Dvorak News Blog

A Bush Push To Poison Us?

By Uncle Dave Thursday December 4, 2008

Anti-abortion, birth control, etc. because that is anti-life. But do everything possible (wreck the economy, poison the environment, unaffordable health care, etc) to make living a nightmare once you’re born. Unless you can afford the very best, of course. Pass the caviar, please.

Feds Set to Eliminate Water Regulations for Neurotoxin

Among the Bush administration’s final environmental legacies will be a decision to exempt perchlorate, a known neurotoxin found at unsafe levels in the drinking water of millions of Americans, from federal regulation.

The ruling, proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency in October, was supposed to be formalized on Monday. That deadline passed, but the agency expects to announce its decision by the year’s end, before president-elect Barack Obama takes office. It could take years to reverse.

Critics accuse the EPA of ignoring expert advice and basing their decision on an abstract model of perchlorate exposure, rather than existing human data.

“We know that breast milk is widely contaminated with perchlorate, and we know that young children are especially vulnerable. We have really good human data. So why are they putting a model front-and-center?” said Anila Jacobs at the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. “And they used a model that hasn’t yet gone through the peer-review process.”

The ruling is one of dozens planned for the final days of the Bush administration. Others include a relaxing of air pollution standards for aging power plants, and a reduction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s traditional role in evaluating the impact of federal projects on endangered species.

Comparing A Woman To Monica Lewinsky Is Libelous In Italy

By Uncle Dave Wednesday December 3, 2008

6 Comments

I wonder if Monica can sue for being compared to this woman?

Lewinsky comparison grounds for libel

Comparing a woman to Monica Lewinsky is an egregious enough offense to be grounds for libel, Italy’s high court says.

The Cessation Court ruled Tuesday such is the reputation of the former White House intern for U.S. President Bill Clinton that when a Puglia woman sued a lawyer for saying she had a “Lewinskian nature,” it was a bad enough insult to be considered libel, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The woman, identified only Gennarina M., reportedly was angry that a lower court ruled the unidentified lawyer did not libel her with the jibe, so she appealed, and the Cessation Court said a new trial was in order.

ANSA said Gennarina M. only sued the lawyer after seeing the derogatory description — which also accused her of “uterine ramblings” — in a legal document.

The Cloud OS Announced

By John C Dvorak Wednesday December 3, 2008

9 Comments

RIMM, Research in Motion continues to dive.
Xbox360 future is vague. Microsoft is lost.
g-OS releases Cloud OS.
Serious shortage of Christmas iPODs. Nobody seems to know why. Is this a marketing ruse?
DOJ was about to go after Google on Yahoo deal.
Contradictory stories abound.
Look for the new domain name .tel. Designed for phone books or directories.
Today’s show sponsored by Budget.com.

click ► to listen:

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

Looking For A Practical (And Weird) Gift For That ‘Special’ Person This Giftmas?

By Uncle Dave Wednesday December 3, 2008

9 Comments

Click pics to purchase.

‘God said she needed to be taken off road’

By John C Dvorak Wednesday December 3, 2008

21 Comments

‘God said she needed to be taken off road’ — Stories like this are always good for your spirit.

Faster! FASTER!

A speeding pickup rear-ended a woman’s sedan on the South Side on Friday morning and sheriff’s officials say the driver said it was Jesus’ will because the other motorist was not “driving like a Christian.”

Schwab told first responders at the scene that “the other vehicle was not driving like a Christian and it was Jesus’ will for him to punish the car,” according to the release.

The 35-year-old woman was driving her sedan north when the pickup struck her vehicle. Schwab told deputies he was driving faster than 100 mph at the time, Coleman said.

The impact caused both vehicles to spin across a median before they came to a stop along a barrier in the southbound lanes. No other vehicles were involved. Though both vehicles were badly damaged, the drivers suffered minor injuries.

“God must have been with them, ’cause any other time, the severity of this crash, it would have been a fatal,” Coleman said.

Found by William Reising.

Pic of the Day Dept. — How Different Religions Comprehend Life.

By hhopper Wednesday December 3, 2008

25 Comments

(Click photo to enlarge.)

Rove: We were Wrong

By McCullough Wednesday December 3, 2008

43 Comments

In what was a remarkable admission that contradicted – to a large extent – the past statements from his onetime boss, former Bush strategist Karl Rove said on Tuesday evening that had the President known Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction, the United States would not have gone to war.

“In the aftermath of 9/11 the concern was about a tyrant accused of enormous human rights abuses,” but who also possessed weapons of mass destruction, said Rove. “Absent that, I suspect that the administration’s course of action would have been to work to find more creative ways to constrain him like in the 90s.”

The remarks, delivered at a debate in New York on Bush’s legacy, came amidst a vigorous defense by Rove on behalf of the war’s purpose and outcome. At no point was it mentioned that the administration — specifically Vice President Dick Cheney — reportedly advanced faulty or poorly sourced information to fit the conclusion that Iraq possessed WMD, or that intelligence reports from the run-up to the war suggested that such a case was flimsy. Later in the event, Rove argued that Saddam Hussein was supporting terrorism, poised a grave threat to the region, and had systematically duped the international community into assuming he was armed.

“He told his interrogators it made him look big in the neighborhood,” said Rove, before noting all of the Democratic officials who believed as much.

As such, Rove argued, the Bush administration was justified in the course it chose and the world better off for its actions.

Translation: If we’d have known what we didn’t know, we wouldn’t have done what we did.

iPod Shortage Spreading

By hhopper Wednesday December 3, 2008

17 Comments

Cnet News

An iPod shortage at Amazon.com appears to have spread to other distribution channels, according to an analyst.

Shaw Wu of Kaufman Bros. reports that after checking in with his retail sources, he believes that Apple is experiencing an iPod shortage as holiday demand proves stronger than the company may have anticipated. Retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target are now reporting iPod shortages after Amazon.com extended the lead times for its iPods following Black Friday, he wrote in a research note distributed Wednesday.

It had been unclear whether the public was responding to Apple’s latest crop of iPods, despite the usual saturation advertising for the iPod Nano and iPod Touch. With the stock market in the tank and people worried about their jobs, it didn’t appear that this would be the best holiday season for iPod sales.

Don’t wait to get your Christmas iPod.

Calif. Insurer Aggravates Hate Killing

By lperdue Wednesday December 3, 2008

33 Comments

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a raging racist killed Taneka Talley in March 2006 while she was working as a clerk at a Dollar Tree store in Fairfield, north of SF. But the company’s worker’s comp insurance company denied her 11-year-old son the $250,000 in death benefits because they claim it was a hate crime and not job related. Dollar Tree supports the insurer.

“They’re saying (the killing) didn’t arise out of her employment, except that in this case she wouldn’t have been killed if she hadn’t been at work,” said Frazier’s attorney, Moira Stagliano. “This person didn’t know her, just walked into the store and picked her out.”

The killer, Tommy Joe Thompson, 45, of West Sacramento — had previously served a prison sentence for beating his young son in 1994 — walked in and stabbed Talley.

[A] defense psychiatrist, Herb McGrew, testified that Thompson had told him he stabbed Talley because she was black. Thompson is white.

“You know that he got up that morning, and he said, ‘I’m going to kill a black person,’ ” said Deputy District Attorney Dane Neilson, according to a transcript of the hearing. “She was, unfortunately, the first person he saw, correct?”

“Correct,” McGrew replied.

German Army In Afghanistan so Fat they are relegated to sidelines

By McCullough Wednesday December 3, 2008

31 Comments

Me want Food!!!!

First they were accused of not wanting to fight. Then they were blamed for failing in their main mission to train the Afghan police.

Now Germany’s battered military reputation has received a further humiliating blow. According to official reports the 3,500 troops in northern Afghanistan drink too much and are too fat to fight.

A German parliamentary report has revealed that in 2007 German forces in Afghanistan consumed about 1.7 million pints of beer and 90,000 bottles of wine. During the first six months of this year 896,000 pints of beer were shipped to German forces in Afghanistan. British and US bases in the country enforce a strict ban on alcohol.

The physical condition of the soldiers was already in question after a German armed forces report found that 40 per cent of its soldiers aged 18-29 were overweight, compared to 35 per cent of the civilian population of the same age. The report, published in March, concluded that the Bundeswehr lived on beer and sausages while shunning fruit and vegetables. It said that an overdeveloped bureaucracy was also contributing to a “passive lifestyle” on the part of the soldiers.

So where’s the down side? I mean, we are talking about Germany here.

Brits tortured Barack Obama’s grandfather

By Eideard Wednesday December 3, 2008

13 Comments

The past usually finds a way of catching up with us. Could Britain’s colonial sins pose a risk to our relationship with the soon-to-be most powerful person on Earth?

Hussein Onyango Obama, the president-elect’s paternal grandfather, had served with the British army in Burma during the second world war and later found work back in Kenya as a military cook. Like many army veterans, he returned to Africa hoping to win greater freedoms. But his aspirations soon turned to resentment of the occupying British.

He became involved in the Mau Mau independence movement and was arrested as early as 1949, probably on charges of membership of a banned organisation.

During two years’ detention he was subjected to horrific violence, according to the story’s authors, Ben Macintyre and Paul Orengoh. Tortures inflicted on Kenyan prisoners sometimes involved such barbaric implements as “castration pliers”. “The African warders were instructed by the white soldiers to whip him every morning and evening till he confessed,” Sarah Onyango, 87, tells the Times.

The behaviour of British soldiers is the subject of continuing legal action in the UK courts from victims seeking reparations for torture and mistreatment suffered more than 50 years ago. The Kenyan Human Rights Commission is still gathering evidence.

Over the course of the battle against colonial Britain in Kenya, over 70,000 Africans are believed to have died. 32 white European civilians were killed.

Paper Plate Face Bandit Fails at Bank Robbery

By McCullough Wednesday December 3, 2008

7 Comments

A would-be robber who tried a new tack was foiled early Wednesday by a gutsy clerk who dismissed the mug’s mumbled threat and note as a joke instead of a threat and called the coppers, according to state police at Reading.

The caper began near Reading when a man, wearing a paper plate over his face, emerged out of the frost-filled darkness around 3:15 a.m. to stand at the front door of the Pricestone Sunoco, 3123 Pricetown Road, Alsace Township in Berks County. When the man approached the counter, the suspicious clerk informed him that he had to remove his paper mask before she could serve him.

“The actor mumbled and placed a note on the counter which told her to give him money and act normal,” police said.

The courageous clerk hit the silent alarm instead and told Plate Face the police were on their way. Plate Face turned tail and ran out the door toward Oley Road, police said.

The quality of the criminals lately is dismal…I blame the school system.

Hitachi + Intel to produce SSD devices

By Eideard Wednesday December 3, 2008

16 Comments

Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi said it and U.S. chipmaker Intel would jointly develop solid state drive (SSD) memory devices, which are seen as a promising alternative to hard disk drives.

The move marks a strategic shift for Hitachi, the world’s third-largest hard drive maker, which until now has not made a commitment to SSD technology.

SSDs are increasingly being used as the storage device in laptop PCs, primarily because they are better at absorbing shocks and consume less power than hard disk drives.

Under the agreement, Intel will manufacture SSDs jointly developed by the two firms. Hitachi will sell the devices, with the first shipment planned for 2010, the companies said in a joint statement.

“More the merrier” won’t make Toshiba and Samsung happy.

Video — Fred Thompson Brings You Some Holiday Cheer: “Ask Not What Your Country Can Spend For You, But What You Can Spend For Your Country”

By Gasparrini Wednesday December 3, 2008

39 Comments

Let Grandpa Thompson tell you a little holiday story about the Economy. You will fell all warm and fuzzy about it, common sense be damned.

Revolutionary Fish-Like Tech Generates Power From Slow Running Water

By Uncle Dave Wednesday December 3, 2008

21 Comments

The technology can generate electricity in water flowing at a rate of less than one knot – about one mile an hour – meaning it could operate on most waterways and sea beds around the globe.

Existing technologies which use water power, relying on the action of waves, tides or faster currents created by dams, are far more limited in where they can be used, and also cause greater obstructions when they are built in rivers or the sea. Turbines and water mills need an average current of five or six knots to operate efficiently, while most of the earth’s currents are slower than three knots.

The new device, which has been inspired by the way fish swim, consists of a system of cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs.

As water flows past, the cylinder creates vortices, which push and pull the cylinder up and down. The mechanical energy in the vibrations is then converted into electricity.

Cylinders arranged over a cubic metre of the sea or river bed in a flow of three knots can produce 51 watts. This is more efficient than similar-sized turbines or wave generators, and the amount of power produced can increase sharply if the flow is faster or if more cylinders are added.

A “field” of cylinders built on the sea bed over a 1km by 1.5km area, and the height of a two-storey house, with a flow of just three knots, could generate enough power for around 100,000 homes. Just a few of the cylinders, stacked in a short ladder, could power an anchored ship or a lighthouse.

Here’s another article on the technology.