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Lost world of the ice age makes a comeback
A Russian biologist is trying to recreate a landscape not seen on
Earth for nearly 10,000 years - welcome to Pleistocene Park, Siberia
SERGEY ZIMOV is no Steven Spielberg, but if this hardy Russian
biologist gets his way, he could one day achieve something the film
director has only dreamed of. He is trying to recreate a landscape
not seen on Earth for nearly 10,000 years, since the end of the last
ice age - complete, if possible, with woolly mammoths. The project is
called Pleistocene Park, but it's not a tourist attraction. Zimov
wants to answer some fundamental questions about the impact early
modern humans had on the environment, and in the meantime he might
just help to save the planet. During the Pleistocene epoch, from 1.6
million to 10,000 years ago, great sheets of ice repeatedly advanced
and retreated across North America and Eurasia, in places extending
as far south as the 40th parallel. That's the same latitude as Denver
in Colorado, or Madrid in Spain. The end of the epoch, ...
http://tinyurl.com/9e3k5
Spy-diver killer If you are scuba diving, be sure not to swim
anywhere near any ship or installation that has been protected by the
Raytheon Corporation's new "swimmer denial" system. Otherwise you
will very quickly feel extremely sick and probably drown.
Raytheon’s underwater sensors detect any unwelcome presence and
trigger an underwater sound system that emits extremely powerful
pulses of low frequency audio. The pulse rate and audio frequency are
chosen to make human organs resonate like organ pipes, causing
swimmers to vomit into their masks or suffer internal ruptures.
The idea of blasting very powerful sound at underwater targets is not
new. It can even be used to detonate incoming torpedoes. But it can
also cause havoc with marine life. Raytheon's new system is
"greener" because the main sound projector, in the middle of the
secure zone, emits sounds with power and frequency that are
relatively safe. A dozen or so secondary projectors in a ring round
the zone also emit safe pulses. But in the region near each secondary
projector the main and secondaries combine to produce a sound which
is decidedly dangerous. Would-be spies or terrorists cannot get
through the ring but there is no widespread danger to fish, dolphins
or whales. Read Raytheon's secrets, here.
An Interview With 2old2play's Doodi
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday January 10, @09:32PM from the
never-too-old-to-play dept. vinnie2k writes "This is an interesting
interview with the founder of 2old2play.com. In it he discusses the
future of gaming for older people, why we need communities like
2old2play, and how the gaming industry needs to refocus its efforts
on the games it makes. Cool insight and worth the read for any older
gamers."
http://tinyurl.com/cm863
Call for Entries: Harvard University’s Sustainable Campus January
10, 2006 03:52 PM - Kara, Newport, Rhode Island Harvard University
envisions their campus to be environmentally and economically
sustainable by the years 2020-2025. Already they are in the early
stages of implementing campus-wide Sustainability Principles and are
now tapping into their alumni, faculty, staff and students in a
competition that poses this question: How can these facilities be
renovated or built in such a way that reduces their environmental
impact while maintaining or improving their economic performance and
service to the academic community? Sponsored by the Harvard Green
Campus Initiative, the winner of this will have a hand in Harvard's
future as a leader in environmental sustainability (not to mention
some cash prizes). Unfortunately this is only open to the Harvard
community, but we’re interested to see what they come up with.
Deadline for the competition is Monday, April 3, 2006 and more
information can be found on their website. ::Harvard Green Campus
Initiative
http://tinyurl.com/8qjjb
10 Ways to Achieve your Goals Quicker Found through Be Excellent
Blog, recently ThinkTQ.com announced the results of 2005 Goals Study.
They considered 10 important key actions that once taken will make
you closer to the goal. They also compiled how often and well people
take these action items. The key actions are pretty neat. The results
are shocking:
Make all your dreams real by first identifying and then focusing on
specific, tangible targets for what you want.
Maintain at least one clearly defined goal for every major interest
and role in your life.
Set your goals so they are directly aligned with your life’s
mission, purpose and passion.
Create goals high enough to ignite your spirit and inspire you to
take action.
Write down all your goals in specific, measurable detail.
Absolutely, unconditionally commit to hitting each of your targets.
Share your goals with others for mutual accomplishment.
Set a whole series of related daily, weekly and long-term goals,
complete with starting times and completion dates.
Take 10 minutes every day to imagine how terrific it will feel when
your goals are actually realized.
Take an action step toward the attainment of at least one goal every
day.
In their sample size of 32,896 users who took the survey, the results
are not promising. Only a maximum of 33% users consistently take the
action item. Maybe most of them do not know how to achieve their
goals, or they never plan their goals. Without a way to walk closer
to your goal, you will only be dreaming about the achievement. You
have to be a dreamer as well as a doer to taste the achievement in
reality.
http://tinyurl.com/c6olk
New Learning Rejuvenate the Brain, Losing Sleep undoes it Brightsurf
has a good article recently on the relationship between brain,
sleeping and learning. The article is pretty technical, but two good
pieces of information you can grab from it which are benefit for our
readers: Learning appears to rejuvenate the brain; and lack of sleep
undoes the rejuvenation benefit from learning. Hence it is quite
important to take two things seriously everyday: to learn something
everyday to keep our brain young and strong, and also get enough
sleep everyday: As the pace of life quickens and it becomes harder to
balance home and work, many people meet their obligations by getting
less sleep. But sleep deprivation impairs spatial learning —
including remembering how to get to a new destination. And now
scientists are beginning to understand how that happens: Learning
spatial tasks increases the production of new cells in an area of the
brain involved with spatial memory called the hippocampus. Sleep
plays a part in helping those new brain cells survive….
http://tinyurl.com/d6zth
Windows Media® Components for QuickTime
Brief Description
With Windows Media® Components for QuickTime, by Flip4Mac™, you can
play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player
and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a Web browser.
http://tinyurl.com/dtqvg
Welcome on Game-Oldies.com! Game-Oldies.com provides thousands of
classic arcade and console video games to play directly in your
browser, through innovative, fast and easy-to-use emulation
technologies. The only requirements are a Java-enabled browser and a
reasonably fast computer. Feel free to browse the games, have fun and
post in the forums!
Overview
Play thousands of classic arcade and console video games in your
browser!
Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis/Megadrive!
NES/Famicom, Gameboy (beta), PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16, Colecovision
games!
Many arcade classics, including Capcom CPS-1/CPS-2 !
Save your games and screenshots on the server!
And registration is free...
http://tinyurl.com/d5e9a
COMMAND AND CONCUR COMES TO REAL LIFE:
Sunstrike - A whole new can of whoop ass The uses for tesla coils
and other devices of that ilk continue to expand. This snippet talks
about an Indiana company's idea for a "less than lethal" weapon type
device that uses high voltage for crowd control. From a recent
edition of digitaljournal.com: Military Weapons on the Horizon If
Thor were to land in 21st-century Earth, he would be jonesing to own
a lightning gun dubbed StunStrike from Xtreme Alternative Defense
Systems (finally, a company worthy of the name “Xtreme”). This 11-
foot-high weapon shoots four-foot bolts of lightning by using an
electrical charge to create a path for sparks generated by a Tesla
coil. Call it the next-gen stun gun or Loki’s worst nightmare. The
company that makes this (or plans to make this, I can't tell from the
company website whether this really exists or not) is called XADS.
Their other product line consists of something referred to as
"photonic disrupters." I think I'd like to have a photonic disrupter.
Not sure what I'd do with it, but it sounds really cool. If memory
serves, I think I first heard that term in the 1960s as a Star Trek
weapon carried by either Romulans or Klingons.
http://tinyurl.com/c7e7b
COOL: HOWTO convert an Oral B flosser into a vibrating lockpick
Here's a simple recipe for converting a low-cost Oral B "Hummingbird"
vibrating flosser into a vibrating lock-pick that can "pop most
popular padlocks open in seconds with very little effort." Link (via
Make Blog) posted by Cory Doctorow at 12:58:33 AM permalink | Other
blogs commenting on this post
Paranoid about hidden tasks on your Windows system?
http://tinyurl.com/csd9l
PC Inspector File Recovery - Today's Free File
A hard-drive meltdown is every computer user's worst nightmare. Data
recovery services charge an arm and a leg, and while your data is
valuable to you, most people have a limit as to what they can pay for
these services. It's hard to gamble that much money when there is no
guarantee that the data can actually be recovered. While there's no
better prevention than regular backups, if you find yourself in this
mess, you might like to know that File Recovery by PC Inspector is
available, and free.
http://tinyurl.com/ae5ca
The first product based on IBM/Toshiba/Sony's Cell processor has
shipped, reports Mercury Computer Systems. Mercury's Cell Technology
Evaluation System (CTES) is a 470-pound behemoth with one or two dual-
Cell blades running Linux. It targets defense, medical, and
industrial inspection markets. The CTES system is available with
one or two of Mercury's Dual Cell-based Blade units. Each Blade
features two Cell processors clocked at 2.4GHz, and running Linux in
SMP (symmetric multi-processing) mode. Each Blade also has 512MB of
"XDR" SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive, and dual gigabit Ethernet interfaces
(dual PCIe Infiniband HCA add-in cards will be available in Q2). The
Blades run a net-bootable Yellow Dog Linux variant called "Y-HPC"
that was developed by Terra Soft Solutions, one of Mercury's VARs
(value-added resellers).
http://tinyurl.com/dkuqq
GM Needs To Get Scared And Stay That Way Joann Muller and Jonathan
Fahey, 01.11.06, 6:00 AM ET DETROIT - General Motors is burning
through cash at an estimated $24 million per day, its market share is
sliding and brutal competition is eroding the margins on its most
profitable products--sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. If
there is a silver lining to this, it is that a crisis can--and
should--scare people to make the hard decisions they might otherwise
resist. GM deserves credit for the steps it has taken so far, like
cutting factory capacity and streamlining its dealer channels, says
Jerome York, adviser to billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian, who
currently owns 7.8% of GM's shares and is one of the company's
biggest critics. The problem, says York, is that GM is not moving
fast enough.
http://tinyurl.com/a8mrg
Tuning tech catches on with guitarists No matter how accomplished
they are, musicians who play fretted instruments spend a lot of time
playing out of tune. Strings stretch and bind. Fluctuations in
humidity and string tension cause instrument necks to bow, arch and
twist. Something--it is not always clear what--throws string pitch
out of whack. Professional players on stage and in recording sessions
find themselves twisting tuner knobs between every song and sometimes
in the middle of songs. "It is maddening that we play instruments
that do not stay in tune for very long," Mike Marshall, one of the
top mandolin and guitar players on the acoustic-music scene, wrote
during a recent online discussion on the topic. "This seems a bit
insane, considering the fact that we are surrounded by so much
incredible technology."
http://tinyurl.com/a46gf
A Million to One Chances Are Imitators Can't Match This Student's By-
the-Pixel Web Sales Success
By Don Oldenburg Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, January 11,
2006; Page C01
Look what Alex Tew did, and you get one of those "Why didn't I think
of that?" flashes. It's so simple, so cheap, so mind-bogglingly
lucrative that it took the 21-year-old student from small-town
Wiltshire, England, not even five months to go from broke to
millionaire. Worried about paying his college tuition last August,
Tew chanced upon one of those rare original money-making ideas. How
about creating an Internet Web page out of 1 million blank pixels?
And then selling those pinhead-size digital picture elements that
make up a computer screen for a dollar apiece, or $100 per 10-by-10-
pixel block, to advertisers who turn them into colorful tiny
billboards and micro logos linked to their own Web sites?
http://tinyurl.com/au5jj
AND JUST FOR SABRINA:
Chuck Norris responds to chucknorrisfacts.com

The action star known for high-style facial hair, high-flyin' kicks,
and high-caliber weaponry replied today to spoof site
chucknorrisfacts.com, which lists such "facts" as
"Crop circles are Chuck Norris' way of telling the world that
sometimes corn needs to lie the fuck down."
Responding on his vanity site, Norris plugs his autobiography and
shrugs off the prank domain. "I do know that boys will be boys," he
says of the internet. And those of us without facial hair know the
internet is not comprised entirely of boys. Link (Thanks, Naimul)
Reader Comment: Ian says,
I operate 4q.cc, the site that began the Chuck Norris Fact Generator.
I noticed that you referenced chucknorrisfacts.com in your post
regarding Chuck's statement. Please note that these are knockoff
sites that have stolen my content and attempted to profit from it. I
would appreciate it if you corrected your post and updated it with my
original website, www.4q.cc/chuck. Thank you.
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