Yet another bit of good news for those of us who sleep far too much of our lives away. According to this “Greek study”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6354855.stm reported by the BBC, men who take naps of any duration are 34% less likely to die of heart-disease.
See “previous post”:http://duenos.net/article/30/sleeping-in-is-good-for-you about the link between sleeping in and intelligence.
Corporate accountability? Not for cable providers
A gentleman in Salt Lake City, Utah has been disconnected from his Comcast broadband service for using too much of his unlimited bandwidth. He’s documenting everything on his “blog”:http://comcastissue.blogspot.com/ and you know what, he’s got a point. If corporations don‚Äôt actually define the terms of their service, it’s very hard to make an educated decision about what companies to patronize. (via “The Inquirer”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37565)
Teraflop isn't just a funny word, it's the future
In addition to being fun to say, a teraflop means calculating one trillion floating point operations per second. That’s what Intel’s new chip code-named ‘The Teraflops Research Chip’ can do, and it promises to revolutionize the way computing, software, everything is done. I don’t actually understand any of the numbers involved, but this is really exciting.
“Intel”s official release”:http://www.intel.com/research/platform/terascale/teraflops.htm?iid=homepage+80core
An ironic news cycle for Zimbabwe
In a twist of irony that only the truly cynical could find funny, two news stories are coming out of debt/war-torn Zimbabwe. The first story is that Zimbabwe has hit yet another world-record inflation mark, this time allowing their ‘currency’ to rise at 1,593.6%. At the same time as the world looks on in horror at the meteoric (and yet somehow sustained) fall of Zimbabwe‚Äôs economy, President Robert Mugabe has set about his own agenda with very little attention to the economic catastrophe in his country. That agenda seems to be solely focused on celebrating his 83rd birthday at an estimated cost of 1.2 million dollars. Of course the government of Zimbabwe doesn’t actually have that kind of money, so President Mugabe has sent out a plea to the people of the country (80% of whom are chronically unemployed) to donate funds for the party.
Don’t believe me? Check out these articles published not 8 minutes apart from each other: “Birthday”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6354337.stm “Inflation.”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6354783.stm
Do you remember… bird flu?
I largely ignored avian flu the first time it came through the news cycle. At the time it seemed like Bird Flu was just another everybody-panic-now kind of news story designed to scare suburban soccer moms away from poultry. As I read about it over the last year I realized more and more that this is actually a pretty big deal and the rate at which it is spreading over the globe is, well, alarming. In fact, a good illustration of that is this interactive map from the BBC. Pay particular attention to the jump in cases between January and June of 2006.
Not only is bird flu a big potential problem from a public health point of view, but economically, outbreaks of the virus can spell financial ruin as it has recently for these Suffolk turkey farmers. As with other potentially explosive viral problems in the past (mad cow, Ebola, SARS) let”s hope that the world health community can keep a handle on this issue before, well, we all die. PANIC.
Military tech goes domestic
Night-vision, laser-guided bombs and wrinkle-free cloth. In case you don”t spend much time hanging around Army bases, the Army has new duds. These uniforms are not only better for camouflage (they use a muted and pixelated pattern that is far harder to pick out in any situation) but they”re also wrinkle and stain-free. I remember watching an episode of "Mail Call" with R. Lee Ermey about the new uniforms a few years ago and I have to say, it is a lot harder to spot people in these. For the individual soldier there is an added blessing to making it harder to shoot him or her, they also can”t be pressed and the Timberland-style suede boots can”t be polished. This new Army, they don”t have to polish boots and Haliburton peels their potatoes. Next thing you know Blackwater will be doing their fighting. If you want to know more about the new uniforms, peruse this New York Times article. rnrnFor a fancy diagram of the uniform changes, look here.
The human face of violence
Stephen Dupont and Kristen Ashburn have put together one of the more powerful photography exhibits I have seen in a while. Focusing exclusively on portraits of gang members and suiciced bombers (and their families) the photographers bring a sense of humanity to what all-too-often is reduced to a good guy vs. bad guy dichotomy. To see the whole collection with introduction go to this site. To skip the intro and go straight to a collection of thumbnails, go here.
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If you had one day left to live, what would you do?
That”s the question these four young guys from Canada ask as they set out to prove that anyone can do anything they want to. At some point or other we”ve all sat down and at least thought about a list of things we would like to accomplish before our time on Earth is through, but these guys are doing theirs at an alarming rate. Some of the items on the list are a little trite like "28. Send a message in a bottle," but then there are also more difficult ones like "33. Hold public office." They”ve done both of those by the way. These guys make me feel like dusting off my list and giving it the old college try. (Via Joshspear.com)
Japanese man cuts down on commute by stealing police car
Getting off the commuter train in Gunma, Japan, an un-named man got into an idling police car and drove himself almost all of the way home. Don”t believe me? Check it out: article.
Netflix for gamers, but it's all online
Gametap gives you unlimited access to a huge amount (yesterday it was 837) of old arcade, console, and computer games, all for a reasonable subscription fee of $6.95/month. Some of the better known titles on the menu are Street Fighter 2, Tony Hawk, and Sonic the Hedgehog as well as lesser-known but still great titles like Final Fight and brand new games like Sam and Max. It”s video gaming à la carte.