Sophont

Podcasts : "The Bob Rivers Show, August 24, 2005 The doctor who called the lady obese," jaynote: it starts about 1/3 of the way in, well worth listening to

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED... AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED. THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. MANY WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE. HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW POSSIBLY TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. MANY WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT. AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK. POWER OUTAGES MAY LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MANY POWER PO...

sfweekly.com : "She was retarded. Among the several hundred or so gathered for the concert, roughly 10 percent seemed to have some sort of developmental disability. Huey really is a phenomenon; it's not just with my clients. A bunch of people from a group home had set up camp on the opposite side of the stage, laying out blankets and picnic food. Bobbi recognized some of her friends and waved. 'Huuuuueyyyy!' they all yelled back. It was just like people who yell 'Bruuuce!' at a Springsteen concert, only more retarded. In fact, Huey Lewis is a retarded version of Bruce Springsteen. Think about it. All of his songs are three-chord chug-a-lugs about working-class schlubs trying to make it through this crazy thing we call life. 'Workin' for a Livin',' 'Walking on a Thin Line,' and 'I Want a New Drug' are all slightly less soulful embodiments of the Springsteen ethos."

The case against the "Kutztown 13" - a group of high school students charged with felonies for tinkering with their school-issued laptop computers - seems to be ending mostly with a whimper. In meetings with students over the last several days, the Berks County juvenile probation office has quietly offered the students a deal in which all charges would be dropped in exchange for 15 hours of community service, a letter of apology, a class on personal responsibility and a few months of probation. The probation department realizes this is small potatoes, said William Bispels, an attorney representing nearly half of the accused students. The 13 were initially charged with computer trespass and computer theft, both felonies, and could have faced a wide range of sanctions, including juvenile detention.">AP Wire | 08/25/2005 | 'Kutztown 13' hackers offered deal : "The case against the 'Kutztown 13' - a group of high school students charged with ...

The Globe and Mail : He notes that the Americans insist they are not in violation, although all of those interviewed found the reasoning of Rob Portman, the U.S. trade representative, ludicrous and incomprehensible. Language this strong usually comes from opponents of the FTA, NAFTA and the globalization movement. That the very architects of free trade between Canada and the United States should be speaking in such terms is, frankly, shocking. Even more shocking is that, to a man and woman, they believe Canada should impose retaliatory tariffs, or other restrictive measures, unless the Americans are prepared to negotiate a new softwood lumber agreement that accommodates Canadian, and not just U.S., concerns, even though such a move could lead to a trade war between the two countries. "I would sit them down and I would say to them, 'All right. Enough of this. You are out of line, and you know that you are out of line,' " says Mr. Reisman, who was chief negotia...

Guardian Unlimited Money : "An image keeps popping into my head. It's the old days. A customer in need sits down with their bank manager who says, '£1,000? You must be crazy!' I wonder: is there some economic sage out there who effectively invented the new way - someone who drew up a utopian image where banks would fall over each other to loan money to whoever wanted it. And so I call Lord Griffiths of Fforestfach. He's the vice chair-man of Goldman Sachs International, a former director of the Bank of England, and once the head of Margaret Thatcher's Domestic Policy Unit. I'd been told that if anyone could answer that question, he could. I ask him if this whole mess can be traced back to one man. I expect him to say something like, 'Oh no, it's far more complicated than that. It is a gradual shift. Nobody is to blame.' But he doesn't. Instead, he says, 'I hate to say it, but I was one of the people who argued strongly in favour of...

Fred : ".......Trouble comes when the sciences overstep their bounds. It is one thing to study physical phenomena, another to say that only physical phenomena exist. Here science blurs into ideology, an ideology being a systematic and emotionally held way of misunderstanding the world. A science is open and descriptive, an ideology closed and prescriptive. A scientists says, in principle at least, “Give me the facts and I will endeavor to derive a theory that describes them.” The ideologist says, “I have the theory, and nothing that does not fit it can be a fact.” Having chosen his rut, he never sees beyond it. This has not been the way of the greats of science, but of the middle ranks, adequate to swell a progress or work in a laboratory. In the limitless confidence of this physics-is-all ideology there is a phenomenal arrogance. Perhaps we overestimate ourselves. As temporary phenomena ourselves in a strange universe we don’t really understand, here for reasons we do not kn...

Inspector falls into cherry vat and dies : " Co-workers found Mendoza, 38, in a large vat of cherries and brine just after 7 p.m. Tuesday at the company's Kroupa Road facility, said Grand Traverse County sheriff's Capt. Tom Emerson.       Emerson said Mendoza, a long-term employee at the company who worked as a quality control inspector, was pulled from the wooden container and given CPR before she was transported to Munson Medical Center.       'My understanding is that her job was to inspect the vats when they fill them full of cherries,' Emerson said. 'Apparently, she was on a steel walkway on top of these things looking down into them when the accident happened.'"

TCS: Tech Central Station : ".....'And because I think that would be a disaster, it is essential that the Muslim world wake up to the fact that it has a jihadist death cult in its midst. If it does not fight that death cult, that cancer, within its own body politic, it is going to infect Muslim-Western relations everywhere. Only the Muslim world can root out that death cult. It takes a village. Friedman's point of view seems eminently reasonable and logical. He is calling on moderate Muslims, for the sake of self-preservation, to do something to stop the barbaric theatrical gestures of the terrorists. Up to this point, however, moderate Muslims have seemed paralyzed. We might wonder why this is the case. In Fools Crow, there are moderate native Americans. However, they, too, are paralyzed. Their failure to restrain a small group of terrorists is what leads to the massacre. Perhaps James Welch, writing from the native American point of view, can offer some insights...

jaynote: I was taping 60 minutes tonight because they had a segment on new flying machines, so I saw Rooney's bit. He did a list of things that are true, and one of them was; "Numbers are longer than they used to be. There's something wrong with a personal identification number on a credit card or a bank check that is larger than the number of people that there are in the world." no no no Mr. Rooney, there is nothing wrong with that. Suppose the number of id numbers was twice the population. This gives 2 problems; a 50% chance that any random number would be valid, and when the population grows you run out of numbers (like we are with Vehicle Identification Numbers in 2011) With 12 digits for a credit card individual account identifier there's a trillion (10 raised to the 12th power, or 1,000,000,000,000) possible account numbers, so odds are a valid number can't be guessed, nor will we run out of numbers in the near future.

OrlandoSentinel.com : "In May the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it could not declare the Miami Blue an endangered species, even though the butterfly met the criteria, because it lacked the staff and money to protect it. The Center for Biological Diversity, a non-profit group based in Tucson, Ariz., on Thursday filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the service over the decision. In announcing its decision, the wildlife service claimed that scientists had failed in their attempts to reintroduce the butterfly to its former range. Since releasing Miami Blues at Biscayne and Everglades national parks, researchers detected only 'an inconsistent or sporadic presence of only a small number of individuals,' stated the agency's written evaluation, published May 11 in the Federal Register. 'Monitoring results do not indicate that the Miami Blue has become established at any of the release sites.' Thomas Emmel, professor of zoology and entomology at the Uni...

Freestar Media, LLC : "On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home. Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land. The proposed development, called 'The Lost Liberty Hotel' will feature the 'Just Desserts Café' and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel 'Atlas Shrugged.' Clements indicated that the hotel must be built on this particular piece of land because it is a unique site being the home of someone lar...

A lot of fossil fuels go into producing the gas substitute : "Ethanol, touted as an alternative fuel of the future, may eat up far more energy during its creation than it winds up giving back, according to research by a UC Berkeley scientist that raises questions about the nation's move toward its widespread use. A clean-burning fuel produced from renewable crops like corn and sugarcane, ethanol has long been a cornerstone of some national lawmakers' efforts to clear the air and curb dependence on foreign oil. California residents use close to a billion gallons of the alcohol-based fuel per year. But in a recent issue of the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences, UC Berkeley geoengineering professor Tad Patzek argued that up to six times more energy is used to make ethanol than the finished fuel actually contains. The fossil energy expended during production alone, he concluded, easily outweighs the consumable energy in the end product. As a result, Patzek ...

News-Register.com : "Wright, 40, has her own service dog, a 5-pound Chihuahua named Joe. He sniffs out changes, undetectable to humans, that occur about 20 minutes before the onset of an epileptic seizure. Joe's warning gives his owner time to prepare herself so she won't fall and hit her head during a grand mal seizure. 'That keeps me safe,' Wright said. 'It puts me back in control.' Before she had the dog, she had no way to predict when seizures would strike. Since Joe moved in, he has accurately predicted more than 20 seizures."

The Democrat Houston Chronicle June 10, 2005 When relatives of Vivian Shulman Lieberman went to visit her final resting place in a Houston mausoleum one year ago today, they discovered that the cedar chest containing her ashes was missing. In its place, behind the locked, glass door of Lieberman's niche in Congregation Beth Israel's mausoleum, was a can of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips. jaynote: This is not surprising, as Vivian was known for saying "are you hungry? oy, you look so thin. Have a nosh."

American Chronicle:s : "Longer yellow lights will do more to reduce crashes at intersections than any other method, including the use of red-light cameras, according to a new report. The report from the Texas Transportation Institute is the result of a three year study of 181 intersections using police reports in three Texas cities. The purpose of the research was to determine the most effective solutions for problem intersections. The research revealed that many yellow lights are shorting than the recommended minimum, causing a jump of 110 percent in the number of red-light violations. The finding gave support to motorists who are caught by red-light cameras. They frequently complain that a short yellow light forced them to chose between slamming on the brakes and getting rear-ended and continuing through the intersection. The report concluded that the best way to improve safety statistics at intersections is to lengthen yellow lights to one second more than the minimum ...

WIL WHEATON dot NET : "This may seem like stupid semantics on my part, but actors are so often misrepresented in the press, I feel it's important to set the record straight here. Residual payments are not profit-sharing. Residual payments are reuse fees that producers pay to actors when they've re-used the actor's performance a certain number of times. For example, when an actor works on a TV show (commercials are a much more complicated beast, so I'll stick with TV for this example) the initial fee that actor earns usually includes one or two re-airings by the producer. If the producer chooses to run the show again, a cycle begins, where the producer pays the actor a residual, or re-use fee, that slowly diminishes over time. The logic behind this is that if producers are re-running an old show, rather than creating a new one, actors have fewer opportunities to work. Also, if a show is re-run very often, the producer will continue to profit from advertising sale...

.imaging-resource.com : "Kodak to End B&W Paper Production By Mike Pasini, The Imaging Resource (Thursday, June 16, 2005 - 12:25 EDT) With publications turning to color digital imaging and amateurs to their inkjets and image editing software, sales of black and white photo paper have been steadily declining. The Associated Press has reported that Eastman Kodak Co. will discontinue production of black and white photo paper by the end of the year. The move follows bankruptcies by Britain's Ilford, the largest black and white paper manufacturer, and Germany's AgfaPhoto GmbH. According to Kodak spokesperson David Lanzillo, the story notes, demand for black and white paper is declining 25 percent a year. Lanzillo said the decline is the result of the imagining industry's transition from film to digital. Kodak will continue to make both black and white film and processing chemicals. The decision to discontinue the paper made at plants in Rochester and Braz...

Mobile Magazine : "To test tech support, we made three calls to each of 10 major notebook manufacturers (we've added three additional vendors since last year). We also called three third-party providers of PC help. On the whole, what we found was a sea of ignorance -- and annoying fixation with pinning down our name, address, and serial numbers. Just how bad is tech support? Things haven't gotten any better since our 2004 test -- and most of the vendors we tested have actually gotten worse. Read on to see our report cards on each manufacturer. And don't miss our review of three third-party tech support providers, plus our tips on how to fix PC problems yourself and avoid tech support altogether. The Tests We subjected each vendor to three increasingly difficult support tests designed to simulate frequent real-life technical problems. In each case, we used an actual notebook from the corresponding vendor, and made three separate calls."

Iqbal Quadir at PUSH 2005 : "Iqbal found himself challenging some myths about economic development and the poor. Can shared costs overcome the problems of low individual buying power? Can the value of purchasing a productivity tool make it possible for people to “overinvest” in communication technologies, because these technologies can increase income? What’s the real problem with digital divides in Bangladesh? The lack of other infrastructures. There are no credit checks, rpads for repairmen, banks to collect bills, schools for the children of workers. Grameen Bank looked like a solution to a lot of these infrastructural problems. Would it make sense to put GSM towers within Grameen offices? Grameen had 1138 branches in Bangladesh, 2.3 million borrowers, 94% female, with $33 million lent per month. The core model - a woman borrows money from the bank, buys a cow, sells the milk and repays the loan. So why can’t a cellphone be a cow? There was a great deal of skepticism a...