These birthdays are coming fast and furious but there are some that I just can't let slip by. Today marks the birthday of another master, Smokey Robinson.
There's no space in space or under the oceans either, apparently.
This is just what I need when I can't find a plug nor have my adapter. I hope Blackberry gets on the solar bandwagon soon.Samsung has finally delivered on this promise with their brand new Blue Earth phone. Blue Earth is a gorgeous green touch phone that has a full solar panel on its back which can generate enough power to charge the phone.
Samsung is going above and beyond to achieve what they hope is the greenest phone on the market. The body of the phone is made out of recycled water bottles and has no brominated flame retardants, beryllium and phthalates - all incredibly toxic substances. That goes for the charger as well, which also meets the newer standby mode energy efficiency ratings. Granted, it is solar powered, so really, a charger?
It also includes a pedometer, and CO2 emissions calculator, and Samsung is aiming for minimal packaging made entirely from recycled paper.
Since I just mentioned odd things in Japan I might as follow-up with one.As part of a government drive to stem the prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a previously rarely mentioned disease that seems to cover everything that can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease or diabetes, waistlines are now being stringently monitored and, for anyone even slightly plump, acted upon.
For men 40 and over, waists must be no more than 33.5 in. Women get a bit more leeway and can swell to 35.4 in. Those exceeding the limits are given dietary guidance if they haven't lost weight within three months. Guidance includes things like agreeing to a weight-loss target and exercise program, e-mails to check on progress, and so forth.
To show they mean business, Japanese bureaucrats will impose financial penalties on companies and local governments that don't hit targets. For large companies with lots of employees the fines are potentially quite large, running to millions of dollars if they miss targets.
If that all sounds a bit Big Brother, it is. For the first time, I had to give a photocopy of my medical results to the company, presumably so the government can assess our collective health. Meanwhile, after the introduction of the rules last year, companies began marketing metabo-busting products, such as government-approved teas that help burn fat.
An estimated 5,000 charmers from all over West Bengal took to the streets of the state capital, denouncing wildlife protection laws that proscribe the commercial use of wild animals, including performances with live snakes.
Since the laws were fully implemented in the late 1990s, the estimated 800,000 snake charmers in India say they have effectively been deprived of their livelihood while an estimated 20,000 are serving jail terms for defying the ban.
"It's our birth right to charm snakes. No can deprive us of that," said Langra Bede, 35, who has suffered two cobra bites in his charming career.
"Our forefathers charmed snakes. We grew up with this. It's basically all we know," he said.
Raktim Das, general secretary of the charmers federation, told reporters on the sidelines of the protest in Calcutta that the government should make the traditional performances legal again.
Anyone who followed the elections closely or read my incessant election related posts this past fall is familiar with Fivethirtyeight.com and Nate Silver, the stats guy who single-handedly nailed the election results.Formally speaking, this required the use of statistical software and a process called logistic regression. Informally, it involved building a huge database of the past 30 years of Oscar history. Categories included genre, MPAA classification, the release date, opening-weekend box office, and whether the film won any other awards.
We also looked at whether being nominated in one category predicts success in another. For example, is someone more likely to win Best Actress if her film has also been nominated for Best Picture? (Yes!) But the greatest predictor (80 percent of what you need to know) is other awards earned that year, particularly from peers (the Directors Guild Awards, for instance, reliably foretells Best Picture).
Best Picture
Slumdog Millionaire..............99.0%
Milk...........................................1.0%
Frost/Nixon..............................0.0%
Benjamin Button......................0.0%
The Reader...............................0.0%
If you think we've got real estate problems in the US, Dubai the land of the opulent and ostentatious is on a completely different level with their property headaches."The construction and real estate industry has been hit following the global slowdown and the direct fallout is that professionals working in the realty industry are rapidly losing their jobs" said a senior media professional.
As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison.
This is an interesting concept, a bit Orwellian, yet one that if implemented properly could work.
A tentative plan to overhaul Massachusetts' transportation system by using GPS chips to charge motorists a quarter-cent for every mile behind the wheel has angered some drivers.
"It's outrageous, it's kind of Orwellian, Big Brotherish," said Sen. Scott Brown, R-Wrentham.
The idea behind the program is simple: As cars become more fuel efficient or powered by electricity, gas tax revenues decline. Yet the cost of building and maintaining roads and bridges is increasing. A state could cover that gap by charging drivers precisely for the mileage their vehicles put on public roads.
A "Vehicle Miles Traveled" program like the one the governor may unveil this week has been tested with positive results in Oregon.
In Oregon, the state paid volunteers who let the transportation department install GPS receivers in 300 vehicles. The device did not transmit a signal _ which would allow real-time tracking of a driver's movements _ but instead passively received satellite pings telling the receiver where it was in terms of latitude and longitude coordinates.
The state used those coordinates to determine when the vehicle was driving both within Oregon and outside the state. And it measured the respective distances through a connection with the vehicle's odometer.
When a driver pulled into a predetermined service station, the pump linked electronically with the receiver, downloaded the number of miles driven in Oregon and then charged the driver a fee based on the distance. The gas tax they would have paid was reduced by the amount of the user fee. Drivers continued to be charged gas tax for miles driven outside Oregon.
"Space, the final frontier...", you know the rest."Hubble's Next Discovery -- You Decide" is part of the International Year of Astronomy , the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's observations. People around the world can vote to select the next object the Hubble Space Telescope will view. Choose from a list of objects Hubble has never observed before.
Now that Valentine's Day is safely behind us I'll rain on the parade with a bittersweet dose of reality about chocolate.
Alhough we recently started something we call "meatless Mondays" we're not remotely close to being vegetarian. Nonetheless, I think it's good to know the consequences of our actions and to the extent possible factor those consequences into our decisions, such as eating meat.Most of us are aware that our cars, our coal-generated electric power and even our cement factories adversely affect the environment. Until recently, however, the foods we eat had gotten a pass in the discussion. Yet according to a 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, our diets and, specifically, the meat in them cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and the like to spew into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry.
- Pound for pound, beef production generates greenhouse gases that contribute more than 13 times as much to global warming as do the gases emitted from producing chicken. For potatoes, the multiplier is 57.
- Beef consumption is rising rapidly, both as population increases and as people eat more meat.
- Producing the annual beef diet of the average American emits as much greenhouse gas as a car driven more than 1,800 miles.
Turritopsis nutricula may be the world’s only “immortal” creature.
Jellyfish usually die after propagating but Turritopsis reverts to an immature stage after reaching adulthood and is capable of rejuvenating itself.
The 4-5mm diameter creature, technically known as a hydrozoan, is the only known animal that is capable of reverting to its juvenile polyp state. Theoretically, this cycle can repeat indefinitely, rendering it potentially immortal.
Marine biologists say the jellyfish numbers are rocketing because they need not die.
Dr Maria Miglietta of the Smithsonian Tropical Marine Institute said: "We are looking at a worldwide silent invasion." The jellyfish are originally from the Caribbean but have spread all over the world.
During these dreary economic times, one market is doing quite well...condoms.While car purchases plummeted and designer clothes mostly stayed on the racks, sales of condoms in the U.S. rose 5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, and 6% in January vs. the same time periods the previous year.
Theory 1: It's cheaper to stay home than to go out.
The sales bump squares solidly with one of the nation's most common trends during any recession: nesting. ... "If people don't have the money to go out to a fancy dinner or are looking to cut back, Trojan gives them some real affordable ways to stay in and make some great memories together," says Jim Daniels, vice president of marketing for Trojan, the nation's No. 1 condom maker.
Theory 2: Controlling the family payroll.
"Condoms make for a relatively inexpensive form of birth control at a time many cash-strapped families are hesitant to grow," Jones observes. "Contraception may also be more popular during a time when families are stretching dollars and want to avoid having more mouths to feed."
No matter how many articles or studies I read about this, it still boggles my mind especially since I don't see a conflict between religion and evolution.Recent public opinion polls indicate that challenges to Darwinian evolution have substantial support among the American people.
According to an August 2006 survey 63 percent of Americans believe that humans and other animals have either always existed in their present form or have evolved over time under the guidance of a supreme being. Only 26 percent say that life evolved solely through processes such as natural selection. A similar Pew Research Center poll, released in August 2005, found that 64 percent of Americans support teaching creationism alongside evolution in the classroom.
So if evolution is as established as the theory of gravity, why are people still arguing about it a century and a half after it was first proposed? The answer lies, in part, in the possible theological implications of evolutionary thinking. For many, the Darwinian view of life -- a panorama of brutal struggle and constant change - goes beyond contradicting the biblical creation story and conflicts with the Judeo-Christian concept of an active and loving God who cares for his creation.
Somehow I missed this when it first came out last summer.
