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Fort Davis wildfire from McDonald Observatory in the Big Bend country near the Rio Grande river.
Thanks, Bubba
Not sure I want this. I’ve seen Star Trek. I know what happens when phasers go on overload and I don’t have a Scotty available to fix it just in time.
For more than 150 years, spark plugs have powered internal combustion engines. Automakers are now one step closer to being able to replace this long-standing technology with laser igniters, which will enable cleaner, more efficient, and more economical vehicles.
[…]
Spark plugs work by sending small, high-voltage electrical sparks across a gap between two metal electrodes. The spark ignites the air-fuel mixture in the engine’s cylinder — producing a controlled explosion that forces the piston down to the bottom of the cylinder, generating the horsepower needed to move the vehicle. […] Spark plugs can ignite leaner fuel mixtures, but only by increasing spark energy. Unfortunately, these high voltages erode spark plug electrodes so fast, the solution is not economical. By contrast, lasers, which ignite the air-fuel mixture with concentrated optical energy, have no electrodes and are not affected.Lasers also improve efficiency. Conventional spark plugs sit on top of the cylinder and only ignite the air-fuel mixture close to them. The relatively cold metal of nearby electrodes and cylinder walls absorbs heat from the explosion, quenching the flame front just as it starts to expand. Lasers, Taira explains, can focus their beams directly into the center of the mixture. Without quenching, the flame front expands more symmetrically and up to three times faster than those produced by spark plugs.
Found by Brother Uncle Don
 Executive Producers and 300 Club members: David Dolson, Daniel Foster, Dame Jessica Walters, Sir Troy Walters, Anonymous from Kyoto Knighthood: David Dolson Art By: Nick the Rat Sign up for No Agenda Show Talking Points signup here. Listen to show by clicking ► Direct link to show. Sign up for No Agenda Talking Points Newsletter signup here. |
Ricko Gee
Two days before a west Houston bank heist, a 19-year-old bank teller named Estefany Martinez posted a cryptic status update on her Facebook page: “Get $$$…”
What looked on surveillance video to be a classic bank robbery — with armed, masked suspects and terrorized bank tellers — turned out to be an amateurish inside job, allegedly orchestrated by two 19-year-old tellers with the help of a boyfriend and an older brother.
Using an incriminating trail of Facebook posts left by Estefany Martinez and her 18-year-old boyfriend, Ricky “Ricko Gee” Gonzalez, detectives arrested four suspects this week on bank theft charges, alleging they made off with $62,000.
Their Facebook pages held not-so-subtle clues: Two days after the robbery, Martinez posted: “IM RICH …” followed by a rhyming expletive.
“WIPE MY TEETH WITH HUNDEREDS …” her boyfriend allegedly posted the day after the heist. He also boasted of wiping another part of his anatomy with $50 bills…
“I’ve always heard that you shouldn’t post pictures of yourself on Facebook smoking pot or drinking because employers are now looking at Facebook pages,” Martinez’ attorney said. “But I never knew there should be a warning not to post about a bank robbery that’s been committed…”
RTFA for the silly details.
So, a sign of an improving economy is full employment for divorce lawyers?
In a perverse sign of the economic recovery, the US divorce rate, which dipped in the recession, has bounced back, lawyers and matrimonial experts say.
A stronger economy, lower unemployment and a housing market that – while still weak – is no longer in free fall are all contributing to a rebound in divorce filings.
“There is huge pent-up demand,” said Marshal Willick, a Las Vegas matrimonial attorney, who has noted an upturn in his business.
During the recession, couples who were out of work or unable to sell their house stayed married to save money. The percentage of the population 15 years and older who counted themselves divorced dropped to 9.7 in 2009, from 9.9 three years earlier, according to the Census Bureau. More than half of the 1,600 attorneys who are members of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers reported a downturn in their business in 2009, the most recent year for which survey data are available.
Now, those same lawyers are inundated with new clients.
Gotta love the way all the “men” stand around watching, even filming this madness. Then there’s this: Dad who split up fight in McDonald’s shot dead. Is there something in the food?
Instead of the mind numbing content presented in our classrooms by teachers who are often hamstrung in how and what they teach (or prevented from teaching), why can’t we have more teachers like this who are told, as Hunter was when he asked as a new teacher what he should do, “What do you want to do?” and be allowed to do it. Yeah, not an effective way to create slaves and drones, but imagine what a country we’d have if every student had only this particular class when they were young.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle have not been invited to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s royal wedding. The Queen personally invited 40 heads of state, who received the gold-embossed invitations over the weekend to the April 29 wedding of the future king. The Obamas, however, were not among them.
But they can take solace in the knowledge that they will be the guests of their very own state visit to the UK in May. There have been suggestions that the state visit – the first for a US President since 2003 – was set up in return for Obama not coming to the wedding because of the added security costs involved with protecting the President.
French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni will also miss out and Prince Andrew’s former wife, Sarah Ferguson – the Duchess of York – has also been snubbed. Leaders from Commonwealth counties, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand have been invited along with Kings and Queens across Europe, including Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Greece.
The couple will hope the meet-and-greet will help prepare them for their first official overseas visit as a married couple to Canada in June. Other guests include the King of Jordan, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the Sultan of Oman, the King of Bahrain, the Sultan of Brunei and the King of Saudi Arabia, the Emperor of Japan, the King of Malaysia, the King of Tonga and the King of Thailand. Around 1,900 guests will attend the Westminster Abbey ceremony, which will be beamed around the world, and the bride and groom have been allowed to invite more than, 1,000 of their friends.
The invitations, which were posted last week, are on thick white card, bevelled, gilded and stamped with EIIR in gold which has then been burnished.
Har! Apparently this is old news. Still humorous however. The Obama’s will be attending the space shuttle launch instead.
Someone explain this to me. This picture is supposed to be racist.
This picture is not?
I Don’t understand.
Just when you thought things in Washington couldn’t get any stupider… Do other countries treat their heroes this way? You can’t make crap like this up!
The tens of thousands of cops, firefighters, construction workers and others who survived the worst terrorist assault in U.S. history and risked their lives in its wake will soon be informed that their names must be run through the FBI’s terrorism watch list. Any of the responders who are not compared to the database of suspected terrorists would be barred from getting treatment for the numerous, worsening ailments that the James Zadroga 9/11 Health And Compensation Law was passed to address. It’s a requirement that was tacked onto the law during the bitter debates over it last year.
[…]
“This is absurd,” said Glen Kline, a former NYPD emergency services officer. “It’s silly. It’s stupid. It’s asinine.”“It’s comical at best, and I think it’s an insult to everyone who worked on The Pile and is sick and suffering from 9/11,” said John Feal, a former construction worker who lost half a foot at Ground Zero and runs the advocacy group Fealgood Foundation.
The provision was added in an amendment by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) during the heated debate over the bill in the House Energy and Commerce Committee last May. Sept. 11 responders in the committee room at the time mostly shook their heads at the move, which Democrats accepted on a voice vote after battling to bar other amendments on abortion and immigration that might have killed the bill.
“I think Congressman Stearns is stabbing at pettiness. He’s a buffoon,” Feal said. “We get sicker and die, and they’re going to disseminate a letter wondering whether we’re terrorists or not. … I think everybody needs to start showing a little more compassion.”
Here’s an article from last year about this inanity.
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Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) wants answers. Security researchers Wednesday revealed the existence of a file on iPhones and on their computer backups that logs detailed cell phone triangulation data — and has ever since iOS 4 was released last summer. The information is stored unencrypted by default, and is simple to access. That announcement led Franken to fire off a two-page letter (PDF), asking nine pointed questions of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Franken first outlines scenarios in which the release of this data could pose a problem. “Anyone who gains access to this single file could likely determine the location of the user’s home, the businesses he frequents, the doctors he visits, the schools his children attend, and the trips he has taken over the past months or even a year,” he writes. Which raises the obvious question: how would an attacker get access to the data?
1. Why does Apple collect and compile this location data? Why did Apple choose to initiate tracking this data in its iOS 4 operating system?
2. Does Apple collect and compile this location data for laptops?
3. How is this data generated? (GPS, cell tower triangulation, Wi-Fi triangulation, etc.)
4. How frequently is a user’s location recorded? What triggers the creation of a record of someone’s location?
5. How precise is this location data? Can it track the users location to 50 m, 100 m, etc.?
6. Why is this data not encrypted? What steps will Apple take to encrypt the data?
7. Why were Apple consumers never affirmatively informed of the collection and retention of their location data in this manner? Why did Apple not seek affirmative consent before doing so?
8. Does Apple believe that this conduct is permissible under the terms of its privacy policy?
9. To whom, if anyone, including Apple, has this data been disclosed? When and why were these disclosures made?
I like Al Franken. As for Apple and today’s rating as least environmentally friendly status, wait, that can’t be true, since Al Gore is on Apple’s Board of Directors. So why do Liberals love this company so much?
The date 21 April 2011 has been prophesied in the Terminator series as Judgement Day, when the machines rise up and bring about the end of human society as we know it.
Artificial intelligence clearly has not developed in quite the way James Cameron’s science-fiction franchise predicted, but how close are we to the technologies he depicted? Central to the Terminator series is the idea of Skynet, the United States’s “Global Digital Defense Network”, which develops self-awareness and begins a nuclear war…
More worrying to would-be members of “the resistance” is the rise of augmented systems and unmanned military technology.
The Guardian reported last week that a Ministry of Defence study had warned this technology could be the start of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”.
“We should not go down this route, just like chemical weapons and biological weapons are regarded as being beyond the pale, we should be saying this about automated systems…”
The film’s director, James Cameron, told the TMZ website: “Kyle Reese said in the first film that it was only one possible future – clearly, not the one we’re in…now instead of nuclear war we need to worry about global climate change.
“And the machines taking over? With everybody going through their lives bent over their Blackberrys all day long, you could even argue the machines have already won.”
Will someone please go down to the basement and tell the nerds cowering there it’s OK to come out.
It is – isn’t it?
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