Cyemm

2011-06-01T13:03:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the worlk superbike races in Salt Lake City, Utah. Great time. Here's the pics.

Jason Britton's No Limit put on a stunt show...

The XR 1200 racers were here - oil cooler hiding under the numberplate...

Turn 1 off the straight - the riders were coming in here sideways under braking....

Buddies enjoying the view...

Chris Pfeiffer and Chris McNeil put on an amazing stunt show....

Wsbk duck unclothed....

Got a great spot on pit road....

Wouldn't be a trip without a prank....my bud sleeping on his head....

WET wet wet day 2....Still getting knees down...

My bud leaning on the School's trainer....

Man cave table idea.....

Teach and Chris again, this time on wet pavement....

Just bunnyhopped the stream in the background - crunch!

Not zoomed - that stoppie was Close!

Standing burnout - Teach is not right...

Race day - bikes everywhere, sunny, beautiful scenery.

More boring backdrop....

Naptime between races...

Sighting lap...

Checa running away...

Checa wins his 2nd...Celebratory burnout!

2011-04-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

So, the local race group WMRRA has a "taste Of Racing" feature - $20 for 20 minutes of on track time. Fun stuff. I'm in black. All black.

Pacific Raceway Taste of Racinf 4-2-11 from Debra Johnson on Vimeo.

2011-03-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

Maxime Berger has the rear wheel on his bike decide enough is enough and it picked a fine time to leave....

2011-03-28T02:58:00.000-07:00

Spycams sneak within a paw’s swipe of the world’s largest land predators - Polar bears. Polar Bear Spy on the Ice gets closer than ever before to these charismatic bears and reveals their astonishing intelligence and curiosity.

Iceberg-cam, blizzard-cam and snowball-cam are a new generation of spycams on a mission to explore the icy Arctic islands of Svalbard in Norway. Backed up by snow-cam and drift-cam, these technologically advanced spycams contain sophisticated electronics to endure polar arctic conditions.

From the outset, the wildlife filmmakers are faced with some of nature’s greatest challenges. But one spycam is just a breath away as cubs emerge from winter maternity dens.

Next the spycams team up and prepare to follow in the footsteps of polar bear mothers and cubs as they face their first summer in a world of shrinking ice. Each mother has a single goal, to guide her cubs to the rich hunting grounds of the sea ice. But on the way they must run the gauntlet of roaming males.

One mother and her cubs make it, and iceberg-cam tracks them across shifting ice as they head north towards the sturdier pack ice. But not all bears are so lucky - a mother and cub are marooned on the island, and it’s here that spycams reveal the true depth of polar bears’ intelligence.The land offers slim pickings and spycams discover how land-locked bears unearth new opportunities hunting walrus, diving for kelp, eating grass and even raiding bird colonies - filmed for the first time. Elsewhere on the island a washed-up whale carcass offers a bear banquet; and iceberg-cam captures the bears’ little-known social nature as they share this rare bounty.

Back on the sea ice, iceberg-cam makes another discovery - the polar bears' astonishing intelligence as they hunt seals. While life is relatively good on the ice it has its dangers. The mother and her cubs reach the end of the drift ice and are faced with a marathon swim. Will they make it to the security of the pack ice?

With spycams at their side, Polar Bear Spy on the Ice follows the bears’ fate during a difficult ice-free summer. Ultimately, spycams reveal that polar bears’ intelligence and curiosity are key to their survival in a world of shrinking ice.

Producer Philip Dalton

Directed by John Downer

A John Downer Production for BBC and Animal Planet

Polar bears smash the spy cams ...

The Site

2011-03-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

In June 2010, a team of scientists and intrepid explorers stepped onto the shore of the lava lake boiling in the depths of Nyiragongo Crater, in the heart of the Great Lakes region of Africa. The team had dreamed of this: walking on the shores of the world's largest lava lake. Members of the team had been dazzled since childhood by the images of the 1960 documentary "The Devil's Blast" by Haroun Tazieff, who was the first to reveal to the public the glowing red breakers crashing at the bottom of Nyiragongo crater. Photographer Olivier Grunewald was within a meter of the lake itself, giving us a unique glimpse of it's molten matter.

You can see the actual scale now that there's a human in the frame....

2010-09-07T06:37:00.000-07:00

I submitted ten puns to a contest, hoping one would win.

But no pun in ten did.

2010-09-05T13:43:00.001-07:00

2010-09-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

Gulf. Oil.

2010-09-05T13:27:00.000-07:00

JEFF BOTELHO BUILDS HIS DREAM ROADSTER
By Daniel J. Linss - Editor

Jeff Botelho has dreamed of building a convertible roadster truck since he was 15 years old. Over the 20 years since then, he has driven trucks, bought and sold trucks, ran the family trucking business, and learned how to visualize something and then create it with his own hands. When it comes to trucks and trucking, this guy has seen and done it all. So, when he was invited to participate in the Big-Rig Build-Off in Louisville, KY (an annual competition pitting truck builders against each other), he figured now was his chance to put all of his skills to use – and to finally build his convertible. But, as you can imagine, it was no easy task.

The "crazy" idea of building a convertible big rig came to Jeff and his brother Jim after a driver rolled one of their company-owned Petes on its side. Jeff was 15 and his brother was 18. They thought it would be cool to remove the wrecked sleeper, replace the hood, and chop the top off the cab. When they went to their dad to see what he thought of the idea, he dismissed them as "young and naive" boys. But Jeff never gave up on the idea. Later, when a driver rolled over his 1991 Peterbilt 377, Jeff bought the rig and sold the components – but he kept the cab, because you never know when you might want to build a convertible truck or something.

Last year, Jeff was invited to participate in the 2006 build-off but had to decline because of previous commitments to customers. Jeff really wanted to participate, but business is business. And that was that – until our photo shoot with him last year in Pismo Beach for our May 2006 cover. After the shoot, we gave Jeff a few 10-4 t-shirts that just happened to feature a chopped KW wide hood, sitting by the beach, with the top down and bikini-clad babes around it. He took one look at that shirt and decided he'd better build his dream before someone else does.

Hoping to be invited to the 2007 build-off, Jeff really started thinking seriously about his hot rod truck. A few months later, he purchased a burned 1998 Pete and then sold everything off of it except the frame rails and suspension, thinking maybe he could use them later. When Bud from Stars & Stripes called to officially invite Jeff to participate in the upcoming build-off, he was more than ready. He now had a "reason" to build his crazy roadster, and a few vital pieces sitting in his yard to help get him started.

The rules of the build-off stipulate that participants only have 90 days to complete their project. By the time Jeff actually began working, he was already down to 83 days. With help and inspiration from his hot rod, low-rider and custom mini-truck friends, Jeff worked out a concept for his convertible that included an air bag system, a wild paint job and a totally "California" look.

After pulling the chassis of the burned Pete into their shop in Los Banos, CA and stripping it down to nothing but the two frame rails, leaving only the front and rear cross members and the junk suspension to hold the wheels, they loaded it up and took it to Solo Customs in Patterson, CA, where it stayed for 53 days while it was getting a custom 4-link suspension and air bag system (similar to hydraulics in a low-rider). Owner John Chamoro and his assistant Todd Sinclair, with help every day from Jeff and his friend Joey Jorge, transformed what started out as something that looked ready for the scrap pile into something truly amazing. The chassis and suspension was by far the most challenging endeavor of the project – and the most time-consuming.

To prepare the frame for the suspension, which would allow the truck to raise up or (more importantly) drop down eight inches at the touch of a button, a notch had to be cut into the frame over each of the rear wheels. All of the pieces for the 4-link setup, including the brackets, rods and bushings, had to be hand-built. The suspension was mounted on the outside of the frame rails to allow for maximum travel. The air system that lifts and drops the truck features four small air compressors, mounted between the frame rails, in addition to the big one mounted on the engine, and four extra air tanks, in addition to the two that operate the air brakes. The truck's stock compressor takes the system up to 120 psi, and then a one-way check valve allows the four extra pumps to take the four rear tanks up to 200 psi without affecting the two front tanks. And there is no waiting for this system to "air up" like most trucks – it happens immediately. With a 9-switch remote controller in the cab, the front and rear of the truck can go up, down, left or right.

While the suspension was being built, Jeff and the crew started boxing out the frame rails with quarter-inch steel plating – which meant that every detail of the frame had to be figured out in advance. Once the frame was boxed, there was no getting inside (with the exception of removable "inspection plates" at each wheel for easy access to the plumbing and electrical systems). When it was all done, every fitting, pipe, hose, bracket and component between the rails was either painted, plated, pinstriped or polished. Even the air lines going into the brakes were "hard-lined" with polished stainless tubing.

To get the truck even lower, Jeff opted for low-profile car tires. He took his ten aluminum wheels to Santa Clara, CA where his cousin, Alan Botelho, runs a machine shop. Using a large lathe, Alan machined off the inner bead of each rim to accommodate the high-performance Pirelli 305/35 ZR24 tires. Jeff had a hard time finding rear fenders with the proper radius, but he eventually discovered that a set of old Hogebuilt half-fenders for a medium duty bobtail truck (which he just happened to have laying around) were perfect. But he only had a set of two, and he needed four. Jeff called his friend Bob at Cherokee Truck Parts and begged him to "pull some strings" with Hogebuilt, and three days later Jeff had another exact set of half fenders delivered to his front door. He then fabricated custom brackets and welded them to the axles.

Apparently, the latest craze in custom cars includes getting it low enough to drag the frame on the ground – a practice called railing – which produces a light show of sparks as the car (or truck) rolls down the road. Jeff wanted to be able to drag his light bar, so he fabricated it out of thick steel plate and then welded it directly to the frame. He also attached a strip of titanium to the portion of the bar that would drag. Titanium produces a brighter light, more sparks and can take a lot of abuse. Within the light bar, he mounted six small oval-shaped taillights (with the Peterbilt logo laser cut into them) that are completely flush with the bar. The process was too extensive to get into all the details here, but the end result is a perfectly smooth light bar with six lights and no bolts or gaps whatsoever.

When it came time to install the drivetrain, Jeff decided it would be easier to downsize the motor and transmission than to deal with the size and weight issues larger models would create, so he dropped in a small, chromed-out Cat 3116, (tweaked to 300 hp) and an Allison automatic transmission. This change forced him to make custom motor mounts and brackets, as well as a few other "adjustments" under the hood. Not liking the way the factory steering box looked, Jeff replaced it with a hydraulic steering system out of a Caterpillar loader. He then covered the firewall with a sheet of polished stainless steel.

Now that the chassis and drivetrain were complete, it was time to start working on the cab, which, of course, came from that wrecked 1991 Pete 377 that had been sitting in his yard for nine years. Jeff brought it into the shop late one night and then just sawed off the roof. Dave Jones of Jones Performance fabricated custom fiberglass fenders for Jeff and Mike at Roadworks provided the side hood panels and a few other custom body pieces. Jeff did some fancy work on the windshield, too. After chopping eight inches off the top of the windshield mask, he cut it loose from the cowl and slid the bottom center of the windshield forward two inches to give it more of a "V" shape, then pushed the top back one inch to give it more lean, and then riveted it all back together. Adrian Rocamontes of ACW Specialties (last year's build-off winner), built the body skin panels for the back of the cab. Now complete, the cab and hood were almost ready for paint.

With only one week to go, the cab and hood still needed to be painted, the interior needed to be done, and quite a bit of assembly was still required. The five-man crew of painters from Cen Cal Creations, led by Rich Gallindo, did all of the interior, as well as the paint. Rich and his assistants (Will, Kenny, Tony and Chivo) worked their magic in a very short time, creating a unique fiberglass interior that feels much like an airplane cockpit – everything is integrated into a smooth and clean "shell" that wraps around the two leather seats, including the shifter, the air brake knob and a bunch of stereo speakers. There are no gauges in the dash (yet) but there is a flip-out DVD screen audio deck. It's a very simple, sleek interior, complete with a billet steering wheel and custom pedals.

With the interior done, it was finally time for the paint. The painters sprayed the cab and hood "Botelho Blue" like all of Jeff's working trucks, and then covered the fenders with multicolored green and orange flames and skulls. By now, everyone had been working for two or three days straight without any sleep, and it was the day before they were supposed to leave for Kentucky. At that point, they decided that there just wasn't enough time to flame the rest of the truck, so they just started putting it all back together. At noon on Sunday (the next day), they fired up the truck for the very first time and it sounded great. Now, they were beginning to think that they might actually leave on time that day at 4:00 PM.

But when they fired it up again later to load it, the fuel pump took a dump. Jeff made a few frantic phone calls and had a replacement lined up for first thing in the morning (Monday). By noon, the pump was replaced and they fired it up again. Everything seemed fine and then the power steering pump quit working. Jeff was at the end of his rope – exhausted and frustrated, he collapsed into a chair and fell asleep. While he slept, a local Caterpillar mechanic named Harley Duarte showed up and fixed the pump in record time. The guys woke Jeff up, loaded the truck, and then took off for Louisville – and 31 hours later, they were at the show – a little late, and extremely tired, but they made it. Unfortunately, the truck did not win the build-off, but it sure did turn a lot of mid-westerner's heads.

After returning from Kentucky, Jeff had the rest of the truck painted and then we did our photo shoot. What a great time! Special thanks go out to Francisco Murillo for getting the rig ready for the shoot and helping us out all day. Some other folks that Jeff wanted to thank include Tuey Dickerson, Rocky Machado, Paul Gaxiola, Rodel Melgoza, Danny Flores, Jimmy Greer, Junior Coria and Jeff Coria. Jeff also wanted to thank a few other companies that provided parts or services for his truck including PPG Industries, Double JJ Enterprises, Valley Chrome Plating, Addictive Audio and Tri Valley Truck & Glass. Last but not least, Jeff wanted to give special thanks to his wife Rosie and their kids, Taylor and Jeffrey, for putting up with him through all of this, as well as his sister Dianna Alexander, his brother Jim, and his parents, Jim and Alvina Botelho.

Jeff is proud to say that he will never forget the look on his father's face when they wheeled the truck out of the shop for the first time and dropped it on the rocks in their gravel yard (hence the "On The Rocks" name they gave it). It was a "Kodak moment" in Jeff's life that he recorded with his own eyes, not a camera. And after everything was said and done, Jeff handed the keys of the truck to his dad and said, "It's yours." But his dad did not accept it – not yet, at least. He told Jeff, "You worked hard on that truck – go out and have some fun with it, and when you're done, if you still want to, you can give it to me then." Being a man of his word, I'm sure Jeff will honor that deal – but not before he has a lot of fun with his finally-realized dream – a convertible big rig roadster. No, it wasn't easy, but fulfilling a dream never is – that's why so few of us ever do it. But win or lose, Jeff Botelho will always be a champion in our book!

Source

2010-09-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

Just a pretty flooded meadow....

2010-09-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

Plain Clothes Officer Pulls Gun on Man for Speeding; Police Threaten to Jail Him for Recording the Incident

Whatever you do, don’t speed to work in Maryland. Apparently, the cops in that state believe the appropriate way to handle speeding is to use an unmarked car with no lights or sirens to cut off the speeder, forcing them to stop, then jump out the car with no uniform or badge and fail to identify them self while he pulls out his gun and orders you off your vehicle. That’s what happened to Anthony Graber, who admitted to speeding. He was cited for doing 80 MPH on the highway. Fortunately for us, the story gets more interesting.

Anthony was riding with a video camera attached to his helmet to record his venture. It was still recording when it caught the cop acting like a thug.

The full video...

The incident itself raises some interesting questions. First of all, the officer here comes off as an impulsive thug, not the image we should expect of our law enforcement officers. Second, as a concealed pistol license holder, I would probably interpret this officers actions as those of a car jacker or road raging murderer. If this happened to me or someone else who was carrying, it might have resulted in the officer and/or the motorist being shot. Not wise, officer.

But it gets worse…

A month after this incident cops found the video Anthony posted on youtube. Apparently furious that their behavior was exposed, they showed up to his home with a warrant for his arrest for felony recording without consent from the other party. Maryland is a two-party consent state for audio recording, but that is usually never upheld when there is no reasonable expectation of privacy – such as on the side of a busy road during a traffic stop. They also confiscated his cameras and computers. Anthony now faces five years in prison, but it seems likely the case will simply be thrown out. We’ll see. I think Anthony might be looking at a fat paycheck at the end of this.

After spending 26 hours in the Baltimore County Jail, Anthony Graber still doesn’t understand what he did wrong.

Sure, the 24-year-old man admits to speeding on his motorcycle, but does that merit having a plainclothes cop pull a gun on him?

Does that merit six state troopers raiding his parents’ home and seizing four computers at the crack of dawn?

Does that merit getting charged with a felony and threatened with five years in prison?

Of course it doesn’t

This is nothing but an obscene case of police intimidation. A Constitutional violation against a man who has served six years in the Air National Guard and who has never been arrested before.

A knee-jerk reaction from the Maryland State Police after Graber posted the video of the cop pulling a gun on him on Youtube (video is below).

That cop’s name is Joseph David Uhler, in case you were wondering. He has no business wearing a badge.

So how come he’s not being punished?

Well, we already know that answer. He’s above the law. They are above the law. The Maryland State Police Department, that is.

Why else would a judge sign a search warrant, allowing them to raid Graber’s parents home at 6:45 a.m. on a weekday, detaining his entire family for 90 minutes, forbidding his mother from going to work and younger sister from going to school while they rummaged through the family’s personal belongings?

And that judge’s name?

That’s a secret.

“There is no signature from the judge on the paperwork,” Graber said in an exclusive Photography is Not a Crime interview Thursday night, just hours after he was released from jail.

“They told me they don’t want you to know who the judge is because of privacy.

Is this America? Where cops are allowed to violate your Fourth Amendment rights – not to mention your First Amendment right to film them – on the approval of some secretive judge?

Well maybe not all judges agree.

“The judge who released me looked at the paperwork and said she didn’t see where I violated the wiretapping law.”

Ah yes, the wiretapping charge. That old standby that cops use when you happen to videotape them in public while they are on duty when they have absolutely no expectation of privacy.

Sure, the First Amendment supposedly allows us to photograph police in public. Numerous court rulings have determined that.

But now cops have turned to irrelevant wire-tapping charges to crack down against those who video them in public.

Those laws are designed to protect people whose voices are recorded in telephone calls. You know, when you actually have an expectation of privacy.

Fortunately, most judges end up throwing these charges out of court when the cops don’t have an expectation of privacy.

The case against Graber began on March 5 when he was speeding on his 2008 Honda CBR 1000RR motorcycle on Interstate 95. He had a video camera strapped to his helmet and was filming the ride.

He sped past Uhler’s unmarked car, who claimed he was popping a wheelie while traveling 100 mph.

And Uhler was only “visually estimating” his speed. He did not have a radar gun, which usually means it wouldn’t stand up in court.

Graber also admits to speeding past a marked car. However, he never heard any sirens behind him and even at one point in the video where Graber looks back, the only car behind him is Uhler’s unmarked car with no lights.

That was when Graber was already exiting the interstate. When he came to a complete stop behind the other cars at the exit, Uhler cut him off and hopped out of his car with a gun drawn, never flashing a badge and not identifying himself as an officer until several seconds later.

Uhler never mentioned that he pulled out his gun in his report.

But he did mention that he spotted “a strange looking object on the operator’s helmet that was later realized to be a video camera.”

And he did mention that he cited Graber a single citation for traveling 80 mph in a 65 mph zone.

So what’s the problem?

Well, Graber decided to post the video on Youtube, which made Uhler look like a thug.

In fact, if you look at the video, you’ll notice Uhler glance at the marked unit behind Graber and moved his gun behind him, as if trying to hide it from the other officer, before tucking it back into his pocket.

After all, an officer is only supposed to pull out his gun if he believes his life is in danger. Surely, that doesn’t happen with every traffic stop. Does it?

Ten days later, Uhler discovered that Graber posted the video online. Two videos. A longer one without audio and a shorter one with audio.

That prompted Uhler to issue an arrest warrant against Graber, citing that “Graber did not inform Tfc. Uhler that he was recording him by video or audio, thus violating criminal law 10-402(b).”

He also tacked on the charges of “reckless driving” and “negligent driving” to the arrest warrant.

And then six cops raided his parent’s home where Graber is living early one morning.

“They spent 90 minutes there,” he said.

“My mom had to go to work and they wouldn’t let her. My sister had to go to school and they wouldn’t let her.

“I just had gall bladder surgery and had bandages on my stomach.”

In fact, after a phone call to the commissioner, that was the only reason they didn’t arrest him on the spot. They told him he had to turn himself in when he got better, which he did.

“I just wanted to do the right thing,” he said.

When he showed up to the jail, they set his bond at $15,000, which is a little extravagant considering there is a maximum $10,000 fine for a wiretapping conviction.

He spent 26 hours in jail before he was released upon his own recognizance. The judge who released him took one look at the report and said that it didn’t appear he violated the wiretapping law.

“She said, ‘I have no idea why you’re charged with this’,” he said.

In fact, Maryland requires there to be an expectation of privacy in order to make that charge valid, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

State courts interpreted laws to protect communications only when parties have a reasonable expectation of privacy

The incident has left Graber with a serious distrust of police.

“I’m now afraid of the police. Afraid of what they can do to me. I’ve never been arrested in my life before this,” he said.

He is now making arrangements to sell his motorcycle because he doesn’t feel comfortable riding it anymore.

And he is waiting for his preliminary trial to see if prosecutors will decide to pursue this case.

And as for Uhler, well he’s still roaming free to terrorize the citizens. Just as he did in Graber’s video.

2010-09-01T16:12:00.000-07:00

One of those side by side atv things ripping up Pike's Peak....

2010-09-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

Best Party Sangria Recipe

Ingredients:

* 1 Bottle of red wine (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Rioja, Zinfandel, Shiraz)
* 1 Lemon cut into wedges
* 1 Orange cut into wedges
* 1 Lime cut into wedges
* 2 Tbsp sugar
* Splash of orange juice or lemonade
* 2 Shots of gin or triple sec (optional)
* 1 Cup of raspberries or strawberries (may use thawed or frozen)
* 1 Small can of diced pineapples (with juice)
* 4 Cups ginger ale

Pour wine into a large pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the lemon, orange and lime into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and pineapple then add sugar, orange juice and gin. Chill overnight. Add ginger ale, berries and ice just before serving. If you'd like to serve right away, use chilled red wine and serve over lots of ice. However, remember that the best Sangrias are chilled around 24 hours in the fridge - allowing the flavors to really marinate into each other.

2010-07-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

Interesting take on carbon footprints and climate change... definately NSFW....

2010-06-25T17:46:00.000-07:00

Yeah....

2010-06-16T14:54:00.000-07:00

Really...

A cordless, electric HAMMER!!!!

The decline of society is accelerating.

2010-06-03T08:08:00.000-07:00

Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Speeding Ticket By Visual Guess

In a 5-1 decision yesterday, Ohio's Supreme Court upheld a speeding ticket based solely on how fast a driver appeared to be moving. The court considered the case of motorist Mark Jenney who drove through a State Route 21 radar speed trap operated by Copley police officer Christopher R Santimarino on July 3, 2008. Santimarino guessed based on the appearance of Jenney's black SUV that it was traveling at 79 MPH in a 60 zone.
Santimarino claimed that his thirteen years as a traffic cop and his certification in speed estimation by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy qualified him to make expert visual determinations of how fast vehicles are moving within 4 MPH. In court, Santimarino testified that his radar showed Jenney was traveling at 82 MPH on direct examination and 83 MPH on cross-examination.
Based on this, a district court convicted Jenney. On appeal, Jenney succeeded in having the radar evidence thrown out because the officer failed to produce the required certification documents at trial. The appeals court then ruled that the visual guess as to Jenney's speed was sufficient evidence for a conviction. Jenney appealed to the supreme court, which agreed with the lower court rulings that an officer's educated guess is sufficient to overcome that state's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
"A majority of the appellate districts that have considered the issue have held that an officer's testimony that in his opinion, a defendant was traveling in excess of the speed limit is sufficient to sustain a conviction for speeding," Justice Maureen O'Connor wrote for the majority. "Given Santimarino's training, OPOTA certification, and experience in visually estimating vehicle speed, his estimation that Jenney was traveling 70 miles per hour was sufficient to support Jenney's conviction... We hold that a police officer's unaided visual estimation of a vehicle's speed is sufficient evidence to support a conviction for speeding in violation of R.C. 4511.21(D) without independent verification of the vehicle's speed if the officer is trained, is certified by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy or a similar organization that develops and implements training programs to meet the needs of law enforcement professionals and the communities they serve, and is experienced in visually estimating vehicle speed."
Justice Terrence O'Donnell filed a dissent that argued the majority essentially created a standard that the police officer is always right.
"Like any other witness, a police officer's credibility is to be determined by the jury or other fact-finder," O'Donnell wrote. "In fact, jury instructions given regularly by trial judges advise that a jury is privileged to believe all, part, or none of the testimony of any witness. Thus, I would assert that a broad standard as postulated by the majority that a trained, certified, and experienced officer's estimate of speed is sufficient evidence to support a conviction for speeding eclipses the role of the fact-finder to reject such testimony and thus such testimony, if found not to be credible, could, in some instances, be insufficient to support a conviction."

Source

So, now a legal precedent's been set...all a cop has to do is say you were speeding, and it sticks. What happened to innocent until PROVEN guilty?

2010-05-31T18:59:00.000-07:00

Found a Russian blog with many pics of a massive "wing in ground" effect seaplane.

Here's Google's translated text...

"In 1987, the water came down "Lun" the first ship of a series of missile-carrying combat WIG weighing 400 tons was the Chief Designer Vladimir Kirillov. Корабль был вооружен тремя парами крылатых ракет 3М80 или 80М "Москит" (НАТОвское обозначение SS-N-22 Sunburn). The ship was armed with three pairs of cruise missile 3M80 or 80M "Mosquito" (the NATO designation SS-N-22 Sunburn). Второй "Лунь" тоже закладывался как ракетоносец, но начавшаяся конверсия внесла свои коррективы, и его планировали достроить как спасательный. The second "Lun" also found a rocket, but the conversion has begun its own changes, and it planned to complete the construction as a rescue. "

Many, many more pics at the Source.

2010-05-31T18:55:00.000-07:00

Amazing high risk mountain trail (6:26)

Where falling would ruin your whole day...

2010-05-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

James Galea (Card Trick) Comedy Festival Gala 2009

Card Trick starts at 1:35

2010-03-17T17:54:00.000-07:00

2010-03-17T17:50:00.000-07:00

2010-03-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

xkcd

2010-03-17T17:42:00.000-07:00

"The boys took a beating on that one" "That guy needs a hug"

58 seconds....

2010-03-17T17:39:00.000-07:00

Card issuers invent fees

The new federal law on credit cards kicks in Monday, and it contains some better protections for credit card users. But some banks have already figured out new ways to charge fees not covered by the Credit CARD Act.

One of the latest is an "inactivity fee" now being charged by banks including Fifth Third. The region's largest bank, for instance, will charge you $19 if you don't use your bank credit card within 12 months.

"The fee helps us cover the increasing cost of servicing credit card accounts," Fifth Third spokeswoman Stephanie Honan said.

Other banks are looking for new sources of fees as well. Beginning April 1, Citigroup will assess cardholders a $60 annual fee if they charge less than $2,400 a year. "This action is necessary given the increasing costs of doing business," Citi spokesman Robert Julavits said.

The nation's second-largest card issuer, Bank of America, just began testing an annual fee for some of its credit card accounts.

The fees are part of a menu of little-known charges that card issuers use. In recent months, some have upped the fees for transferring balances. Some have added a minimum charge for cash advances, meaning a $50 advance on the credit card could cost the unwitting consumer $10 or more in fees.

Some are charging a dollar a month to customers who still want to get an account statement in the mail.

These fees and more are documented in a recent report by the Center for Responsible Lending, a Washington-based nonprofit research group.

"The credit card issuers can adjust their tactics faster than Congress can pass laws," said Joshua Frank, author of the report.

The CARD Act does include some long-needed reforms. They include ending late-fee traps like weekend payment deadlines, outlawing retroactive rate increases, requiring more advance notice of rate increases and placing restrictions on overlimit fees.

But consumers should read the fine print and speak up if they find something they don't like.

The Center for Responsible Lending and others are pushing to enact a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency as the best way to stop credit card companies from inventing new ways to charge their customers.

Source

2010-03-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Homunculus, the first of an annual series of experimental films by our in-house directing collaborative, Hydra. Conceived of and directed by Sam Stephens, Homunculus is a dark and twisted fable of spontaneous generation and untrammeled id. Taking its title from the Latin word for "Little Human", the piece is an associative mashup between the two concepts behind the word: The first being middle-age alchemical beliefs that "little men" could be spontaneous generated from dead or decaying matter. The second being Carl Jung's usage as a personification of pure id. These ideas, combined with our love of Dutch still life's "beautiful decay," sowed the seeds for this unique little monster of a film.

3;20 ....

2010-02-24T14:41:00.000-08:00

Big Block jeep....

Ferrari vs Jeep Cj-7 0-156mph...

Drifting Cj-7 ZZ572

Hillclimb Cj-7 ZZ572

2010-02-24T14:36:00.001-08:00

Jeff and Marci Beagley Gave Sick Son Prayer Instead of Medicine, Jury Gives Them Guilty Verdict

Oregon couple Jeff and Marci Beagley testified they did everything they could for their 16-year-old son before he died, but a jury decided that anointing oils and prayer were not enough.

The couple, who practices faith healing, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide on Tuesday after prosecutors argued they failed in their duty to get medical help for their son, Neil, in June 2008.

Neil Beagley died of complications from a congenital urinary tract blockage. Doctors testified the he could have been treated up until the day he died.

His death came just months after the death of their granddaughter, Ava Worthington, who died under similar circumstances.

The 15-month-old passed away March 2008 of pneumonia and a blood infection. Like Neil, she was given oils and prayer instead of medicine.

The toddler's parents, Raylene and Carl Worthington, were acquitted of manslaughter last year. The trial tested a change in Oregon law in 1999 resulting from a public outcry over a series of child deaths among members of the Followers of Christ Church.

Members of the church, including the Beagleys, are known to avoid doctors in favor of faith healing.

The Beagleys could face 16 to 18 months in prison under state sentencing guidelines, although defense attorneys plan to ask for probation. They remain free pending their sentencing on Feb. 18.

Source

AKA... Darwinism.

2010-02-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

Study: 73% use bank password everywhere

For years computer security experts have been preaching that users should never share the same password across their connected lives -- at online banking sites, at Amazon, on their Web mail services, even on their cell phones.

Apparently, most people ignore that advice.

A new study by security firm Trusteer found that 73 percent of Web users take their online banking password and use it at other Web sites. And about half of all consumers utilize the same password and user name at online banking sites and other sites.

"I must say I was very surprised,” said Amit Klein, chief technology officer of Trusteer. “It is surprisingly sad that such a large portion of users use their banking credentials at other sites. ... It exposes those users to attacks that would otherwise be impossible. I thought that people would take banking credentials more seriously, but it turns out that in this digital age, this is not the reality."

When consumers use the same password across multiple sites, hacking becomes trivially easy. If a criminal breaks into a smaller Web site -- say a site created by a local grocery store -- and grabs a cache of passwords, their next step is always the major banking Web sites. When you consider that 40 percent of U.S. consumers' checking accounts are tied up in the four largest banks, odds are good that the stolen credentials will work for in one of them.

Password overlap also creates an easy end run around sophisticated banking security technology, which is only as strong as the weakest site where the password is used. Banks might enforce strong password creation requirements, for example. But if a consumer uses a bank password it at a poorly defended small site, a hacker can break into the small site, steal the log-in information and essentially crack the bank's high-tech system.

"This is something that should be of huge concern both to banks and to users," said Klein.

Trusteer unearthed the data through use of its Rapport security software, which is designed to warn users when they are about to enter a critical banking password into a site where it doesn't belong -- a phishing site, for example. The tool was used to examine the behavior of 4 million computer users during a 12-month period. During that span, the firm found that 73 percent used their online banking password on at least one non-financial Web site.

And it didn’t help much when the banks enforced strict password controls. When a bank allowed consumers to pick a user ID, 65 percent used it on other sites. When a bank assigned a customer ID, 42 percent used it at other sites and 42 percent used both the ID and the password on at least one other site.

'They don't think it's worth the trade off'
Last year, analyst firm Gartner released a survey that reported similar results. It said two-thirds of consumers use the same one or two passwords across all Web sites they access.

But Avivah Litan, who directed the Gartner survey, said that choice might not be as unreasonable -- or as unsafe -- as it seems.

"They are making a choice for convenience over security," she said. "They are using a cost-benefit equation ... and they don't want to try to remember 10 different passwords for everything they do. They don't think the trade-off is worth it, honestly."

While password sharing isn't a safe practice, Litan said, complicating your life with multiple passwords isn't exactly a cure-all.

"The truth is criminals steal your passwords lots of ways, such as recording keystrokes, and if they do that, it doesn't matter whether your password is 15 characters and unique or 7 characters and the same for every site. People have figured this out," she said.

Using multiple passwords is a good idea, but Litan said it is important that consumers understand the risks that remain even if strong passwords are used.

"It is another lock on the door but a lock that is easily picked," she said. "Still, it's always better to put as many blocks in the road you can."

Large banks don't rely on simple user/password combinations to identify users anymore, she added. Numerous technologies are used to prevent fraud through a strategy called "layered security." Device fingerprinting of PCs is a key tool, she said. Web sites tag computer hardware by monitoring unique characteristics, such as exact processor speed or time and date settings. Sites that use device fingerprinting see fraud rates drop 15 to 20 percent, she said.

Banks also look for suspicious behavior, such as attempted transfers to unusual accounts. Another hacker giveaway: clicks through Web sites that occur at high speed, showing an automated PC -- and not a person -- is attempting a transaction. Humans take, on average, about 10 seconds before they click "confirm payment." Computers controlled by hackers racing through stolen login accounts barely wait at all.

"That's best-of-breed security," Litan said. "If you as a bank are relying on passwords for security then you have a poor security system."

It should be comforting to know that your user ID and password are not all that stands between a hacker and your money. Still, that's no reason to let your guard down. Your banking passwords should be handled with great care, and shouldn't be shared with other Web sites.

And remember, many Web firms that store your critical personal information do not use best-of-breed security on their back end -- meaning you are still at risk. A criminal who stole your Facebook credentials could easily wreak havoc with your life, so protect those accounts, too.

Klein concedes that the vast majority of computer users will never create unique user/password combinations for all their sites. As a more practical goal, he recommends maintaining three "families" of passwords -- one for critical financial sites, a second for sites that store your personal information, and a third for generic log-ins.

"And you don’t want to mix those passwords," he said.

Source

2010-02-24T14:26:00.002-08:00

A Message From Transport Canada (1;13)

2010-02-24T14:26:00.001-08:00

2010-02-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

Man killed by dogs after saving them from death

A Slovenian who saved his three dogs from being put down for attacking humans was himself mauled to death by them, police said on Wednesday.

“Three dogs bit their 52-year-old owner to death in Ljubljana yesterday,” police spokeswoman Maja Adlesic said.

Four years ago, the three bullmastiffs attacked and seriously injured a passer-by outside their owner’s house. They spent years in custody pending legal hearings, but when one of them attacked a dog handler, authorities ordered them to be put down.

Their owner, a doctor, succeeded last June in his legal appeals to get the dogs back, sparking a national controversy. After his death, an opposition party said the agriculture minister should resign for failing to stop the dogs being released.

The dogs attacked the man in his garden on Tuesday, killing him before the police arrived. All three dogs were put down following the attack.

2010-02-24T14:18:00.000-08:00

Chimpanzee Memory Test (2;53)

What really sets us apart from our cousins? Our wonderful memory?

No, not that, either.

This video illustrates that our ape cousins far exceed us in short term memory recall skills. A chimp is shown memorizing numbers with remarkable accuracy at lightning speed.

An amazing bit of footage from the National Geographic documentary "Human Ape".

Damn dirty apes!!!

2010-02-24T14:11:00.000-08:00

Pretty cool photos about Hawaii's voclanic life....

Source

2010-02-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

The Simpsons intro Estonian version (1;21)

2010-02-20T15:33:00.000-08:00

Ride of the Year Entry - Brian Conley in Mainland Mexico - 1:00

2010-02-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

Storax Sedan was a shallow underground nuclear test conducted in Area 10 of Yucca Flat at the Nevada Test Site on 6 July 1962 as part of Operation Plowshare, a program to investigate the use of nuclear weapons for mining, cratering, and other civilian purposes.

The radioactive fallout from the test contaminated more US residents than any other nuclear test, and the Sedan Crater is the largest man-made crater in the United States, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

2010-02-20T15:12:00.000-08:00

Downhill suspension scooter/backpack?

The Bergmönch

Bergmönch - Hiking uphill Wheeling downhill from Thomas Kaiser on Vimeo.

The site

2010-02-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Best Panhandler - 3.15...

2010-02-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

Ben Potter describes and show how he makes custom blades....

Each piece begins as an idea, which is then transferred to paper as a rough sketch.
Next I order the materials, taking care when selecting the individual pieces of wood,
bone, horn etc. to ensure that the color, texture and grain will contribute to the overall
lines and feel of the piece.

The first step in forging is to make the billet, either mono-steel, one solid piece of one
type of steel, or composite construction, welded up out of several different types of steel.
Once the billet is finished I begin forging to shape by drawing it out to the proper length
and thickness to begin the tang. Next I draw the tang out and forge the bevel or bevels on
the blade,then straighten the blade and normalize (heating to non-magnetic heat and letting
it air cool). Once the blade is cool, I file the edge profile.

After forging I file the profile, faces of the blade, bevels, and tang to shape. Then polish
the the blade to 150gt. Heat treating requires the blade to be heated up to the critical point
and rapidly cooled by quenching it in oil. Then thermo cycling it three times to reduce stress
and complete martensite conversion. Then test the blade by cutting and or chopping, and
polish it.

The hilt components are make by forging and fileing the guards and pommel to shape
engraving, inlaying, and carving any decoration in to them and inleting the tang. Grips are
inlet for the tang by hand, shaped, and carved. I peen all my through tangs for greater
strength and athenticity. For two piece upperguard-pommels I use the Norse method
of riveting.

Source

2010-02-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

Five of the "ten best" 2009 space photos....

Source

2010-02-20T14:57:00.001-08:00

Titled... Extreme Sports....

2010-02-20T14:55:00.000-08:00

Ferrofluid on the track of a Meatgrinder

2010-02-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

2010-02-20T14:47:00.000-08:00

Nimbus Motorcycle Trip in Japan

"I wrote this story as a regular weblog – in Danish - while touring the western part of Japan in October and November of 2006. Unlike the Danish weblog, the version you see below is set up so you read it like a regular homepage, starting from above. Please ignore the date at the very top of each section, about when the pictures and bits of text were posted. It is the weekdays and dates from September, October and November that count.

English is not my first language, so there’s bound to be a lot of misspellings, grammatical errors and occasionally downright incomprehensible sentences. Inevitably there will also be a number of factual errors, because I had great difficulty communicating with most of the Japanese I met, even if all of them were most helpful when I tried to tell them something, or have them tell me something. So please bear with me, I’m really doing my best.."

The blog

2010-02-20T14:46:00.000-08:00

Solving the age-old question....

2010-02-20T14:37:00.000-08:00

Lodger - I love Death

2010-02-20T14:34:00.000-08:00

Carpenter Racing, the industry’s leader in motorcycle horsepower enhancement and high-performance component design and development have set their sight on a new project: the Triumph Rocket III.

The Triumph R3 is a heavyweight muscle-touring bike. Think England’s cross between a V-Max and a Valkarie. It has a massive, 2300cc inline 3-clyinder engine producing 120 horsepower and over 130 foot-pounds of torque.

“We saw the big engine and said ‘This monster needs to wake up!’” stated Bob Carpenter.

And wake up it did

The team at Carpenter took the head and applied their signature CNC porting. They then mated it with a custom-ground, aggressive cam, titanium retainers, shim-under tappets and specialized springs. Custom-designed forged aluminum pistons keep the same weight as stock units to retain proper balance but raise the compression to 11.4:1. New clutch springs and a higher volume fuel pump round out the package.

The results are impressive. With stock valves the bike produces an incredible 230+ horsepower to the rear wheel.

“This thing is so strong, at 700 pounds you don’t need 1st gear,” said Carpenter of the prototype machine. “All we basically did was put more fuel in it and let it rev up. The limiter comes in at 5,800 rpm. We had ours up to 9,000.”

“Nobody is beating our Hayabusa's and 1000’s,” he continued. “And nobody is going to beat this bike. We think the Triumph, even with all its mass, will be a contender. We think this bike will give the Hayabusa a run for its money.”

And that is only the beginning. Carpenter already has his eye on the next version.

"At over 700cc a hole this thing is hungry for a big valve,” he said. “When we get serious with this next version I am sure we are going to hit 280 horsepower without making it any bigger.”

For now the 230 package is available. Choose the “Drive-in, Drive-out” and leave Carpenter Racing with a turnkey, tuned motorcycle. For the mail order package send us your head and cams and we will ship it back ready to bolt on along with the other components.

The Site

2010-02-20T14:30:00.002-08:00

Belgian coma 'writer' Rom Houben can't communicate

A Belgian man who stunned the world last year by apparently communicating after 23 years in a coma cannot in fact do so, researchers say.

The doctor who believed that Rom Houben was communicating through a facilitator now says the method does not work.

Dr Steven Laureys told the BBC: "The story of Rom is about the diagnosis of consciousness, not communication."

His conclusions follow a study to test the validity of so-called facilitated communication.

Claims that Mr Houben - who was seriously injured in a car crash in 1983 - could communicate, swept around the world last November.

After more than two decades in a coma, he was filmed apparently tapping out messages on a special touchpad keyboard with the help of his speech therapist.

Method 'not valid'

By holding Mr Houben's forearm and finger, the therapist was said to feel sufficient pressure to direct her to the correct keys on the keyboard.

Dr Laureys, a neurologist at Liege University Hospital in Belgium, had earlier established that Mr Houben, was more conscious than doctors had previously thought - and that is still thought to be the case.

But he also believed that his interaction with the speech therapist was genuine. Following further study, however, Dr Laureys says the method does not work.

He told the BBC that a series of tests on a group of coma patients, including Mr Houben, had concluded that the method was after all false. The results of the study were presented in London on Friday.

Objects and words were shown to the patients in the absence of the facilitator who was then called back into the room. The patient was then asked to say what they had seen or heard.

"It's easy to watch the video and say this method is not valid, but to prove that it is not true is actually very difficult," Dr Laureys said.

Houben was 'writing a book'

Doubts were expressed about the method by other experts at the time and repeated this week.

"It's like using an Ouija board," Arthur Caplan, a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, told Associated Press on Friday. "It was too good to be true and we shouldn't have believed it."

Last November Mr Houben's mother, Fina Houben, told the BBC that she always believed her son could communicate.

"He is not depressed, he is an optimist," she said. "He wants to get out of life what he can."

Last year, Mrs Houben claimed her son was writing a book. "Just imagine," Mr Houben ostensibly typed out via his speech therapist. "You hear, see, feel and think but no one can see that."

Experts say the question of whether people like Houben who have a traumatic brain injury are conscious and alert remains unanswered.

"I hope Rom and his family will stay as an example" of how hard it is to pick up the signs of consciousness, Dr Laureys told the Associated Press.

"Even when we know that patients are conscious, we don't know if there is pain or suffering or what they are feeling."

Source

2010-02-20T14:30:00.001-08:00

2010-01-24T16:49:00.000-08:00

E.T.A. by JUNK

Marvin has the most boring job in the universe - but all is not as it seems...

2010-01-24T16:41:00.000-08:00

Judge slashes "monstrous" P2P award by 97% to $54,000

Judge Michael Davis is the senior federal jurist in Minnesota. He presides over the gleaming 15th floor courtroom where, earlier this year, P2P user Jammie Thomas-Rasset was slapped with $1.92 million in damages for sharing 24 songs. Davis made no comment on the amount of the award and showed no emotion as it was read out.

But now we know how he rely feels about the jury's work in that case: it led to a "monstrous and shocking" damage award that veered into "the realm of gross injustice."

Davis used his power of remittitur today to slash the damage award by 97.2 percent, from $1.92 million down to $54,000—and he suggested that even this lower amount was too high.

Thomas-Rasset, the first defendant to take an RIAA-backed P2P lawsuit all the way to trial, turned out not to be an especially sympathetic defendant.

In recounting the case today, Davis went over the changing history of Thomas-Rasset's testimony. "Thomas‐Rasset previously provided sworn interrogatory answers that there had never been any type of online media distribution on her computer in the three years before the Complaint was filed and that she did not contend that anyone else was responsible for the infringement," he wrote.

"Despite never implicating others during her depositions or testimony in the previous trial, in this second trial, she suddenly leveled new accusations against her children and ex‐boyfriend, asserting that they might have committed the infringement. Thomas‐Rasset’s refusal to accept responsibility for her actions and her decision to concoct a new theory of the infringement casting possible blame on her children and ex‐boyfriend for her actions demonstrate a refusal to accept responsibility and raise the need for strong deterrence."

Later, he refers to the moment when "Thomas‐Rasset lied on the witness stand by denying responsibility for her infringing acts and, instead, blamed others, including her children, for her actions."

Davis also notes that statutory damages, which range from $750 up to $150,000 per infringement in copyright cases, have both a deterrent and a compensatory purpose. It's no good to argue that a damage award is too high simply because it's higher than actual damages suffered; that's part of the point.

But there are limits, and $80,000 per song exceeded them. "Although Plaintiffs were not required to prove their actual damages, statutory damages must still bear some relation to actual damages," Davis wrote.

In his capacity as a judge, Davis is allowed to alter damage awards in some cases, though not verdicts. (Update: a reader notes that, in some circumstances, a judge can in fact issue a new judgment at odds with the verdict.) He chose to do so in this case by reducing the award to three times the minimum level of $750, setting it at $2,250 per song. This amount is still "significant and harsh" and is a "higher award than the Court might have chosen to impose in its sole discretion, but the decision was not entrusted to this Court."

Instead, Davis simply reduced the jury award to the maximum reasonable level before it veered into "monstrous and shocking" territory.

He noted the difference between what Thomas-Rasset did and the commercial infringement the statutory damage laws were written to stop. "In the case of individuals who infringe by using peer‐to‐peer networks, the potential gain from infringement is access to free music, not the possibility of hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of dollars in profits," he wrote. "The need for deterrence cannot justify a $2 million verdict for stealing and illegally distributing 24 songs for the sole purpose of obtaining free music."

Because of the Seventh Amendment's guarantee to a trial by jury, Davis' decision to change the damage award means the RIAA has to make a choice: it can accept the new $54,000 award or it can exercise its right to go back to a jury for a third full trial.

We asked the RIAA for comment, but the music trade group and its members will only say that they are weighing their options. Davis has given them one week to decide.

Source

2010-01-24T16:40:00.000-08:00

2010-01-24T16:29:00.000-08:00

I REALLY like this reimagineering of the Buell 1125... girder and angular bodywork to match the faceted frame, rad hung out in front instead of slabsided....somebody build this before I do....

Magpulronin.com

2010-01-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

2010-01-24T16:23:00.000-08:00

If it’s catchy, why bother with the science?

Too many, too soon is one of the sacred mantras of the anti-vaccination movement and its sympathizers who are looking for any remotely plausible argument which would paint vaccines as some kind of poison turning an entire generation of children autistic. Ok, so you can show that timerosal used in vaccines had nothing to do with autism and that the type of mercury it contained wasn’t a neurotoxin. You could even tackle the big issue of how autism is diagnosed and whether parental age has something to do with a rise in the number of diagnosed cases over the last decade and have sound science on your side. But you certainly can’t debate a threefold increase in vaccinations over the last thirty years. And if you can’t debate that, you certainly couldn’t say that three times as many vaccines means that kids’ immune systems aren’t being overwhelmed, right?

Actually, yes. You could. The number of vaccinations is actually a misnomer used to make an argument which firmly casts vaccines as either the villain in today’s pediatric problems, or at least a suspect cause. What has been missed by TV personalities promoting this fallacy, like Bill Maher and Joy Behar, is the fact that today’s vaccines are much more efficient than those given when they were kids. The initial seven vaccines of the late 1970s have been doubled in the last 30 years but their actual antigen load has been lowered from 3,000 to just about 150, only 5% of what the people making this argument were exposed to in their childhoods. For the too many too soon argument to be true, we’d need to see the same kinds of pediatric problems a generation ago and with far greater frequency than we do today. If we weren’t overwhelming immune systems back then, how could we possibly be doing it today with a twentieth of the antigens? And yet, this is the argument being made by the alt med and anti-vaccine crowd.

Either someone is trying to apply the homeopathic idea of dilution and potentization to vaccines, or we’re not being given the relevant fact for the sake of keeping the manufactroversy going. And even if doctors on TV will keep bringing up the massive drop in antigen loads thanks to modern technology, the anti-vaxers will keep on using it by bringing up their other favorite chant. They’ll blame unnamed toxins in vaccines and say that while there are far less antigens, there must be more toxins in the greater number of vaccines. How do these toxins cause whatever pediatric problems they want to blame on them? They don’t know, but the lack of evidence for their position isn’t going to keep them up at night for the simple reason that they can blame doctors for doing bad research to protect their Big Pharma friends or just demonize those who disagree with their agenda as enablers of infanticide. Meanwhile, after vilifying well tested, well proven medical technology, putting almost every study of their efficacy into question over the tiniest if or but, they’ll sprinkle industrial mining chemicals on their autistic kids’ breakfast after seeing a testimonial on an anti-vax blog and call it battling autism.

Give that a moment to sink in. Highly refined, thoroughly tested and very successful vaccines that expose kids to around 150 antigens or roughly 5% of what their parents received in their early childhood are overwhelming immune systems of infants who are exposed to billions of bacteria and viruses from birth. However, a mining chemical which contains benzene, a known carcinogen, comes with no clinical proof of its safety and efficacy, and is marketed by testimonials is perfectly safe to sprinkle over their gluten-free waffles. Yes, maybe it’s not going to actually harm anyone if it’s extremely diluted or administered in small enough quantities, but maybe, just maybe a group with this kind of approach to medical science has its priorities skewed and isn’t a reliable source of information on immunology. So rather then simply repeating the chant of too many too soon, some of the aforementioned TV personalities could take a minute to look up a few studies, read a couple of medical blogs and ask a couple of pointed questions once in a while.

Source, with relevant hotlinks

2010-01-24T16:22:00.000-08:00

Now this is a great idea....

2010-01-24T15:52:00.000-08:00

The 31st running of the Dakar Rally is being held in South America for the second year, instead of the traditional African route, due to ongoing security concerns. This year's race began and will end in Buenos Aires, covering a looping 9,000 kilometers between Argentina and Chile over 14 stages. 362 Teams began the race with 176 motorcycles and quad bikes, 134 cars, and 52 trucks. The race is just over halfway completed now, the winners expected to cross the finish line on January 16th. Collected here are several photographs from the first 8 stages of this year's rally.

Source

2010-01-24T15:27:00.000-08:00

The Yikebike...interesting concept... (1:54)

2010-01-21T10:03:00.000-08:00

Why so angry?

2010-01-21T09:59:00.000-08:00

Travis Pastrana jumps 269 feet in his rally car live on ESPN in Long Beach.

Then, of course, he back flipped into the harbor. (2;04)

2010-01-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

xkcd.com

2010-01-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

Probably ruined his whole day....(1;29)

Moral.....don't wheelie into a dip.

2010-01-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

2010-01-21T09:50:00.000-08:00

What a great idea....

2010-01-21T09:45:00.000-08:00

Just try get this out of your head for the rest of the day :}

Inspector Gadget theme song played on beer bottles

2010-01-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Analysis of 32 million breached passwords

Imperva released a study analyzing 32 million passwords exposed in the Rockyou.com breach. The data provides a unique glimpse into the way that users select passwords and an opportunity to evaluate the true strength of these as a security mechanism.

In the past, password studies have focused mostly on surveys. Never before has there been such a high volume of real-world passwords to examine.

Key findings of the study include:

* The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as “brute force attacks.”
* Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is “123456”.
* Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.

“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes,” explained Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman.

The report identifies the most commonly used passwords:

For enterprises, password insecurity can have serious consequences. “Employees using the same passwords on Facebook that they use in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising enterprise systems with insecure passwords, especially if they are using easy to crack passwords like ‘123456’,” said Shulman.

“The problem has changed very little over the past 20 years,” explained Shulman, referring to a 1990 Unix password study that showed a password selection pattern similar to what consumers select today. “It’s time for everyone to take password security seriously; it’s an important first step in data security.

PDF of Report

2010-01-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

Take one of these....

Add a shell...

And some mods...

TaDa! 214mpg. yeah, 214.

The Build Diary..Click

2010-01-21T09:31:00.000-08:00

Loved the visual feast of Imax 3d Avatar,...but.... the story seems.....familiar...

2010-01-21T09:28:00.000-08:00

OUT of the utter horror of Haiti, comes a picture of incredible joy.

Meet Kiki, Boy Wonder, alive and well after eight days under the rubble of earthquake-blitzed Port au Prince.

Can you see the joy in the eight-year-old's eyes … he never gave up hope that he would be freed.

The rescue - and a picture that will bring tears to the eyes - defied the myth that people only survive being trapped for a couple of days or so.

Kiki was saved after an incredible operation, in the Nazan district of the Haitan capital, mounted by US earthquake experts.

The heroes and heroines were members of urban rescue squads from New York and Virginia, some of whom had been involved in the 9/11 horrors of New York in 2001.

Sourse

2010-01-21T09:25:00.000-08:00

Chainlink extreme 4x4 (2;17)

Cams hydraulic Chain-drive 4x4, about 7 feet of up OR down motion on each tire: specs below Engine is a fuel injected Ford 5.0 V8 out of a '93 cobra mustang, c4 transmission and t-case out of an early bronco. 9" w/ 5.38 gears and ARB air locker mounted in the center (below driver) running chain gears on the ends where the swing arms pivot. Swing arms are hydraulically controlled individually or together, and there is coil spring and shock suspension as well. large chains running inside the swing arms turn hummer gear reduction (2:1) hubs at each wheel. tires are 39.5". The steering is linked through the swing arms as well and the steering box is mounted just infront of the axle below the driver. body construction is steel tubing (mostly DOM) and the total weight is 5900 LB.

2010-01-21T09:00:00.001-08:00

Gold.... Some pics stolen from the Big Picture section of the Boston Globe.....

2010-01-21T08:56:00.000-08:00

Brain bending illusion....

This perspective window by Adelbert Ames upsets size-shape scaling to produce remarkable effects. (1:19)

2010-01-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

Officially one month without an update. Sorry 'bout that. Back to your regularly scheduled programming......

2009-12-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Around 2.30PM on Saturday, December 19, during a historic snowstorm, residents at the intersection of 14th and U Streets NW started throwing snowballs at passing Hummers.

One of the cars pelted was driven by a plainclothes police officer identified only as Det. Baylor. Baylor got out of his car and brandished his gun at the crowd.

Reason.tv's Dan Hayes was on the scene, capturing the tense confrontation between police and citizens who chanted "Don't bring a gun to a snowball fight!"

Approximately 5 minutes; harsh language throughout.

2009-12-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

Rare tree cut from UW arboretum

Someone has cut down a rare Chinese tree at the Washington Park Arboretum and it might be sitting in someone's living room decorated with ornaments.

David Zuckerman, horticultural supervisor for University of Washington Botanic Gardens, said the 15-year-old keteleeria tree is estimated to be worth $10,400.

"There are so many places in the city where there are Christmas trees for sale. If you want to go to a tree farm, you can do that, but not on parks or botanical gardens," said Zuckerman.

He added that it's illegal to cut trees from the arboretum.

The keteleeria tree stood about seven to eight feet tall, but all that's left is the stump.

"In with the saw and out with the truck I guess," said Zuckerman.

The arboretum received two keteleeria trees in 1998 from a Chinese sister institution that had grown them from seeds. Zuckerman said "there could be a hotel sitting where trees like this once grew."

The second tree isn't growing as well as the one that was stolen, but Zuckerman said even the tree cut down was pretty young and spindly compared to the noble and Douglas firs most people want for Christmas trees.

Source

2009-12-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

2009-12-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

The Muppets: Ringing of the Bells... (1;26)

2009-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Questions Arise Over Red Light Cameras

Lakeland city vehicles seen apparently violating law, but not cited.

Video from Lakeland's red light cameras doesn't show what three Ledger journalists witnessed in person - city of Lakeland vehicles turning right on red without properly stopping.

No citations were issued in those incidents, according to city records. And video requested from the times when the incidents occurred did not show the vehicles going through the intersection.

The failure to issue citations in those instances reignites questions about whether the red light camera system, installed at five Lakeland intersections in June, is used evenly in enforcing violations and whether city of Lakeland vehicles might be held to a different standard than other drivers.

Here's what happened in the two incidents in question:

Two Ledger photographers were recording unrelated video at North Florida Avenue and Memorial Boulevard when they observed a city vehicle and other cars rolling through a red light at the intersection about 12:20 p.m. July 31.

On Aug. 4, a Ledger reporter saw a Lakeland police car and a Lakeland Electric vehicle turn right on red without stopping at the same intersection about 12:30 p.m.

None of the vehicles were using emergency lights.

A Ledger reporter Thursday asked the red light camera operator, American Traffic Solutions of Arizona, about what was observed. A company representative took the questions but did not respond with answers after subsequent phone calls and an e-mail.

The company installed and operates the cameras under a contract with the city. It sends video of instances that appear to be violations to the Lakeland Police Department, which reviews the video and decides whether citations should be issued.

The company is responsible for mailing citations and collecting the money. The city operates a review process through which vehicle owners can appeal.

As of Dec. 2, 16,619 citations had been issued since the cameras started being used June 1.

The city, which owns 1,116 vehicles, has received two citations. One was for a Lakeland police car and one was for a Lakeland Fire Department vehicle, city spokesman Kevin Cook said. The drivers cited were required to pay their own fines.

Six other citations involved Lakeland police cars answering emergency calls, and those were dismissed.

Cook said he doesn't think the two citations issued to city vehicles - far less than 1 percent of the total - is suspicious.

"To me, it doesn't seem weird because we instill in our employees that there are cameras out there and you will pay for it if you get caught," he said. "It doesn't take much to find that there have been 150 stories in the newspaper and on the news that they are out here."

The Ledger attempted for months to get video from the intersection where the reporter and photographers observed what appeared to be violations by city vehicles.

Numerous public records requests in August and September were initially denied by ATS, the camera company. ATS then charged The Ledger $250 for a copy of video footage it said was taken between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. on each of the two days requested, July 31 and Aug. 4.

The video received raised more questions than it answered.

"There were no violations captured on 7/31/09 at N. Florida Ave.," Mary Jo Hopper, ATS's client services liaison, wrote to The Ledger in October. As a result, no video footage was sent by the camera to ATS. Cameras are programmed to send footage only if it includes possible violations, according to ATS.

In the August incident, ATS sent a CD that compiled 124 video clips recorded throughout the day and forwarded by the camera to the company for review.

The cameras capture 12-second video clips if sensors detect what are suspected to be violations. Those clips are sent to ATS for a first review before they are forwarded to the city for the final say.

But the clips received by The Ledger contained no time or date stamps to show what day or time the footage was shot, and the video showed both day and night scenes, which does not match The Ledger's records request.

The video also showed multiple video clips of the same infraction recorded at different time intervals.

The company has provided no explanation of the footage or the apparent differences between what was requested and what was received.

Also, The Ledger asked an ATS spokesperson whether it was unusual for such a low number of citations to be issued to city vehicles.

The company did not respond to that question or to requests for numbers of city vehicles cited in other cities where it has cameras.

Lakeland Mayor Buddy Fletcher and others at the city have been adamant in saying the cameras were installed to improve safety and not to generate money.

Drivers have been cited for nearly $2.1 million in red light violations as of Wednesday, and the city had collected $1.2 million in violations, Cook said.

The city has not spent any of the money collected. It sits in a bank account until two lawsuits against the city and the camera company have been resolved, he said.

City Manager Doug Thomas recently said money from red light cameras will go, at least in part, to help offset potential budget cuts at the Police Department.

The lawsuits filed against the city allege the cameras violate state traffic laws and laws governing how courts operate.

More county-owned than city-owned vehicles have been cited using the cameras. Eight citations have gone to the Polk County Sheriff's Office and three to county vehicles from other departments.

County employees are required to pay their own fines.

The Sheriff's Office requires that and adds stricter guidelines, said Chief Gary Hester, including a letter of guidance put into personnel files.

Of the sheriff's employees cited, six were detectives, one a court process server and one a worker driving an animal control vehicle, he said. One of the detectives, who was cited in September, received the notification too late, which voided the fine under the city's ordinance.

But that didn't mean the detective didn't have to pay up. Hester gave the detective two options: Give $125 to a charity or be suspended without pay for $125 of time. The detective opted for the donation.

"The whole purpose was equal discipline," Hester said. "I don't want that person to slide because of a technicality.

"It's dangerous to run red lights. And it's dangerous for cops to run red lights."

Source

2009-12-12T10:16:00.000-08:00

Extreme scootering....

2009-12-12T10:10:00.000-08:00

Record industry faces liability over `infringement'

Chet Baker was a leading jazz musician in the 1950s, playing trumpet and providing vocals. Baker died in 1988, yet he is about to add a new claim to fame as the lead plaintiff in possibly the largest copyright infringement case in Canadian history. His estate, which still owns the copyright in more than 50 of his works, is part of a massive class-action lawsuit that has been underway for the past year.

The infringer has effectively already admitted owing at least $50 million and the full claim could exceed $6 billion. If the dollars don't shock, the target of the lawsuit undoubtedly will: The defendants in the case are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada, the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

The CRIA members were hit with the lawsuit in October 2008 after artists decided to turn to the courts following decades of frustration with the rampant infringement.

The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences.

Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list," which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee.

Over the years, the size of the pending list has grown dramatically, now containing more than 300,000 songs.

From Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen, the artists waiting for payment are far from obscure, as thousands of Canadian and foreign artists have seen their copyrights used without permission and payment.

It is difficult to understand why the industry has been so reluctant to pay its bills. Some works may be in the public domain or belong to a copyright owner difficult to ascertain or locate, yet the likes of Sarah McLachlan, Bruce Cockburn, Sloan, or the Watchmen are not hidden from view.

The more likely reason is that the record labels have had little motivation to pay up. As the balance has grown, David Basskin, the president and CEO of the Canadian Musical Reproduction Rights Agency Ltd., notes in his affidavit that "the record labels have devoted insufficient resources for identifying and paying the owners of musical works on the pending lists." The CRIA members now face the prospect of far greater liability.

The class action seeks the option of statutory damages for each infringement. At $20,000 per infringement, potential liability exceeds $6 billion.

These numbers may sound outrageous, yet they are based on the same rules that led the recording industry to claim a single file sharer is liable for millions in damages.

After years of claiming Canadian consumers disrespect copyright, the irony of having the recording industry face a massive lawsuit will not be lost on anyone, least of all the artists still waiting to be paid. Indeed, they are also seeking punitive damages, arguing "the conduct of the defendant record companies is aggravated by their strict and unremitting approach to the enforcement of their copyright interests against consumers."

Source

2009-12-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

The REAL king of the jungle

Here's a jungle trial the pampered celebs on I'm A Celebrity . . . Get Me Out Of Here might want to try. Leave Ant and Dec behind and go to one of the most remote locations on earth, somewhere it would take a rescue team a good week to reach you - should you be able to contact them.

Then smash your satnav and throw away all your food apart from 2lb of salt. Now walk for two months, surviving on no more than your wits and what you can forage from the dried-out land and parched riverbeds. No takers? Thought not.

While the Z-listers of I'm A Celeb have been whining away in their cosy jungle camp, protected from the sun and rain by canopies the cameras do not show - with a medic nearby should one of the poor darlings break a fingernail - one man has been doing it for real.

He hasn't been in a national park like the celebs, but in the Amazon - the land of the pit viper and the jaguar, the narco-terrorist and the piranha. There, the bush tucker is you.

Former British Army captain Ed Stafford, 33, is well on the way to becoming the first man in history to walk from the source of the Amazon in the mountains of Peru to its mouth in Brazil. And he's not doing it in the hope of achieving notoriety, nor is he being paid handsomely for his efforts. No, he's doing it out of a sense of adventure - for the sheer derring-do.

He is 612 days in - and looking to finish next August. If he achieves his aim, it will be a stupendous achievement, right up there with Hillary's ascent of Everest and the conquerors of the poles.

The challenges he faces are monumental. So monumental, in fact, that Arctic explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes has written to Ed to warn him that the stage in front of him - the deep Brazilian jungle - will be 'difficult'. You can take it that this is something of an understatement, given that it comes from a man who once sawed off his own fingers after they became frostbitten.

Ironically - for someone taking on such a serious expedition - Ed's nickname would not be out of place on I'm A Celebrity. In the Army he was known as 'Spice Girl', a moniker earned when he attended the officers' mess one day in a pair of jeans that were considered 'too trendy'.

He doesn't look much like a Spice Girl. In fact, he looks pretty much as you'd expect - nay, hope - him to be: 6ft 1in, lean as a whippet and with a look of dogged determination in his eye. The sort that made the Zulus think twice at Rorke's Drift.

His average day would kill most people. Up at dawn, he walks for around eight hours, until 3pm. At this stage of the journey he will be lucky to have covered 7km in that time. This is jungle, real jungle - and you pay for every step with willsapping swings of the machete.

It's like clearing the thickest hedge you could imagine for a whole working day. Only this hedge is filled with razor grass - which is pretty much as the name implies, grass that will cut exposed flesh to ribbons - huge thorns and spines on trees sharp enough to go straight through a carelessly placed hand, deadly snakes, poisonous

spiders and foot-long centipedes so venomous that they can blister your skin with a touch. Oh, and the odd man-eating big cat. Specifically, jaguars.

It's 40 degrees in the shade, 100 per cent humidity - and water is scarce because this is the dry season. In some places, it's impossible to walk close to the river - and he might be a jungle mile inland. If he's lucky, he will find a stream or plants he can cut to drink from. If not, he goes thirsty.

Once he makes camp, he gathers firewood and - if there's water - he washes. Sometimes he might catch a few spiny piranhas to eat. But if he doesn't, he goes hungry. If you offered him one of the celebs' witchetty grubs, he'd regard it as a rare treat.

Has he been near death? Regularly. Sometimes daily. Only last week he was cutting his way through the jungle when he saw a movement. It was a deadly pit viper, ready to strike. Ed backed off. Luckily, so did the snake.

At dusk, he climbs into a hammock surrounded by mosquito nets. It's a sanctuary where he can read, write and try to sleep, although he's compelled to take sleeping pills, despite his exhaustion; the deafening noise of the jungle, the buzzing insects and the cries of monkeys, birds and animals - as well as the sauna-like temperatures - mean he would have no hope of rest otherwise.

Should he want to go to the loo at night, then he can tread only in the immediate area of his tiny camp. When the sun goes down, the jungle teems with deadly poisonous snakes. He has lived like this day after day, night after night, for nearly two years. And it will continue for at least another eight months.

I have a great appreciation of what Ed is facing, as last year I met him for part of his walk through the Peruvian stretch of the jungle.

In my time with him I was nearly swept away by a raging river, caught an all-over rash that made me look as though I'd been grilled, had one pair of shoes disintegrate on my feet, narrowly avoided being bitten by a snake, even more narrowly avoided sitting on a Poison Dart Frog, got lost, was accused by suspicious locals of trying to steal children's eyes and, oh yes, was taken hostage by 20 shotgunwielding villagers.

I also reached the point of physical collapse and my left knee has never been the same since. How long was I with Ed in the jungle? Three days. And that was the easy bit.

He and his guides are the fittest men I've ever met. I thought I was no slouch until I walked with them. I exercise hard three times a week and walk an average of 15 miles on a Saturday with the dog on the Sussex Downs.

But it's no preparation at all. By the end of a 12-hour slog on my third day, I was literally screaming in pain as we drove ourselves forward on a logging track of sucking mud to make a village before nightfall.

That was when we were taken prisoner. We'd come into a large village, but the guides went in first and came out to warn us that the chief was drunk.

We had no other options, so we went in anyway.

The chief's reception was far from welcoming and he threatened to throw us into the jungle in nothing more than the clothes we stood up in. Which was when the armed men appeared.

At the end of the hardest exercise I'd ever done in my life - 12 hours of crawling, climbing and chasing through the sodden jungle - here I was bargaining in my appalling Spanish for my life. Or rather, Ed was bargaining for me - in his rather better version of the language.

After a lot of discussion, we were marched to a shack and told not to move. Our fate would be decided by morning.

Luckily, Ed took control of the situation and approached the gunmen with some packets of cigarettes. After 20 minutes chatting to him - without the benefit of the chief's intervention - they were laughing and joking like old friends.

Ed then explained how sometimes the locals put on an act of aggression as a bargaining position to get money out of you. How do you know when they're serious, though?

'You don't,' he said with a shrug. He obviously made some impression because the next morning the chief made himself scarce while the rest of the village waved us away.

Ed seems a natural-born leader - and the guides told me they thought he was a very tough guy. That, from people raised in unimaginable poverty, who face more challenges in a day than most of us do in a lifetime, is some compliment. One of them has stayed with him all the way from Peru into Brazil - and is still travelling with him now.

Every day brings a new challenge. In the next 'difficult' bit, Ed explains, there will be no villagers to negotiate with, no gunmen to talk round, but water is a constant problem - either too little of it or, when the rains come, too much.

Food? He has £4 to his name after his recession-hit sponsors withdrew. When he reaches a town, he can't afford provisions to take with him into the jungle. He is already starving and expects to starve more. He was 14st 7lb when he started. The last time he weighed himself in a jungle town he had lost two stone - but he knows he has lost more since then.

His satnav is broken and even if he had enough money for guides, he wouldn't be able to get them anyway for this section of his expedition.

The locals are too scared of jaguars

to go into the jungle. The big cats find pickings lean in the dry season and a juicy explorer would be a welcome addition to their diet. Ed is, of course, unarmed. A gun might give protection from the wildlife, but it would guarantee hostility from the people.

'I am scared of the next part,' he tells me via satellite link. 'We've already been on the point of collapse through malnutrition and dehydration- - and it looks like we're in for much more of the same.'

When Ed says he's scared, you know its something worth being scared about. After all, this is someone who has worked as a security consultant in Afghanistan, where he was once detailed to guard a polling station.

Unfortunately, the militia weren't too keen on the election taking place and the station was overrun by 500 screaming tribesmen firing assault rifles into the air.

Ed had to barricade himself and his men in a storeroom while the place was ransacked. He described that as 'a bit of a laugh', so you can imagine that it takes quite a bit to frighten him.

Is the jungle as hard as Afghanistan? Totally different, he says. 'Afghanistan gave me nightmares for weeks afterwards. The jungle I love. Still, recently I've had nightmares about the bombs going off again. It's my default position when I get tired.'

He admits, too, that the mental demands are taking their toll. Two years' dependency on Nytol sleeping pills isn't doing his body any good - and the sheer length of the trip would test anyone's resolve.

When the rainy season finally arrives, he will be pushed inland, as

the river floods to miles wide. He will come into contact with remote tribes who are living the same way they did when Portuguese colonists arrived.

In Peru he encountered people who had never seen a white man. Here he may meet those who have never even heard of one. It's Ed and his guide with that bag of salt (for preserving fish) versus the most hostile territory on earth.

His only back-up is his friends and family. His mother is looking to sell her house to support him. That's how much she believes in what he's doing.

The trip is a pure challenge. There's no artificial degree of difficulty to it; he's not trying to be the first man up Everest in a gorilla suit playing a banjo - he's trying to walk the Amazon, the cauldron of heat, disease and hostility.

It's something that would have appealed to the Victorians in the great age of British exploration; if Ed comes out alive he will deserve a place alongside Scott, Livingstone and Shackleton - something he's very proud of.

'It's good to stand in the long and distinguished line of British nutters who think its clever to put themselves through hell to achieve something that no one else ever has,' he says.

Will he succeed? Probably. After all, he's proved that running out of funds won't stop him, and physical hardship won't beat him.

If the Amazon wants to remain unconquered then it's going to have to kill Ed Stafford first - something it seems more than prepared to try.

He'll finish in August, if things go smoothly. My guess is that they won't. If Ed doesn't get home before next Christmas, he will at least have one consolation - he'll have missed the next series of I'm A Celebrity. . .

Source

2009-12-12T09:57:00.000-08:00

The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers

2;43

2009-12-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

Time to make the donuts....

2009-12-12T09:51:00.000-08:00

22 million horsepower.

NASA and industry partners lit up the Utah sky on Sept. 10, 2009, with the initial full scale, full-duration test firing of the first motor for the Ares I rocket. ATK Space Systems conducted the successful stationary firing of the five-segment solid development motor 1, or DM-1. ATK Space Systems, a division of Alliant Techsystems of Brigham City, Utah, is the prime contractor for the Ares I first stage. Engineers will use the measurements gathered from the test to evaluate thrust, roll control, acoustics and motor vibrations. This data will provide valuable information as NASA develops the Ares I and Ares V vehicles. Another ground test is planned for summer 2010.

Skip to ~1;36 if you're impatient like me.

2009-12-12T09:50:00.000-08:00

Might want to rethink your ad campaign.

2009-12-12T09:43:00.000-08:00

Excellent ride video from killboy.com....

Following my BFF through the Dragon from killboy on Vimeo.

2009-11-29T02:49:00.000-08:00

Shark Nose Massage 1;16...

2009-11-29T02:41:00.000-08:00

Algae and Light Help Injured Mice Walk Again

In the summer of 2007, a team of Stanford graduate students dropped a mouse into a plastic basin. The mouse sniffed the floor curiously. It didn’t seem to care that a fiber-optic cable was threaded through its skull. Nor did it seem to mind that the right half of its motor cortex had been reprogrammed.

One of the students flipped a switch and intense blue light shone through the cable into the mouse’s brain, illuminating it with an eerie glow. Instantly, the mouse began running in counterclockwise circles as though hell-bent on winning a murine Olympics.

Then the light went off, and the mouse stopped. Sniffed. Stood up on its hind legs and looked directly at the students as if to ask, “Why the hell did I just do that?” And the students whooped and cheered like this was the most important thing they’d ever seen.

Because it was the most important thing they’d ever seen. They’d shown that a beam of light could control brain activity with great precision. The mouse didn’t lose its memory, have a seizure, or die. It ran in a circle. Specifically, a counterclockwise circle.
See the numbers.

See the numbers.

Precision, that was the coup. Drugs and implanted electrodes can influence the brain, but they are terribly imprecise: Drugs flood the brain and affect many types of neurons indiscriminately. Electrodes activate every neuron around them.

This is bad for researchers, because practically every square millimeter of the brain contains a mess of different kinds of neurons, each specialized for a particular task. Drugs and electricity set off cascades of unwanted neural activity. Side effects.

It’s bad for patients, too. Cochlear implants, which let the deaf hear by shocking the auditory nerves, produce fuzzy sound because the electricity spreads beyond the neurons it’s aimed at. Deep brain stimulators for Parkinson’s patients allow them to walk and speak but may cause seizures and muscle weakness. Electroshock can help depression but often results in memory loss.

In 1979, Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, lamented the blunderbuss nature of existing technologies. What was needed, he wrote in Scientific American, was a way to control neurons of only one cell type in one specific location. Which, nearly 30 years later, was precisely what these students had achieved.

But how could they be using light? Neurons don’t respond to light any more than muscles do. The idea sounds as crazy as trying to jump-start a car with a flashlight. The secret is that the mouse’s neurons weren’t normal. New genes had been inserted into them — genes from plants, which do respond to light, and the new genes were making the neurons behave in planty ways.

Genes are just instructions, of course. By themselves they don’t do anything, just as the instructions for your Ikea desk don’t make it leap together. But genes direct the assembly of proteins, and proteins make things happen. The weird new plant proteins in this mouse’s brain were sensitive to light, and they were making the neurons fire.

The counterclockwise-running mouse was something new — a triple fusion of animal, plant, and technology — and the students knew it was a harbinger of unprecedentedly powerful ways to alter the brain. For curing diseases, to begin with, but also for understanding how the brain interacts with the body. And ultimately for fusing human and machine.

The story of this technology starts with a most unlikely creature: pond scum. In the early 1990s, a German biologist named Peter Hegemann was working with a single-celled bug called Chlamydomonas, or, less technically, algae. Under a microscope, the cell looks like a little football with a tail. When the organism is exposed to light, its tail wags madly, moving the cell forward.

Hegemann wanted to know how this single cell, with no eye or brain, responded to light. How did it “see”? What made it “act”?

Answers slowly emerged: Hegemann and his colleagues found that part of the cell’s membrane is packed with coiled-up proteins. They theorized that when a photon hits one of those proteins, the molecule uncoils, creating a tiny pore in the membrane. Charged ions flow across the membrane, which makes the cell’s flagella move. And the whole shebang swims forward.

This was good, solid cell research. Fascinating little machines! But completely useless fascinating little machines. It wasn’t until the end of the decade that scientists figured out how they might be put to use.

In 1999, Roger Tsien, a biologist at UC San Diego, was heeding Crick’s call for better ways to trigger neurons. When he read about Hegemann’s work with Chlamydomonas, he wondered: Could that photosensitivity somehow be imported into neural cells? To do that, it would be necessary to figure out which gene made the light-sensitive protein in the Chlamydomonas cell wall. Then the gene could be inserted into neurons so that, Tsien hoped, they too would fire in response to light.

Now, using light to make neurons fire wouldn’t be a huge deal; electricity could do that. But the exciting part was that a gene could be designed to affect only specific kinds of neurons. Scientists can mark a gene with a “promoter” — a cell-specific piece of DNA that controls whether a gene is used.

Here’s what they do: Insert the gene (plus promoter) into a group of viral particles and inject them into the brain. The viruses infect a cubic millimeter or two of tissue. That is to say, they insert the new gene into every neuron in that area, indiscriminately. But because of the promoter, the gene will only turn on in one type of neuron. All the other neurons will ignore it. Imagine you wanted only the lefty in an outfield to catch. How would you do that? Distribute left-handed gloves to all the players. The righties would just stand there, fidgeting and calling their agents. The lefty would spring into action. Just as the lefty is “tagged” by his ability to use the glove, a neuron is “tagged” by its ability to use the gene. Bye-bye side effects: Researchers would be able to stimulate one kind of neuron at a time.

It was a dazzling idea. Tsien wrote to Hegemann asking for the Chlamydomonas light-sensitivity gene. Hegemann wasn’t sure which one it was, so he sent two possibilities. Tsien and his graduate students duly inserted both into cultured neurons. But when exposed to light, the neurons did nothing at all. Tsien extracted two more genes from the algae and tried one of them, but that didn’t work either. “After three strikes, you have to admit that you’re out and try something else,” Tsien says. So he moved on to another line of research and put the fourth gene back into the lab refrigerator, unexamined.

Tsien may have put his work on ice, but Hegemann and his colleagues continued searching; two years later, they inserted a gene into a frog egg and shone light on it. Voilè0! The egg responded with a flow of current.

When Tsien read their paper, he recognized the gene immediately. It was, of course, the one he’d put away. “Our error was not to put it in the fridge,” Tsien says wryly, “but rather to fail to take it back out.” That’s science, though: “You win some, you lose some.” (And he did end up winning some. For his new area of research, using genes to make cells glow by cell type, he won a Nobel Prize in 2008.)

Hegemann’s team named the gene Channelrhodopsin-1. In 2003, they published a bold proposal about its variant, Channelrhodopsin-2: It “may be used to depolarize [activate] animal cells … simply by illumination.” Now someone had to find a practical use for this discovery.

Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist at Stanford, has seen many people with horrific brain diseases. But there are two patients, in particular, that drive his work. He once treated a bright college student ravaged by depression who had grown terrified by its assault on his mind. The other patient was frozen by Parkinson’s. The disease had slowly destroyed the motor control areas of her brain until she was unable to walk, smile, or eat. “I couldn’t save either of these patients,” Deisseroth says. “My inability to treat them, despite our best efforts, has stayed with me.”

Deisseroth, a compact man in his late thirties, is also a neuroscientist. He holds a psych clinic one day a week but spends the rest of his time running a lab. In 2003, he read Hegemann’s paper and asked himself the same thing that Tsien had back in 1999: Could the brain’s misbehaving cells be tagged genetically and controlled with light?

He took on several graduate students to research this, including Feng Zhang and Ed Boyden. Zhang had just graduated from Harvard. He is precisely spoken, his lean sentences tinged with a Boston accent overlaid on a Mandarin one. Boyden, on the other hand, talks so fast he swallows his words, as if his brain were perpetually outracing his mouth. He’s a man in a hurry. He had graduated from MIT at age 19 with a thesis on quantum computation and was pursuing his doctorate in neuroscience.

In 2005, Zhang and Boyden repeated Tsien’s experiment. This time, though, they had the right gene. They inserted it into a culture of neural tissue on a glass slide and poked a tiny electrode into one of the neurons so they would know when it fired. Then they aimed blue light at it. (Channelrhodopsin reacts most strongly to light at 480 nanometers on the spectrum, i.e., blue.)

Their apparatus looked like a microscope that spent its off-hours at the gym. It had a camera screwed into the eyepiece, a laser aimed at the slide, and big boxes of circuitry for amplifying the tiny current they hoped to see. If the cell fired, a huge in-your-face spike would appear on a screen. And that’s exactly what happened. With every flash, another spike marched across the whiteness.

They now had an On switch for neurons. But in the brain, it’s as important to inhibit neurons as it is to make them fire. As with computers, 0 is as crucial as 1; they needed an Off switch, too. When Boyden finished his PhD, he took an appointment at MIT and began hunting for it. He found there was a bacterial gene, halorhodopsin, that had properties suggesting it could do the opposite of channelrhodopsin. In 2006, Boyden inserted halorhodopsin into neurons and exposed them to yellow light. They stopped firing. Beautiful.

Over at Stanford, Deisseroth’s team was making the same discovery, and soon they were stopping worms in their tracks with yellow light. Other labs were already making flies leap into the air when exposed to blue light. And on The Tonight Show, Jay Leno had even joked about the technology with a clip in which he pretended to steer a “remote control” fly into George W. Bush’s mouth. The research was mushrooming, and dozens of labs were calling Deisseroth to ask for the genes. The new field was dubbed optogenetics: optical stimulation plus genetic engineering.

But neurons in petri dishes and in bugs were comparatively simple. Would optogenetics work in the staggeringly complex tangle of a mammalian brain? And could it be used to cure real brain illnesses?

By summer 2007, Deisseroth’s group had answered the first question with their counterclockwise mouse. They put the channelrhodopsin gene into the mouse’s right anterior motor cortex, which controls the left side of the body. When the light went on, the little guy went left.

Deisseroth immediately put his lab to work figuring out what part of the brain needed to be stimulated to cure Parkinson’s. Optogenetics was the ideal tool because it let researchers test various types of neurons to find which one would make legs move again, hands grasp again, faces smile again.

But test after test failed. “This was a discouraging time,” Deisseroth says. “The project was almost abandoned, because we had difficulty showing any therapeutic result.”

Many experts had thought the cure was to stimulate certain kinds of cells within the subthalamic nucleus, which coordinates motion. But when they tried that, it had no effect whatsoever. Then two of Deisseroth’s grad students began experimenting with a dark-horse idea. They stimulated neurons near the surface of the brain that send signals into the subthalamic nucleus — a much harder approach because it meant working at one remove. It was as if, instead of using scissors yourself, you had to guide someone else’s hands to make the cuts.

Their idea worked. The mice walked. In their paper, published in April 2009, they wrote that the “effects were not subtle; indeed, in nearly every case these severely parkinsonian animals were restored to behavior indistinguishable from normal.”

Over at MIT, Boyden was asking the obvious question: Would this work on people? But imagine saying to a patient, “We’re going to genetically alter your brain by injecting it with viruses that carry genes taken from pond scum, and then we’re going to insert light sources into your skull.” He was going to need some persuasive safety data first.

That same summer, Boyden and his assistants began working with rhesus monkeys, whose brains are relatively similar to humans’. He was looking to see whether the primates were harmed by the technique. They triggered the neurons of one particular monkey for several minutes every few weeks for nine months. In the end, the animal was just fine.

The next step was creating a device that didn’t require threading cables through the skull. One of Deisseroth’s colleagues designed a paddle about one-third the length of a popsicle stick. It has four LEDs: two blue ones to make neurons fire and two yellow ones to stop them. Attached to the paddle is a little box that provides power and instructions. The paddle is implanted on the surface of the brain, on top of the motor control area. The lights are bright enough to illuminate a fairly large volume of tissue, so the placement doesn’t have to be exact. The light-sensitizing genes are injected into the affected tissue beforehand. It’s a far easier surgery than deep brain electrical stimulation, and, if it works, a far more precise treatment. Researchers at Stanford are currently testing the device on primates. If all goes well, they will seek FDA approval for experiments in humans.

Treating Parkinson’s and other brain diseases could be just the beginning. Optogenetics has amazing potential, not just for sending information into the brain but also for extracting it. And it turns out that Tsien’s Nobel-winning work — the research he took up when he abandoned the hunt for channelrhodopsin — is the key to doing this. By injecting mice neurons with yet another gene, one that makes cells glow green when they fire, researchers are monitoring neural activity through the same fiber-optic cable that delivers the light. The cable becomes a lens. It makes it possible to “write” to an area of the brain and “read” from it at the same time: two-way traffic.

Why is two-way traffic a big deal? Existing neural technologies are strictly one-way. Motor implants let paralyzed people operate computers and physical objects but are incapable of giving feedback to the brain. They are output-only devices. Conversely, cochlear implants for the deaf are input-only. They send data to the auditory nerve but have no way of picking up the brain’s response to the ear to modulate sound.

No matter how good they get, one-way prostheses can’t close the loop. In theory, two-way optogenetic traffic could lead to human-machine fusions in which the brain truly interacts with the machine, rather than only giving or only accepting orders. It could be used, for instance, to let the brain send movement commands to a prosthetic arm; in return, the arm’s sensors would gather information and send it back. Blue and yellow LEDs would flash on and off inside genetically altered somatosensory regions of the cortex to give the user sensations of weight, temperature, and texture. The limb would feel like a real arm. Of course, this kind of cyborg technology is not exactly around the corner. But it has suddenly leapt from the realm of wild fantasy to concrete possibility.

And it all began with pond scum.

Source

2009-11-29T02:36:00.000-08:00

Never ever give parking services back their wheel lock...or you're a terrorist!!!

Purdue student arrested in connection with suspicious package

Purdue police have arrested a student in connection with a suspicious package found Thursday morning in the university's Visitor Information Center.

Roy C. Sun, 21, a senior in the College of Engineering from Andover, Mass., faces preliminary charges of terroristic mischief and possession of stolen property.

An employee at the center, 504 Northwestern Ave., which also houses Parking Services, alerted police at about 7:50 a.m. about a suspicious box left in a hallway by three college-age men. Police evacuated about 10 people from the building and used a portable X-ray machine to identify the box's contents. The box contained a wheel look, a Purdue parking ticket and $20, Detective Sgt. Matt Rosenbarger said. People were allowed back into the building at about 9 a.m.

Purdue Parking Services had written the ticket and placed the wheel lock on Sun's vehicle the previous day because the car allegedly displayed a parking permit that did not belong to him.

Rosenbarger said terroristic mischief is when a person knowingly or intentionally places a device with the intent to cause a reasonable person to believe that it is a weapon of mass destruction. In this case, the act would be a Class C felony, punishable by a maximum of eight years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Possession of stolen property is a Class D felony, which is punishable by up to three years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000.

Source

2009-11-29T02:29:00.000-08:00

2009-11-29T02:28:00.001-08:00

Replicating the clasic Hot Wheels set, Fifth Gear TV attempts to perform a full 360 degree loop in a full size car. 4;56

2009-11-29T02:27:00.000-08:00

2009-11-29T02:23:00.000-08:00

Car part art....

2009-11-22T12:31:00.000-08:00

Creepy....

Boston Dynamics' Petman Prototype - somebody's been watching Star Wars a few too many times....

2009-11-22T12:30:00.000-08:00

2009-11-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world

Last week it was revealed that 54 oil tankers are anchored off the coast of Britain, refusing to unload their fuel until prices have risen.

But that is not the only scandal in the shipping world. Today award-winning science writer Fred Pearce – environmental consultant to New Scientist and author of Confessions Of An Eco Sinner – reveals that the super-ships that keep the West in everything from Christmas gifts to computers pump out killer chemicals linked to thousands of deaths because of the filthy fuel they use.

We've all noticed it. The filthy black smoke kicked out by funnels on cross-Channel ferries, cruise liners, container ships, oil tankers and even tugboats.

It looks foul, and leaves a brown haze across ports and shipping lanes. But what hasn’t been clear until now is that it is also a major killer, probably causing thousands of deaths in Britain alone.

As ships get bigger, the pollution is getting worse. The most staggering statistic of all is that just 16 of the world’s largest ships can produce as much lung-clogging sulphur pollution as all the world’s cars.

Because of their colossal engines, each as heavy as a small ship, these super-vessels use as much fuel as small power stations.

But, unlike power stations or cars, they can burn the cheapest, filthiest, high-sulphur fuel: the thick residues left behind in refineries after the lighter liquids have been taken. The stuff nobody on land is allowed to use.

Thanks to decisions taken in London by the body that polices world shipping, this pollution could kill as many as a million more people in the coming decade – even though a simple change in the rules could stop it.

There are now an estimated 100,000 ships on the seas, and the fleet is growing fast as goods are ferried in vast quantities from Asian industrial powerhouses to consumers in Europe and North America.

The recession has barely dented the trade. This Christmas, most of our presents will have come by super-ship from the Far East; ships such as the Emma Maersk and her seven sisters Evelyn, Eugen, Estelle, Ebba, Eleonora, Elly and Edith Maersk.

Each is a quarter of a mile long and can carry up to 14,000 full-size containers on their regular routes from China to Europe.

Emma – dubbed SS Santa by the media – brought Christmas presents to Europe in October and is now en route from Algeciras in Spain to Yantian in southern China, carrying containers full of our waste paper, plastic and electronics for recycling.

But it burns marine heavy fuel, or ‘bunker fuel’, which leaves behind a trail of potentially lethal chemicals: sulphur and smoke that have been linked to breathing problems, inflammation, cancer and heart disease.

James Corbett, of the University of Delaware, is an authority on ship emissions. He calculates a worldwide death toll of about 64,000 a year, of which 27,000 are in Europe. Britain is one of the worst-hit countries, with about 2,000 deaths from funnel fumes. Corbett predicts the global figure will rise to 87,000 deaths a year by 2012.

Part of the blame for this international scandal lies close to home.

In London, on the south bank of the Thames looking across at the Houses of Parliament, is the International Maritime Organisation, the UN body that polices the world’s shipping.

For decades, the IMO has rebuffed calls to clean up ship pollution. As a result, while it has long since been illegal to belch black, sulphur-laden smoke from power-station chimneys or lorry exhausts, shipping has kept its licence to pollute.

For 31 years, the IMO has operated a policy agreed by the 169 governments that make up the organisation which allows most ships to burn bunker fuel.

Christian Eyde Moller, boss of the DK shipping company in Rotterdam, recently described this as ‘just waste oil, basically what is left over after all the cleaner fuels have been extracted from crude oil. It’s tar, the same as asphalt. It’s the cheapest and dirtiest fuel in the world’.

Bunker fuel is also thick with sulphur. IMO rules allow ships to burn fuel containing up to 4.5 per cent sulphur. That is 4,500 times more than is allowed in car fuel in
the European Union. The sulphur comes out of ship funnels as tiny particles, and it is these that get deep into lungs.

Thanks to the IMO’s rules, the largest ships can each emit as much as 5,000 tons of sulphur in a year – the same as 50million typical cars, each emitting an average of 100 grams of sulphur a year.

With an estimated 800million cars driving around the planet, that means 16 super-ships can emit as much sulphur as the world fleet of cars.

A year ago, the IMO belatedly decided to clean up its act. It said shipping fuel should not contain more than 3.5 per cent sulphur by 2012 and eventually must come down to 0.5 per cent. This lower figure could halve the deaths, says Corbett.

It should not be hard to do. There is no reason ship engines cannot run on clean fuel, like cars. But, away from a handful of low-sulphur zones, including the English Channel and North Sea, the IMO gave shipping lines a staggering 12 years to make the switch. And, even then, it will depend on a final ‘feasibility review’ in 2018.

In the meantime, according to Corbett’s figures, nearly one million more people will die.

Smoke and sulphur are not the only threats from ships’ funnels. Every year they are also belching out almost one billion tons of carbon dioxide. Ships are as big a contributor to global warming as aircraft – but have had much less attention from environmentalists.

Both international shipping and aviation are exempt from the Kyoto Protocol rules on cutting carbon emissions. But green pressure is having its effect on airlines. Ahead of next month’s Copenhagen climate talks, airlines have promised to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050.

But shipping companies are keeping their heads down. A meeting of the IMO in July threw out proposals from the British Chamber of Shipping, among others, to set up a
carbon-trading scheme to encourage emissions reductions.

Amazingly, they pleaded poverty. Two-thirds of the world’s ships are registered in developing countries such as Panama. These are just flags of convenience, to evade tougher rules on safety and pay for sailors.

But at the IMO, governments successfully argued that ships from developing countries should not have to cut carbon emissions. IMO secretary-general Efthimios Mitropoulos insisted: ‘We are heavily and consistently engaged in the fight to protect and preserve our environment.’ Yet without limits, carbon emissions from shipping could triple by 2050.

The failure brought calls for the IMO to be stripped of its powers to control the world’s ships. Colin Whybrow, of Greenwave, a British charity set up to campaign for cleaner shipping, says: ‘The IMO is drinking in the last-chance saloon.’

Burning low-sulphur fuel won’t cut carbon emissions from ships. But there are other ways. More efficient engines could reduce emissions by 30 per cent, according to British marine consultant Robin Meech.

Cutting speed could reduce emissions by as much again. And there are even wackier ways, such as putting up giant kites to harness the wind as in the days of sailing ships.

However you look at it, the super-ships are rogues on the high seas, operating under pollution standards long since banished on land; warming the planet and killing its inhabitants. Santa’s sleigh, they are not.

Robert Pedersen, of Maersk, said: ‘The sulphur content varies according to where you get your fuel. Our average sulphur content is, I believe, 2.5 per cent. It’s rather rare you get anything close to 4.5 per cent.’ He added that ‘the sulphur issue is one for the whole industry’ and that there would be a ‘huge cost implication’ to switch to cleaner fuel.

2009-11-17T11:28:00.000-08:00

Got about 16 minutes to waste? Here you go..... Random Oddness for the month.

Charlie the Unicorn - 3;45

Charlie the Unicorn 2 - 6;01

Charlie the Unicorn 3 - 5;58

2009-11-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Whisky on (Antarctic) ice

Explorer Ernest Shackleton loved his Scotch whisky. And he left a stash at the bottom of the world.

CAPE ROYDS, Antarctica — This spit of black volcanic rock that juts out along the coast of Antarctica is an inhospitable place. Temperatures drop below -50 Fahrenheit and high winds cause blinding snowstorms. The only neighbors are a colony of penguins that squawk incessantly and leave a pungent scent in their wake.

But if you happen upon the small wooden hut that sits at Cape Royds and wriggle yourself underneath, you'll find a surprise stashed in the foot and a half of space beneath the floorboards. Tucked in the shadows and frozen to the ground are two cases of Scotch whisky left behind 100 years ago by Sir Ernest Shackleton after a failed attempt at the South Pole.

Conservators discovered the wooden cases in January 2006. They were unable to dislodge the crates, but are going in with special tools in January during the Antarctic summer to try to retrieve them. An international treaty dictates that the crates, and any intact bottles that are inside, remain in Antarctica unless they need to be taken off the continent for conservation reasons. The whisky's condition after a century of freezing and thawing is unknown.

Polar explorers of that era relied on their alcohol of choice to help them and their crews through the long Antarctic nights and insomnia-inducing days. And Shackleton knew a thing or two about being well prepared for an adventure. On a later trip to the continent he kept all 28 members of his crew alive during 15 harrowing months after their ship got marooned in and then slowly devoured by ice. So it's no surprise that he brought 25 crates of Scotch with him when he set off on an expedition to the South Pole in 1907.

The earlier trip didn't go well, either. Shackleton turned around 97 miles short of his destination, telling his wife, "I thought you’d rather have a live donkey than a dead lion." When the ship arrived in 1909 to pick the men up, they left their supplies behind in their hut, including reindeer sleeping bags, tins of boiled mutton and bottled gooseberries. And, as we now know, they also abandoned two cases of Charles Mackinlay & Co. whisky.

Al Fastier is a program manager in New Zealand with Antarctic Heritage Trust, the group charged with preserving the hut at Cape Royds along with three others on that section of Antarctic coastline. He was there the day the crates were discovered. The team was clearing out a century's worth of ice that had accumulated under the hut and was causing structural problems.

"It was a very exciting time of actually finding artifacts that possibly hadn't been seen since the historic explorers left," he said. The group also found felt boots and jugs of linseed oil. The other 5,000 or so artifacts left behind are inside the hut or on the ground nearby and had been catalogued and viewed by the occasional tourist and on the internet.

In January, the conservationists will use a special drill that chips into the rock so they can pull the crates out and let them melt free in the omnipresent Antarctic summer sun.

So what will century-old, Antarctic-iced Scotch taste like?

Source

2009-11-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Random pics from my webscapades...I'll save a pic, either as a future link/post or just because it's interesting, but then subsequently forget about it, leaving me with a folder of context-free images. Every few months I'll disseminate then thusly