August 2011
65 posts
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July 2011
101 posts
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A Real-Life, No-Kidding 1880's Cowboy Talks True →
We are both huge history dorks here at Nullary Sources. So you’ll understand why I couldn’t resist linking to this. Ptak Science Books:
This interview of L.M. Cox was conducted by Elizabeth Doyle in San Angelo (Texas), in 1937 as part of the WPA (Worker’s Project Administration) effort to record American oral history. We know only this of Mr. Cox: “L.M. Cox of Brownwood, Texas was...
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Walter Reed closing after more than 100 years of... →
Wendell Marsh for Reuters:
The U.S. Army’s chief medical facility, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, retired its ceremonial flags on Wednesday, as it closes its historic facility after more than a century of treating wounded American fighters and presidents.
The complex in northwest Washington near the Maryland border shifts most of its operations in August and finally shuts its doors on...
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Earliest bird was not a bird? New fossil muddles... →
Ed Yong of Discover Magazine’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog:
The eleven specimens of Archaeopteryx are some of the most iconic and captivating fossils in existence. The fingers end in claws, the tail is long and bony, and the head – arched back in the throes of death – contains toothed jaws. But the splayed arms are lined with the faint but unmistakeable outlines of feathers. This was...
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“Nemeses” by Jonathan Coulton
New...
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iPlayer for iPad coming to US later this year →
The Guardian’s Apps Blog:
BBC Worldwide is launching its global iPlayer service on Thursday, via an iPad app that will be made available in 11 countries in Western Europe. The US, Canada and Australia will follow later this year, as part of what is intended to be a one-year pilot.
The service will offer a limited amount of content for free, supported by pre-roll ads and sponsorship,...
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Not from the Onion →
Think Progress is reporting that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are now trying to deny the weather. Nutso.
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U.S. man operates on himself with butter knife →
A 63-year-old American man with a hernia plunged a butter knife into his abdomen to try to fix the problem, and later put a lit cigarette in the wound, according to police.
Police found the man lying naked on the porch of his apartment in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale in California Sunday night after his wife called to report his attempt at surgery, Glendale police spokesman Sergeant Tom...
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The Internet Tidal Wave →
Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats. After 10 hours of browsing, I had not seen a single Word .DOC, AVI file, Windows .EXE (other than content viewers), or other Microsoft file format. I did see a great number of Quicktime files. All of the movie studios use them to offer film trailers. Apple benefited by having TCP support before we did and is working hard to build a...
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A pound of flesh: how Cisco's "unmitigated gall"... →
Horrifying story reported by Ian Mulgrew for Ars Technica about legal intimidation and abuse of power:
A week after his arrest and imprisonment, [Peter] Adekeye appeared before British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Arne Silverman, a six-year veteran of the province’s highest trial bench. Adekeye was described as a “sinister” figure of uncertain citizenship on the run from 97...
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Shrine no more: Bones of Hitler aide exhumed →
Reuters:
The remains of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess have been exhumed from a grave in Bavaria after it became a pilgrimage for thousands of right-wing extremists.
A church official in the southern town of Wunsiedel said Thursday the tomb had been razed and its headstone removed after consulting with Hess’s family over how to handle the grave site.
“The bones...
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Ron Paul: DC Miser, Galveston Porkmeister →
Josh Harkinson, writing for Mother Jones:
As a libertarian, Paul says he opposes federal disaster relief, but one of Paul’s staffers told me that his office has shepherded hundreds of FEMA claims, ensured the reconstruction of the county’s seawall, and won federal funding for an extensive beach nourishment project. Indeed, between 1999 and 2009 (the most recent year available),...
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No-hitter later ruled one-hitter, then later... →
From Bloomberg:
[Luis] Mendoza, who pitches for the Omaha Storm Chasers of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against the Memphis Redbirds at AutoZone Park in Memphis, Tennessee, on July 18.
A deep drive by Memphis’s Tyler Greene glanced off the glove of leaping Storm Chaser left-fielder David Lough. The play was ruled a two-base error by the...
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Obama Certifies End of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’... →
The title of this piece by Elisabeth Bumiller for The New York Times is really “Obama Ends ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy,” but that’s not quite accurate, as it won’t end for another sixty days:
President Obama formally certified on Friday that the American military is ready for the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as Pentagon officials said that nearly two...
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New Spider-Man trailer looks really familiar →
Can’t quite place where I’ve seen it before though.
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Norway ripped by Oslo bomb, youth camp shootings →
Nils Myklebost, reporting for the AP:
Terrorism struck long-peaceful Norway on Friday when a bomb ripped open buildings including the prime minister’s office and a man dressed as a police officer opened fire at an island youth camp connected to the ruling party. At least seven people were killed in the blast and a witness said more than 20 died in the shootings on the nation’s...
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GOP presidential candidates join Twitter debate →
Hilarious piece by The Onion:
Six Republican presidential hopefuls traded tweets in the first presidential debate conducted through Twitter on Wednesday, outlining their agendas across the popular social media service.
In brief responses that buzzed across cyberspace, the GOP field challenged President Barack Obama’s approaches to the ongoing debate over the debt ceiling, job creation and...
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Playing the Reagan card on the debt ceiling is... →
The LIEbrul socialismsphere has been getting a lot of play lately of remarks Ronald Reagan made in the 1980s about the debt ceiling. In a letter he sent to members of Congress in 1983 and a radio address he made in 1987, he pushed the necessity of raising the debt ceiling to avoid catastrophe. From the letter:
The full consequences of a default or even the serious prospect of default by the...
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The flood photo that isn’t →
Interesting piece by Myo-ja Ser for the Korea JoongAng Daily that covers photo manipulation, North Korea, and wire service operations:
The Associated Press has withdrawn a photo depicting flooding in North Korea, released recently by the reclusive communist country’s news service, claiming that signs of digital manipulation were detected.
The American news wire agency transmitted the photo to...
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16 killed at Syrian funeral procession →
Borzou Daragahi and Roula Hajjar reporting on an unfolding situation for the Los Angeles Times:
Syrian security forces allegedly killed at least 16 people in Syria’s third-largest city Tuesday amid allegations that the government of President Bashar Assad was attempting to bolster its widely challenged rule by intensifying the country’s sectarian tensions.
The shootings took place...
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Compton hoop star's act of generosity →
Feel-good story as reported by the Los Angeles Wave:
The event — a foul-shooting contest for top academic students at Compton High School — was created with a simple premise: Organizers wanted to show the kids at Compton how to create community spirit with college scholarship money as the incentive.
Allan Geui won in front of a packed house.
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Three months after winning the $40,000 top prize,...
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Police examine bag found in bin near Rebekah... →
Amelia Hill for The Guardian:
Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International.
The Guardian has learned that a bag containing the items was found in an underground car park in the Design Centre at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour development on Monday afternoon.
The car...
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Aaron Swartz charged with data theft →
Swartz co-founded Reddit. Nick Bilton:
In a press release, Ms. Ortiz’s office said that Mr. Swartz broke into a restricted area of M.I.T. and entered a computer wiring closet. Mr. Swartz apparently then accessed the M.I.T. computer network and stole millions of documents from JSTOR.
Demand Progress, which Swartz founded, has a different angle:
“This makes no sense,” said Demand Progress...
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Stuxnet →
10,000 words on Stuxnet from Kim Zetter. Definitive.
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Phoenix Police Arrest Woman for 'Squeezing and... →
Olivia Katrandjian for ABC News:
Phoenix police arrested a 61-year-old Colorado woman for allegedly grabbing the left breast of a Transportation Security Administration officer with both hands and “squeezing and twisting” it at Sky Harbor Airport.
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Police say Yukari Mihamae refused to go through the TSA screening Thursday and began arguing with officers, which led to the alleged...
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News of the World phone-hacking whistleblower... →
The Guardian:
Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.
Tragic.
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End of DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak changed... →
On this day seventy years ago, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak of fifty-six games came to an end. Kostya Kennedy wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated on the game:
The outs are famous now, two of them anyway: the plays by third baseman Ken Keltner, a gold glover had there been such a thing back then. Twice — in the first inning and again in the seventh — Keltner dived to his left,...
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How to Talk to Little Girls →
Lisa Bloom:
Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5 and foundation at age 11 and boob jobs at 17 and Botox at 23. As our cultural imperative for girls to be hot 24/7 has become the new normal, American women have become increasingly unhappy. What’s missing? A life of...
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Rebekah Brooks arrested →
Jill Lawless, writing for the AP:
Brooks’ arrest came only 48 hours before she, Rupert Murdoch and his son James were to be grilled by U.K. lawmakers investigating widespread lawbreaking at Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid. It also raises the possibility that Murdoch’s old friend Les Hinton, who resigned Friday as publisher of The Wall Street Journal, or his...
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First Demonstration of Time Cloaking →
KentuckyFC of The Physics arXiv Blog posted this summary of some optics work out of Cornell University:
Invisibility cloaks are the result of physicists’ newfound ability to distort electromagnetic fields in extreme ways. The idea is steer light around a volume of space so that anything inside this region is essentially invisible.
The effect has generated huge interest. The first...
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Showdown over disclosure rules for Irish priests →
Why not do it the same way as the doctor-patient confidentiality that psychologists have? Wikipedia:
There are important exceptions to confidentiality, namely where it conflicts with the clinician’s duty to warn or duty to protect. This includes instances of suicidal behavior or homicidal plans, child abuse, elder abuse and dependent adult abuse.
Hard to argue with that.
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Animals: more human than we previously thought?
New Scientist reports that Bengal finches may have grammar:
“What we found was unexpected,” says Abe. The birds reacted to only one of the four jumbled versions, called SEQ2, as if they noticed it violated some rule of grammar, whereas the other three remixes didn’t. Almost 90 per cent of the birds tested responded in this way. “This indicates the existence of a...
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Sunflowers to clean radioactive soil in Japan →
From the AFP:
Campaigners in Japan are asking people to grow sunflowers, said to help decontaminate radioactive soil, in response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster that followed March’s massive quake and tsunami.
Volunteers are being asked to grow sunflowers this year, then send the seeds to the stricken area where they will be planted next year to help get rid of radioactive contaminants...
