Thursday, January 24, 2008

Stories, Pictures Lost Forever

This is a very real problem that will only escalate, as we use more and more web applications.

For instance, I don't know how to save my data from ClipMarks. If an account is canceled, do all my links and Clips to blogs die. These are important issues to discuss.
clipped from www.portigal.com


Stories, lost forever
Thursday January 10th 2008, 2:58 am by Steve Portigal

As I’ve already blogged, I was the victim of a phishing scam and my flickr account was deleted.

Yahoo/flickr has known about this particular culprit for a year or so.
miscreant deleted my account, just for fun. And Yahoo can’t restore it. We all know there are backup copies all over the place, but they can only recreate my account, blank.
all the people I’ve linked to are gone (I’ve spent a few hours trying to reconnect with those I can remember). Anyone who watched my photos via their contacts has lost me (and I’ve lost much of my audience).
All the titles, tags, geotags, view counts and comments are gone. All the descriptions and stories and dialog with others in is gone.
cr_portigal.jpg

My document, my story, my part of the community, is gone.

DataPortability is a movement to create these tools where they don’t exist. I hope someone creates something for flickr soon.

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Saturday, January 19, 2008

New Nontoxic Antifreeze

There are probably a wide range of other applications of this new compound called gelatin hydrolysate, and it is all natural...no genetically modified ingredients.
clipped from www.livescience.com

New Antifreeze Improves Ice Cream

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

posted: 17 January 2008 07:55 am ET


A few sharp ice crystals ruin ice cream's silky texture, as all connoisseurs know. An edible, tasteless antifreeze may soon come to the rescue.

The non-toxic antifreeze, made from a gelatin protein, could be added to any frozen food to prevent unappetizing ice crystals from forming, without otherwise affecting the food itself.

The results of the study will be published in the Jan. 9 issue of The American Chemical Society's Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Previous attempts to make anti-freeze for frozen foods have not been very effective, Damodaran said. These products have relied on genetically-modified ingredients, mainly from Antarctic fish and other cold-climate species. This is the first antifreeze made from natural ingredients, the researcher said.
extracted gelatin protein from cow hide and used it to make a compound called gelatin hydrolysate.
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Decommissioning Aging Infrastructure

"EXPERTS" recommend targeted decommissioning of deterioriated and obsolete infrastructure to renew degraded ecosystems. This approach will turn the middle of the United States into a bare scattering of city-states unable to communicate because their infrastructure was destroyed when it could have been fixed in a way that could also help the environment repair.
clipped from www.sciencemag.org

Science 18 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5861, pp. 286 - 287
DOI: 10.1126/science.1149852

Aging Infrastructure and Ecosystem Restoration


ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE:


Martin W. Doyle,1* Emily H. Stanley,2 David G. Havlick,3 Mark J. Kaiser,4 George Steinbach,5 William L. Graf,6 Gerald E. Galloway,7 J. Adam Riggsbee8


Targeted decommissioning of deteriorated and obsolete infrastructure can provide opportunities for restoring degraded ecosystems.



1University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.


2University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.


3University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, CO, USA.


4Center for Energy Studies, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA.


5California Artificial Reef Enhancement Program, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.


6University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA.


7University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.


8Restoration Systems, LLC, Raleigh, NC, USA.


*Author for correspondence. E-mail: mwdoyle@email.unc.edu


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Friday, January 18, 2008

Program Yourself

Another one of those push the limits type of interactive videos, and it is very good at mediating the words. The frames fly very fast, so if you have a perceptual problem or get "car sick" you may not want to watch it.
clipped from www.youtube.com
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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Uncooperative? Another Taser Death

These stories are so heart wrenching!

I thought that the classical conditioning and the ease with which others could torture, ie the law enforcer, was explained and warned against in basic general psychology classes! What's up w/that?

The young man was in an accident, couldn't get to the airport to pick up his parents, and the patrolmen said he was agitated. REALLY? Can't imagine why!

It seems to me that many of these people are only tasered for the CONVENIENCE of the police. That is what happened to thepoor man killed in the US airport in 2007. The police could have left him in the room where he was until they could find a translator....BUT NO! They had to hit him w/electricity and continue to let it pulse through his body until he was fried....dead.
clipped from www.bnd.com
NEW BRIGHTON, Minn.
A man died after state troopers stunned him with a Taser when they said he became "uncooperative" after being involved in a wreck.

The State Patrol said five troopers were placed on standard, administrative leave after the man's death Tuesday. A patrol spokesman would not describe what kind of "uncooperative" behavior was involved.

"This is a traumatic event for a lot of people," superintendent Tim O'Malley said. "Someone has died and in fairness to that person, the troopers, family members and others who may have been affected, we need to make sure that we're accurate and thorough."

The man who died was identified as Mark C. Backlund, 29, by his father, Gordon Backlund. He had been driving to the airport to pick up his parents, who were returning from a trip to Florida.

Peterson told the newspaper that State Patrol troopers began carrying Tasers about 18 months ago, mirroring their growing use among police departments nationwide.

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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Stepping Back to Dangerous Era in Mining

I first heard about this AVOIDABLE tragedy last year. The Robber Barons are returning.

The people of Northern Michigan and the entire Great Lakes Region, are fighting to prevent corporations from ruining their health and the ecosystem for the SECOND TIME AROUND.

The area is just now recuperating from the last time mining of sulfids, metals, heavy metals and radioactive materials such as uranium destroyed habitats, animals, and humans.

How much is a fragile ecosystem and the people of Michigan worth? At the moment, not much, it seems.

These corporations are also exploiting the fact that Michigan has runaway unemployment and people are worried about how they will live today. Please check this out and share this with your friends, neighbors, leaders and online network.
clipped from savethewildup.org
No Metallic Sulfide Mining
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Choosiness, Cooperativeness Historically Linked

This is an scientific abstract from a research group who is studying the effect of choosing to be associated with people who cooperate and the ways that this cooperation can encourage others to choose them.
It's too bad that Nature magazine couldn't have been more COOPERATIVE and released this research a free article, then more of us would have access to it and could CHOOSE to learn more about Nature and its parent organization.
Hmm! Maybe that is the point the staff at Nature is choosing not to cooperate with the "great unwashed", so we will not choose to cooperate or even try to learn more about them. Maybe they fear the loss of their exclusivity?
clipped from www.nature.com

The coevolution of choosiness and cooperation

Correspondence to: Lutz Fromhage3 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to L.F. (Email: lutzfromhage@web.de).

Explaining the rise and maintenance of cooperation is central to our understanding of biological systems1, 2 and human societies3, 4. When an individual's cooperativeness is used by other individuals as a choice criterion, there can be competition to be more generous than others, a situation called competitive altruism5.
evolution of cooperation between non-relatives can then be driven by a positive feedback between increasing levels of cooperativeness and choosiness6
in a situation where individuals have the opportunity to engage in repeated pairwise interactions, the equilibrium degree of cooperativeness depends critically on the amount of behavioural variation that is being maintained in the population by processes such as mutation.
important role of lifespan in the evolution of cooperation.
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Zemanta Pixie

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Wipe the Memory Clean Before YOU Leave!

This is outrageous! If you want to access archives, you will need the old software to stay accessible w/o the service packs or hire a secretary to upgrade all your old files, OR SWITCH TO LINUX.
clipped from www.news.com

Office 2003 update blocks older file formats

The latest service pack for Microsoft Office 2003 has made a range of older files inaccessible, including Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, it emerged this week.
Office 2003 update blocks older file formats


Office 2003 Service Pack 3, which was made available in September, blocks a lengthy list of word-processing file formats, including Word 6.0 and Word 97 for Windows, and Word 2004 for Macintosh. It also blocks older versions of Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus Notes, Corel Quattro spreadsheet, and Corel Draw graphics package.

the blocking of them will make retrieval of archived material more difficult.

Microsoft released details of a work-around to restore access. The work-around requires changes to the registry, which could render a PC unusable if carried out incorrectly.
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Americans Get It!

I wish I could find the original primary source from the CNN interview more quickly. If I had known that this need for the constitutional process of holding a special session during a congressional recess was so poorly understood outside our country, I would have clipped the original CNN interview at the time when it was easier to find. One month of news at CNN is mountain to sort through. Sorry! This source does cite the CNN interview though.


Yes, the opening of special sessions of the US Senate is a part of the checks and balances of our American constitution.

This constitutional process may seem childish to outsiders, as mentioned in a related clip at ClipMarks.

It seems to me, the opening of a special session of Congress during the Congressional recess is a most adult response to the childish excesses of a president guided by the old/young men of the Nixon Cabinet who are trying to gather more power for the executive branch and punish the American people.

In my opinion, the current executive branch has proven that they need Congressional supervision, hence the opening of a Congressional special session. This is our American system working at its very best, whether a person is in favor of the action or not.

As far as the Chinese source, look more closely in the mainstream American media. The media were all over this story before the Thanksgiving recess.

By Christmas, this use of the special session was already common knowledge across the nation, because the Senators had already done this throughout the Thanksgiving recess. I saw freshman Senator James Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, being interviewed on CNN about his important job in this very significant protection of the American people.

http://dfa.meetup.com/194/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3999602

clipped from dfa.meetup.com

Messages


Lott's replacement named, Webb helps block Bush's recess appointments, and Iowa/New Hampshire this week!


Also, it's good to hear that the Senate is staying in session to block Bush's recess appointments, and that Virginia's Senator Webb is using his close proximity to DC in order to help out:
"For Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), it's not exactly a call to arms resembling his tours of duty in Vietnam. But, as a local senator and a freshman, Webb volunteered to make the drive from his Virginia home to host the first of the pro forma sessions held during a two-week Thanksgiving break. His brief appearance presiding over the Senate provided a minor media bonanza for the rookie senator: CNN carried the brief session live and then broadcast a post-session interview with Webb.
bang a gavel and preserve the constitutional process,'
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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Founder of a Cancerous Genetic Disorder

If you have polyps and are wondering if you belong to the family with the colorectal founder gene, I would imagine that these are people who would have settled on the Connecticut River or other areas where the Dutch did not have settlements. That thesis is dependent on the family being English and not Dutch. If they sailed from England, the assumption is that they were English. Well, at least it is a start to help you learn more.
clipped from news.yahoo.com



Reuters

Colon cancer risk traced to common ancestor


By Michael Kahn
Wed Jan 2, 12:15 AM ET


LONDON (Reuters) -
A married couple who sailed to America
from England around 1630 are the reason why thousands of people
in the United States are at higher risk of a hereditary form of
colon cancer, researchers said on Wednesday.

Using a genetic fingerprint, a U.S. team traced back a
so-called founder genetic mutation to the couple found among
two large families currently living in Utah and New York.

The U.S. team first focused on the Utah branch of the
family -- numbering about 5,000 people today -- 14 years ago
because its members had an unusually high risk of colon cancer.

Because the family was Mormon, the researchers were able to
mine a wealth of genealogical information taken from detailed
church records over the years that is now part of a large
genetics database in Utah, Neklason said.

most
records
related to the Utah
part of the family, the researchers eventually identified the
New York branch
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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Ocean Adventures Wallpapers and Ringtones

From the various Ocean Adventures documentaries, a series with Jean Michel Cousteau and a team of scientists and ocean adventurers

Ringtones

Wallpapers

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Hiding In Plain Sight

Not only are containers of rubber ducks being lost in the high seas, but huge shipping containers of floating athletic shoes and other debris that pollute the oceans. The up side of this pollution dilemma is that scientists are able to study the movement of ocean currents based on the travels of this objects. If you find any odd piece of debris at the beach, contact an oceanographer.
clipped from www.cbsnews.com
For more than 11 years now, oceanographer Curt Ebbesmeyer has been learning about movement on the ocean by tracking the travels of thousands of bathtub toys, reports CBS News Correspondent John Blackstone.
"It's amazing what a duck can teach you," Ebbesmeyer says. "There was one container load of turtles, ducks, beavers and frogs, twenty-nine thousand in a single container that went overboard in the middle of the Pacific," he says.
The small, plastic adventurers were accidentally dumped into the ocean in January 1992. Pushed by winds and currents the ducks were carried to Alaska where thousands washed ashore.
Ebbesmeyer has faith that there are numerous ducks waiting to be found along the East Coast, though none have yet been recovered.
First Years is offering a $100 reward to anyone who finds one of the well-traveled bath toys.
"It's really a critical piece of scientific data," Hollywood says.
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