ok, lets start the day with something funny. Four BABIES charged with looting in India I always knew that people in India were early starters, precocious, and hell bent on getting ahead but this is a bit much.
What to say, what to say? A most contentious group of people have made a giant show of unity. here is a short but interesting article on the current Orthodox Jewish practice of Daf Yomi. I wonder how long, how many generations until the practice of Daf Yomi goes from a nice thing to do, to becoming a Minhag (a word that roughly translates to custom, only with more strength, somewhere between a custom and a law), and then how long before it becomes law. If you look carefully at current jewish practice, much that is taken for law is actually custom, and much that is custom has its roots in habit more than religion. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but something that needs to be noted. Judaism is not the only religion that does this, but it has more of a habit of codifying things than most other religions.
While I am not a huge fan of the current sitting president, I must give him props for trying. Its to bad I disagree with most of what he tries and worse how he tries it. Oddly enough I agree that Social Security needs major work. I even agree that a system of personal accounts is probably the best, however I have seen little inthe way of evidence that his current plan will do the job. March 1 - President Bush's drive to overhaul Social Security is in trouble, and while it is far too soon to declare it doomed, it faces obstacles on all sides., thats from the NYTimes, one of my favorite non-perfect news sources. When i find a perfect news source I think I will stop blogging and just read the damn thing.
As long as we are discussing politics and washington, lets discuss how it all works. Here is an interesting look at some of what goes on in DC in a way you would not really think of. Professional line sitting(standing actually), not fence sitting (that job is taken by most of congress).
How about a Fair and Balanced (HA) look at Donald Rumsfeld being named in a torture lawsuit now I am all for accountable governing but something here smack of fall guy..... I have no proof and expect there is none, its just a feeling.
LETS TALK SCIENCE:
and of course whenever we talk science we start with the ENVIRONMENT (caped out and everything so its easy to find).
2004 Was Fourth-Warmest Year Ever Recorded and with the 10 warmest years ever recorded having happened in the last 30 years and the top 4 in the last ten years.... It is clear to me that all those people yelling about global warming are just hippies with too much acid in their systems.... Sorry, was channeling our current government for a second there. I'm better now. Although correlation is not causation I wish to point out that human activity is the only thing to work on the same time scale as the current temperature shift.
More ont he environment, the BBC reports that a pact to curb mercury has been rejected at the UN. Guess which government was behind the rejection of a binding agreement? It starts with U and the last word starts with A and the middle word starts with S. No big surprise. Let the coal fired power plants continue!
The UK is ramping up their Flu Preparedness Program, in preparation for a pandemic. they have also cornered the market on the letter P and are suing anyone else who uses it. In an attempt to avoid a law suit, British publication New Scientist reported on the whole situation without a single 'P' in the title of their article: UK to stash 15 million anti-flu drug courses However they messed up in the first paragraph and used the word 'Pandemic' making it impossible for them to avoid stiff penalty fines. (if you don't know that my blurb on the letter P was a joke, your really dumb)
ONWARD--
I mentioned yesterday about the ipod firmware being hacked, here is another story on it, this one focuses on how it was done.
More from New Scientist, an article reviewing Cars and the Technology behind them, gatta love their reviews.
In India, it seems that if you remove a few cubic tons of soil and sand you will find an ancient city. WHile that in no way makes up for the huge and truly horrible loss of life, it at least shows that maybe something good can come of the tsunami. I wonder if tsunamis serve a similar role to seasonal floods, rejuvenating the environment, even while wreaking havoc. before anyone starts yelling, I ant it clear I am not saying this tsunami was good. I think that the huge loss of life and property was a very bad thing.
A friend once claimed that snake poison was proof that evolution was fake. His theory went that if the poison is fatal even to the snake itself, how could it have evolved a way to contain it safely in its own body. I questioned how he knew that the poison was fatal to the snake... he never answered that. Well, here is a short blurb on the evolution of snake poison who'd've thunk my friend might be wrong?
Licorice whips herpes and it also does wonders for constipation.
I am liking hackaday more and more, here is an article on Making your old palm pilot into an lcd readout for other things too bad I just threw mine out. Also and article on Hacking a car boot and while this particular scofflaw got away with it, I wonder if he realized how much an entire new wheel (rim and tire) costs. Could he really have owed THAT much in parking fines? I wonder how the parking attendant who put the car boot on his car reacted.
And in the using tech/science to sell stuff arena we have shopper profiling. a good read.
and last for the morning post which will just barely make it to the morning edition:
famous cooks using bizarre tools in their private kitchens
hopefully I will find time to post again this afternoon (which is in twenty minutes)
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