Officials suspended a fifth-grader in New Jersey who found a lighter on his way to school.

Jamesburg school superintendent Gail Verona told The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick the lighter had the potential to compromise student safety.

But the 11-year-old boy’s father questioned why school officials consider the lighter a weapon.

Patrick Halpin called police Wednesday to say there were weapons on school property because teachers at the Grace Breckwedel Middle School had lighters in the building…

The superintendent says a weapon is anything that ”has the potential to cause harm.”

Jamesburg Police Chief Martin Horvath says he believes the school took appropriate action

Which goes to say that the school superintendent and the police chief are mutual political toadies.


For non-Flash version, click here.

Today’s Guests:
David Spark, Host, The Spark Minute
Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager, Google
Cade Metz, U.S. Editor, The Register

The Topics:
Farewell, Cranks!

Download this Episode:
iPod/iPhone/PSP: 111MB
Quicktime H.264: 137MB
Windows Media Player: 133MB
Mobile 3GP: 38MB
MP3 (Audio Only): 28MB

Right click and choose “save target as” or “save as” to download videos.


In follow-up work to Miller and Urey’s groundbreaking study look at the synthesis of organic compounds in a primordial environment, it was shown that RNA monomeric bases could form under conditions similar to those of a prehistoric Earth. More recent work has shown how such individual bases, floating in a water environment, could link together into chains. […] A critical question that remained unanswered, though, was how the ancient RNA enzymes could survive.

Now researchers at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the United Kingdom think they have cracked that puzzle. By placing RNA inside liquid pockets of water encased inside cooling ice, they found that RNA enzymes could function and at the same time escape degradation.
[…]
Thus the origin of life on Earth might not have been in a deep-sea vent or open ocean, but in a cold muddy puddle in the icy north or south, which contained a mix of water and organic byproducts of freed carbon from the Earth’s crust.
[…]
Over time this life form could have built up an arsenal of useful chemicals — evolution at its most basic microscopic form. The most critical developments would have been the creation of a protective phospholipid bilayer, the creation of protein enzymes to offer faster catalysis, and last, but not least, the switch to the more chemically stable DNA. Once a self-replicating RNA-lifeform gained these adaptations, it would at last have been ready to venture into warmer climates and begin to survive and reproduce, capturing the sun’s power to fix energy in carbon-based molecules.

From there a long evolutionary road lay ahead, eventually reaching man and our zoological peers in the modern world.

Looks like no ‘creator’ needed after all. Just chemical reactions, evolution and vast, hard for humans to comprehend stretches of time. Parallels Stephen Hawking’s book that shows one wasn’t needed to have created the universe either.


Here is the latest conversation I had with money manager Andrew Horowitz…. new insights for anyone who invests in anything. We talk about who is screwing with the Yen.
Click here for non-Flash version.

click ► to listen:

 
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Contribute to the future of the show here.



This is the NeXT computer that hosted the first web server built by Tim Berners-Lee at Cern. It’s in a glass case with a note requesting that it not be turned off.

This photo is just one in a series taken at the Large Hadron Collider which may have found something interesting.


  • Oracle World going full tilt in SF. Michael Dell attends.
  • Rumor abounds that the Oracle may buy HP.
  • IBM to buy Brocade? Perhaps.
  • DSL hitting 700 Mbps. Where?
  • Twitter attack not my fault.
  • Autumn begins.
  • Jet Blue setting up Wi-Fi on planes.
  • Schools and libraries will get fiber from government.

click to listen:

 

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

Just a few articles on the Tea Party from today:
The Decidedly Unconservative Nature of the Tea Party Establishment
Fox News Surveys and the Tea Party Movement
Tea Party’s Carl Paladino Within a Few Points of Andrew Cuomo in N.Y. Gov Race
Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell: Tea Party’s conservative darlings look, dress and talk alike

Will / Would You Vote For A Tea Party Candidate?

View Results
Create a Poll


An elderly man is in critical condition after being thrown to the ground by a police officer. It happened Saturday night near North Orange Avenue after police say Daniel Daley put his hands on the cop. The World War II veteran is out of surgery. He suffered an injury doctors at Florida Hospital say only about 10 percent of people are lucky enough to survive. Daley left the Caboose Bar and headed to his car across the street Saturday night.

Witnesses say the 84-year-old was upset when he saw his car was about to be towed. The Ivanhoe Grocery owner recently posted signs warning drivers because customers of other businesses were parking in their spots. Several people, who didn’t want to go on camera, say it has led to plenty of arguments the past few weeks, but none with the potentially deadly consequences that happened Saturday. The police were called and say Daley, who’d been drinking, put his hands on the officer.

Witnesses say he put his hands on the officer three times and the cop warned him to stop each time. Police say Daley made a fist and said ‘I’m not leaving until I knock this cop out.’ Another witness says the officer then violently hip checked him and took him to the ground.

Daley ended up in Florida Hospital with a broken neck.



The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Meet the Depressed
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party
So much for the screeners doing their job. Har.


A diary entry belonging to a senior member of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has revealed that during the First World War it was discovered that the bodily fluid could act as an effective invisible ink.

In June 1915, Walter Kirke, deputy head of military intelligence at GHQ France, wrote in his diary that Mansfield Cumming, the first chief (or C) of the SIS was “making enquiries for invisible inks at the London University”.

In October he noted that he “heard from C that the best invisible ink is semen”, which did not react to the main methods of detection. Furthermore it had the advantage of being readily available

However, the discovery also led to some further problems, with the agent who had identified the novel use having to be moved from his department after becoming the butt of jokes.

In addition, at least one agent had to be reminded to use only fresh supplies of the ‘ink’ when correspondents began noticing an unusual smell.

The revelations are included in ‘MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909-1949′ by Professor Keith Jeffery.

Isn’t masturbation an essential job skill in most intelligence services?


Motorola Droid X Android 2.2 Froyo

I have it… now trying to figure out what’s new.



The health-reform law is changing the health-insurance marketplace in big ways. The first changes—those that happen right away—take effect Sept. 23, 2010, six months after the health-reform bill was signed.,, Consumer Reports offers a free health-insurance guide [.pdf] to how the new law affects you.

If you get health insurance through work, your coverage will likely remain pretty much the same, but with some new consumer protections. Lifetime caps on coverage are banned, for example, and insurers will have to adopt new procedures allowing workers to appeal coverage denials.

According to the new Patient’s Bill of Rights insurers can no longer do the following: Cancel your coverage if you get sick; set lifetime limits on coverage; put annual dollar limits on coverage (this is phased in over three years); deny coverage to children under age 19 who have pre-existing conditions; and impose barriers to or refuse to pay for emergency care even if it’s at a hospital outside the insurer’s network.

A Kentucky man accused of strangling his wife is poised to claim excessive caffeine from sodas, energy drinks and diet pills left him so mentally unstable he couldn’t have knowingly killed her…

Woody Will Smith, 33, is scheduled for trial starting today on a murder charge in the May 2009 death of Amanda Hornsby-Smith, 28.

Defense attorney Shannon Sexton filed notice with the Newport court of plans to argue his client ingested so much caffeine in the days leading up to the killing that it rendered him temporarily insane — unable even to form the intent of committing a crime…

Reports and case records say during that time, he was drinking five or six soft drinks and energy drinks a day, along with taking diet pills; it all added up to more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day.

Prosecutor Michelle Snodgrass said Smith tested negative for amphetamine-type substances shortly after the killing…

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — published by the American Psychiatric Association showing standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders — defines overdose as more than 300 mg. That’s about three cups of coffee.

More than three cups of coffee classifies you as loony, overdosed on coffee?

Har! That explains the behavior of half the geeks in the world.


« Previous PageNext Page »

Bad Behavior has blocked 10792 access attempts in the last 7 days.