See? Not all Republicans are evil or stupid. There may be hope yet.

8:28:21 PM     leave/read comments []

Biggest solar flare goes off. After 10 days of dramatic activity, the most powerful solar flare ever seen explodes on the Sun's surface. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Worst. Flare. Ever.

Powerful solar flares are given an "X" designation. There was an X8 and an X3 event on Sunday.

On Monday, there was an X3 flare followed by smaller ones.

Last week there were X7 and X10 events that took place back-to-back.

Tuesday's flare went off the scale, researchers say it was "well above X20".

This would make it the most powerful ever recorded, surpassing the X20 flares of 2 April 2001 and 16 August 1989.

8:07:28 PM    

Corporate welfare alert!

FCC screws America, adopts Broadcast Flag, doom, gloom, armageddon. We've lost a round in the Broadcast Flag fight. The FCC today decided that it didn't need to listen to the tens of thousands of Americans that wrote to it, asking to have this terrible proposal set aside, and instead adopted a rule proposed by billionaire movie studios whose biggest problem is figuring out how to spend the riches they made off the VCR after we saved their asses by telling them to get bent when they tried to get the Betamax banned the last time around.

"The FCC today has taken a step that will shape the future of television," said EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Sadly, this represents a step in the wrong direction, a step that will undermine innovation, fair use, and competition."

"The broadcast flag rule forces manufacturers to remove useful recording features from television products you can buy today," said EFF Staff Technologist Seth Schoen. "The FCC has decided that the way to get Americans to adopt digital DTV is to make it cost more and do less."

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

6:00:05 PM     leave/read comments []

Study Finds New Drug Acts Quickly on Clogged Arteries. A small study of heart disease patients has found that an experimental drug reversed what may be the equivalent of years' worth of plaque in coronary arteries. By Gina Kolata. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

And while you're at it, gimme the pomme frittes wih the garlic butter drizzle.

After five weekly infusions, those who got the experimental drug had a 4.2 percent decrease in the volume of plaque in their coronary arteries, while those who had saline infusions had, if anything, a slight increase in their plaque. By contrast, according to Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic cardiologist who directed the study, the most powerful statins, which lower levels of low-density lipoproteins, or L.D.L., which deliver cholesterol to coronary arteries, take years to show more modest effects.

``It is astonishing, you have to admit that,'' said Dr. Scott Grundy, a cholesterol expert, who is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern School of Medicine in Dallas. ``A 4 percent reduction in the size of the lesions is remarkable.''

5:52:31 PM    

Oiling up the draft machine?. The Pentagon is quietly moving to fill draft board vacancies nationwide. While officials say there's no cause to worry, some experts aren't so sure. [Salon.com]

It should be noted that the Bushes have girls.

Even among those who think the public might support a draft, like Bandow at the Cato Institute, few believe Bush would dare to propose it before the November 2004 election. "No one would want that fight," he explains. "It would highlight the cost of an imperial foreign policy, add an incendiary issue to the already emotional protests, and further split the limited-government conservatives." But despite the Pentagon's denials, planners there are almost certainly weighing the numbers just as independent military experts are. And that could explain the willingness to tune up the draft machinery.

5:37:30 PM    

Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

From 8-track Heaven:

Arguably the most avant garde of Lou Reed's works, Metal Machine Music is a double album of mechanical screeches and drones. On the LP version, the B side of the second record ends in a locked groove which continues to play until the needle is physically lifted from the turntable. Since the LP consists of four evenly-timed sides, and since an 8-track produces continuous sound without the contrivance of a locked groove, in some ways this recording is a natural for the 8-track format. In other ways, of course, it's perfectly ludicrous. It is remarkable enough that RCA considered this to be commercially viable enough to be released at all, never mind in multiple formats. Metal Machine Music even came out in quad LP and 8-track! The legendary rock-n-roll journalist Lester Bangs immortalized this 8-track in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. Few 8-tracks have provoked livelier discussion in the pages of 8-Track Mind, and almost none are as sought after by 8-track's true believers. For these reasons and many more, Metal Machine Music has officially entered The 8-Track Hall of Fame on this 10th of October, 1995.

5:31:55 PM    

Goodwill is fragile in new Iraq. How good US relations unraveled in a Baghdad suburb. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

This piece just breaks my heart- American troops are in an untenable situation, trying to defend themselves, while trying to win "hearts and minds." But, when things go wrong, can you really blame the Iraqis for blaming U.S. troops? After all, it's their tanks and grenades that are killing neighbors and destroying livelihoods.

ABU GHRAIB, IRAQ- As the cinderblock rubble of what was to be Abu Ghraib's new marketplace is carted off by scavengers, a piece of the goodwill that had slowly been built between Iraqis and Americans stationed here is also disappearing.

Just this month the new market had opened, a symbol of reconstruction progress in this poor agricultural town just west of Baghdad - and on the fringes of the violent Sunni Triangle. But by Sunday, what was intended as a community-improvement project, planned and executed by the US military in cooperation with the local town council, lay in ruins. It was crushed by American tanks and a combination of fear, misunderstandings, and outside insurgent interference.

5:15:26 PM    

More Mad Cow (Kyodo). Japan is going to have to face up to the facts that it has a big BSE problem. At first it tried to blame the problem on old cows imported from Britain in the 1980s -- then it was due to crushed bone meal feed from Italy brought into Japan in the 1990s. Well, fresh cases #8 and #9 are cows under two years old. [Nippon Goro Goro]

4:31:37 PM     leave/read comments []

Morons in the News: Radio Frequency Identification Used to Track Children in Buffalo School. A charter school in Buffalo, New York uses Radio Frequency ID chips to track children, causing some concerns about privacy. [Morons Dot Org]

Yes, one more step towards making our schools more like prisons and our children more like prisoners.....or maybe more like that moose that Jim Fowler wrestled to put a radio tracking tag on.

BEEP.....BEEP.....BEEP......

"Mr.Ashcroft would like to see you, Jimmy."

4:23:31 PM     leave/read comments []

OK, I'm a total girlie tool. I want.

Cool laptop bags for chicks.

The "Slim," a new bag/sleeve hybrid designed specifically for G4 Apple PowerBooks and other laptops. Bag can be inserted into another bag or carried with or without the removable shoulder strap. Lots of textiles to choose from. Starts around $79. Swankolicious. Link (thanks, Clayton)
[Boing Boing Blog]

4:03:39 PM     leave/read comments []

Photographic place map.

Following on the heels of this site blogged last week, another online collection of images organized by points on a map. I love how the photographer/webmaster says, "Please make the room dark and look [at] the photographs." I can't recall ever having read those instructions on a photoblog before. Link (via Cup of Chica)
[Boing Boing Blog]

4:00:51 PM     leave/read comments []

Peter Murphy, a Sydney QTVR photographer, has some really cool stuff up on his blog. Check it out!

Source: Peter Murphy's Panoramic VR Weblog; 11/4/03; 1:31:14 PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Art House Hotel in the old School of Arts Building in downtown Pitt Street has a series of upmarket bars - which are used also for art exhibitions, painting classes etc. Panorama.  The event last night - in the upstairs bar - was the launch of an exhibition of body painting by Emma Hack -- with photographs and some live models.

[Peter Murphy's Panoramic VR Weblog]

3:33:24 PM    

Actually, don't give me a beer- in the two weeks since I quit drinking I've lost 8 pounds, thank yew verra much.

2:09:20 AM     leave/read comments []