book through Tuesday, NYC for free!

MegaBus yesterday charged into the ultracheap bus wars with an offer hard to beat - a free ride to the Big Apple.

[MegaBus offers at least one seat per bus on its Boston-to-New York route for $1. Other seats cost up to $14 each way.]

But through Tuesday, MegaBus is offering all seats for free, with a small booking fee.

Homeless woman lived undetected in man's closet for a year

TOKYO (AP) - A homeless woman who sneaked into a man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man's closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.

The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.

One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home Thursday after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed.

"We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," Itakura said. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."

The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked.

She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and even took showers, Itakura said, calling the woman "neat and clean."

On the Comcast HaXors

kevin poulsen for wired.
The computer attackers who took down Comcast's homepage and webmail service for more than five hours Thursday say they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.
In an hour-long telephone conference call with Threat Level, the hackers known as "Defiant" and "EBK" expressed astonishment over the attention their DNS hijacking has garnered. In the call, the pair bounded freely between jubilant excitement over the impact of their attack, and fatalism that they would soon be arrested for it.

"The situation has kind of blown up here, a lot bigger than I thought it would," says Defiant, a 19-year-old man whose first name is James. "I wish I was a minor right now because this is going to be really bad."
The two hackers are members of the underground group Kryogeniks. The interview was arranged by Mike "Virus" Neives, an 18-year-old New Yorker who pleaded guilty as a minor last year to hacking AOL. Neives, who was on the call, is also a member of Kryogeniks, though he and his compatriots say he's stopped hacking.
Neives vouched for the identities of the hackers. Threat Level also confirmed Defiant's identity over AOL instant messenger, on a handle that's known to belong to Defiant.
Neither hacker would identify their full names or locations. Defiant's MySpace profile lists him in Cashville, Tennessee, but he says that's incorrect. His girlfriend lists herself in New York. Threat Level expects both hackers' names and locations will emerge soon.
The hackers say the attack began Tuesday, when the pair used a combination of social engineering and a technical hack to get into Comcast's domain management console at Network Solutions. They declined to detail their technique, but said it relied on a flaw at the Virginia-based domain registrar.
Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade disputes the hackers' account. "We now know that it was nothing on our end," she says. "There was no breach in our system or social engineering situation on our end."
However they got in, the intrusion gave the pair control of over 200 domain names owned by Comcast. They changed the contact information for one of them, Comcast.net, to Defiant's e-mail address; for the street address, they used the "Dildo Room" at "69 Dick Tard Lane."
Comcast, they said, noticed the administrative transfer and wrested back control, forcing the hackers to repeat the exploit to regain ownership of the domain. Then, they say, they contacted Comcast's original technical contact at his home number to tell him what they'd done.
When the Comcast manager scoffed at their claim and hung up on them, 18-year-old EBK decided to take the more drastic measure of redirecting the site's traffic to servers under their control. (Comcast would neither confirm nor deny the warning phone call.)
"If he wasn't such a prick, he could have avoided all of that," says EBK. "I wasn't even really thinking. Plus, I'm just so mad at Comcast. I'm tired of their shitty service."
"They called me back five minutes later and said, 'We got Comcast'," recalls Neives.
The defacement message was short and simple: "KRYOGENICS Defiant and EBK RoXed Comcast," it read. "sHouTz to VIRUS Warlock elul21 coll1er seven."

They cut down my tree.

Today is a sad day.
Now instead of watching the seasons change out my window, I just live in....

a city.

Sharon Stone is a twat.

from my fave industry mag, Variety.
China responds to Stone comments
BEIJING -- Thesp Sharon Stone's suggestion that the Chinese earthquake which killed at least 70,000 people was the result of bad karma has prompted outrage in China, where relief efforts are still ongoing for the millions made homeless by the quake, and is facing a boycott of her movies.
Stone made her comments at Cannes, linking the recent disaster to China's treatment of Tibetans during anti-Chinese riots in March.

"All these earthquakes and stuff happened and I thought, "Is that karma?" When you are not nice, bad things happen to you. I'm not happy about how the Chinese are treating the Tibetans, I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. They're not being very nice to the Dali Lama, who's a good friend of mine," she said.

She also said how she cried when she heard of the quake and hoped to help the victims, but these remarks have received less attention in China than her karma comments.

Stone appeared at the Shanghai Film Festival last year and was well-received for her comments about life and love, as well as her praise for China's ancient civilization.

The timing of the "Basic Instinct" star's comments is poor, as China continued to mourn its dead following the 7.9-magnitude quake on May 12.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who numbers Richard Gere and others among his friends in Hollywood, has praised the Chinese response to the quake, prayed for the victims and called for a suspension of demonstrations against Chinese rule as relief efforts continue.

"This actress does not deserve our attention. The best way is to ignore her. I will never watch her films in future," said thesp Liu Wei, while fellow actor Lu Qilong accused Stone of lacking respect.

"Sharon Stone's remarks made all Chinese people and the world shocked and angry. She does not respect the Chinese people, as well as people's lives. Sichuan's earthquake affects everyone's heart," said Lu.

"The earthquake is not only China's disaster, but a disaster for all of mankind. Sharon Stone's performance shows that not only does she lack love, but she lacks humanity? How could she say such things!" said thesp Tong Dawei.

red bull makes bulls of teens. [no shit]

Super-caffeinated energy drinks, with names like Red Bull, Monster, Full Throttle and Amp, have surged in popularity in the past decade. About a third of 12- to 24-year-olds say they regularly down energy drinks, which account for more than $3 billion in annual sales in the United States.

The trend has been the source of growing concern among health researchers and school officials. Around the country, the drinks have been linked with reports of nausea, abnormal heart rhythms and emergency room visits.

In Colorado Springs, several high school students last year became ill after drinking Spike Shooter, a high caffeine drink, prompting the principal to ban the beverages. In March, four middle school students in Broward County, Florida, went to the emergency room with heart palpitations and sweating after drinking the energy beverage Redline. In Tigard, Oregon, teachers this month sent parents e-mail alerting them that students who brought energy drinks to school were "literally drunk on a caffeine buzz or falling off a caffeine crash."

New research suggests the drinks are associated with a health issue far more worrisome than the jittery effects of caffeine — risk taking.

In March, The Journal of American College Health published a report on the link between energy drinks, athletics and risky behavior. The study's author, Kathleen Miller, an addiction researcher at the University of Buffalo, says it suggests that high consumption of energy drinks is associated with "toxic jock" behavior, a constellation of risky and aggressive behaviors including unprotected sex, substance abuse and violence.

A quick reminder: CAFFEINE IS A DRUG.
A DRUG!!!!!
Get over it. Dad's gonna see this, yell at you, smack your ass a bit and go have a cup of coffee.

A whole new way to crap yourself.

Four words you don’t want to hear in space:
“The toilet is broken.”

The crew aboard the International Space Station is working on a problem with the system for collecting solid and liquid waste, which is a trickier proposition without gravity than it is on the Earth. Space toilets use jets of fan-propelled air to guide waste into the proper container.

A NASA status report noted that last week, while using the toilet system in the Russian-built service module, “the crew heard a loud noise and the fan stopped working.” The solid waste collector is functioning properly, but the system for collecting liquid waste was not.

The crew tried replacing one device, an air/water separator, and then a filter, but nothing seemed to bring the toilet back to full operation. Russian mission control told the crew — Russian Cosmonauts Sergey Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, and Garrett Reisman, a NASA astronaut, to use the toilet on the Soyuz capsule that is attached to the station as a lifeboat. But that system has very limited capacity, and so repairing the system has become an increasingly urgent issue.

As so often happens when there’s a plumbing problem, house guests are on the way: the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch on Saturday, with seven astronauts aboard. The shuttle, however, has its own toilet.

Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters, a spokeswoman for NASA, said that mission managers are working on plans to carry replacement toilet parts to the station. In the mean time, she said a temporary work-around has been put in place: “they’re bypassing the troublesome hardware” for urine collection with a “special receptacle” that has been attached to the toilet, she said.

Of all the technological achievements of space travel, none has captured the popular imagination as much as bathroom physics. Mike Mullane, a former astronaut and professional speaker, said questions about the operations of space toilets are the most popular questions from audiences by “more than ten to one” over such questions as “have I seen any aliens” and “did we fake the moon landing.”

This is a me post.

Today, I stop shunning the title w00k which some of you have rudely given me.
Due to a series of coincidences, I found myself looking like QUEEN w00k today.
It's a beautiful day, so I wear my flower child skirt. And what flower child would not put a braid crown atop her head?
It's a beautiful day, so I take my umbrella out of my bag.

I end up getting out of class and proceeding to plow through the silly students hovering under the entrance. I proceed to get literally soaked through on my walk ACROSS comm ave.
Get on train.
Smiling.
Rain is cleansing. It's rejuvenating. And lets be honest, it's just fun.

Get off train. Only 50% of the sky is dropping at once.
Walk home, barefoot. Through puddles. Across streets. Liang laughed at me.
Still smiling.
of course the moment I turned onto my alley, the rain stopped.
don't care.
I love rain.

Lindbergh tries to play Gd.

Forget aviation hero. On the side, Lindbergh was a Dr Frankenstein figure, who used his mechanical genius to explore the possibility of conquering death - but only for the select few who were considered "worthy" of living forever.

"Beating death was something he thought about his entire life", says David M Friedman, American author of the new book The Immortalists. "Even as a small child, he couldn't accept that people had to die. He would ask: 'Why do you have to die to get to heaven?'"

In the 1930s, after his historic flight over the Atlantic, Lindbergh hooked up with Alexis Carrel, a brilliant surgeon born in France but who worked in a laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute in Manhattan. Carrel - who was a mystic as well as a scientist - had already won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the transplantation of blood vessels. But his real dream was a future in which the human body would become, in Friedman's words, "a machine with constantly reparable or replaceable parts".

This is where Lindbergh entered the frame. Carrel hoped that his own scientific nous combined with Lindbergh's machine-making proficiency (Lindbergh had, after all, already helped design a plane that flew non-stop to Paris) would make his fantasy about immortal machine-enabled human beings a reality.

At the Rockefeller lab, Lindbergh and Carrel - almost like a real-life Jekyll and Hyde double act - made some extraordinary breakthroughs.

Lindbergh created something that Carrel's team had singularly failed to: a perfusion pump that could keep a human organ alive outside of the body. It was called the "Model T" pump. In later years, Lindbergh's pump was further developed by others, eventually leading to the construction of the first heart-lung machine.

"Some people, even academics and science students, are still shocked when they hear about the contribution that the aviator Lindbergh made to developing life-saving cardiac machinery", says Friedman.

Carrel was a eugenicist with fascistic leanings. He believed the world was split into superior and inferior beings, and hoped that science would allow the superior - which included himself and Lindbergh, of course - to dominate and eventually weed out the inferiors.
He thought the planet was "encumbered" with people who "should be dead", including "the weak, the diseased, and the fools". Something like Lindbergh's pump was not intended to help the many, but the few.

"I wouldn't say Lindbergh was the philosophical partner of Himmler or Hitler," says Friedman. "But yes, he certainly admired the order, science and technology of Nazi Germany - and the idea of creating an ethnically pure race." (BBC News)

Hot Life-Forms Found a Mile Under Seafloor

Life-forms have been found thriving a mile beneath the seafloor in hot sediments, a new study says.

The finding doubles the maximum known depth for organisms under the ocean bottom—and may be an encouraging sign for the search for life on other planets.

At 140 to 212 degrees F, the microscopic life forms are probably also the hottest life-forms yet found in seafloor sediments, according to study co-author R. John Parkes, a microbiologist at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom.

The scientists examined core samples of sediments in the North Atlantic Ocean and found microbes known as prokaryotes.

Many of the prokaryotes share characteristics in common with "extremophiles," which live in hot springs, both under the sea and in areas such as Yellowstone National Park.

The microbes appear to make their livings by metabolizing methane and other hydrocarbons created as the Earth's interior heat warms organic material in the sediments, Parkes said.

"That's what we think they're using as an energy source."

The organisms do not appear simply to have been dormant microbes trapped in the sediments, Parkes added, but instead appeared to be thriving.

The discovery supports predictions that as much as 70 percent of the Earth's prokaryotes may live in seabed sediments, some of which can be several miles thick.
All told, Parkes said, these prokaryotes could amount to 10 to 30 percent of the world's total living matter.
(NTNL GEOGRAPHIC)

Diet Coke to *stop* causing cancer

Coca-Cola is phasing out a controversial additive that has been linked to damage to DNA and hyperactivity in children.
Sodium benzoate, soda's best friend, is one of those terms on the can I am familiar with, but know little about. It is used to stop fizzy drinks going moldy.

Coca-Cola said it had begun withdrawing the additive from Diet Coke in January in response to consumer demand for more natural products. By the end of the year no can or bottle will contain the 'benz.

Coke plans to remove it from other drinks as well, but as of yet has failed to find an acceptable replacement in those sodas that actually have juice (Fanta, Dr Pepper, Sprite, etc.)

While sodium benzoate occurs naturally in some fruits, it is used in greater strengths by the soft drinks industry.

Research by Peter Piper, a professor of molecular biology at Sheffield University, found that the additive could switch off parts of DNA; that could be linked to cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson's disease.
"The Man" (in this case, british govt) argues that while sodium benzoate has been shown to be harmful to yeast cells, human cells are stronger...thus disproving the importance of the study.

Research by Southampton University found that sodium benzoate was one of seven additives - the six others are food colours - hat can lead to hyperactivity in children.
The Food Standards Agency has called for the six colours to be withdrawn from products but not sodium benzoate.

If you jumped off a bridge, turns out I would , too.

We all know the the book, the space, etc. have changed hte way we network.
But evidence is mounting that "traditional" social networks are also super important. (You know, going to the mall with the girls. Remember that type of network?)

Enter new research. From Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at the Harvard Medical School, and James H. Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego.
They found in a study last summer that obesity grows in groups. Like the plague. Nobody cant say yes to cheetos. Esp. when Bobby, Timmy, and Susie are crunching.
Now the duo has taken on another of my fave vices: smoking.
NEJM last week published a Christakis-Fowler slice of genius: those who smoke together, quit together. No more party packs, no more stress sticks, nada.
Turns out, whole networks of people - even those weird "because you know x and y, perhaps you know z" strangers are included.

"What all these studies do is force us to start to kind of rethink our mental model of how we behave," said Duncan Watts, a Columbia University sociologist. "Public policy in general treats people as if they are sort of atomized individuals and puts policies in place to try to get them to stop smoking, eat right, start exercising or make better decisions about retirement, et cetera. What we see in this research is that we are missing a lot of what is happening if we think only that way."

The research focused on a group from Framingham.
On the influences of quasi-friends, and even strangers: "It could be your co-worker's spouse's friend or your brother's spouse's co-worker or a friend of a friend of a friend. The point is, your behavior depends on people you don't even know," Christakis said. "Your actions are partially affected by the actions of people who are beyond your social horizon" -- but in the broader network.

Star Wars comes to Holyhead as Darth Vader strikes back in Jedi's back garden

By Tom Chivers, for Telegraph (of london)
A Star Wars fan got closer to his idols than he would perhaps have liked when he was attacked in his garden by Darth Vader.

Jedi Master Jonba Hehol - known to family and friends as Barney Jones, 36, of Holyhead - was giving a TV interview in his back garden for a documentary when a man, dressed in a black bin-bag and wearing Darth Vader's trademark shiny black helmet, leapt over his garden fence.

Wielding a metal crutch - his lightsaber presumably being in for repairs - the Sith Lord proceeded to lay about his opponent, whose Jedi powers proved inadequate for the task of defending himself.

After besting Master Hehol in single combat, Vader, who The Sun reports was under the influence of alcohol, went on to assault the camera crew and a hairdresser.

Master Hehol, a hairdresser, who founded the first-ever British Jedi Church in loving homage to the world-famous science fiction franchise with his brother Daniel, was unimpressed by the revenge of the Sith.

"This wasn't a joke. This was serious," he said.

Police are investigating a claim of assault.

The Jedi "religion" was born as a joke in the 2001 census, when almost 400,000 people claimed to believe in the Jedi faith.

Based on the teachings of Yoda, the crinkly green dwarf of the films, the "church" has a branch in Florida and plans to open another in the Philippines.

good lord kids are stupid these days.

LONDON(Reuters) - It sounds like every student's dream -- turning over an exam paper and finding the answers on the back.

But that was what happened to 12,000 lucky teenagers when they sat their GCSE music exam last week.

The OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA) examination board admitted on Thursday that, because of a "printing error", papers sent to schools had answers to questions on the back page.

"All exam papers have a copyright statement dealing with source material on the back page," an OCR spokeswoman said. "This one in particular had more detail than is usual in a music paper."

The exam board said only 5 percent of the overall marks on the paper were possibly affected and students would not have to do a re-sit as most pupils seemed to have been unaware of their good fortune.

"It is unlikely that any of the 12,000 students sitting the examination would have recognised the value of the information ... and subsequently used it," said the spokeswoman, adding there had been just 20 queries from teachers.

"OCR is confident that the procedures put in place will ensure that all candidates get the grades that their hard work deserves."

2 really interesting [opposing?] looks into prostitution

http://lettersfromjohns.blogspot.com
http://lettersfromworkinggirls.blogspot.com

sussannah breslin is a porn/sex goddess, and well known journalist

Wild Boars ruin car theft (theif?)

An 18-year-old in Schwerin, Germany, decided to take a car. He decided to drive it around. The police decided to follow.
Taking his cues from Cops, the kid drove into a field, ditched the car, and ran into the woods.

The plot twist: he was heard screaming for help. Police rushed to his aid - he was being attacked by a herd of *angry* wild boars.

Arrested.
FAIL.

10 toys that made you gay

from liquidgeneration.com
its just too good.

your mom jokes never get old.

OH. NO. WINO.

life today

i think i want to move to ny.
yes, ny.

clinton v. mccain frat style

from bbc.
Picture the scene: August 2004, a congressional delegation from the US is visiting the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
The group includes two future presidential hopefuls - Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
After a long day of official meetings, the senators want to relax.
And what better way to do that, in the Baltics at least, than with a few good shots of vodka?
One thing leads to another and a contest develops - which Senator Clinton wins.
At least, that is according to Terry McAuliffe, chair of Mrs Clinton's presidential campaign.

Rumour or fact?
Somebody pointed me in the direction of Molly Malone's Irish Bar.
Was it inside this establishment that the fabled contest took place?
It seemed like a highly unlikely venue to me, but worth a try.
Inside I found Johan, an off-duty barman, sipping apple vodka with lime and ginger ale.
"I've heard they had a drinking match or something," he told me.
"And that at the end of the day, John McCain said about Hillary Clinton that she could really hold her drink."
It was a start but I needed an eyewitness, and Johan could not tell me where this fabled contest might have taken place.
It was becoming clear to me that I was not going to find what I was looking for by methodically trawling the many bars and restaurants of Tallinn.

Back in the centre of town, right opposite the ministry building, there is a restaurant called Gloria.
I had heard this place mentioned as a possible venue for a senatorial drinking contest.
So, I went to see the chef and owner, Dimitri Demjanov.
The place was certainly plush. I was ushered into a secluded booth. Behind a velvet curtain, the table was set for two. A waitress brought a plate of Baltic herring.
"Should I wait for Mr Demjanov?" I asked. I was told to go ahead - he would be with me shortly.
I was finally summoned downstairs.
Mr Demjanov, in a vast chef's hat, was jovial but firm: "I don't give information about my big customers," he told me.
Something told me I was very close. I had to give this my best shot.
"If I ask you a series of very simple questions, you could give me a yes or no answer," I suggested.
He did not object.
"So," I began, "in August 2004, did John McCain and Hillary Clinton have dinner in your restaurant?"
"Yes," came the one-word answer. Was there any vodka drunk? The answer, again, was: "Yes".
I wanted to know how much. The chef said he could not remember. I jogged his memory, and it turned out they had downed four shots - each.
And then the crucial question: who won?
"Hillary won," he said, without hesitation.
After four shots, he told me, she was still standing.
So what about John McCain?
There was a long pause. Mr Demjanov thought hard, and then concluded that Mr McCain had also remained standing.
This raised more questions than it answered: by what criteria had Mrs Clinton won the contest?
But Mr Demjanov had had enough. He laughed, but would divulge nothing more.

bolting to nyc.

I overhear the man in the seats next to mine talking on his cell phone. “Yo this bus is tight. It smells like a new car. And there's power things on the seats. Yeah. Bolt bus.”
Bolt Bus is a company that advertises itself. A bus that is new, clean, has power and wireless internet. In a time where busses are struggling to compete with cheap express planes and acela, the old model just can’t keep up.
Enter bolt bus, dream of yuppies and millenials alike. A place where you can sit, throw on your headphones, and scour the internet for crappy youtube videos and juicy celebrity gossip. No old man sitting next to you yapping your ear off about the Lord – Bolt is still new enough that on my 530 Weds bus to NY (from Boston) I’m one of only 14 passengers….theoretically allotting each of us 3.6 seats---though I choose to use only 2.
I proceeded to watch Skins for hours. Amazing.

"Snake Man" Slithers out of Prison Cell

VIENNA (Reuters) - A man has escaped from his Austrian jail cell by squeezing through a food hatch in the door, police said on Wednesday.

The 19-year old Kosovan, who weighed less than 121 pounds, was being held at the prison in Linz for entering the country illegally, police spokesman Alexander Niederwimmer told APA news agency.

How he got through two further doors or possibly over the prison wall is being investigated, said Niederwimmer, calling the escapee "a snake man."

that's it, the fat lady's singing.

News Alert: John Edwards to Endorse Barack Obama
From: NYTimes.com News Alert (nytdirect@nytimes.com)

horoscope says what?

You can float even further out today than usual, so be careful or you may forget about the commitments you made. You won't be allowed to leave your responsibilities behind, nor can you take them too seriously, either. Practice walking in two worlds, with one foot grounded in the mundane while the other is exploring the outer reaches of your fantasies.

and with that, I go to NY.

wsj outlines online stalking

not just googling anymore!

Zaba Inc.'s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.'s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.'s Wink.com are "people-search engines" that specialize in digging up personal pages, such as social-networking profiles, buried deep in the Web. Spokeo.com is a search site operated by Spokeo Inc., a startup that lets users see what their friends are doing on other Web sites. Zillow Inc.'s Zillow.com estimates the value of people's homes, while the Huffington Post's Fundrace feature tracks their campaign donations. Jigsaw Data Corp.'s Jigsaw.com, meanwhile, lets people share details with each other from business cards they've collected -- a sort of gray market for Rolodex data.

12 ways to monetize your body

a handy link.
make money selling reversible bodily "things..."

platelete donation center, here i come!

just another reason to love Gravel...

the soldja boy!



fave mg quote of all time:
mg: "give me your arm"
me: "oh, do you need an escort?"
mg: "no, I just wanted to point out how spectacular my wife's legs are!"

10-year-old scholar takes Calif. college by storm

DOWNEY, Calif. (AP) - With the end of another school year approaching, college sophomore Moshe Kai Cavalin is cramming for final exams in classes such as advanced mathematics, foreign languages and music.

But Cavalin is only 10 years old. And at 4-foot-7, his shoes don't quite touch the floor as he puts down a schoolbook and swivels around in his chair to greet a visitor.

"I'm studying statistics," says the alternately precocious and shy Cavalin, his textbook lying open on the living room desk of his parents' apartment in this quiet suburb east of Los Angeles.

Within a year, if he keeps up his grades and completes the rest of his requirements, he hopes to transfer from his two-year program at East Los Angeles College to a prestigious four-year school and study astrophysics.

One of his primary interests is "wormholes," a hypothetical scientific phenomenon connected to Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. It has been theorized that if such holes do exist in space, they could - in tandem with black holes - allow for the kind of space-age time travel seen in science fiction.

"Just like black holes, they suck in particulate objects, and also like black holes, they also travel at escape velocity, which is, the speed to get out of there is faster than the speed of light," Cavalin says. "I'd like to prove that wormholes are really there and prove all the theories are correct."

WOW.

this car powered by sap!!

Over half of Brazil's fuel comes from sugar cane, are we finally taking the hint from a nation that has a *successful* alternative fuel supply?

LUBBOCK, Texas - Sweet sorghum is grown in the U.S. for cooking and livestock feed. But the tall plant also might help at the gas pump.

A sugary sap inside the plant's stalk, which grow as tall as 12 feet, can be turned into a potent biofuel, and experts and companies are studying its potential with hopes that farmers will want to plant more of it.

Ethanol made from the stalk's juice has four times the energy yield of the corn-based ethanol, which is already in the marketplace unlike sweet sorghum. Sweet sorghum produces about eight units of energy for every unit of energy used in its production. That's about the same as sugarcane but four times as much as corn.

"I think it can be a piece of the puzzle" as a biofuel crop, said Danielle Bellmer, executive secretary of the Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Association and an Oklahoma State University researcher studying ways to improve stalk pressing and fermentation methods. "The real issue is it's just not a well-known crop."

China get warnings silent?

As we all know, there was no warning about the devastating earthquake monday.
Did China know something was going to happen, but kept mum anyways?
Many Chinese bloggers say yes, citing these strange circumstances:
-One blogger from Shandong province, in eastern China, wrote that more than a month ago, he went to his local earthquake resesarch centre several times to report that his animals had been disturbed and restless.
But, he wrote: "They not only ridiculed me, they accused me of making up stories."

-The Chutian Metropolis Daily reported that on April 26, 80,000 tonnes of water suddenly drained from a large pond in Enshi, Hubei province. The province shares a border with Chongqing Municipality, which was devastated by the earthquake on Monday.

-On May 10, a Sichuan-based newspaper, the West China Metropolis Daily, reported that hundreds of migrating toads descended upon the streets of Mianyang, the second largest city in the province which neighbours Wenchuan County, the epicentre of the earthquake.

-In the city of Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicentre, bloggers pointed to reports just weeks before the earthquake of a mass migration of more than one million butterflies.

-Other bloggers seized upon an as yet unsubstantiated rumour that a Chinese geologist had predicted the earthquake in advance but had been stifled by the authorities, and by fear.

U. of Okla. freshman, 19, elected mayor of Muskogee

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) — A 19-year-old freshman at the University of Oklahoma was elected mayor Tuesday of Muskogee, a city of 38,000 in the northeastern part of the state.

With all precincts reporting, John Tyler Hammons won with 70 percent of the vote over former Mayor Hershel Ray McBride, said Muskogee County Election Board Secretary Bill Bull.

"The public placing their trust in me is the greatest, humbling and most awesome experience I've ever had in my life," said Hammons, who is from Muskogee but attends the university in Norman.

Hammons, who will be sworn in next week, said he plans to continue his college education but expects to transfer to a school closer to Muskogee.

"Being elected does not change my desire to continue my education," he said. "We will schedule our time in an appropriate fashion so that I can be mayor and stay in school."

New storm head toward cyclone-devastated Myanmar

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has reached that the U.N. warned on Wednesday of a "second wave of deaths" among an estimated 2 million survivors.

The U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that "a significant tropical cyclone" will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area.

The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, leaving at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing, according to the government. The U.N. says the death toll could exceed 100,000.

just what these people need...for Gd's sake, give them the UN biscuits!!!

India calls out US as nation of fat asses.

MY version of IHT article. yes, no copying.

thoughts: New Dehli is pissed, because we are pointing fingers at their rising middle class for causing the recent, semi-debilitating food shortages.

India is pointing it's finger right back: saying that Americans need to re-think their conspicuous over-consumption of energy AND food.

fact: americans eat FIFTY PERCENT more calories than indians.
holy crap thats a lot of food. [said Pradeep Mehta, the secretary general of CUTS Center for International Trade, Economics and Environment]
quote: If Americans were to slim down to even the middle-class weight in India, "many hungry people in sub-Saharan Africa would find food on their plates," Mehta said. The money Americans spend on liposuction to get rid of their excess fat could be funneled to famine victims instead, he added.


SMACKED IN THE FACE.

oooommmmmmm.....

13 Year Old Steals Dad's Credit Card to Buy Hookers

Now THIS is 'MERican.

A 13 year old Texan boy was convicted of fraud for stealing Daddy's credit card and ordering 2 hookers.
Ralph, of Newark, confessed to the $30,000 spree. The outcome? A bunch of kids with boners playing Halo in a motel. With hookers awkwardly watching.

Ralphie was busted when the ho's called the cops, saying they found it strange the boys would rather play with xBox than real Box.
Cops were also tipped off by a concierge, after the boys ordered obscene amounts of Dr Pepper, Fritos, and Oreos, and asked where to score some pay-for-pussy action.
What excuse did they give for having the money? Winning big at World of Warcraft.
Oh, you...crafty youth...

lies that Ralph told throughout this event: [not exact quotes, though ideas acurate.]
to cops: my dad wont mind. it was my birthday last week. he didnt buy me anything, he was too busy. but he should take me on a trip to Disney.

to concierge: well, buying sluts seems to be the thing to do coming of this WoW high.

to the sluts: were people of restrcited growth. traveling with the circus. were actually like 40. and its illegal to discriminate against us.


two asides: they ordered THOUSAND DOLLAR hookers. and Ralph aspires to enter a career in politics.

from the Doodle 4 Google competition....

wook in training (grades 6-8)



full blown w00k (grades 10-12)

plan of today.

more specific bike across the country idea.
http://www.bikeandbuild.org

Chaiten and Etna volvanos re-activate.

Lightning bolts appear above and around the Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 30 kms (19 miles) north of the volcano, as it began its first eruption in thousands of years, in southern Chile May 2, 2008. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanos are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. Picture taken May 2, 2008 [reuters]

Meanwhile, across the world.....The Etna volcano in Sicily rumbled back to life on Tuesday with a "seismic event" followed by a burst of ash, volcanologists said three days after minor eruptions shook the cone. Scientists called hte event "significant." Last eruption? 11/07. last MAJOR eruption? 2001. [breitbart]

Belief in God 'childish,' Jews not chosen people: Einstein letter

Albert Einstein described belief in God as "childish superstition" and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.
The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they "have no different quality for me than all other people".

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.
"No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this," he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

In his letter, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel's second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God's chosen people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions," he said.
"And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people."

And he added: "As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Previously the great scientist's comments on religion -- such as "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" -- have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein's real thoughts on the subject. "He's fairly unequivocal as to what he's saying. There's no beating about the bush," he told AFP.

food cravings driven by emotion

More: So what does your favorite turn-to food say about you?

Tough foods like meat, or hard and crunchy foods = Angry
Sugars = Depressed
Soft and sweet foods like ice cream = Anxious
Salty foods = Stressed
Bulky, fill-you-up foods like crackers and pasta = Lonely
Anything and everything = Jealous

read more on realage.com

Indecency of Speedo questioned

Man Ticketed For Wearing Speedo On Beach

BONITA BEACH, Fla. -- A Florida man is suing after he was ticketed on a beach for wearing a Speedo bathing suit....or so he claims.
Bob Hezzelwood is a regular, long-time visitor to the beech.
But recently, a sheriff's deputy ticketed him for tresspassing. Claiming hte ticket was actually for the speedo, Hzzelwood took him to court.
A judge threw out the case.
Hezzelwood plans to fight back by suing the sheriff's department.
He looks like a dick, and we all know what his looks like due to his darling mantie suit.

today's goal:

work for the UN.

names matter.

There's good reason to be wary of choosing names that are that unusual, says David Figlio, a professor of economics at the University of Florida and one of a growing number of researchers who are studying the impact a name may have on how a child is perceived, and even how he or she behaves. "We know now that names make a difference," says Figlio.

He has conducted studies that have found, for example, that girls with particularly feminine names, like Emma or Anna, are less likely to study math or science than peers with less feminine-sounding names (based on linguistic tests), such as Ashley or Lauren. A more recent study Figlio did found that boys with names that are traditionally associated with girls--Ashley, Kelly, or Leslie, for instance—are more likely to be difficult or disruptive in class than peers with more masculine names, and they're particularly likely to act up if there's a female student of the same name in their class.

Albert Mehrabian, a professor emeritus of psychology at UCLA, concurs: "There absolutely is a perception associated with a name."


His research has found that certain names are significantly more likely to be perceived, for example, as belonging to someone who is highly ethical, fun-loving and popular or successful. ("Jacob" scores highly on all three, while "Emma" is tops on attributes like being ethical and caring, but less so with being popular or successful.)

Still, even those who research names for a living warn parents not to get too wrapped up in the perceptions and popularity of specific names. "Yes, the name is something, but it's important to remember that there are all sorts of other things that influence you, and how others perceive you," says Figlio. "A name is not a sentence."

That's good news for Kennedy, who learned she was pregnant again last year. For months, she and her husband struggled to come up with a name they liked that wasn't too popular. But nothing felt quite right. So, in the end, they decided to use their hearts instead of the list, as their guide. When their second daughter was born five months ago, they named her Emma.

"Self-important and irritating"

This Reuters report makes me want to re-think my decision to always default to Lonely Planet tour guides:

England is an irritating and insular country full of overweight, binge-drinking, reality TV addicts, a new guide warns tourists.

But in the new Rough Guide to England, the English are also hailed as a nation of animal-loving, tea-drinking charity donors who love nothing better than forming an orderly queue.

Gone, it seems, is the image of a genteel country awash with Englishmen politely tipping their bowler hats, groping through the London fog and being kinder to pets than kids.

The writers confess to bafflement over the quirky English, concluding that of the 200 countries the guide reviews there is none "so fascinating, beautiful and culturally diverse yet as insular, self-important and irritating as England."

They said the English are proud of their multi-culturalism and are united by one thing -- their sense of humor.

But there are constant contradictions. In a country priding itself on patriotism, they have a Scottish Prime Minister, an Italian football coach and a Greek married to the Queen.

They are gently mocked as voracious consumers of celebrity chit-chat and "as a glance at the tabloid newspapers will confirm, England is a nation of overweight, binge-drinking reality TV addicts."

local, organic, raw....seasonal?

So desires Brit chef Gordon Ramsay.
After my trip to Grezzo with the HLP Thurs night, I've been giving the raw food movement some thought. It's gotta be good.....right?

Well, Ramsay takes it a step further....he is proposing that restaurants be handed a fine for serving out-of-season fruits and vegetables.

"I don't want to see asparagus in the middle of December. I don't want to see strawberries from Kenya in the middle of March. I want to see it home-grown," he said after raising his concerns with Prime Minister Gordon Brown to the BBC Friday.

OH GOOD LORD....

OH GOOD LORD....

First Time In World History, Killer Whales Filmed Hunting Dolphins

A tour operator in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, alongside his boat captain and 4tourists were the first to stumble upon the hunting habits of a pod of orcas......using a dolphin as a battering ram. Hey, we all tenderize our meat, yes?


Ranier Schimpf was leading a group of divers when they noticed that one dolphin had been separated from his pod by five of the killer whales. The dolphin was sent flying through the air by the force of impact from Shamu and his pals. When the dolphin finally laid to rest atop the sea, Shamu pulled him under.
Now, normal people, at this point, would get onto the boat. But not these cats. They dove under, and continued to record the orca's behaviors. Once decided to be friends, the orcas allowed them to watch, even introducing hte calf of the pod to the people - but at a safe (and protected) distance.

This is the first time the hunting process of orcas and their post-hunt behavior has been recorded.

life goal of today.

Today, I would like to work on a boat.
why?
You make your own hours, and have a home that brings you to different countries.
WHAT? thats great.
just hire a boat job head hunter (these actually exist)
outline what you want - "I have an affinity for scrubbing public-use toilets, and I'd like to work 3 hours a day 6 days a week"
hunter Steve gets you a lits of boats looking for just that.
breathe, enjoy life.

perfect.

it's great someone was thinking of the needy...

http://www.pornfortheblind.org/

a quote from the dalai lama

on why one should ignore organized faiths and keep to the road of higher consciousness:

Without relying on religion, we look to common sense, common experience and the findings of science for understanding.

swear to gd this is the last one.

feliz tequila dia manana

what will YOU be doing in honor of cinco de mayo?

yes please

gross statistics

64%
Percentage of U.S. teenagers who use informal text-message slang in their written schoolwork, including abreviations like "LOL" (38%) and emoticons (25%)

56%
Percentage of teens surveyed who consider good writing to be "essential" later in life.

[from Time Mag]

the question of the day is...

how does one go about embedding themselves in a platoon?
I think, maybe, I am re-considering this war-time reporting angle.

first step: reporting.

singularity quote

"Playing G-d" is actually the highest expression of human nature. The urges to improve ourselves, to master our environment, and to set our children on the best path possible have been the fundamental driving forces of all of human history. Without these urges to "play G-d", the world as we know it wouldn't exist today. A few million humans would live in savannahs and forests, eking out a hunter-gatherer existence, without writing or hstory or mathematics or an appreciation of the intricacies of their own universe and their own inner workings.
--Ramez Naam


more to come on scientific design in the next few weeks, as i delve into my next pile of dorkdom.

What ever happened to ask MSR?

An Economist article from 2004:
What is the next stage in the evolution of internet search engines? AltaVista demonstrated that indexing the entire world wide web was feasible. Google's success stems from its uncanny ability to sort useful web pages from dross. But the real prize will surely go to whoever can use the web to deliver a straight answer to a straight question.

And Eric Brill, a researcher at Microsoft, intends that his firm will be the first to do that.
Dr Brill's initial crack at the problem is a system called “Ask MSR” (MSR stands for Microsoft Research).
This program uses information on web pages to respond to questions to which the answer is a single word or phrase - such as “When was Marilyn Monroe born?”

Ask MSR starts by manipulating the question in various ways: by identifying the verb, for example, and then changing its tense or moving it into different positions in the sentence (“Marilyn was Monroe born”, “Marilyn Monroe was born” and so on).

The resulting phrases are then fed into a search engine, and documents containing matching strings of words are retrieved.
It sounds a promiscuous strategy, but gibberish phrases produce few matches, so, as Dr Brill puts it, “being wrong is very cheap.”
Once accumulated, the pile of documents is scanned for possible answers, and these are ranked by frequency.

In practice, the correct answer appears in one of the first three places around 75% of the time.
That might not sound very good, but human intelligence provides a second filter, since wrong answers are often obvious.

If you ask how many times Bjorn Borg won Wimbledon, for example, “1980” is not a plausible answer, but “5” is.
If in doubt, clicking on an answer produces a list of links to pages which provide support for that answer.

Ask MSR is still a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve it and it may be launched commercially under the name AnswerBot.

Another of Brill's projects:
One of his most recent papers, written jointly with Radu Soricut of the University of Southern California, is entitled “Beyond the Factoid”.

It describes his efforts to build a system capable of providing 50-word answers to questions such as “What are the rules for qualifying for the Academy Awards?”
This is harder than finding a single-word answer, but Dr Brill thinks it should be possible using something called a “noisy channel” model.

Such models are already employed in spell-checking and speech-recognition systems.
They work by modelling the transformation between what a user means (in spell-checking, the word he intended to type) and what he does (the garbled word actually typed).

A system can then be designed to work the process backwards. Given a mis-spelled word, it can guess what that word is most likely to be a mis-spelling of.
Dr Brill's question-answering system does something similar.
Many question-and-answer pairs exist on the web, in the form of “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) pages.

Dr Brill trained his system using a million such pairs, to create a model that, given a question, can work out various structures that the answer could take.
These structures are then used to generate search queries, and the matching documents found on the web are scanned for things that look like answers.
The current prototype provides appropriate answers about 40% of the time. Not brilliant, but not bad.

the question is: what happened with these projects? and why have we heard nothing further from Brill or Microsoft? [or have we, and i just am not querying my search properly?]

What ever happened to ask MSR?

An Economist article from 2004:
What is the next stage in the evolution of internet search engines? AltaVista demonstrated that indexing the entire world wide web was feasible. Google's success stems from its uncanny ability to sort useful web pages from dross. But the real prize will surely go to whoever can use the web to deliver a straight answer to a straight question.

And Eric Brill, a researcher at Microsoft, intends that his firm will be the first to do that.
Dr Brill's initial crack at the problem is a system called “Ask MSR” (MSR stands for Microsoft Research).
This program uses information on web pages to respond to questions to which the answer is a single word or phrase - such as “When was Marilyn Monroe born?”

Ask MSR starts by manipulating the question in various ways: by identifying the verb, for example, and then changing its tense or moving it into different positions in the sentence (“Marilyn was Monroe born”, “Marilyn Monroe was born” and so on).

The resulting phrases are then fed into a search engine, and documents containing matching strings of words are retrieved.
It sounds a promiscuous strategy, but gibberish phrases produce few matches, so, as Dr Brill puts it, “being wrong is very cheap.”
Once accumulated, the pile of documents is scanned for possible answers, and these are ranked by frequency.

In practice, the correct answer appears in one of the first three places around 75% of the time.
That might not sound very good, but human intelligence provides a second filter, since wrong answers are often obvious.

If you ask how many times Bjorn Borg won Wimbledon, for example, “1980” is not a plausible answer, but “5” is.
If in doubt, clicking on an answer produces a list of links to pages which provide support for that answer.

Ask MSR is still a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve it and it may be launched commercially under the name AnswerBot.

Another of Brill's projects:
One of his most recent papers, written jointly with Radu Soricut of the University of Southern California, is entitled “Beyond the Factoid”.

It describes his efforts to build a system capable of providing 50-word answers to questions such as “What are the rules for qualifying for the Academy Awards?”
This is harder than finding a single-word answer, but Dr Brill thinks it should be possible using something called a “noisy channel” model.

Such models are already employed in spell-checking and speech-recognition systems.
They work by modelling the transformation between what a user means (in spell-checking, the word he intended to type) and what he does (the garbled word actually typed).

A system can then be designed to work the process backwards. Given a mis-spelled word, it can guess what that word is most likely to be a mis-spelling of.
Dr Brill's question-answering system does something similar.
Many question-and-answer pairs exist on the web, in the form of “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) pages.

Dr Brill trained his system using a million such pairs, to create a model that, given a question, can work out various structures that the answer could take.
These structures are then used to generate search queries, and the matching documents found on the web are scanned for things that look like answers.
The current prototype provides appropriate answers about 40% of the time. Not brilliant, but not bad.

the question is: what happened with these projects? and why have we heard nothing further from Brill or Microsoft? [or have we, and i just am not querying my search properly?]

Would-be Hitler assassin dies

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- Philipp Freiherr von Boeselager, believed to be the last surviving member of the inner circle of plotters who attempted to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944 with a briefcase bomb, has died. He was 90.

The German military said in a statement Friday that the former army major died Thursday night. It did not give a cause of death.
Von Boeselager was part of a group of officers who tried to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, supplying explosives for the operation led by Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg.

Von Stauffenberg placed the bomb in a conference room where Hitler was meeting with his aides and military advisers. Hitler escaped harm when someone moved the briefcase next to a table leg, deflecting much of the bomb's explosive force.

Almost immediately afterward, von Stauffenberg and many of his cohorts were arrested and executed in an orgy of revenge killings that saw some hanged by the neck with piano wire.

Though many of those rounded up by Nazi officials were tortured in the hopes they would give up other conspirators, von Boeselager's name was never divulged and he was never found out.
Still, he carried a cyanide capsule with him until the end of the war in case his secret was revealed.

The von Stauffenberg plot is the basis for the upcoming Tom Cruise film "Valkyrie" in which the American actor plays the aristocratic colonel.

Von Boeselager, who lived in Altenahr, near Bonn, was first recruited by von Stauffenberg co-conspirator Maj. Gen. Henning von Tresckow in 1942, he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview three weeks ago that was published Friday.
He said he knew that Jews were being systematically killed and that Germany was waging a war of annihilation along the Eastern Front with Russia and that he never considered declining taking part in the plot.

By 1942, he said that "It was no longer about saving the country, but about stopping the crimes," the newspaper quoted him as saying.

The Clean Energy Scam

From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says it's going to get worse fast. "It gives me goose bumps," says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote sustainable ranching on the Amazon frontier. "It's like witnessing a rape."

The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation. Carter is not a man who gets easily spooked--but he can sound downright panicky about the future of the forest. "You can't protect it. There's too much money to be made tearing it down," he says. "Out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work."
Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

to read more...

Helen Keller billboard is causing a buzz

The advertisement is supposed to attract people to the birth place of Helen Keller in Tuscumbia, but some say it is offensive.
The billboard has a young photo of Helen Keller and reads: "See, what she couldn't."

One of the billboards is just south of Athens, the other down the road near Cullman. One faces north and the other south. They have only been up a few weeks, and already causing a buzz.

John Sasser, of Tuscumbia, said, "I thought it was very offense."
Barbara Auch, of Athens, was visiting the birthplace of Helen Keller today. Auch said, "I could kind of see it because she was blind, come see what she couldn't, but I don't think there was any ill intent."

Others in Tuscumbia could see how the sign could be misinterpreted.
Blake Ellett, of Tuscumbia, said, "They might not understand the full history of the Shoals area, it come off as a joke to them."

Elizabeth Zuelke, of Tuscumbia, said, "I was really upset about it, Helen Keller is one of our heroes."
Twyla Hyde just moved to the Shoals a few years ago. When she saw the billboard, she thought it was insightful. Hyde said, "It shows we can see what she couldn't, but at the same time I believe she could see in her mind's eye."

Helen Keller's birthplace brings more than 60,000 visitors a year to the Shoals. Catchy advertising is key in bringing new tourist to the area.

Hiding Teen Sends Text Message To Foil Alleged Intruders

(AP) A teenager home alone pulled bed sheets over her head to hide from two intruders and sent a text message to her mother, whose 911 call led to the arrest of two suspects, authorities said Wednesday.

Lauren Durnbaugh, 13, didn't go to school Tuesday and was home when she heard someone open an unlocked rear door. She climbed into bed and hid under the covers as the suspects began ransacking rooms in the house about 15 miles southeast of Columbus, authorities said.

""Mommy omg im scard i think were being robbed im hiding help me!," Durnbaugh said in a text message to her mother, Margo Roby, 53, who was working at a car dealership about 15 minutes away.

Racing home, Roby called 911. Back in the house, the intruders roamed from room to room, and at one point sat on Lauren's bed, police said.

"They didn't know she was there while they were going through stuff," Sheriff Dave Phalen said.

Roby arrived home and rammed her vehicle into the back of the suspects' car parked in the driveway, Phalen said.

One of the suspects, Jenna Marie Burns, came out of the house and Roby wrestled with her just as sheriff's deputies and the Lithopolis police chief arrived, Phalen said.

"I ran in to get my daughter. She was just shaking like a leaf," Roby said.

Jewelry, a laptop computer, a digital camera and a tool box were among items the intruders had set outside apparently to be carried away, Phalen said.

Roby said she blamed herself for failing to lock the door when she left for work. But she's proud of how her daughter handled herself.

"After we cried, she said, 'Wow, I can't believe I did that,'" Roby said.

Burns, 20, of Orient, and Jeremiah Lee Fyffe, 26, of Lockbourne, were arrested and charged with burglary. Burns also was charged with robbery. Both remained in a county jail Wednesday on $100,000 bond.

Lesbos islanders dispute gay name

Campaigners on the Greek island of Lesbos are to go to court in an attempt to stop a gay rights organisation from using the term "lesbian".
The islanders say that if they are successful they may then start to fight the word lesbian internationally.
The issue boils down to who has the right to call themselves Lesbians.
Is it gay women, or the 100,000 people living on Greece's third biggest island - plus another 250,000 expatriates who originate from Lesbos?
The man spearheading the case, publisher Dimitris Lambrou, claims that international dominance of the word in its sexual context violates the human rights of the islanders, and disgraces them around the world.
He says it causes daily problems to the social life of Lesbos's inhabitants.

In court papers, the plaintiffs allege that the Greek government is so embarrassed by the term Lesbian that it has been forced to rename the island after its capital, Mytilini.

An early court date has now been set for judges to decide whether to grant an injunction against the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece and to order it to change its name.
A spokeswoman for the group has described the case as a groundless violation of freedom of expression, and has pledged to fight it.
The term lesbian originated from the poet Sappho, who was a native of Lesbos.
Sappho expressed her love of other women in poetry written during the 7th Century BC.
But according to Mr Lambrou, new historical research has discovered that Sappho had a family, and committed suicide for the love of a man.

Study sheds light on spider sex

Spiders "talk" to potential mates using a type of light not visible to the human eye, scientists report.

A team found that male jumping spiders (Phintella vittata) are using ultraviolet B (UVB) rays to communicate with females.

While UVA rays are often used in animal communication, this is the first evidence that UVB light is also being used, the researchers said.
The study is published in the journal Current Biology.

The researchers discovered that females were more likely to mate with males that could "talk" to them with UVB compared with spiders sitting in chambers where UVB light had been blocked with filters.

Professor Daiqin Li, from the National University of Singapore, said: "UVA and UVB make up a small fraction of the Sun's rays, but humans cannot see them.
"Most previous studies have focused on UVA in animal communication, but this is the first study of UVB on any animal.

"Until now, scientists have assumed that animals cannot 'see' UVB, but we have found that this is not the case."

Spiders have complex eyes and although scientists know that they have UVA receptors, it remains unclear how they can detect the ultraviolet B light.

Man plans air ascent by ponytail

A man in eastern India says he is going to take to the air by hanging from a helicopter suspended by his ponytail.

Earlier this week Shailendra Roy drew large crowds when he pulled the famous Darjeeling toy train with his ponytail.

One end of an iron chain was tied to his foot-long ponytail, and the other to the train engine and three coaches, weighing some 35 tonnes.

He says he keeps the hair strong by rubbing it with mustard oil and pulling cars and other heavy objects.

"I am planning to dangle myself from a helicopter," Mr Roy said after pulling the train 10 metres the town of Siliguri where the track is flat.

"It is a dream come true for me. I had planned to pull the train for at least 300 metres, but railway officials did not allow that," Mr Roy said.

A railway official said they stopped him moving the train further for safety reasons.
"I practised for this by pulling huge logs too," he said.

This is not the first time Mr Roy has been in the limelight for his ponytail.
He has pulled buses and trucks and uses small cars for practice.
Last year, his ponytail tied to a rope, he flew from one building to another in front of television cameras.

Saddam signed my 'Most Wanted' ace

GRANTED ITS FROM THE SUN, BUT......
A US soldier who guarded Saddam Hussein and his cronies yesterday revealed he has an almost complete set of signed ‘Iraq’s most wanted’ playing cards.

The US military developed the special deck to help troops identify the fugitive members of Saddam’s government.
And as they were rounded up and taken to Camp Cropper near Baghdad Airport Sergeant Mark Heinbaugh was able to get them to sign their card.

Even Saddam gave his signature, under the word Victor in red ink — the guards’ codename for him. Those on the cards were all high-ranking Baath Party members or from the Revolutionary Command Council. Each card contains the wanted person’s name, a picture if available, and their job.

The highest-ranking cards, starting with the aces and kings, were used for the people at the top of the most-wanted list. Saddam’s card was the ace of spades.

Mark’s other signed cards were of Saddam’s cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid al-Tikriti — dubbed CHEMICAL ALI for his use of chemical weapons. He was the king of spades. He is now on death row for the massacre of 200,000 Kurds.

Saddam’s half-brother, BARZAN EBRAHIM AL TIKRITI was the five of clubs. He was hanged last January. Mark said: "He was aggressive. He tried to grab one of our guards and drag him into his room by his neck and shoulder."

The infamous ‘Anthrax Annie’ — HUDA SALIH MAHDI AMMASH, the five of hearts, used her card to protest her innocence.
She scribbled: "Leadership? Yes. Scientist? Indeed. But WMD??!! By no means. A truth that’ll shine one day . . . by the grace of god not far away." Mark said: "We also called Annie ‘Shadyside’. Before the war she had worked as a scientist in the US and had been treated for cancer in Shadyside, Pennsylvania."

Mark, 45, who was serving with the Pennsylvania National Guard, was dispatched to Camp Cropper for a year from March 2004 — three months after Saddam’s capture. Saddam was hanged in 2006.
Mark added: "A lot of the detainees were happy to sign the cards. They said it made them look like celebrities. They were happy to be remembered. I think I am the only soldier with practically a full set of signed cards. And I got a signature from Saddam himself.

Eastampton man suffers burns from dropped cigarette

EASTAMPTON -- A 47-year-old township man sustained severe burns to his legs
and groin areas Wednesday night when he accidently ignited rubbing alcohol he
was applying to his body with a cigarette that fell into his lap, a township
police clerk said.

Joseph Russell had second-degree burns after the shorts he was wearing apparently
ignited from the dropped cigarette.


WHY WAS HE APPLYING RUBBING ALCOHOL TO HIS BODY?!?!?

Crowley man arrested after trying to cash $360 billion check

FORT WORTH -- An aspiring record label owner is singing the blues after he was arrested last week for allegedly trying to pass a $360 billion check at a Fort Worth bank.

Employees at the Chase Bank at 8601 S. Hulen St. grew suspicious after seeing all those zeroes (10 to be exact) and called the check's owner. The woman said the suspect, Charles Ray Fuller, 21, of Crowley, is her daughter’s boyfriend and that he did not have permission to take the check or cash it.

Fuller was arrested on suspicion of fraud, along with unlawfully carrying a weapon and possession of marijuana after officers found less than 2 ounces of the drug and a .25-caliber handgun and magazine in his pockets.

While inside a patrol car, police say Fuller blurted out that he is starting his own record label and had been given the money by his girlfriend’s mother to help him start it.
Apparently breaking into the music business does not come cheap.

Luckily for him, bail was a lot less expensive. Fuller was released from Mansfield Jail on Thursday after posting $3,750 bail

an update on the quarter life crisis.

up until sunday, i wanted to live in atlanta, but after visiting my sister that came in to question - it may drive me mad.
what to do, what to do.....

live in LA?
MARRY AN ARMY MAN. ps i am serious, i want to be an army wife. its great. all the perks of marriage, free insurance, and the asshole is gone half the time anyways.

bike across america.
talked to erik/dan......dan brings up valid points as to why this is a bad idea...namely why would you want to bike across the scaulding hot american desert.
so maybe bike from wash/san diego.

or maybe move to seattle
or maybe australia?
i jsut threw australia in, but the others were all real plans.

also, ive had my first not one but TWO anxiety dreams about buenos aires.
on monday night i dreamt this:

got off plane. dad was with me. we split at enterance to city.....dad went to hotel, i went to house. followed mikes directions...went down hall...all of a sudden i was just in a living room. no door.
was this my house? or one of those hotel like enterances?
turn around, mike is drinking a frappuccino and vacuuming (would never ever happen)
truth. the house has no door.

turns out, it does.

but then yesterday night, i dreamt that linda and i went to ba and we were walking through the city trying to find the apt.
but it wasnt really ba it was like fucking baghdad or something like baghdad in 1920, with little men hawking wares off of little velvet blankets. and people were playing frisbee - massive games of frisbee - but every time it came to me, it turned into an earring and fell onto the velvet blankets and i had to carefully manuvre it out except it was tretorous becuase they had monkeys and thoguht i was stealing.
and then we finally found the apartment.
we followed three generations of women into the home ---a 65 year old, her daughter, and a 2 year old girl. they were clearling talking hushedly about linda and i under their breath, but they did not stop us.
the entrance was the same as monday night - but with a door this time.
then we went up a small flight of stairs and htere was a bedroom off to the right - a beautiful room with a huge white canopy bed - the three women lived there.
to the left was a rickety old set of steps, which we took up.
that was where everyone else lived....SIX little triangular bed, in groups of three.
linda lay down, and commented on the fact that her fleas had returned very nonchallantly.
she then killed hte one that had hopped out of her hair on to the bed.
in came a group of three, and a few minutes later a painfully good looking black man. his name was chaireeot. he knew linda from chicago - has lin even ever been to chicago?

absurd.
i need to go work on a vineyard.

My world is crumbling.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (April 18, 2008) – In response to consumer demand, Nalgene® will phase out production of its Outdoor line of polycarbonate containers that include the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) over the next several months, it announced today. Nalgene’s existing product mix, including the recently launched Everyday line, already features a number of containers made from materials that do not contain BPA.


to find out why i am troubled, see my previous, uber scientific post about how BPA is causing the fagotization of america.
oh, and cancer.
that too.