Archive for April, 2009
Spam ‘Produces 17 Million Tons Of CO2′
A study into spam has blamed it for the production of more than 33bn kilowatt-hours of energy every year, enough to power more than 2.4m homes.
The “Carbon Footprint of e-mail Spam Report” estimated that 62 trillion spam emails are sent globally every year.
This amounted to emissions of more than 17 million tons of CO2, the research by climate consultants ICF International and anti-virus firm McAfee found.
Searching for legitimate e-mails and deleting spam used some 80% of energy.
The study found that the average business user generates 131kg of CO2 every year, of which 22% is related to spam.
Errol Morris Will Direct Cryonics Project
Documentarian Errol Morris is taking on a narrative feature for his next project.
The “Fog of War” helmer will direct the Untitled Cryonics Project, which Zach Helm is writing.
Mandate Pictures and Steve Zaillian’s Film Rites are producing the dark comedy, which was inspired by both Robert F. Nelson’s memoir “We Froze the First Man” and a story that aired on NPR’s “This American Life” this week titled “You’re as Cold as Ice.”
True story centers on Nelson, a TV repairman who in the 1960s joined a group of enthusiasts who believed they could cheat death with a new technology: cryonics. But freezing dead people so scientists could reanimate them in the future turned out to be harder than Nelson thought.
Governor Rick Perry Says Texas Could Secede From The Union
Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax “tea party” Wednesday with his stance against the federal government and for states’ rights as some in his U.S. flag-waving audience shouted, “Secede!”
An animated Perry told the crowd at Austin City Hall — one of three tea parties he was attending across the state — that officials in Washington have abandoned the country’s founding principles of limited government. He said the federal government is strangling Americans with taxation, spending and debt.
Perry repeated his running theme that Texas’ economy is in relatively good shape compared with other states and with the “federal budget mess.” Many in the crowd held signs deriding President Barack Obama and the $786 billion federal economic stimulus package.
Perry called his supporters patriots. Later, answering news reporters’ questions, Perry suggested Texans might at some point get so fed up they would want to secede from the union, though he said…
Britain Criticized By EU Over Secret Tracking Of Internet Accounts
Fears that Britain is slipping into a surveillance society have been heightened by Brussels initiating legal action after declaring that UK laws guaranteeing data protection were “structurally flawed” and well below the European standard.
The criticism arose after the European Commission investigated the use of “behavioural advertising technology” by British internet service providers, which it found was illegal under European — but not British — law.
“I call on the UK authorities to change their national laws and ensure that national authorities are duly empowered and have proper sanctions at their disposal to enforce EU legislation on the confidentiality of communications,” Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, said.
A Commission statement said that Brussels had sent several letters to the British authorities since last July asking why the Government had not taken action against BT after the company used Phorm technology — a covert method of targeting advertising based…
Will Stem Cells Create Immortality? And Will It Suck?
Aubrey de Grey’s foundation is conducting stem cell research hoping to engineer a solution to aging itself.
But in a new interview he fields some wild questions about whether immortality will strain the resources of the world, whether people will be less willing to risk their immortal lives in order to fight oppression, and whether we’ll ultimately need to upload ourselves into technological body replacements (or “lose the meat”).
Rod Blagojevich Wants to Star in Reality TV Show
Jimmy Orr | Christian Science Monitor:
Would there be a better TV show than plopping Rod Blagojevich in the middle of a jungle and watching him try to find his way out?
Nope. And if a federal judge gives the impeached ex-governor of Illinois the go-ahead, we’ll get to see it. Bizarre? Yes. A possibility? Maybe.
NBC is interested in having Blagojevich appear on the new reality TV show ““I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!” The premise is simple. NBC explains: “Ten celebrities of various backgrounds will be dropped into the heart of the Costa Rican jungle to face challenges designed to test their skills in adapting to the wilderness and to raise money for their favorite charities. Rod Blagojevich will be a participant on the show pending the court’s approval.”
He needs the court’s OK because he’s facing 16 federal charges which could put him behind bars for 300 years.…
How Many Attended The Tea Parties?
Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight.com: Here is a VERY long (but far from comprehensive) list of crowd size estimates at today’s Tea Party protests across the country. I’ve tried to take estimates provided by reporters or police officials only, rather than estimates provided by the organizers or attendees themselves, although surely this is an imperfect science. I’ve also tried to avoid taking any data from explicitly partisan (including left-leaning partisan) news sources. Collectively, these reports account for an attendance of 111,899.
Are these figures impressive? I’d say they’re reasonably impressive. Then again, 111,899 isn’t much more than the number who attend a typical University of Michigan football game or who attended a single Barack Obama rally in Portland, Oregon last year.
But, the list is far from complete. This covers 126 rallies, whereas the most common figure I’ve seen is that there were about 750 such protests nationwide — about six times more than…
The Dark Side of Dubai
Dubai was meant to be a Middle-Eastern Shangri-La, a glittering monument to Arab enterprise and western capitalism. But as hard times arrive in the city state that rose from the desert sands, an uglier story is emerging. Johann Hari reports.
The wide, smiling face of Sheikh Mohammed – the absolute ruler of Dubai – beams down on his creation. His image is displayed on every other building, sandwiched between the more familiar corporate rictuses of Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders. This man has sold Dubai to the world as the city of One Thousand and One Arabian Lights, a Shangri-La in the Middle East insulated from the dust-storms blasting across the region. He dominates the Manhattan-manqué skyline, beaming out from row after row of glass pyramids and hotels smelted into the shape of piles of golden coins. And there he stands on the tallest building in the world – a skinny…
Hemp for Victory: 1940s U.S. Government Film Urging Folks to Grow Tons of Mary Jane’s Cousin
Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing: Hemp for Victory, a 13-minute film produced by the US government in the 1940s which urged citizens to grow hemp during the war. During this earlier era of American crisis, farmers and 4-H clubs were encouraged to cultivate industrial hemp, the non-intoxicating cousin of what I like to call cannabis gettabis stonerus. And now, during our current American crisis, this same “non-drug” cannabis strain is the subject of a new bill put forth by Congressmen Ron Paul (R-TX) and Barney Frank (D-MA):
“They and eight cosponsors, both Republican and Democrat, hope to legalize the plant so American farmers can begin supplying fibers for a wide array of products, with the overreaching goal of opening a new sector in American agriculture.”
Anyway, back to the propaganda film. I think the world needs a post-econopocalyptic remix with a totally baked-out Cheech and Chong VO.
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Tea Party Politics: The Republican Party Is Not, and Has Not Been, Libertarian Despite the Big Show
Libertarian political consultant Steven Gordon talks with Rachel Maddow on how the Republican Party is trying to hijack the Libertarian Movement’s energy with “tea parties” despite decades of big spending, cultural wedging, and foreign warmongering:
FreedomWorks Behind Tax Day Tea Party Protests
The Tax Day Tea Party protest movement is not as spontaneous as its organizers would like you to think. Chris Good writes, “Here is the organizational landscape of the April 15 tea party movement, in a nutshell: three national-level conservative groups, all with slightly different agendas, are guiding it. All are quick to tell you that the movement is a bottom-up affair and that its grassroots cred is real.
They are: FreedomWorks, the conservative action group led by Dick Armey; dontGO, a tech savvy free-market action group that sprung out of last August’s oil-drilling debate in the House of Representatives; and Americans for Prosperity, an issue advocacy/activist group based on free market principles.
Conservative bloggers, talk show hosts, and other media figures have attached themselves to the movement in peripheral capacities. Armey will appear at a major rally in Atlanta, FreedomWorks said. All three groups vehemently deny that the movement is a…
The Seven Signs Of Terrorism
It does not matter that al-Qaeda is not a threat to the homeland — you need to prepare for a terrorist attack regardless, according to PrepareMetro KC, a website put together by the Greater Kansas City regions Metropolitan Emergency Managers Committee, which is funded by the Department of Homeland Security.
Lehman Sits on Bomb of Uranium Cake as Prices Slump
Bloomberg: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is sitting on enough uranium cake to make a nuclear bomb as it waits for prices of the commodity to rebound, according to traders and nuclear experts.
The bankrupt bank, in the throes of paying off creditors, acquired uranium cake “under a matured commodities contract” and plans to sell it when the market improves “to realize the best prices,” Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal said.
Lehman, once the fourth-largest investment bank, has an estimated $200 billion in unsecured liabilities left to pay. The uranium, which may be as much as 500,000 pounds, might fetch $20 million at today’s prices of about $40.50 per pound, said traders who asked not to be named because of the confidential nature of the data. Marsal said the traders’ estimate of Lehman’s uranium holding is “reasonable,” while declining to be more specific.
Uranium has dropped for five straight months from $55 a pound…
Presidential Pirate-Killing Chart
This chart shows totals of bloodthirsty pirates killed under the command of various United States presidents. How many pirates you’ve killed shows how tough you are.
Mother Commits Murder-Suicide At Florida Gun Range
Shooting ranges can be dangerous places. At one in central Florida last week, a woman approached her 20-year-old son from behind, shot him through the back of the head before killing herself. The woman, Marie Moore, also left suicide notes, which she signed “Failed Queen,” explaining that she “had to send [her] son to heaven and [herself] to Hell” in order to create “1,000 years of peace.” The whole thing is captured in the gruesome video below; Moore, who had a history of being mentally disturbed, easily could have killed more people in a matter of seconds if she had wished. Shouldn’t there be some sort of background check before handing someone a powerful weapon in an enclosed area like this?
Tax Day Becomes Protest Day
Today American taxpayers in more than 300 locations in all 50 states will hold rallies — dubbed “tea parties” — to protest higher taxes and out-of-control government spending. There is no political party behind these rallies, no grand right-wing conspiracy, not even a 501(c) group like MoveOn.org.
So who’s behind the Tax Day tea parties? Ordinary folks who are using the power of the Internet to organize. For a number of years, techno-geeks have been organizing “flash crowds” — groups of people, coordinated by text or cellphone, who converge on a particular location and then do something silly, like the pillow fights that popped up in 50 cities earlier this month. This is part of a general phenomenon dubbed “Smart Mobs” by Howard Rheingold, author of a book by the same title, in which modern communications and social-networking technologies allow quick coordination among large numbers of people who don’t know each…
The New Economic Survivalists
When the economy started to squeeze the Wojtowicz family, they gave up vacation cruises, restaurant meals, new clothes and high-tech toys to become 21st-century homesteaders.
Now Patrick Wojtowicz, 36, his wife Melissa, 37, and daughter Gabrielle, 15, raise pigs and chickens for food on 40 acres near Alma, Mich. They’re planning a garden and installing a wood furnace. They disconnected the satellite TV and radio, ditched their dishwasher and a big truck and started buying clothes at resale shops.
“As long as we can keep decreasing our bills, we can keep making less money,” Patrick says. “We’re not saying this is right for everybody, but it’s right for us.”
Hard times are creating economic survivalists such as the Wojtowicz family who are paring expenses by becoming more self-sufficient.
Brain Decline Reflected in Patient’s Brush Strokes
Ewen Callaway, New Scientist: In the late spring of 2001, a 52-year-old lawyer quit his job in southern California, moved to San Francisco and began devoting most of his time to creating art.
A year later, doctors at the University of California San Francisco diagnosed the man, known as “VW”, with two neurodegenerative conditions — frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
VW had never shown any interest in art before. But degeneration in a brain area responsible for controlling impulses might explain his creative urge, says neurologist Anli Liu. At the same time, symptoms of ALS limited VW’s motor control and, eventually, his ability to create art.
The series of paintings reveal the changes at work within VW’s brain.
Engadget’s Wild Ride in the P.U.M.A.
Paul Miller: Against all odds, GM and Segway let us inside their precious P.U.M.A. prototype, and we went for a quick jaunt down 18th St. We couldn’t drive it, unfortunately, but there was plenty of action to be had from the passenger side. Starting from a rest on four wheels — the main powered wheels and the front two “safety” wheels; we never touched the back two to the ground — the contraption shoves itself up onto two wheels quite gracefully, with the passenger compartment moving slightly independently from the wheelbase and floor. It was a bit odd, but not at all unpleasant, and we were soon zipping down the road.
Since the P.U.M.A. is self-balancing, we felt way less force when accelerating and decelerating than we would in a car, since our body was being “leaned” into it instead of pulled along. Turning on a dime is quite fun as…
