the NBA. The deal turned out to be so lucrative that several NBA teams have tried to break it, without success.

"We honor the deal," said Donnie Walsh, the Indiana Pacers' chief executive. "I can't say we haven't met and tried to settle it. But it's the greatest deal known to man. What more can you say?"

The key line in the Silnas' TV contract that makes NBA executives cringe reads: "The right to receive such revenues shall continue for as long as the NBA or its successors continues in its existence."

In other words, the deal lasts as long as the NBA does.

Another key component is that Silna, anticipating the NBA expanding, capped the brothers' portion of shared television revenue at a maximum of 28 teams. The other NBA teams share their revenue among all 30 teams.

The Silnas' contract stands ironclad, despite occasional court challenges. Harry Weltman, former general manager of the Spirits, argued to the Supreme Court in 1991 that he was entitled to a share of the revenue to no avail.

The Geek Squad

Best Buy's Geek Squad: Conquest of Branding Over Competence
Warning - Using the Geek Squad May Be Harmful to Your Computer

Face it, the brilliance of American business is not perfecting quality of products and services, it is in marketing, advertising, and branding. That is what the Geek Squad is all about. They have niffty language, make their agents wear uniforms and drive the cutest little cars covered with advertising. They say that: "Our mission is to alleviate the world's computer problems, educate people to fearlessly embrace technology and practice the art of human interaction." Sounds so noble. Their real mission is to make money, which is just fine if their services were top quality. But my own experience and that of many others who have shared their pain on many Internet sites is that the youthful Geek Squad agents have nice personalities but lack technical competence. The result is that when customers expose their prized computers to their agents, because they need technical help, they put themselves at risk.

Computers have become so crucial in our lives and when things go wrong it is like becoming seriously ill. So naturally your instinct is to seek professional help. But the Geek Squad does seem to adhere to the wisdom of health professionals: first do no harm.

One of the Geek Squad's standard services is called data transfer. Simply put, copy data from an old computer to a new one. For that they charge plenty. So what might be the worst case scenario or nightmare of having the Geek Squad come to your home to perform this job. Think a minute. What happened to me is that they destroyed the hard drive of my old computer and I lost the hard drive in it and, worse yet, lost over five years of all kinds of data and files.

And an interesting aspect of the Geek Squad business model is that if something bad happens and you have to bring something into a Best Buy store they do not allow their agents to physically take anything back to their store. In my case, I had to take back my old computer box, wait several days and then learn that they had destroyed my hard drive and data.

Were they so sorry that they accepted blame and responsibility? Did these military-style geeks offer compensation? No and no. They acted as if somehow it was a strange coincidence that the hard drive died exactly when their agent had removed it from my old computer, tried but failed to connect it to the new computer (that I bought at Best Buy) and then discovered when he put it back into the old computer that it no longer worked. And let me emphasize that when the agent let me know that he intended to remove the hard drive from my old computer that I was very concerned about the risk of doing that - but he insisted that there was no risk. So much for Geek Squad military-style competence.