Due to the continuing economic meltdown brought to us by the shrub and his fellow felons - the repugicans ... the stock market lost $3 trillion in the last three days.
Investors are leaving the market and holding their money in large numbers - but the real rippling effect is the lack of consumer spending and the further shrinking of the Public's willingness to open their wallets due to the meltdown ... and news like today's 410 point fall only serve to increase that unwillingness to part with the do-re-mi on Main Street.
And there are still those that say the repugicans are better in handling the economy than are the Democrats?!
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
The US Should Be Denmark: Tom Friedman on Greening the Economy
From Treehugger:
By this point we’ve all heard it dozens of times: Green jobs will revitalize the economy. And though by most accounts the stats bear out that near-maxim, nonetheless transforming our current brown economy to one a nice healthy shade of green is easier said than done. In a brief interview with The Huffington Post, Tom Friedman outlined the sort of effort required to make this sort of transformation.
The most interesting example he gave, as a model to prove that it can be done, is from Denmark:
Near Future for Green Movement: Speed Bump or Precipice?
From Treehugger:
We're All Living in Internet Time Now
Things sure move fast these days. If we look at the environment, it wasn't so long ago that in the U.S. green wasn't on the mainstream's radar and opinions on global warming were extremely polarized. Then in the past couple years, everybody and their dogs were now into green. European governments were pledging to make huge cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, etc.
But things are changing. Are we on the eve of a new 180 degrees? Read on for more.
Boater goes to prison for fatal collision
A man who drunkenly drove his high-speed powerboat over a smaller boat in a nighttime crash that killed two people was sent to prison Wednesday for 3 1/2 years.
The judge sentenced Robert LaPointe of Medway, Massachusetts, to the maximum five-year term on two counts of aggravated operating under the influence, but the rest of the sentence was suspended.
At the trial in September, a jury deadlocked on the more serious charges of manslaughter; prosecutors say they will not retry him on those counts.
Prosecutors said LaPointe's 32-foot boat, "No Patience," was going 45 mph or faster when it ran over the 14-foot boat and its two occupants during a moonless night on western Maine's Long Lake in August 2007.
Prosecutors told jurors LaPointe had been drinking all day and was operating his boat recklessly.
Terry Raye Trott, 55, of Harrison, and Suzanne Groetzinger, 44, of Berwick, were killed in the collision.
LaPointe and his passenger survived being thrown from their boat, which sped ashore before stopping more than 100 feet in the woods.
A blood sample taken three hours after the crash indicated his blood-alcohol content was 0.11 percent, higher than the limit of 0.08 percent for operating a boat in Maine.
LaPointe testified he drank only three beers that day and was operating his boat prudently.
He maintained that he didn't see the smaller boat because its lights weren't operating.
The judge sentenced Robert LaPointe of Medway, Massachusetts, to the maximum five-year term on two counts of aggravated operating under the influence, but the rest of the sentence was suspended.
At the trial in September, a jury deadlocked on the more serious charges of manslaughter; prosecutors say they will not retry him on those counts.
Prosecutors said LaPointe's 32-foot boat, "No Patience," was going 45 mph or faster when it ran over the 14-foot boat and its two occupants during a moonless night on western Maine's Long Lake in August 2007.
Prosecutors told jurors LaPointe had been drinking all day and was operating his boat recklessly.
Terry Raye Trott, 55, of Harrison, and Suzanne Groetzinger, 44, of Berwick, were killed in the collision.
LaPointe and his passenger survived being thrown from their boat, which sped ashore before stopping more than 100 feet in the woods.
A blood sample taken three hours after the crash indicated his blood-alcohol content was 0.11 percent, higher than the limit of 0.08 percent for operating a boat in Maine.
LaPointe testified he drank only three beers that day and was operating his boat prudently.
He maintained that he didn't see the smaller boat because its lights weren't operating.
UNE Étage en français
This French tyke tells her free-flowing story with gusto!
To be free to imagine ... a dream lost - or is it?!
To be free to imagine ... a dream lost - or is it?!
Armless man steals TV
From the "OK, Where is the 'Candid Camera' hidden at all ready?!" Department:
A man with no arms allegedly stole a 23" TV from a store in Munich, Germany. According to reports, he had helpers strap the TV to his chest.
From the Daily Telegraph:
From the Daily Telegraph:
A police spokesman admitted: "It's hard to believe that the sight of an armless man walking along with a giant TV clamped to his body did not get anyone's attention."
Music helps heart health
Play it LOUD and Play it LONG!
A new study suggests that listening to your favorite music is actually good for your heart. The research from the Maryland School of Medicine supports a previous study showing that laughter is good for vascular health.
From the University of Maryland:
From the University of Maryland:
Music, selected by study participants because it made them feel good and brought them a sense of joy, caused tissue in the inner lining of blood vessels to dilate (or expand) in order to increase blood flow. This healthy response matches what the same researchers found in a 2005 study of laughter. On the other hand, when study volunteers listened to music they perceived as stressful, their blood vessels narrowed, producing a potentially unhealthy response that reduces blood flow...
Compared to baseline, the average upper arm blood vessel diameter increased 26 percent after the joyful music phase, while listening to music that caused anxiety narrowed blood vessels by six percent. “I was impressed with the highly significant differences both before and after listening to joyful music as well as between joyful and anxious music,” says Dr. (Michael) Miller...
Most of the participants in the study selected country music as their favorite to evoke joy, according to Dr. Miller, while they said “heavy metal” music made them feel anxious. “You can’t read into this too much, although you could argue that country music is light, spirited, a lot of love songs.” says Dr. Miller, who enjoys rock, classical, jazz and country music.
Dead man's coffin kills wife
From the "You Know It's Really, Really Bad Day When" Department
A woman died this week when her husband's coffin slammed into the back of her neck during a traffic accident in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Marciana Silva, 67, was riding in the front seat of the hearse when she was hit.
A woman died this week when her husband's coffin slammed into the back of her neck during a traffic accident in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Marciana Silva, 67, was riding in the front seat of the hearse when she was hit.
Right-wing media feeds its post-election anger
Earlier today I posted about the chatter on the forums on the net and all is well save for the wing-nut forums.
Later in the day I came across this piece on just that ... the wing-nut's losing their minds:
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dive shamelessly in, talking about the 'Obama recession' and other partisan lines.
You have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit. At least when he is demonizing Barack Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.
Opening his first post-election rant against the president-elect, Limbaugh launched in with a certain relish. "The game," he told his radio listeners, "has begun."
Sean Hannity, on the other hand, insisted on feigning a post-election detente, telling his Fox News television audience last week, "I want Barack Obama to succeed."
Didn't he think anyone would notice that, just a moment later, he was back parroting the failed campaign argument that Obama is a "mystery"?
"I fear [this] is the guy that has these radical associations 20 years ago," Hannity added, an odd way of demonstrating support for the new commander in chief.
A healthy skepticism is not only the media's right but its obligation. Indeed, commentators at many mainstream outlets -- including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal -- have already argued that Obama's best bet to succeed will be if he hews to a centrist path.
But many on the losing end of last week's election want to hold on to their anger. And there are those in the media -- led by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity -- only too ready to feed that animus, along with their own ratings.
"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen," Limbaugh told his radio audience of 15 million to 20 million on Thursday. "Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression."
Apparently the tanking of the real estate market, record losses in the auto industry, and massive failures in the banking and investment industry have very little to do with our problems. The economic system is collapsing, Rush wants us to know, because it anticipates the tax increases Obama has pledged on capital gains and for the highest income earners.
But maybe that shouldn't be so surprising, because radio's Biggest Big Man also assures us that the Democrat welcomes "economic chaos" because it gives him "greater opportunity for expanded government." In a time when the nation calls out for cool leadership and rational discussion, Limbaugh stirs the caldron, a tendency he proved in a particularly grotesque way last week when he accused Obama's party of plotting a government takeover of 401(k) retirement plans.
"They're going to take your 401(k), put it in the Social Security trust fund, whatever the hell that is," Limbaugh woofed. "Trust fund, my rear end."
A slight problem with Limbaugh's report: Obama and the Democrats have proposed no such thing.
The proposal, in fact, emanated from a single economist, one of many experts testifying to a congressional committee.
The president-elect has thus far shown as much interest in taking over your 401(k) as he has in moving the capital to Nairobi. (If you look hard, you might find that one somewhere out there in the blogosphere, too.)
To broadcast such a report -- so drained of context as to constitute a lie -- would be a shameless act at any time. But Limbaugh needlessly stirred the fears of the millions he holds in his thrall -- making the 401(k) thievery sound like nearly a done deal. Shameless.
Hannity and Limbaugh filleted Obama's selection as chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, in a way that exposed their partisan gamesmanship.
Mainstream newspapers have filed plenty of unflinching accounts of Emanuel's tough, occasionally ruthless tactics as a Democratic congressional leader and onetime operative in the Clinton White House. That assessment of bare-knuckle partisanship Hannity seized on. But it wouldn't do to report another aspect of Emanuel's record -- his Clintonesque bent for the political center.
So the Fox-man simply created a new persona for Emanuel as, you guessed it, "one of the hardest left-wing radicals on the left."
Ever open-minded, Hannity concluded, "I think they're going to overreach, and I think we're going to see the person that I think Barack Obama is. I think he is hard, hard left."
Then, I kid you not, Hannity ended with this pledge: "We'll see. We'll give him an opportunity."
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham apparently didn't get the memo requiring Obama's opponents to sink immediately and mindlessly into rank partisanship.
The South Carolina senator, one of Sen. John McCain's closest allies in his bid for the presidency, praised Obama's selection of Emanuel as "a wise choice." He added that the new chief of staff could be a tough partisan, but was also "honest, direct and candid" and willing to "work to find common ground where it exists."
Perhaps Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of those intent on poisoning the soil before bipartisanship can take root might recall words of wisdom from Brit Hume, a veteran newsman who is close to leaving the Fox anchor desk for semi-retirement.
The problem with the accusations of Obama being "dangerous" and "radical," Hume said on election night, "was that it just didn't fit with the man you saw before your eyes."
Later in the day I came across this piece on just that ... the wing-nut's losing their minds:
Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity dive shamelessly in, talking about the 'Obama recession' and other partisan lines.
By James Rainey
November 9, 2008
November 9, 2008
You have to give Rush Limbaugh a perverse kind of credit. At least when he is demonizing Barack Obama, fabricating Obama policies, blaming Obama for single-handedly causing the recession and the stock market crash, he doesn't pretend to be fair.
Opening his first post-election rant against the president-elect, Limbaugh launched in with a certain relish. "The game," he told his radio listeners, "has begun."
Sean Hannity, on the other hand, insisted on feigning a post-election detente, telling his Fox News television audience last week, "I want Barack Obama to succeed."
Didn't he think anyone would notice that, just a moment later, he was back parroting the failed campaign argument that Obama is a "mystery"?
"I fear [this] is the guy that has these radical associations 20 years ago," Hannity added, an odd way of demonstrating support for the new commander in chief.
A healthy skepticism is not only the media's right but its obligation. Indeed, commentators at many mainstream outlets -- including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal -- have already argued that Obama's best bet to succeed will be if he hews to a centrist path.
But many on the losing end of last week's election want to hold on to their anger. And there are those in the media -- led by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity -- only too ready to feed that animus, along with their own ratings.
"The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen," Limbaugh told his radio audience of 15 million to 20 million on Thursday. "Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression."
Apparently the tanking of the real estate market, record losses in the auto industry, and massive failures in the banking and investment industry have very little to do with our problems. The economic system is collapsing, Rush wants us to know, because it anticipates the tax increases Obama has pledged on capital gains and for the highest income earners.
But maybe that shouldn't be so surprising, because radio's Biggest Big Man also assures us that the Democrat welcomes "economic chaos" because it gives him "greater opportunity for expanded government." In a time when the nation calls out for cool leadership and rational discussion, Limbaugh stirs the caldron, a tendency he proved in a particularly grotesque way last week when he accused Obama's party of plotting a government takeover of 401(k) retirement plans.
"They're going to take your 401(k), put it in the Social Security trust fund, whatever the hell that is," Limbaugh woofed. "Trust fund, my rear end."
A slight problem with Limbaugh's report: Obama and the Democrats have proposed no such thing.
The proposal, in fact, emanated from a single economist, one of many experts testifying to a congressional committee.
The president-elect has thus far shown as much interest in taking over your 401(k) as he has in moving the capital to Nairobi. (If you look hard, you might find that one somewhere out there in the blogosphere, too.)
To broadcast such a report -- so drained of context as to constitute a lie -- would be a shameless act at any time. But Limbaugh needlessly stirred the fears of the millions he holds in his thrall -- making the 401(k) thievery sound like nearly a done deal. Shameless.
Hannity and Limbaugh filleted Obama's selection as chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, in a way that exposed their partisan gamesmanship.
Mainstream newspapers have filed plenty of unflinching accounts of Emanuel's tough, occasionally ruthless tactics as a Democratic congressional leader and onetime operative in the Clinton White House. That assessment of bare-knuckle partisanship Hannity seized on. But it wouldn't do to report another aspect of Emanuel's record -- his Clintonesque bent for the political center.
So the Fox-man simply created a new persona for Emanuel as, you guessed it, "one of the hardest left-wing radicals on the left."
Ever open-minded, Hannity concluded, "I think they're going to overreach, and I think we're going to see the person that I think Barack Obama is. I think he is hard, hard left."
Then, I kid you not, Hannity ended with this pledge: "We'll see. We'll give him an opportunity."
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham apparently didn't get the memo requiring Obama's opponents to sink immediately and mindlessly into rank partisanship.
The South Carolina senator, one of Sen. John McCain's closest allies in his bid for the presidency, praised Obama's selection of Emanuel as "a wise choice." He added that the new chief of staff could be a tough partisan, but was also "honest, direct and candid" and willing to "work to find common ground where it exists."
Perhaps Hannity, Limbaugh and the rest of those intent on poisoning the soil before bipartisanship can take root might recall words of wisdom from Brit Hume, a veteran newsman who is close to leaving the Fox anchor desk for semi-retirement.
The problem with the accusations of Obama being "dangerous" and "radical," Hume said on election night, "was that it just didn't fit with the man you saw before your eyes."
Chatter
Now that the election is over the Chatter on the forums is varied and widening.
Topics such as Global Warming, Sustainable Foods, Alternative Energy, and the like are dominating many of the major open forums.
While on the 'not so major' open forums the chatter centers on ways to make it through tough economic times on a personal level, renewed hope in the future and holiday recipes.
On the progressive forums the chatter is about how can we accomplish the mandate for change we gave the Democrats and the re-iteration that it IS a mandate and NOT a Carte Blanche.
Of course there are forums for a myriad of interests and they too have left the election chatter off now that it is over and returned to their regularly scheduled programming.
The wing-nut forums on the other hand are fuming about actually failing to steal the election because too many voters turned out to override their suppressions, disenfranchisements and electronic vote-switching this time. And they are mad that their 'permanent repugican majority' was only a figment of their imagination like their idiotic notion the the United States was a 'center-right' nation. Here's a clue ... we have always been a 'Left-center' nation from our foundation to today.
Well, that is the Chatter for the day.
Topics such as Global Warming, Sustainable Foods, Alternative Energy, and the like are dominating many of the major open forums.
While on the 'not so major' open forums the chatter centers on ways to make it through tough economic times on a personal level, renewed hope in the future and holiday recipes.
On the progressive forums the chatter is about how can we accomplish the mandate for change we gave the Democrats and the re-iteration that it IS a mandate and NOT a Carte Blanche.
Of course there are forums for a myriad of interests and they too have left the election chatter off now that it is over and returned to their regularly scheduled programming.
The wing-nut forums on the other hand are fuming about actually failing to steal the election because too many voters turned out to override their suppressions, disenfranchisements and electronic vote-switching this time. And they are mad that their 'permanent repugican majority' was only a figment of their imagination like their idiotic notion the the United States was a 'center-right' nation. Here's a clue ... we have always been a 'Left-center' nation from our foundation to today.
Well, that is the Chatter for the day.
Paranoia on the rise
If you think they're out to get you, you're not alone.
Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought.
According to British psychologist Daniel Freeman, nearly one in four Londoners regularly have paranoid thoughts.
Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College and the author of a book on the subject.
Experts say there is a wide spectrum of paranoia, from the dangerous delusions that drive schizophrenics to violence to the irrational fears many people have daily.
Paranoia is defined as the exaggerated or unfounded fear that others are trying to hurt you. That includes thoughts that other people are trying to upset or annoy you, for example, by staring, laughing, or making unfriendly gestures.
Surveys of several thousands of people in Britain, the United States and elsewhere have found that rates of paranoia are slowly rising.
The post-Sept. 11 atmosphere and the war on terror have also increased levels of paranoia in the West, some experts said.
"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters," Penn said.
"That primes people to be more paranoid."
Traumatic events can make people more vulnerable to having paranoid thoughts.
Since the attacks, Penn said Americans have been conditioned to be more vigilant of anything out of the ordinary.
While heightened awareness may be good thing, Penn said it can also lead to false accusations and an atmosphere where strangers are negatively viewed.
That can result in more social isolation, hostility, and possibly even crime.
And it can take a toll on physical health.
More paranoia means more stress, a known risk factor for heart disease and strokes.
Paranoia, once assumed to afflict only schizophrenics, may be a lot more common than previously thought.
According to British psychologist Daniel Freeman, nearly one in four Londoners regularly have paranoid thoughts.
Freeman is a paranoia expert at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College and the author of a book on the subject.
Experts say there is a wide spectrum of paranoia, from the dangerous delusions that drive schizophrenics to violence to the irrational fears many people have daily.
Paranoia is defined as the exaggerated or unfounded fear that others are trying to hurt you. That includes thoughts that other people are trying to upset or annoy you, for example, by staring, laughing, or making unfriendly gestures.
Surveys of several thousands of people in Britain, the United States and elsewhere have found that rates of paranoia are slowly rising.
The post-Sept. 11 atmosphere and the war on terror have also increased levels of paranoia in the West, some experts said.
"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters," Penn said.
"That primes people to be more paranoid."
Traumatic events can make people more vulnerable to having paranoid thoughts.
Since the attacks, Penn said Americans have been conditioned to be more vigilant of anything out of the ordinary.
While heightened awareness may be good thing, Penn said it can also lead to false accusations and an atmosphere where strangers are negatively viewed.
That can result in more social isolation, hostility, and possibly even crime.
And it can take a toll on physical health.
More paranoia means more stress, a known risk factor for heart disease and strokes.
Woman slain as she tried to leave KKK rite
From the "Stupidity should be a crime!" Department:
Then again ... it may be ...
An Oklahoma woman who was lured over the Internet to take part in a Ku Klux Klan initiation was shot and killed after the ritual went awry, and the group tried to cover it up by dumping her body on a rural roadside and setting her belongings aflame.
But the plan failed.
By Tuesday, a local Klan leader sat in jail on a second-degree murder charge, and seven others were charged with trying to help conceal the crime.
"The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind," St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said. (Kind of an understatement, don't you think, there Jack)
The woman, whose identity was not released, was supposed to be initiated near the village of Sun, Louisiana. and then return to her home state to find other members for the white supremacist group, Strain said.
It wasn't clear what rites awaited her at the campsite, but authorities believe the initiation had begun by the time the shooting happened.
Strain said the group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, shot and killed her Sunday night after a fight broke out when she asked to be taken back to town.
Foster was charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond.
Seven others - five men and two women ages 20 to 30 - were charged with obstruction of justice and were held on $500,000 bond at the St. Tammany Parish jail.
All eight of the suspects live in neighboring Washington Parish.
Authorities said some of the suspects tried to destroy evidence by burning the woman's belongings along with other items.
At the campsite, investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes, some emblazoned with patches reading "KKK LIFE MEMBER" or "KKK SECURITY Enforcement."
Strain said the woman arrived in the Slidell, Louisiana, area last week and was met by two people connected to the Klan group and taken to the campsite on the banks of the Pearl River, about 60 miles north of New Orleans.
"We haven't completely sorted out if they finished the initiation," Bonnett said, adding he wasn't aware of any other KKK-related cases during his three years with the department.
"I assume that they had started it, but I don't know if they were finished."
Authorities said the group's members called themselves the "Dixie Brotherhood."
Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, said the Dixie Brotherhood appears to be a small, loosely organized group of people.
"This is not what I would call an established Klan group," he said. "The Klan has a pretty high association with violence. Some of these guys are just crooks, sociopaths."
But the sheriff said the public shouldn't feel endangered."I can't imagine anyone feeling endangered or at risk by any one of these kooks," Strain said.
Then again ... it may be ...
An Oklahoma woman who was lured over the Internet to take part in a Ku Klux Klan initiation was shot and killed after the ritual went awry, and the group tried to cover it up by dumping her body on a rural roadside and setting her belongings aflame.
But the plan failed.
By Tuesday, a local Klan leader sat in jail on a second-degree murder charge, and seven others were charged with trying to help conceal the crime.
"The IQ level of this group is not impressive, to be kind," St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain said. (Kind of an understatement, don't you think, there Jack)
The woman, whose identity was not released, was supposed to be initiated near the village of Sun, Louisiana. and then return to her home state to find other members for the white supremacist group, Strain said.
It wasn't clear what rites awaited her at the campsite, but authorities believe the initiation had begun by the time the shooting happened.
Strain said the group's leader, Raymond "Chuck" Foster, 44, shot and killed her Sunday night after a fight broke out when she asked to be taken back to town.
Foster was charged with second-degree murder and is being held without bond.
Seven others - five men and two women ages 20 to 30 - were charged with obstruction of justice and were held on $500,000 bond at the St. Tammany Parish jail.
All eight of the suspects live in neighboring Washington Parish.
Authorities said some of the suspects tried to destroy evidence by burning the woman's belongings along with other items.
At the campsite, investigators found weapons, several flags and six Klan robes, some emblazoned with patches reading "KKK LIFE MEMBER" or "KKK SECURITY Enforcement."
Strain said the woman arrived in the Slidell, Louisiana, area last week and was met by two people connected to the Klan group and taken to the campsite on the banks of the Pearl River, about 60 miles north of New Orleans.
"We haven't completely sorted out if they finished the initiation," Bonnett said, adding he wasn't aware of any other KKK-related cases during his three years with the department.
"I assume that they had started it, but I don't know if they were finished."
Authorities said the group's members called themselves the "Dixie Brotherhood."
Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, said the Dixie Brotherhood appears to be a small, loosely organized group of people.
"This is not what I would call an established Klan group," he said. "The Klan has a pretty high association with violence. Some of these guys are just crooks, sociopaths."
But the sheriff said the public shouldn't feel endangered."I can't imagine anyone feeling endangered or at risk by any one of these kooks," Strain said.
*****
And these are the type who claim to be REAL Americans!!!???
In what fantasyland ... they are hard-pressed to be referred to a humans in the real world!
Of course, with them offing one of their own ...
In what fantasyland ... they are hard-pressed to be referred to a humans in the real world!
Of course, with them offing one of their own ...
Just call me 'Swifty'
How fast is the new supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory?
If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.
That makes the $100 million computer, nicknamed "Jaguar" by scientists, the fastest in the world for unclassified scientific research.
At more than 1 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, it is about 55,000 times faster than your typical PC.
Only one other supercomputer is faster, and it's devoted to classified research on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Global climate change, space matter that can't be seen, and alternative energy - everything from improved gasoline combustion to fusion - are some of the subjects Jaguar will be used to research.
If everyone in the world performed one mathematical calculation per second, it would take 650 years to do what this machine can do in one day.
That makes the $100 million computer, nicknamed "Jaguar" by scientists, the fastest in the world for unclassified scientific research.
At more than 1 quadrillion mathematical calculations per second, it is about 55,000 times faster than your typical PC.
Only one other supercomputer is faster, and it's devoted to classified research on nuclear weapons at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Global climate change, space matter that can't be seen, and alternative energy - everything from improved gasoline combustion to fusion - are some of the subjects Jaguar will be used to research.
Flying Car
The Times Online has an article about a fan-poweerd flying car. The British inventor is going to fly it from London to Timbuktu.
“This thing will launch itself without any pilot input,” says Cardozo. “You just open it up and it goes. The more power you put on, the faster you go until you come off the ground [at 35mph]. The wing will basically lock above you [once airborne] and stay there, without weaving, at speeds of up to 80mph.”Fully road-legal - the car passed the government’s single vehicle approval test last month - and designed to run on bioethanol, Cardozo’s Skycar is powered by a modified 140bhp Yamaha R1 superbike engine with a lightweight automatic CVT (continuously variable transmission) gear-box from a snowmobile. It boasts Ferrari-beating acceleration on land, an air speed of up to 80mph and can swap between road and flight modes in minutes.
Migraine Might Lower Breast Cancer Risk
Back on November 7, 2008 I posted a blurb about hearing something about migraines and lower breast cancer risk as I walked by a TV set that was on but did not know any anything more than that so I did some sleuthing and found this piece on the matter ...
Women who experience migraines may actually have a 30 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer, say researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
Levels of estrogen may be the key to this association: High levels of estrogen are associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, but women who suffer migraines appear to have low levels of the hormone, which may account for the reduction in breast cancer risk, the researchers explained.
"Women who suffer migraines suffer them either when they have fluctuations in their hormone levels or particularly low levels of hormones," said lead research epidemiologist Dr. Christopher I. Li.
Li noted that during pregnancy, when estrogen levels are high, migraines often stop. "Among migraine sufferers who reach the third trimester, 80 percent of them will not suffer any migraines," he said.
The report was published in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
Not everyone is convinced that Li's theory is correct.
Dr. Ellen Drexler, associate director of the Division of Neurology at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., doesn't think that estrogen levels explain the association between breast cancer risk and migraine.
"Migraine brains are more sensitive to many exogenous and endogenous factors, of which falling estrogen levels are an important one for many female migraineurs," Drexler said. "However, female migraineurs are not known to have consistently lower levels of estrogen than are non-migraineurs."
It is not clear that the lower incidence of breast cancer in women with migraines proves that the reason is lower estrogen levels, Drexler said.
"Genetic factors may also be playing a role, as well as exogenous factors such as medication use, smoking and alcohol use, which may vary between migraineurs and non-migraineurs," Drexler said. "In summary, an interesting study, but more work needs to be done to conclude that it has furthered our understanding of the biology of migraine or of breast cancer."
For the study, Li's team collected data on 3,412 postmenopausal women. Among these women, 1,938 had been diagnosed with breast cancer, and 1,474 had no history of the disease. The researcher also gathered information about migraines from the women.
The researchers found that women who suffered from migraines had a 30 percent lower risk of developing breast cancer compared with women with no history of migraine.
Li noted that more work needs to be done to nail down the reason for the apparent protective effect of migraine for breast cancer. "Advancing our understanding of the mechanisms of migraine may improve our understanding of how we could potentially reduce breast cancer risk," he said.
Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, thinks the finding is interesting, but has no clinical implications.
"There is a decreased risk for women with migraines to develop breast cancer," Lichtenfeld said. "But in practical implications -- what should a woman do differently -- there is no action a woman or her health-care professional would take as a result of this report."
Migraine expert Dr. Stephen Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, said the findings are flawed, because using self-reported migraine data is not sufficient to determine whether the women actually suffered migraine or not.
"This study doesn't prove anything," Silberstein said. "It's not that I don't believe the results, it's that the results are not believable."
More information is available at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Football FINALLY makes sense
A guy took his blond girlfriend to her first football game.
They had great seats right behind their team's bench.
After the game, he asked her how she liked the experience.
"Oh, I really liked it," she replied, "especially the tight pants and all the big muscles."
"I just couldn't understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents!"
Dumbfounded, her date asked, "What do you mean?"
"Well ... they flipped a coin ... one team got it and then for the rest of the game all they kept screaming was 'Get the quarterback! Get the quarterback!' ... I'm like ... Helloooooo ... it's only 25 cents!!!!"
They had great seats right behind their team's bench.
After the game, he asked her how she liked the experience.
"Oh, I really liked it," she replied, "especially the tight pants and all the big muscles."
"I just couldn't understand why they were killing each other over 25 cents!"
Dumbfounded, her date asked, "What do you mean?"
"Well ... they flipped a coin ... one team got it and then for the rest of the game all they kept screaming was 'Get the quarterback! Get the quarterback!' ... I'm like ... Helloooooo ... it's only 25 cents!!!!"
When the excrement hit the rotary-oscillator
... and other PC expressions ...
I will add some of the more colorful PC phrase used to replace some of the colorful non-PC phrases over time ... see if you can translate them.
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