Behind China’s Stock Meltdown — Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2007 — Page 1 — TIME
Rollercoaster rides are not unusual for China’s stock markets, which sometimes resemble a casino in Macau. What happened next, however, was decidedly unusual: investors in New York’s equity markets woke up, saw that Shanghai had tanked, and had a collective heart attack: they sent the Dow Jones industrial average down more than 400 points, its biggest single-day drop since Sept. 17, 2001 — the first trading session after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The drop in New York, in turn, fueled fear in markets across Asia the following day, and suddenly investors were seized by visions of a rerun of 1997’s “Asian contagion,” when a financial crisis in Thailand triggered stock crashes from Jakarta to Moscow to New York. On Feb. 28, as this new outbreak of investor gloom spread, India’s main stock index tumbled 4%, Singapore’s dropped 3.7%, Japan’s fell 2.9%, South Korea’s lost 2.6%, and Hong Kong’s slipped 2.5%.
God vs. Science — Sunday, Nov. 05, 2006 — Page 1 — TIME
But in fact creationism and I.D. are intimately related to a larger unresolved question, in which the aggressor’s role is reversed: Can religion stand up to the progress of science? This debate long predates Darwin, but the antireligion position is being promoted with increasing insistence by scientists angered by intelligent design and excited, perhaps intoxicated, by their disciplines’ increasing ability to map, quantify and change the nature of human experience. Brain imaging illustrates–in color!–the physical seat of the will and the passions, challenging the religious concept of a soul independent of glands and gristle. Brain chemists track imbalances that could account for the ecstatic states of visionary saints or, some suggest, of Jesus. Like Freudianism before it, the field of evolutionary psychology generates theories of altruism and even of religion that do not include God. Something called the multiverse hypothesis in cosmology speculates that ours may be but one in a cascade of universes, suddenly bettering the odds that life could have cropped up here accidentally, without divine intervention. (If the probabilities were 1 in a billion, and you’ve got 300 billion universes, why not?)
Kindergartner Being Groomed For Line-Leader Position | The Onion - Americas Finest News Source
BELLE MEADE, TN—Belle Meade Day School kindergarten teacher Mrs. Allen, 33, says she has known since the first day of class that student Gregory Hutter, 6, was “line-leader material.”
“Hes wasnt the tallest, but he conducted himself as if he were over four feet,” Mrs. Allen said of Hutter, who she believes “has what it takes” to lead the class to key locations throughout the school such as the cafeteria, bathroom, water fountain, and to the playground. “Once hes got his feet under him a bit more, the skys the limit on where he can take this class.”
TrekToday - Paramount Officially Announces Trek XI For Christmas 2008
Paramount Pictures today officially announced the return of Star Trek on Christmas Day 2008.
“If there’s something I’m dying to see, it’s the brilliance and optimism of Roddenberry’s world brought back to the big screen,” J.J. Abrams was quoted in a Paramount press release, which in its title again confirmed Abrams will be directing the new Trek film. Abrams continued: “[Alex Kurtzman] and Roberto Orci] wrote an amazing script that embraces and respects Trek canon, but charts its own course. Our goal is to make a picture for everyone — life-long fans and the uninitiated. Needless to say, I am honored and excited to be part of this next chapter of Star Trek.”
Kurtzman and Orci, who previously worked on Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III, were the only writers mentioned in the press release. They will also serve as executive producers along with Bryan Burk, while Abrams and Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof will produce the film. Shooting is currently scheduled to begin in the Fall.
“We could not be more thrilled to be back in business with J.J. Abrams,” Paramount CEO and Chairman Brad Grey said. “The revival of the Star Trek franchise is an important part of Paramount’s turnaround.”
Slashdot | Christian Group Prepares To Mark Wii as ‘Porn Portal’
Citing the Wii’s ability to browse the internet via the Opera browser, a Christian group based out of California is planning on targeting the console with a smear campaign, Kotaku reports. The site has gotten ahold of a leaked press release from the upcoming ‘Porn Talk’ media event. From the release:
“Like many new gaming technologies, the Wii’s wireless internet capabilities make it a portal to porno. ‘Parents think the computer is the only way for their kids to get porn on the internet. Unfortunately, they are dead wrong,’ says Mike Foster, founder of ThePornTalk.com. ‘Gaming devices like the Wii and the PSP aren’t just for fun games anymore. You’re able to surf the net, chat with friends, email, and view porn because of its internet access. Kids know this but parents don’t!’”
Teen-On-Homeless Violence Increases | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
A report issued by the National Coalition for the Homeless says there were more attacks against the homeless in 2006 than in the previous decade, many of them carried out by teenagers. What do you think?
Slashdot | AMD A Ripe Target For Buyout?
“AMD stock was up 6.74% on Monday on rumors that AMD is a prime buyout target. After their purchase of ATI, they’ve been pressed to maintain their aggressive policy of chip production increases. As a result, the AMD message board on Yahoo! is full of speculation on who has their eyes on the company. Many folks there think that IBM is the right buyer for the company. There’s no firm word that AMD is even being considered for purchase, but it’s certainly and interesting prospect.”
KGB maps discovered in Jesus’s coffin | The Register
Why not kick off with the obvious big story of the week? Yes, James Cameron finds the tomb of Christ. We had upwards of a trillion responses on this one, but very few were actually written in anything approaching comprehensible English, so we’ve trimmed the pile, somewhat.
One theme that has troubled many of you, though, is the question of confirming identities using DNA analysis. Who, you wondered, were they comparing the samples to?
We have worked this one out: to obtain a comparative sample, one merely needs to wait for the transubstantiation of the Eucharist during communion and, presto! You have your sample for comparison…
14 WFIE, The Tri-State’s News Leader: Chain restaurants charged with promoting “X-treme Eating”
Some of the “X-Treme Eating” options highlighted in the March issue of CSPI’s Nutrition Action Health Letter include: Ruby Tuesday’s “Colossal Burger.” Ruby Tuesday actually became the first big chain to put nutrition information on its menus. Unfortunately, it scrapped that initiative, presumably because it meant the sale of fewer Colossal Burgers. With 1,940 calories and 141 grams of fat - more than two days’ worth! One of these megaburgers is equivalent to about five McDonald’s Quarter Pounders.
Independent Online Edition > Business News
The company and the film industry hope that BitTorrent can win paying customers because of its reputation as an internet pioneer and because 135 million internet users are now operating BitTorrent software. However, the films available on the BitTorrent Entertainment Networkare for “rent” only. They have to be watched within 24 hours and are encrypted so that they cannot be kept indefinitely and transferred to other computers.
Since it was launched in late 2002, BitTorrent software has grown to be the most widely-used means of sharing files, mostly music albums, television shows and films that the entertainment industry would otherwise sell on CD or DVD.
TheStar.com - News - Pet shop’s saucy name sparks debate
“It’s never been such a huge deal till now,” says Pacchiano, 36. “It’s just a word – it’s what veterinarians call female dogs, it’s how the American Kennel Club refers to girl dogs.”
But Stillman’s worried that the name will be an ongoing irritant to the community. “When we have the kiddie parade next summer, people will take pictures of their kids, dressed up for the parade and that word will be in the background. It’s not going to make many parents happy,” she says.
a full day of linux haggling and i finally got my screen resolution problem solved. it ended up with me downloading this software package called 915resolution or 915resolutions (whichever) that modified some vbios settings ….and basically tricked linux into loading the right resolution! now i just need to get the sound working again…something with graphviz-cairo was screwing up installations, but i think i finally got alsa installed…we’ll see how this goes.
XP Minimal-Requierement-Test
The target of this project was to find the weakest system where you can run Windows XP.
Keep in mind, that Microsoft official requirements are a CPU with 233 MHz an 64 MB of RAM.
But that had to be beaten!
MP3 Patent Verdict Harmless To Music Fans — For Now - washingtonpost.com
About 400 companies, including some of the world’s largest technology companies, have licensed MP3 technology from Thomson Technology, a San Diego firm that identifies itself as a representative of the Fraunhofer Institute.
In a prepared statement, Thomson said yesterday that it does not license the two patents at issue in the court case. Thomson said it had the rights to 20 other families of patents that cover some of the standards for compressed audio files and are essential to implementing MP3 technology.
“MP3 is the world’s most popular compressed audio technology, and we look forward to its continued popularity,” the company said.
But some experts suggested that the fear of litigation and increased royalties could force companies to adopt other formats for audio files, including open-source technology. Apple, maker of the popular iPod music payer, uses a format called AAC for its iTunes music store.
Peoples Daily Online — U.S. soldier sentenced to 100 years for rape, murder of Iraqi girl
A U.S. soldier was sentenced Thursday to 100 years in prison for rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killing of her family last year, U.S. media reported.
Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, was also given a dishonorable discharge under a plea agreement he reached Tuesday with prosecutors prior to a court-martial at Fort Campbell, Kentucky,
In the plea agreement, Cortez, of Barstow, California, said he conspired with three other soldiers, Jesse V. Spielman, James P. Barker and Steven D. Green, to rape 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in Mahmoudiya, a village about 32 km south of Baghdad, in March 2006.
On March 12, 2006, five U.S. soldiers, all from the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, reportedly broke into the girls home, raping and murdering her, and then killing her parents and her six-year-old sister.
A linux and a windows install in one night (well, kinda, it is 3:50am). Of course, that was only half of what happened…
Bush Likens Terror War To U.S. Independence
In a speech at Mount Vernon, President Bush likened the war on terror to the Revolutionary War. What do you think?
Daft Charleston - Jokeroo.com
Who would have thought layering Daft Punk - “Around the World” over an old Charleston dance video would be so amusing.
Top 5 ways to hustle free drinks | Wise Bread
This is pretty nifty, just have to find the gullible people..
AlterNet: Maybe We Deserve to Be Ripped Off By Bushs Billionaires
Headline: While America obsessed about Brittanys shaved head, Bush offered a budget that offers $32.7 billion in tax cuts to the Wal-Mart family alone, while cutting $28 billion from Medicaid.
Independent Online Edition > Science & Technology
Amillia Sonja Taylor was born after 22 weeks, weighing less than a bag of sugar. Doctors gave her little chance of life. But now she has been allowed home. Jeremy Laurance reports
Published: 21 February 2007
Her tiny transparent feet, covered in gelatinous skin, look like those of some aquatic creature. Her chest, festooned with wires and tubes, covers a heart that pumps up to 80 times a minute. She is the world’s most premature baby known to have survived and, after four months in hospital, she is going home.
New Scientist Technology Blog: iTunes fingers musical fraud
Sounds to me like another Nick Hite-esque incident. From the article:
The recordings of a British concert pianist who found fame in the last years of her life have been exposed as hoaxes - by Apple’s iTunes music player.
Joyce Hatto died in June 2006, having become a cause célèbre with fans of classical piano in the last years of her life. A series of recordings showed her masterful command of a wide range of composers including Liszt, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Dukas and more.
Last week, a critic at the Gramophone magazine got surprise when he put a Hatto recording of Lizt’s 12 Transcendental Studies into his computer. The iTunes player identified the disc as being recorded by another pianist, Lászlo Simon. He dug out the Simon album and found it sounded exactly the same as the Hatto one.
Well, I think once of the neatest little apps on my new iPod Mini is under the “games” section, where you have music trivia on the files that are on your iPod. Sure makes a fun game to see how many I can get right.
Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination
WASHINGTON, DC—The Department of Health and Human Services issued a series of guidelines Monday designed to help parents curtail their children’s boundless imaginations, which child-safety advocates say have the potential to rival motor vehicle accidents and congenital diseases as a leading cause of disability and death among youths ages 3 to 14.
“Defuse the ticking time-bomb known as your child’s imagination before it explodes and destroys her completely,” said child-safety expert Kenneth McMillan, who advised the HHS in composing the guidelines. “New data shows a disturbing correlation between serious accidents and the ability of children to envision a world full of exciting possibility.”
Hip-Hop Outlaw (Industry Version) - Samantha M. Shapiro - New York Times
The RIAA is retarded.
…But Drama and Cannon’s studio was not a bootlegging plant; it was a place where successful new hip-hop CDs were regularly produced and distributed. Drama and Cannon are part of a well-regarded D.J. collective called the Aphilliates. Although their business almost certainly violated federal copyright law, as well as a Georgia state law that requires CDs to be labeled with the name and address of the producers, they were not simply stealing from the major labels; they were part of an alternative distribution system that the mainstream record industry uses to promote and market hip-hop artists. Drama and Cannon have in recent years been paid by the same companies that paid Kilgo to help arrest them.
The Daily Tribune News - Cartersville, Georgia
A Bartow County couple will go before a magistrate judge today to see if they will be arrested for allegedly stalking a Kennesaw police officer by installing cameras to track neighborhood speeders.
Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home, which is at the bottom of a hill. They have said they did so in hopes of convincing neighbors to slow down to create a safe environment for their son.
The Sipples allegedly caught Kennesaw police officer Richard Perrone speeding up to 17 mph over the speed limit. Perrone alerted Bartow authorities, who in turn visited the Sipples’ home to tell them Perrone intended to press charges against them for stalking.
Slashdot | Pre-Installed Linux Tops Dell Customer Requests
“Within only a few days of Dell opening a new customer feedback website, they discovered that the feature most requested (by an almost 2-to-1 margin!) is an option on all new Dell PCs: pre-installed Linux. (And the number 3 request is pre-installed Open Office.) I believe they’ll have a harder time now with the tired old mantra ‘There’s no customer demand for Linux.’”
In College, I Marched Against Racism—And It Worked | The Onion - Americas Finest News Source
It was a turbulent time in American race relations—the late 1980s. I was just an undeclared major at that historic flashpoint of racial reckoning, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those who werent there just cant understand. They were dark, dark days, crying out for the light of an organized, campus-wide demonstration, and we heeded that call. We provided that light.
Many of us were having our eyes opened, often for the first time, to the extent of racial injustice in America. Galvanized by the protest songs of Public Enemy and the writings of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and caught up in the surging crest of a rising wave of a bold new dawn of a bright new awakening, we took to the streets.
We came together from every area of study to make a statement. We marched with banners and signs and chanted slogans that made it clear to the entire campus that we, the young people, opposed racism in no uncertain terms. Several black people even showed up, which was awesome, and we all got our pictures in the college paper. The next morning—poof—racism, in all its insidious forms, was gone forever.
Doesnt that give you the inspiration to go out and fight for whatever you believe in?
Slashdot | Interstellar Ark
“There are three strategies to travel 10.5 light-years from Earth to Epsilon Eridani and bring humanity into a new stellar system : 1) Wait for future discovery of Star Trek physics and go there almost instantaneously, 2) Build a relativistic rocket powered by antimatter and go there in 22 years by accelerating constantly at 1g, provided that you master stellar amounts of energy (so, nothing realistic until now), but what about 3): go there by classical means, by building a gigantic Ark of several miles in radius, propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries — where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math to figure out how far are our fantasies of space travel from their actual implementation.”
