Category: Interesting Reads

Earthquake *NOT* caused by global warming?

For a change, global warming is not the root cause of some serious act-of-god type happenings. In this instance, those damns gays are causing earthquakes.

An Israeli parliamentarian said that several earthquakes felt in Israel recently were a consequence of gays and the parliament’s acceptance of them.

. . .

“Why do earthquakes happen? One of the reasons is the things to which the Knesset (parliament) gives legitimacy, to sodomy,” Benizri said during a parliamentary debate on earthquake preparedness.

A cost-effective way of averting earthquake damage, he added, would be to stop “passing legislation on how to encourage homosexual activity in the state of Israel, which anyway brings about earthquakes”.

So there’s the little bonus throw-in that it isn’t just the gays, but the acceptance and apparent promotion of their lifestyle by the Parliament that has caused the recent quakes. It’s encouraging to see that closed-minded thinking is prevalent in more places than just the US.

[tags]Gays, earthquakes, sodomy[/tags]

Pizza pricing

080228_pizza_chart.gifHere’s a facet of your life you probably don’t give much thought to – pizza prices. You call up the local pizza joint, order your $15 pizza, and soon you are eating a tasty treat made to your specifications (or at least, close to what you wanted), right? Well, cheese prices are up, and now with a rise in wheat prices, there’s a good chance that pizza you depend on (well, in my house we depend on it once every 7-10 days at a minimum) will soon go up in price, too.

Players big, small and in between in the $30 billion-plus industry are feeling the heat as they figure out how to deal with the double-barrel price spikes of the gooey and grainy commodities without sacrificing their quality, competitive edge or customer loyalty.

Now to us non-pizza-making peons, it might be hard to imagine how this could have such a big impact on pizza pricing. I mean, absolutely everything is going up in price right now, isn’t it? Massive fuel cost increases over the past half decade seem to have made everything more expensive. So how big a deal can a little bump in wheat prices be?

Spring wheat for March delivery fell $1.75 Thursday to close at $18.25 a bushel on the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. It traded as high as $25 a bushel this week. Wheat historically trades at $3 to $7 a bushel.

Holy Lolita-smacking beat-down. That’s a lotta price jumping, isn’t it? So, how to cope? Continue reading “Pizza pricing”

Ricin inside

It isn’t such a great time to be a guest at a slightly-off-the-strip hotel in Vegas right now, is it?

A substance found at a motel may be the deadly toxin ricin, but authorities said Friday they don’t believe it was intended for a terrorist attack. Lab tests on the substance were pending and seven people were taken to hospitals as a precaution.

“This event does not appear to be terrorism related,” FBI spokesman Richard Kolko in Washington said Friday morning. Kolko said the FBI was assisting local police in the investigation.

That aside, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are still involved in investigating the find.  But really, that makes sense for this oddity – I just find it humorous that it’s already being said that authorities don’t believe it is related to terrorism, but the DHS is involved in investigating it.

And if you aren’t familiar with just why a box of ricin is a big deal:

Ricin is made from the waste left over from processing castor beans, and can be extremely lethal. As little as 500 micrograms, or about the size of the head of a pin, can kill a human, according to the CDC.

Nasty stuff.  Quick, deadly in small quantities, and I’m guessing easy to keep out of sight.

[tags]Ricin, Las Vegas, FBI, DHS[/tags]

How cigarette smoke causes cancer

That title might need a question mark following it, as I’m not absolutely convinced that this is definitive, but recent research appears to point to hydrogen peroxide as the source of cancer from cigarette smoke.

In the research study, Goldkorn and colleagues describe how they exposed different sets of human lung airway cells (in the laboratory) to cigarette smoke and hydrogen peroxide. After exposure, these cells were then incubated for one to two days. Then they, along with unexposed airway cells, were assessed for signs of cancer development. The cells exposed to cigarettes smoke and the cells exposed to hydrogen peroxide showed the same molecular signatures of cancer development, while the unexposed cells did not.

I wonder what implications this has for folks who use that same stuff to bleach their hair? How much trouble does the evaporating liquid cause to those exposed to it briefly and infrequently?

And a bonus quote for those that believe in the Bill of Rights:

“Guns kill, bombs kill and cigarettes kill,” said Gerald Weissmann, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. “While biologists can’t do much about the first two, studies like this will help in the fight against tobacco-related death and disease.

Sounds like a gun-control advocate to me, no? (via QJ Science)

[tags]Cigarettes, smoking, cancer, hydrogen peroxide, FASEB, science, It works bitches, QJ, Gun control, Bill of rights[/tags]

The “Duh!” news of the week

A recent study shows that men are more likely to get addicted to games than women. I think this is a surprise to substantially less than 100 people in the world.

The study looked at how the brains of 22 young gamers – half of them male, half female – reacted when playing a simple video ball game. The researchers found that men’s brains had a higher activity in the mesocorticolimbic system.

. . .

Acquiring as much territory in a computer game environment is more rewarding for men than for women, the study showed. Reiss wasn’t surprised: “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species – they’re the males.”

Might explain the jealous boyfriend thing, too, I’m guessing.

[tags]Games, Territorial, Gaming addiction[/tags]

Anti-Ralph activity returns

No, no. It’s not a movement to prevent vomiting (well, not exactly). What I’m talking about here is the revival of people opposed to Ralph Nader running for President. Since Nader announced on Sunday his plans to improve John McCain’s chances of winning the White House, there has been a good bit of activity from those who believe all Nader does in entering the arena is take away votes from the Democratic candidate. Of course, Nader actually appears to consider himself a serious candidate, and I think he doesn’t see his entrance as a “Let’s let John McCain win” event. However, I think most people with political awareness who AREN’T Ralph Nader at least suspect this to be the outcome of Nader staying in the race (although, there are those who will say his presence did not cause the Gore loss in 2000, except the results they use don’t appear to quite support their argument to me). He probably killed an Al Gore win 8 years ago, and seems ready to do the same for Obama or Clinton this go around.

Now, I wonder if he really is after the White House, or if he’d just prefer McCain to win of the candidates we’re getting for the coming election. Sure, sure – he’ll say he’s serious about the run. And he certainly doesn’t seem like the type to support McCain over Obama or Clinton. Regardless, there are anti-Nader web sites lumbering back to life, and I expect we’ll start getting more of the so-called grass roots movement stuff going (door-to-door, pamphlets, TV ads maybe) to try shutting him down.

It should make for an interesting end of campaigning for the party nominations and a fun twist in the lead-up to this fall’s elections, though, wouldn’t you say?

[tags]Nader, Ralph Nader, McCain, Election, Presidency[/tags]

Lasers are old, you know?

I’m not really sure when the brilliant hybrid of frikkin’ sharks and laser-beams came about, but it’s pretty clear from this 1963 article on cutting wood with a beam of light that the frikkin’ sharks didn’t yet have frikkin’ laser-beams on their frikkin’ heads – at least, not in popular culture. There was probably an underground cult-like movement with such creatures. I envision them hosting frikkin’ shark fights in frikkin’ pools in frikkin’ secret underground cabins. All before Michael Vick was even born, most likely.

mm-med_laser_cut_wood.jpgA new technique in woodworking may be on the way. The University of Michigan has developed a tool that cuts through maple and other hardwoods with bursts of light that act like the science-fiction writers’ disintegrating-ray gun. The experimental drill operates with a laser (light amplification by stimulated electron radiation) head that contains a coiled xenon flash tube and a ruby rod. It builds up intensely hot light pulses, focuses them through a lens to vaporize a hole in a block of wood instantly without leaving char. It’s not ready yet for the home workshop.

I have a theory, in fact, that the young man pictured there is the inventor of the frikkin’ shark/laser hybrid, although I haven’t worked out all the details yet.

[tags]Sharks, laser-beams, cutting wood, wood, laser, frikkin’, Modern Mechanix[/tags]

Beef recall? Can it *really* be that bad?

So, maybe you’ve heard about the huge, nation-wide beef recall? Maybe you don’t know just why this is happening. And maybe you are wondering, well just how bad could it really be?

A disturbing video of cows too sick to walk being pulled to their feet by chains in order to pass slaughterhouse inspections has prompted the largest recall of beef in American history.

. . .

The undercover footage, obtained by the Humane Society of the United States, shows workers kicking crippled cows, spraying them with water and using electric shocks, trucks and chains to force the cattle to walk and pass USDA inspection.

. . .

The recall covers beef produced since February 2006 and distributed nationwide to wholesalers for use in products such as burrito filling, meatballs and sausage.

Of course, a lot, probably most of the beef in question has already been consumed. But if you weren’t already wary of beef, maybe this will help you to think about your food before you buy it. I love me some beef, but I rarely eat it any more. This recall is making me appreciate not having any lately.

Oh, and why the hell is it that the best story I can find about a US product recall is from a British news site?

[tags]Beef, Recall, USDA, Mmmmm[/tags]

Floridians against evolution?

tb_evolutionpoll_graph225.jpgResults from a badly worded survey are in, and if the numbers are to be believed (hint: they aren’t to be believed), approximately 50% of Floridians are in favor of teaching creationism in place of evolution as science.

Only 22 percent want public schools to teach an evolution-only curriculum, while 50 percent want only faith-based theories such as creationism or intelligent design, according to a new St. Petersburg Times survey.

Here’s a clue. If you only use penicillin to deal with your occasional infection, you can make a reasonable claim that you don’t buy in to the theory of evolution. If, however, you use such as Azithromycin, Ciprofloxacin, Amoxicillin, or any of the other updated penicillin alternatives or medications which fight some of the same classes of illness, then you are getting medicated based on evolution theory. If there were no evolution, you wouldn’t need to fight penicillin-resistant medications, as penicillin would always work against the class of ailments for which penicillin worked many years ago.

If you want to believe in some higher power, that’s great. But don’t confuse faith issues with science and try to get evolution taken out of school just because the science disagrees with your faith. If you feel children must be taught Intelligent Design or Creationism, take them to church and get your Sunday School teachers to educate them. Because as appealing as these concepts are, they are most certainly not science.

I lack the proper command of the language and sufficient depth in the subject to write a very good post about this, but I do know the difference between science and non-science, and am so tired of people trying to teach one as the other. (via Pharyngula)

[tags]Pharyngula, Science, Evolution, Creationism, Intelligent Design[/tags]

World’s biggest ferris wheels

ferris-wheel-800_clip2.jpg

Honestly, sometimes I even surprise myself with the subjects that I find interesting.  Quite randomly, I recently found this very short, but very cool article on work around the world (well, at least a couple of locations) to build the world’s largest ferris wheel.  A ride that had fallen out of favor some years ago, the ferris wheel seems to be suffering, you might say, a resurgence in interest since the London Eye opened a few years ago.

The larger these monstrous rides become, the greater their capacity and potential profit—and the more seriously builders take them. To start, they don’t call them Ferris wheels. “We categorize them as ‘observational wheels’ because of the capsules,” says Alexander Pieper, spokesman for the Great Wheel Corporation, which developed the Singapore, Dubai and Beijing wheels.

My bad.  The world’s largest observational wheel.  It’s hardly an article, being no more than sidebar length for any magazine publication, but I found the accompanying illustration (captured in part above) to be chock full of useless cool knowledge. For instance, the original ferris wheel, the Eagle 16 noted in the illustration, made a revolution in a mere 12 seconds.  Now, it’s around half an hour start to finish on the giants.  To borrow a phrase from Keanu Reeves – Whoa.

[tags]Ferris Wheel, Observational wheels, Singapore Flyer, London Eye, Beijing Great Wheel, Extreme Engineering[/tags]

Happy Valentine’s day

Celebrate the oddity of love’s expression that is Valentine’s Day with Yahoo! Movie’s look at the 10 most mismatched movie couples.

Dan Aykroyd & Rosie O’Donnell
Exit to Eden – 1994
“Exit to Eden” was a dark, romantic novel by “Interview With a Vampire” author Anne Rice about bondage and S&M. Who better, then, to turn it into a movie than the creator of “Mork and Mindy?” An even better question: what movie executive thought that the formula for box office gold was putting Dan Aykroyd and Rosie O’Donnell in skimpy studded leather outfits? As the comic relief they are painfully unfunny, and not even the kind of painful that a dominatrix would enjoy.

Also making the list are painful pairs like Hayden Christiansen and Natalie Portman (I adore her, but he is Gore-like in his woodenness), and the laughably bad Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck coupling in Gigli.  A couple of the movie couples feel almost like “We can’t come up with couple 9 and 10 – throw some forgettable pair in.”  Otherwise, it’s dirty-laundry comforting to see where others agree with your feelings.

[tags]Yahoo!, Movies, Mismatched couples, Valentine’s day[/tags]

KDE for Windows

I hadn’t even heard of this before, but for all you Linux-lovers out there, work is being done to get KDE running on Microsoft Windows. If I get a bit of time to work on this, I’m going to try it on one of my systems and see how it goes. I suspect it will make it easier for me to get the family ported to Linux based systems at home.

So how did I learn about this? Why would I care? Well, MrCopilot has a good, moderate length write-up on his experience with installing and using KDE for Windows. This is a port that has been in-process for quite a while, because, let’s face it, porting a full development library set like KDE and supporting libs is a big undertaking. But after showing a few screens of the install, he gets right to the meat of the experience. What works?

Quite a lot actually. See below for Screenshots of included apps that work. Almost all the apps shipped “work”. Two are all but useless due to bugs. The rest seem to function perfectly as long as you don’t need to refer to Help. Fortunately most apps have an online help while this bug gets ironed out.

And he shows a lot of what does work, what standard KDE tools and apps are included, and so on. But first, he has to answer the opposing question – what doesn’t work?

Sound, at least on my setup there was no sound, any application that tried to make a peep instead produced this error message. Most Apps let you disable sound.

. . .

Konqueror – KDE’s Swiss Army Knife, Web Browser, File Manager, FTP Client, Embedded File Viewer, Etc … Unfortunately on my Windows box it is reduced to a Web Browser (without Flash support) and a Menu Explorer (without being able to launch anything.)

And a few other things that would probably be minor to most folks.  I always like the concept of changing my Windows interface, but the fact that it doesn’t follow me to other machines really hinders my enjoyment of that idea.  This is why I don’t use Stardock’s GUI re-skinner or desktop customizer tools, as much as I like the company, the concept, and the cost.   Of course, that means there’s a good chance I would try this and not stick with it.  But again, the concept is appealing, and the more universal desktop experience this could enable at home when I move between Windows and Linux is very appealing to me.

And I’m hopeful that developments like this will push content creators (read “developers”) to put out more portable, cross-platform software.  Once the support libraries are more globally available, it should make it easier for more globally portable software, right?  I mean, I know it’s not a case of “Well, the libraries are there, so *POOF* our software now works on 12 different operating systems.”  But as middleware and support libraries become more portable, I would think that applications would naturally follow to become multi-platform entities.  So I will be watching KDE for Windows as it is worked on to see if this does anything to improve computing for the masses.  I’m hopeful, but I realize what an uphill battle that change will be.