BLURFOs Are Not UFOs

rense.com: "We have a real problem. Lately, anything that streaks across a digital camera lens or video cam is being hailed as a flying saucer or UFO photo. These blurry, distorted images are not flying saucers, space craft, black ops aerial phenomena, motherships or scout craft. They are, in fact, bugs and birds which are passing quickly by the video camera within the range of focal inability I like to call the BLURFO ZONE. Just about anything zipping through this zone (ie, close to the camera when it is set on infinity focus or zoomed to focus on distant objects) is transformed into blips, blobs, disc-shaped smears and streaks. The tiniest of insects will appear to be a massive, dark object leaving quite a tracer (lingering smeared elements of itself on the tape) when in freeze frame. And therein lies the rub -- freeze frames! Freeze frame on the video tape is not the same as a frame of film. The illustrations below will hopefully help people wrap their skulls around this distortion problem and end once and for all the cavalcade of BLURFOs."

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At USDA, the Mouse Is in the House

(washingtonpost.com) : "Employees at the Department of Agriculture's main cafeteria were just sitting down to lunch on Friday when security guards ordered everyone in the huge eatery to leave. Al Qaeda? Bomb scare? No. Mouse droppings. The D.C. Department of Health closed the cafeteria for failing to pass inspection. Yes, the USDA, home to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the meat and poultry inspectors -- the agency that is part of the federal system for protecting the nation's food supply, was in violation of the D.C. Health Code. There were several citations, according to the inspection report, including: 'water leaking excessively' in the ceiling, employees not wearing hair restraints, and inadequate cleaning of the inside of ice machines, cabinets, surfaces and equipment. The biggest problem, however, seemed to be mouse droppings found everywhere -- in the dry storage room, by the salad bar, behind the ovens, near the serving line, ...

Artist turns animals into everyday objects

Ananova - A Chilean artist is making a name for herself with an exhibition in which stuffed animals are transformed into household objects. Artworks on display include a chick turned into a lamp, and 'sheep bag' - a lamb carcass fitted with handles. Artist Caterina Purdy says her exhibition at the Experimental Arts Centre in Santiago is intended to be humorous but also makes a serious point. She told Las Ultimas Noticias online: 'It is possible to see my work as something scary, but I find it beautiful. 'There is also irony and humour in my objects as well as a criticism of the way animals are treated by society.'"

BW Online | March 1, 2004 | Software : "As Stephen and Deepa emerge this summer from graduate school -- one in Pittsburgh, the other in Bombay -- they'll find that their decisions of a half-decade ago placed their dreams on a collision course. The Internet links that were being pieced together at the turn of the century now provide broadband connections between multinational companies and brainy programmers the world over. For Deepa and tens of thousands of other Indian students, the globalization of technology offers the promise of power and riches in a blossoming local tech industry. But for Stephen and his classmates in the U.S., the sudden need to compete with workers across the world ushers in an era of uncertainty. Will good jobs be waiting for them when they graduate? 'I might have been better served getting an MBA,' Stephen says."

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