Green Tea

Green tea gets chocked. mmmm kit kat

[ Cool Hunting ]

Whale Sick Used in Perfume

A family on South Australia's west coast has discovered a rare specimen of whale vomit on the beach that is tipped to be worth over $1 million.

The specimen, known scientifically as ambergris, is sought after by perfume companies and worth about $US20 per gram.

The sample found on a beach near Streaky Bay weighs 14.75 kilograms.

[ $20/gram seems like a bit much ]

Maybe drug dealers need to enter this market and make some real money.

People's Daily Online -- China to build world's first "artificial sun" experimental device

China to begin experimenting with :artificial sun: on earth. I recomend the board to rent out a copy of Spiderman 2...

A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China's Anhui Province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", experts here said.

The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world

People's Daily Online -- China to build world's first "artificial sun" experimental device

Sony NW-A1000

Sony to release VERY limited edition Franz Ferdinand MP3 Player. Only 100 available.

[ Sony NW-A1000 Franz Ferdinand Limited Edition ]

Pool staff bashed as youths riot

Middle eastern looking youths attack more riot against life guards. This time in Melbourne.

[ NEWS.com.au ]

[decentcontent]

Tan interviews the late Richard Pryor

[ wordmeup ]

The Dumb Blonde Behind the Best Blonde Joke Ever

[ Who's Behind This?

Metrosexual teens gone wrong

[ Wrong ]

And if you cant be fucked looking through the now massive thread, here is all the original pics

This is so fucking hilarious. You literaly will roll on the floor in laughter because of this

My Cat Is Watching HDTV!

he other night, I was thinking of watching a movie on HBO, but my female housemate wouldn't let me. She was absorbed in a PBS documentary about birds, which was broadcast in High-Definition TV.

My female housemate is named Snoopy. She's a five-year-old black domestic cat.

Yes, my cat watches High-Definition TV.

In fact, she will watch for 20 minutes at a time, particularly if the show features birds, fish or animals. If she sees a bird flying on a high-def channel, she will crouch down in the attacker stance as if the winged creature was right in front of her.

The high-def picture is so clear and life-like that Snoopy apparently thinks it's real.

[ HDTV so awesome cats think its real ]

Man builds island out of bottles

We couldn't make this stuff up: this man, Reishee Sowa of Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, apparently grew tired of trying to live self-sufficiently on dry land, and did what any of us would have done. He built his own island out of used pop bottles. 250,000 of them, plus some construction leftovers and bags of leaves, make up "his island," though he's quick to point out that it's technically not an island by traditional standards. "You see not even the president is allowed his own island in Mexico," he says, "but technically I don’t have an island, I have an eco space-creating ship."

[ href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/11/tired_of_living.php">oh and a lamp made by stacking empty glass jars around a light bulb... ]

Aussie coppers crushed to discover Segways are illegal

Police in Victoria looked to prop their squadrons up on the Segway scooters. The over-hyped device has become a favorite mode of transport for coppers here in the US, as it opens up a whole new realm of excuses for "the one who biked, skateboarded or jogged away." The Aussie police officers apparently wanted the same excuse luxury but were denied.

[ The Shitway ]

hahah only 100 of these things have been sold here...

Breaking News

The back seat of a taxi is one of the worst places to be for exposure to ultrafine particulate pollution, a new study has revealed.

People on buses and those riding bikes are also exposed to a lot of the pollutant, while pedestrians and, ironically, those in private cars, are exposed to the least.

Researchers from Imperial College London, UK, tracked exposure to fine particulate pollution second by second as volunteers travelled around a test area along a stretch of Marylebone Road, a busy street in the city.

The researchers were interested in exposure to particles under 100 nanometres in diameter. Some studies suggest that ultrafine particles might pose an especially serious health hazard, and that brief exposures to high levels of particles might be more important than lower exposure over a longer period.

[ The Results ]

France is awesome

It would also make a distinction between people illegally downloading for profit and the estimated eight million individuals in France who occasionally add to their music and movie collections via internet peer-to-peer sites.

Under the proposed new bill, a consumer who broke such protection to put, say, a movie from a disk onto a pocket video player such as Sony's PlayStation Portable or Apple's latest iPod would not be prosecuted. And someone who copies a friend's disk would face only a $240 fine.

However, those trying to make money off such activities or publish hacker how-tos to get around the blocks would face a year in prison and fines of up to $160,920.

[ They actually thought through what is reasonable ]

Solar rebates to be abolished

THE Federal Government has slashed solar electricity rebates to community organisations and schools and will phase out financial incentives for residential and commercial solar power installations by the middle of next year.

The Australia Greenhouse Office, which offers cash refunds to home owners, community groups and developers installing photo-voltaic (PV) panels to generate electricity, quietly halved the maximum rebate to community organisations on January 1, from $8000 to $4000. Rebates available to private home owners will be gradually reduced until the program is closed in 2007.

[ Buy solar stuff now ]

Other wise you will have to buy coal. Coal is bad because its heavy.

Sad Toast

[ Here comes another fad ]

Doomsday vault

WITHIN a large concrete room, hewn out of a mountain on a freezing-cold island just 1000 kilometres from the North Pole, could lie the future of humanity.

The room is a "doomsday vault" designed to hold around 2 million seeds, representing all known varieties of the world's crops. It is being built to safeguard the world's food supply against nuclear war, climate change, terrorism, rising sea levels, earthquakes and the ensuing collapse of electricity supplies. "If the worst came to the worst, this would allow the world to reconstruct agriculture on this planet," says Cary Fowler, director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an independent international organisation promoting the project.

[ What kinda seeds were they smoking... ] Imagine nuclear tomatos, Fuck yes. Can you imagine, something meaty yet juciy like a tomato. Best of a fruit and a meat. Plus it would be red meat, so you get the iron you need.

Bulk Up: Drink Booze

NICKY Taylor, 39, is stumbling around a nightclub dance floor in the early hours of the morning, clutching a bottle of Smirnoff Ice.

In five hours, she has drunk equal to four bottles of wine in a potentially fatal mix of cocktails, spirits and beers.

She is drunk. She has vomited once, but Nicky carries on, determined to keep up with her female companions.

This ugly scene is not a typical night for Nicky. In an experiment for a British TV documentary, the single mother spent a month matching the bingers drink-for-drink to see what it did to her body and mind.
Iran / AP
Post-bender: Nicky's experiment has taken its toll.

Over 30 days, going out five nights a week, Nicky consumed a staggering 516 units of alcohol -- 17.2 units a day. Guidelines say women should drink no more than two or three units a day, and a maximum of 14 a week.

[ Milfing - Memmoirs of a Drunk ]

Let Go to Grow

The commodosisation of stuff... and why its bad for companies like IBM that cant compete with the high volume, low price... but thats ok becuase other companies are actually good at this (lenovo...).

"My colleague Linda Sanford has just published a book, Let Go to Grow: Escaping the Commodity Trap, co-written with Dave Taylor. The book's basic premise is that the Internet, globalization, and deregulation have given rise to an ultra-competitive marketplace in which many products and services have become commodities. It then presents a sequence of management principles not just to help a company survive the commodity threat, but actually turn it into a growth opportunity by letting go of outdated business models and management systems and bringing innovation into all aspect of the business.

I have worked closely with Linda for many years now and can attest without hesitation that when it comes to business transformation, she knows what she is talking about from firsthand experience. Linda led the successful transformation of IBM's mainframe business in the 1990s, when that business was essentially in free-fall because the industry was undergoing a major technology and architectural transition. Several years later, she similarly led the revitalization of IBM's storage systems. In between, she restructured IBM's industry and application solutions business."

[ :: AO ]

Managing Innovation

"The myth that higher R&D spend translates into competitive advantage has been around for decades, but it appears to be particularly strong now. [...] Perhaps this belief is a holdover from the past. When products were simpler, industrial processes less mature, and competition less fierce, companies could make new products and be reasonably certain that their customers would buy them. The R&D, manufacturing, marketing, and sales silos could do their jobs independently with little imperative to manage across departmental boundaries."

[ :: AO ]

No more Film Cameras

Following the success of our digital line-up over the last seven years, which has resulted in more than 95% of Nikon’s UK business being within the digital area, Nikon Corporation has made the decision to focus management resources on digital cameras in place of film cameras. This decision will allow Nikon to continue to develop products that match the demands of an increasingly competitive market place.

[ Nikon
]

Dutch troops in Pakistan say mocked by drunk Brits

"We were told before we arrived that alcohol was banned in this country or else very difficult to get hold of and we accepted this," one soldier told the Dutch daily De Telegraaf.

"The Spanish drive around with cars full of Heineken ... and the English laugh at us when they show up at our campfire drunk," another Dutch soldier said.

Let the Mocking Begin

Someone attacks $3.6m urinal

Duchamp’s 1917 piece — an ordinary white, porcelain urinal that’s been called one of the most influential works of modern art — was slightly chipped in the attack at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the museum said Thursday. It was removed from the exhibit for repair.The suspect, a Provence resident whose identity was not released, already vandalized the work in 1993 — urinating into the piece when it was on display in Nimes

‘Artist’ attacks Duchamp's urinal

Commodore Returns

The device is being offered with five 8-bit games included, and another 90 or so available for online downloadable purchase. It comes with a 20GB hard drive running Windows CE, and offers GPS functionality.

8 bit handheld


I know the commodore was cool in its time, but wouldnt mobile phone games be more advanced then this 8 bit shite...

No Sale: Catholic Condoms

A ROCKHAMPTON woman is still in shock after a teenage Catholic checkout operator refused to sell her condoms.

The woman, 19, who asked not to be named, said she was "thrown back’’ when the Woolworths Allenstown worker refused to serve her in the express lane on Wednesday night.

"She just said to me that she was sorry, she couldn’t sell them (the condoms) to me because she was Catholic.

"I couldn’t even say beg your pardon. I was so shocked. I just stepped back in line, mortified.’’

[if you read the entire article is says "drilling into her" HAHAHA]

Catholic Observer

You have been warned

The future of internet law:

1. Going Global, Going Local
The Internet is experiencing its fastest growth in the developing world, where millions are connecting for the first time. For e-commerce businesses seeking to sustain significant growth, those foreign markets will become an increasingly important part of their business strategy. Tapping into foreign Internet markets presents some new challenges, however, including different languages, cultures, domain names, currencies, and legal rules. As e-commerce companies go global, they will simultaneously seek to localize their presence by customizing terms and conditions to suit national markets.

2. Developing World Demands a Say
Alongside increasing e-commerce opportunities, the developing world's embrace of the Internet will also have consequences for international technology policy. The developing world's desire to influence the Internet reached its peak in 2005 at the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis, where developing countries, backed by the European Union, sought to internationalize management of the global domain name system. While a compromise was ultimately reached, look for similar tensions to arise in 2006. The most likely candidates for a developed vs. developing world showdown include negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization over a new development agenda and at the new Internet Governance Forum, the body created at the WSIS event that will meet for the first time in Athens, Greece, in the spring.

3. The Changing Network
The emergence of a two-tier Internet was one of the top stories in 2005, as major telecommunications companies did away with the network neutrality principle and began to prioritize certain content and applications on their networks. The battle over the two-tier Internet will escalate in 2006, as consumer advocates look to the FTC and FCC for regulatory protection, while the telecommunications providers lobby Congress for legislative approval of new-look Internet connectivity.

4. Desperately Seeking Consumer Protection
The potential harms arising from the Internet and new technologies began to resonate with consumers in 2005, as more than 50 million people received notices that their personal information was subject to a security breach and millions more learned that their computers were vulnerable to hacker attack due to the installation of dozens of Sony CD titles containing faulty copy-protection. Look for consumers to argue for new statutory protections against these dangers in 2006, with Congress to consider national rules mandating disclosures of security breaches alongside emerging calls for regulations guarding against digital rights management misuse.

5. Borders and Barriers
While legislators and policy makers have been prone to view the "borderless Internet" as an insurmountable barrier to effective regulation, the combination of geolocation technologies and growing determination to address tough issues such as spam and spyware will lead to a greater willingness to venture into online regulation. The new Alaska spyware statute, which relies on geolocation technologies, may provide a model for other jurisdictions looking to address online issues but wary of overextending their regulatory reach.

6. The Internet Jurisdiction Struggle
This past year featured a series of noteworthy Internet jurisdiction decisions, including a pair from Canada involving the Washington Post and New York Post. Look for more of the same in 2006, as the jurisdictional limits of intellectual property law moves to the fore. First up will be the Kazaa case from Australia, where owner Sharman Networks is seeking to comply with a court order by limiting access to its software within Australia, but leaving the rest of the world untouched. An Australian court is expected to rule on the viability of the approach early this year.


:: AO

New Lego MindStorms

LEGO Mindstorms NXT will arrive in stores in Aug. of 2006. If you're looking for a preview, you can check out the Robotics TechZone Thursday, January 5 through Sunday, January 8 during the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show.


Some of the exciting new features of NXT is the ability to download programs via Bluetooth - No more constantly repositioning the IR tower to get a good signal. The processor has been upgraded to 32 bits and amazingly enough, the NXT will now be programming using LabVIEW

GoRobotics.net

Economics x 50

Arnold Kling has done a set of note pages for economics. Those 50 pages provide an overview on the best economics that you should learn about. If you don’t have time to read all of them right now, I recommend to select some sections from microeconomics and learn about it:

Growth Theory

• Growth Across Time
• Growth in Different Countries
• An Economic Calculation: Should You Buy a Vacation Timeshare?
• Capital and Rental Cost
• Opportunity Cost, Profit, and Comparative Advantage
• Scale and Substitution
• The Production Function and Aggregation
• Accounting for Growth
• Success and Failure of Social Systems
• Mathematical Growth Models
• The Rich and the Poor
• Practice Questions on Capital, Comparative Advantage, Scale, and Substitution
• Practice Questions on the Production Function, Growth Facts, and Growth Accounting
• Practice Questions on Growth and Social Systems, Mathematical Growth Models, and Wealth and Poverty

Saving, Finance, and Social Security

• The Real Interest Rate and Annuities
• Pensions and Social Security
• The Economics of Social Security
• Basic Financial Calculations
• Efficient Markets and the Portfolio Theorem
• Futures and Options
• Personal Finance
• Corporate Finance

Markets (Microeconomics)

• Introduction to Markets
• Consumers and Utility
• Relative Prices, Demand Elasticity, and Leisure
• Borrowing, Lending, and Human Capital
• Producers and Profit Maximization
• Efficiency, Supply and Demand, and Market Clearing
• The Gains from Trade
• Tariffs and Quotas
• The Problem of Monopoly
• Public Goods
• Some Classic Policy Issues
• Money Vs. Barter

Macroeconomics

• Introduction to Macroeconomics
• A Basic Macroeconomic Equation System
• Fiscal Policy
• Investment as an Endogenous Variable
• The Trade Balance as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Exchange Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• The Real Interest Rate as an Endogenous Variable
• Inflation as an Endogenous Variable
• Employment and Unemployment
• Macroeconomic Policy Challenges
• Theoretical Controversies

Information Economics

• Moore’s Law
• Moore’s Law and Economic Growth
• Asymptotically Free Goods
• Network Effects
• Asymmetric Information

Fifty Essential Topics on Economics

Impulsive-Compulsive-Repulsive

If Martin Scorsese was invited to create a nude love scene between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to plop down in the middle of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane in order to bring in younger audiences, would that be valid?

Impulsive-Compulsive-Repulsive - Why Verve/Impulse is wrong

Intel changes logo

Intel Changes logo. Drops the "intel inside" to be just intel in a circle. Also for some reason the blue colour looks like it was sitting in a video store for the past 15 years.

Leap Forward - is this supposed to be a weird "impossible is nothing/just do it" type slogan. The person that came up with this must die.