moonbuggy

`Nine out of ten (93%) Web users in the UK know the difference between sponsored and organic search engine results compared to just 38% of Americans, according to new research.’

‘Animal experts admitted yesterday they had no explanation for a spate of what appear to be canine suicides — all from the same spot.

At least five dogs have jumped to their deaths from a bridge over a burn at Overtoun House in the past six months.

In the most recent case, a woman out walking her dog watched in disbelief as her pet suddenly vaulted over the parapet and plunged 40ft to its death.’

`The picture of a lesbian student dressed in a tuxedo will not be permitted in her school’s yearbook, the Clay County school officials decided.

Principal Sam Ward of Fleming Island High School made the initial decision to pull Kelli Davis’s picture from the yearbook, saying he did so because Davis, who is openly gay, was dressed in boy’s clothes. [..]

Fifteen of the 24 people who spoke at the meeting were in favor of Davis and nine supported the principal’s decision.’

`The idea of a cloak of invisibility that hides objects from view has long been confined to the more improbable reaches of science fiction. But electronic engineers have now come up with a way to make one. [..]

But the invisibility shield proposed by Alù and Engheta in a preprint on arXiv1 is more ambitious than this. It is a self-contained structure that would reduce visibility from all viewing angles. In that sense it would be more like the shielding used by the Romulans in the Star Trek episode “Balance of Terror” in 1966, which hid their spaceships at the push of a button.’

see it here »

`A Londonder made a tsnuami-relief donation using lynx — a text-based browser used by the blind, Unix-users and others — on Sun’s Solaris operating system. The site-operator decided that this “unusual” event in the system log indicated a hack-attempt, and the police broke down the donor’s door and arrested him.’

`The nitrogen (N2) laser produces intense extremely short (a few ns) intense (100 kW typical) pulses of light in the near UV portion of the E/M spectrum (337.1 nm). Despite this impressive capability, the N2 laser is among the easiest to construct [..]

Compared to all the other home-built lasers, the nitrogen laser also likely has the lowest risk of failure IFF you stay pretty close to the SciAm design, more below. No glass working, no mirrors, mirror mounts, or mirror alignment, minimal vacuum. Despite this, what you end up with isn’t substantially inferior to a commercial unit costing many kilobucks.’

`The bell certainly didn’t save two suspects in the case of a missing assault rifle.

A ringing cell phone was the downfall of the men, who insisted they had no knowledge of an AK-47 used in an October shooting. They continued to stand by their story under questioning.

Then their cell phones chimed in. As Detective Kevin Doran tried to silence the rings, he noticed one had interesting wallpaper – a picture of one of the suspects holding an AK-47.

“A picture truly is worth a thousand words,” said Capt. Joe Fair, the vice squad’s commander.’

`What you are looking at is Zil 135 Frog (Free Range Over Ground) – 7 short range Russian Missile launcher. This is definately not for the faint hearted, powered by TWO mighty big block V8 Ural Petrol Engines, it is best described as a monster truck. These are extremely rare, and most sort after by the US military for destroying. The Taliban had two of these and alot of Northern aliance and US special forces were used in tracking them down and destroying as they were a credible threat. These were commonly used by the Iraqi forces in the first Iraq war.’

`In its 183-year history, the august Oxford Union debating society has heard the wisdom of Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan and Mother Teresa.

Now its members are to hear from Ron Jeremy, star of 1,700 adult films, including Bang Along With Ron.

“Ron is the biggest and apparently the best in the business, so I’m sure he’ll have some fascinating stories to tell,” said Oxford Union librarian Vladimir Bermant, who organised the event.

Jeremy, who claims to have slept with more than 4,000 women, will address the union on Wednesday, joining many British prime ministers, three US presidents and prominent figures from the Dalai Lama to Malcolm X in its archival guest list.’

`Some researchers say that men can have ‘women’s brains’ and that women can think more like men.

Find out more about ‘brain sex’ differences by taking the Sex ID test, a groundbreaking experiment designed by a team of top psychologists.’

`Finally, you can have tasty, sizzling bacon, without all the shopping, planning, and preparation. Just schedule your appointment at baconwhores.com, and our trained experts will come and prepare bacon for you, exactly the way you like it.’

`DartMail lets people physically shoot electronic information at others.

The head of the Dart contains an RFID tag. By waving the tag over the reader, the ‘shooter’ can attach a handle to any electronic file (located in a shared file system) to the dart. After being shot, the victim can pass the dart over his or her reader (although invariable this is a guy’s thing), and see the file on the screen.’

`some of these topics are extremely dangerous’

`This robot solves the 3x3x3 Rubik’s Cube®.

I started to think about this problem in about August of 2000. In Jan 2001 fellow Mindstorms forums user ‘agiecco’ announced his intention to work on a robotic solution and, simultaneously, I saw that Rubik’s Cubes were on sale at www.target.com. So I bought a couple of cubes and started getting down to business…

I produced a ‘late beta’ version in mid-April 2001 that was a little clunky. The final version (presented here) is smooth and fairly reliable.’

`These images are the result of 8 years in the retail computer industry – 8 years that are thankfully behind me. I used to work in the service department in a retail store of a very famous computer company (think cows…). During this time, I was able to observe (and preserve for posterity) the aftereffects of the – shall we say – “technology challenged” folks. My friends and relatives couldn’t believe the stories I told – thus this collection of photos.’

`A South Jordan burglary may make the list of Utah’s dumbest robberies. [..]

“He was attempting to make access via the internet, some pornography sites and also attempting to dial some 1-900 sexual service numbers. All evidence indicates he disrobed while he was there and that he donned some women’s clothing while he was on the property,” said Sgt. Dan Starks of the South Jordan Police Department.

Police arrested the 18-year old suspect at his home where they found the stolen items from the robbed home.’