moonbuggy

`An Alaska high school violated a student’s free speech rights by suspending him after he unfurled a banner reading “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” across the street from the school, a federal court ruled Friday.

Joseph Frederick, a student at Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska, displayed the banner — which refers to smoking marijuana — in January 2002 to try to get on television as the Olympic torch relay was passing the school.’

`Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal.

The tribunal said he had been found dead in his cell on Saturday morning. The cause of death is not yet clear. [..]

The tribunal last month rejected a request by Mr Milosevic to go to Russia for medical treatment. He had high blood pressure and a heart condition.’

‘News reports that the U.S. military intends to close Abu Ghraib within the next few months and to transfer its prisoners to other jails are inaccurate, officials said.

There’s no specific timetable for that transfer or for closure of the Baghdad prison, they said. Decisions regarding Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities in Iraq will be based largely on two factors: the readiness of Iraq’s security forces to assume control of them and infrastructure improvements at the facilities.’

From what I can tell, it is what it says it is. [shrug] :)

`Michael Jackson has been ordered to shut down his Neverland Valley Ranch by California authorities who have fined the pop star ,000 (,700) for failing to pay his employees or maintain proper insurance. [..]

Fryer said local animal welfare officials had been asked to care for the inhabitants of Neverland’s zoo.

He said that Jackson could reopen the ranch if he obtains workers compensation insurance but may face legal action by the state if he fails to pay the back wages.’

`It’s bad enough that they overcharge domestic customers but we have alternatives. The soldiers don’t because, according to The Prepaid Press, AT&T has an EXCLUSIVE contract to put payphones in PXes in Iraq and Afghanistan. But, you ask, can’t the soldiers get cheap calling cards to call the US? No! Because AT&T is using (abusing!) its position as monopoly supplier of payphones to block the 800 numbers necessary to use nonAT&T calling cards.

This blocking is illegal in the US but, AT&T told our friend Gene Retske, editor of The Prepaid Press, the rules are different in Iraq. Right.’

`The Nigerian Government has warned citizens they may suffer “psychological discomfort” during a new eclipse this month but urged them not to panic.

Information Minister Frank Nweke says an eclipse in 2001 caused riots in northern Borno state because people did not know why it happened.

“Some people even felt some evil people in their communities were responsible for the eclipse,” he said in a statement aimed at reassuring Nigerians the eclipse is expected to darken parts of the country on March 29.’

`We work in the IT department of the college, and were inventorying equipment in the closet. We ran across a box of USB floppy drives that were just sitting there…looking very sad and lonely. We blew off the dust from them and decided to give them a second life. We also had to test the drives, and rather than waste the time to test each drive individually we thought it would just be easier to RAID them all together and test them all at once. So that’s exactly what we did.’

‘A two-year probe into the Madrid train bombings concludes the Islamic terrorists who carried out the blasts were homegrown radicals acting on their own rather than at the behest of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, two senior intelligence officials said.

Spain still remains home to a web of radical Algerian, Moroccan and Syrian groups bent on carrying out attacks — and aiding the insurgency against U.S. troops in Iraq — the Spanish intelligence chief and a Western official intimately involved in counterterrorism measures in Spain told The Associated Press.’

`Computer technicans are threatening chaos at fast-food outlets, supermarkets, banks and airports unless they get a pay rise.

More than 100 staff from NCR – a company responsible for repairing computer breakdowns at KFC outlets, Aldi supermarkets and Sydney Airport’s baggage handling systems – are planning to to walk off the job on Monday morning.

“In terms of industrial action in the IT industry this is easily the most significant one we’ve had in Australia,” said Australian Services Union secretary Sally McManus. If the strike goes ahead, it might last up to a week, she said.’

`Meet BigDog, a mechanical mutt that does more than snare Frisbees and irrigate fire hydrants. It totes hundreds of pounds of gear so soldiers won’t have to, and it will never spook under fire. Developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the U.S. military, the BigDog prototype is arguably the world’s most ambitious legged robot. Its stability and awareness of its own orientation make it the first robot that can handle the unknown challenges of the battlefield. The Great Dane–size ’bot can trot more than three miles an hour, climb inclines of up to 45 degrees, and carry up to 120 pounds—even in rough terrain impenetrable to wheeled or tracked vehicles. But this one is just a puppy; Boston Dynamics expects the next iteration, ready this summer, to be at least twice as fast and carry more than twice as much.’

`George Michael was arrested in London on drug charges after being found slumped at the wheel of his car, a British tabloid newspaper reported.

A passer-by contacted police after spotting the 42-year-old pop star in his car in central London on Saturday night, the Sun newspaper reported in Monday’s editions.

Michael was arrested on suspicion of possessing drugs before being bailed out to return to a police station next month, The Sun said. The report said he was checked by paramedics but did not need hospital treatment.’

`Object of this fun puzzle game is to get all of the globs off the screen by pumping certain ones up and taking the rest out. You start with 10 drops in your tank. Use YOUR MOUSE to click on the blobs so that they grow until they burst. Create combos to earn more drops. How many levels can you clear. Mike Foce made it to 30th level. Can anyone beat that? Have fun!’

Not as easy as it seems.

`A mouse immune cell that plays dual roles as both assassin and messenger, normally the job of two separate cells, has been discovered by an international team of researchers. The discovery has triggered a race among scientists to find a human equivalent of the multitasking cell, which could one day be a target for therapies that seek out and destroy cancer.

“In the same way that intelligence and law enforcement agencies can face deadly threats together instead of separately, this one cell combines the ability to kill foreign pathogens and distribute information about that experience,” says Drew Pardoll, M.D., Ph.D., the Seraph Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.’

‘A US soldier who raped a Nigerian woman in Italy has been given a lighter sentence because the court deemed his tour of duty in Iraq made him less sensitive to the suffering of others.

According to an Italian court document, James Michael Brown, a 27-year-old paratrooper from Oregon stationed in northern Italy, was sentenced to five years and eight months for rape in February 2004.

Brown beat and handcuffed the woman, a Nigerian resident in the town of Vicenza. He raped her vaginally and anally and left her to wander the streets naked in search of help.’

`A large “mothership,” closely resembling the U.S. Air Force’s historic XB-70 supersonic bomber, carries the orbital component conformally under its fuselage, accelerating to supersonic speeds at high altitude before dropping the spaceplane. The orbiter’s engines fire and boost the vehicle into space. If mission requirements dictate, the spaceplane can either reach low Earth orbit or remain suborbital. [..]

Exactly what missions the Blackstar system may have been designed for and built to accomplish are as yet unconfirmed, but U.S. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) officers and contractors have been toying with similar spaceplane-operational concepts for years. Besides reconnaissance, they call for inserting small satellites into orbit, and either retrieving or servicing other spacecraft. Conceivably, such a vehicle could serve as an anti-satellite or space-to-ground weapons-delivery platform, as well.’

‘Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA.

A year ago, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, unveiled a programmable molecular computing machine composed of enzymes and DNA molecules instead of silicon microchips. Now the team has gone one step further. In the new device, the single DNA molecule that provides the computer with the input data also provides all the necessary fuel.’

Followup to Molecular Computer Runs a Billion Simultaneous Programs, kinda.

`A team of thieves that broke into an abandoned missile silo not far from the Russian city of Kostroma in search of nonferrous metals was shocked to find the shaft packed with Soviet money bills, Regnum news agency reported on Tuesday.

The incident would have remained secret, had the wind not blown hundreds of banknotes all over the countryside.’

`Residents in Shoreditch, East London, will become the first to test a new advance in broadband technology when they switch on a new set-top box that combines the functions of a television and computer. [..]

Most commercially-available broadband connections operate at a speed of 2 megabits per second (2Mb/s), but the Shoreditch project can access internet images and content at a speed of up to 2 billions of bits per second (2Gb/s).’

`Straight out of a toilet and into your bed . The new Pee & Poo toys are cute, cuddly and a little controversial. Designer Emma Megitt launched her unique friends at the Future Designer Days Expo this year. The first batch of Pee & Poo toys hit Sweden and where sold out quicker than you can say Abba. The controversy surrounding a line of toys representing human waste has created great publicity for Megitt and has launched her name into the designer world spotlight. Originally sold separately Pee & Poo now come in a duo pack. So you get both bodily functions covered in the one box.’

‘A white powdery substance has local people asking what it is and where did it come from.

Last Friday, the rain and snow came down with a powdery yucky substance. [..]

The dust is being blamed for a power outage in Idaho Falls on Monday evening. The power was out in the area of Sunnyside and Woodruff.

Power workers says the dirt created an arc across the insulators. It acts like a groundwire and shorted out the power. The power crews rerouted the power, but Tuesday morning, they’ll have to fix the insulators.’

`Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday.

Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, but companies frequently dismiss them as “nuisance calls”, Elke den Ouden found in her thesis at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands.’

‘A court commissioner has signed off on an unusual restraining order against celebutante Paris Hilton, ordering her to stay at least 100 yards away from an event producer who claimed she threatened him — unless they’re at a party together.

Brian Quintana was granted the three-year restraining order against Hilton last month after he testified that the celebutante harassed and threatened him after their friendship soured.’

‘Why is there a sawed-off shotgun on the International Space Station? To fight Alien invaders? In case of war on Earth so the Cosmonauts can kill the US Astronauts? NO.

Read the following paragraph and you will see that Russians take the Wolf problem very seriously:

“In 1965, two cosmonauts overshot their touchdown site by 1,200 miles and found themselves deep in a forest with hungry wolves. That’s when Russian space officials decided to pack a sawed-off shotgun aboard every spacecraft. It took Russian search crews more than two hours to locate the spacecraft and another two hours for helicopters to get support crews to the landing site.”‘

`I think everyone needs one. They have several uses. The obvious reason is to call your lover. Male or female, either come and get it, or bring it here. Call an exotic dancer to your table. Get the bartenders attention to get another drink, blow it at idiot drivers, give it to your best friend, give one to everyone at a bachelor or bachelorette party and then hit the town blowing your whistle. The uses are endless, I’m sure you can think of some. Mostly they are fun and I am the only person in the world making them. You can collect them, each one is different.’

`A British man on trial for murdering four people tried to bite himself to death as a fitting end to his killing spree, an Old Bailey jury was told.

A consultant psychiatrist said Daniel Gonzalez tried to repeatedly bite through arteries in his arms while at Broadmoor high security hospital in an attempt to commit suicide because he believed he had not done enough after killing four victims.

“I have never seen anyone bite themselves with the ferocity that he did,” Edward Petch said.’

`It is not an intelligence-boosting formula likely to impress an Oxbridge don: watching Countdown, playing Sudoku, remembering telephone numbers and taking a shower with your eyes closed.

Yet doing ‘brain exercises’ such as these can make us all up to 40 per cent cleverer within seven days, according to research by a BBC programme this week.

The tests conducted for Get Smarter in a Week appear to bear out the growing belief among scientists that making simple changes to our lifestyle can lead to significant improvements in how well our brains function.’

`An extraordinary family who walk on all fours are being hailed as the breakthrough discovery which could shed light on the moment Man first stood upright.

Scientists believe that the five brothers and sisters found in Turkey could hold unique insights into human evolution.

The Kurdish siblings, aged between 18 and 34 and from the rural south, ‘bear crawl’ on their feet and palms.

Study of the five has shown the astonishing behaviour is not a hoax and they are largely unable to walk otherwise.’

‘A radical Islamic group is infiltrating Australian mosques, distributing inflammatory pamphlets urging Muslims to rise up against Australian troops in Iraq and support the insurgency.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is telling local Muslims that coalition forces in Iraq are responsible for the mosque bombing in Samarra last month that left the nation on the brink of civil war.

The group – a hardline political faction banned in Britain, Germany and other countries — is using Friday prayer meetings, traditionally compulsory for all Muslims, to distribute flyers inciting hatred against the West.’