Dvorak News Blog

South Carolina stimulus lawsuits handed over to State Court

By Eideard Tuesday June 2, 2009

Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who has refused to accept $700 million in federal stimulus money, was dealt a major blow when a federal judge said two lawsuits seeking to require him to take the money should be heard in state court. The legislature has ordered Mr. Sanford to request the money, most of which would pay for education, but he has refused.

In a news conference after the ruling, Mr. Sanford said he would accept whatever decision the state court made, and acknowledged that he faced long odds in a state with a notoriously weak governorship and several previous court rulings that favor the legislature’s authority over the governor’s.

“It looks like we will be bound to spend that money,” Mr. Sanford said.

Molly Spearman, the executive director of the South Carolina Association of School Administrators, which filed one of the lawsuits against the governor, applauded the announcement.

“Thank goodness for the people of South Carolina,” Ms. Spearman said. “He’s realizing that he’s going to lose and there’s no reason to try and delay this any longer…”

Mr. Sanford’s critics say he has used his opposition to the stimulus package to boost his national profile for a presidential run while South Carolina suffers from the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate.

I guess you don’t get to be leader of the Republican Party till you prove willing to sacrifice education for ideology?

Penguin poop provides location of colonies

By Eideard Tuesday June 2, 2009

13 Comments

Ten new colonies of emperor penguins have been found in Antarctica after satellite photos showing brownish stains on the ice turned out to be the excrement of thousands of birds.

The findings, revealed by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), will help understand penguin populations and the vulnerability to global warming of the breeding colonies which are on sea ice.

“We now reckon there are 38 colonies in Antarctica, 10 of them previously unknown,” Phil Trathan, a BAS penguin ecologist, told Reuters of the study in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography…

Experts studying images taken from space were initially baffled by reddish-brown splodges on the ice.

“It turned out they were the feces, guano stains, of the emperors,” Trathan said. “There’s a really good contrast between the dark poo stains and the ice…”

“We can’t see actual penguins on the satellite maps because the resolution isn’t good enough. But during the breeding season the birds stay at a colony for eight months. The ice gets pretty dirty and it’s the guano stains that we can see,” BAS mapping expert Peter Fretwell said in a statement.

Trathan said British, U.S., French and Australian experts were using more powerful imagery to try to count emperor penguins — perhaps the only species of bird that never puts feet on land.

Can you imagine trying to explain this to explorers even seventy years ago?

Are You Smarter Than A Chimp? Don’t Count On It!

By Uncle Dave Tuesday June 2, 2009

105 Comments

Could you be dumber than a chimp? That’s not as daft a question as it once was. After all, science has proved that chimpanzees share 99 per cent of our DNA.

They can learn sign language. They can solve puzzles and even make tools. And this week came the most startling discovery of all.

Researchers in Japan have pitted human adults against five-year-old chimpanzees in a test of mental agility and memory – and the chimps won. In a test of short-term memory involving numbers flashed on a computer screen, the apes comfortably beat their human opponents. This astonishing result, published in the journal Current Biology, shows that in at least some respects our position at the top of the intellectual tree may be a bit shakier than we thought.

So what is going on here? Are chimps really brighter than us, even in this sort of memory test? And if so, what does this mean for the way that we treat them? After all, how could it be right to lock up creatures more intelligent than ourselves in zoos or laboratories? Most uncomfortably of all, can it be right to kill and eat creatures which may be less bright than ourselves but may nevertheless be fully sentient beings? In fact, the more science discovers about the animal mind, the less comfortable, philosophically, the findings become.
[…]
Apes are not people: they cannot build cathedrals, travel into space or find cures for diseases – but then again, nor can most humans.

What the Japanese research does prove is that once again, a new and hitherto unsuspected ability has been unearthed in animals.

What would you tell Darwin if you could meet him?

No Agenda 101 On the Air — Lightning Strikes

By John C Dvorak Monday June 1, 2009

17 Comments

Here is the latest No Agenda…another show coming on Sunday on around 11 AM I think.

click ► to listen:

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

This week’s episode brought to you by: The Listeners

Click here for your discount code.

Google Doing e-Books?

By John C Dvorak Monday June 1, 2009

4 Comments

iTunes upgraded.
Xbox360 to become the world’s greatest entertainment hub.
Google to get into the e-books business.
Bing launched today. Check it out.
Microsoft starter kit to be improved.
AMD showing 6-core Istanbul chip.
Sony PSP-GO slated to go.
Qualcomm has a processor? I guess so.
Dell Says the bottom of the sales slump is not here yet.

click ► to listen:

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

No Agenda #100 – Now On Cage Match

By KD Martin Monday June 1, 2009

12 Comments

Click image to go to No Agenda.

John and Adam discuss the news of the day from an international perspective

Queue / cue / Q the closing credits — We hope you enjoy the show!

No Agenda Archive

Running time: approx. 90 mins.

Train didn’t stop at your station. Set fire to the one that does!

By Eideard Monday June 1, 2009

12 Comments

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Angry protesters in northern India set fire to a train and a railway station in protest at a move not to stop at remote stations, railway police say.

About 200 protesters attacked Khusrupur station in Bihar, It is not clear if anyone was injured. Local television channels showed flames and smoke billowing out of the burning train and stick-wielding protesters standing nearby.

Residents are said to have been incensed after watching the Patna-Calcutta train speed by without stopping.

“That train did not stop there, so they went berserk and attacked the Dhanapur intercity express,” senior railway police officer Rajender Singh told the Associated Press

New Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee said the protests were “unfortunate”.

“Unfortunate”? You’ve got to be kidding. It’s fracking anarchy.

She said she was unaware of where the order not to stop at certain stations had come from. Ms Banerjee said an inquiry would be held to establish who was behind the order…

Former railway minister Laloo Yadav is from Bihar and railway officials say he had many major trains halting at dozens of smaller stations during his tenure.

Railway ministers in India often reward their constituencies by launching new trains or halting existing trains at existing stations in their area.

The boy who would be a god

By McCullough Monday June 1, 2009

23 Comments

untitled

As a toddler, he was put on a throne and worshipped as by monks who treated him like a god. But the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of a spiritual leader has caused consternation – and some embarrassment – for Tibetan Buddhists by turning his back on the order that had such high hopes for him.

Instead of leading a monastic life, Osel Hita Torres now sports baggy trousers and long hair, and is more likely to quote Jimi Hendrix than Buddha.

Yesterday he bemoaned the misery of a youth deprived of television, football and girls. Movies were also forbidden – except for a sanctioned screening of The Golden Child starring Eddie Murphy, about a kidnapped child lama with magical powers. “I never felt like that boy,” he said.

He is now studying film in Madrid and has denounced the Buddhist order that elevated him to guru status. “They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal,” said Torres, 24, describing how he was whisked from obscurity in Granada to a monastery in southern India. “It was like living a lie,” he told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Despite his rebelliousness, he is still known as Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche and revered by the Buddhist community.

According to the foundation biography, another leader suspected Torres was the reincarnation of the recently deceased Lama Yeshe when he was only five months old. In 1986, at 14 months, his parents took him to see the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. The toddler was chosen out of nine other candidates and eventually “enthroned”.

At six, he was allowed to socialise only with other reincarnated souls – though for a time he said he lived next to the actor Richard Gere’s cabin. By 18, he had never seen couples kiss. His first disco experience was a shock. “I was amazed to watch everyone dance. What were all those people doing, bouncing, stuck to one another, enclosed in a box full of smoke?”

Found by Ian Warner

Robot Construction…

By hhopper Monday June 1, 2009

52 Comments

(Click photo to enlarge.)

If You Thought Only Govt. Spooks Could Tap into Your Cell Phone and Track Your Every Move… Well Think Again

By McCullough Monday June 1, 2009

31 Comments

After four months of harassing phone calls, Courtney Kuykendall was afraid to answer her cell phone. The Tacoma, Washington, teenager was receiving graphic, violent threats at all hours. And when she and her family changed their cell phone numbers and got new phones, the calls continued. Using deep scratchy voices, anonymous stalkers literally took control of the Kuykendall’s cell phones, repeatedly threatened Courtney with murder and rape, and began following the family’s every move. “They’re listening to us and recording us,” Courtney’s mother, Heather Kuykendall, told NBC’s Today Show. “We know that because they will record us and play it back as a voicemail.” How is something like this possible?

Just take a look on the internet. That’s where you’ll find the latest spy technology for cell phones. Spyware marketers claim you can tap into someone’s calls, read their text messages and track their movements “anywhere, anytime.” Security experts say it’s no internet hoax. “It’s real, and it is pretty creepy,” said Rick Mislan, a former military intelligence officer who now teaches cyber forensics at Purdue University’s Department of Computer and Information Technology.

Mislan has examined thousands of cell phones inside Purdue’s Cyber Forensics Lab, and he says spy software can now make even the most high-tech cell phone vulnerable. With the permission of WTHR producer Cyndee Hebert, 13 Investigates purchased and downloaded Spyware on her personal cell phone. Hebert agreed to be spied on – if the spy software lived up to its bold claims. The process of downloading the software took several attempts and a great deal of patience. But once the spy program was installed, Hebert’s phone could indeed be tapped into at any time – just as its distributor promised.

While Hebert was at home making phone calls to her family, investigative reporter Bob Segall was outside her house, listening to the conversations on his cell phone.

And there’s more – much more.

Fly-by-Wire Air France Airbus Disappears Over Atlantic. 228 Feared Dead.

By John C Dvorak Monday June 1, 2009

78 Comments

Air France plane lost: Gordon Brown fears Britons were on board – Telegraph Two-engines, fly-by-wire, short-circuit. This is a formula for disaster.

The Prime Minister said that he feared that there were Britons on board the Airbus A330 which dropped off the radar after hitting turbulence over the Atlantic.

Air France officials said privately that they had “no hope” for Flight 447 which lost contact with air traffic control part way into a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

As the Brazilian air force mounted a search and rescue operation in the waters around the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha, families of passengers gathered at a crisis centre in Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport awaiting news.

The Foreign Office said it was “urgently” seeking news on whether there were any Britons on board.

Mr Brown said: “I do fear that there may be some British citizens on board.”

Although the airline said that it could not rule out terrorism, the indications pointed to a serious electrical short circuit which crippled the jet after it passed through storms near the equator.

Obama’s face rules folk art sales

By Eideard Monday June 1, 2009

13 Comments

Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy, whose dusty portraits can still be seen in kitchens and barbershops and alongside the antique beer cans at bars like Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among hobbyist and professional artists.

Mr. Obama’s campaign was well known for inspiring art, including Shepard Fairey’s ubiquitous “Hope” poster, a version of which is now in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. Months after the election, with the glow of the administration’s first 100 days dimming, it might have been expected that enthusiasm for Obama art would be dimming, too…

The phenomenon has been a boon to the near-anonymous painting factories crowded together in the suburbs of Shenzhen, China, famous for cranking out copies of masterpieces, along with landscapes and semitasteful nudes. Another one, seemingly based in Germany, offers stately Obamas amid air-brushy likenesses of Tupac Shakur, Bruce Lee and Al Pacino (in his “Scarface” role), advertised as “real hand-embellished” paintings on canvas.

Awww. He Built A “Love I.E.D.” For His Sweetie’s Dad…

By Uncle Dave Monday June 1, 2009

9 Comments

Give a man a gun; you have armed him for today. Teach a man to build a bomb; and you have armed him for a lifetime.

It goes like this: Boy meets girl. They exchange glances and text messages, the limit of respectable courting here. Then boy asks girl’s father for her hand. Dad turns him down. Boy goes to girl’s house and plants a bomb out front.

The authorities call it a “love I.E.D.,” or improvised explosive device, and it is not just an isolated case. Capt. Nabil Abdul Hussein of the Iraqi national police said that six had exploded in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad alone in the past year.

“These guys, they face any problem with their girlfriends, family, anyone, and they’re making this kind of I.E.D.,” Captain Hussein said.

There have been no reported deaths or injuries from the devices used in this way, in Dora or elsewhere. “Usually they’re putting them in front of the doors of their houses, not to kill, but to scare them,” Captain Hussein said.

After six years of war, Iraq is a society with a serious anger management problem. That, along with a lot of men with a lot of experience fashioning bombs and setting ambushes, makes for a lethal mix.

The police say that many of the men are former insurgents who are no longer trying to kill foreign troops but who have an array of bomb-making skills and a stash of TNT.

China Suspends Exchanges With North Korea

By Gasparrini Monday June 1, 2009

28 Comments

China Suspends North Korea Exchanges, Yonhap Reports – Bloomberg: China suspended government exchanges with North Korea after Kim Jong-Il’s regime last week tested a nuclear device and fired short-range missiles, Yonhap News said.
China has halted plans to send officials to North Korea and won’t accept visits from Kim’s government either, the Korean- language news agency said today, citing unidentified diplomatic sources in Beijing.
China’s foreign ministry has said the country “resolutely opposes” North Korea’s nuclear test.

Does Cap-And-Trade Have Too High A Cost With Trivial Benefit?

By Uncle Dave Monday June 1, 2009

31 Comments

This article was written by a professor of economics at Harvard.

The Obama administration and congressional Democrats have proposed a major cap-and-trade system aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists agree that CO2 emissions around the world could lead to rising temperatures with serious long-term environmental consequences. But that is not a reason to enact a U.S. cap-and-trade system until there is a global agreement on CO2 reduction.
[…]
The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the resulting increases in consumer prices needed to achieve a 15 percent CO2 reduction — slightly less than the Waxman-Markey [bill’s] target — would raise the cost of living of a typical household by $1,600 a year. Some expert studies estimate that the cost to households could be substantially higher. The future cost to the typical household would rise significantly as the government reduces the total allowable amount of CO2.

Americans should ask themselves whether this annual tax of $1,600-plus per family is justified by the very small resulting decline in global CO2. Since the U.S. share of global CO2 production is now less than 25 percent (and is projected to decline as China and other developing nations grow), a 15 percent fall in U.S. CO2 output would lower global CO2 output by less than 4 percent. Its impact on global warming would be virtually unnoticeable.