moonbuggy

Chewbacca now has a his own blog. Has some very interesting things to say..

`A body of research suggests that playing video games provides benefits similar to bilingualism in exercising the mind. Just as people fluent in two languages learn to suppress one language while speaking the other, so too are gamers adept at shutting out distractions to swiftly switch attention between different tasks.

A new study of 100 university undergraduates in Toronto has found that video gamers consistently outperform their non-playing peers in a series of tricky mental tests. If they also happened to be bilingual, they were unbeatable.

“The people who were video game players were better and faster performers,” said psychologist Ellen Bialystok, a research professor at York University. “Those who were bilingual and video game addicts scored best — particularly at the most difficult tasks.”‘

`Sperm whales in the Gulf of Alaska are likely using the sounds of fishing boat engines as underwater dinner bells to hone in on longlines hung with valuable sablefish, scientists said.

The engines make loud, erratic bubbling noises as fishermen maneuver their boats while winching up hundreds of bottom-dwelling sablefish.

“That’s the whales’ cue,” said Jan Straley, an assistant professor at the University of Alaska Southeast who since 2002 has helped lead an ongoing study of the whales’ behavior.

The study has helped researchers devise low-cost ways for fishermen to hoodwink the highly intelligent cetaceans.

It estimates there are 90 male sperm whales feeding from longlines in the eastern Gulf of Alaska, part of the world’s largest sablefish fishery.’

`According to several different support threads over at Microsoft’s user groups forum, the latest definitions file from Microsoft “(version 5805, 5807) detects Symantec Antivirus files as PWS.Bancos.A (Password Stealer).”

When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec’s product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user’s machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple entries (registry editing is always a dicey affair that can quickly hose a system if the user doesn’t know what he or she is doing) so that the program can be completely removed and re-installed.’

`Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has become the second state leader in as many days to be caught up in a swearing gaffe.

Mr Beattie was unaware cameras were rolling when he swore while talking about his deputy Anna Bligh with other premiers at Friday’s Council of Australian Governments meeting in Canberra.

Television cameras recorded Mr Beattie telling his NSW counterpart Morris Iemma: “She’s deputy premier and treasurer and every other piece of shit I don’t want.”

The comments followed Mr Iemma’s own slip-up during the same conversation, when he described Sydney’s new Cross City Tunnel chief executive as a “fuckwit”.’

`Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Teheran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. [..]

“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” said a senior Pentagon adviser. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”‘

`An Australian tourist has been charged with assault after telling a Texas woman to stop talking on her mobile phone at the movies.

Pauline Clayton was enjoying a matinee screening of Brokeback Mountain in a Texas cinema when her day suddenly turned ugly. [..]

“I put one finger up to my mouth to shoosh her,” Ms Clayton said.

“She ignored me – I then leaned across and touched her with three or four fingers on the top of her arm.”

When the “very large” woman failed to end her call, Ms Clayton again touched her on the shoulder and that was when the woman exploded.

Ms Clayton said the woman stood up over her, started shouting expletives at her and then stormed out of the cinema, in the town of Webster, just outside Houston.

A short time later two Texas police officers walked into the cinema and escorted Ms Clayton out.’

Poor kid. 🙂

(2.1meg .flv)

An interesting job offer for a PHP programmer posted on Craigslist.

`Using cartoons, games and kid-friendly websites, the federal intelligence community is seeking to win the hearts and minds of America’s children.

Move over, McGruff. The trench-coated canine mascot of the National Crime Prevention Council has some youthful competition in the battle for the hearts and minds of America’s children. Now in virtual training on the website of the National Security Agency are the CryptoKids, the code-makers and code-breakers of America’s future. [..]

This Toys ‘R’ Us approach to spying is nothing new for the fifteen agencies that comprise the “intelligence community” of the US government, including the CIA, the NSA and the National Reconnaissance Office. In 1997 President Bill Clinton mandated that all government agencies set aside virtual space on their websites for child-friendly material. Today, these sites serve as recruiting portals for America’s youth.’

Well, no one seems to die.

Pretty disgusting. I couldn’t watch it. No doubt some of you dirty fuckers love this sorta stuff tho. 🙂

(8.2meg Windows Media)

see it here »

`US immigration officials have arrested a Haitian woman after baggage screeners found a human head in her luggage at a Florida airport.

Myrlene Severe, 30, has been charged with failing to declare the head on a customs form and transporting “hazardous material”. [..]

Ms Severe said that the head was to ward off evil sprits, officials said.’

`By creating plasma in open air with lasers, Japanese scientists are working on a true 3D display

The Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced an exciting breakthrough in optoelectronics — a working three dimensional display. The display does not rely on any sort of optical illusion or disorientation. Instead, infrared lasers are aligned to converge and create small amounts of plasma. The plasma acts as a floating “dot” on top of the laser grid.’

A bunch of accidents in some tunnel.

Now I kinda see why they’re so keen on people not changing lanes in tunnels. 🙂 Would suck to be a passenger on that bus.

`It’s a little-noticed legacy of post-9/11 airport security procedures: the brisk commerce spawned by the buying, selling and disposal of the 30 million prohibited items surrendered by passengers at checkpoints.

Some of it is hazardous waste, like Chemical Mace, and is disposed of accordingly. A small portion is pure junk and gets discarded. But scissors, cigarette lighters and pocketknives have value. And, this being the USA, a lucrative market has sprung up around the buying and selling of surrendered items.

Nobody has totaled it up, but the business of disposing of or reselling items banned by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration appears to be valued in the millions of dollars a year. After a traveler leaves behind a banned item – a hunting knife, say – it can follow a strange and convoluted journey to a new owner. That journey often involves a pass through state or local government ownership, and a posting on eBay.’

`A port Lincoln man was in hospital after crashing his car into the town’s police station causing several thousand dollars worth of damage, police said today.

A police spokesman said the vehicle smashed through a fence and hit the front wall of the station about 2am (CST) today. [..]

He has been charged and will appear in Port Lincoln court for driving without due care and on licence and drink-drive offences.’

`Google today announced a new “feature” of its Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new “Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers not to use this feature, because it will make their personal data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google password.’

`Paris Hilton reportedly threatened to pull out of the Brit Awards unless she had a Jacuzzi in her dressing room. Hilton, will report from the red carpet, was allegedly ready to boycott the show if she didn’t get the special bath. An insider said to Britain’s Daily Star the 24-year-old, who is thought to be pocketing £100,000 ($235,500) for the show, was shocked she wouldn’t have a few “home comforts”. “The producers had to tell her the facts of life, that her dressing room is precisely that – a place to get dressed, nothing else,” the source said.’

`The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity. [..]

The core of this effort is a little-known system called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). Only a few public documents mention it. ADVISE is a research and development program within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), part of its three-year-old “Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment” portfolio. The TVTA received nearly $50 million in federal funding this year.’

`The Turd Twister is a complete kit for shaping your turd into amazing designs, and it comes with a hilarious instruction manual. It’s just a joke of course, and it’s good for hours of laughter! It’s the Ultimate Gift for the person who has everything, including a “twisted” sense of humor! Get one today!’

`Some of the most famous physicists in the world are not telling the truth about one of the most taken for granted concepts in scientific history. They are not telling us how they can come up with their fanciful time travel theories (wormholes, advanced and retarded waves traveling in spacetime, etc…) using a model of the universe that precludes the possibility of motion. Nothing can move in spacetime or in a time dimension-axis by definition. This is because motion in time is self-referential. It is for this reason that Sir Karl Popper compared Einstein’s spacetime to Parmenide’s unchanging block universe[*], in which nothing ever happens.

The following is a short list of notorious time travel and spacetime crackpots, not necessarily in order of crackpottery. Some, like Hawking, Wheeler and Feynman, are venerated by the physics community and are considered by many to be among the most brilliant scientific minds that ever lived. Too bad they believe in time travel.’

`A woman who is 3 feet tall and weighed 37 pounds before she got pregnant has given birth to her first child — a healthy boy.

Eloysa Vasquez, who uses a wheelchair and had two miscarriages, suffers from Type 3 osteogenesis imperfecta, a disorder that makes bones soft and brittle.

Vasquez gained 20 pounds during pregnancy and delivered the 3 pound, 7 ounce baby on Jan. 24 at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital.’

`A sentimental husband in Denton, Greater Manchester, has celebrated his golden wedding anniversary by eating a 50-year-old can of chicken.

Les Lailey had been saving the tin of Buxted Whole Cooked Chicken in Jelly from a buffet he and his bride Beryl received as a wedding gift – in 1956. They kept hold of the tin through numerous house moves, explaining to the BBC: “I always said ‘on my 50th wedding anniversary I’m going to eat that chicken’ – so I did.”

He added: “It was all right. But I don’t like chicken.”’

`Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, told a grand jury he was “authorized by his superiors” to disclose classified information from an intelligence report to reporters, according to the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

In a letter to Libby’s lawyers, obtained by CNN, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said it is his understanding that Libby testified he was “authorized to disclose information about the National Intelligence Estimate to the press by his superiors.”

The letter does not name who the superiors are. But the National Journal, which first reported on the Fitzgerald letter, named Vice President Dick Cheney and other White House officials as authorizing Libby to disclose the classified material.’

`A Taiwanese citizen has been indicted as an agent of the People’s Republic of China in a lengthy indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Florida, federal officials announced in Washington Friday. [..]

Moo and Serge Voros of Paris have been indicted in Miami, Florida with attempting to export an F-16 aircraft engine, Black Hawk helicopter engines, cruise missiles, and air-to-air missiles to China, according to a statement released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities.’

`Milliseconds before a giant star dies in a spectacular explosion, it hums a note around ‘middle C’, astronomers say. [..]

“Our simulations show that the inner core starts to execute pulsations,” says Professor Burrows.

“They show that after about 500 milliseconds [after the core collapses] the inner core begins to vibrate wildly. And after 600, 700 or 800 milliseconds, this oscillation becomes so vigorous that it sends out sound waves.

“In these computer runs, these sound waves actually cause the star to explode, not the neutrinos.”‘

`Those of you fortunate enough to own Final Cut Pro 4.5, or those who promote eclecticism: nested in your FCP application itself is a string that is quite out of the ordinary. [..]

“If we can’t ship this puppy by then, we might as well be herding yaks. I’m glad it’s getting weird again. I didn’t understand it when it wasn’t weird. The C switch statement: Mmmmmm! Chock full of nooses! That would be like crossing the streams or something. Mmmm… Chicago style pizza! I’ve got my blankie, I’m good to go. A lot of this job is mental. “Mostly clockwise, sometimes reverses…” What’s the sound of one luma clamping? I just wanna be in the app! Oh, rough and woeful music which we have! Cause it to sound! The Yak is a delightful creature… rather like a visit with a bovine Confucious Nobody might know anything. I don’t know, somehow it just works. How do you tempt a Yak? [..]”

[..] 10 bucks drugs were involved.’

`Goldilocks would approve. Dark matter is not too cold and not too hot, but just right, researchers have found. Furthermore, its lukewarm temperature may help pinpoint just what the mysterious material is. [..]

According to their calculations, dark matter is “tepid” – about 10,000°C. By comparison, the surface of the Sun is about 6000°C, while its core is about 15.5 million °C.

“This temperature tells us something very fundamental about the properties of dark matter,” says Gilmore. He believes that tepid dark matter is almost certainly made up of a type of WIMP – massive theoretical particles that interact only weakly with other forms of matter, but attract or repel other WIMPs very strongly.’