Keep your 20-sided dice, I have D&D on the Surface: "Trading pencils and paper for virtual dice on Microsoft's multitouch tabletop computer speeds up famous role-playing game."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Anonymous Unfurls 'Operation Titstorm'
Anonymous Unfurls 'Operation Titstorm': "The online prankster group Anonymous unleashes a major distributed denial-of-service attack against Australian government websites to protest internet censorship in the land down under. Several of the sites were slowly recovering from the barrage by the same group that earlier had taken down Scientology websites.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Early Galaxies Had More Gas to Form Stars Fast
Early Galaxies Had More Gas to Form Stars Fast: "Astronomers have finally figured out why galaxies formed during the early universe had much more rapid star birth than today's galaxies. It turns out they had more hydrogen gas to fuel their stellar nurseries.
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
Being bored could be bad for your health
Being bored could be bad for your health: "Literally 'bored to death': study shows link between boredom, early death
Salon - http://www.salon.com/?source=rss&aim=/
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
With Darpa's 'Transparent Earth,' Underground Doesn't Mean Out of Sight
With Darpa's 'Transparent Earth,' Underground Doesn't Mean Out of Sight: "Pentagon extreme research agency Darpa launches the 'Transparent Earth' project this year. It wants to create real-time, 3-D maps that display 'the physical, chemical and dynamic properties of the earth' underground.
"
Wired News - http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
The New Dating Game
The New Dating Game: "It helps, of course, that there’s currently a buyer’s market in women who are up for just about anything with the right kind of cad, what with delayed marriage (the average age for a woman’s first wedding is now 26, compared with 20 in 1960, according to the University of Virginia-based National Marriage Project’s latest report); reliable contraception; and advances in antibiotics (no more worries about what used to be called venereal disease). No-fault divorce, moreover, has pushed the marriage-dissolution rate up to between 40 and 50 percent and swelled the single-female population with ‘cougars’ in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. On top of it all is the feminist-driven academic and journalistic culture celebrating that yesterday’s ‘loose’ women are today’s ‘liberated’ women, able to proudly ‘explore their sexuality’ without ‘getting punished for their lust,’ as the feminist writer Naomi Wolf put it in the Guardian in December.
All this takes place to a basso profundo of feminist cheerleading. Wolf’s op-ed in the Guardian praised the uninhibited sexual “self-expression” of the four female leads in Sex and the City, especially the 40-something Samantha (hitting 50 in the 2008 movie), who, during the six seasons that the series ran, racked up nearly as many sex partners (41) as her three coleads combined—and Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte were no slouches themselves in the quickie department. “Did not thousands of young women . . . breathe a sigh of relief or even liberation watching Samantha down another tequila, unrepentantly ogle the sex god at the end of the bar, and get richer and more beautiful with age, with no STDs or furies pursuing her?,” Wolf gushed.
As might be expected, many males would like to help themselves at this overladen buffet. But there’s a problem: While it’s a truism that the main beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are men, it is only some men: the Tucker Maxes, with the good looks, self-confidence, and swagger that enable them to sidle up successfully to a gaggle of well turned-out females in a crowded and anonymous club where the short-statured, the homely, the paunchy, the balding, and the sweater-clad are, if not turned away outside by the bouncer, ignominiously ignored by the busy, beautiful people within.
Living in the New Paleolithic can be hard on women, many of whom party on merrily until they reach age 30 and then panic. “They’re at the peak of their beauty in their early 20s—they’re luscious—but the guys their age don’t look as good, so they say to themselves: ‘Why do I want to get married?,’ ” notes Kay Hymowitz, a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, who is writing a book about the singles crisis. “Then they get to age 28, 29, and their fertility goes down and they’re not quite so luscious. But the guys their age are starting to make money, they look better, they’ve got self-assurance, and they’ve also got the pick of the 23-year-olds.”
Roissy’s blog is an unflinching look at female nature at its very worst: the acquisitiveness, the narcissism, the self-absorption, the selfishness, the superficiality, the brainlessness, the wayward lust as powerful as any man’s.
Roissy’s deliberately outrageous posts are a source of controversy. In a write-up on George Sodini, the man who shot up a gym near Pittsburgh last August, killing 3 women before turning the gun on himself, Roissy contended that Sodini, whose diary revealed that he had not had sex for 20 years before the incident, was simply a frustrated beta barred access to women by the sexual/feminist revolution and that “anything was justified” to avoid the “walking death” of celibacy. In other words, Sodini was a hapless victim of the sexual revolution.
The whole point of the sexual and feminist revolutions was to obliterate the sexual double standard that supposedly stood in the way of ultimate female freedom. The twin revolutions obliterated much more, but the double standard has reemerged in a harsher, crueler form: wreaking havoc on beta men and on beta women, too, who, as the declining marriage rate indicates, have trouble finding and securing long-term mates in a supply-saturated short-term sexual marketplace. Gorgeous alpha women fare fine—for a few years until the younger competition comes of age. But no woman, alpha or beta, seems able to escape the atavistic preference of men both alpha and beta for ladylike and virginal wives (the Darwinist explanation is that those traits are predictors of marital fidelity, assuring men that the offspring that their spouses bear are theirs, too). And every aspect of New Paleolithic mating culture discourages the sexual restraint once imposed on both sexes that constituted a firm foundation for both family life and civilization.
"
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Arts & Letters Daily (09 Feb 2010)
Arts & Letters Daily (09 Feb 2010): "
Lady Jane Grey, the 'nine-day queen,' was virginal, sweet, and beheaded at the age of 16, a notorious victim of the Tudors, or so it is thought... more
Orson Welles's funeral was a tawdry and chaotic affair, reminding his daughter of dumping Mozart's body into a pauper's grave... more
Tens of thousands of years of human mating norms are evaporating as Cro-Magnon males drag women into their caves, and the women love every minute of it... more
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
Netflix has Blockbuster on the ropes
Netflix has Blockbuster on the ropes: "As Blockbuster suffers through another round of layoffs and its stock trades for less than a postage stamp, one has to wonder when Netflix will deliver a knockout."
CNET News.com - http://news.cnet.com/
Christopher Nolan To Head "Superman" Reboot?
Christopher Nolan To Head "Superman" Reboot?: "Word is out that the 'Dark Knight' director has been tapped to oversee the Man of Steel's next foray into film as well as the fact that a third Batman picture is already in the works at Warner Brothers."
CBR News - http://www.comicbookresources.com/
Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything
Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything: "(PhysOrg.com) -- Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products.
The liquid glass spray (technically termed ‘SiO2 ultra-thin layering’) consists of almost pure silicon dioxide (silica, the normal compound in glass) extracted from quartz sand. Water or ethanol is added, depending on the type of surface to be coated. There are no additives, and the nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface because of the quantum forces involved. According to the manufacturers, liquid glass has a long-lasting antibacterial effect because microbes landing on the surface cannot divide or replicate easily.
"
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Monday, February 8, 2010
Flickr Photos In Google Street View
Flickr Photos In Google Street View: "This is significant for two reasons:
1) Flickr has millions of geotagged photos"
O'Reilly Radar - http://radar.oreilly.com/
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Friday, February 5, 2010
Microsoft finally gets around to patching 17-year-old Windows bug
Microsoft finally gets around to patching 17-year-old Windows bug: "A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Magnetic nanoparticles target human cancer cells | Health Tech - CNET News
Magnetic nanoparticles target human cancer cells | Health Tech - CNET News: "In 2008, scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Ovarian Cancer Institute developed a potential treatment to fight cancer using magnetic nanoparticles designed to attach themselves to cancer cells. They found in their groundbreaking tests on mice that the particles not only attached to cancer cells, but they also moved those cells.
Nanoparticles, in brown, attach themselves to cancer cells, in violet, from the human abdominal cavity.
(Credit: Ken Scarberry/Georgia Tech)
In what may well prove to be some of the most exciting health news in the year to come, the group announced in the journal Nanomedicine in December and further publicized on Tuesday that it has replicated the study on human cancer cells, with the nanoparticles appearing to be every bit as effective.
"
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Google Email Uploader gets your old e-mail into Gmail
Google Email Uploader gets your old e-mail into Gmail: "Google Email Uploader, a free, open-source utility, lets you easily upload your desktop e-mail messages to a Google Apps-hosted Gmail account.
"
"Macworld - http://www.macworld.com
Monday, February 1, 2010
Marvel comics, graphic novels coming to Apple iPad?
Marvel comics, graphic novels coming to Apple iPad?: "By bringing comics and graphic novels to the iPad, Apple will not only attract..."
MacDailyNews - http://www.macdailynews.com/
Apple iTunes 9.0.3 - Play & buy music, videos, TV shows & burn CDs. (Free)
Apple iTunes 9.0.3 - Play & buy music, videos, TV shows & burn CDs. (Free): "
Apple iTunes 9.0.3
iTunes is the #1 music player available for the Macintosh. You can listen to CDs, MP3, AAC and more.
You can listen to streaming music over a local network, buy individual songs for $1, download over 2,000 music videos, copy songs to your iPod, buy music, movies, TV shows, and audiobooks, or download free podcasts from the iTunes Store 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Organize and play everything on your Mac or PC. Then sync it to your iPod and bring it along. Anywhere.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 9.0.3:
Provides a number of important bug fixes, including:
- iTunes no longer ignores your \'Remember password for purchases\' setting.
- Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
- Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
- Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.
REQUIREMENTS
- G4 or faster processor
- Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or later
- QuickTime 7.6 or later
- Safari 4 or later
PRICE
Free
DEVELOPER
DOWNLOADS
283871
"
MacUpdate - Universal Binary - http://www.macupdate.com/macintel.php
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Arts & Letters Daily (30 Jan 2010)
Arts & Letters Daily (30 Jan 2010): "Philip K. Dick bounced in and out of love affairs and marriages, stints in rehab and drug overdoses, never losing his cool. Well, almost never... more
"
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate - http://aldaily.com/
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