Slashdot Mirror

New Scientist published, in their paper weekly, years ago, that *Earth's temperature disconnected from the Sun's temperature/cycle in the mid '80s*.

Also, it seems that in natural temperature-cycling of Earth's climate, temperature-change happens-before CO2-change, but we poured billions-of-tonnes of CO2 ( I can't even imagine that correctly ) into our atmosphere lately, so...

using this as 'proof' that global warming is just some liberal propaganda, as some other propagandists would want/need to do, don't wash... ( I'm using world-context, rather than just some specially-limited context, for this discussion, obvaneously )

Solar temperature and Earth-climate-temperature cannot be defined out of being actual.

It's like how someone who actually measured the current-flow in the northern Atlantic discovered that in '99 it was flowing in .. the wrong direction ..
( originally N m/s one way, now some other 'n' cm/s the other direction ).

-shrug- change the thermal masses, change the way they interact, displace one-another, flow, etc.

making-believe that our long-committed actions don't have capability to touch us, because .. what, because our make-believe is immoveable power?

our climate is crashing.

El Nino broke from a 6-8y cycle in the '70s, now is on a 2-4y cycle.

Previous 400 000 years we know it hadn't been on a 2-4y cycle ( from entrapped atmosphere taken from ice-cores off Vostok Antarctica ).

Some thermal energy shunted from thermal, to kinetic, energy in the '70s: the bottom of our atmosphere became violenter.

That means that looking at the planetary temperature doesn't show the energy-increase, it only shows the energy-that-remained-thermal increase...
This one was discovered by seismographs(sp?), showing the background waves-pounding-against-continents noise jumped, globally, then.

The disconnect from Solar cycle, in the '80s, I already mentioned.

The loss of 2000 cubic kilometres of ice from Antarctica, between '95 and '02 ( inclusive, I believe ) means our planet isn't reflective so much as it was...

IIRC Antarctica lost 215km of radius of ice, in the ?70 years before 1950 ( profound loss of reflectivity of heat, perhaps? )...

There's a particularly huge ice-plain that's now expected to collapse quickly, but They don't know when, but They know it'll rather-likely mean a 6m or 7m increase in ocean-level.

It's now believed very likely that there isn't going to be ANY ice in the Northern hemisphere, in the summer, by the end of this century ( again, lower reflectivity? also, earthquakes from the melting glaciers, and rebounding Greenland, and Iceland crustal plate, etc. )

'Deal with it' seems the only choice now...
Either proactively, or, after we've had our WWIII/tantrum, what's left of us will deal-with/be-in what remains.

...

Coupla reasons for knowing the tantrum's perfectly inevitable:

1. ecology-break instantiates 'wars', always.
Look at Uruk, now Iraq, ~5000 years ago... huge metropolis, that broke its local ecology, and it broke sooo quick, some have gone through the Iraqi desert picking up coins, that've lain there for ... ~5000 years. This suggests that few remained to loot thoroughly, without getting dead ( contrast with the huge temple in Egypt, that's totally missing, now: every last speck of it is gone, except for the twin quartzite statues that once stood astride its doorway ).

2. Political Religions, Intolerance of Community/Harmony, And Other Predator/Agression-addiction/Cancer-modes:
If one cell-type within your body decided "Me First!", say muscle-tissue, and it killed-off your bones, kidneys, and neurons, YOU wouldn't be likely to survive. This is usually called cancer, when it happens within one's body.

"Reproduction in any form is explicitly illegal".

I can't wait until we can prove that remembering a movie is copyright infringement. What, maybe 10-15 years?

From New Scientist

Jammers can be deployed on mountaintops or tall antennas, but it is probably most economical to place them aboard aircraft. Langley thinks the US might also use "spoofing", in which fake signals fool the GPS receiver into thinking it is somewhere else.

Cool, make the enemy think they are about 500 miles east from where they really are.

Where the hell are we? This can't be right! According to this we are 300 miles out in the Gulf.

This article says that the DOD has better ways to achieve this end, so you can stop crying. But, if degrading the signal worldwide were the only way to degrade it for the Iraqi military, they would be correct to do so.

According to this article, nothing needs to be done to the satellites at all. Jammers can be deployed to scramble civilian GPS signals over a localized area.

After all, when's the last time you've seen a GPS receiver with a dish antenna? Ground-based signals can logically affect them just as easily as sky-based.

Well, you can believe what some German automobile club says, or you can talk to the Pentagon - According to the story on New Scientst they've promised not to degrade the signal. "We would not create a global problem for transport out of spite for Saddam," says a spokesman at the US Department of Defence.

The reality is that in the time period since S/A was turned off many businesses have become dependent on the GPS. If S/A were to be turned back on worldwide, then that would provide one more reason to oppose the war. COnsidering the current political climate, both in the US and worldwide, I can't see this happening.

It's more likely that localized blackout or jamming in the Iraq region will be used, rather than a global downgrade. See here for more.

Hook this into the artificial hippocampus mentioned in another /. article.

Forget the video blog, you can invite the rest of the world into your brain! Shades of Herman's Head!

I am someone who dislikes governmental control in any form, so to embrace this technology with the caveat of regulation is a very scary proposition.

I would rather see the technology only used to cure existing people as in the linked story, rather than to design people. But then again, I am a card carrying religous freak so I am not to be trusted...

I consider religion to be insane ideas that you can inflict on children if you indoctrinate them early enough. (I am from Sweden -- most people doesn't indoctrinate children and have something like less than 10% of the population going to a church more than once in a given year...)

I would be against Xian, muslim, etc "freaks" inducing this kind of mental instability into their children... Something some religious people would do.

And, further, I would bet money that religious people with that kind of mental problems would be angry if someone tried to hinder their children from inheriting them...

Those religious freaks would not consider the mental problem giving them faith a mental problem.

Most people outside Australia wouldn't have heard Adam and Dr Karl doing their Sleek Geek show. Really entertaining, and accurate stuff. Adam Spencer is a DJ at JJJ, and also holds a PhD in mathematics. Dr Karl is a regular visitor on Thursday mornings since it seems time began. See some of his stuff here. Recently, they got together for a tour called "Sleek Geeks" .. and here's a report on it by New Scientist.

It can be done !

ceejayoz writes "A newly discovered gas cloud around Jupiter, created by ion radiation hitting the surface of Europa, has cast doubt on possible life on the moon.

The ion cloud is completely irrelevant to the chances of finding life deep in the oceans of Europa. The Earth itself is surrounded by belts of ionized radiation. Ions bombard the atmosphere hard enough for it to visibly glow near the magnetic poles. And yet life thrives in just about every Earth environment that isn't molten rock. And the original posted link about the Jovian ion torus never mentioned any hazards to Europan life.

Hmmm, and which propulsion system would this be? I know that there's one that has been proposed that can get from the Earth to Mars in six weeks using a kind of fusion drive (New Scientist vol 177 issue 2379 - 25 January 2003, page 23 - sorry, don't have a URL unless you can acess the NS archive, in which case it's here). Even this is still at the drawing board however. I would be very surprised if we could get a craft that could get to Pluto in a year in nine years time, given there are no ideas on how we'd do it at the moment...

Hmmm....intersting idea, except the radio-iso-thermo-electric generators depended on heating thermocouples with nuclear decay. I don't think we'll get as good a temperature differential in our lovely atmosphere at sea level as there is in the near-vacuum of inter-steller/planetary space. And there is the whole radiation problem of decaying unstable matter.

But these people with their
quantum nucleonic reactor might be able to do it. While based on X-ray induced gamma ray emission of halfium isomers , rather than (I think) thorium isotope-decay powered thermocouples, it still sounds cool (which we all know means its better.) Besides, with a throttle-able power supply with which you could save the juice your not using at any given moment, your probe - unlike poineer - could be still tickin' away.

The UK will pay a high price in than high electric costs when it uglifies it's landscapes with windmills and it's shores with tideal generators.

Much of the proposed wind energy will come from large offshore sites in terratorial water, (Rockall is not only useful for cod fishing;-) which will be only barely visable from the shore. The UK (and ireland) are well endowed with wind an wave energy and consiquenlty are in an almost unique possition to be able to take good adavantage of the excess power while the technology is still young and inefficient. As this Government Consultation [pdf] points out.

Wave power schemes are idealy suited for incorperation with the offshore wind, as the infrastructure is there, and they would also provide some protection for the turbines in such a harsh environment.

As for tidal generators, such as the Severn barrage, the visual impact of the scheme would be minimal when compared to a bridge (which these projects usually incorporate). Though they have some environmental issues they are easily comparable to those of hydro schemes e.g..

Besides I would much rather look out on a wind farm than a gas platform or coal power plant, knowing that I was breathing clean fresh air.

i like this one too from the same page.

OK, that post came out a bit more flamebaity than I intended (though I did decline the +1 karma bonus), but you might get an idea what I mean from this
article.

Seems to me it's only on the slower stories like these that we seem to get back to the intelligent posts from people who know what they're talking about - does this make me an old fart or what ??

Cheers for the info, I offer my hangover knowledge in return. A hangover is (for me) a mixture of the acetaldehyde/formic-acid poisoning from breaking down alcohol, general dehydration, and the dehydration effects on the nerve endings in the head. Following the advice such as this , following a big night I try to remember to drink a sports rehydration drink like IsoStar, a bit of ibuprofen to reduce swelling and the "blocked nose" effect, and some n-acetyl cysteine to help the liver break down what's there. If I take all these BEFORE going to bed, I'll sleep right thru, but without it I'll be up for a wee and feeling-like-shite around 4am, in which case I can try and take it then.

Done properly it's very strange as you wake up in the morning with all the "ohmigod did I really do/say that" memories, but without the punishing headache, nausea and general hangover, but possibly still feeling slightly drunk (the latter part I think always happens, but is normally masked by the other sensations).

YMMV, but as I get older I'm finding rehydration a miracle cure for all sorts of ills... and no, drinking plain water doesn't do it.

If you want to speed up your metabolism, the best way is to exercise. However, the benefits of that are more long term.

Very true, too...

Cheers

--
T

Of course aether was primarily brought up by Maxwell to explain certain phenomena. It was disproved by the "fact" that the speed of light was a constant in all inertial frames.

What's interesting is that there is a movement to suggest that perhaps, just perhaps, the speed of light wasn't a constant after all. While I rather doubt that, New Scientist has an interesting interview with the main proponent of that theory, Joao Magueijo. Interview with Joao Magueijo

He has a book partially about this coming out this month called Faster than the Speed of Light

I rather doubt Einstein is wrong on this matter, although some of Magueijo's criticisms of superstring theory are often made. Still quite a few people are discussing the issue. Landau, for instance, has a recent paper on the topic. "Charge Conservation and Time-Varying Speed of Light.

To tie all this together, here's an interesting paper that ties some of this all together, including "dark energy." "Perfect Fluid Cosmology with Varying Light Speed."

Stalagmites and craters

By examining the surface of hundreds of alloy plates under an electron microscope, NPL has discovered where previous researchers went wrong. It has developed a two-stage technique that produces the blacker black New Scientist saw emerge from the acid tank last week.

In the first stage, an object to be blackened is immersed for five hours in a solution of nickel sulphate and sodium hypophosphite. This produces a nickel and phosphorus coating containing between five and seven per cent phosphorus. Then the surface is etched with nitric acid to produce the super-black surface structure.

One of the crucial discoveries, says Brown, was how the percentage of phosphorus in the nickel coating affected the surface after etching. An electron micrograph of the surface of an alloy containing more than eight per cent phosphorus (see graphic) looks like a collection of stalagmites.

But if the phosphorus content is around six per cent the surface becomes pitted with craters. The curved craters reflect less light that the straighter-sided stalagmites, so super-black reflects about half as much light as the high-phosphorus surfaces.

Right angle

Super-black is especially effective at absorbing light that hits it at an angle. With the light source at right angles the super-black coating reflects less than 0.35 per cent. Black paint, by comparison, reflects about 2.5 per cent, or seven times as much. With the light source at an angle of 45, black paint reflects 25 times as much light as the super-black.

NPL Super Black In order to make accurate measurements in the UV, IR and visible regions, optical instruments and sensors need surfaces with very low reflectance. These black surfaces are used as efficient radiation detectors or may reduce stray light in an instrument. Highly efficient black surfaces allow smaller, lighter instruments to be made, which is an important advantage in aerospace applications. NPL has successfully developed a very high quality optical black ] known as NPL Super Black. The process uses an adapted nickel phosphorus electroless plating technique followed by finely controlled etching and gives probably the blackest surface known in the visible region. NPL has successfully and repeatedly produced the Super Black coating on a small-scale ecottage industryf basis for a number of years. It is now for upgrading and validating the process for plating much larger substrates with this high quality optical black. The upgrade has led to an opportunity to collaborate with CNES, Astrium and Sodern, the major space contractors for the European Space Agency, on the space evaluation of the black. If successful this will open up many new opportunities for supplying coated optics to the aerospace industry.

A slightly more informative article is here.

They give the recipe.

At this point in time (and for the foreseeable future... whatever that means) a computer or infact anything besides matter itself can act with such precision at the atomic (and subatomic) level.

Quantum effects are indeed an incredible thing, and New Scientist has a Quantum World section that will no doubt have some fascinating articles to read if you want to know more... It's all way over a /. thread though (I barely get half of it and i'm 2/3 through a physics degree largely based on quantum :p)

At this point in time (and for the foreseeable future... whatever that means) a computer or infact anything besides matter itself can act with such precision at the atomic (and subatomic) level.

Quantum effects are indeed an incredible thing, and New Scientist has a Quantum World section that will no doubt have some fascinating articles to read if you want to know more... It's all way over a /. thread though (I barely get half of it and i'm 2/3 through a physics degree largely based on quantum :p)

Compare this image of an injector to this image of this steam propulsion system, I don't think they're that far apart.

I'm definitely not belittling these folks' creation, I think it's interesting that an old (mid-nineteenth century) invention is related to this new propulsion system, using the condensation of steam in cone-shaped orifices to draw in water and shoot it out the end.

The engine

*nix.org -- Latest article: "IBM Set to Replace AIX with Linux"

I was initially going to link to this or this article, but the first included this memorable quote:

We like to think of most corporations as hard candies with a soft chewy center," Rouland said.

Mmmmmm... Soft, chewy center...

Does this mean we'll be able to get generic cartridges? Or will we be able to select different cartridges for what we want?

Mind you this does mean they can combine the "Get Larger Genitalia" and "Cheap Ink" spam mails now.

Ummmmmm... to risk a pun, scientists already have beaten the spammers to this market.
Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab
19:00 11 September 2002

(Yes - the story title is funny. You have permission to snicker.)

Breast boost
19:00 23 May 01

Silicone breast implants could soon be unnecessary, claim researchers in Australia. They say their work will make it possible for women to grow their own.


I think that covers pretty much the two biggest obsessions of the male market.

On the upside (some signs of sanity returning to the American public).
Judge Throws Out McDonald's Obesity Suit
Wed Jan 22, 4:28 PM ET


NEW YORK - Saying the law is not intended to protect people from their own excesses, a federal judge threw out a class-action lawsuit Wednesday that blamed McDonald's food for obesity, diabetes and other health problems in children.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said the plaintiffs failed to show that the fast-food chain's products "involve a danger that is not within the common knowledge of consumers."

The lawsuit was filed against McDonald's last summer and sought unspecified damages.

"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain ... it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses," the judge said. "Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald's."

Plaintiffs' attorney Samuel Hirsch filed other, similar lawsuits last year. In one, a 270-pound city maintenance worker alleged that eating McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC had caused him health problems. Those suits had been dropped or put on hold while Sweet considered the lawsuit against McDonald's.

The lawsuits became a lightning rod for pundits and editorial writers who jeered that they were the latest example of a litigious society in which people abdicate personal responsibility.

"Common sense has prevailed," McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker said. "We said from the beginning that this was a frivolous lawsuit. Today's ruling confirms that fact."
[ end of clipping ]

Or as Lewis Black stated on The Daily Show: "You're telling me that you didn't know that FAT fried in FAT is FATTENING?!?

Does this mean we'll be able to get generic cartridges? Or will we be able to select different cartridges for what we want?

Mind you this does mean they can combine the "Get Larger Genitalia" and "Cheap Ink" spam mails now.

Ummmmmm... to risk a pun, scientists already have beaten the spammers to this market.
Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab
19:00 11 September 2002

(Yes - the story title is funny. You have permission to snicker.)

Breast boost
19:00 23 May 01

Silicone breast implants could soon be unnecessary, claim researchers in Australia. They say their work will make it possible for women to grow their own.


I think that covers pretty much the two biggest obsessions of the male market.

On the upside (some signs of sanity returning to the American public).
Judge Throws Out McDonald's Obesity Suit
Wed Jan 22, 4:28 PM ET


NEW YORK - Saying the law is not intended to protect people from their own excesses, a federal judge threw out a class-action lawsuit Wednesday that blamed McDonald's food for obesity, diabetes and other health problems in children.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet said the plaintiffs failed to show that the fast-food chain's products "involve a danger that is not within the common knowledge of consumers."

The lawsuit was filed against McDonald's last summer and sought unspecified damages.

"If a person knows or should know that eating copious orders of supersized McDonald's products is unhealthy and may result in weight gain ... it is not the place of the law to protect them from their own excesses," the judge said. "Nobody is forced to eat at McDonald's."

Plaintiffs' attorney Samuel Hirsch filed other, similar lawsuits last year. In one, a 270-pound city maintenance worker alleged that eating McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King and KFC had caused him health problems. Those suits had been dropped or put on hold while Sweet considered the lawsuit against McDonald's.

The lawsuits became a lightning rod for pundits and editorial writers who jeered that they were the latest example of a litigious society in which people abdicate personal responsibility.

"Common sense has prevailed," McDonald's spokesman Walt Riker said. "We said from the beginning that this was a frivolous lawsuit. Today's ruling confirms that fact."
[ end of clipping ]

Or as Lewis Black stated on The Daily Show: "You're telling me that you didn't know that FAT fried in FAT is FATTENING?!?

I'm suprised I haven't seen more penis jokes in response to this story, because in the same article they have a link to this story: Tissue engineers grow penis in the lab.

My psychology prof. just gave a lecture about how basic research is fundamentally important, but you've got to wonder why all these research dollars are being spent in the field of penis enlargeonomy...

The REAL story is linked under the "Related Stories" header. Could ink-jet technology also one day make possible the long-awaited penis transplant? Imagine the spamming possibilities!

Scientists Don't Read the Papers they Cite: Study in New Scientist. Certainly
millions, probably billions of marketing dollars
go into convincing us to go with the herd into
the greener pastures and rugged SUV tamed landscapes.
So the idea that having to get all new software
is abhorrent to consumers is incorrect: every year
they are prodded, exhorted, probably even extorted
to upgrade. Many SIPRs (suits in positions of responsibility) also say "Windows
is our lifeblood, We must upgrade!" and
in fact its the guys who maintain the systems
who would prefer a lower slope of treadmill.

From the article:
"Mooring a ship can be a time-consuming, labour-intensive affair in which dock workers grab ropes hurled from the deck of the incoming ship and secure them to the dockside."

I've never been one decry progress because it'll put some people out of work, but this does have the potential to unemploy a whole crapload of people over the not-so-long term.

I wonder how the dockworkers union is handling this?

Simultaneously, the dinosaurs decided to develop hollow bones, a totally different lung system, flight muscles, brain modifications, dietary modifications, new digestive and excretory systems, new behavioral instincts, flight feathers, and everything else that goes along with aeronautical engineering. Just how that happened is somehow glossed over.

What is most incredible is how all the lazy news sources parrot this story uncritically, with literally no one asking the hard questions about how flight could evolve with all of these complex subsystems working together. If they present any controversy at all, it is only about which evolutionary tall tale is better than the others.

Examples: "Scientific" American, Nature, EurekAlot, New Scientist, ABC, etc.

It seems as if only creationists have the guts to pull the curtains from the wizards of awes and call a dumb story dumb. Want to add your entry to this storytelling contest? Send it in to Science and see if it passes peer review. They don't seem to be too particular these days, as long as you toe the Darwin Party line. You might even get NSF money and 15 minutes of fame. Try this science project: drop lizards out of trees and measure their flapping rates. Just be sure you take good lab notes and draw pretty graphs so that it looks scientific. Videos also make good supplementary material. Just don't show the blood on the ground and proves how absurd this all really is.

That was part of one of the articles I read about this: They said that the same genes control whether wings or legs are well-formed, so when the wing is switched off, the genes in it are still protected from too much mutation until the wings are switched on again.

Then again, I'm by far no expert on the subject...

Here it is: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 93269.

Researchers assumed wings could not come back once lost as the genes needed to create them would mutate beyond repair once the wings disappeared. But Whiting says there is evidence from the fruit fly Drosophila that the same genes contain instructions for forming wings and legs.

If the same were true for stick insects, there would be an evolutionary pressure to stop wing genes from mutating, even in the insects that did not have wings. Those genes could then be turned back on in the future.

Daniel

As far as reliable storage goes, check out this story from New Scientist. DNA-ROM. No cost mentioned, but give it a few years and I'm sure it'll be reasonable. Maybe they can combine it with cloning or IVF, so that your descendents will have all your data in every one of their cells.

Don't be fooled by attention grabbing headlines. They didn't actually slow light down. You have to read the articles thoroughly to understand what they actually did because I don't remember it well enough to explain.

Does anyone remember the 'gravity shielding' story a while back, where a spinning superconductor was supposedly responsible for changes in weight?

Read this: Earth's magnetic field 'boosts gravity' As the artice says it is very contraversial.

Also, what about magnetic forces? How do those work, and at what speed do they 'travel' ?

Magnetism is coupled to the electrostatic force and electromagnetic waves including visible light travel at the speed of light.

There is also a story at New Scientist, if you can't read this one.

I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.

For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.

Seditious groups like the RIAA/MPAA are fighting a losing battle to try to back up outdated business models with legislation. Copy protection doesn't work, it's even been tried -- and later dropped -- by software companies like Lotus and Ashton-Tate during the 1980's. The role that RIAA/MPAA companies have played in the past has been as a channel for distribution. The Internet is a much more convenient distribution channel and they need to rework their business models to take that into account. DeCSS is perhaps so embarrassing for the RIAA/MPAA companies because it shows where they are falling far short of market needs -- DeCSS allows time-shifting or space-shifting, both of which are not just fully legal, but widely practiced and accepted.

Free as in market...the RIAA and MPAA are hurting the U.S. economy.

The New Scientist provides a little more information about the legal actions and negligence issues. It strikes me that DOW knew about the Bhopal events before they bought UC. DOW seem to want to continue to avoid responsibility for the effects of their commercial activities just as UC did before.

The compensation that the Bhopal victims have had so far wouldn't keep many of us in food and clothes for a month. What compensation would UC or DOW have paid if this had happened in the USA?

digbat

Personally, I remember numerous incidents before my second birthday. As I am told that I acquired language at an extremely early age, I guess - in my case at least - the model holds true. However, what happens to those unfortunate persons who never fully acquire language ?

This was answered in New Scientists 'Last Word' recently.

Executive summary:
- You brain is developed enough yet
- You don't have any context by which to remember things.
- Autobigraphical memory is taught by adults, but only after language is developed.

My first memory was when I was 3, in 1975, when I rode a few miles in the back of my dad's pickup truck when we were moving house.

My second memory was on the same day, and it is of seeing a mirror at the end of the hallway in the new house.

If I had a third memory on that day, it would have been of me letting my pet bird joey fly around the new house. I don't remember this, but my mom insists it happened. It seems to be her only memory of the day. Odd that I didn't remember this.

I also remember that we had a fish tank at the top of our stairs in the old house, and I kind of remember going down into our basement. But they aren't particular events, but I supposed they are really my earliest memories since it was before we moved.

Anyone else caught this from the new scientist article?
My word! They make bikinis that size?

They switched the face link with the penis link in the article, not my fault, really! Try this one.

"functioning replacement penises were grown from cells in the lab, albeit for mice."

[insert joke here]

Pioneer sells a jukebox system for $13,000+, DVD-R drives not included. I was looking at the system as a replacement for tape drives, and the sales rep I talked to basically told me to hold off until the Blue-laser drives get released in the states. Supposedly they'll deliver twice the current capacity for both CD-Rs and DVD-Rs, assuming that they ever get adopted here...

"The endlessly versatile carbon nanotube was then shown also to have an explosive side in April. A laboratory accident revealed that a bundle of carbon nanotubes will explode when exposed to an ordinary camera flash." Just in time for New Years!

New Scientist linked this story from the ice piece. I know this is sorta OT, but wow, I'm always stunned when I read a hail story like this.

Ice not nice.

this baby might be the first clone instead of the canadian one..

The world's first cloned baby was born on 26 December, claims the Bahamas-based cloning company Clonaid. But there has been no independent confirmation of the claim.

4. I'd either be dead already or vey very sick