serius stuff and child safety

Worlds largest plane takes to the air. Thing weighs 308 tons and was carrying 22 tons of test equipment. um.... wow. thats one heavy turkey.

Vegetable Ivory. Once popular, now little known but maybe coming back into vogue. Some people think it will reduce the need/interest in animal ivory. I don't think so. Animal ivory is no longer sought after for its mechanical or physical properties. It is sought after because it is pleasant to look at and hard to get. You want to reduce the world interest in animal ivory? Start producing large amounts of vat grown animal ivory that is indistinguishable from the wild form and flood the black market with super cheap supply. the poachers will disappear.

EXPLODING FROGS, well toads actually. They don't know what is causing it. I can think of a number of items. Yeast, any number of bacteria, several acid/base reactions.... What someone needs to do is grab a few dead toads, a few living ones and some water/mud/dirt samples. Geez, how hard is it to think this through.

the BBC is reporting that the 2004 report on world terror activity is missing large numbers of attacks that actually show an INCREASE in terrorist activity. This is the second report that the US has put out showing its success in the war on terror that is actually a load of crap. President Bush, thank you for turning America in to a nightmare of security elated infringements on personal freedoms all to win a war you should not be fighting and are currently losing. May I suggest changing your tactics?(The Washington Post also picked up the story)


It so sad when a company chooses a losing business model and then pounds it into the ground with a vengeance rather then step back and say 'what is wrong with this, why is it losing?' If Real Networks wants to sell music, then let them SELL music, not rent it. People still cling to what real would call outdated views of ownership and property, but you gatta play by those rules if you want to get their money (legally). Those rules include, I pay for it, so i own it. Once they pay for it, they get to listen to it as many times as they like on as many devices. Now Apple hit on a compromise with their music system. Its easy to beat (record it to audio and rip it again) and its relatively nice even if you don't 'beat' it. I mean three devices and you OWN the music. Please not that this article points out in its first paragraph that real is fighting both pirating songs for free and buying them from apple as its main competitors. If their business model worked then their only major competitor SHOULD be the pirating. But buying is better then renting when music is involved.

The marburg outbreak continues to worsen, as much from bad information and lack of infrastructure as anything else. The story is a grim one with no happy ending in sight.

um... I am usually glib and crack jokes about even the worst things (marburg for instance), but not this time. This is a story about an anti-child porn police force in Canada. Its frightening. First off, its scary because of how many children are out there that are being abused. Secondly its scary cause of how little can be done. Lastly its scary because its happening here, not in some ex-communist bloc country, not in some third world brothel. Here in the US and in Canada and in Europe. If anyone out there can help stop it, PLEASE DO SO. If you find out someone is collecting the pics, tell them to stop. Its not like collecting playboy, this is something that hurts, and it hurts for life. The kids in those pics are never normal again. The cops in this story have pictures of crime scenes, go look, if you recognize anything, call them. (The pics have been sanitized.) This is the web site of the crime unit involved in the story. I am a big fan of bit-torrent. I was a big fan of e-mule before bit-torrent. Now I have to think about what it is I am a fan of. These anonymous file sharing systems (ok, e-mule is not truly anonymous) allow me to download tv shows without worry that some lawyer for some media company will sue me into oblivion for it. The problem is they also allow child pornographers to trade their pics and avoid capture.
One last point: Parents, if you don't know what your child is doing on the computer your asking for trouble. Its not that i think your child will look for trouble, its that trouble will find your child. Sick people know that the internet allows them to get instant access to children and like minded individuals. Five minutes in any public chat room posing as a child will result in more propositions than you would believe. Talk to your kids about it, and make certain you know who your kids are talking to online. Don't intrude, just ask. If you have to, install net nanny or something. Don't sit back and watch and then get surprised when something happens.

New tapes are online, recordings of the president's daily doings. If this is the stuff we are seeing I wonder what we don't see?

We will sell the arms, but nobody is allowed to use them(at least that is how america has acted in the past).... reminds me of an old law on firecrackers that said you could sell them and buy them just not own them.
weird

Oxygen deprivation at 10,000 feet. Turns out the stingy practices of the air lines by which they give the freshest air to the first class and recycled to the rest of us might just result in low O2 levels, which in turn aint good.

A quick behind the scenes look at the new hitchikiers movie.

Remote control bomb sniffing rats. The problem is that when they try to sneak through a tight hole and rip off their electronics and end up in agonizing seizures. Otherwise, its really cool.

SemaCodes as tour guides.... jewish ones no less.

A data transfer system that has a lettuce based guidance sub-system. cool.

COFFEE! I like tea, I am addicted to coffee. Here is a personal coffee machine, something I would even think about buying if I had available cash.

thats all for today.