Month: September 2006

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand. (Putt’s Law)

from Deb Shinder, Editor, WXPNews

Paris Hilton books at $650,000 per appearance. wikiNews

I’m stunned.

One colony of Argentine ants is believed to extend almost the complete length of California, stretching from San Diego to Ukiah, 100 miles north of San Francisco.

Their sheer numbers, cooperative behavior and lack of natural predators in the United States make these small, slender ants – only about 1/8 of an inch long – difficult to eradicate…

But now chemists and biologists at the University of California, Irvine, (UCI) think they may have found a natural way to finally check the spread of environmentally destructive Argentine ants in California and elsewhere in the United States: Spark a family feud.

Slight alterations in the “recognition” chemicals on the exoskeletons of these closely related pests, these scientists say, could transform “kissing cousins” into mortal enemies, triggering deadly in-fighting within their normally peaceful super colonies, which have numerous queens and can stretch hundreds of miles.

We spend $10,000 per student per year in public schools, twice 1980, which at $500Billion is more than the cost of Defense, yet student performance remains flat.

Private sector schools are back on the agenda, but it seems not because corporate schools are better, but that they introduce the vigor of competition.

When staff and teachers feel threatened when enrollment drops in favor of a nearby commercial school, student performance in the public school shows improvement.

Complacency seems endemic. It’s difficult to know what to try next.

To set up a municipal wireless broadband system, The Wireless Report says about 20 Sensoria routers would be needed at $2,000 each to cover one square mile.

Calcium supplements useless for strengthening bones

Scientists take new look at coffee’s bad rap

Why are leafy greens grown in California’s Salinas Valley linked with E. coli?

A fifth of American kids projected to become obese

Residential buildings produce over 20% of the nation’s greenhouse gas. Read More

The human psyche is skewed to the negative, according to happiness experts.

“People prefer tragedy,” says Dr Stefan Klein, author of The Science of Happiness. Show people happy and sad pictures and their brains will respond more strongly to the latter. “In every newspaper bad news yields larger headlines than good news. Losses inflict hurt more than equivalent gains bring joy.”

Happiness is not simply the absence of unhappiness, research shows. Brain scans have recently revealed happiness has its own separate circuitry, concentrated in the left-hand side of the prefrontal cortex, while unhappiness is predominantly associated with activity in the right part of the brain.

Article here

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Happiness is enjoying a boom.

And not just among hedonists, and people forced to confront their mortality. Economists, scientists, psychologists and publishers can’t get enough of the stuff. It is being prodded, measured, weighed, defined and deconstructed; the world is groaning under a mountain of academic papers and books on the subject.

Some believe the new findings on what makes people happy call for a revolution in how governments can help citizens flourish. Faster economic growth, they argue, should no longer be the most important objective for society.

Money can make people happy, but not as much as you think.

Where average income per person is low – less than about $20,000 a year – extra money does make people happier. Above that, happiness seems to be independent of income. The average American, for example, is much richer than the average Icelander or Dane, but also less happy.

Go there.
Contempt for the customer is not a brand-building strategy

“Homework may be the single most reliable extinguisher of the flame of curiosity.”

Alfie Kohn asks two questions: First, Does the research show that homework is beneficial? And second, Why not?

Kohn has been described in Time magazine as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores.”

OOZ examines the narrow spaces where humans and animals intersect and interact.

WorldChanging discusses how animals endure in the spaces humans covet and convert themselves toward ourselves.

It’s not enough for us that there are experts.
Where each exclude more than they offer.
We’ve no regard for leadership.
Each so greedy in their coffer.
We seem better poor and lost.
Poverty a lesser cost.
Our lot.
Not.

The role of the plant’s pores in defense against invading bacteria has been redefined by a new look at the behavior of one the plant’s first lines of defense against disease.

Pores called stomata are like tiny mouths that open and close during photosynthesis, exchanging gases. In sunshine, the stomata open. In darkness, they close to conserve water.

It has been assumed that these tiny ports were busy with their photosynthesis business and were merely unwitting doorways to invading bacteria but recent discoveries show that stomata are an intricate part of the plant’s immune system that can sense danger and respond by shutting down.

It appears those plant-based bacteria produce a phytotoxin, a chemical called coronatine, to force the pores back open. For bacteria, entry is crucial to causing disease and probably survival. They could die if left lingering on the surface. Animal-based bacteria do not produce coronatine.

“Now that we know a key step in bacteria’s attack, we have something we can learn to interfere with,” Melotto said. “From this we can learn about disease resistance.”

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Conventional wisdom holds that harmful bacteria on fruits and vegetables are the remnants of contamination skulking on the exterior of the plants — easily washed away by conventional surface sterilization techniques. But University of Florida microbiology experts believe the recent rash of spinach-related E. coli infections may be instead linked to swarms of the pathogen lurking inside the leafy greens.

“We know that plants can take bacteria up from the soil through their roots,” Triplett said. “What we need to do now is investigate whether this is a problem with our crops, and then what we can do about it if it is.”

For food safety experts, this could mean a paradigm shift in thought about food sterilization.

“When I was a graduate student, we were taught that the insides of plants were sterile,” said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. “Further elucidation is needed before we can say this is a major health concern…but assuming E. coli is getting into the plant — yes, this will be a big problem to address.”

The problem, UF researchers say, would be twofold. The first is the question of how to keep dangerous bacteria out of water and soil in the first place. The second is how to eliminate a pathogen if it does infiltrate crops. [story]

I have worked as hard as any and more than most.

I know what effort is and I know what truth is and I am in all things good.

Best to you,
and please be brave,
and please turn less by wanting and more by giving:

You are always.

“one of the best online resources for education in the humanities”

Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram Newsletter says:

I’d like everyone to take a deep breath and listen for a minute.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets, or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we’re doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We’re all a little jumpy…

“The government in Ghana, like governments in many developing countries, is not allowed to help its farmers with subsidies or protect its own chicken market with higher tariffs on imports. When they did try, …”

“Paul Wolfowitz, who as the US Deputy Defence Secretary was a key architect of the Iraq war and who has focused his attention during his first 15 months…” “in areas such as tackling corruption and good governance…” is imposing conditions such as “economic policy choices like privatisation and trade liberalisation.”

Britain is protesting.

1) Turn off engine
2) Don’t smoke
3) Don’t use your cell phone – leave it inside the vehicle or turn it off
4) Don’t re-enter your vehicle during fueling

The Shell Oil Company recently issued a warning after three incidents in
which mobile phones (cell phones) ignited fumes during fueling operations.

Bob Renkes of Petroleum Equipment Institute is working on a campaign to try
and make people aware of fires as a result of”static electricity” at gas
pumps. His company has researched 150 cases of these fires.

His results were very surprising:
1) Out of 150 cases, almost all of them were women.
2) Almost all cases involved the person getting back in their vehicle while
the nozzle was still pumping gas. When finished, they went back to pull the
nozzle out and the fire started, as a result of static.
3) Most had on rubber-soled shoes.
4) Most men never get back in their vehicle unt il completely finished.
This is why they are seldom involved in these types of fires.
5) Don’t ever use cell phones when pumping gas
6) It is the vapors that come out of the gas that cause the fire, when
connected with static charges.
7) There were 29 fires where the vehicle was re-entered and the nozzle was
touched during refueling from a variety of makes and models. Some resulted
in extensive damage to the vehicle, to the station, and to the customer.
8) Seventeen fires occurred before, during or immediately after the gas cap
was removed and before fueling began.

Mr. Renkes stresses to NEVER get back into your vehicle while filling it
with gas. You can find more information at http://www.pei.org/

I’ve learned not reading but living that life earns its description: Terror tells us warmth. Forgiving tells us hope. Experience is the better of chance. Dead reigns. Fear lies. So in these only things I warn you that Hemingway hurt. Those words birth in stone. The old man said thinking is our river. He said we are not a painful thing. Hate is sleep. War is dreaming. Love awakes. Observation is his sympathy.

police can now pinpoint the distance between cars

EU fines cartel
EU fines chemical cartel
EU fines food preservative cartel

Sotheby’s fined for price fixing
Microsoft hit record EU fine
Central banker shot dead

In that early morning
That tiny light
Brings day

“T”H”O”U”G”H”T”
Yes, sending a thought.

-t-‘u’-n-‘e-‘
Yes, sending a tune.

s s s s s s s s s s s s s s s y y y s s s s s s s t t t t em ssysstemm system.
Oops, sssending aa bbbelief.

Orgasm. Remote. Popular. Iraq. Internet-controllable sex toy.

Nearly a third of Americans, 31.4 per cent, believe in an Authoritarian God, angry at earthly sin and willing to inflict divine retribution — including tsunamis and hurricanes.

And as Times Online reports,

There’s the Critical God, at 16 per cent, viewed as the classic bearded old man, judgmental but not going to intervene or punish, and is popular on the East Coast.

The Benevolent God, popular in America’s Midwest among mainstream Protestants, Catholics and Jews, is one that sets absolute standards for man, but is also forgiving — engaged but not so angry. Caring for the sick is high on the list of priorities for these 23 per cent of believers.

The Distant God, seen by 24.4 per cent as a faceless, cosmic force that launched the world but leaves it alone.

“You learn more about people’s moral and political behaviour if you know their image of God than almost any other measure,” said Christopher Bader, one of the researchers.

America is 91.8 per cent religious.
More religious than any nation on earth.