Blizza Blizza

ABC News:

Bridge Collapse: Who's at Fault? It's Still Too Soon to Know If Anyone Is Legally Responsible for the Disaster

How about instead of trying to assign blame somewhere, you spend your time, money, and efforts figuring out how to ensure this doesn't happen again?

Sometimes, I really hate American society.

I know that a rocket doesn't have a throttle in a purely technical sense, but neither do turbine engines, so there.

It's nice to see that NASA is finally catching up to the FAA. Am I the only one who is shocked that this wasn't already a rule, at least for critical phases of flight like launch and re-entry/landing?

Man, if only they had had Explosives Camp when I was in high school. That would have been amazing.

I would gladly pay a grand now for a week of blowing stuff up, by the way. UMR has a great marketing opportunity on its hands.

I need -- and by "need" I mean "want this like Smithers wants C. Montgomery Burns" -- a jet-powered airplane backpack.

Someone with access to an electron microscope (at least, that's what appears to be the source of the photos) and car windshields has put together an absolutely stunning collection of photos of insects that met their demise at the business end of a speeding plate of glass.

(via Autoblog)

A New Zealand television station couldn't afford $20,000 for a commercial parabolic dish antenna to send their signal from the studio up to the main antenna atop a nearby mountain, so they used an $80 wok instead.

This isn't the first time folks down under have done some crazy homebrew wireless antenna stuff; using standard 802.11 hardware with (fairly inexpensive, but commercial) yagi antennas, some Lucent engineers in Australia managed to get 57-km range between an island and the mainland about seven years back.

Dad wants a Morbark 30 Whole-Tree Chipper.

A ski-track kit for my mountain bike. That's wicked cool.

Dan Briody over at InfoWorld has a great op-ed piece entitled The Ten Commandments of cell phone etiquette.

This seems like a good opportunity to point out the overarching Don't be a dick rule, too. "It's not just for Wikipedia. It's for life!"

Bald eagles have made a great comeback in the last 50 years, with an estimated 100,000 now living throughout North America. Its close Asian cousin, Steller's sea eagle, has not been so lucky. Fewer than 5,000 birds survive, and the number is thought to be declining.

Both birds share a similar diet, habitat, and breeding habits. So why is the bald eagle doing so well when the Steller's sea eagle is in serious trouble?

Viagra.

When the little blue pill was introduced in the Asian market, it destroyed the traditional-medicine aphrodisiac trade almost overnight. Among the aphrodisiacs employed by Asian men was the dried gallbladder of the brown bear. Poachers no longer found it profitable to kill brown bears, resulting in an increase in the juvenile brown bear population. Juvenile brown bears have not yet grown too big to climb trees, where they prey on Steller's sea eagle nests, limiting the breeding success of the Steller's population.

A team of Dartmouth College researchers has come up with an incredibly cool-sounding way to remove ice from windshields, refrigeration coils, etc.: they send a rapid pulse of electricity through a thin film on the surface of the windshield (for instance), causing microscopic and instantaneous heating of the surface, which breaks the bonds that ice forms with the surface. This allows the ice to slough off, and sure as heck beats the windshield heaters or alcohol sprays currently used on most commercial aircraft. Goodrich, the aerospace supplier, is working on an application of the technology in commercial jet windshields.

I wonder how long it'll be until Cirrus or Columbia incorporates this into a new aircraft...

I'm packing up and moving to Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia as soon as possible.

Awesome iPod case (very expensive) and Bronzed Baby Booties of the, erm, 18th Century. I'd love 'em both.

After much hemming and hawing, in-depth research, and market study, the powers that be finally decided on a Bluetooth headset by going to dealnews and finding the cheapest one from a company that seemed mildly reputable.

This blog is now the proud owner of a Logitech Mobile Freedom headset. It's not the best-looking headset out there, nor the lightest, but it was only $35 shipped (on sale, before a $10 rebate) and it came with an Official Eric Schwarz Endorsement.

Will someone please explain the idea behind spending $100 (or more!) on something that's no better, features-wise, than a product costing one-fourth as much?

By the way, I heartily recommend this as a Bluetooth headset if you need one. It's pretty painless to set up and the volume seems pretty good so far, although I have yet to use it in the car.

The award for February definitely goes to the guy who built this Babbage Difference Engine out of Legos. Notice, please, that the host for that site is none other than Steve Wozniak's personal domain. For more on the difference engine concept, please visit Wikipedia's Difference engine entry, which also talks about Charles Babbage, its inventor.

(via Gizmodo)

In case you have a lot of company coming, this six-piece radial-design toaster should help smooth things along in the kitchen. Pretty cool idea -- each individual heating unit is removable and interchangeable. Seems like it would make for very easy repair and maintenance, which means we'll probably never see it in the marketplace.

Take one old couch, two mountain bikes, some steel tubing, and a welder, and add a bit of ingenuity and a desire to see the Maritime Provinces in Canada, and you get the couch bike, which is quite possibly the coolest way to spend a summer break I've ever seen.

Rock on, guys.

The state of Michigan has just banned alcohol vapourisers.

Of course, until I read that news story, I had no idea there even was such a thing, or that you could get drunk by inhaling alcohol vapour. Now I kinda want to try it.

On Wikipedia, that would be a huge violation of WP:BEANS. Was this really that big of a problem before they outlawed the machines? You might as well ban kegs, since we all know kegs lead to frat parties and peeing on cars. Sheesh.

Kim, you might be better than I am at Scrabble, but I'll whip pWnz0r you in 5cr488|3 any day.

Those of you with a passing familiarity with post-World War II Germany may know that any sort of Nazi memorabilia is illegal there. This includes the viewing of such material on the Internet, apparently, and eBay, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to filter their auction items so as to avoid breaking the law in Germany.

Notwithstanding the utterly idiotic censorship policy they've put in place -- swastikas are required to be covered up in any item photos, for instance, which makes it damn difficult to present a good photograph of any Nazi memorabilia -- their means of filtering auction items is even more horribly retarded.

As an American, living in the United States, I cannot view any items that even so much as imply a relationship to the Nazis, not because such items are illegal here -- they're not -- but because eBay's servers filter on the Accept-Language header sent by the browser.

That's right. Anyone who reads German (or French, incidentally) must, therefore, be living in Germany or France.

Because no one outside Germany or France has ever read a word of German or French in their entire lives, especially on the Internets.

The really sad part is the item in question is a book written by an American ex-POW, about American POWs in Stalag Luft III. It just happens to have a swastika on the cover, and some photos of uniformed German soldiers inside.

Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.

But now I think I'm looking for a Bluetooth-enabled rear-view mirror for my car.

And still looking for a headset for when I'm not in the car, of course.

Also, I need one of these nifty programmable LED nametags to hang in my rear window for the guy who keeps tailgating me.

From the New York Times:

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday...of the 16 candidates the one with the fewest votes was Mr. Bonsell, the driving force behind the intelligent design policy.

Too bad the morons in Kansas weren't up for re-election this year. Serves those goons in Pennsylvania right, though. Keep your religion out of my science class.

Attention, readers: should any of you stumble across a copy of either of these books, I would be greatly interested.

But not at the prices some folks are charging on Amazon, thankyouverymuch. That's ridiculous.

I present the Talking Remote Control.

Insert silly jokes about 42 and Guy Noir here.

Turner's got an interesting quote -- which, unfortunately, is not taken out of context -- about the avian flu vaccine situation.

What the WSJ op-ed piece (the source of the quote) didn't tell you was that "one pharmaceutical company" may have not only accepted that $10/dose discount, but they still made a 200% net profit on it.

I've seen how the industry works from my experience working at one of the major pharma companies and in close connection to the industry during my graduate work, and they're making money hand over fist when they can run a drug through approval. What's killing them -- and what the article touches on all too briefly and with ENTIRELY the wrong attitude -- is that, and I quote:

One problem is the Food and Drug Administration, which puts safety above developing rapid cures.

Uh.

Yeah.

That's what their job is, dummy. Obviously if a drug isn't safe, it's not a "rapid cure." It's a flawed semi-solution at best and might be more of a problem than the disease it's intended to cure. Anyone remember the widespread prescription of thalidomide for morning sickness? More recent examples include the newly discovered "Viagra makes you go blind" effect and the enormous mess over COX-2 inhibitors (Celebrex, Vioxx, etc.).

The FDA needs a serious overhaul, but it needs a serious overhaul in the direction away from being a corporate stooge under the auspices of the Federal government, which is what it's become in the last 30 years.

Another one from the questions-nobody-ever-bothered-to-ask-because-they-were-just-too-mind-boggling deparment:

In case you were ever wondering the volume contained within the city limits of New Orleans that is below sea level, the answer is about 250 billion gallons.

All 250 billion of those pesky gallons have now been relocated to more appropriate areas, like Lake Ponchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico, at least two weeks ahead of the most optimistic estimates.

How well do you know the area you live in? Kevin Kelly wants to know, and I'm curious too. I scored a 25 (including bonus questions, where I was three out of four) on my first run through without any outside help or Googling.

Anyone else?

Researchers at Penn have developed a prototype backpack that can generate power while the wearer is walking. Pretty cool, especially since it doesn't weigh appreciably more than a regular backpack and can put out enough current to charge "several" mobile devices at the same time. Sign me up for product testing!

Greg Howard, of Geese Aplenty fame, has a bloody great post about the conflict between the cockamamie theory of so-called "Intelligent Design" and the scientific fact of evolution. One of the comments made an allusion to what has to be the headline of the day:

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Fox television producers, take note. You might want to extend an offer of employment to the young son of Richard Walkup, of West Chester, PA. He captured some very impressive photographs of a praying mantis catching and eating a hummingbird in his own backyard.

(via Matt via BoingBoing)

Hey, Tim, let's fire up the DC-8 and go pop some water balloons in zero gravity!

(via Slashdot)

Authorities and West Michigan residents are left wondering: what ate the calf and attacked its mother?

My vote is for El Chupacabras.

Via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools comes St. Claire, Inc.'s Industrial Sign Builder. You can choose from a variety of categories for various warning signs, then build a custom PDF with a few clicks of the mouse.

Watch for some products of this nifty program here on the blog.

UPDATE: For example, this lovely warning sign:

UPDATE 2: Here are a few more.

• DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER WITH REMAINING EYE
• DEATH STAR IN USE
• WALKING LIKE AN EGYPTIAN PROHIBITED
• OVERSIZED HEADPHONES MAY NEGATE COOLNESS OF iPOD

Today's award goes to Thomas Hesse.

I know, I know. "Who the heck is Thomas Hesse?"

He's the "president for global digital business" at Sony BMG, the recording industry giant. Instead of being remembered merely for having the world's most pretentious business cards, Hesse will now go down in infamy for this little slip, sure to raise the ire of Uncle Steve over in Cupertino:

It's just a proprietary decision by Apple to decide whether to play along or not. I don't know what more waiting we have to do. We think we need to move this forward. Time is ticking, infringement of intellectual property is happening all over, and we've got to put a stop to it I think.

OK, let me get this straight.

1) Mac users are all pirates and can't be trusted.

2) Apple -- a computer, not music company, mind -- is responsible for writing unbreakable DRM that makes CDs unplayable in computers.

If I were Steve Jobs, you know what I would do? I would call up this Hesse goon and tell him his little tantrum just cost his company any chance of ever having CD copy protection that works under Mac OS. Let fly the Wrath of Steve!

More technical details, and a much better article, at Yahoo.

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

A butane-powered V-twin engine for my desk.

Best. Paperweight. EVAR.

(via Dave Barry)

"Oh, shit!" says humanity.

(With a nod to the Onion for the great headline.)

Maybe I need an "art" category, although this seems sufficiently technical to fit in sci/tech...

Apparently no less a celebrity than Boris the Red-Nosed Yeltsin has discovered the wonder and glory that is the Sculpture series from Kalamazoo Outdoor Gourmet.

The funny thing is that I had never heard of these guys before today. They oughta be advertising more locally.

(Trendir via Gizmodo)

I was talking with Eric tonight when the subject of HDTV came up.

Will someone please explain the following questions to me?

1. Why is it that there are approximately 100 different HDTV sets under $5000, not a single one of which can actually receive HDTV signals without purchasing an add-on tuner at an additional cost of approximately $200?
2. If I don't buy a tuner for TV sets falling into the above category, what's the point of the set being HDTV-capable?
3. Why aren't any of the various computer monitor-cum-TV gadgets capable of receiving HDTV signals? If anything is capable of handling high resolutions, it's a computer monitor. Dammit, someone sell me a 30" Cinema Display with integrated HDTV tuner already.

In the immortal words of Captain Steven Hiller, "I have got to get me one of these!"

(via Gizmodo)

If the Sanyo DVR-H200 digital video recorder is any good and costs less than $400, I'm throwing out the VCR and never looking back. Not only does it have a 160 GB hard disk (allowing for up to eight straight days of recorded TV), but it can record to DVD-RW and DVD+R, and it can read DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, Audio CD, Video CD, SVCD, MP3, JPEG, and Kodak's PictureCD formats.

And it looks cool.

(via Gizmodo)

I hesitate to even remotely associate the concept of Creationism "intelligent design" with science, but it seems some folks in Kansas can't leave well enough alone. Choice quote from the article:

Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design, said changing the schools' definition of science would avoid freezing out questions about how life arose and developed on Earth.

The current definition is "not innocuous," Meyer said. "It's not neutral. It's actually taking sides."

Yeah, Steve, that's right. It's taking sides. It's taking the side of science, which is by definition neutral, rather than the side of one narrow view of theology, which is by definition the opposite of neutral.

Side note: this is not the first time I've noted what crackpots the Discovery Institute folks are. "Discovery," indeed. How about you guys discover a better way to waste public resources?

In a first for U.S. wireless carriers, T-Mobile has decided to release detailed street-level wireless coverage maps to the public. I've done quite a bit of traveling in the I-94/I-80 corridor, and along the I-69/I-75 corridor, and the maps jive pretty well with the coverage I've experienced. If you're on T-Mo, have a look and see where you can expect to have your calls dropped.

(via PhoneScoop)

Senator Rick Santorum has officially sold out to corporate interests. He has introduced a bill that would eliminate free weather information as provided by the NOAA's National Weather Service.

Why?

Because AccuWeather, a very large corporate "constituent" headquartered in Pennsylvania, Santorum's "home" state, thinks the NOAA's free information is keeping people from buying the same information from AccuWeather.

AccuWeather doesn't have anywhere near the data-gathering capacity of the NOAA. They don't have taxpayer-funded satellites or thousands of taxpayer-funded offshore bouys. They don't have ten taxpayer-funded WC-130s flying as part of the 53d Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, better known as the "Hurricane Hunters." They are a private company that, ironically enough, relies very heavily on NOAA data for their business.

Corporate welfare at its finest. This is utterly ridiculous.

Sunbeam makes toasters, right? Toasters, microwave ovens, toaster ovens, coffeemakers, that sort of thing, right?

I'm just struggling to wrap my head around how a company that was, until yesterday, best known for their toasters could birth something as ridiculous (and as ridiculously useful) as the "20-in-1 Superior Panel" (review).

If I had even the slightest inkling that I might be getting a tower computer any time soon, I would be all over this.

(via Gizmodo)

This is just too cool.

In addition to the psychological benefits of eating a bit of chocolate, researchers at Georgetown have now found compounds in chocolate shut down cancerous cell division.

The physiological properties of theobromine, the primary alkaloid in cocoa beans, are well-known. Hopefully we'll be able to add procyanidin to that list.

(via ScienceDaily)

Because if the Robo-Urinal touches my penis, I swear on all things holy that I will dismember it into a million pieces and insert every last one of them up the urethra of its designer, like a million tiny candirú.

Benjamin Cohen, owner of the disputed domain name iTunes.co.uk, is appealing the recent decision by the British registrar Nominet to hand the domain over to Apple.

Nominet seems to have made the right decision, though:

The domain name, in the hands of the respondent [Cohen], is an abusive registration on the grounds of its use in a manner taking unfair advantage of, and being unfairly detrimental to, the rights of the complainant.

Here's hoping the High Court upholds the decision. I don't care if you registered the domain name in 1992 -- if you're cyber-squatting on it, don't go whining to mommy when someone calls you on it and it gets taken away.

ScienceDaily is reporting that Duke University researchers have postulated a computer that pairs answers with questions put to it, delivering solutions to problems nearly instantaneously.

Why wait? Through the modern miracles of the Internet, PHP, and, to quote the About page of this site, "the inimitable mind currently resident in a human container known as Chris Lawson," such a computer is already available.

First, speak a question out loud.

Louder. I didn't hear you.

OK, thanks. I've determined the answer to your question. Click here for the answer.

Give it to me so I can have six hunnert bux to buy me a P910i, which I so desperately need.

I saw a news story posted somewhere in the last month (let's just say sometime in 2005 to be safe) about a guy who discovered a security vulnerability in a Web site somewhere that basically worked like this:

1. Go to site.
2. Notice unique ID in URL.
3. Increment by one.
4. Read other people's data.

Anyone remember what I'm talking about or have a link to a news item? I've spent the last four hours trying everything I can on Slashdot, Google, Google News, The Register, the NYT (which is where I think I read it), etc., and I've had no luck so far.

It's not the Harvard MBA story. That only involved people seeing their own data. And I'm pretty sure it's not the Johns Hopkins J-CARD story I linked to back in early February.

Thanks a bunch if anyone finds it and posts it here.

From a Slashdot user channeling Descartes:

I can be googled, therefore I am.

I stuck this in sci-tech because it's, well, sort of technological. But depending on your pain tolerance, it could just as easily be in humour.

A 22-year-old Dallas artist has pierced his nose and attached his glasses to the barbell. Key quote:

Sooy said the original model, constructed without nose pads, did cause problems.

"Without those, there was really nothing keeping them still, so they would kind of rotate around," Sooy said. "If I looked down they would kind of fall out from my face and just kind of hang a little oddly. It was pretty disorienting."

Ya think?

(via Lee via AIM)

The local CBS affiliate, WWMT, has, at long last, owned up to the difficulty in predicting the weather. From the latest RSS feed:

Weekend Winter Storm

- This is a tricky forecast.

WWMT 19/02/05 20:51

Good call.

No, the 'Book isn't here yet, but I did just get a very nice (wired) handsfree for my fone: the Belkin ActiFlex Boom Universal Hands-Free. I can highly recommend this excellent product, which cost me only $15 at OfficeMax. It has a lifetime warranty, and it beats the factory handsfree by a mile.

If you want to use one of these with a fone that has a proprietary handsfree connector, you'll need an adapter. I picked up a Belkin adapter for the T616 from a link on Froogle for $8.50 shipped.

I'm rather less pleased with the Belkin case, which I'm tempted to return. It's a nice leather case, but it doesn't quite fit the fone, and as a result, the top 15-20 pixels of the screen get covered up. I'm not sure if it's this specific case, or if the problem is endemic to the design. Expect a full report if/when I return this case and/or find anything better.

When it rains, it pours. I'm getting a lot of use out of Red and his cadre of dumbasses lately. Here's another one for you.

Johns Hopkins officials have a bit of a problem on their hands after a student discovered that her J-CARD (a student debit card at Johns Hopkins) data was available to anyone who searched Google.

Dennis O'Shea, Executive Director of Communications and Public Affairs:

The file was in a very obscure place. You would have had to gone looking for them [sic]

(via Techdirt via The Raw Feed)

Red Forman Dumbass Rating:

If anyone who happens to be doing Christmas shopping for me sees this, I'm adding the MiG-29 Instrument Panel Clock to the list.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase.

This just in...the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, has officially declared that Reptilia are no longer a sub-classification of Animalia.

Two ordinances enacted on 07 January make it illegal

to have an animal or reptile within 150 feet of a public event unless the animal or reptile is participating. It does not apply to animals or reptiles fenced inside private property near an event or to service animals.

This entry brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

I think I speak for all your users when I say:

YOU ALL SUCK!

Cingular becomes the latest cell fone provider to disable key features of a popular handset. Sprint also did it with the Treo 650, much as Cingular has, and Verizon completely crippled the Motorola V710.

Rhetorical question: What the hell is the point of offering a feature-laden fone when you disable the features users want the most?

Remember rotary fones?

Yeah, I'm just old enough. In fact, there's one in my basement that's just begging to be turned into a cell fone. It won't fit in your pocket, but it's über-cool.

(via Slashdot)

The top image on the product page for the Thanko Head Massager (Japanese — are you really surprised?) is absolutely hilarious.

(via Gizmodo)

While we're talking about weird products/inventions, can someone confirm/deny that the Angel Light isn't just an April Fool's prank that accidentally got published over two months early?

Erm, yeah, right.

Maybe if I had applied one of these to my Sonicare, it would still be working...

If you do, be sure to read this excellent primer on CRTs vs. LCDs. Lots of information there, presented in a very easily digestible format. Gets the official CLN Grandmother Seal of Approval™.

(via Slashdot)

In what comes as a refreshing bit of good news for anyone who is not engaging in pseudo-Christian jihad against the basic principles of science, U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that stickers pushing a Creationist agenda be removed from science textbooks.

Colin Purrington has an interesting perspective:

[I]t's really too bad the Cobb County school district, the loser in the decision, now has to pay the rather large legal fees, sucking valuable assets away from school budgets. To cover the expected revenue shortfall, and to avoid tax increases in Cobb County, perhaps Marjorie Rogers (the Creationist who started the whole mess) can extract donations from the 2,300 supporters who signed her original petition that objected to evolution instruction.

He also has a new sticker to be placed over the old one:

Please read this entire textbook before the end of the year. Due to insufficient funds, you will not have a teacher for this class. If you would like to thank somebody for this situation, please contact local Creationists, who helped bankrupt the district.

The district's legal counsel is also being blamed (by a small legion of organised crackpots called the Discovery Institute, whose agenda, among other things, appears to be the promotion of intelligent design) for mounting an "incompetent defense."

(Also on Slashdot)

I got a really nice Sonicare toothbrush about 18 months ago. It worked great, even if it was a bit on the expensive side at $120.

I assumed from day one (correctly, it turns out) that it used Ni-Cd batteries, and as a result, I was very conscientious in its charging to ensure no "memory" effect developed. I took all the standard precautions for Ni-Cd batteries: don't keep it on the charger constantly, only charge it when it's fully run down, etc.

Despite my best efforts, the batteries died completely — as in, the toothbrush was rendered completely useless — after 18 months. It won't charge, it won't power up, it won't do anything. It just sits there like a nice, heavy, $120 lump of white plastic.

Sonicare's engineers, in their quest for maximum profit, designed the toothbrush in two halves, to be ultrasonically welded together. This completely removes any possibility that the batteries could be replaced without destroying the toothbrush. It would have cost at most another dollar per brush to screw the two halves together instead, making the batteries replaceable and preventing this $120 item from being a $120 disposable, toxic paperweight.

The extreme toxic effects of cadmium are widely known. Nickel, while less toxic than cadmium, also has no place in a landfill. Extensive recycling efforts are in place to prevent any more Ni-Cd batteries from ending up in landfills, yet Sonicare has chosen to shirk any responsibility and designed their toothbrushes in a manner extremely unconducive to recycling.

Boo-hiss, Sonicare. Shame on you for such a poor design, and shame on you for putting profits ahead of corporate responsibility.

Kirin, the Japanese brewer, has hypothesized the ancient Egyptian methods of brewing beer.

They also have a recipe if you'd like to try it at home. (Kiddies, not unless you're 21!)

If only I had huge sterile pots to brew this in, I'd like to try it. It sounds interesting.

A group of Australian architects has developed a house made entirely of cardboard, Velcro, wing nuts, and tape.

(From Slashdot)

Researchers at Imperial College London have determined that theobromine was up to one-third more effective than cough remedies at stopping persistent coughs. Theobromine, an alkaloid found in cocoa, has been previously shown to have a mild stimulant effect, as well as an ability to improve the mood.

I was sitting on the couch tonight and a movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. Whaddaya know, a camel cricket was walking across the carpet.

Someone left the outhouse door open...

...to the