Pictures of the day: 1 December 2008 – Telegraph This 1.08 KG white truffle sold for $200,000. It will be showcased at some restaurant then eaten soon… eaten in thin expensive slices.
Found by Alex Wasowicz.
Google has published its plan to build into Chrome what is arguably its most requested feature: the ability to accept extensions that can customize how the open-source Web browser operates.
And guess what? Google’s dependence on advertising notwithstanding, one of the extension examples the company points to is the ability to block advertisements.
The Chrome extensions document, spotlighted Saturday by Google programmer Aaron Boodman, doesn’t include a timeline, but it does shed light on why the project is a priority for Chromium, the open-source project behind Chrome.
Google has to add extensions if their browser is going to be competitive.
Just thought I’d do a little trolling this morning. See part 2 here.
Thanks to Gasparrini.
Daylife/AP Photo by Anja Niedringhaus
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A pioneering Swiss program to give addicts government-authorized heroin was overwhelmingly approved Sunday by voters who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.
Sixty-eight percent of voters approved making the heroin program permanent. It has been credited with reducing crime and improving the health and daily lives of addicts since it began 14 years ago.
Only 36.8 percent of voters favored the marijuana intitiative…
Parliament approved the heroin measure in a revision of Switzerland’s narcotics law this past March, but conservatives challenged the decision and forced a national referendum under Switzerland’s system of direct democracy.
Neither vote surprised me. Still an advance over policies that only benefit moralists and gangsters.
ABC News– Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush said he was “unprepared” for war and pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as “biggest regret of all the presidency.” “I think I was unprepared for war,” Bush told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson in an interview airing today on “World News.” “In other words, I didn’t campaign and say, ‘Please vote for me, I’ll be able to handle an attack,'” he said. “In other words, I didn’t anticipate war. Presidents — one of the things about the modern presidency is that the unexpected will happen.”
Bush, who has been a stalwart defender of the war in Iraq and maintaining U.S. troop presence there, said, in retrospect, the war exceeded his expectations. “A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein,” Bush said. “It wasn’t just people in my administration. A lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.
“I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess,” Bush added.
When pressed by Gibson, Bush declined to “speculate” on whether he would still have gone to war if he knew Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.
“That is a do-over that I can’t do,” Bush said.
Venus and Jupiter, the two brightest planets, have been marching toward each other for more than a month in the southwestern sky at dusk. As they’ve drawn closer together, the sight has been catching more people’s eyes, and now the show is reaching its climax.
This evening, weather permitting, you will see Venus and Jupiter blazing about a finger’s width apart at arm’s length. Look early enough and, far to their lower right, you can find the crescent moon just above the horizon…
Monday night brings the peak of the show. The two planets will remain as close as ever, and the moon will form a compact, extraordinary triangle with them.
The moon is currently 1.4 light-seconds distant, Venus is 8.4 light-minutes distant, and Jupiter is 42 light-minutes away. That’s how long the light from each has been traveling through space before it hits your eye.
It was absolutely stunning, last night.
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Some may see just a simple stain on the wall, but one East Bakersfield family say their home has been blessed with a miracle.
Elvia Alvarez was recently using her blender to make salsa in her kitchen. Some of the salsa splattered onto the wall, creating what Alvarez says is the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Alvarez says it’s no coincidence. She believes it to be a sign from the blessed mother that people need to start being good toward one another.
Since this happened, Alvarez says at times there’s been the strong smell of roses in her home though there aren’t any fresh roses nearby her home on Northrup Street.
In Bakersfield, when you ask someone if they’ve heard about the apparition of the Virgin Mary – they reply, “Which one?”
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Is Roger Clemens Seeking a Pardon? – MLB FanHouse — FYI
Way back in February, a lawyer for Brian McNamee made headlines when he said that he thought Roger Clemens would escape any criminal prosecution for perjury by receiving a presidential pardon. Clemens is friendly with the former President Bush, as he mentioned during Congressional hearings, and the feeling was that relationship could pay off with a reprieve.
Now that the current President Bush is nearing the end of his term, traditionally an occasion for numerous pardons, Clemens’ name is again coming up in discussions of potential pardon recipients. An Associated Press article mentions him alongside people like former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, American Taliban member John Walker Lindh and imprisioned financier Conrad Black when discussing who might get pardoned.
Both Lindh and Black have applied for pardons, according to the article, while there’s no evidence that Clemens has done so. He’d need to do so before the President could issue a pardon. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t been convicted of any crime, see Ford’s pardon of Nixon, but if he did apply for one and get it, there would be a major caveat.
Gold is poised for a dramatic surge and could blast through $2,000 an ounce by the end of next year as central banks flood the world’s monetary system with liquidity, according to an internal client note from the US bank Citigroup. The bank said the damage caused by the financial excesses of the last quarter century was forcing the world’s authorities to take steps that had never been tried before.
This gamble was likely to end in one of two extreme ways: with either a resurgence of inflation; or a downward spiral into depression, civil disorder, and possibly wars. Both outcomes will cause a rush for gold.”They are throwing the kitchen sink at this,” said Tom Fitzpatrick, the bank’s chief technical strategist. “The world is not going back to normal after the magnitude of what they have done. When the dust settles this will either work, and the money they have pushed into the system will feed though into an inflation shock. “Or it will not work because too much damage has already been done, and we will see continued financial deterioration, causing further economic deterioration, with the risk of a feedback loop. We don’t think this is the more likely outcome, but as each week and month passes, there is a growing danger of vicious circle as confidence erodes,” he said.
 
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Ok, maybe it’s not from Noah’s Ark. And sure, it’s probably not even wood. But you can check out the full picture from NASA’s site here and make up your own mind.
 Daylife/Reuters Pictures
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As Prasan Dhanur prepared his 13-foot boat on Wednesday evening for a hard night of fishing, he saw something strange.
A black inflatable lifeboat equipped with a brand new Yamaha outboard motor threaded its way among the small, wooden fishing boats at anchor and pulled up to the concrete pier of the slum where Dhanur, 24, has lived his whole life as a fisherman.
Ten men, all apparently in their early 20s, jumped out. They stripped off orange windbreakers to reveal T-shirts and blue jeans. Then they began hoisting large, heavy backpacks out of the boat and onto their shoulders, each taking care to claim the pack assigned to him.
Dhanur flipped his boat light toward the men, and Kashinath Patil, a 72-year-old harbor official on duty nearby, asked the men what they were doing.
“I said: ‘Where are you going? What’s in your bags?”‘ Patil recalled.
“They said: ‘We don’t want any attention. Don’t bother us.”‘ Thus began a crucial phase of the recent terror attacks…
Thus began the slaughter of the innocents that transformed Mumbai for the next three days. And more.
Robert Ballard became famous as the explorer who found the wreckage of the Titanic. But what most people don’t know about that expedition is that Ballard also secretly worked with the U.S. Navy to learn more about two lost nuclear submarines.[the Thresher and the Scorpion. The only two subs ever lost by the Navy during peacetime.]
Ballard shared that nugget when he came to the Tampa Bay area last week for the Coastal Cities Summit, organized by the University of South Florida and other institutions. He spoke with the St. Petersburg Times about the Titanic and his underwater exploration career.
When you wanted to search for the Titanic, did you make an arrangement with the military?
I can only tell you now because they declassified this a few months ago. The Navy was not interested in the Titanic. … I mean, they funded the technology because it had so many military applications. And I was a naval intelligence officer for 30 years, and so I did a lot of missions for the Navy. Many remain classified, my best stuff. Rats …
Yes, the Titanic was a cover for a series of military operations.
First under-reported mention of this found here.
Found by Aric Mackey.
President Bush’s “coalition of the willing” is set to all but disappear from Iraq by the end of the year, with 13 countries, including South Korea, Japan, Moldova and Tonga preparing to withdraw their few remaining troops.
Britain, Australia, Romania, Estonia and El Salvador are the only nations, apart from the US, that plan to remain after a UN mandate authorising their presence expires on December 31.
London must still reach an agreement with Baghdad, however, to keep its 4,100-strong contingent on the ground into the new year. Failure to do so in time would leave British troops without legal cover and they too would have to leave…
President Bush and Tony Blair scrambled the coalition together in the build-up to the Iraq invasion in a bid to put an international face on what was fast becoming an unpopular war. But the list of participants drew scorn for failing to include a greater number of powerful states, with the US and Britain the main contributors.
While the coalition is dissolving, another force of foreigners is still thriving in the country: thousands of private contractors from developing countries such as Peru, Uganda, the Philippines and Bangladesh.
And we all know what useful skills private contractors bring to Iraq.
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
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