Americans May Build Road to South Pole

Monday, February 10th, 2003

Americans May Build Road to South Pole

A century after pioneer explorers with dogs and horse-drawn sleds tried to cross from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole, American engineers may carve a 1,000-mile track so supplies can be driven to the pole.
[...]
“This is not a highway … or a road, more a trail or a route,” Brown told National Radio of the plan, which would cost about $350 million.

I can’t imagine a better use for $350 million.

Brown said the first phase of the project — filling huge crevasses with ice on fields 40 miles south of McMurdo — already is completed.

Filling the giant ice cracks allows tracked vehicles to cross the 3-mile wide area, the first major hurdle on the route to the pole.
[...]
Brown said the route proposal would come under the strict environmental protocols of the Antarctic Treaty, which preserves and protects the pristine environment of the frozen continent.

So filling three-mile-wide crevasses with ice is maintaining the pristine environment of Antarctica?

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Playground Equipment May Pose Cancer Risk

Monday, February 10th, 2003

This sounds practically engineered to panic parents. Playground Equipment May Pose Cancer Risk:

Almost all wood playground equipment now in use has been treated with a pesticide called chromated copper arsenate, said Hal Stratton, chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He said children can get arsenic residue from the treated wood on their hands and then put their hands in their mouths.

Stratton said the agency’s scientists recommend that parents and caregivers thoroughly wash children’s hands with soap and water immediately after youngsters play on playground equipment made of the treated wood. Children also should not eat while on the equipment, he said.

Who, by the way, is the wizard who thought to treat children’s playground equipment with arsenic? Was it cheaper than lead-based paint and mercury?

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Microbiologist Harold Ginsberg Dies

Monday, February 10th, 2003

A pioneer in the study of infectious diseases, microbiologist Harold Ginsberg has died from pneumonia:

Microbiologist Harold Ginsberg, who pioneered the study of viruses and infectious diseases, has died of pneumonia. He was 85.
[...]
In the 1950s, while at Western Reserve University (now Case Western), Ginsberg showed that common childhood infections such as atypical pneumonia and pharyngitis were caused by adenoviruses — a type of virus that can survive long periods outside a host.

My question: Ironic? Or not?

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Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

I didn’t recognize Engelbart by name when my friend, Dan, sent me a link to Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo, but I’d definitely heard about Xerox PARC developing the mouse in the 1960s:

On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface.

The video footage has such a 1960s-future feel to it — and a bit of a 1940s propaganda-film feel too. Oh, and the best part — the computer makes all those great sci-fi computer sounds! Check it out.

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Tokyo Professor Working on Invisibility

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

How’s this for overstatement? According to Tokyo Professor Working on Invisibility, the professor’s working on technology to turn you invisible — to an observer wearing a special optical device and looking through a pinhole:

Engineering Professor Susumu Tachi is in the early stages of technology that he says will eventually enable camouflaged objects to be virtually transparent by wearing an optical device.
[...]
For the best effect — one that keeps the correct depth of focus — the observer needs to look through a pinhole.

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Passenger Allegedly Beats Ferret to Death

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

This disturbs me. Passenger Allegedly Beats Ferret to Death:

An airline passenger who was told he couldn’t take his ferret on an airplane is accused of beating the animal to death in an airport restroom.

Police said the man had the ferret in a cooler on an American Airlines flight from New York.

Flight attendants realized he had the animal and told him he could not take it on his next flight.

He’s accused of trying to flush the ferret down a toilet during a layover in St. Louis, then beating it to death.

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Rolling Stones Give Free Concert — No One Killed

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

I had to chuckle at the dark humor of this news story: Rolling Stones Give Free Concert — No One Killed. If you’re not familiar with Stones history, this should clear things up:

The event at the Staples Center was a considerably more sedate affair than their last free show, at the Altamont Speedway near San Francisco in 1969. Then, security was handled by the local Hells Angels chapter, who clubbed fans with pool cues while the band looked on helplessly. A teenager was stabbed to death as he appeared to point a gun at the stage.

I sounds like an urban legend, doesn’t it? The Hells Angels worked security for the Stones? And killed a guy?

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Dog’s Death Puts Wales On Alert for Big Cats

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

What’s Welsh for chupacabra? Dog’s Death Puts Wales On Alert for Big Cats:

The fear of big cats has lately reached nearly hysterical proportions in Wales — and not just among people who also believe in UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster. Provoked by the killing of a whippet owned by a former dog-show judge, police mounted a round-the-clock stakeout to find the leopard-like cat that, according to a witness, tore the dog apart on a Sunday evening last month.
[...]
The police sent in a van normally used for SWAT raids. “These guns have a two-mile kill range,” says officer Julian Jenkins, displaying two sniper rifles locked in the vehicle. Puma scent was sprinkled in the area to lure the creature back from the adjacent woods. A police helicopter was scrambled after another reported a sighting, but advanced thermal-imaging equipment (“It can spot a rabbit at night from 1,000 feet in the air,” says a police spokesman.) spotted only farm animals.
[...]
Yet despite all the precautions, police say there has never been indisputable photographic evidence that big cats actually exist in these parts. Although there have been some 170 reported sightings in Wales since 1994, the Welsh Assembly’s rural-affairs minister, Michael German, says that “nobody’s found one yet, not even a dead one.”

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Boy tried to poison teacher, Philadelphia police say

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

Here’s one more reason not to put your kids in a Philadelphia school. Boy tried to poison teacher, Philadelphia police say:

A 13-year-old Philadelphia middle school student has been charged with attempted murder after police said he slipped a cleaning fluid into his math teacher’s drink because she had moved his seat for disciplinary reasons.

For the record, I’m against poisoning teachers.

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French Police Seize Mobile Phone Guns

Saturday, February 8th, 2003

French Police Seize Mobile Phone Guns demonstrates how criminals — at least in Europe — have gone 007:

French police said on Friday they had seized two lethal mobile phones capable of shooting four bullets, with the digital touchpads used as triggers.

The black telephones, identical to normal mobile phones on the outside, were discovered in a raid on a suspected gangster’s home on Tuesday in the northern town of Rouen.

The fake phones come apart in the middle to reveal a four-chamber secret compartment for .22 caliber bullets, which can be shot out of a protruding fake aerial.

“These would be lethal at 10 meters,” said Michel Lavaud, head of a local police brigade.

Police seized the telephones along with 1,000 ecstasy pills, heroin, cannabis and about $25,000 at the home of a man suspected of armed robberies and drug trafficking.

Lavaud said police thought the weapons were of a kind believed to be made in eastern Europe and to have appeared in Belgium and the Netherlands in 2001.

I know it’s silly, but I want one. C’mon, it’s a phone that’s a gun. What’s not to like? (And thanks, Dan, for that article.)

Posted in Technology, War | No Comments »

Bronx Zoo Cheetahs Go Wild for Calvin Klein Perfume

Friday, February 7th, 2003

In an effort to keep animals entertained, zookeepers are spraying different scents around their habitats. Bronx Zoo Cheetahs Go Wild for Calvin Klein Perfume explains:

Female cheetahs at the Bronx Zoo in New York just love Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men perfume.

No, they don’t dab their favorite perfume behind their ears, but they do enjoy rubbing up against tree stumps sprayed with the scent.
[...]
The scents provide a way to stimulate the animals. Under the Wildlife Enrichment Program, the animals also get to play with interactive toys and puzzles, learning to manipulate boxes to find a hidden toy or food treat. Research has shown that animals would rather work for their food than just be given it, Reiss said.

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All Aboard Singapore’s ‘Love Boat’

Friday, February 7th, 2003

Just a few weeks ago I was commenting on Singapore’s darkly comical government programs to increase the birthrate. Now All Aboard Singapore’s ‘Love Boat’ describes another:

Alarmed by a drop in the island state’s fertility rates, Dr Wei Siang Yu has launched a program of fertility seminars accompanied by a boat cruise and a night at a vacation resort — all designed to put couples in the mood.
[...]
But it doesn’t come cheap. Couples must fork out S$1,000 ($580 dollars) for the fertility program.

“Massages, nutrition, aphrodisiacs, we are talking about music, we are talking about aromatherapy, and we’re talking about health education programs,” the self-styled sex guru said.

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A question of upbringing

Friday, February 7th, 2003

I didn’t find A question of upbringing particularly insightful — it contrasts Churchill and Hitler — but I did love this quote from Churchill about Hitler’s failed invasion of Russia:

He forgot about the winter. There is a winter, you know, in Russia. For a good many months the temperature is apt to fall very low. There is snow, there is frost, and all that. Hitler forgot about the Russian winter. He must have been very loosely educated. We all heard about it at school; but he forgot it. I have never made such a bad mistake as that.

I can hear A.A. Milne giving that explanation to Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear.

Posted in War | No Comments »

Law Passes Banning Rude or Foreign Words

Friday, February 7th, 2003

Outlawing foreign words? How…French. But it’s the Russians outlawing foreign words — foreign words and obscene words, actually, and only (I believe) in political addresses, as Law Passes Banning Rude or Foreign Words explains:

The State Duma lower house overwhelmingly approved a bill entrenching Russian as the “state language” and barring “offensive,” “obscene” and “vulgar” words. Foreign words are also outlawed when Russian-language equivalents exist.

Some of the examples are…colorful:

Putin launched a 1999 drive against Chechen rebels by vowing to “wipe them out in the sh*thouse.” He then chose not to campaign in the 2000 election he easily won, saying he would not treat politics like trying to sell “Snickers and Tampax.”

Allegations of Russian atrocities in Muslim Chechnya again prompted him to tell a French journalist last November that anyone wishing to become a Muslim extremist could undergo circumcision in Moscow “in such a way that nothing grows back.”

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Mystery Over Death of Australia’s First Cloned Sheep

Friday, February 7th, 2003

According to Mystery Over Death of Australia’s First Cloned Sheep, Australia’s first cloned sheep died, and no one knows why:

Australia’s first cloned sheep has died despite being in apparent good health, but any chance of getting to the root of the mysterious death was lost when its decomposing carcass was cremated.
[...]
An autopsy failed to find any reason for the ewe’s abrupt death and the carcass was cremated because it had decomposed after lying out in the open in hot summer conditions.

“She was very healthy, and very sprightly…on the day she died,” Lewis told Reuters.

“There was nothing that was grossly obvious in the organs and outer body. The body’s been cremated because it was in a very bad state. To be quite honest, it was clearly pongy (smelly), very pongy.”
[...]
Matilda was created by technology similar to that which produced Dolly, the world’s first cloned sheep, in Scotland. Lewis said he did not believe premature aging — an affliction which affected Dolly — lay behind Matilda’s demise.

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