Last fall, the race to stop terrorists from acquiring a nuclear bomb passed through Tashkent, Uzbekistan. There, on the morning of September 19, a Russian Antonov 12 cargo plane touched down carrying two nearly indestructible steel canisters. Under the watch of elite security forces armed with machine guns, Uzbek officials unloaded the canisters and drove them to a remote, wooded area about 20 miles from the Central Asian capital. Waiting there at the Institute of Nuclear Physics, which houses a small nuclear reactor used for scientific research, was a team of Americans, Russians and officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency. With extreme care, they filled the canisters with 24 pounds of reactor fuel containing highly enriched uranium, the ideal ingredient for a terrorist nuke. Area roads were closed off as an armed convoy rushed the cargo back to the airport. The canisters were loaded back onto the Antonov 12 and flown to Russia, where their contents were sent to a secure facility and blended with less-potent materials to create a mixture that is of little use to aspiring terrorists. Continue reading »
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Earlier this evening (Australian time) several blasts rocked the London underground and at least one double decker bus. The blasts coincide with not only London winning its Olympic bid, but also the G8 meeting. Who is going to lose from all of this? London? US? What about Africa. As the Live8Live and One campaign has been drumming into us, someone dies there every three seconds from poverty. One person every 3 seconds… ~2 terrorism deaths in a hundred years in the UK? It’s crucial the world leaders don’t lose sight of the big issues.
2 loses in a bombing is a tragedy, Millions from poverty is a statistic. Poverty and famine are some of the problems of which terrorism stem.
On the same topic, more then this number die of bombing in Baghdad every day, yet they now fail to even reach the news. Human life really is no longer equal.
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A high school student in the US was asked, as an assignment, to translate an entire rap song from Ebonics to proper English.
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Ebonics,
n.
A non-standard form of American English originating from black people in the United States. Derived from a combination of the words ‘ebony’ and ‘phonetics’. Made popular through its wide use in rap and hip-hop music.
Eg.
ENGLISH: “My, you’re a lovely young lady.”
EBONICS: “DAMN bitch! Youz a fine muther fucker!”
EBONICS: “Yo G, you frontin me?”
ENGLISH: “Excuse me, my peer, are you attempting to influence me to engage in a violent action with you?”
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The song chosen was “One More Chance (remix)� by Notorious B.I.G. Here’s a sample:
Lyrics:
First things first, I poppa, freaks all the honeys
Dummies - playboy bunnies, those wantin’ money
Those the ones I like ‘cause they don’t get nathan’
But penetration, unless it smells like sanitation
Garbage, I turn like doorknobs
Heart throb, never, black and ugly as ever
However, I stay coochied down to the socks
Rings and watch filled with rocks
TRANSLATION:
As a general rule, I perform deviant sexual acts with women of all kinds, including but not limited to those with limited intellect, nude magazine models, and prostitutes. I particularly enjoy sexual encounters with the latter group as they are generally disappointed in the fact that they only receive penile intercourse and nothing more, unless of course, they douche on a consistent basis. Although I am extremely unattractive, I am able to engage in these types of sexual acts with some regularity. Perhaps my sexuality is somehow related to my fancy and expensive jewelry.
It’s done extremely well, and I realise now why rap stars continue to proliferate this bastardisation of the English language: because it sounds stupid otherwise. Hilarious read.
Complete translation here.
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Have we caught our first glimpse of the upcoming Motorolla/Apple iPod Phone merge?
From purportedly leaked internal documents, here’s a first look at the Motorola iTunes phone. The most striking feature is clearly the scroll wheel, which could come into play for even non-music things like moving through stored phone numbers. There also appear to be dedicated buttons on the side—that’s not quite as ‘iPoddy’ as one would hope.
Specifically, it appears that iTunes 4.9 is happy to recognize certain flash-memory enabled Motorola phones as an ‘iPod phone.” When one AppleInsider tipster connected his Motorola cellphone to his PowerBook he was taken back as iTunes 4.9 automatically launched and prompted him to provide a name for the phone.
After a name was provided, the phone registered itself in the main iTunes window below the iTunes Music Store icon, the tipster said. He was then able to transfer a number of music tracks to the phone and access the iTunes “iPod Phone” preference dialog (shown below).
Based on the preference dialog, it appears that users of an iTunes compatible phone will be able to view album art on the phone. They’ll also be able to choose how much flash-memory space should be reserved for music tracks verses data.
More info:
Appleinsider | MacObserver
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In what must be the biggest act of hyperbolic writing ever perpetrated by a British man, Mike from T3 writes “Talking TP has to be ultimate toilet humour gadget.� No, Mike, I’m sorry. I’m sure in old Blighty you don’t have too much fun in the loo as you drop your bonnets and produce potential petrol, but the ultimate toilet humor gadget is a plunger to the face. Gets ‘em every time.
If you want to try the second-best toilet humor gadget, consider the Talking TP. This thing allows you to record your own clever message that plays when someone pulls the toilet paper. My message would be “You can help stop world hunger.� It wouldn’t be humorous, but it would bring a tear to the eye of the dumper and maybe make them stop and think.
[Link] [Via]
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Anheuser-Busch is launching its caffeinated beer in the UK. BE (Beer With Extra) contains 5% alcohol, 60.4mg of caffeine, guarana, and ginseng. In the US, BE is sold as B-to-the-E (BE).
Victoria Manning, research psychologist for Action on Addiction, added: “(The introduction of BE) concerns us because the combination of caffeine and beer will enable people to drink more because the caffeine will keep them awake longer.”
[Link]
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Back in autumn 1986, while he was an optics-obsessed grad student, Mr. Travis had an idea that he called time multiplexing. Suppose you were to pass an image through a lens and open a shutter when it emerged to guide the image out at a precise angle. And suppose you could do that for 30 images a second through each of 10 angles. Like fanning out a deck of cards, you’d beam out 10 angles of your image so quickly that, no matter where the viewer was in relation to the screen, each of his eyes would see its own angle of live video. Voilà : natural 3-D.
Coming to a TV near you… 3d without and glasses!
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This is just fucking cool. It looks like water. It pours, flows and sloshes like water. But it doesn’t get things wet. Its name is 3M Novec 1230 Fire Protection Fluid, and its chemical formula looks like alphabet soup. (It’s technically a fluorinated ketone, whatever that means.) But you can dunk a laptop computer in it, and it’ll come out bone dry and working fine. That makes this wonder fluid perfect for putting out fires in offices, computer rooms and museums. Just don’t try drinking it.
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The sites just had its biggest overhaul since it was launched. We’ve moved off the tolerable blogger system and onto WordPress. To put it simply… it rawx. On the downside, the port across caused us to lose all of the comments. The old pages still exist however, and the comments intact on them.
You can now register and you can submit articles. If we like what we see they’ll be on the site in a matter of hours. This is just one of the many many new changes. So go check it out. Register an Account now!
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Science mag in the US has released for its 125th anniversary an article on the most pressing questions facing today’s scientists. They’ve got a great little write-up on each of them. Some of the interesting ones include:
> What Is the Universe Made Of?
> What is the Biological Basis of Consciousness?
> Why Do Humans Have So Few Genes?
> To What Extent Are Genetic Variation and Personal Health Linked?
> Can the Laws of Physics Be Unified?
> How Much Can Human Life Span Be Extended?
> What Controls Organ Regeneration?
> How Can a Skin Cell Become a Nerve Cell?
> How Does a Single Somatic Cell Become a Whole Plant?
> How Does Earth’s Interior Work?
> Are We Alone in the Universe?
> How and Where Did Life on Earth Arise?
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