The little people in China can never catch a break - there are a lot of them and the government in charge is not exactly benevolent so issues that might kill some peasants, like space debris falling on their houses, were likely factored in as acceptable casualties.For its part, despite the launch debris falling on two villages, the Chinese government has declared Chang’e II a successful mission. Unfortunately the residents won't even get to keep these as souvenirs - soldiers already whisked them away.
Everything is LEGOs these days. My kid has played some game that is LEGOs but is based on all three Star Wars movies. 25 years ago LEGOs were almost out of business, today they are bigger than the Bible. Well, not bigger, but big enough to be the Bible.Side note: The Bible has made a heck of a comeback. Atheists have been predicting its demise for centuries yet it is still out there and more popular than ever. Heck, it is even a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game (see The Bible MMO - in where I get beat to the best gaming idea ever)
New research challenges the controversial theory that an ancient comet impact devastated the Clovis people, one of the earliest known cultures to inhabit North America.The comet theory first emerged in 2007 when a team of scientists announced evidence of a large extraterrestrial impact that occurred about 12,900 years ago. The impact was said to have caused a sudden cooling of the North American climate, killing off mammoths and other megafauna. It could also explain the apparent disappearance of the Clovis people, whose characteristic spear points vanish from the archaeological record shortly after the supposed impact.
Genetically modified organisms have existed for thousands of years but more recently an anti-science contingent has been concerned, perhaps with reason, about their impact on the environment.But genetically modified organisms, like forests of genetically altered trees and other plants, could also help save the environment and sequester several billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year, according to a study in BioScience.
First rule of being a university dean; you don't use grad students as slaves. Instead, you wait until they get a Ph.D. and then pay them slave wages and call them post-doctoral fellows. Sheesh, everyone knows this, but St. John's University former dean Cecilia Chang was in charge of East Asian Studies so she knows more about Asians, namely that she could bully them into doing her laundry and whatever other menial jobs she had in mind and culturally they were going to have to take it. Ahhhh, it's good to be in the humanities because you can show people your culture by exploiting them just like you would back home.
It's international golf challenge weekend and Tiger Woods is getting prepared. Witness his concentration as Welsh opera singer Katherine Jenkins performs at the opening ceremony of the Ryder Cup.Way to stay focused!
Rahm Emanuel, the Karl Rove of Democrats - though Democrats defend him as being aggressive, tenacious, etc. whereas the Republican Rove was evil incarnate for acting the exact same way - finally revealed the worse kept secret in America; he is leaving the Obama administration, presumably to run for mayor of Chicago, the city that helped steal the election of 1960 from Richard Nixon.
Our friend and occasional scribe Dr. Bertalan Meskó has createda free, easy-to-use aggregator of quality medical information that lets you select your favourite resources and read the latest news and articles about a medical specialty or a medical condition in one personalized place.Give it a look on his Webicina site.
When Congress and the White House were insisting their government health care plan would be cheaper, they were the only ones who believed it.Now it will be much more expensive - for employees. Trade groups for restaurants and retailers say their employers might halt coverage if the government doesn't loosen the requirement for "mini-med" plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans. That means McDonald's, which has pretty good health benefits for low income earners, could be priced out of a good plan, forcing those people into government health care.As in science, if the government wants to pay for it, private sector corporations will avoid the government paperwork and hassle and let them. But it won't be cheap.
Andrea Kuszewksi, Science 2.0's Internet eyes and ears in the real world, came across this SHORT++ show technology which can make your height an interactive variable - one you can modify in real-time with your phone.See them in action below and then go to the site and read the rest:
