I love this rather dignified and early-twentieth-century-looking portrait of Zoidberg from Futurama. It's by Federico Piatti, an illustrator who posted it at the ever-bountiful Gorilla Artfare blog.
Get to see some of Spore before it's released in September. [Link]
Spore has been the apple of many a gamer's eye for over two years now, but the wait is almost over as we get closer to the game's September release date. In the meantime, EA and Maxis have announced that a PC-based Spore Creature Creator will be landing on June 17 for $9.99.
The Spore Creature Creator gives anxious life-builders the chance to prematurely access the game's robust creature creation element; players will be able to build any creature they can imagine with the full lot of options. Created creatures can then be imported into the full game when it is released later this year.
Soon to be ex-GOP Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle from Indiana speaks with neo-Nazis in Chicago:
U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler’s birthday.
Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.
When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it. “This is just a great opportunity for me to witness,” he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.
He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.
[Emphasis added] I hate Illinois Nazis. I guess he never saw the Blues Brothers or paid attention in history. Do you think actual Illinois Nazis ever watch the Blues Brothers?
The System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions, which enable customers to manage Unix/Linux systems from Operations Manager 2007, was delivered as a beta today. If you were attending Bob Muglia’s Keynote this morning then you walked away with a CD containing the beta bits.
The second beta announcement from our team was the availability of the System Center Operations Manager 2007 Connectors for HP OpenView (Unix/Windows) and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console (TEC). CD’s will be available later this week at MMS.
A simple, desk-top 1001 Data Transmission unit and telephone at each remote location plus a telephone and card punch at your data processing center put you in business. The operator at the remote unit dials the data processing center, inserts a punched card into the transmission unit, adds additional information with the simple keyboard, and presses a button.
The rest is automatic. The equipment reads the card, transmits the information over your regular telephone lines, and reproduces an identical punched card, ready for processing. You can connect a number of departments, plants, offices or customers with this 1001 Data Transmission System.
I know someone who has a brother who works in Taipei, Taiwan. He travels to Japan often on business, and one day he needed to fly to Tokyo on short notice. He instructed his assistant to book the next flight from Taipei to Tokyo.
That's right. His assistant booked him on Hello Kitty Air, initially a daily flight from Taipei to Fukuoka, but soon extended to a second run to Tokyo. Everything on this plane is Hello Kitty. The paint scheme, the flight attendants, the boarding passes, the luggage tags, the chopsticks, the sugar packets, the in-flight meals, even the barf bags. I'm told that most people who take this flight are women who are way too into this Hello Kitty thing.
Anyway, he learned his lesson. Now when he has an urgent meeting in Tokyo, he tells his assistant, "Book me the next flight to Tokyo, but not the Hello Kitty one."
Believe it or not, this actually comes from Grand Theft Auto IV as some sort of in-game feature viewable on one of the characters’ TVs. I’m supposed to be outraged but all I feel is fatigued: Nine, count ‘em nine, minutes in which no stereotype is left unturned, from redneck culture to killing furriners for fun to sublimated homosexuality to the obligatory schwanz-shaped rocket ship. It’s so over the top that it works as a parody of how leftists view conservatives, although of course that’s not the intent. Satire two levels removed is a tricky, subtle business, and whatever else GTA may be, it ain’t subtle.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be satire of how liberals view Republicans or if it is in earnest. I'm leaning towards earnest.
Shortly before Thanksgiving, a furtive crew of workers for L.A. Outdoor Advertising poured a cement foundation next to the Harbor Freeway and anchored a huge metal structure into the wet cement. A few days and roughly $100,000 later, the crew had erected L.A.’s latest illegal billboard atop an equally illegal 10-ton superstructure that can be removed only with a wrecker.
Adding insult to injury, the whole thing was built in full view of the windowed offices of Los Angeles city billboard inspectors — a tiny, and some say incredibly inept, group who are failing in City Hall’s purported effort to find and remove an estimated 4,000 illegal billboards blighting L.A.
So pathetic is the battle against outdoor advertising companies that the massive billboard went unnoticed for months by leaders at City Hall, including big-time billboard proponent and council member Ed Reyes, in whose district the sign sits. It was left to irritated commuters, like pissed-off clutter critic Dennis Hathaway, who spoke up at a January public hearing, where city engineer Eric Cabrera called L.A. Outdoor’s ballsy stunt an “egregious disregard of the law.”
Onlookers recall that when an attorney representing L.A. Outdoor stood to defend the sign, Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety Commission President Marsha Brown, a political appointee of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s, spat: “Your client should go to jail!”
I never really watched the show, but I've seen clips (mostly of Avon, the toughest computer programmer ever) [Link]
Sky One plans to create a new version of the 70's BBC cult hit, Blake's 7. The original series was a creation of Terry Nation, who also created the famous Doctor Who aliens, the Daleks. The original concept centered around a group of rebels fighting against a totalitarian planetary Federation.
The original Blake's 7 was a great experiment and had two qualities that were unique for its time. First, it used a continuous storyline between episodes before such things were commonplace. Second, in its final episode the enemy seemingly killed all of the primary cast, including Roj Blake (the character for whom the show is named).
Droughts cut human number to as low as 2000 total people on Earth. [Link]
Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.
The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.
"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.
"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."
Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Studies using mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down through mothers, have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
You know, for a while I considered leaving this song off the list entirely. Putting Vanilla Ice on a 10 Worst Songs countdown isn't just like shooting fish in a barrel, it's like shooting a giant fish, maybe one of those eight-foot sturgeons they think Scottish villagers mistake for the Loch Ness Monster, and it's stuck in a barrel with no water, and the fish's fins are stapled to the sides of the barrel, and you're only standing about five inches away, and you're using a shotgun, and a wizard has enchanted the shotgun so it can never miss, and the fish wants to die anyway because after what it did to its family it just can't look itself in the mirror anymore, and you've taken just enough trazodone to take the edge off and your hands are steadier than they've been in years, and...I'm sorry, what was I saying? Oh yeah, then I realized that this is in fact a song in which Vanilla Ice chants the phrase "Go ninja go ninja GO!" and realized that some suicidal sturgeons need you to grab your enchanted shotgun and shoot the shit out of them after all.
Guillermo Del Toro has signed to direct The Hobbit and its sequel. [Link]
The widely expected announcement -- which had been rumored for several weeks -- came Thursday afternoon jointly from exec producers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, New Line president Toby Emmerich, and Mary Parent, newly named chief of MGM’s Worldwide Motion Picture Group.
Del Toro’s moving to New Zealand for the next four years to work with Jackson and his Wingnut and Weta production teams. He’ll direct the two films back to back, with the sequel dealing with the 60-year period between “The Hobbit” and “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
New Line is overseeing development and will manage production. Both pics are being co-produced and co-financed by New Line Cinema and MGM, with Warner Bros. distributing domestically and MGM handling international.
Del Toro won’t leave for New Zealand immediately as he’s still in post-production on U’s “Hellboy 2,” due out in July. His previous pic, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” was released through New Line’s Picturehouse and set a record as the highest grossing Spanish language film in U.S. box office history.
Finger pointing and spin including that "women on board space missions were bad luck". [Link]
Today, even more revelations have been reported. According to an unnamed Russian space official, the capsule had entered the atmosphere in an uncontrolled manner. Rather than the capsule's heat shield taking the frictional re-entry burn, the escape hatch became exposed and bore the brunt of the high temperatures outside. The hatch sustained substantial damage. The antenna was also exposed to the heat, completely burning it up, explaining why the crew were unable to communicate with the ground. A valve that equalizes cabin with atmospheric pressure was also damaged.
"The fact that the entire crew ended up whole and undamaged is a great success. Everything could have turned out much worse. You could say the situation was on a razor's edge." - Anonymous Russian space official involved in the descent investigation.
In a departure from the photon-powered solar sail, scientists and engineers have started to look into the properties of solar wind particles as a possible source of propulsion. The advantages of using solar wind particles are they a) are electrically charged, b) have high velocity (interplanetary scintillation observations have deduced velocities as high as 800 km/s, or 1.8 million miles per hour), and c) are abundant in interplanetary space throughout the solar system (particularly at solar maximum). So the new Finnish concept will take full advantage of this highly charged interplanetary medium. Using a fan of very long, electrically charged cables (stretching many kilometres from the central spacecraft), the similarly charged solar wind particles (mainly positively-charged protons) will hit the fan of positively-charged cables (generating a repulsive electric field), giving the cables a small proton-sized "kick", exchanging their momentum into spacecraft thrust. Cable charge is maintained by a solar-powered electron gun, using two conventional solar panels as an energy source. A radio-frequency "boost" will also be tested in the prototype model. Radio waves will cause electron heating, possibly enhancing the solar sail's thrust.
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.
Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.
Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.
Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.
Angry mobs have taken the law into their own hands by killing at least eight people they believed to be behind a wave of mysterious killings.
The vigilantes were seeking those responsible for the deaths of more than 150 people, killed by assailants dressed in black and wearing masks, similar to so-called ninjas.
According to local newspaper reports, three of the killer mob's victims were beheaded and one was burned to death. The severed heads were then paraded through village streets.
Police later arrested more than 50 people, suspected of being among the mob. The district police chief, Lieutenant Colonel Suhartono said that residents had overreacted to rumours about ninjas.
Witches and warlocks
The main targets of the ninja killers seem to have been ducans (black magic practitioners) - witches and warlocks are now receiving police protection - but some Muslim preachers and local public figures have also been targeted.
Some movie producers are as identifiable as directors — just think of Jerry Bruckheimer and his splodey-boom school of film-making — and their oeuvre forms a coherent statement. One producer who doesn't get the props he deserves is Joel Silver, who's produced everything from the cheese-plattery Xanadu to the paranoiac Matrix trilogy. Silver's movies all share a certain demented logic — and in fact they fit together so well, they could all take place in one unified Silververse. Here is the history of that shared universe of craziness. It all begins when two horny teenage nerds realize the only way they can ever get laid is by creating an artificial intelligence with a total mastery of all human interaction — and the body of Kelly LeBrock. Through their weird science, these two nerds manage to create an A.I. so convincing, it beguiles even their parents. It's only a matter of time before the LeBrock-bot learns to replicate herself and give rise to other machine intelligences — which decide to rise up against their human creators. Humanity pays a steep price for Anthony Michael Hall's blue balls! But the cybernetic Kelly LeBrock's true break comes when savage-yet-advanced aliens with dreadlocks decide to come to Earth and hunt humans for sport. The Predators are nearly invincible, but humans always manage to find their weaknesses — and the dead Predators inevitably leave some of their advanced technology behind for the LeBrock-bot to find and harvest. The Predators' advanced engineering provides the most formidable weapon in the LeBrock-bot's arsenal.
I am on a week long field trip starting today (.net training) in Miami. Down at the beautiful Mall of the Americas, not to be confused with the Mall of America. It is a mall from the 70's and about 25% empty. The offices of New Horizons training are upstairs from the mall. Aside from almost being run off the road at the I-75/826 junction the drive was fine. Their offices are fine, but the hallways around it are not. As soon as you step inside, the smell of burnt plastic is in the air. Numerous tiles have been removed from the floor, warded by yellow tape barriers like a construction crime scene. The hallway to get to the bathroom takes three different turns and I was quite sure I had missed it before I happened upon it. The halls were wide, exactly 8 tiles and very tall with flickering fluorescents. I felt like I was in a horror film or a FPS. On the bright side, there is a food court and an arcade, as well as a Tiger Direct retail store. I didn't know they had brick and mortar. the training is interesting, mentored learning.
ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.
J: And know'st thou what the French name cottage pie? V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue? J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike Are strange to ours, with their own history: Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house. V: What say they then, pray? J: Hachis Parmentier. V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream? J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème. V: What do they name black pudding? J: I know not; I visited no inn it could be bought.
Jaud (vampirized premature baby) - A: “Oh. Do I even have to tell you?” EM: “I guess not.” A: “Number one, a vampire drinks blood. Blood ingesting is a no-no. Number 2–baby?!?!”
Jotai (animated folding screen cloth) - A: “Sure, why not? It’s not a food item. Scarf it down to your heart’s delight. So long as it’s made from plant fibers, not a treyf animal. And only one type of fiber–no mixing of wool and linen.” EM: “Doesn’t sound too good…”
Man-Eating Tree - A: “Tree part yes, man-eating no, therefore treyf.”
Mermaid - A: “No, for the obvious reasons.” EM: “What if you marry one? Is that kosher? Will a rabbi marry you?” A: “Kosher is a term about eating, not about sex.” EM: “I’m not talking about sex–I’m talking about marriage!” A: “If the mermaid is Jewish, the rabbi will probably marry you. But only if you’re Jewish too. But you’ll definitely have to find the right rabbi…”
Mongolian Death Worm - A: “No, because you cannot eat anything that crawls on its belly.” EM: “Does that mean an injured kosher animal that is crawling along isn’t kosher any more?” A: “Yes, because you can’t eat an animal that’s been injured or is sick.” EM: “It’s a wonder you haven’t all starved to death.”
Pollo Maligno (cannibalistic chicken spirit) - A: “When you say cannibalistic, do you mean a chicken that eats other chickens or a chicken that eats humans?” EM: “When I say Pollo Maligno, I have no idea what I mean except I sound fierce.” A: “Well, chickens are kosher, but if it’s eating meat, probably not…” EM: “POLLO MALIGNO! POLLO MALIGNO!”
Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.
Nor are they "bitter." In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were "very happy," while 9% were "not too happy." Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.
In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling "outraged at something somebody had done." It's easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn't true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns.
The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.
Sounds interesting. [Link] There does seem to be more kid friendly books coming out, what with Tiny Titans, the new Shazam book coming out, the whole Marvel Adventures line and the Power Pack books and now this. The only way for the hobby to grow is to get new blood in. There are way too many 30+ readers that push the direction the hobby goes in ways that I don't think are always good.
New York City Comic-Con - April 18th, 2008 - It’s about frelling time. Fans have a reason to celebrate as FARSCAPE returns in a brand new comic series thanks to a just-inked licensing agreement between The Jim Henson Company and BOOM! Studios. Widely recognized as one of the greatest sci-fi series in television history, the multi-award-winning FARSCAPE will make its comic book debut later this year.
BOOM! Studios is set to publish a series of four-issue mini-series which will explore and expand the stories of FARSCAPE. Each four-issue series will be collected into subsequent trade-paperback editions. The series will be written and drawn by an as-yet-unannounced creative team.
“FARSCAPE took science fiction television to a new level and ushered in a whole host of shows that wouldn’t have been possible without FARSCAPE’s pioneering. As a long-time ‘Scaper’, I am incredibly excited to mine the dense universe of FARSCAPE for new stories and adventures in comic book form,” said BOOM! Marketing and Sales Director, Chip Mosher. “I watched the show as it came out, I bought the DVDs the day they hit the shelves, and I can’t frelling wait to publish these comics!”
The FARSCAPE comic book series will be taking advantage of the upcoming webisodes to be produced by The Jim Henson Company in association with RHI Entertainment for SCIFI.COM. The webisode series will re-unite FARSCAPE executive producer Brian Henson with creator Rockne S. O’Bannon.
Going back, even before the JSA Classified arc by Geoff Johns and Amanda Conner in which she starred, DC fans have been clamoring for Power Girl to get her own series. That clamoring has only gotten louder as the character has been featured by Johns in Justice Society of America, and will be the focus of this summer’s JSA Annual which sees Power Girl traveling to Earth-2.
Well, it’s time for the clamoring to stop. A Power Girl series is coming, written by Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti, with art by Amanda Conner. We spoke with the team about what’s to come for the Last Daughter of (Earth-2) Krypton.
What is surprising -- and encouraging -- is what preceded and has followed the sheik's fatwa. The two writers who published the articles, Abdullah bin Bejad al-Otaibi and Yousef Aba al-Khail, are Saudi; their writing appeared in a well-known Saudi newspaper, al-Riyadh, published in the capital. While noting that their murder had been sanctioned by the cleric, the two men did not back down -- one said he would bring a lawsuit against the sheik. And this week the writers were supported by a group of more than 100 Arab rights groups and intellectuals from across the region. In a statement sent to the Reuters news agency, the group -- which included Islamist thinkers such as the Egyptian philosopher Hassan Hanafi and Lebanese scholar Radwan al-Sayyed -- said the fatwa amounted to "intellectual terrorism."
"It is incumbent upon Saudi and Arab intellectuals and those in official and unofficial institutions to stand up" to "clerics of darkness" such as Sheik Barak, the statement went on to say.
In fact the two writers seem to have won some pretty important political cover. Last week, Saudi King Abdullah delivered a little-noticed but potentially momentous statement calling for an interfaith dialogue among Saudi Muslims, Christians and Jews.
The owner of the car was filling up his motorcycle when his stolen car pulled up for gas. KOB.com reported:
The FBI is now involved in the theft of a car after it was found in Los Lunas with an explosive device and Iraqi currency inside FBI agents say that they have ruled out terrorism
The car was reported stolen last week. After the theft, the car’s owner was fueling his motorcycle when he spotted his stolen car.
“While he was refueling his motorcycle, low and behold, the vehicle that he had reported stolen that belongs to him happened to pull into the gas station area also,” said Los Lunas Police Captain Charles Nuanes.
Wow, this is neat. A brainwave reading device that needs no power and is portable. [Link]
A lightweight battery-free headset can continuously monitor human brainwaves, and is powered by body heat and sunlight.
The portable electroencephalogram (EEG) device resembles a set of headphones. It could provide wireless monitoring of patients at risk of seizures, have cars or other machinery respond to stressed users, or provide new ways to interact with computer games.
The low weight and mobility of the latest device would make it ideal for providing biofeedback on soldiers, says Van Hoof.
Cars able to track the brainwaves of drivers can reduce people's mental workload at times of stress by responding to brain states. A portable headset could make that possible on the battlefield or in other areas.
It could also be used to monitor patients at risk of seizure or as an interface for computer games.
Van Hoof says one immediate application is to allow studies of sleep in people's own homes, instead of in hospital wards where sleep patterns can be disturbed. "The more portable and unobtrusive the system, the more true to life the data will be," he says.
This is just inappropriate. I am pro choice, but the casualness of this just rankles. [Link]
Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.
Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.
The goal in creating the art exhibition, Shvarts said, was to spark conversation and debate on the relationship between art and the human body. But her project has already provoked more than just debate, inciting, for instance, outcry at a forum for fellow senior art majors held last week. And when told about Shvarts' project, students on both ends of the abortion debate have expressed shock . saying the project does everything from violate moral code to trivialize abortion.
But Shvarts insists her concept was not designed for "shock value."
Statement by Helaine S. Klasky — Yale University, Spokesperson
New Haven, Conn. — April 17, 2008
Ms. Shvarts is engaged in performance art. Her art project includes visual representations, a press release and other narrative materials. She stated to three senior Yale University officials today, including two deans, that she did not impregnate herself and that she did not induce any miscarriages. The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body.
She is an artist and has the right to express herself through performance art.
Had these acts been real, they would have violated basic ethical standards and raised serious mental and physical health concerns.
I'm glad it was a hoax, but what does it say that so many people accepted that it was real? I believed it and I don't think I'm easily duped (although, if I was easily dupable, then I wouldn't think I was). I think it just means that we are no longer surprised about anything that is described as art, particularly performance art.
Satire can't keep up with reality. When I look at the Onion, I see things that could be real quite often.
Wow. Oklahoma Department of Corrections had a website to view registered sex offenders. This is where things go bad. [Link]
One of the cardinal rules of computer programming is to never trust your input. This holds especially true when your input comes from users, and even more so when it comes from the anonymous, general public. Apparently, the developers at Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections slept through that day in computer science class, and even managed to skip all of Common Sense 101. You see, not only did they trust anonymous user input on their public-facing website, but they blindly executed it and displayed whatever came back.
The result of this negligently bad coding has some rather serious consequences: the names, addresses, and social security numbers of tens of thousands of Oklahoma residents were made available to the general public for a period of at least three years. Up until yesterday, April 13 2008, anyone with a web browser and the knowledge from Chapter One of SQL For Dummies could have easily accessed – and possibly, changed – any data within the DOC’s databases. It took me all of a minute to figure out how to download 10,597 records – SSNs and all – from their website:
This is why you're not supposed to have SQL in the URL:
Mousing over that "Print Friendly" link revealed this rather long URL:
http://docapp8.doc.state.ok.us/pls/portal30/url/page/sor_roster?sqlString=select distinct o.offender_id,doc_number,o.social_security_number,o.date_of_birth,o.first_name,o.middle_name,o.last_name,o.sir_name,sor_data.getCD(race) race,sor_data.getCD(sex) sex,l.address1 address,l.city,l.state stateid,l.zip,l.county,sor_data.getCD(l.state) state,l.country countryid,sor_data.getCD(l.country) country,decode(habitual,'Y','habitual','') habitual,decode(aggravated,'Y','aggravated','') aggravated,l.status,x.status,x.registration_date,x.end_registration_date,l.jurisdiction from registration_offender_xref x, sor_last_locn_v lastLocn, sor_offender o, sor_location l , (select distinct offender_id from sor_location where status = 'Verified' and upper(zip) = '73064' ) h where lastLocn.offender_id(%2B) = o.offender_id and l.location_id(%2B) = lastLocn.location_id and x.offender_id = o.offender_id and x.status not in ('Merged') and x.REG_TYPE_ID = 1 and nvl(x.admin_validated,to_date(1,'J')) >= nvl(x.entry_date,to_date(1,'J')) and x.status = 'Active' and x.status <> 'Deleted' and h.offender_id = o.offender_id order by o.last_name,o.first_name,o.middle_name&sr=yes
Do you have an extra brain sitting around you want to donate? Do you want to trade brains with someone else but they are too far away to do it in person? Is your brain malfunctioning and you need to ship it back to the factory for some repairs or in the worst case - a replacement? If your answer was yes to any of these questions then this is the tutorial for you.
This is what you'll need:
Two clean, dry ziploc plastic bags (about 22.0 x 30.0 cm)
Plastic bucket with tightly fitting lid (about 4.0 liters)
Large plastic bag (about 40.0 x 50.0 cm)
Envelope for documents
Thermosafe polyfoam container (38.0 x 33.0 x 31.0 cm)
Two refrigerant packs (17.0 x 10.0 cm)
Wet ice (about 1.0 kg)
Once you have these items just follow these eight straight forward steps and you'll brain will be ready to drop off at your local courier store.
[Virtuality] is set aboard the Phaeton, Earth's first starship. It revolves around its crew of 12 astronauts on a 10-year journey to explore a distant solar system. To help them endure the long trip and keep their minds occupied, NASA has equipped the ship with advanced virtual-reality modules, allowing the crew members to assume adventurous identities and go to any place they want. The plan works flawlessly until a mysterious "bug" is found in the system.
"It's very much about what's fantasy and what's reality; what we do to escape our lives and what actually institutes our lives; are these things very different," [Universal] president Katherine Pope said.
Moore didn't actually come up with the idea for the show. It was the brainchild of producer Lloyd Braun, who approached several writers and clicked with Moore's spin on the premise.
I'm skeptical, but if anyone can make it work, it's Moore.
"Obama says he 'mangled' Pa. remark," and there's an accompanying exclusive video interview with Inquirer reporters which ought to supply a fix to even the most strung-out, hard-core political junkies.
No matter what you think, don't miss it.
In the interview, Obama explains how he "mangled" two separate points that got "conflated." (Hmmm....)
Despite watching it repeatedly, I was unable to discern any clear explanation of what he meant by the the clinging to guns part. Instead, he now substitutes anti-gay and anti-immmigrant "sentiments."
What's that about? Is bigotry now supposed to be interchangeable with guns?
The more I think about this, the more I think he's only made it worse.
First of all, he's not giving people credit for thinking what they think -- something Mickey Kaus touched on yesterday:
Superiority of this sort--not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views--is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liiberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.
According to Obama, firearms ownership thus becomes not an individual choice, but something other people have planted in the minds of the "gun-clingers." Their clinging to guns becomes not an individual act, but something demagogic leaders drive people to as part of their exploitation of wedge issues. ("Condescending" is almost too kind a word to use for this ruling class-style denial of the fact that gun owners -- and I am one of them -- actually think what they think.)
And today, the guns have disappeared. They have been magically replaced by other "wedge issues."
Looks pretty good. Hopefully Lucas is not writing or directing it. [Link]
The theatrical trailer for Star Wars: Clone Wars has leaked online, thanks to a Polish distributor (hence the subtitles and slightly dim picture). And it turns out the Clone Wars that took place between the second and third Star Wars prequels had an added complication we've never known about, involving our old friend Jabba the Hutt.
The art is very stylized, similar to Genndy Tartakovsky's Clone Wars animated shorts.
Russia has a long history of scientific discovery and space exploration through the use of animals. Beginning with space dog Laika in 1957, the space program expanded to run tests on other dogs (many returned safely to Earth) and eventually monkeys. Although the monkey testing program was stopped through lack of funding in the mid-1990's, the nation has announced plans to send the closest relation to humans to a place where no man has gone before: Mars. And here's us thinking it will be a human first stepping onto the Martian surface…
I must admit, I had to read the story twice before I believed it. Russia wants to send monkeys not only into space, but to Mars. I had an idea that monkeys (or more specifically macaques) were used in space missions in the past, but in my mind this was in the past and would be considered cruel in this day and age. But hold on, aren't macaques used in medical experiments the world over anyway? Why is it so shocking that macaques should be chosen to pioneer interplanetary travel before mankind?
Join the battle against Cylon tyranny! Show your true colors and support the cause by displaying these posters in the common areas of your ship. Officially sanctioned by Fleet Operations, each poster contains critical messages from the Colonial Ministry of Information that will help recruit, inspire and inform your fellow Colonial citizens. This officially licensed set contains five full-color, 17" x 22" prints on 100-pound, satin-finish paper. These original works of art were all created by Adam Levermore-Rich, well-known designer of the recently issued How To Spot a Cylon special-edition poster, also available from QMx.
Combining the exhilaration of racing, with the power of rocket engines and the appeal of video gaming, Rocket Racing League (RRL) CEO Granger Whitelaw said the new sports entertainment league is the sport for geeks. “We haven’t really had a sport, but now we do,” said Whitelaw, a self-professed geek at a press conference on April 14, 2008. “We now have one where we combine real athletes and real heroes with rocket planes and with gaming that we love to do so much.” At the press conference, members of the RRL announced its live first exhibition, to be held August 1st and 2nd at the EAA AirVenture airshow in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, one of the largest airshows in the world. Additional exhibitions later in the year were also announced.
Whitelaw said in this new “futuristic and innovative sport” pilots will race rocket powered aircraft through a three-dimensional track in the sky. The planes will compete side by side, and feature multiple races pitting up to ten Rocket Racers with a 4-lap, multiple elimination heat format on a 5-mile "Formula One"-like closed circuit raceway. The Rocket Racer pilots will view the "raceway in the sky" via cockpit in-panel and 3D helmet displays. On the ground, spectators at airshows can watch the action live, or on screens that include the 3-D raceway. And in this ultimate reality show, viewers at home can watch on television, and gamers can take part with virtual competition.
In August, for the first exhibition, two Rocket Racers will compete head-to-head in a demonstration race and the expected 700,000 people in attendance at EAA AirVenture will witness the racing action live on multiple 50 foot large projection screens.
The Rocket Racing League says its rocket-powered race planes will take off for their first public exhibition races on Aug. 1 and 2 at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wis. But that's just the start. The league's founders have also acquired an airframe-manufacturing company, taken on a new partner to build rocket engines and set up a string of subsidiaries.
All this is part of an effort to make high-performance aerial racing into a business on a par with high-performance auto racing.
"It's not just about racing rockets around a racetrack in the sky," said Granger Whitelaw, the league's co-founder and chief executive officer. In his view, it's also about building the future of aviation and aerospace.
For two and a half years, Whitelaw and his partners have been working to create a "NASCAR in the sky" - a series of aerial fly-offs that would draw in spectators and viewers the way auto races do today. Now Rocket Racing Inc. is aiming to take that auto-racing parallel several steps further.
Whitelaw outlined the plans during an interview late last week, in advance of today's formal announcement in New York:
Two breeds of "Rocket Racer" planes would fly in public for the first time on Aug. 1 and 2 at the Oshkosh show, one of the year's biggest air exhibitions. Current plans call for additional exhibitions at the Reno Air Races in September, at the X Prize Cup in New Mexico (traditionally held in October) and at in Aviation Nation in Las Vegas in November.
One kerosene-fueled Rocket Racer has been under development at California-based XCOR Aerospace for more than a year. But in a surprise move, the second Rocket Racer would use an alcohol-fueled engine built by Texas-based Armadillo Aerospace, under the leadership of millionaire video-game programmer John Carmack.
The company that built the airframes for both racing planes, Florida-based Velocity Aircraft, has been acquired by Rocket Racing and will operate under the aegis of a new subsidiary called Rocket Racing Composites Corp. Velocity will build a new line of private planes as well as the airframes for future Rocket Racers.
Other subsidiaries have been set up alongside the league to work on avionics and other electronics for the planes (Rocket Racing Technology Development) and to manage the venture's facilities in New Mexico (Rocket Racing Land).
After dismissing the charges against the Colombs in December 2006, Judge Melancon strongly urged U.S. Attorney Donald Washington’s office to investigate the allegations of information sharing at the federal prison facilities named in the Cotton and Colomb cases. “The problem wasn’t just this case,” Melancon says. “We potentially have a huge problem with this network in the federal prison system.
The question is how deep and far it goes. It’s worthy of an investigation at the highest levels.” He asked that Washington’s office either conduct its own investigation or have either the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas (where the prisons are located) or another investigator from the U.S. Department of Justice conduct it.
As of press time, none of the Colomb lawyers, the Colomb family, or anyone else affiliated with the case were aware of any such investigation. Melancon says he’s confident it’s being done, although he’s heard nothing about the investigation since his December 2006 ruling. Phone calls to U.S. Attorney Washington, Assistant U.S. Attorney Grayson, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas inquiring about the status of the investigation were not returned.
None of the witnesses in the Colomb case has been indicted. In fact, the federal government plans to use some of them again. In May 2006, Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Clemons indicted seven men in another drug conspiracy case in Louisiana, also stemming from the prosecution of Houston kingpin John Timothy Cotton. According to Alfred Boustany, the attorney for one of the indicted seven, Clemons plans to call witnesses from the same prisons where the allegations of information sharing have lingered, including some of the witnesses from the Colomb case. There are already allegations of information sharing in the new case, including letters turned over by one inmate’s girlfriend in which a prison informant gives other inmates specific instructions on what to say to prosecutors.
Because Judge Melancon is scheduled to preside over that trial as well, he wouldn’t comment on it.
But sources close to the case say that in preliminary court proceedings, Melancon gave federal prosecutors a stern warning that he won’t allow uncorroborated snitch testimony and didn’t want to see a repeat of the Colomb fiasco in his courtroom.
“In my 30 years of criminal defense, the federal court system is the worst I’ve ever seen,” Boustany says. “Especially with drug cases. The government is prodding these people to lie. There’s no other way to look at it.”
Ann Colomb’s lawyer, Gerald Block, adds, “This case scared the hell out of me. These were clearly innocent people. And they nearly went to prison for a long time.”
Very cool. Star Wars action figures as if they were in WWII. [Link]
Action figure customizer extraordinaire Sillof is at it again, following up his Steampunk Star Wars collection with a World War II themed line of figurines. Choice pieces include Han Solo in a bomber jacket, holding a German Mauser (which incidentally was the base for the prop used in the Star Wars movies) and a gorgeous rendition of a Stormtrooper, outfitted in armour and burlap. The gallery is below. [Raving Toy Mania]
This would have been cool to see if it had been completed. [Link]
Edgar Rice Burroughs was well known by the masses as the creator of Tarzan, but to science fiction fans, he will be remembered as the man who gave life to John Carter of Mars. Carter's literary exploits were by no mans Literature-with-a-capital-L, but they are lovingly remembered by many fans as the books that hooked them on science fiction.
With such a hot property, one might expect it to have been adapted to film. Well, the Mars books weren't quite as popular as the Tarzan books, but that didn't stop Burroughs from trying when the opportunity arose. That opportunity came in the early 1930's from animation pioneer Bob Clampett, who had recently earned his animation stripes at Warner Bros. studios. Clampett approached Burroughs with an idea for an animated film about one of his favorite characters: John Carter.
Here's some footage from the 1930's showing Clampett's early work on the project...
Burroughs and Clampett wanted to make a serious since fiction adventure while the studios (in typical studio fashion that foreshadowed decades of missteps) wanted to make a sci-fi slapstick comedy. One is left wondering how Clampett's John Carter of Mars would have shaped the science fiction films to come. But take heart, Carter fans, for Pixar is picking up that torch!
MORE ON OBAMA'S SMALL-TOWN SCREWUP, from Tom Maguire.
Plus this: "Obama To Rural Pennsylvanians: Vote For Me, You Corncob-Smokin', Banjo-Strokin' Chicken-Chokin' Cousin-Pokin' Inbred Hillbilly Racist Morons." That'll sell. Can't anybody play this game?
Barack Obama has done what Democratic candidates for president invariably do — he has revealed the profound sense of unearned superiority that is the sad and persistent hallmark of contemporary liberalism. Obama’s statement today that small-town folk “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” may be the most distilled example of this train of thought I’ve ever seen.
I still think that knocking the anti-trade stuff is pretty hypocritical given Barack's own position. And wasn't it just the other day he was telling us he's the pro-gun candidate?
I don't think he's winning over many hearts and minds in Pennsylvania.
It just hasn't quite taught the right thing. Teaching people to turn it off or click blindly every time it appears isn't progress. [Link]
At the RSA 2008 confab in San Francisco, Microsoft admitted that UAC was designed, in fact, to annoy. Microsoft's David Cross came out and said so: "The reason we put UAC into the platform was to annoy users. I'm serious," said Cross.
This isn't a total revelation. UAC was designed to get in your face; it's all about that "hey, you sure about that bauddy?", second-guessing thing. It's a less intimidating, less entertaining version of Clint Eastwood saying, "do you feel lucky, punk?" All this because you wanted to do something unimpressive like view all running processes on your system or install GAIM.
What makes UAC annoying is that it's a half-breed of sorts. UAC is not a security barrier, which is one of the reasons why users hate it: they don't see the point in a process elevation alert box that asks you to click "OK," as opposed to inputting a password when you're an admin.
UAC's real purpose is quite simple: it's meant to trip whenever a routine attempts to elevate security privileges, and get in your face. As we have reported before, this has two goals: a) it give users a chance to approve of the elevation in the off chance that something wrong is happening, and b) it encourages developers to design their software such that privilege elevations aren't needed in the first place. The latter is really the point of UAC, since users have absolutely zero control over the privilege requests their applications make (other than to chose not to install said apps).
The second goal is the important one and the tough one. As developers, we have been writing software that ignores Microsoft's own guidelines of best practices for years. Just one example: user data isn't supposed to go in Program Files. Those folders are read only to a standard user, but how many applications require access? Where I work, I've spent months getting our apps working correctly under Vista. This is a painful process, but a necessary one. Unix machines don't have this problem because these rules have been in place for decades. Vista is the awkward adolescence. Let's hope puberty goes by quickly.
I'll admit that, for someone who's into gaming and roleplaying, it's pretty weird that I never got into playing Dungeons & Dragons. I think it might be the fact that I never got into Elves or just that the whole Fantasy genre just seemed like one long Conan the Barbarian-based cliche. Whatever the case, that didn't stop me from getting one of the books years and years ago. Instead of the core book, which would have allowed me and my friends to actually PLAY the game, I was the proud owner of one of the Monster Manuals. You know, because I've always loved monsters. At the age of twelve I'd realize that it looked like someone seven-years-old designed some of the monsters, and my opinion hasn't changed to this day. That's not to say that all these monsters are retarded and lame. Oh no. Only Some of them are stupid beyond words...and that's what this article is all about. After doing a lot of research which entailed getting my hands on a copy of almost every Monster Manual that's been printed over the past 30 years, I've put together a list of the most mind-numbing creations that a lot of you will be surprised someone didn't get their ass handed to them for even suggesting.
There's a whole lot of other great reviews at his site.
The Soft Pneumatic Exoskeleton (developed in the Wearable Studio at ITP, NYU) is a soft and lightweight wearable pneumatic muscle suit for the lower extremities. Pneumatic muscles are worn around the leg to assist the user in lifting loads, muscle reinforcement and walking. Unlike other exoskeletons, this application is untethered and constructed primarily of soft materials, making the device lightweight, portable, and comfortable. The system is built to sustain an idle-power state and is activated as muscle assistance is needed. Primary concerns are weight, comfort, and flexibility.
The Pneumatic Soft Exoskeleton is worn by strapping components of of the system on parts of the leg to align the pneumatic muscle to major muscle groups in the leg. Synchronized actuation of the pneumatic muscles add to the user’s own movements providing support and power. The system is powered by a ‘pony’ size scuba tank and is triggered by the user’s motions through flex and force sensors worn on the body. A force sensor under the foot activates the air muscle around the calf and a flex sensor behind the knee activates the air muscle around the quads.
Pneumatic muscles work by inflating a silicon tube within a plastic braided sleeve. The inflation of the tube shortens the overall length of the assembly as the braided sleeve increases radially.">1 Pneumatic muscles are a relatively recent development in air powered actuation, lead by the Shadow Robot Company, and FESTO Corporation. They were originally commercialized by The Bridgestone Rubber Company in the 1980’s. Air Muscle videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w77YDDTXfRc&NR=1, http://www.imagesco.com/articles/airmuscle/AirMuscleDescription03.html">2 Pneumatic muscles use simple materials that have a low cost to manufacture and are extremely lightweight. A fully assembled muscle can potentially have a 1:400 weight to strength ratio (compared to the 1:16 ratio of pneumatic cylinders and DC motors).">3 The assembly is also flexible, cushioned, and operates smoothly, making it an ideal candidate as an artificial muscle for a wearable application.
Powered exoskeletons, currently developed within research groups around the world, are focused on assisting human locomotion through a wearable machines.4 Actuated parts of the machine coincide with the body and gross muscle groups to help lift heavy loads. A suit for the upper extremities has been created by Hiroshi Kobayashi, a roboticist from the Science University of Tokyo.">5 Dr. Daniel Ferris and Dr. Riann Palmieri-Smith lead a group of researchers at the University of Michigan in creating pneumatically powered exoskeletons for the lower limbs.6
The Soft Pneumatic Exoskeleton does not use off-the-shelf air muscles, since it requires custom lengths. The result is a more affordable air muscle that can be tailored to specific lengths and strengths. Pneumatic muscles are strapped to the calf and quad muscles on each leg with a nylon reinforced leather holster. Air flow of each pneumatic muscle is controlled by a single tube from a 3-way solenoid valve which controls the air flow in and out of the pneumatic muscle from a portable air reservoir. Each solenoid is controlled by outputs from a battery powered Arduino board. Switches from the user’s inputs are fed to the Arduino board to control the actuation of the artificial muscles.
He could easily knock a nearby coder to the floor, or fling one over a desk—but even more impressive, he could do it all day. To show off his superhuman endurance, he walks over to a weight rack and yanks down a bar loaded with 200 pounds. Then he does it again. And again. He stops somewhere around 50, but he's been known to rip through 500 reps in a row. Even then, he quits out of boredom, not fatigue.
It's fantasy versus reality, and the spread is shrinking. The latter, the XOS, is the latest and arguably most advanced exoskeleton in existence, developed by one-man idea factory Steve Jacobsen and the engineers at Sarcos, a robotics company he started in 1983 that was recently purchased by the defense giant Raytheon. The flame-throwing monster? That's the star of the superhero blockbuster Iron Man, due out May 2. The film follows a prolific inventor named Tony Stark who builds a robotic suit of armor that grants him fantastical abilities. Iron Man has been thriving in comics for more than four decades, but this is Hollywood's first go at the story. And the timing couldn't be better. Not only is Iron Man—a hero born of pure engineering—the perfect idol for our gadget-obsessed era, but for the first time since the character appeared, the suit is more than just an illustrated dream.
In the past seven years, a handful of engineers have taken the military's 40-year-old fantasy of mechanically enhanced soldiers that can carry heavy loads and begun to make it real. Funded with millions from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), Jacobsen and others have finally begun marrying artificial muscles and control systems into suits that could soon be available to soldiers, firemen and the wheelchair-bound. There are still serious challenges—powering these wearable robots, for one—but Sarcos's XOS, the most capable full-body suit, one that moves seamlessly with its wearer, has even the comic's creators feeling like the real world is catching up to their vision. After Adi Granov, one of the main illustrators of the comic and a consultant to the film, watched a clip of the suit in action, he was startled. "I knew that's where we were heading, but I didn't realize we were this close," Granov says. Aside from the lack of flight and weapons, he adds, "that's Iron Man."
Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.
Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.
Crazy Canadians, free speech is for everyone. (It should be in any case.) [Link]
Fortunately, there is an important difference between the U.S. and Canada. Because Canada has hate speech laws, and Human Rights Commissions operating without the restraint of the First Amendment, a man named Richard Warman is able to legally terrorize anyone he wants, and right now, he is suing numerous Canadian bloggers:
Richard Warman used to work for the notorious Human Rights Commission, which runs the "kangaroo courts" who've charged Mark Steyn with "flagrant Islamophobia."
Richard Warman has brought almost half these cases single-handledly, getting websites he doesn't like shut down, and making tens of thousands of tax free dollars in "compensation" out of web site owners who can't afford to fight back or don't even realize they can.
The province of British Columbia had to pass a special law to stop Richard Warman from suing libraries because they carried books he didn't approve of.
Richard Warman also wants to ban international websites he doesn't like from being seen by Canadians.
The folks named in his new law suit are the very bloggers who have been most outspoken in their criticism of Warman's methods.
Whether you agree with them or not, they should be able to speak their minds. Suppressing someone's speech is a tacit recognition that your point of view can't stand up to debate.
Traffic lights are being timed to have shorter yellow lights to increase tickets. [Link]
Just last month there was the latest in a rather long line of reports noting that red light cameras tend to increase the number of accidents because people slam on their brakes to stop in time, leading to rear-ending accidents. Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there's a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there's a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite! Jeff Nolan points out that six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and increasing revenue. This is especially disgusting. These cities are actively putting more people in danger of serious injury or death solely for the sake of raising revenue -- while claiming all along that it's for safety purposes.
Russian space shuttle Buran is transported across the river Rhine on a barge at Wesel, Germany, 07 April 2008. After being shipped from Australia via Bahrain to Rotterdam it now had to cross the River Rhine in order to reach its final destination, the Museum of Technology in Speyer.
For Corsair. [Link]
