BS: Random Traces From All Over

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 18 Mar 08 - 10:10 AM

ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2008) — Far from being a model of social co-operation, the ant world is riddled with cheating and corruption -- and it goes all the way to the top, according to scientists from the Universities of Leeds and Copenhagen.


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Ants have always been thought to work together for the benefit of the colony rather than for individual gain. But Dr Bill Hughes from Leeds' Faculty of Biological Sciences has found evidence to shatter this illusion.

With Professor Jacobus Boomsma from the University of Copenhagen, he's discovered that certain ants are able to cheat the system, ensuring their offspring become reproductive queens rather than sterile workers.

"The accepted theory was that queens were produced solely by nurture: certain larvae were fed certain foods to prompt their development into queens and all larvae could have that opportunity," explains Dr Hughes. "But we carried out DNA fingerprinting on five colonies of leaf-cutting ants and discovered that the offspring of some fathers are more likely to become queens than others. These ants have a 'royal' gene or genes, giving them an unfair advantage and enabling them to cheat many of their altruistic sisters out of their chance to become a queen themselves."

But what intrigued the scientists was that these 'royal' genetic lines were always rare in each colony.

Says Dr Hughes: "The most likely explanation has to be that the ants are deliberately taking steps to avoid detection. If there were too many of one genetic line developing into queens in a single colony, the other ants would notice and might take action against them. So we think the males with these royal genes have evolved to somehow spread their offspring around more colonies and so escape detection. The rarity of the royal lines is actually an evolutionary strategy by the cheats to escape suppression by the altruistic masses that they exploit."

A few times each year, ant colonies produce males and new queens which fly off from their colonies to meet and mate. The males die shortly after mating and the females go on to found new colonies. The researchers are keen to study this process, to determine if their hypothesis is correct and the mating strategy of males with royal genes ensures their rarity, to keep their advantages undetected by their 'commoner' counterparts.

However, the scientists' discovery does prove that, although social insect colonies are often cited as proof that societies can be based on egalitarianism and cooperation, they are not quite as utopian as they appear.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 08:30 PM

An amazing display of modern robotic science.



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 09:42 AM

Today is Bach's 350th birthday, according to Minnesota Public Radio.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 22 Mar 08 - 12:06 AM

63-year-old solves riddle from 1970

Israeli mathematician unravels puzzle that baffled scientists for decades
By Aron Heller
The Associated Press
updated 5:06 p.m. CT, Thurs., March. 20, 2008

JERUSALEM - A mathematical puzzle that baffled the top minds in the esoteric field of symbolic dynamics for nearly four decades has been cracked — by a 63-year-old immigrant who once had to work as a security guard.

Avraham Trahtman, a mathematician who also toiled as a laborer after moving to Israel from Russia, succeeded where dozens failed, solving the elusive "Road Coloring Problem."

The conjecture essentially assumed it's possible to create a "universal map" that can direct people to arrive at a certain destination, at the same time, regardless of starting point¹. Experts say the proposition could have real-life applications in mapping and computer science.

The "Road Coloring Problem" was first posed in 1970 by Benjamin Weiss, an Israeli-American mathematician, and a colleague, Roy Adler, who worked at IBM at the time.

/quote

There's a bit more at the link, although despite asserting that the "solution" is "on the web" they don't give a clue as to where.

¹ In the real world it's well known that one can arrive at an intended destination by following directions that do not include a starting point. This is, in fact, the system used by one aircraft manufacturer of my acqauintance, where in order to determine what part(s) are in use on the airplane one follows the "changes" without knowing what the original configuration was.

In this case, I "pulled" a minimum of about 300 drawings, and an average of about 425, for each of about 80 "problem squawks," in order to learn that previous engineers who had previously responded to the same pilot/shop complaints had "fixed" each of several parts and had indeed made perfectly fine "fixes" - but to parts that were not used on the airplane. Some "problems" had been fixed 8 consecutive times without ever being applied to parts in use.

Perhaps if I'd had this solution I might still work there (but I doubt it).

John

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Mar 08 - 11:50 AM

Changes in the spin rate of Saturn's moon Titan suggest an ocean of liquid water lies beneath its icy surface, a new study reports. The finding bolsters the possibility that the moon might foster life.

Titan's low density suggests it is composed of a combination of water and rock. During the moon's early days, heat from its formation and the decay of radioactive material should have melted much of this water to create an ocean.
Much of the ocean would have since frozen. But scientists suspect a liquid layer up to 300 kilometres thick persists beneath an ice crust, probably aided by ammonia, which acts as an antifreeze.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 23 Mar 08 - 06:59 PM

MONTEREY, California: A great white shark released from the Monterey Bay Aquarium six weeks ago has already swum past the southern tip of Mexico's Baja peninsula -- about 1200 miles (1930 kilometers) away.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 24 Mar 08 - 09:56 AM

Bear Stearns had total positions of $13.4 trillion. This is greater than the US national income, or equal to a quarter of world GDP - at least in "notional" terms. The contracts were described as "swaps", "swaptions", "caps", "collars" and "floors". This heady edifice of new-fangled instruments was built on an asset base of $80bn at best.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Mar 08 - 03:14 PM

December 7, 2006 Spectrolab has achieved a new world record in terrestrial concentrator solar cell efficiency. Using concentrated sunlight, Spectrolab demonstrated the ability of a photovoltaic cell to convert 40.7 percent of the sun's energy into electricity. The U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) verified the milestone. High efficiency multijunction cells have a significant advantage over conventional silicon cells in concentrator systems because fewer solar cells are required to achieve the same power output. This technology will continue to dramatically reduce the cost of generating electricity from solar energy as well as the cost of materials used in high-power space satellites and terrestrial applications.

"This solar cell performance is the highest efficiency level any photovoltaic device has ever achieved," said Dr. David Lillington, president of Spectrolab. "The terrestrial cell we have developed uses the same technology base as our space-based cells. So, once qualified, they can be manufactured in very high volumes with minimal impact to production flow."

"These results are particularly encouraging since they were achieved using a new class of metamorphic semiconductor materials, allowing much greater freedom in multijunction cell design for optimal conversion of the solar spectrum," said Dr. Richard R. King, principal investigator of the high efficiency solar cell research and development effort. "The excellent performance of these materials hints at still higher efficiency in future solar cells."

Spectrolab is reducing the cost of solar cell production through research investments and is working with several domestic and international solar concentrator manufacturers on clean, renewable solar energy solutions. Currently, Spectrolab's terrestrial concentrator cells are generating power in a 33-kilowatt full-scale concentrator system in the Australian desert. The company recently signed multi-million dollar contracts for its high efficiency concentrator cells and is anticipating several new contracts in the next few months.

Development of the high-efficiency concentrator cell technology was funded by the NREL's High Performance Photovoltaics program and Spectrolab.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 24 Mar 08 - 06:54 PM

In case you wondered, here's the story on the battle of Actium and how it changed the world, and lead indirectly to the Bush Administration... .

The Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. was an epic showdown that pitted Mark Antony and Cleopatra against spurned former ally Octavian. When Octavian eventually reigned supreme in battle, it meant the end of the Roman Republic for good and the beginning of the Roman Empire, whose influences were ultimately felt throughout the world.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 08 - 10:59 AM

HOUSTON, March 25 (UPI) -- Space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the International Space Station at 8:25 pm EDT Monday, ending a 12-day visit and beginning its return to Earth.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 08 - 03:21 PM

A very pissed-off goat has killed a pastor, and tried for his wife and the emergency technicians who came to help.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 08 - 06:47 PM

A brain scientist accidentally discovers Nirvana and comes back to tell the tale.


Absolutely worth listening.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 08 - 06:55 PM

Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf.

Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that it looked like the entire ice shelf Ñ about 6,180 square miles (16,000 square kilometers Ñ about the size of Northern Ireland)Ñ was at risk of collapsing.

David Vaughan of the BAS had predicted in 1993 that the northern part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if warming on the Peninsula continued at the same rate.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," he said. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread Ñ we'll know in the next few days and weeks what its fate will be."

(From Live Science).

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 25 Mar 08 - 10:26 PM

Children playing in Washington state may have dug up the remnants of D.B. Cooper's parachute. FBI is analyzing it.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 08 - 09:37 AM

Quote of the day:

"If we didn't have this war going in Iraq, this thing would be a piece of cake. They could drop that much money through the cracks every lunch hour at the Pentagon."
Former U.S. presidential contender and special envoy for the U.N. food aid agency, George McGovern, who is pressing U.S. lawmakers to guarantee funds for overseas child nutrition programmes. He says mandatory funding for the McGovern-Dole programme - which sends U.S. crops to poor schoolchildren overseas - would sail through Congress were it not for the hundreds of billions of dollars being poured into Iraq.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Mar 08 - 10:27 AM

"New research into advanced photon data transmission is revolutionary but guaranteed to make your head hurt".

Tripping on the light fantastic

Does this mean that aliens on Altair 4 are now watching Gilligan's Island? I sure hope so!

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 26 Mar 08 - 12:39 PM

Statement on Tibet and China

I wish to express my solidarity with the people of Tibet during this critical time in their history. To my dear friend His Holiness the Dalai Lama, let me say: I stand with you. You define non-violence and compassion and goodness. I was in an Easter retreat when the recent tragic events unfolded in Tibet. I learned that China has stated you caused violence. Clearly China does not know you, but they should. I call on China's government to know His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as so many have come to know, during these long decades years in exile. Listen to His Holiness' pleas for restraint and calm and no further violence against this civilian population of monastics and lay people.

I urge China to enter into a substantive and meaningful dialogue with this man of peace, the Dalai Lama. China is uniquely positioned to impact and affect our world. Certainly the leaders of China know this or they would not have bid for the Olympics. Killing, imprisonment and torture are not a sport: the innocents must be released and given free and fair trials.

I urge my esteemed friend Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Tibet and be given access to assess, and report to the international community, the events which led to this international outcry for justice. The High Commissioner should be allowed to travel with journalists, and other observers, who may speak truth to power and level the playing field so that, indeed, this episode -- these decades of struggle -- may attain a peaceful resolution. This will help not only Tibet. It will help China.

And China, poised to receive the world during the forthcoming Olympic Games needs to make sure the eyes of the world will see that China has changed, that China is willing to be a responsible partner in international global affairs. Finally, China must stop naming, blaming and verbally abusing one whose life has been devoted to non violence, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a Nobel peace laureate.

(From Desmond Tutu, also a Nobel laureate)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 01:26 PM

"KAMUELA, HI -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/27/08 -- Millisecond Publishing Company, Inc., the world's foremost resource for researching deep family history via its proprietary Family Forest Project, today announces its latest discovery: Elvis Presley, the iconic "King of Rock" was, in fact, himself descended from kings of England.

"Through at least one of the known ancestral lines of Elvis' grandmother, Minnie Mae (Hood) Presley, recorded history shows Elvis Aaron Presley to be a descendant of King Henry the 1st and William the Conqueror," states Bruce H. Harrison, Millisecond's CEO and co-founder of the Family Forest Project
...

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 01:46 PM

"...Many American women, until they get pregnant, have no idea that they are entitled to no paid leave under current law. Indeed, a study from Harvard University last year found that of 168 nations worldwide, the United States is one of only four whose government doesn't require employers to provide paid maternity leave. The others are Lesotho, Papua New Guinea and Swaziland.

--Dana Goldstein
http://blog.prospect.org/mt-tb.cgi/68560

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 27 Mar 08 - 06:52 PM

Lights Out for Earth Hour

March 27, 2008

This Saturday, a global "lights out" event called Earth Hour is being held to call for immediate action on climate change. Nearly 200 cities and millions of people worldwide are expected to participate by turning off home and building lights from 8:00 pm-9:00 pm local time. Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Phoenix are hosting city-wide events, and landmarks including the Golden Gate Bridge, Niagara Falls, the Sears Tower and Wrigley Field will turn off nonessential lights for the hour. Our friends at the World Wildlife Fund, who are organizing this event, expect it to be "among the largest global calls for climate change action ever."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 28 Mar 08 - 12:40 PM

Cubans are to be allowed unrestricted access to mobile phones for the first time, in the latest reform announced under new President Raul Castro.

In a statement in official newspaper Granma, state telecom monopoly ETECSA said it would offer mobile services to the public in the next few days.

Some Cubans already own mobile phones, but they have had to acquire them via a third party, often foreigners.

Cuba's rate of cell phone usage remains among the lowest in Latin America.

Now Cubans will be able to subscribe to pre-paid mobile services under their own names, instead of going through foreigners or in some cases their work places.

However, the new service must be paid for in foreign currency, which will restrict access to wealthier Cubans.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 08 - 11:03 PM

March 29, 2008 Ð Vol.13 No. 1

A RAY OF HOPE IN SOLAR ENERGY.

ItÕs such a big planet. ThereÕs so much going on Ð so much of it frightening. The mainstream daily news is often so grim that it overshadows all the positive news thatÕs never seen or heard - itÕs safe to say - by most people.

If they only knew. ThereÕs more good news out there than bad.

Many want the world to be powered by clean solar energy. Eventually they may get their wish. ThereÕs certainly a continuing flow of good solar news - including here in the beleaguered US of A.

In Massachusetts a small startup company has formed that could revolutionize silicon-based photovoltaic solar electric power. That company, 1366 Technologies, has a new manufacturing process as well as new cell architecture that, says the company, will bring the cost of electricity from multi-crystalline silicon solar in line with that from coal-fired power plants.

With the new architecture, surface texture and metallization of the cell are improved which enhance cell efficiency by 25 percent: from 15-19 percent. While these improvements in cell efficiency and cost lowering improvements in manufacturing are proprietary and understandably not discussed, the company does describe one component of its new cell - its light capturing ribbon.

As small as they may seem, the interconnect wires, that metallic grid visible on most solar cells, block light and hampers the performance and electric output of the cell. 1366 is using a commercially available light-capturing ribbon to reflect 80 percent of sunlight that hits it back to the cell to generate electricity. With solar cells all minor improvements help....

(Green Earth News)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 29 Mar 08 - 11:27 PM

VLADIMIR PUTIN, the Russian president, is to raise plans for a tunnel to link his country with America when he meets his US counterpart, George W Bush, next Sunday.

The 64-mile tunnel would run under the Bering Strait between Chukotka, in the Russian far east, and Alaska; the cost is estimated at £33 billion.

Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club and governor of Chukotka, has invested £80m in the worldÕs largest drill but has denied that it is linked with the development.

Proposals for such a tunnel were approved by Tsar Nicholas II in the early 20th century but were abandoned during the Soviet era. If finally built, the tunnel would allow rail connections between London and New York.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 01:51 PM

ONDON: Scientists have determined that solar flares in the Sun's outer layers that causes quakes, produce strong oscillations throughout the star the same way as the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake.

Christoffer Karoff and Hans Kjeldsen of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, came out with the new theory.

According to a report in Nature News , the possibility that post-quake vibrations also occur in the Sun, was first proposed in the 1970s, but has not been demonstrated until now.

"It's the first observational evidence of this that I'm aware of," said Gunter Houdek, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridge in England.

When Karoff and Kjeldsen studied data from two Sun-watching satellites - the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, they found that whole-star high-frequency oscillations are more prominent when solar flares are more active, implying a connection between them.

These oscillations are thought to be caused by turbulent convection near the solar surface, as hot material rises from deeper down and sinks again as it cools. This motion sets up a kind of noisy background shaking over a wide range of frequencies.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 30 Mar 08 - 02:09 PM

The race to become the first private company capable of launching paying customers into space got more crowded last week as a small but well-respected California firm announced plans to have a two-seat spacecraft ready within two years.

The mini-ship, built by Mojave-based Xcor Aerospace and designed to fly to the edge of space, is expected to be ready for test flights by 2010, around the time Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic hopes to send its much larger spaceship on its maiden voyage.

More than half a dozen other companies -- most, unlike Xcor, bankrolled by wealthy businessmen, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com and Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal -- are building rockets and spacecraft that they hope will capture the imagination of space travelers. Most plan to finish testing their rockets and rocket planes in the next few years, and the Federal Aviation Administration has estimated the market for space tourism to be more than $1 billion a year by 2021. (WaPo)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 31 Mar 08 - 10:26 AM

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

New York TImes

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 04 Apr 08 - 08:54 PM

http://www.kestudies.org/

Knowledge Ecology Studies, Vol 2 (2008)

Cite as: "Life, the Internet, and Everything: An Interview with Bruce
Sterling," KEStudies, Vol. 2 (2008).

Life, the Internet and Everything: An Interview with Bruce Sterling

An intellectual survey of the cognosphere.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 05 Apr 08 - 02:32 AM

Report finds the ... city most vulnerable in the West to attack

By Lyndsey Layton and Ashley Surdin
The Washington Post
updated 12:09 a.m. CT, Sat., April. 5, 2008

Quick: Name the Western U.S. city most vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

Is it Los Angeles, with its crowded roads that make quick escape impossible?

San Francisco and its iconic bridge?

Or Seattle with its Space Needle and busy port?

Try Boise, Idaho, with its, um, ... ... ... potatoes????.

A new study funded largely by the Department of Homeland Security ranked 132 American cities according to vulnerability to terrorist attacks.

Boise was the only city in the western half of the country to make the top 10.

/quote

The researchers assert that their definition of "vulnerable" has nothing to do with whether anyone is interested in attacking a place. It deals only with how easily the town could suffer catastrophic damage.

It's not indicated whether a factor entering into the calculation was "would anyone notice a disaster there."

Apparently, a 9 year old kid with a slingshot could just about take out Boise.(?)

A commentator remarked that Los Angeles has all of the same risk factors as Boise, but "they're used to it so who cares" ... sort of.

(Actually: "San Francisco and Los Angeles got low ratings despite their frequent wildfires and earthquakes because they've grown adept at handling disasters, Piegorsch said.")

See the article for the full story.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 08 - 03:51 PM

The other side of the Fermi paradox

by Michael Huang (writing in The Space Review)

"The Fermi paradox—the estimation that extraterrestrial civilizations are common and would naturally expand into space, contradicting the lack of evidence that they exist anywhere—is the subject of fascinating speculation and guesswork. Every possible fate of extraterrestrial intelligence is proposed and explored. These thought experiments are not only interesting in their own right, but may help evaluate the state of a more terrestrial civilization. What will happen to humankind in the future?

By examining the possible futures of extraterrestrial civilizations, we are simultaneously examining the possible futures of our own civilization. Put in another way, if an alien civilization somewhere had their own version of the Fermi paradox, they would be speculating on our future in the same way that we speculate on theirs..."

See link for rest of analysis. Interesting.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 07 Apr 08 - 07:10 PM

The discovery of a lungless frog-critter in the remote jungles of Borneo helps put time-tags omn major evolutionary branchings.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 09:53 AM

the average earnings of typical workers have failed to keep up with inflation in four of the past five years. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, average incomes in the highest-earning 1 percent of the United States grew 11 percent year-over-year between 2002 and 2006. Incomes in the bottom 99 percent grew by 0.9 percent annually over the period. This year looks bad, too.

This polarization is producing a pattern of income distribution rarely seen outside Africa or Latin America, and unheard of in the United States, at least since the gilded age. In 2006, the 15,000 families in the top 0.01 percent of the income distribution — earning at least $10.7 million apiece — pocketed 3.48 percent of the nation's total income, double their share in 1993.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: bobad
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 09:25 PM

"Based in the Waitakeres, in West Auckland, software developer and artist Vik Olliver is part of a team developing an open-source, self-copying 3D printer. The RepRap (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) printer can replicate and update itself. It can print its own parts, including updates, says Olliver, who is one of the core members of the RepRap team."

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/2F5C3C5D68A380EDCC257423006E71CD

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 08 Apr 08 - 10:03 PM

The RUssians launched a Soyuz rocket into the blue yesterday, carrying into orbit the firt Korean astronaut, a lovely lady from S. Korea.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 08:58 AM

The director of FEMA Chertoff disallows 550,000 legal immigrants from voting in November.

By decideing to not process thefinal papers for all immigrants who have done everything by the book until after the November elections he has successfully purified the upcoming election. These new citizens will just have to wait their turn a little while longer for the Constitution to apply to them.

_________________________

Haitain protests amid mass starvation has attracted the attention of a few reporters that certain Haitians have been seen eating dirt in their last desperate efforts to fight hunger.


_________________________

Charley Rose hosted a panal of 4 who were evenly split on the issue of withdrawl from Iraq. Things are better than we had hoped vs. things are worse than we feared was politely discussed with rhetoric such as "Yes we have lost 12 troops this week alone but the real issue is...."


This will eventually end with the Democrats being blamed for the percieved defeat of US forces.

___________________________

I heard the fighter planes overhead at a bit p[ast midnight 2 weeks ago which is out of the ordinary. I later leaned that ufo sightings in the Capitol area was to blame and not the typical "lost" Cessna.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 11:53 AM

CONCORD, N.H. — Calls from obese patients had increased nearly 25 percent in recent years, and the Fire Department could no longer handle them.

The department's gurneys could not adequately support the patients' weight, and the department had to pay a private ambulance company.

Last fall, the department bought three gurneys that can hold patients weighing up to 600 pounds, about twice the holding capacity of a regular stretcher.

"We had to do something," Acting Chief Tim McGinley said. "It was one of those things where we would try to use the equipment we had and were afraid that you were going to end up hurting somebody, the patients themselves or the staff."

As obesity rates increase around the country, fire departments and emergency medical workers are responding similarly.

"I think everybody is moving to a stretcher that has a higher weight capacity," said Jerry Johnston of Mount Pleasant, Iowa, president of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians. "We have to be able to deal with it and have the equipment to take care of those people appropriately. It's part of our job."

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 12:04 PM

Astronomers look away now. Throughout the Renaissance and the early development of modern science, astronomers refused to accept the existence of meteorites. The idea that stones could fall from space was regarded as superstitious and possibly heretical - surely God would not have created such an untidy universe?

The French Academy of Sciences famously stated that "rocks don't fall from the sky". Reports of fireballs and stones crashing to the ground were dismissed as hearsay and folklore, and the stones were sometimes explained away as "thunderstones" – the result of lightning strikes.
It was not until 1794 that Ernst Chladni, a physicist known mostly for his work on vibration and acoustics, published a book in which he argued that meteorites came from outer space. Chladni's work was driven by a "fall of stones" in 1790 at Barbotan, France, witnessed by three hundred people.

Chladni's book, On the Origin of the Pallas Iron and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena, earned him a great deal of ridicule at the time. He was only vindicated in 1803, when Jean-Baptiste Biot analysed another fall of stones at L'Aigle in France, and found conclusive evidence that they had fallen from the sky

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 12:17 PM

Data proves:

While every small increment in wealth improves health, an economic downturn in fact improves health across the board.

as counterintuitive as it sounds.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 09 Apr 08 - 12:23 PM

Why in the hell were all the plans and blueprints for our Saturn 5 rocket ordered destroyed and never to be built again?

A cogent expanation has never been given.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 08:27 AM

GENEVA (Reuters) - British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.

Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson", which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.

"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 01:59 PM

Lots of fighter jets overhead today.

There is yet to be a report as to why.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 03:00 PM

They're doubling the Tractability Hypno-Aerosol delivery schedule in your area. They keep getting reports of random bursts of independent thought from somewhere in the region, and they need to suppress it fast.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 05:47 PM

April 9, 2008 -- One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists -- say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal.

The online poll from the British science magazine didn't ask readers how they felt about professional athletes using drugs to enhance their physical performance. But when asked how they felt about professional thinkers using drugs to enhance their cognitive performance, nearly 80% said it should be allowed.

While only a fifth of the poll's 1,400 respondents admitted to drug use to improve concentration, nearly two-thirds said they knew of a colleague who did. And if there were "a normal risk of mild side effects," nearly 70% of the scientists said they'd boost their brain power by taking a "cognitive-enhancing drug."

Scientists from all over the world participated in the poll, but 70% of respondents said they were from the U.S.

The most popular drug was Ritalin, used by 62% of responders. Provigil was the drug of choice for 44% of those polled -- suggesting that many of the users take more than one drug. Beta-blockers, such as Inderal, accounted for 15% of the drug use.

Most respondents said they took the drugs to improve concentration or to improve focus for a specific task. Counteracting jet lag was also a popular reason for drug use.

One alarming poll finding was how often respondents used brain-boosting drugs. It was an even split, with about 25% of users saying they took the drugs daily, weekly, monthly, or once a year at most.

When asked how big an effect the drugs had on their mental function, most users gave them a 3 or 4 on a 5-point scale with 1 being "mild" and 5 being "large." On the other hand, more than half of the users said the drugs had side effects they did not like.

(WebMD.com)

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 10 Apr 08 - 07:31 PM

ROCHESTER, Wash. (AP) -- Authorities say a woman has been found living with hundreds of rats and four malnourished snakes in a home outside Rochester.

Thurston County Animal Services Director Susanne Beauregard says an official from the Area Agency on Aging alerted authorities about a month ago, but the woman has been uncooperative. She says the woman calls the rats her friends.

On Wednesday a search warrant was obtained and officers found the floor covered with rat droppings and the carpets soggy with rat urine. Beauregard says two malnourished boa constrictors, a corn snake and a king snake were seized from cages.

Investigators believe the woman bought some rats to feed the boa constrictors, but they got loose and filled the house with their offspring.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 07:06 AM

Ah HA I found out that the fighter jets were scrambled in part to clear air space when they shut down Dulles airport for the flight of 4 large vintage WW II aircraft to the air museum in Virginia.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 11 Apr 08 - 12:52 PM

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Scientists have found a cluster of spruces in the mountains in western Sweden which, at an age of 8,000 years, may be the world's oldest living trees.

The hardy Norway spruces were found perched high on a mountain side where they have remained safe from recent dangers such as logging, but exposed to the harsh weather conditions of the mountain range that separates Norway and Sweden.

Carbon dating of the trees carried out at a laboratory in Miami, Florida, showed the oldest of them first set root about 8,000 years ago, making it the world's oldest known living tree, Umea University Professor Leif Kullman said.

California's "Methuselah" tree, a Great Basin bristlecone pine, is often cited as the world's oldest living tree with a recorded age of between 4,500 and 5,000 years.

Two other spruces, also found in the course of climate change studies in the Swedish county of Dalarna, were shown to be 4,800 and 5,500 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 06:30 PM

It Takes a Cyber Village to Catch an Auto Thief is an awesome story of cyber-citizens knocking out crime using social-connection sites .



A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Apr 08 - 08:01 PM

One of the truely immortal lifeforms on earth is not a tree but a jellyfish.

It can metamorphose in two directions from infant to adult and from adult to infant. IT would be like butterfly turning back into a catapillar.

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 01:09 PM

IN what may become the last trial for war-time crimes by a living Nazi, an 86-year old man is up for prosecution for the murder of unarmed civilians in Holland during the war, a reprisal for Dutch resistance murders of Nazi leaders in Holland. Der Spiegel reports:

"He joined the Waffen-SS, the elite military arm of Hitler's murderous SS organization, in 1940 and served on the Eastern Front for two years before returning to occupied Holland to join the 15-strong hit squad "Special Command Feldmeijer" in 1942.

His job was to help eradicate the Dutch resistance by shooting civilians deemed to be sympathetic to it. "We didn't know the men," Boere told SPEGEL ONLINE last August. "The security service of the SS gave us the name and off we went."

According to Dutch and German court documents, he and a companion shot dead a pharmacist, a bicycle dealer and another civilian.

In the case of the pharmacist Fritz Bicknese, Boere and a companion -- both dressed in civilian clothes -- walked into his drugstore in the town of Breda on July 14, 1944, asked him his name and then opened fire. Bicknese bled to death on the floor.

Boere admits that he was a "fanatic" at the time. "I'm sorry about what happened in 1944. I pray for the dead every night and for everyone who died in the war." He said he only realized after the war that he had believed in "total nonsense." ..."

---

There's the rub. What technique, or approach could dislodge belief in total nonsense without requiring it to run through the complete physical dramatization of violent death given and taken?

Where's the key to sanity, or the formulation that might make it impossible to believe in such fictions?

Along with water and energy, this is one of the big crises of human history, because we have so many more people sharing the bounded space of the planet than we did even a generation ago. So we can no longer afford the luxury of indulging in psycho belief systems.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Amos
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 01:18 PM

The Hunger Crisis Illustrated from Der Spiegel.

I wonder if the driven price of oil is what is driving up the cost of food, and I am moved to wonder if the drivers are natural or artificial, and to what degree human management decisions have been causative vectors.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Random Traces From All Over
From: Donuel
Date: 14 Apr 08 - 01:20 PM

Hey Amos I interviewed a nazi war criminal in a nursing home who feigned more mental disability than he had to avoid possible prosecution.

Today we have Iraqi war criminals wanted by Interpole living in the safe harbor of the US.