rare Indian butterflies	the "other" pile
Link #152572 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 01:08pm.   (+100XP) http://www.flickr.com/photos/26689187@N00
Isaac Kehimkar, author of "The Book of Indian Butterflies", has an amazing photostream of rare butterflies from India. Comments: 0   Hits: 5   Points: 247059   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Half of Turkey's wetlands lost in last 40 years	government
Link #152571 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 12:59pm.   (+100XP) http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey8217s-wetlands-gives...
Turkey has lost half of its 2.5 million hectares of wetlands over the last 40 years due to poor water-management practices and water pollution, the World Wildlife Fund Turkey has said in its 2011 report.     The country’s largest body of freshwater, Lake Egirdir, is among those threatened by pollution, the report said. Other threatened wetlands include those around Lake Beysehir, Lake Bafa, the Büyük Menderes Delta, the Gediz Delta, Göksu Delta, the Igneada Su Basar Forests and Lakes, Lake Iznik, Lake Sapanca and Lake Ulubat.   Lake Tuz, formerly Turkey's second-largest lake, has diminished by 60 percent due to unsustainable consumption of both aboveground and underground water sources. Comments: 0   Hits: 5   Points: 246946   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Steve & Woz/Secrets Of The Little Blue Box	history
Link #152570 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 12:52pm.   (+100XP) http://myoldmac.net/FAQ/TheBlueBox-1.htm
Printed in the October 1971 issue of Esquire Magazine. If you happen to be in a library and come across a collection of Esquire magazines, the October 1971 issue is the first issue printed in the smaller format. The story begins on page 116 with a picture of a blue box.     Quote John T Draper a.k.a. Captain Crunch: "After the Esquire article came out, Steve Wozniak read it and found it fascinating, and really wanted to build the blue box and play with it himself. It didn't take him long to realize that the tone frequency combinations used in the article were deliberately changed to protect this fatal flaw in Ma bell.   Woz contacted me somehow, through KKUP radio, where another DJ from KPFA knew me and mentioned to Woz that he knew me. The KPFA DJ called me up and told me to contact Woz. At first, I didn't think it was safe to discuss this with a stranger, but I finally agreed to phone Woz. Comments: 0   Hits: 4   Points: 246862   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Critics question billions in aid routed back to US contracto	government
Link #152569 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 12:48pm.   (+100XP) http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2011/02/03/critics_quest...
United States taxpayers have funneled more than $60 billion of aid into Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak came to power in 1981, but more than half of the money has been spent supplying weapons to the country’s military, an arrangement that critics say has benefited American military contractors more than ordinary Egyptians.     About $34 billion of the aid to Egypt has come in the form of grants that Congress requires Egypt to spend on American military hardware, according to statistics from the Congressional Research Service. Those contracts include helicopter engines built by GE Aviation in Lynn and transmitters for Egypt’s Navy built by Raytheon in Tewksbury.     “Egypt has a real need for foreign aid, but not the kind of foreign aid they are getting,’’ said Geoffrey Wawro, history professor and director of the Military History Center at the University of North Texas. Comments: 0   Hits: 4   Points: 246809   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

If Indie Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl	entertainment
Link #152568 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 12:42pm.   (+100XP) http://www.indiewire.com/article/if_indie_filmmakers_directed_the_s...
… it would probably have a hard time getting distribution.     That said, check out the fine work from Slate V filmmaker Andrew Bouvé who imagines the Superbowl as directed by Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch, Wes Anderson, Jean Luc Godard and Werner Herzog. Comments: 0   Hits: 6   Points: 246746   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Disused London tube station for sale	shopping
Link #152567 submitted by dorian on Feb 7, 2011 08:46am.   (+100XP) http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2011/02/05/disused-tube-station-for...
Sadly, not an iconic deep level structure, but the former Shoreditch station that used to be the terminus for the East London Line before the line was diverted as part of the Overground extension works. Frankly, it’s a bit of a shed and not that interesting – but nonetheless, a chance to own a disused tube station is pretty unique.     It is being sold off by auction and has a comparatively low reserve price of £180,000 – probably as it straddles the former railway line, so access rights/leases will have to reflect the legal issues of not owning the land under the building. Comments: 0   Hits: 33   Points: 243872   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Rock guitarist Gary Moore dies	entertainment
Link #152566 submitted by humandoing on Feb 6, 2011 07:18pm.   (+300XP) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12377862
The renowned rock guitarist Gary Moore has died in a hotel room in Spain.     Mr Moore, 58, was originally from Belfast and was a former member of the legendary Irish group Thin Lizzy.     Adam Parsons, who manages Thin Lizzy, told the BBC that Mr Moore had died in the early hours of Sunday morning. Comments: 1   Hits: 63   Points: 234028   Rating: 10.0 / 3   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Ronald Reagan at 100 casts shadow over Republican Party	history
Link #152565 submitted by LinusMines on Feb 6, 2011 07:05pm.   (+130XP) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/04/AR2...
On the 100th anniversary of his birth, Ronald Reagan is remembered as a transformative president, the creator of the contemporary Republican Party and the very definition of conservatism. He might also be as misunderstood by some of his followers as he is underappreciated by his detractors.     Reagan, who died in 2004, is the object of both mythmaking and revisionism. As his presidency has undergone examination and reevaluation by conservative and liberal scholars, his place in history has grown larger.     His iconic stature among conservatives is a source of inspiration for a Republican Party that, despite its victories in November, still hungers to recapture the high points of his presidency. Yet to many Republicans, Reagan nostalgia is an obstacle to the party's hopes of moving forward in a different time with challenges different from those of the 1980s.     Reagan's leadership style blended conviction, flexibility, toughness and optimism. Those who try to pinpoint a single attribute to explain Reagan's success often overlook other facets of his political persona that were equally significant. And although he helped fuel the conservative ascendancy, he was not, in the estimation of scholars, a conventional conservative, certainly not by today's standards...     By Dan Balz. Comments: 0   Hits: 33   Points: 233821   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Seeing Yellow	government
Link #152564 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 03:12pm.   (+140XP) http://seeingyellow.com
When you print on a color laser printer, it's likely that you are also printing a pattern of invisible yellow dots. These marks exist to allow the printer companies and governments to track and identify you.     Most color laser printers made and sold today intentionally add invisible information to make it easier to determine where (and when) a particular document was printed. This seems to have been done as part of a secret deal between the United States Secret Service and the individual manufacturers. Some of the manufacturers have mentioned the existence of the tracking information in their documentation, and others haven't. None of them have explained exactly how it works or what information is conveyed. No law requires printer companies to help track printer users this way, and no law prevents them from stopping this practice or giving customers a solution to avoid being tracked.     This information is most famously known to be coded by patterns of yellow dots that the printers add to the background of all the pages they print. The yellow dots are hard to see with the naked eye, but can be seen under bright blue light or with a microscope. Their arrangement reveals which printer was used to print a particular document, and sometimes also shows when it was printed. Some of the codes have been understood while others are still mysterious, but none of the printer manufacturers has denied that the dots are intended to help track a particular document to a particular printer (or that they can actually be used for this purpose). This is a direct attack on the privacy of the owners and users of printers, and in particular, on their right to free, anonymous speech. Comments: 0   Hits: 104   Points: 231030   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code	vices
Link #152563 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 02:38pm.   (+100XP) http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/01/ff_lottery/all/1
Mohan Srivastava, a geological statistician living in Toronto, was working in his office in June 2003, waiting for some files to download onto his computer, when he discovered a couple of old lottery tickets buried under some paper on his desk. The tickets were cheap scratchers—a gag gift from his squash partner—and Srivastava found himself wondering if any of them were winners. He fished a coin out of a drawer and began scratching off the latex coating. “The first was a loser, and I felt pretty smug,” Srivastava says. “I thought, ‘This is exactly why I never play these dumb games.’”     The second ticket was a tic-tac-toe game. Its design was straightforward: On the right were eight tic-tac-toe boards, dense with different numbers. On the left was a box headlined “Your Numbers,” covered with a scratchable latex coating. The goal was to scrape off the latex and compare the numbers under it to the digits on the boards. If three of “Your Numbers” appeared on a board in a straight line, you’d won. Srivastava matched up each of his numbers with the digits on the boards, and much to his surprise, the ticket had a tic-tac-toe.     As a trained statistician with degrees from MIT and Stanford University, Srivastava was intrigued by the technical problem posed by the lottery ticket. In fact, it reminded him a lot of his day job, which involves consulting for mining and oil companies.   Srivastava realized that the same logic could be applied to the lottery. The apparent randomness of the scratch ticket was just a facade, a mathematical lie. And this meant that the lottery system might actually be solvable, just like those mining samples. “At the time, I had no intention of cracking the tickets,” he says. He was just curious about the algorithm that produced the numbers. Walking back from the gas station with the chips and coffee he’d bought with his winnings, he turned the problem over in his mind. By the time he reached the office, he was confident that he knew how the software might work, how it could precisely control the number of winners while still appearing random. “It wasn’t that hard,” Srivastava says. “I do the same kind of math all day long.” Comments: 0   Hits: 71   Points: 230571   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Malawi row over whether new law bans farting	strangely funny
Link #152562 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 02:34pm.   (+100XP) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12363852
Two of Malawi's most senior judicial officials are arguing over whether a new bill includes a provision that outlaws breaking wind in public. Comments: 0   Hits: 47   Points: 230504   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

The Geek-Kings of Smut	the biz
Link #152561 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 02:33pm.   (+100XP) http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/70985/index1.html
After once being the best thing that ever happened to porn, the Internet is now wreaking havoc: destroying some fortunes, making bigger ones, and serving as a stimulus plan, in more ways than one. Not safe for work. Comments: 0   Hits: 139   Points: 230578   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Dark 80s	entertainment
Link #152560 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 02:29pm.   (+100XP) http://kittylectro.podomatic.com
Meow. I'm Kitty Lectro. I play music and stuff.     When I'm not sleeping, chasing mice, or enjoying catnip, I can usually be found in some dark dwelling getting tipsy while mixing, de-mixing, and re-mixing the likes of New Wave, Mew Wave, French style Coldwave, Darkwave, Minimal Wave, Minimal Synth, Batcave, Post Punk, Industrial, Electropunk, Synthpunk, '80s Goth, Italo Disco, Lo-Fi and other deliciousness. Comments: 0   Hits: 49   Points: 230446   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Tracking down my online haters	the wired
Link #152559 submitted by dorian on Feb 6, 2011 02:28pm.   (+100XP) http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/21/pearlman.online.civility/...
Matthew is a college student from a small suburban town in Missouri. He loves the Kansas City Chiefs and spending Sundays in front of the TV watching football.     Recently, in response to something I wrote on my blog about Jeff Bagwell and the Baseball Hall of Fame, Matt tweeted me a couple of times.     The words were snarky and snide and rude. His final message, however, left an extra special impression: "I got caught up in the anonymity of the internet. I'm sorry and here is a legit post with my criticisms." Upon opening the pasted link, I was greeted by a nasty pornographic image that would make Sasha Grey vomit into the nearest trash can.     When I later noted to Matt, via Twitter, that my 7-year-old daughter happened to be next to me when I clicked on the picture, he wrote: "lmao. You're so full of ----."     This time, I aspired to know why Matt, cloaked in the anonymity provided by the internet, felt the need to respond in such a way to, of all things, a Jeff Bagwell post.     So, going deep, deep, deep undercover, I tracked him down and, shortly after our exchange, gave him a call. Comments: 0   Hits: 113   Points: 230496   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

Interesting	some dude/some chick
Link #152558 submitted by j d ess on Feb 5, 2011 05:01pm.   (+100XP) http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/02/07/110207ta_talk_paumgarten
The most interesting thing about the man who plays the Most Interesting Man in the World, in those TV ads for Dos Equis beer, is that he is interesting, too, perhaps even superlatively so. His name is Jonathan Goldsmith. A montage of highlights from the real life of Jonathan Goldsmith might include (had there been cameras present) footage of him rescuing a stranded climber on Mt. Whitney, saving a drowning girl in Malibu... Comments: 0   Hits: 119   Points: 214727   Vote Now!   [ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ]

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