Representative Pete King of New York has introduced a bill to Congress that would require all new cameraphones to have shutter sounds. Why? For the children!
The bill states that “Congress finds that children and adolescents have been exploited by photographs taken in dressing rooms and public places with the use of a camera phone,” a fact which I doubt many would challenge. What many will challenge are the notions that the main purpose of silent camera modes is to perv on Kindergartners and that banning these modes would stop anyone from doing so.
There is a practically unlimited supply of existing, silent-mode-enabled cameras that are available to anyone who wants them, not to mention the fact that many cameraphones have video modes, which present a problem that couldn’t really be solved short of requiring handsets to scream “HEY NAKED KIDS, I’M TAKING A VIDEO RIGHT NOW SO YOU SHOULD PROBABLY GO GET YOUR PARENTS” on loop for the duration of the recording.
On Thursday, a story broke that some restaurants around Buffalo were experiencing shortages of chicken wings & very high prices, causing worry among owners and wing fans alike who are hoping the issues of the Northeast do not spread further through the country.
Damn right that’s a problem, as this weekend is of course the Super Bowl, a weekend that accounts for 5% of all wing consumption during the year, with over 1 billion wings eaten in all. That’s a lot of chickens that died for your sins.
The potential chicken wing crisis started when producer Pilgrims Pride filed for bankruptcy December 1st. Pilgrims Pride was responsible for 25% of U.S. chicken processing. Higher gas and feed prices have also led some farms to decrease production.
At the very least, this production shortage is affecting wing prices. This week, the Georgia Department of Agriculture quotes a price of $1.425 for chicken wings, well above the 2008 high of $1.27.
Some restaurant owners were even calling for a boycott of their suppliers, citing prices that have almost doubled. “Forty pounds (of wings) would be like $85,” said Sam Musolino, owner of Sammy’s Pizzeria. Good luck getting football fans to boycott eating buffalo wings, Sam.
Why haven’t we heard about this on the MSM? Is the government afraid of chicken wing riots? Are detention camps being set up to hold irate, wingless Super Bowlers? I foresee blood in the streets. Mark my words!
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On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, two experts on Auschwitz argue for and against the idea that the former Nazi death camp should be allowed to crumble away.
ROBERT JAN VAN PELT, HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR
Many Auschwitz survivors have told me that a visit to the camp can teach little to those who were not imprisoned there.
Their view is best summarised in the text of Alain Resnais’ celebrated movie Night and Fog (1955), written by the camp survivor Jean Cayrol. As the camera pans across the empty barracks, the narrator warns the viewer that these remains do not reveal the wartime reality of “endless, uninterrupted fear”. The barracks offer no more than “the shell, the shadow”.
Should the world marshal enormous resources to preserve empty shells and faint shadows?
The White House said Thursday it is considering the option of an “orderly” bankruptcy as it weighs aid for U.S. automakers and Chrysler LLC prepared to shut down all of its 30 factories for a month.The move by the Bush administration injected a new note of uncertainty into the politically charged discussions of a bailout for the U.S. automakers that is reaching a conclusion after more than a month of wrangling.
Both Chrysler and General Motors Corp denied earlier on Thursday that merger talks between the two had restarted.
Also, the outlook for a near-term recovery in global auto demand dimmed as Europe saw a record fall in truck sales and an industry group warned that Japanese car sales likely to be the worst in at least three decades next year.
- Layoffs at Sprint and Philips.
- IE being finalized.
- Win7 stops downloading on Feb. 10.
- Blackberry glitches.
- Photoshop CS4 pirated version has virus.
- Femtocell changing the way we use phones.
- iLIFE 09 ships tomorrow. I have no idea what iLIFE actually is and do not want to know.
- Twitter valued at $250 million. For what?
- Zune sales way down.
- Cisco to do servers.
- Games outselling DVDs.
- EU may demand MSFT bundle rival browsers with Windows.
Google is to launch a service that would enable users to access their personal computer from any internet connection, according to industry reports. But campaigners warn that it would give the online behemoth unprecedented control over individuals’ personal data.
The Google Drive, or “GDrive”, could kill off the desktop computer, which relies on a powerful hard drive. Instead a user’s personal files and operating system could be stored on Google’s own servers and accessed via the internet. The long-rumoured GDrive is expected to be launched this year, according to the technology news website TG Daily, which described it as “the most anticipated Google product so far”. It is seen as a paradigm shift away from Microsoft’s Windows operating system, which runs inside most of the world’s computers, in favour of “cloud computing”, where the processing and storage is done thousands of miles away in remote data centres.
Las Vegas airport has biggest passenger decline since 1981 – USATODAY.com — Another indicator that things are grinding to a halt.
About 44 million passengers flew in and out of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas in 2008, a 7.7% decline from 2007.
The numbers released by the Clark County Department of Aviation include a 14.1% decline in December to about 3.2 million, and reflect the recession that has undercut Las Vegas tourism.
It’s the biggest year-over-year percentage decline since traffic fell from 10.3 million in 1980 to 9.5 million in 1981.
found by John Ligums
Householders are to be visited by officials offering advice on cooking with leftovers, in a Government initiative to reduce the amount of food that gets thrown away. Home cooks will also be told what size portions to prepare, taught to understand “best before” dates and urged to make more use of their freezers. The door-to-door campaign, which starts tomorrow, will be funded by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a Government agency charged with reducing household waste. The officials will be called “food champions”. However, they were dismissed last night as “food police” by critics who called the scheme an example of “excessive government nannying”.
In an initial seven-week trial, eight officials will call at 24,500 homes, dishing out advice and recipes. The officials, each of whom has received a day’s training, will paid up to £8.49 an hour, with a bonus for working on Saturdays. The pilot scheme, which will cost £30,000, could be extended nationwide if it is seen as a success. If all 25 million households in the UK were visited in the same way, 8,000 officials would be required at a cost of tens of millions of pounds. Peter Ainsworth, the shadow environment secretary, said: “You might have thought, at a time of economic hardship, that spending public money on stating the obvious is hardly a priority. With household budgets under pressure, most people are looking to spend wisely and waste less anyway.”
The UK has become a never-ending source of amusement for me.
City sues man for canceling trash service – Examiner.com — In some cities like Berkeley you get fined for not doing enough recycling. So this guy takes it to the max and gets sued by the dipshits in San Mateo County.
A man who claims to have reduced his waste to nearly nothing out of concern for the environment now faces a lawsuit from San Carlos for canceling his garbage-collection service.
Eddie House, 53, says he was shocked when he was served with a lawsuit Sunday at his Cedar Street home.
The lawsuit, filed by San Carlos Deputy City Attorney Linda Noeske in San Mateo Superior Court on Jan. 22, seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit.
found by Aric Mackey

Monster.com is advising its users to change their passwords after data including e-mail addresses, names and phone numbers were stolen from its database. The break-in comes just as the swelling ranks of the unemployed are turning to sites like Monster.com to look for work.
The company disclosed on its Web site that it recently learned its database had been illegally accessed. Monster.com user IDs and passwords were stolen, along with names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, gender, ethnicity, and in some cases, users’ states of residence. The information does not include Social Security numbers, which Monster.com said it doesn’t collect, or resumes.
USAJobs.com, the U.S. government Web site for federal jobs, is hosted by Monster.com and was also subject to the data theft. USAJobs.com also posted a warning about the breach.
The company advised users to change their passwords and reminded them to ignore e-mails they may get that purport to be from the company and that ask for password information or instruct the user to download anything.
I think it’s reasonably creepy that monster.com isn’t directly contacting users whose accounts were compromised.
“Remember Me? Of course you do because you drink Columbian Coffee”
The January issue of The Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease features the results of this study which tracked some 2,000 people over a 21 year period. During the study period the participants self-reported their dietary habits; which included their coffee consumption. After evaluating the effects of many health and socioeconomic factors, including high blood pressure and high cholesterol counts, the research team concluded the participants who drank between three and five cups of coffee a day were 65% less likely to develop dementia than those who drank less. Drinking even more than five cups a day was also associated with a reduced risk of developing dementia but the number of participants drinking this much coffee was too small to be statistically significant. While not advocating someone start drinking coffee as a preventive measure, Dr. Miia Kivipelto, associate professor of neurology at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute, suggests the following factors may be involved:
* Previous studies have found drinking coffee decreases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a disease that raises the risk of dementia.
* Animal studies have shown that caffeine reduces formation of amyloid plaques in the brain. These plaques are a distinguishing characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease.
* Coffee may be a bloodstream-protecting antioxidant that protects the vascular system enough to reduce the likelihood of dementia.Kivipelto also noted coffee consumption has been linked to decreased risk of Parkinson’s disease.
So, it turns out some drugs are actually beneficial. Great, and I just gave up coffee a few weeks ago.

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If you thought being governor of Alaska and a new grandmother would be enough to fill the cold, dark nights in the Arctic state, you underestimate Sarah Palin, the failed vice presidential candidate.
Palin has reportedly enlisted the services of Robert Barnett, the Washington lawyer who represented President Obama, would-be President Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in their multimillion-dollar book deals.
Barnett declined to comment. But a variety of published sources, including the Hollywood Reporter, said that Barnett was on board in helping to sell a Palin book. Presumably, the book would tell her side of the 2008 presidential election, when the GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, plucked Palin out of relative obscurity and offered her the vice presidential spot. Though she was a darling of conservatives and ignited the Republican base whenever she appeared in public, Palin has made it known that she had a difficult time with McCain’s strategists…
Sources close to Palin rejected reports of the $11-million figure and said the governor had not talked to any publisher or given any number…In any case, there is more than money at stake. Palin has been trying to stay in the spotlight, presumably with an eye on 2012, and a book could help her extend her reach beyond Alaska.
Do you think rank-and-file Republicans want her to stay in party leadership?
Thanks, Mr. Justin
Spooky. That’s the kind of look I see on my fellow commuters in the morning when I take the train to come to London.