Sudoku
For come time now I have been sort of addicted to Sudoku. It is a great thief of time but a source of great satisfaction when you get a difficult one out. This site has a great collection of puzzles.
The Web edition of Newsweek tries to explain the phenomenon
Not since the Rubik's Cube of 1980 has a puzzle been this hot. From its mind-teasers have sprung clubs, competitions, computer-games and a cult-like following. It has become a fresh way to procrastinate. And some experts are even asserting that it can lower your blood pressure, relieve stress - even make you smarter. It might just be the least-harmful addiction around.
I have to go now and finish one.
Nobel Peace Prize Nominees
Among the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize are Bono and Bob Geldof. This is their second nomination, they were also nominated last year.
That was the easy part.
Making the Norwegian award committee's deeply secret shortlist, already whittled down from the 191 nominees, is another matter, the nonvoting secretary said Friday.
"It's easy to get nominated, but very hard to win," Geir Lundestad told The Associated Press in releasing the number he compiled and checked after the Feb. 1 deadline for mailing proposals.
I disagree, it isn't easy. Two years in a row : fantastic.
We should bask in the glory that they have brought to this small country and give our wholehearted support and cash to their projects.
I feel the reflection.Yahoo News
This is why I always wear a seatbelt.
I have never doubted the wisdom of wearing a seatbelt. In fact when I started to drive, a long time ago (grin) I learned to always wear one. Now I feel undressed without it. Some time ago, after surgery, I couldn't wear one for a while and felt so strange and vulnerable.
Have a look at this video and you see why you should wear. Watch what happens the person thrown out.
Inter Library Loan
A great new service is offered by BorrowBooks.ie
...[This] allows you to search across the Irish public libraries' online catalogues to locate and request an item which is not held in your own library service.
...BorrowBooks.ie is an initiative of the Irish public libraries, supported by An Chomhairle Leabharlanna and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and funded by the Information Society Fund.
This is the way to go. I hope that it will speed up the search for things I want to read.
A Good Idea
A sign of the changing times.
Amsterdam's famed red light district held its first ever "open day" Saturday as its peep-shows and brothels gave crowds of wide-eyed visitors free entry to help shed the area's increasingly negative reputation.
Armed with a list of 25 establishments opening their doors and flinging back their red curtains, hundreds of tourists and locals seized the opportunity to see a prostitute's bedroom, watch a brief live peep-show or chat to a lap dancer...
..."The open day is partly to promote the red light district but also to help change the image of the area because we think it is too negative," said organizer Mariska Majoor...
I suppose all business have to promote themselves.
Reuters
Of Course I'm Afraid
It's a sad reflection on how little progress we have made.
...al-Asaadi [ the editor of the pro-government Yemen Observer newspaper] has not been party to the sort of controversies that have seen many Yemeni journalists jailed in recent years. But when his newspaper ran an article about the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist, Asaadi decided to reprint the cartoonsÂalbeit with a large X censoring most of them, and an article denouncing them. On Feb. 11, he was arrested and charged with insulting the Prophet. He is now in jail in Sanaa, the capital of Yemen, awaiting trial...
...Some hard-line preachers at Friday prayers called for your execution; some even suggested death by beheading or immolation. Aren't you afraid for your future, in or out of jail?
Of course I'm afraid. I'll have to take precautions when I go to and from my office and travel around in the future. But Yemenis as a whole are very moderate, and I know I can persuade any reasonable person that I did nothing wrong. And I believe in God. What I did was in defense of the Prophet, and I don't think God will let me down for doing that.
Newsweek
His Face Was Red
A German youth who tied himself to a foldaway bed because he was bored was rescued by police after becoming trapped in its mechanism, officials said on Tuesday.
Neighbors alerted the police in the western German town of Schwelm after hearing the 16-year-old's cries for help late on Monday night.
When police entered the apartment, they found the bed had folded itself away and the red-faced youth was tied upside down to it with a tow-rope and wire and unable to free himself.
"He said he did it because he was bored," said Dietmar Trust, a spokesman for the local police. "He was visibly embarrassed but it was also a pretty amusing situation."
Reuters
I blogged some time ago on Tysabri and it's subsequent withdrawal.
It is now reported that the F.D.A. allows some patients to resume M.S. drug.
The Food and Drug Administration said yesterday that it would allow some patients in a clinical trial to resume treatment with Tysabri, a multiple sclerosis drug that was abruptly withdrawn from the market a year ago because of safety risks.
The decision appears to strengthen the probability that Tysabri, developed by Biogen Idec and Elan, will be allowed to return to the market. The F.D.A. is scheduled to decide on that question by the end of March.
"You can certainly deduce that we've concluded that there are at least some people for whom the risk is worth it," Dr. Robert Temple, director of medical policy for the drug division of F.D.A., said in an interview.
Still, he said, the decision yesterday was to allow the drug to be used only under the controlled conditions of a clinical trial and only by patients who had previously benefited from it in a clinical trial. "That's not at all the same as making it available for marketing," he said.
Some hope again for many people.
Don't Get Sick
The spiraling cost of medicines. This will give you wallet burn and a heart attack. I hope you never need it.
Doctors are excited about the prospect of Avastin, a drug already widely used for colon cancer, as a crucial new treatment for breast and lung cancer, too....
But then greed set in.
...But doctors are cringing at the price the maker, Genentech, plans to charge for it: about $100,000 a year.
That price, about double the current level as a colon cancer treatment, would raise Avastin to an annual cost typically found only for medicines used to treat rare diseases that affect small numbers of patients. But Avastin, already a billion-dollar drug, has a potential patient pool of hundreds of thousands of people  which is why analysts predict its United States sales could grow nearly sevenfold to $7 billion by 2009.
Doctors, though, warn that some cancer patients are already being priced out of the Avastin market. Even some patients with insurance are thinking hard before agreeing to treatment, doctors say, because out-of-pocket co-payments for the drug could easily run $10,000 to $20,000 a year.
The spin.
Until now, drug makers have typically defended high prices by noting the cost of developing new medicines. But executives at Genentech and its majority owner, Roche, are now using a separate argument — citing the inherent value of life-sustaining therapies.
If society wants the benefits, they say, it must be ready to spend more for treatments like Avastin and another of the company's cancer drugs, Herceptin, which sells for $40,000 a year.
New York TimesHat Tip
mcarthur
A Foxy Lady
Girl #1: Is that a real fur coat?
Girl #2: Yes, oh my god and this woman started yelling at me this morning. I was like, "Please don't throw blood on me or something. I don't hate animals; I have a dog!"
Man: Not around your neck.
--Elevator, Broadway & Dey
Overheard in New YorkHat Tip
mcarthurweb
It Could Be You...after 75,999,999 others
...we need a dream.
The odds of winning the EuroMillions lottery are 76 million to one. So why are so many buying tickets?
...are we just taking a chance or being taken for a ride? According to bookmakers William Hill, the odds on winning the jackpot are 76 million to one.
To put this in perspective, spokesman Graham Sharpe says this week the bookmaker has given similar odds to two other gambles - one for the world to end, and the other for Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother to become the next England football manager.
As likely as that? But when we've virtually no chance of winning, why are so many of us queuing up to hand over £1.50 for a ticket?
Professor Alastair Ross, a psychologist who specialises in interpreting gambling and risk, says we find it almost impossible to understand such a huge level of improbability.
French lottery
Europe in the grip of lottery fever
"People can't conceive how unlikely it is," says Dr Ross
...he says that a weekly player of the national lottery could only expect to win a jackpot if they lived to be 300,000 years old.
Being dealt a Royal Flush poker hand - 1 in 650,000
Being killed today in a road accident in the UK - 1 in 6 million
Winning the EuroMillions jackpot - 1 in 76 million
Source: John Haigh, University of Sussex
We can still dream...it could be you.BBC
Just Testing
An F/A-18 is elevated to 20 feet with tires spinning and then dropped. Check out the successful engineering in that gear!
Check out the full speed version as well. It's worth seeing.Source
Google VideoHat tip
mcarthurweb
Things actually said in court, word for word...
They have to be true. You couldn't make them up...could you?
Q:What is your date of birth?
A:July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
Q: This myasthenia gravis-does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
Q: How old is your son - the one living with you.
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
Q: And where was the location of the accident?
A: Approximately milepost 499.
Q: And where is milepost 499?
A: Probably between milepost 498 and 500.
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in the voodoo or occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
Q: Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?
A: Yes.
Q: Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: What did she say?
A: What disco am I at?
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
Q: Did he kill you?
Q: How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?
Q: You were there until the time you left, is that true?
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
Q: You say the stairs went down to the basement?
A: Yes.
Q: And these stairs, did they go up also?
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere.
Q: You were not shot in the fracas?
A: No, I was shot midway between the fracas and the navel.
...more at
Iavor S. Diatchki OGI School of Science and Engineering Beaverton, Oregon
Things actually said in court, word for word...
They have to be true. You couldn't make them up...could you?
Q:What is your date of birth?
A:July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
Q: This myasthenia gravis-does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget. Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
Q: How old is your son - the one living with you.
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
Q: And where was the location of the accident?
A: Approximately milepost 499.
Q: And where is milepost 499?
A: Probably between milepost 498 and 500.
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in the voodoo or occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
Q: Trooper, when you stopped the defendant, were your red and blue lights flashing?
A: Yes.
Q: Did the defendant say anything when she got out of her car?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: What did she say?
A: What disco am I at?
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
Q: Did he kill you?
Q: How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?
Q: You were there until the time you left, is that true?
Q: How many times have you committed suicide?
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
Q: You say the stairs went down to the basement?
A: Yes.
Q: And these stairs, did they go up also?
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
Q: All your responses must be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practising law somewhere.
Q: You were not shot in the fracas?
A: No, I was shot midway between the fracas and the navel.
...more at
Iavor S. Diatchki OGI School of Science and Engineering Beaverton, Oregon
Corrections Draw Attention
I've always had the view that corrections only draw attention to the item...
... A German court has ordered a German business magazine to run a correction after it reported that Ferdinand Piech, the chairman of Europe's biggest car maker, Volkswagen AG, has a penchant for "garish ties with hunting motifs" and not a clue as to how many children he has fathered. Piech strongly disagrees.
...I hadn't seen this until the correction.
Regret the error
Priceless
I hadn't see this one. Thanks
Google Video, I laughed a lot.
Exploding Ink
Another item for 007's arsenal...
A very unusual ink-jet printer cartridge, containing explosive ink, has been patented by Qinetiq, the commercial spin-off of the British Ministry of Defence.
The ink is a mixture of very fine aluminium particles, each 1 micrometre in diameter, particles of copper oxide 5 micrometres wide, epoxy varnish and alcohol. The ink is stable in liquid form, making it safe to print onto conventional paper, but forms an explosive fuse once dry.
An engineer can easily sketch out a printable fuse using computer imaging software, modifying the delay in milliseconds by changing the length, thickness and pattern of the line on the paper.
The ink can then be printed between a small strip of metal and a larger patch of explosive ink. Feeding a current through the metal strip makes it hot enough to ignite the fuse, which burns until it reaches the explosive patch. This explosion can then trigger the detonation of a much larger amount of explosives...
New Scientist
Acronyms
They often cause me a problem and I get very frustrated reading posts with a lot of them, sometimes to the point of abandoning the post. Halley has a useful list...
AFK Away From Keyboard
ASL? Age? Sex? Location?
B4 Before
BAK Back At Keyboard
BBL Be Back Later
BCNU Be seeing you
BRB Be Right Back
BTW By The Way
FAQs Frequently Asked Questions
IMHO In My Humble Opinion
L8R Later
LOL Laughs Out Loud
MOF? Male Or Female?
NM or N/M Never Mind (or Not Much)
NP or N/P No Problem
OMG Oh My God
ROFL or ROTFL Rolling On (The) Floor, Laughing
TTFN Ta Ta For Now
UR Your / You're
W/ With
And if that's not enough:
AFAICT As Far As I Can Tell
AFAIK As Far As I Know
AIUI As I Understand It
BST But Seriously Though
BTDT Been There, Done That
CUL See you Later
DWISNWID Do What I Say, Not What I Do
DYJHIW Don't You Just Hate It When
ETLA Extended Three Letter Acronym
F2F Face to Face
FOAF Friend Of A Friend
FWIW For What It's Worth
FYI For Your Information
GA Go Ahead
GAL Get A Life
GIGO Garbage In, Garbage Out
IANAL I Am Not A Lawyer
IIRC If I Recall Correctly
IME In My Experience
IMNSHO In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
IMO In My Opinion
IOW In Other Words
IRL In Real Life
ISTM It Seems To Me
ITRO In The Region Of
IWBNI It Would Be Nice If
IYSWIM If You See What I Mean
JAM Just A Minute
KISS Keep It Simple, Stupid
MOTOS Member Of The Opposite Sex
NALOPKT Not A Lot Of People Know That
OIC Oh, I See
OTOH On The Other Hand
OTT Over The Top
RTFM Read The F****** Manual
RUOK Are you OK?
SITD Still In The Dark
TANSTAAFL There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
TIA Thanks In Advance
TIC Tongue In Cheek
TLA Three Letter Acronym
TNX Thanks
TPTB The Powers That Be
TTYL Talk To You Later
TVM Thanks Very Much
WIBNI Wouldn't It Be Nice If
WRT With Regard To
WTH What The Hell (similarly: WTF)
WYSIWYG What You See Is What You Get
YABA Yet Another Bloody Acronym
YHM You Have Mail
Sickies
Tonight with Trevor Mc Donald had an interesting piece about 'sickies'. It seems that February is the top period for them and this is confirmed in a Reuters report...
More British workers will call in "sick" Monday than on any other day in 2006, many opting to make their excuses by text message or by phoning in with an artistic cough or splutter, research revealed Monday.
Widespread dissatisfaction with holiday allowances combined with a post-Christmas comedown will contribute to thousands of Britons, who work some of the longest hours in Europe, staying at home to recharge their batteries.
"Early February is a very popular time for taking a 'sickie', the first bank holiday still seems a long way off, the days are gloomy and many people are still feeling the post-Christmas blues," said Cary Cooper, a professor of organizational psychology and health at Lancaster University, who headed the study...
...In my experience things are not much different here.
Believe it or Not
As Ripley said "believe it or not".
Frozen squirrels, angry wasps and obstructive potatoes were among some of the reasons given by motorists to support their insurance claims, Norwich Union said Monday.
Freak incidents involving animals top the list when it comes to bizarre claims, closely followed by those involving food.
The squirrel motorist said the frozen animal had fallen out of a tree and crashed through the windshield while another driver blamed a wasp sting on the leg for a sudden surge in acceleration and a bump with the car in front.
One driver even blamed a potato stuck behind the brake pedal for the inability to stop.
"We see a lot of strange things but we were surprised at how many involved animals and food of all things," said a Norwich Union spokeswoman.
One claim in particular stood out.
"As I was driving around a bend, one of the doors opened and a frozen kebab flew out, hitting and damaging a passing car," it read.
All the cited claims were legitimate and had been paid out, the spokeswoman said.
Source
Reuters
Tsunami
I missed the article in the Irish Independent about the effect of a Atlantic Tsunami on Ireland.
IRELAND is directly in the path of a potential tsunami similar to that which killed more than 250,000 people in south-east Asia, experts warned yesterday.
The Government is now considering a plan to establish a round-the-clock early warning system, involving sensors placed in the Atlantic off our coast.
New concerns were raised yesterday that the side of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands could collapse into the sea, triggering a tsunami that would rapidly travel north.
The huge waves would arrive here in four to five hours with potentially catastrophic consequences for the west and south coasts.
A very interesting simulation of the effect is here.
Windows Media Player needed to see this.Hat tip
Limerick Blogger
Shining Light on the Problem
A simple way for us to save money and reduce pollution.
Listening to most politicians, you would think the world's energy problems can be solved only by building ever bigger power stations and burning ever more fuel.
Not so; and it certainly cannot solve the coming climate crisis.
After turning off unnecessary pieces of equipment, improved energy efficiency is the cheapest way for developing countries to maximise their use of limited energy supplies, and for developed countries to achieve cuts in their carbon dioxide emissions.
One quick and simple option for improving energy efficiency would be to make greater use of compact fluorescent light bulbs.
Each one of these bulbs produces the same amount of light as an incandescent light bulb whilst being responsible for the emission of 70% less carbon dioxide.
It also saves money; about £7 ($12) per year in the UK, more or less in other countries depending on electricity prices.
So why not just ban incandescent bulbs - why not make them illegal?
They waste so much energy that if they were invented today, it is highly unlikely they would be allowed onto the market.
Nobody would suffer; every energy-saving bulb would save money and help to curb climate change.
It is truly a win-win solution.
With lighting contributing 5-10% towards the typical electricity bill in the developed world, and even more in the developing world, the savings could really mount up.
It has been estimated that if every household in the US replaced just three of its incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving designs and used them for five hours per day, it would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 23 million tonnes, reduce electricity demand by the equivalent of 11 coal-fired power stations and save $1.8bn.
Given that investing $450m could save $1.8bn, it is hard to understand why anyone would still choose incandescent bulbs.
Source
BBC
Libraries and DRM
There is growing concern that Digital Rights Management (DRM)will prevent legitimate use by Libraries.
Libraries have warned that the rise of digital publishing may make it harder or even impossible to access items in their collections in the future...
...digital rights management (DRM) controls may block some legitimate uses, the British Library has said.
And there are fears that restricted works may not be safe for future generations if people can no longer unlock them when technology evolves...
..."As custodians of human memory, a number [of libraries] would keep digital works in perpetuity and may need to be able to transfer them to other formats in order to preserve them and make the content fully accessible and usable once out of copyright."...
...the British Library said DRM must not "exert excessive control on access to information".
"This will fundamentally threaten the longstanding and accepted concepts of fair dealing and library privilege and undermine, or even prevent, legitimate public good access."
Fair dealing and library privilege must be "re-interpreted and sustained for the digital age", it added.
Is this an unintended consequence or is it more sinister? The leaders in the promotion of DRM causes me to fear that it is yet another attempt by the wealthy class to become wealthier.Source
BBC
Optical Illusion
I love these illusions. A sign of not enough to do?
Broadband Problems
Had trouble with my landline which meant no blogging for the last few days. Thankfully the problem seems sorted this evening.
