Man foils bank robbery after assuming it was an April Fool

The problem now that I have the RSS Ticker working in Firefox... is that there is too much interesting stuff to read!  I'm also noticing a lot of stories that I missed, like the one below.

Customer Andrew Stewart was sitting down reading a newspaper in an Exeter branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland on March 31 last year when a raider burst in and demanded money.

Brian Davison, 32, put his hand inside his back pack then told cashiers:  "I've got a gun. Seriously I've got a gun – hand over the ******* money". But as terrified cashiers prepared to hand over a bundle of notes, Mr Stewart calmly walked up to the robber and said: "It's April the 1st isn't it mate? It's April Fool's Day".

When Davidson said to him "I've got a gun I will shoot you", Andrew replied "go on then shoot me" and grabbed the bag from his hands.

He opened it in front of staff and after seeing it was empty sat down and carried on reading his paper, Exeter Crown Court heard.

Davison fled the scene but was later arrested and has now pleaded guilty to affray.

via Man foils bank robbery after assuming it was an April Fool - Telegraph.

100 points for Gryffindor for bravery and sheer luck in guessing that there was no gun.

Occult hit: Witches bucking religion trend

While most other major religions lost ground Wiccan -- whose members Wiccans sometimes refer to themselves as witches -- and other so-called "New Religious movements" grew by more than a million members since the last ARIS survey was published in 2001. They re now an estimated 1.2 percent of the adult population.

via Occult hit: Witches bucking religion trend :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Religion.

YouTube - UFO IN LONDON 15 APRIL 2009. very close!

YouTube - UFO IN LONDON 15 APRIL 2009. very close!.

I cant belive i filmed this on my mobile!
It was so close!
Did anyone else see it? NW10 area.
Was listening to Steve Vai at the time, as you can tell.

Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic

It's emerged that virulent H5N1 bird flu was sent out by accident from an Austrian lab last year and given to ferrets in the Czech Republic before anyone realised. As well as the risk of it escaping into the wild, the H5N1 got mixed with a human strain, which might have spawned a hybrid that could unleash a pandemic.

Last December, the Austrian branch of US vaccine company Baxter sent a batch of ordinary human H3N2 flu, altered so it couldn't replicate, to Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, also in Austria. In February, a lab in the Czech Republic working for Avir alerted Baxter that, unexpectedly, ferrets inoculated with the sample had died. It turned out the sample contained live H5N1, which Baxter uses to make vaccine. The two seem to have been mixed in error.

Markus Reinhard of Baxter says no one was infected because the H3N2 was handled at a high level of containment. But Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus University in the Netherlands says: "We need to go to great lengths to make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen."

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences. While H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

via Virus mix-up by lab could have resulted in pandemic - Science - Health & Science - The Times of India.

Face Mining of Star Trek

Our face mining technology enables new video viewing experiences:

* Clickable navigation to scenes of interest

* Search for specific people

* Hyperlinking scenes of interest

* Embedding scenes of interest in other media (e.g blogs)

* Adding commentary synchronized with play points of interests

* Summarizing occurrences of single characters

* Summarizing co-occurrences of characters

Here we illustrate the face mining concept for the TV series Star Trek. Specifically, we applied our state-of-the art algorithms in face detection, face tracking and face recognition to 67 Star Trek episodes over three seasons. This process automatically extracts all visible face tracks, and clusters these into a small number of same-person groupings. Currently, we recognize frontal or near-frontal tracks. In the near future, we will extend our results to non-frontal tracks as well.

Given our face mining output, it took a person less than five minutes to assign names to all the main characters (Kirk, Spock, Mccoy, Uhura, Scotty, Sulu and Chekov) and a couple of minor ones (Janice, Nurse Chapel) across all 67 episodes. The above graph visualizes the relative face time for each of the main characters across all three seasons.

via Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition.

Test of the "RSS Ticker" add-in for Firefox

For those of you not using Firefox, one of the best things about it is that people are constantly writing new plug-ins you can easily add. Some are cosmetic, some improve security, and some improve your productivity and keep you better connected.

RSS is a technology you can use with Firefox to subscribe to a web site or blog's posts. Firefox lets you click on a subscribed RSS feed and see the latest entries... but that wasn't easy enough for me.

I'd like new posts show up when anything new is added for the sites I am monitoring.  RSS Ticker 2.0.3 seems like it might do just that.

In tests tonight, it did scroll my news feed and posts from my blog. I was able to dismiss everything as read. It also has a setting you can set to hide the bar when there are no unread items. I have it checking every 2 minutes. Will it find this new post and display the bar?

Results: Yes, it worked. I click to read the post and the ticker goes away. So cool.

What happens if I update a post?

Nothing, with regard to the ticker. Updates are not seen by the RSS Ticker as new entries, so they will not be re-displayed once they are dismissed.

Does the feed/ticker show title changes?

Yes, if you are blogging on Wordpress.com and you make your change to your post's title before the RSS Ticker loads it, the person will see the change to the title of your post.

RSS feeds (and the orange logo) are all over the place.  If you want to monitor news, blogs, job listings, or anything else with an RSS feed, I recommend Firefox with the RSS Ticker add-in.

A few neat feeds (I'll add more as I find them). If you click the links below, you need a web browser that allows you to subscribe to RSS feeds.

RSS

• The CDC's swine flu RSS feed (RSS).


• The most popular technology bookmarks (RSS) currently being tagged by people on the delicious social bookmarking site is fantastic and can lead you to great new places.  (Or try some other category to suit your interests.)


• Create an eBay search which is an RSS feed and watch for new items.

Farecast, back in August of 2006 had an RSS feed so you could monitor cheap prices. I can't find it now. Perhaps it vanished when Micro$oft ate them?

Twitter: If you follow people on Twitter, you can keep track of all of them along with all of your other feeds by subscribing.  (You'll need to enter your twitter username and password when you click to get the RSS feed.) The Above Top Secret twitter feed is the most interesting I've found so far and includes links to stories.

Here is an example of what you will see in Firefox if you click an RSS links (actually there are two feeds on this blog, one for posts and one for comments, the image below is me subscribing to the comments so I can see them scroll by in the ticker as I work on other things).

After clicking the RSS link, click [Subscribe Now]. You will notice that you can check the box to have this feed show up in the ticker or not.

Optical disc offers 500GB storage

It looks like a color tweaked button from a pair of Levis jeans, but it is really a new super DVD. A normal DVD holds 4.7 GB of data (8.5 GB if it is double layer).

A disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric.

The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players.

Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB.

Micro-holographic discs can store more data than DVDs or Blu-ray because they store information on the disc in three dimensions, rather than just pits on the surface of the disc ...

While the technology is still in the laboratory stage, GE believes it will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray technologies.

In a statement the firm said: "The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs."

''GE's breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer,'' said Mr Lawrence in a statement.

He added: "The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think.''

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Optical disc offers 500GB storage.

There are 2 TB drives (2000 GB) you can buy now for around $300, but 500 GB on a DVD is great.

Some facts from wikipedia:

• The U.S. Library of Congress Web Capture team has claimed that "as of May 2008, the Library has collected more than 82.6 terabytes of data".^[1]


• Ancestry.com claims approximately 600 TB of genealogical data with the inclusion of US Census data from 1790 to 1930.^[2]


• Hitachi introduced the world's first one terabyte hard disk drive in 2007.^[3]


• In 1993, total Internet traffic amounted to approx. 100 TB for the year.^[4] As of June 2008^[update], Cisco Systems estimated Internet traffic at 160 TB/s (which assuming to be constant comes to 5 Zettabytes for the year).^[5]

I hacked my first computer's OS to display that it's molecular hard drive has a 500 exabyte capacity.

"One exabyte is the equivalent of about 50,000 years of DVD quality video."^[18]

I'm upgrading to a 5oo xenobyte quantum hard drive powered by dark energy in 2013. Then I'll go around saying, "I gotta lot a yottabytes," because, of course, one xenobyte is 1000 yottabytes. (Pass the word!)

A yottabyte is 10 ²⁴ bytes.  That is 1 septillion, which is a 1 followed by 24 zeros: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

1,000,000 = one million (MB, megabyte)
1,000,000,000 = one billion (GB gigabyte)
1,000,000,000,000 = one trillion (TB terabyte)
1,000,000,000,000,000 = one quadrillion (PB petabyte)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one quintillion (EB exabyte)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one sextillion (ZB zettabyte)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one septillion (YB yottabyte)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = one octillion (XB xenobyte)

Jailhouse Tech Sniffs Out ‘Cell’ Phones

In prison, the cellphone is a deadly weapon: Inmates can use contraband phones to plot more crime, intimidate or kill witnesses or plan an escape. But the introduction of the Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009 — which would amend federal law to allow the use of jamming technology to block smuggled cellphones — has prompted a showdown between jamming advocates and wireless communications companies.

Jammers, however, are not the only tool for battling contraband cellphones. Several companies are marketing cellphone detection as a smarter alternative to jamming. The principle is straightforward: Instead of blocking signals, prison authorities can use a network of sensors to detect cellphone transmissions, measure their use and triangulate their location.

... ITT Corporation... markets a system called Cell Hound. It’s currently installed in some state and federal institutions. According to Bittner, a system like Cell Hound is more of an intel tool. Illicit phones are often hidden with other contraband — and detectors can be used not only to locate phones, but to track the patterns of the callers. “You need to study the habit of the phone — who uses it most of the time, how it got in there,” he said. “They will never store the phone in a cell where they use it. They rent it out to other inmates. In some cases they won’t use the phone.” Cell Hound scans for the most common cellphone radio frequency signatures in North America; a central server then maps the location and gives a visual alert on a corrections officer’s workstation.

ITT is not the only company in this game, however. Israeli prisons also have a major issue with contraband phones (pictured here). Netline, an Israeli electronic-warfare firm, also markets a cellphone detection system with a central control. Cellphone detection could potentially have other applications, too: detecting illicit cellphone use inside secure conference facilities, or to aid a network in pushing marketing messages or alerts to mobile phones.

Typically, law enforcement and intelligence agencies don’t like to advertise what kinds of tools they use to counter or detect illicit communications. ITT, for instance, initially marketed Cell Hound in a very low-key fashion. But pending legislation in Congress, as Bittner described it, forced the company to “come out of the closet” with its technology.

via Jailhouse Tech Sniffs Out ‘Cell’ Phones | Danger Room.

Does anyone know what (if any) transmissions enter and exit a typical powered on cell phone when it is on but not making calls? Actually the "How it works" page says that step 1 in detection is: "A cell phone places or receives a voice or data call.", so I assume they can't track a phone until it is used?

Here is an image from the Cell Hound video:

The Original Star Trek Series with new graphics added

The Fortean  Times has a Star Trek thing going on, and David Sutton has this review of the re-working of the original series for DVD:

A project that got underway back in 2006 for Star Trek’s 40th anniversary, Star Trek Remastered was an attempt to make a 40-year-old TV show sparkle for the dawning High Definition age. It involved a complete digital overhaul of the original camera negatives (which were, fortunately, in good shape) in which every shot was been cleaned up and rendered sufficiently pristine to withstand the scrutiny of the next generation (excuse the pun) 1080p resolution HD televisions.

Even on DVD, the improved picture quality is noticeable: those fantastic, primary coloured uniforms simply leap off the screen with a new depth and vibrancy, as do the weirdly-hued lighting schemes and sets. Watched in HD, the incredibly detailed textures of the costumes (mmm… velour) and the subtle effects of Shatner’s eye shadow become equally stunning.

The project, however, didn’t stop at simply remastering the original film elements; more controversially, it extended to redoing all of the show’s external effects shots (planets, ships, weird space stuff) in CGI, with digital versions of the Enterprise being used in place of the original models and optical work (which, despite their inventiveness and effectiveness in the 1960s, were clearly going to look pretty ropey in HD). Some fans cried sacrilege – but a look at the results suggests that the process has been both admirably restrained and amazingly faithful to the originals; you could argue that this is simply doing what the original effects artists would have done had they possessed similar technology. While the tight budgets and deadlines involved with getting the remastered shows ready for TV screenings in the US mean that the digital effects work is sometimes a bit basic compared to what you’d see in the cinema, this, in a way, actually helps to maintain a continuity between old and new materials; since the new effects are very much ‘in the spirit’ of the original 1960s ones, the transitions from new digital shots to the cleaned-up original elements is remarkably seamless. ...

via The Original Series | Star Trek | Specials | Fortean Times UK.

So far I've avoided the Blu-ray thing. I'm waiting to see if it ends up like eight track tapes... but a review at IGN says Trek in Blu-ray is worth it.

The special effects, while enhancing the scope of such episodes as "Where No Man Has Gone Before," "The Corbomite Maneuver," "Arena" and "Balance of Terror" (Trek's version of Run Silent, Run Deep) feel cheap. The CG Enterprise and planets are vivid and beautifully rendered, but there is no weight to the Federation's flagship; she moves without mass. The subtler effects are the ones that really deliver, as they so often do. For example: adding the much-needed phaser beam to Scotty's weapon as the engineer tries to cut open a panel and gain access to the engine room in "The Naked Time" or the expanded battle damage given to the planet Kirk and company first visit in the Gorn-centric "Arena." (Check out the brief, but impressive, disc one featurette chronicling the above for a better appreciation.)

Spread across seven discs, TOS season one is one of the best seasons of television Trek has ever produced. As double dips go, this is the one to invest in. Whether you're revisiting an old favorite, or watching Bones accuse Spock of being out of his Vulcan mind for the first time, season one should be the excuse you use to justify the purchase of a Blu-ray player.

Remastered Enterprise vs. the original effects.

Hmm. I don't know. I like the look of the original models.  Well, you get that option too if you buy the disk. Nice.

Trek's first season on Blu is by far the best presentation and experience the series has received yet, managing to appeal to die-hard fans and curious newcomers by refusing to be just another reunion tour of what has gone before (pun not intended). With the option to toggle between the remastered and original effects, coupled with a reference-quality transfer that puts all other 40-year-old shows to shame, TOS: Season One is arguably Paramount Home Entertainment's best catalog release on the format, giving their Godfather set a run for its money. - ign

Disposable Ice Drums?

Refreshing News: Hidden photons’ may be used to send secret emails through Earth

A team of scientists has proposed the possibility of hypothetical particles called “hidden photons” being used to send secret emails through the Earth.

According to a report in New Scientist, the theory has been put forward by Andreas Ringwald at the German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, and colleagues.

Hidden photons are a class of particles predicted by so-called supersymmetric extensions to the standard model of particle physics.

Unlike normal photons, hidden photons could have a tiny mass and would be invisible because they would not interact with the charged particles in conventional matter.

This means hidden photons would flit through even the densest materials unaffected.

The only place to spot them is in a vacuum, where they should sometimes “oscillate” into normal photons.

There are already experiments searching for this effect: the idea is to shine a laser at a wall in a vacuum and see if any of the photons make it through to the other side by transforming into their hidden counterparts and back again.

According to Ringwald’s group, if these experiments succeed it should be possible to scale up the apparatus so that the hidden photons become signal carriers and the “wall” becomes any stretch of ground or water.

Hypothetical ‘hidden photons’ could beam messages through any stretch of ground or water.

“If such particles exist, then we can use them to communicate. It’s very simple,” said Ringwald.

The benefit of such a communication method is that, unless someone were in the exact line of sight with appropriate equipment, it would be impossible to eavesdrop.

For example, submarines could employ the system to avoid communicating via sound, which is easily intercepted.

Hidden photons could even take messages where radio signals cannot reach, such as the far side of the moon.

According to physicist Doug Shaw at Queen Mary, University of London, it would be a “technical challenge” to line up transmitters and receivers over large distances, but he agrees a system is feasible in principle.

“It’s a nice idea,” he said. “Unlike most hypothetical particles that are only accessible at high energies, these particles, if they exist, would have potentially useful real-world applications,” he added.

via Refreshing News: Hidden photons’ may be used to send secret emails through Earth.

'Laser within a laser’ could take out bombs

Reports indicate that the US Army is working on developing a laser within a laser that could blow up roadside bombs and explosive-laden vehicles from a distance.

A side effect of high-energy lasers is that they heat up and ionize the air molecules they pass through.

For a brief moment after the laser beam has stopped firing, a long narrow tube of ionized plasmas hangs in the air — a perfect conductor for any kind of electromagnetic pulse you may want to send through it.

Now, according to a report in Wired News, researchers at the Army’s Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) in Picatinny, New Jersey have another idea — super high-energy microwaves.

Microwave weapons already have been tried, but not really used, because the beams scatter so much that there’s a high risk of “self kill” to nearby personnel.

Meanwhile, lasers are well understood, but need tremendous amounts of energy to even approach being dangerous.

So, the ARDEC crew is combining the best of both worlds — using a laser to create a focused plasma channel microwaves can’t escape, then firing microwaves down it.

Called the Multimode Directed Energy Armament System by the researchers, the weapon “defeats/neutralise full spectrum of materiel threats at stand off” and have “scalable effects from non-lethal to lethal.”

via Refreshing News: 'Laser within a laser’ could take out bombs.

Obama Demands Right to Recruit Minors for Military

Humboldt County, California voters passed measures F and J last November prohibiting military recruiters from initiating contact with minors. Now the Obama administration is demanding that the law be overturned. A court hearing is scheduled for June 9 in Oakland, California. The measures which passed by a large margin allow recruitment to occur if the minor initiates contact. Federal government lawyers claim "irreparable harm" if the laws stand.

The cities of Eureka and Arcata cite international treaties which prohibit recruitment of children under 17. If the Cities prevail over the Obama administration in court, the legislation could likely be brought before voters in communities across the nation. Enforcement of the laws is on hold pending the court action.

The author of the legislation, Dave Meserve described the ordinances prior to their passage last fall:

These ordinances will protect youth from the intense pressure to enlist exerted by military recruiters. While recruiters may deny that they pressure teens to sign up, many local students and their parents have had to deal with repeated, persistent phone calls and personal contact efforts, even after asking to be left alone. Recruiters target teens at school, at home, at community events, and in public places.

Recruiters are rewarded for meeting enlistment quotas and risk reassignment if quotas are not met. They are trained sales people, referring to our communities as “market areas,” our kids as “prospects,” and a successful enlistment as “closing the sale.” They target teens by glorifying military service and focusing on the high-tech, sexy, action-packed military jobs that few recruits ever experience. Rarely do they mention the horrific truth of modern warfare: Soldiers thrown into battle situations where they must kill or be killed, 18 percent returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injuries, and 20 percent with diagnosed post traumatic stress disorder.

via Atheo News: Obama Demands Right to Recruit Minors for Military.

White House apologizes for low-flying plane

A White House official apologized Monday after a low-flying Boeing 747 spotted above the Manhattan skyline frightened workers and residents into evacuating buildings.

The aircraft was a White House plane taking part in a classified, government-sanctioned photo shoot, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

"Last week, I approved a mission over New York. I take responsibility for that decision," said Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office. "While federal authorities took the proper steps to notify state and local authorities in New York and New Jersey, it's clear that the mission created confusion and disruption."

Witnesses reported seeing the plane circle over the Upper New York Bay near the Statue of Liberty before flying up the Hudson River. It was accompanied by two F-16s. Video Watch the plane fly over Manhattan

"I was here on 9/11," said iReporter Tom Kruk, who spotted the plane as he was getting coffee Monday morning and snapped a photo. Kruk called the sight of the aircraft low in the sky "unsettling."

The incident outraged many New Yorkers, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"First thing is, I'm annoyed -- furious is a better word -- that I wasn't told," he said, calling the aviation administration's decision to withhold details about the flight "ridiculous" and "poor judgment."

"Why the Defense Department wanted to do a photo op right around the site of the World Trade Center defies the imagination," he said. "Had we known, I would have asked them not to."

Video: Watch the White House respond to questions about the scare

Linda Garcia-Rose, a social worker who counsels post-traumatic stress disorder patients in an office just three blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, called the flight an "absolute travesty."

"There was no warning. It looked like the plane was about to come into us," she said. "I'm a therapist, and I actually had a panic attack."

via White House apologizes for low-flying plane - CNN.com.

The only "White House plane" of this type I knew about were the two 747's which, when carrying the president, are called Air Force One.

Since 1990, the presidential fleet has consisted of two specifically configured, highly customized Boeing 747-200B series aircraft—tail numbers 28000 and 29000—with Air Force designation VC-25A. - ef

How many 747s does the White House actually have now... and  how many did they have the day before 9/11?  Did Obama just sent Cheney a little warning?

Passenger Jets may get stealth from study of owls

Noisy aircrafts may soon be turned into havens of tranquillity, courtesy owls.

European plane manufacturer Airbus is performing studies on the night birds to determine how they manage to swoop silently on unsuspecting prey.

What they have found so far is that owls are so quiet because they manipulate airflow by their angle of approach and through the special arrangement of feathers on their legs.

The researchers hope to incorporate such findings into their designs.

Airbus, which makes the A380 ‘superjumbo’ jet, is working on modifications to its landing gear that will mimic the birds.

It believes this could reduce dramatically noise levels on future generations of its aircraft.

Airbus has conducted the research on different types of owls in collaboration with Southampton University’s Airbus Noise Technology Centre.

Models of the birds in flight are made on computers and then refined in wind tunnels.

“The technology we use is like SDHp accelerated evolution,” the Daily Express quoted Doctor Kenji Takeda, one of the senior ¬engin¬eering scientists on the project, as saying.

As part of the cutting-edge research, landing gear structure is moulded so that it has a surface, which imitates some of the peculiar features of owls’ legs.

The innovations have been fed into a European-funded aircraft ¬research programme called Silencer.

via CafeTerra: Noisy aircrafts may soon be turned into havens of tranquillity, courtesy owls.

Clown banned from wearing giant shoes

A clown has been told he cannot wear his giant comedy shoes during his act because they breach health and safety rules.

Valerik Kashkin broke a toe after falling from a high-wire and has been told his size 18s were to blame.

His bosses have now banned the clown – whose routine also includes playing a drum kit, trumpet and double bass at the same time – from using the outsize footwear and ordered him to perform barefoot, instead

via Clown banned from wearing giant shoes | Metro.co.uk.

Scientists Give A Hand(edness) To The Search For Alien Life

Visiting aliens may be the stuff of legend, but if a scientific team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is right, we may be able to find extraterrestrial life even before it leaves its home planet—by looking for left- (or right-) handed light.

The technique the team has developed for detecting life elsewhere in the universe will not spot aliens directly. Rather, it could allow spaceborne instruments to see a telltale sign that life may have influenced a landscape: a preponderance of molecules that have a certain “chirality,” or handedness. A right-handed molecule has the same composition as its left-handed cousin, but their chemical behavior differs. Because many substances critical to life favor a particular handedness, Thom Germer and his colleagues think chirality might reveal life’s presence at great distances, and have built a device to detect it.

“You don’t want to limit yourself to looking for specific materials like oxygen that Earth creatures use, because that makes assumptions about what life is,” says Germer, a physicist at NIST. “But amino acids, sugars, DNA—each of these substances is either right- or left-handed in every living thing.”

Many molecules not associated with life exhibit handedness as well. But when organisms reproduce, their offspring possess chiral molecules that have the same handedness as those in their parents’ bodies. As life spreads, the team theorizes, the landscape will eventually have a large amount of molecules that favor one handedness.

“If the surface had just a collection of random chiral molecules, half would go left, half right,” Germer says. “But life’s self-assembly means they all would go one way. It’s hard to imagine a planet’s surface exhibiting handedness without the presence of self assembly, which is an essential component of life.”

Because chiral molecules reflect light in a way that indicates their handedness, the research team built a device to shine light on plant leaves and bacteria, and then detect the polarized reflections from the organisms’ chlorophyll from a short distance away. The device detected chirality from both sources.

via Scientists Give A Hand(edness) To The Search For Alien Life.

Legendary White Pyramid Located in China

image: histories mysteries. The Russian pyramid investigator Maxim Yakovenko has visited several Chinese pyramid complexes and has finally been able to identify the legendary “White Pyramid” as the Liangshan Mountain, which holds the tomb of Emperor Gaozong. As such, decades of speculation and mystery have finally been answered.


The story of the White Pyramid came about in the 1940s, when eyewitness reports, specifically from pilot James Gaussman, related the presence of an enormous “White Pyramid” near the Chinese city of Xi’an. If true, it was bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza. The region was off-limits to Western tourists for many decades afterwards and once this restriction was lifted, many pyramids were found, but the gigantic “White Pyramid” was not amongst them. A photograph of what was believed to be the White Pyramid, turned out to be one of a much smaller pyramid near Xi’an.
So what was the White Pyramid? Had someone overestimated the dimensions of a smaller pyramid? The answer is a simple no. The photograph had nothing to do with the original account of the White Pyramid, and this is where the main problem has lain in recent years. The actual White Pyramid is Liangshan Mountain and it is as big as Gaussman and others had claimed it was.

Liangshan Mountain is located in the vicinity of Qiang Xian, a small Chinese town located 80 km to the northwest from Xi’an. In 684 AD, the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty Gaozong was buried at the bottom of the mountain with his wife the Empress Wu. She reigned after Gaozong’s death. When she died in 705 AD, her body was buried near Gaozong’s on Liangshan Mountain. It is the only mausoleum where two Tang monarchs were buried.

Just above is the only pyramid looking image I found when searching google images for Liangshan. Is this the only image that has slipped past the censors? What is this thumbnail an image of?

Another site which had the photo below says:

All the pyramids I know of are situated in the Qin Chuan plains, and differ in size from between 25 to 100 metres in height. All except one, that is. To the north, in the valley of Qin Lin, lies what has become known as the Great White Pyramid. It is immense, approximately 300 metres in height (1000 feet)! I would say this is the mother of all Chinese pyramids.

Returning to the story:

The Qianling mausoleum incorporates 17 attendant tombs, including the tombs of Princess Yongtai, Prince Zhanghuai and Prince Yide. Twenty stone sculptures guard the emperor and his wife from evil spirits and enemies. They line the way to the burial place, guarding it with unusual long swords. Behind the guards there is a reconstructed gate, built from clay, but finished with bricks. Next are two large statues of mythical monsters. Building the mausoleum and the inner chambers was an enormous accomplishment, but my research is primarily focused on the mountain where the emperor was buried, as this is the legendary White Pyramid.

Liangshan is listed as a natural mountain that consists of three peaks. The two southern peaks are approximately the same size, but the northern peak is much taller and bigger. The two southern peaks consist of soil (so-called “central Chinese clay soil”, which is 30% clay, 35% clay elements and almost 40% limestone), but it is the northern peak that is the highest and consists of huge, almost straight stone plates which lie on the clay.
A key account about the “White Pyramid” – though it had not yet received its name at the time – in the vicinity of Xi’an was given by Alfred Schroeder in 1912: “The pyramid is about 1,000 feet high (other descriptions estimate 1,000 to 1,200 feet high) and roughly 1,500 feet at the base, which makes it twice as large as any pyramid in Egypt. The four faces of the structure are oriented with the compass points.” This observation conforms to what we have seen on the ground about Liangshan Mountain: it is a colossal pyramid, with four visible sides, holding the tomb of emperor Gaozong. It is difficult to determine the height of the pyramid. If measured from the platform with the twenty guards, the height is 160 meters; if measured from the base of the pyramid, the height is about 300 meters, or ca. 1,000 feet!
Schroeder also wrote: “Each side of the pyramid was of a different color: the northern side was black, the eastern blue, the southern red and the western side had a tint of white. The flat top of the pyramid was covered with yellow soil (clay).” Why did Schroeder describe each side of the pyramid as having a different color? The answer is the condition of the surface of the pyramid. The northern side of the pyramid is the most damaged by human activity. There are many modern man-made terraces and peasant gardens; therefore this side looks like a long slope of a natural hill. Since this side does not face the sun, the terraces have dark-grey color, conform to what Schroeder referred to as black.
The eastern side is planted by coniferous trees having a tint of blue and green colors. The southern side was also damaged by local inhabitants and revealed the yellowish color of the clay, or for Schroeder, red. The western side of the pyramid is white because it is covered by massive stone blocks, in grey and white colors. It is this side, together with the light yellow of the top, which created the story of “the White Pyramid”.

In fact, a long time ago, the entire pyramid was covered by massive white stone plates, even though the core structure of the pyramid is from pressed clay, conform to the other pyramids of Shaanxi province. But these massive plates slipped to the foot of the pyramid, the result of natural forces such as earthquakes and rain. Only on the western side did the plates remain relatively intact. ...

via Histories & Mysteries

Your Prius may try to kill you, accelerates by itself, Toyota denies it.

Elizabeth James says her Prius surged out of control near Lawson, Colorado, sending her plunging into a river.

Sometimes the cars accelerate on their own. Sometimes they stop dead. Drivers of the hybrid Prius have discovered they can be an unexpected adventure. ... Traffic near the mall was congested but moving, and Riner kept the Prius pegged at 60 mph, constantly looking at the console to manage her fuel consumption.

Suddenly she felt the car hydroplaning out of control, and when she glanced at the speedometer she realized the car had shot up to 84 mph. Riner wasn't hydroplaning; quite simply, her Prius had accelerated on its own.

She pushed on the brakes but they were dead. Then just as suddenly as the car had taken off, it shut down. The console lit up with warning lights, leaving Riner fighting a stiff steering wheel as she coasted across four lanes of traffic and down an exit ramp.

The car stopped near a PetSmart parking lot, and Riner sat in disbelief, listening to fat raindrops pelt the Prius, wondering if her new car had actually gone crazy.

... Jaded Prius owners say there's no resolution with Toyota—through their hometown dealer or corporate arbitration—and the company hasn't lost or settled a single lawsuit concerning "unintended acceleration." ...

Toyota responded to the acceleration problem in 2007 by recalling "faulty floor mats" that the company said could cause the gas pedal to stick. Another explanation from Toyota is simple driver error.

"You get these customers that say, 'I stood on the brake with all my might and the car just kept on accelerating.' They're not stepping on the brake," says Toyota corporate spokesman Bill Kwong. "People are so under stress right now, people have so much on their minds. With pagers and cell phones and IM, people are just so busy with kids and family and boyfriends and girlfriends. So you're driving along and the next thing you know you're two miles down the road and you don't remember driving, because you're thinking about something else."

...

Then there's Kevin McGuire, who test-drove a Prius one afternoon last fall—a year after the safety recall—at Dorschel Toyota in Rochester, New York.

"There was a wait list to buy one, but they happened to have one in the showroom for me to drive," he says. "The saleswoman was very knowledgeable on the vehicle, and I was impressed with the car. Everything seemed to be in order."

The weather was crisp and sunny, and with the saleswoman along for the ride, McGuire drove the Prius away from the city to a hillside road without much traffic. As he recalls the conversation:

"What do you think?" the saleswoman asked.

"I like this feel," McGuire said.

"Well, go ahead and jump on it and see what you think about the acceleration."

McGuire stomped on the gas pedal and the Prius zipped forward, but when he took his foot off the accelerator, the car kept going faster. He turned to the saleswoman.

"This is all well and good, but there's one problem," McGuire told her.

"What?!"

"It's not stopping."

"What?"

"Lookit, we're still going."

"Take your foot off the accelerator," she told him.

"I did!"

"Pull over!"

McGuire hesitated to steer the car off the road, because he was slamming on the brake with all his weight and the Prius wouldn't stop. Smoke poured from the tires, and finally the car shut down and he pulled to the shoulder.

"She was scared and I was scared, too. We just sat there for a couple of minutes and caught our breath, and then she said, 'OK, start it up,'" McGuire says. "You could hear the engine rev up, and when I put it in drive—boom! The car took off again." This time the car died almost immediately and McGuire pulled over again. After starting it a third time, all was OK, and he cautiously drove back to the dealership. The saleswoman asked a technician to look at the Prius.

"Oh, people put in too many floor mats," the technician said. "So the accelerator gets stuck."

McGuire responded, "Wait, this is not my car, this is your car. I haven't done anything. It's not me, there's something wrong with this car." Our reporting found just one person currently in litigation with Toyota concerning unintended acceleration. Art Robinson, the man involved in that 2007 crash, wouldn't discuss the situation (saying his lawyer has advised him not to), but a Toyota spokeswoman confirmed the lawsuit, declining to comment further.

Apparently, hours after Robinson purchased his used 2005 Prius in Tacoma, the car began to handle funny, and as he was driving back to the dealership, the car took off. Robinson stomped on the brake and the emergency brake, but the car wouldn't slow down. He exited the freeway and shot through an intersection safely, but then lost control and drove through a convenience store. Robinson escaped before the Prius and the building burst into flames.

via Seattle News - The Flip Side of the Perfect Prius - page 1.

Holy Crap. I may make my next car a Chevy Volt or something. If this happens to you in a Prius, try tapping the cruise control, even though it is not on.

ConsumerAffairs.com has collected complaints from Toyota Prius owners regarding throttle control. One, a new Prius with 600 miles on the odometer, accelerated wildly while the owner was attempting to merge onto a busy interstate. On another occasion, the traction control system (itself another problem reported on the site) kicked in and the car accelerated. A third time the car refused to slow after passing another car. One Prius owner, an engineer, discovered that tapping the lever that disengages the cruise control solved the problem– even though the cruise control system was already turned off. Toyota denies any mechanical or software problem exists. They suggest that a wadded carpet may have caused a sticky go-pedal. - autospies

Federal safety regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration say they are "aware of" complaints of runaway acceleration in the popular Toyota Prius hybrid and are in a "monitoring mode.""It is currently like dozens, or maybe hundreds, of other issues of this kind," an agency official said. The Toyota Product Communications office has not responded to several requests from ConsumerAffairs.com to discuss the issue of unintended acceleration in the Prius.

Prius owners in the meantime continue to encounter incidents of unintended acceleration with the hybrid and the Japanese automaker seems unable to remedy the problem.

In a new wrinkle, one Prius owner whose hybrid was damaged in an unintended acceleration accident reports that her Toyota dealer is unwilling to accept the Prius in trade for another vehicle, even though the hybrid is almost new. ... “I called Toyota and talked to a sales person and explained this dangerous experience. He confirmed that he was familiar with the problem and also experienced this himself when driving one of the earlier models of the Prius,” Karen wrote.

No floor mats

She took the runaway Prius to her Toyota dealer and listened as the service manager blamed everything that has occurred on “nothing more than a floor carpet jamming accelerator pedal.” “As I explained to him, I didn't have floor mats when this happened the first time,” Karen wrote. - September 10, 2007 : http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/09

Consumer Affairs first wrote about unintended acceleration in a Prius August 1. It had just 600 miles on the odometer but a driver was reporting problems with acceleration and the display. It won Consumer Affairs Lemon of the Week Award. August 12, Consumer Affairs is writing again about the same problem.

This time they are making more serious claims. They are saying this suggests "a serious flaw in the vehicle's computer system, electronic controls or software program." Now, Consumer Affairs said they reported about this last year as well. They all go to shop and technicians look into it but no one can repeat unintended acceleration or find a problem.

[Source: Consumer Affairs]

Don't Taze Me Bro, Military Version: Man kills 2 deputies after being stunned

Two deputies killed by a soldier they were trying arrest for beating his wife exchanged multiple rounds with the man who began shooting while on the ground after he was shocked with a stun gun, authorities said Sunday, a day after the men were killed.

"When that Taser released after five seconds, he came up shooting," Interim Okaloosa County Sheriff Edward Spooner said. "He went from just being disagreeable to using deadly force in a matter of seconds. It was a very aggressive move with a concealed weapon on his part."

Spooner said that between 30 and 40 rounds were exchanged between Cartwright and the two deputies. Investigators were working to determine the extent of 28-year-old Joshua Cartwright's military and militia weapons training, Spooner said. Cartwright was killed by deputies in a neighboring county after he fled a shooting range parking lot near Crestview where he killed deputies Burt Lopez and Warren "Skip" York.

Cartwright's truck flipped on its side after the tires were punctured by spikes at a roadblock.

"When he had his crash, the truck flipped upside down, nose first and he came out of the backside of the truck firing immediately and using the truck for cover," Spooner said. Investigators say Cartwright and deputies exchanged about 60 rounds in 30 to 40 seconds before he was shot and killed. They are awaiting autopsy results to determine whether either of the slain deputies struck Cartwright before they died.

Destiny Harder lived next door to the Cartwrights at their Fort Walton Beach apartment complex.

Harder said she was often disturbed by their loud arguments and had banged on the wall between the two apartments Saturday morning after she was awakened by their fighting.

via The Associated Press: Sheriff: Man killed 2 deputies after being stunned.

I don't know if he saw combat or not, but I figure in Cartwright mind's, what he did was self defense. He was physically attacked so he responded with deadly force.

Tasers do kill some people. They are extremely painful. One tased reporter described the 50,000 volt jolt this way: , "It's like having nail guns applied to your hands and feet while you're being dunked in a vat of boiling water."

Police need better tools. How about we develop non-painful ways to immobilize people!? Nets, glue, foam, etc. How about a gun that makes people relax, feel happy and laugh?!

While feeling bad for the slain police, some consider Cartwright a hero who would not simply submit to the physical abuse of being electrocuted. He paid with his life for not submitting to authority. Was it worth it Joshua? Tragic.

The problem is, things can escalate quickly. The charge "resisting arrest" is highly abused. Why do Police seem amazed that people “resist” having a knee on their head, in their backs, or having their arms twisted up behind them until they are yelling in pain? Resisting arrest in many cases is really just being human and attempting to avoid pain caused by a hyped up cop. Like, no shit(!), if you hurt someone, they will resist being hurt. And then comes the taser.  And then the guns. Total lack of understanding that the cops can cause the escalation which they then respond to with increasing force.

Some times it seems like just a power trip. Even an innocent harmless women who does not resist at can be taken to jail, then pinned down in a cell, video taped, and completely stripped by multiple female and male officers with no consequences. I know 98 lb woman who had a similar "attack" on her happen in the form of a "forced blood draw" after a supposed DUI stop. The emotional trauma you get from being gang forced to do anything is similar to a rape.

Any cop(s) taking physical control of a person when the person is not a CLEAR threat to him/herself or others is violating that person's human right to be treated with dignity.

As I've said before, I have a cop in my family, and I have a great respect for the job they do.  We usually only hear about the bad cops, not the majority, who every day are making good decisions, keeping the peace, and risking their lives to keep citizens safe from people like Cartwright who have a screw loose for one reason or another.