Rush Limbaugh says a dozen incredibly offensive things:
Rush Limbaugh said many awful, offensive things today, because he was defending himself from people who say that hateful, ugly rhetoric leads to violence. Well, he wasn't really "defending himself" from anything, so much as just spewing his usual free-associative garbage.
Thunderstorms Shoot Beams of Antimatter Into Space: Scientists now believe gamma rays, as well as beams of energetic particles of antimatter, are common components of lightning storms on Earth.
Verizon Wireless Finally Gets Apple's iPhone: Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest wireless mobile provider, announced Tuesday that it will offer Apple’s wildly popular iPhone to its nearly 100 million customers, breaking 4 years of exclusivity by arch-rival AT&T.
At last, iPhone comes to Verizon: Moments ago Verizon confirmed that it will indeed be selling Apple's iPhone 4 on its CDMA network. Apple COO Tim Cook makes an appearance at the event, says it's the 'beginning of a great relationship.'
Sarah Palin's Alaska finale: The campaign ad wraps up - Sarah Palin's Alaska - Salon.com: This week's episode served as the final episode in the 8-part marketing presentation that brilliantly defined Sarah Palin as a political brand while simultaneously putting the nail in the coffin of her presidential ambitions. It seemed like a good idea I suppose -- using the ruse of an Alaskan documentary to produce a long-form political ad -- but even her most hardcore fans must have had a hard time buying the Mama Grizzly crap that she was selling. And she never stopped selling it to the bitter end.
How To: Get thousands of back issue comics on your iPad for pennies an issue : Macenstein: The cool thing is, it isn’t just Archie you can do this with. Many comics are being sold this way, on Amazon from X-Men and Avengers to the entire 50 years of MAD Magazine (for only $18.60), all at ridiculous savings compared to per issue paper or regular digital downloading.
The Web Is a Customer Service Medium (Ftrain.com): The obvious example of WWIC at work is Wikipedia, created for free by unpaid labor. It tapped into the basic human need to be consulted and never looked back.
Then there's YouTube. It was created so that anyone could upload and distribute videos. So that's one level of WWIC—to hell with TV, people should look at me! The site has comments, so people can discuss the videos—a second level of WWIC. But there are now also thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons so that you can rank the comments and the video, a third level of WWIC.
Hands on with Apple's Mac App Store | Software | MacUser | Macworld: The Mac App Store feels very much like a version 1.0 product—some might even say it feels like a beta. There are interface issues and some mixed results with the Store’s ability to recognize the version of software you currently have installed, so you need to proceed with a careful eye to avoid purchasing an app you already have.
Overall, the Mac App Store experience is much like the iTunes Store; it’s easy to navigate, find software, buy and install new apps—and that’s a good thing. Hopefully, the issues I encountered will be ironed out sooner rather than later.
"The Cape": Why can't TV do superheroes?: There's something fundamentally unsatisfying about "The Cape," NBC's new superhero show about a former cop who becomes a costumed crime fighter in the mythical Palm City (Premiering Sunday, Jan. 9 at 9/8 Central; regular timeslot Mondays at 9/8 Central). The problem isn't lack of ambition. The series wants nothing less than to be the ultimate tribute to comic books -- an encyclopedia of modes that will satisfy everyone from young viewers weaned on graphic novels to grandparents that still pine for the days of black-and-white Saturday morning serials. No, the source of the show's downfall is more basic: It rushes through everything, pulverizing potentially engaging characters and story until the whole production starts to feel like a long trailer for itself.
Cisco unveils Internet TV and more at CES | Home Theater | Playlist | Macworld: “This is reinventing the television experience,” Chambers said.
Apple App Store 1.0 - Storefront for Mac apps (downloads in Mac OS X 10.6.6).. (Free): 
The Mac App Store is just like the App Store for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. So it’s as easy to find and download Mac apps as it is to add your favorite magazine to iPad or a new game to iPod touch. You can browse Mac apps by category, such as games, productivity, music, and more. Or do a quick search for something specific. Read developer descriptions and user reviews. Flip through screenshots. When you find an app you like, click to buy it.
Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later.
Download Now
Apple Releases Mac OS X 10.6.6 and Launches Mac App Store:
Apple today announced that the Mac App Store has opened for business with over 1,000 apps available at launch. The Mac App Store requires Mac OS X 10.6.6, which is now available for download via Software Update.
Apple today a...
AT&T announces Apple iPhone 3GS for $49: AT&T today announced a new price for the popular iPhone 3GS – $49...
Intel Beefs Up CPUs With Graphics Power — and Content Protection | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: Intel says the chips can support playback of seven or eight HD video streams simultaneously, and can transcode and downsize a two-hour HD video to iPhone format in five or 10 minutes — without tying up the processor, so you can continue to use your computer during the operation.
Going On The Attack: "Q. Why did God give liberals annoying, whiny voices? A. So that even the blind could hate them. "That's just one of James Delingpole's favorite jokes from his new book 365 Ways To Drive A Liberal Crazy. Hat tip to Patrick the Born Again Redneck.
Contrari-wise: "Q. Why did God give conservatives annoying, whiny voices? A. So that even the blind could hate them, too."
Intel Beefs Up CPUs With Graphics Power, Content Protection: Intel is preparing a new line of processing, graphics and wireless technologies aimed in part at bringing video to consumers — and preventing them from copying it.
Casino puts its chips on green, now winning big:
The Seven Feathers Casino Resort in Canyonville, Ore., didn't bet on black or red, it bet on green. Now, they are seeing the payoff, and it's a big one.
Developer Year in Review: Operating Systems: Vista never managed to crack the 20 percent adoption mark, even after four years on the market (it peaked just shy of 19 percent). By contrast, Windows 7 is already past the 20 percent mark, after only a little more than a year. XP, however, is still holding on to more than 50 percent of the Windows market. Not bad for a nine-year-old OS that isn't supported by Microsoft anymore.
HP planning WebOS event for February 9: The company hasn't given any indication about what its announcement is about, other than saying it plans on making customers: "Think big. Think small. Think beyond."
Winston, Ore. woman killed in crash Monday:
Montana Hope Edwards, 78, of Winston, Ore., was killed in a crash after her vehicle left the roadway on Old Hwy 99 in Dillard just before 5:00 p.m. on Monday.
My roommate Aaron's mee-maw.
BitNami Moodle Stack 2.0.1-0 - Easy deployment of Moodle.. (Free): BitNami Moodle Stack makes it easy to deploy Moodle, a Course Management System that is designed using sound pedagogical principles to help educators create effective online learning communities. It can scale from one computer to a 50,000-student university and is used in 175 countries around the world. The BitNami Moodle Stack native installers were packaged using BitRock's cross platform installer tool.
Meteor Shower and Solar Eclipse to Ring in 2011: The new year is opening up with the annual Quadrantid Meteor Shower, one of the most impressive but least observed meteor showers of the year. As a bonus, viewers in Europe, northern Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia will see a partial solar eclipse the morning of Jan. 4.
Apple Surpasses $300 Billion in Market Capitalization: On the first trading day of 2011, Apple's stock has jumped to a new high and broken through yet another psychological milestone by pushing past $300 billion in market capitalization. AAPL stock currently sits at nearly $330 per share with a market c...
Hatching Monsters - Lapham’s Quarterly: In a world in which every truth is fungible, advertising begins to substitute for the news. One of Barnum’s brilliant, almost genius-level aperçus, was that you could create news through advertising, and the advertising itself becomes newsworthy. If you advertise forcefully, the advertised object, even if perfectly vacant and without qualities (think: Paris Hilton), becomes a topic of conversation. Truth value is always trumped by hype, and hype in turn is fueled by controversy. Any news is good news. Barnum discovered that if your show generates angry letters to the editor, so much the better: people will be compelled to see the spectacle for themselves “to determine whether or not they had been deceived.”
Television, of course, is the playground of present-day Barnum freaks, where plain citizens can be snatched out of the crowd, put in the spotlight, and cued up to sing or dance, as in American Idol. Self-destructive “superstars” in the Andy Warhol sense litter the pages of our weekly magazines addicted to celebrity. But political advertisements, in particular, seem to be the new repository of magical thinking. Candidates with little or no administrative experience and no knowledge of facts on the ground (and who therefore avoid “mainstream” news conferences) are presented as brilliant problem solvers or as saviors. You have to have nerves of steel, along with steely Zen detachment, to avoid expectations aroused by contemporary omnipresent, hyperinflated rhetoric. What are our political figures if not openly show-business personalities? Who looks better on TV, Harry Reid or Sarah Palin?
Best of 2010: Physicist Discovers How to Teleport Energy - Technology Review: In 1993, Charlie Bennett at IBM's Watson Research Center in New York State and a few pals showed how to transmit quantum information from one point in space to another without traversing the intervening space.
The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Isner wins yet another longest match in history: John Isner won on Monday a re-run of the longest tennis match ever played, defeating Frenchman Nicolas Mahut for a second time — but taking almost 10 hours less to get the job done at the Hopman Cup mixed teams event.
The first round Wimbledon encounter between the pair lasted an historic 11 hours, five minutes, played over three days and ending in Isner’s favour 70-68 in the fifth set. The pair put that red-letter meeting well into the past as they met in Group B at the eight-nation Hopman Cup.
More than 100,000 dead fish on Ark. River - U.S. news - Weird news - msnbc.com: The mass kill occurred just one day before thousands of blackbirds dropped dead from the sky in Beebe, Ark., which is 125 miles away.
The Associated Press: Arkansas bird carcasses being sent for testing: Why did nearly 3,000 red-winged blackbirds tumble from the Arkansas sky on New Year's Eve?
How to make your speakers sound better: Exactly where you place speakers in a room can make a dramatic difference in their sound. That includes iPod, hi-fi, and home theater speakers.
Exclusive: Fantagraphics to publish the complete Carl Barks: In an exclusive interview with ROBOT 6, Fantagraphics co-publisher Gary Groth reveals that the company has acquired the rights to reprint a definitive collection of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck comic stories.
The hidden philosophy of David Foster Wallace:
In 1962, a philosopher (and world-famous beekeeper) named Richard Taylor published a soon-to-be-notorious essay called "Fatalism" in the Philosophical Review. As the title indicates, it concerned a subject that, as a matter of human intellectual concern, surely dates back to the minute Homo became sapiens. That is the subject of the future and how it is determined: by the gods or God; solely by the past and the present; or (in circumstances that appear to be within our control), by our own agency — free will. Taylor's argument, which he himself found distasteful, was that certain logical and seemingly unarguable premises lead to the conclusion that even in matters of human choice, the future is as set in stone as the past. We may think we can affect it, but we can't. When we try to change it, we simply put ourselves deeper into its stony hands. To quote Doris Day, "Que sera, sera" and that's all there is to it.
Bad science fiction writing does not a theory of economics make - Blog For Arizona: Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
From Paul Krugman's blog post Rule by the Ridiculous - NYTimes.com, this tidbit:
Rep. Paul Ryan requires that his staffers read Atlas Shrugged. I mean, I was inspired by Isaac Asimov, but I don’t think I’m Hari Seldon — whereas Ryan, it seems, really does think he’s John Galt.Time to bring out the classic quote:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Future historians will giggle at our expense.
The Joy of Stats - Gapminder.org: Hans Rosling says there’s nothing boring about stats, and then goes on to prove it. Only with statistics can we make sense of the world and harness the data deluge to serve us rather than drown in its confusion.
A one-hour long documentary produced by Wingspan Productions and broadcast by BBC, 2010.
For Kodachrome Fans, Road Ends at Photo Lab in Kansas - NYTimes.com: PARSONS, Kan. — An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.
That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap.
Gold passes $1,400 an ounce: Gold prices surged above $1,400 an ounce Tuesday as a weaker dollar pushed investors into the safe haven of precious metals.
Shocker: Obama to give America back to Indians:
Congratulations, 2010, for fitting in one more completely insane made-up right-wing scandal: Barack Obama is going to give Manhattan back to the Indians! Also the U.N. will help, because grrrr, the U.N.!
Netflix said to be planning 2011 international push: Movie rental giant could be well on its way to offering its streaming service overseas next year, according to two recent reports.
Restaurant goers will have one less place to eat, now that the IHOP in Roseburg is closed. Sunday was the last day the business was open after 10 years of operating, and it will be closed indefinitely.
Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street: Artificial intelligence is here. In fact, it's all around us. But it's nothing like we expected.
These sudden drops are now routine, and it’s often impossible to determine what caused them. But most observers pin the blame on the legions of powerful, superfast trading algorithms—simple instructions that interact to create a market that is incomprehensible to the human mind and impossible to predict.
For better or worse, the computers are now in control.
Bradley was among the first traders to explore the power of algorithms in the late ’90s, creating approaches to investing that favored brains over access. It took him nearly three years to build his stock-scoring program. First he created a neural network, painstakingly training it to emulate his thinking—to recognize the combination of factors that his instincts and experience told him were indicative of a significant move in a stock’s price.
But Bradley didn’t just want to build a machine that would think the same way he did. He wanted his algorithmically derived system to look at stocks in a fundamentally different—and smarter—way than humans ever could. So in 2000, Bradley assembled a team of engineers to determine which characteristics were most predictive of a stock’s performance. They identified a number of variables—traditional measurements like earnings growth as well as more technical factors. Altogether, Bradley came up with seven key factors, including the judgment of his neural network, that he thought might be useful in predicting a portfolio’s performance.
Delaware senator Ted Kaufman sounded an even louder alarm in September, taking to the Senate floor to declare, “Whenever there is a lot of money surging into a risky area, where change in the market is dramatic, where there is no transparency and therefore no effective regulation, we have a prescription for disaster.”
Mac 911: Migrating to a new Mac: A Macworld readers what to cleanly transfer his data from an old Mac to a new one. Senior editor Christopher Breen has a few tips on migrating data
Installing Snow Leopard: What you need to know: 
Got a copy of Snow Leopard as a holiday gift? Macworld's Dan Frakes as some tips on what to expect when you install the new operating system.
Why, no, -- no, I didn't get a copy of Snow Leopard as a holiday gift. Even though it's the only thing I really wanted. As I repeatedly told anyone who would listen.
The top 12 Civil War books ever written: If, like me, you received a necktie with reindeer on it from Santa instead of a good Civil War book under the Christmas tree, then you might try selecting one for yourself from my own list of the top 12 Civil War books, which I offer here in the spirit of the season and, even more appropriately, as the 150th anniversary of the war is about to begin. Perhaps your own observance of the sesquicentennial could include reading one of these books a month over the next year. If so, I can promise you'll be edified by every one of them, even if they do not end up on your own personal list of favorite Civil War books. And something more: there'll be no exam next December.
Appstravaganza: Apps for your new iOS device: Was a new iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch waiting for you under the tree this holiday season? Congratulations -- now it's time to load up your iOS device with apps. Fortunately, our app experts are here to recommend groups of apps aimed at every interest and occasion.
Cosmologists Discover How Black Holes Can Leak - Technology Review: That has important implications inside a black hole, they say. Although there would be no route out of a black hole in the 4D brane, Frolov and Mukohyama say it ought to be possible for information to leak out through this shortcut into higher dimensional space and then back to ours. They call this breach in higher dimensional space a brane hole.
Arts & Letters Daily (25 Dec 2010):
George Washington disapproved of it, and so did Benjamin Franklin. The Tea Party wasn't such a good idea the first time around... more
People, we're in deep trouble - Fox News - Salon.com: In it, Orwell describes the corrosive effect of politicized mass media. In Spain, he wrote, "I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed ... I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various 'party lines.' "
Mac Gems: Dropbox 1.0.10: 
Dropbox is an amazingly useful combination of a Web service and a Mac OS X program that work together to make your data accessible from anywhere and to keep it synchronized between your computers.
Michael Moorcock, Epic Science Fiction Master and Hard Rocker: Hawkwind wasn't the only band Moorcock wrote lyrics for, though. He was also a fan of New York's Blue Öyster Cult, a fact that should surprise no one. The Cult were sort of the Steely Dan of early '70s hard rock/metal-a bunch of sardonic East Coasters with talent equal to their intellect and a sharp lyrical wit, who dissected the society and pop culture around them while crunching out anthemic, pummeling rock songs like "(Don't Fear) the Reaper," "Godzilla" and "Cities On Flame With Rock and Roll."
Left Out - Francis Fukuyama - The American Interest Magazine: This is not, however, what this issue of The American Interest means by plutocracy. We mean not just rule by the rich, but rule by and for the rich. We mean, in other words, a state of affairs in which the rich influence government in such a way as to protect and expand their own wealth and influence, often at the expense of others. As the introductory essay to this issue shows, this influence may be exercised in four basic ways: lobbying to shift regulatory costs and other burdens away from corporations and onto the public at large; lobbying to affect the tax code so that the wealthy pay less; lobbying to allow the fullest possible use of corporate money in political campaigns; and, above all, lobbying to enable lobbying to go on with the fewest restrictions. Of these, the second has perhaps the deepest historical legacy.
Scandalous as it may sound to the ears of Republicans schooled in Reaganomics, one critical measure of the health of a modern democracy is its ability to legitimately extract taxes from its own elites. The most dysfunctional societies in the developing world are those whose elites succeed either in legally exempting themselves from taxation, or in taking advantage of lax enforcement to evade them, thereby shifting the burden of public expenditure onto the rest of society.
These data point clearly to the stagnation of working class incomes in the United States: Real incomes for male workers peaked sometime back in the 1970s and have not recovered since.1
The financial crisis of 2008–09 has only deepened the mystery. The crisis laid bare some unpleasant facts about American capitalism. The banking industry lobbied heavily in the 1990s to further free itself from regulation, a trend that began in earnest with the Depository Institutions and Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. This resulted in, among other things, the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which enabled the emergence of large “universal” banks and a non-transparent market in derivatives. Before the bust in the U.S. housing market, the rapidly expanding financial sector took home some 40 percent of all corporate profits, and yet it was responsible for an implosion that not only wiped out the banks themselves but imposed huge costs on innocent bystanders both in the United States and abroad. It also cost U.S. taxpayers an enormous sum in bailouts.
Indeed, the U.S. financial sector is now concentrated in fewer hands than it was before the crisis.
Hmmm..... It's intended purpose all along?
Videos: Do Electric Sheep Dream of Dancing Fractals? | Underwire | Wired.com: Electric Sheep is a collaborative abstract artwork founded by Scott Draves. It's run by thousands of people all over the world, and can be installed on any ordinary PC or Mac. When these computers "sleep," the Electric Sheep comes on and the computers communicate with each other by the internet to share the work of creating morphing abstract animations known as "sheep." The result is a collective "android dream," an homage to Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Anyone watching one of these computers may vote for their favorite animations using the keyboard. The more popular sheep live longer and reproduce according to a genetic algorithm with mutation and cross-over. Hence the flock evolves to please its global audience. You can also design your own sheep and submit them to the gene pool.
Rare lunar eclipse expected tonight: A full lunar eclipse is expected tonight--the first to occur on the winter solstice since 1638. The Earth's shadow will completely cover the moon for about 72 minutes.
Cold Plasma Kills Bacteria Better Than Antibiotics : Discovery News: Cold plasmas are able to kill bacteria by damaging microbial DNA and surface structures without being harmful to human tissues.
Rare Cosmic Event to Transpire Tuesday Morning | Dr. Kaku's Universe | Big Think: This particular eclipse will coincide with the December winter solstice, the longest night of the year. A total lunar eclipse on a winter solstice is a very rare event: the last one took place over 450 years ago. It might be a good idea to try and brave the cold for the viewing, even if it's for 10-15 minutes every hour or so until it's complete, because you won't be able to enjoy it again until around 2401.
Chicken 2.1b3 - VNC viewer for accessing your Mac over a network.. (Free): Chicken is a VNC viewer, which means that it allows you to use a computer over a network as if you're sitting in front of it. Chicken is based on Chicken of the VNC, but contains a number of bug fixes and some additional features. As with Chicken of the VNC, Chicken features a full-screen mode, saving passwords in Keychain, mouse-button emulation for one-button mice, and many more options.
Total lunar eclipse visible Monday night - latimes.com: A total eclipse of the moon will be visible throughout North and Central America from 11:41 p.m. PST Monday until 12:53 a.m. Tuesday, the first such eclipse in almost three years.
The next lunar eclipse is June 15, 2011, but North America will be facing the wrong way.
That's my birthday, BTW.
Why the "lazy jobless" myth persists: During the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, conservatives trotted out the shibboleth that says the program fosters sloth. Sen. Judd Gregg, for instance, said added unemployment benefits mean people are "encouraged not to go look for work." Columnist Pat Buchanan said expanding these benefits means "more people will hold off going back looking for a job." And Fox News' Charles Payne applauded the effort to deny future unemployment checks because he said it would compel layabouts "to get off the sofa."
The idea is that unemployment has nothing to do with structural economic forces or rigged public policies and everything to do with individual motivation. Yes, we're asked to believe that the 15 million jobless Americans are all George Costanzas -- parasitic loafers occasionally pretending to seek work as latex salesmen, but really just aiming to decompress on a refrigerator-equipped recliner during a lifelong Summer of George.
Why, then, is the myth so resonant that polls now show more than a third of America opposes extending unemployment benefits? Part of it is the sheer ignorance that naturally festers in a country of cable-TV junkies.
First, there's what psychologists call the Just-World Fallacy -- the tendency to believe the world is inherently fair. This delusion is embedded in our pervasive up-by-the-bootstraps, everyone-can-be-a-millionaire catechism.
In a nation that typically dehumanizes the destitute Other with epithets like "welfare queen" and "white trash," our self-centered culture leads the slightly less destitute to ascribe their own relative success exclusively to superhuman greatness.
With the labor-market news downright frightening, the still-employed are understandably pining for a defense mechanism to cope with persistent layoff anxieties. The myth of the lazy unemployed provides exactly that -- a calming sensation of control.
The trouble, though, is that the whole narrative averts our focus from the job-killing trade, tax-cut and budget policies that are really responsible for destroying the economy. And this narrative, mind you, is not some run-of-the-mill distraction. The myth of the lazy unemployed is what duck-and-cover exercises and backyard nuclear shelters were to a past era -- an alluring palliative that manufactures false comfort in the face of unthinkable disaster.
Facial recognition comes to Facebook photo tags: New technology in Facebook Photos will suggest which of a user's friends may be in a just-uploaded photo, the first time facial recognition technology has been incorporated into Facebook's consumer service.
Want an online date? Tell her she has nice lips: A survey by the dating site Badoo.com suggests that the "Holy Grail of flirting" lies in complimenting a girl's lips. Really.
PlayStations power Air Force supercomputer: PlayStation 3 processors find an unlikely home in the Condor Cluster, a mega-computer built to undertake highly specific military tasks.
Doctors: We have cured man of HIV:
Tweets are flying with news of a major medical breakthrough: Doctors in Germany have strong evidence that they've cured a man of HIV using stem cells.
The best TV shows of 2010 | Slide Show - Salon.com: "30 Rock"
While most comedies these days cater to the misfits and losers of the modern landscape, "30 Rock" demonstrates how easily the vainglorious narcissist, the deluded misanthrope and the self-defeating neurotic alike can transform their so-called personality flaws into gainful employment.
Reinstall Windows Without Losing Your Data - PCWorld: I'm not going to lie to you--this is a scary and time-consuming job. Your PC may be unusable for a day or more. You could even lose all of your data.
Navy's Mach 7 gun can kill from 100 miles away: The U.S. Navy is testing out a railgun that hits targets with mortal accuracy from some 100 miles away. It doesn't rely on an explosive charge but rather on electromagnetics.
Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Monday | Wired Science | Wired.com: Part of what makes the Geminids so spectacular is that they travel more slowly than meteors from other showers. They can take several seconds to blaze across the sky, and sometimes leave a brief trail of glowing smoke.
The curious pathology of Sherlock Holmes: Near the climax of the first episode of the new miniseries "Sherlock," constables from New Scotland Yard are industriously tearing apart the eponymous hero's Baker Street flat. Inspector Lestrade's team has come to believe that the arrogant consulting detective is not only holding out on them in a serial murder case, but is the likeliest suspect himself. Harsh words are exchanged and one officer tosses out an epithet: "Psychopath!" Benedict Cumberbatch, whose lethal glee in the role of Holmes can barely be contained, snaps, "I'm a high-functioning sociopath. Do your research."
Sampras has numerous trophies stolen (AP): The president of the International Tennis Federation has offered Pete Sampras a replica trophy from his two Davis Cup wins following the theft of much of his tennis memorabilia. Sampras, who won 14 Grand Slam titles, says most of his trophies and other memorabilia were stolen last month from a public storage facility in Los Angeles.
Dec. 9, 1968: The Mother of All Demos: Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart kicks off the personal computer revolution with a product demonstration that is so amazing it inspires a generation of technologists.
California's monarch butterflies in peril (photos): Road Trip at Home: Several sanctuaries used to host more than 150,000 butterflies a year. Now the number is as low as 6,000.
Boom! Samsung Sells 1 Million Galaxy Tabs: Samsung's 7-inch tablet isn't "dead on arrival" after all. In fact, Samsung has sold over a million of them in less than two months.
Microsoft's voice platform to get a 'brain': Microsoft's voice team says it's on the cusp of getting its voice platform to understand not just what you're saying, but what you actually mean.
Netflix signs new Disney-ABC deal, shows up doubters: At a time when some in Hollywood are wondering whether Netflix is a threat, Disney hands over TV content to Web's top video rental service. Is Hulu the big loser in this?
Refurbished iPads now up to $100 off: The 16GB Wi-Fi iPad can be yours for just $429, the lowest price ever. But is it low enough? And should you wait for the upcoming iPad 2 instead?
X Particle Explains Both Dark Matter, Antimatter: A theoretical particle could solve two big mysteries at the same time: why there is more matter in the universe than antimatter, and what dark matter is made of.
Victorian-era calculator cranks away: The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., shows off its functioning Babbage Difference Engine.
Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. : The Inception of Inception: More than 80 years before Inception, Buster Keaton’s dreamy silent movie mesmerized audiences.
Nobody represents the American people: The disconnect between the actions of the government and public opinion is the central fact of American politics today. It doesn’t seem to matter whether liberal Democrats or conservative Republicans are in power. Only minor, marginal reforms ever take place. The basic outlines of American economic policy and foreign policy remain the same, even as Congress and the White House change hands. The changes promised by progressive Democrats and Tea Party Republicans are quickly discarded after the elections.
Just Breathe: Body Has A Built-In Stress Reliever : NPR: He's talking about modern science, but these techniques are not new. In India, breath work called pranayama is a regular part of yoga practice. Yoga practitioners have used pranayama, which literally means control of the life force, as a tool for affecting both the mind and body for thousands of years.
Narcissistic Disorder to Be Eliminated in Diagnostic Manual - NYTimes.com: Finally, the narcissist, who longs for the approval and admiration of others, is often clueless about how things look from someone else’s perspective. Narcissists are very sensitive to being overlooked or slighted in the smallest fashion, but they often fail to recognize when they are doing it to others.
Secretive X-37B space plane ends 7-month orbit: Resembling a shrunk-down space shuttle, the Air Force's X-37B returns to Earth from its debut test flight, pointing the way toward cheaper, adaptable--and perhaps military--missions.
Today's Gemini Horoscope from Jonathan Cainer: Gemini, Saturday, 4 December 2010
Your December Monthly Forecast: I can see how close you are now, to reaching a judgement. Your world looks to me, a little like one of those courtrooms in the movies, just after the prosecution has done an excellent job of summing up. The defence is in tatters. Then suddenly, in through the doors at the back, walks a key witness shouting, 'Stop! You have to hear the truth now.' Suddenly, they take all the key facts and put them in a different order to reveal a dramatic new perspective on the matter in question. A lunar eclipse, just before Christmas, is your chance to learn - and benefit enormously - both materially and psychologically - from new discoveries.
NASA Finds New Life Form: Hours before their special news conference today, the cat is out of the bag: NASA has discovered a completely new life form that doesn't share the biological building blocks of anything currently living in planet Earth. This changes everything.
Apple awarded U.S. patent on no-glasses-required 3D display: Apple has been awarded a U.S. patent for a display system that would allow multiple viewers...
Arts & Letters Daily (01 Dec 2010):
With Amazon, the publishing industry is now beholden to a single, profit-obsessed company. What happens when you sell a book like it's a can of soup?...more
Consciousness used to be the crazy aunt in psychology's attic, up there squeaking the floorboards and troubling our dreams of science... more
By stressing exchange as the key mechanism in the success of our species, Matt Ridley underplays education, law, patents, and science. Bill Gates likes Ridley's message, but... more
