Archive for January, 2009
Say Yes To Order 66 Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
OK, Aussies, this is going too far
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Category: Organisms
Sea squirts or ascidians are lovely little marine filter feeders. They have a larval tadpole stage, where the little guys disperse by swimming, and then they settle down, metamorphose, and spend the rest of their lives quietly sucking in sea water and filtering out small particles for food. They are soft, gooey little blobs that filter feed.
Except in Australia.
Everything seems to be toxic or dangerous in Australia. Newly discovered off the South Australian coast: carnivorous sea squirts. These creatures aren't content with living on bacteria or debris — they function like a Venus fly trap, with a funnel shaped oral region on the end of a long stalk that snaps shut on small animals that touch it.
Do you guys think this is macho, or something? Does everything have to be trying to kill something else down under?
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:27 PM • 171 Comments
Category: Organisms
Sea squirts or ascidians are lovely little marine filter feeders. They have a larval tadpole stage, where the little guys disperse by swimming, and then they settle down, metamorphose, and spend the rest of their lives quietly sucking in sea water and filtering out small particles for food. They are soft, gooey little blobs that filter feed.
Except in Australia.
Everything seems to be toxic or dangerous in Australia. Newly discovered off the South Australian coast: carnivorous sea squirts. These creatures aren't content with living on bacteria or debris — they function like a Venus fly trap, with a funnel shaped oral region on the end of a long stalk that snaps shut on small animals that touch it.
Do you guys think this is macho, or something? Does everything have to be trying to kill something else down under?
Posted by PZ Myers at 10:27 PM • 171 Comments
Palin takes home one honor for her efforts
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Category: Politics
Posted on: January 20, 2009 10:21 AM, by PZ Myers
Late last year, the New Humanist podcast was taking nominations for their Bad Faith award, given to the most "deluded fantasist" of the year. It was my honor as one of the Americans on the roster to nominate our very own Sarah Palin.
Either I was extremely persuasive or my nominee was so patently fit for the award that none could oppose her. Sarah Palin wins! I am very pleased to say that it is the only thing she has won, and that it is well deserved.
Category: Politics
Posted on: January 20, 2009 10:21 AM, by PZ Myers
Late last year, the New Humanist podcast was taking nominations for their Bad Faith award, given to the most "deluded fantasist" of the year. It was my honor as one of the Americans on the roster to nominate our very own Sarah Palin.
Either I was extremely persuasive or my nominee was so patently fit for the award that none could oppose her. Sarah Palin wins! I am very pleased to say that it is the only thing she has won, and that it is well deserved.
worst foods to eat in the U.S.
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
Men's Health updates its list of the worst foods to eat in the U.S., finding a wealth of new terrible-for-you menu options to avoid if you're anywhere near concerned with your health or waistline.
- The Worst Food in America of 2009: Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake, 2,600 calories, 135 g fat … "more than a day's worth of calories and three days worth of saturated fat, and, worst of all, usually takes less than 10 minutes to sip through a straw."
- Worst Sandwich of 2009: Quizno’s Tuna Melt (large), 2,090 calories, 175 g fat … "Puts tuna’s healthy reputation on the line. A large homemade sandwich would likely provide one-fourth of the calories."
- Worst Salad of 2009: T.G.I. Fridays Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad, 1,360 calories, Fat: unknown … "Six out of the seven (TGIF salads) we analyzed topped out with more than 900 calories, which means that lunchtime can be the start of something big—namely, your belly."
- Worst Burger of 2009: Chili’s Smokehouse Bacon Triple-The-Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch Dressing, 2,040 calories, 150 g fat … " … Two-and-a-half day’s worth of fat—a full third of which is saturated. To do that much damage with roasted sirloin, you’d have to eat about eight 6-ounce steaks."
Seriously, I mean wtf, a shake with 2,600 calories, what s going on with you america?
Men's Health updates its list of the worst foods to eat in the U.S., finding a wealth of new terrible-for-you menu options to avoid if you're anywhere near concerned with your health or waistline.
- The Worst Food in America of 2009: Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake, 2,600 calories, 135 g fat … "more than a day's worth of calories and three days worth of saturated fat, and, worst of all, usually takes less than 10 minutes to sip through a straw."
- Worst Sandwich of 2009: Quizno’s Tuna Melt (large), 2,090 calories, 175 g fat … "Puts tuna’s healthy reputation on the line. A large homemade sandwich would likely provide one-fourth of the calories."
- Worst Salad of 2009: T.G.I. Fridays Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad, 1,360 calories, Fat: unknown … "Six out of the seven (TGIF salads) we analyzed topped out with more than 900 calories, which means that lunchtime can be the start of something big—namely, your belly."
- Worst Burger of 2009: Chili’s Smokehouse Bacon Triple-The-Cheese Big Mouth Burger with Jalapeno Ranch Dressing, 2,040 calories, 150 g fat … " … Two-and-a-half day’s worth of fat—a full third of which is saturated. To do that much damage with roasted sirloin, you’d have to eat about eight 6-ounce steaks."
Seriously, I mean wtf, a shake with 2,600 calories, what s going on with you america?
Police Blotter: Google searches nab hit-and-run driver
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
What: Google searches for phrases including "hit-and-run" nab California investment banker who claimed he believed he killed a deer instead of a person.
When: California appeals court rules on January 14, 2009.
Outcome: Conviction upheld.
What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
At about 9:00 p.m. on January 11, 2005, 55-year-old Gurdeep Kaur was dropped off on Moraga Boulevard, across the street from her home near Lafayette, Calif. She was on her way back from Terzetto Cuisine, an Italian restaurant that her family owned where she worked as a cook. Kaur began to cross the street–although not in a crosswalk, which was 1,000 feet away–and was wearing a white sweater and black pants.
She was struck by a car and killed. The driver left the scene, and police found no skid marks. Kaur was taken to a hospital and died of what a coroner would later rule to be "multiple blunt force injuries" caused by the impact.
Moraga police announced that the vehicle was a red or burgundy Jaguar XJ6 or XJ8 built between 1995 and 2003, based in part on debris at the scene including a hood ornament that snapped off as a result of the impact. They asked the public for leads.
Eventually their investigation led them to secure a warrant to search the home of Lee Harbert, a San Francisco Bay-area investment banker who had been convicted three times for driving while intoxicated. (Apparently at least some convictions had been expunged.) Inside his garage was a black 2000 Jaguar Vanden Plas that had been recently cleaned. It had body damage and police found one of the dead woman's earrings in the windshield well.
It's undisputed that Harbert was the driver who hit and killed Kaur that evening; the question is whether or not he violated the vehicle code requiring a driver involved in such an accident to stop and provide assistance to an injured person.
Harbert claimed he believed he hit a deer. He had consumed three drinks in Marin County during a long meeting earlier in the day and was driving home. He described the incident thusly: "And I looked…down the road, I looked immediately northbound, because I knew whatever had struck the car was large. I had no idea at the time what it was. God forbid that it was a person. Whether it was a large animal or… not… I didn't know." Also, because the police were looking for a red and burgundy Jaguar, he claimed to believe his accident was unrelated to the hit-and-run.
This could have remained a he said/she said situation except for a detail that makes this case relevant to Police Blotter: Harbert's Internet searches.
When police searched Harbert's house, they examined his computer. They found evidence of Google searches a few days after the accident for search terms including "auto glass reporting requirements to law enforcement," "auto glass, Las Vegas," auto parts, auto theft, and the Moraga Police Department. He allegedly also searched for "hit-and-run," which led him to a Web page dealing with the death of Kaur that said police had a lead on the vehicle.
(…)
Harbert was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, with the trial judge lecturing him for a "display of arrogance and self-absorption… while you were on the stand." He appealed, saying that the prosecutors' arguments amounted to misconduct and that there was no evidence he had actual knowledge a person was hit. A California appeals court rejected his arguments this week.
This isn't the first time that police have used Google searches to nab suspects. Police Blotter has chronicled a 2006 case involving a wireless hacker ("how to broadcast interference over wifi 2.4 GHZ") and a 2008 case involving a woman convicted of murdering her husband ("decomposition of a body in water"). Searches in a 2005 murder case included "neck," "snap," and "break."
What: Google searches for phrases including "hit-and-run" nab California investment banker who claimed he believed he killed a deer instead of a person.
When: California appeals court rules on January 14, 2009.
Outcome: Conviction upheld.
What happened, according to court documents and other sources:
At about 9:00 p.m. on January 11, 2005, 55-year-old Gurdeep Kaur was dropped off on Moraga Boulevard, across the street from her home near Lafayette, Calif. She was on her way back from Terzetto Cuisine, an Italian restaurant that her family owned where she worked as a cook. Kaur began to cross the street–although not in a crosswalk, which was 1,000 feet away–and was wearing a white sweater and black pants.
She was struck by a car and killed. The driver left the scene, and police found no skid marks. Kaur was taken to a hospital and died of what a coroner would later rule to be "multiple blunt force injuries" caused by the impact.
Moraga police announced that the vehicle was a red or burgundy Jaguar XJ6 or XJ8 built between 1995 and 2003, based in part on debris at the scene including a hood ornament that snapped off as a result of the impact. They asked the public for leads.
Eventually their investigation led them to secure a warrant to search the home of Lee Harbert, a San Francisco Bay-area investment banker who had been convicted three times for driving while intoxicated. (Apparently at least some convictions had been expunged.) Inside his garage was a black 2000 Jaguar Vanden Plas that had been recently cleaned. It had body damage and police found one of the dead woman's earrings in the windshield well.
It's undisputed that Harbert was the driver who hit and killed Kaur that evening; the question is whether or not he violated the vehicle code requiring a driver involved in such an accident to stop and provide assistance to an injured person.
Harbert claimed he believed he hit a deer. He had consumed three drinks in Marin County during a long meeting earlier in the day and was driving home. He described the incident thusly: "And I looked…down the road, I looked immediately northbound, because I knew whatever had struck the car was large. I had no idea at the time what it was. God forbid that it was a person. Whether it was a large animal or… not… I didn't know." Also, because the police were looking for a red and burgundy Jaguar, he claimed to believe his accident was unrelated to the hit-and-run.
This could have remained a he said/she said situation except for a detail that makes this case relevant to Police Blotter: Harbert's Internet searches.
When police searched Harbert's house, they examined his computer. They found evidence of Google searches a few days after the accident for search terms including "auto glass reporting requirements to law enforcement," "auto glass, Las Vegas," auto parts, auto theft, and the Moraga Police Department. He allegedly also searched for "hit-and-run," which led him to a Web page dealing with the death of Kaur that said police had a lead on the vehicle.
(…)
Harbert was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, with the trial judge lecturing him for a "display of arrogance and self-absorption… while you were on the stand." He appealed, saying that the prosecutors' arguments amounted to misconduct and that there was no evidence he had actual knowledge a person was hit. A California appeals court rejected his arguments this week.
This isn't the first time that police have used Google searches to nab suspects. Police Blotter has chronicled a 2006 case involving a wireless hacker ("how to broadcast interference over wifi 2.4 GHZ") and a 2008 case involving a woman convicted of murdering her husband ("decomposition of a body in water"). Searches in a 2005 murder case included "neck," "snap," and "break."
Windows 7 Shortcuts Enables the Best Win7 Shortcuts in XP or Vista
Wednesday, January 21st, 2009
truly helpful, truly lifehacker, truly why-didn't-i-get-this-in-all-the-other-windows-versions :)
Windows 7 Shortcuts was submitted by Lifehacker reader Rupert and was written in one of our favorite scripting languages, AutoHotkey. Right now, Windows 7 Shortcuts supports the following keyboard shortcuts:
Included:
Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor
Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window
Win+Down arrow: Minimize the window/Restore the window if it's maximized
Win+Space: All windows are made transparent so you can see the desktop
Win+Home: Minimize all windows but the current window
truly helpful, truly lifehacker, truly why-didn't-i-get-this-in-all-the-other-windows-versions :)
Windows 7 Shortcuts was submitted by Lifehacker reader Rupert and was written in one of our favorite scripting languages, AutoHotkey. Right now, Windows 7 Shortcuts supports the following keyboard shortcuts:
Included:
Win+Left/Right arrows: Dock the window to each side of the monitor
Win+Up arrow: Maximize the active window
Win+Down arrow: Minimize the window/Restore the window if it's maximized
Win+Space: All windows are made transparent so you can see the desktop
Win+Home: Minimize all windows but the current window
The atheist bus journey continues … A project which saw London buses carrying the slogan ‘There’s probably no God’ is to be extended
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009
Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount, I'm very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Cardiff, Devon, Leeds, Bristol and Aberdeen.
From today's launch, two hundred of the buses will run in London, because the campaign was originally started as a positive counter-response to the Jesus Said ads running on London buses in June 2008. These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil". Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism.
(…)
An animated version of the slogan will also appear on two large LCD screens on Oxford Street (opposite Bond Street tube station), so that you can see the advert live without having to wait for an atheist bus. And, to thank all donors and show the strength of atheism in the UK, every ABC advertisement will contain the line "This advert was funded by public donations".
Amazingly, the campaign has now gone international. Spain's Union of Atheists and Freethinkers are launching buses across Barcelona today with a translation of our slogan, Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists are also planning to roll out atheist buses, while the American Humanist Association have been inspired to launch a campaign, and buses carrying their slogan "Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake" have now been running for over a month in Washington DC. Sadly, not every country has been so open to the idea: the Atheist Foundation of Australia tried to place the slogan "Atheism – celebrate reason" on buses, but were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company.
(…) As Charlie Brooker – one of the first people to donate to the Atheist Bus Campaign – says: "Public transport in Britain suggests there isn't a God anyway, but in case anyone hasn't noticed, or feels isolated for thinking such a thing, this campaign should help." I hope it does.
Today, thanks to many Cif readers, the overall total raised for the Atheist Bus Campaign stands at a truly overwhelming £135,000, breaking our original target of £5,500 by over 2400%. Given this unexpected amount, I'm very excited to tell you that 800 buses – instead of the 30 we were initially aiming for – are now rolling out across the UK with the slogan, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life", in locations all over England, Scotland and Wales, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow, York, Cardiff, Devon, Leeds, Bristol and Aberdeen.
From today's launch, two hundred of the buses will run in London, because the campaign was originally started as a positive counter-response to the Jesus Said ads running on London buses in June 2008. These ads displayed the URL of a website which stated that non-Christians "will be condemned to everlasting separation from God and then you spend all eternity in torment in hell … Jesus spoke about this as a lake of fire prepared for the devil". Our rational slogan will hopefully reassure anyone who has been scared by this kind of evangelism.
(…)
An animated version of the slogan will also appear on two large LCD screens on Oxford Street (opposite Bond Street tube station), so that you can see the advert live without having to wait for an atheist bus. And, to thank all donors and show the strength of atheism in the UK, every ABC advertisement will contain the line "This advert was funded by public donations".
Amazingly, the campaign has now gone international. Spain's Union of Atheists and Freethinkers are launching buses across Barcelona today with a translation of our slogan, Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists are also planning to roll out atheist buses, while the American Humanist Association have been inspired to launch a campaign, and buses carrying their slogan "Why believe in a God? Just be good for goodness' sake" have now been running for over a month in Washington DC. Sadly, not every country has been so open to the idea: the Atheist Foundation of Australia tried to place the slogan "Atheism – celebrate reason" on buses, but were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company.
(…) As Charlie Brooker – one of the first people to donate to the Atheist Bus Campaign – says: "Public transport in Britain suggests there isn't a God anyway, but in case anyone hasn't noticed, or feels isolated for thinking such a thing, this campaign should help." I hope it does.
