For the discussion of news articles and current events.
It seems that POTUS Obama is having a little trouble with his world map. At the recent Americas summit in Colombia he managed to fail by naming the Falkland Islands as the Maldives. Now he was probably going to try and name them the Malvinas,...
Apparently, all it takes is one little picture from the Economist. I'm trying to work out whether its just a sense of humour failure or if they have a point?
There was another earthqauke off Aceh, near Indonesia with the potential for tsunami across the Indian Ocean. Reports are still coming in but nothing known yet. Here's hoping there is not a repeat of Boxing Day 2004.
I thought it was a lte April Fools joke, but here you go, some scientists have managed to turn snails into batteries capable of powering electronic equipment. I had seen the pictures showing them upgrading cockroaches, and it seems they are moving...
The Mayor of London election race has been a fairly lacklustre affair for the last couple of months. Ken Livingstone, ex-Labour has been making inroads into the incumbent's, Boris Johnson, lead. Boris has not run a great campaign and seems very...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/11/david-cameron-poster-police A man was arrested for displaying a fake election poster that said David Cameron, the British PM was a wanker. It turns out the police acted unlawfully. See the link below. ...
If you haven't been following the Volt's short career, it's worth knowing that Fox News has made it the whipping boy of their anti-Obama rhetoric. It doesn't work, it catches fire, Obama made GM build it as a condition of the bail out, it costs...
(The 1960 part can't change, of course.) James Cameron is going back to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. And on Wednesday, James Cameron folded his 6-foot-2-inch frame into a 43-inch-wide capsule and plummeted, alone, down five miles in the...
http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/mysterious-booms-trembles-plague-wisconsin-town-baffle-scientists-060707562--abc-news.html I'm voting for early warm weather causing unusual ground expansion. Anyone?
I feel like more people should be stunned by this. A comic that pretends to be a yahoo in order to entertain yahoos was courted by a serious presidential candidate to drum up interest in his campaign. I am appalled that: Southerners are...
I'm sure most of you have seen this by now.. Employees at Washington City Paper, Chicago Reader, and Creative Loafing Atlanta were told at meetings today they’d be getting an across-the-board 5 percent pay cut with their next paycheck. There have...
For any astronomers on the board, if you gaze to the west you can see Jupiter and Venus in close alignment, which will not be happening for another few years as their orbits take them further apart. The photo is from 2008 and not something I...
I guess this is passing for news today, that according to a study. Women do more housework Apparently after 40 years of feminism, 8 out of 10 women do more household chores than their husband. Umm, really? This doesn't surprise me at all, a...
Given all the trouble the politicians have gone to in Europe to avoid going anywhere near a popular vote, it appears they are going to have to do exactly that. The European Stability Pact will have to go to a referendum in Ireland and once again,...
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/china-soften-one-child-policy-slogans-not-law-200726036.html Please make special note of the "slogans" that are now being replaced with softer language. Charming.
CERN laboratory has a quandary. It appears that in one of their experiments that they had found particles travelling faster than the speed of light. According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, this is impossible. A stream of neutrinos...
Dear First Husband of Finland, When one is dining in High Company with Presidents and Royals, one should not start looking down the cleavage of the Danish Princess sat next to you. hx92zGs9Txo If caught, looking away makes you out to be the...
I see a lot of articles that catch my eye, but don't seem to have enough meat behind them for a full thread. So I'm going to experiment with a thread for those sorts of interesting snippets. Feel free to share links of your own. Army’s Virtual...
That's Lake Vostok, Antarctica, which is buried beneath several thousand metres of ice and is effectively cut off from the world as its own unique ecosystem. The water at the base is expected to be kept above freezing by geothermal heat and its...
I'm amazed that no-one has commented on the death of Whitney Houston earlier today.
An interesting decision awaits the worlds scientists in 2015. There has been a push from some countries to abandon GMT and time as we know it and to convert everything to atomic time, where everything is regulated in a scientific manner. As...
I know this news hit last week, but I haven't seen much discussion of it. On the one hand, they made unhealthy junk food that probably shouldn't be eaten. On the other hand, it's sad to see an old and iconic brand die.
This could be just the kick in the pants the space program needs, I say. :sci:
In positive environmental news, Obama has banned uranium mining on 1miilion acres in and around the Grand Canyon for the next 20 years. Given the world known status as a natural wonder, this is a very good thinig to happen. Not to mention, that...
Link Ebay buyer sends $2500 to PayPal for a purportedly antique violin. After receiving the item, he claims fake and demands a refund from the company. PayPal say they'll refund after receiving proof that the instrument has been destroyed. ...
Well, after 14 months of being tamed it seems that Russell Brand has filed for divorce from Katy Perry citing irreconcilable differences. It seems that there has been no response yet from Katy Perry. There goes another showbiz marriage.
As happens at this time of year, everyone starts making lists of the best and worst films/stories/people etc. etc. This particular list is one that the BBC really, really should have thought a little harder about. The 2011 Women of year and in...
The Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, has died from a heart attack. He had ruled over the country for over 20 years, through several crises, some of them a legacy of the country and some of them caused by him. His successor, Kim Jong-un is...
Old chinese curse: May you live in interesting times. Well it doesn't get more interesting than this, as for the first time I can remember a government has said No to the EU and walked away. No second referendums, no further inducements, just a line...
http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/1206/haydena.html The woman referred to in the article is my friend's mother. I'm very happy for them.
Ha, ha. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/08/michele-bachmann-memoir-core-of-conviction_n_1136416.html
NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one...
It seems that one of the skeletons hanging in the London Dungeon has turned out to be more than a prop to scare people, but an actual skeleton. It looks liks it has been hanging in one of the exhibitions for several years and no-one had noticed....
Yesterday was General Strike Day in the UK as a lot of the unions complain that they are being hard done by in government negotiations and that they are being given a raw deal. Effectively the UK government has ripped up their previous contract...
A lorry containing a large amount of a yeast extract, believed to be Marmite crashed and spilled its load across the road. It is not yet believed whether they are clearing the road or using it to relay the surface. Although there was a sudden...
A job advertisement in China took the unusual step of asking Scorpios and Virgos not to apply for the job on the grounds they would be unsuitable. OTOH, Capricorns, Pisceans and Librans would be welcome. More on the story here Employee...
So we have large protests held by people with no specific goals and vague politics on a far end of the spectrum. No, it's not the Tea Party again. It's Occupy Wall Street. What are people's thoughts on this one? I'm sympathetic to their anger,...
Well okay, I can see why they might want to ban this: Even if I don't agree with them. In fact, should they succeed, not only will I spam this image to as many people as possible (yeah, I've already saved it off for when the inevitable...
Story here. "The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material's absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our...
I think we can safely say that Rick Perry is not going to get the GOP nomination. zUA2rDVrmNg Oops. So which three was it again?
So the allegation goes that Justin Bieber, all 17 years of him had sex for the first time with a fan backstage at one of his concerts and has promptly become a father. The mother, 19 yr old Mariah Yeater, is now claiming paternity from him and wants...
Politicians are still a great source of interesting dialogue when they forget to turn off their microphones and go for a private chat. This time round, it is Presidents Obama and Sarkozy being just a little bit rude about Israeli Prime Minister,...
Rescued when she was 7 months old, baby elephant Mosha had stepped on a land mine and lost half of her front right leg. Without assistance she would have been unable to survive. And so to help her out, doctors created a prosthetic leg for her to...
This one will probably do the rounds uintil someone shows a mistake in the calculations or something the scientist has missed out, but until then the entier internet is the same weight as a .... ...a strawberry. Calculated by adding up the...
Plans are afoot to create the world's most powerful laser, capbale of ripping apart a vacuum and exposing the ghost particles that appear and vanish in the instants of time. Science wise, it could tell us a lot about how the universe is...
In case you haven't heard, there is a Sesame Street channel on youtube showing repeats of the cartoon series. Some delightful hacker decided to make it slightly more educational for youngsters by uploading some hardcore action to it. It was...
The commonwealth has today voted to abolish primogeniture when it comes to the British Royal Family. So the first born child of Wills and kate will be the following ruler of Britain and the Commonwealth regardless of gender. It seems the world...
From beyond the grave does Steve Jobs spit hate at Android, or perhaps the US Patent system really does need an overhaul. Patent 8,046,721 has been granted and covers the unlocking of a device using a gesture on the screen or using images to show...
The last Javan Rhino was found shot with its horn removed in Vietnam as the last one of its kind in the wild. There are a few more remaining in a Wildlife park, but I think this is one species that man has hunted to death. Not something we can be...
Normally, when a crash test is certified, it is rated at 40mph for how much the car survives and protects the driver and passengers. Motoring show Fifth Gear decided to up the ante and perform a crash test at 120mph on a Ford Focus, a speed it is...
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