Archive for August, 2007
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 22, 2007 at 6:15 am
 Excellent! Finally those lazy tides will be earning their keep:
By the end of the year, twin underwater turbines should be generating 1.2 megawatts of electricity off the coast of Northern Ireland in a landmark demonstration of tidal power technology. Marine Current Turbines, a company based in Bristol, UK, had hoped to begin installing the turbines at Strangford Lough (Google map) on Monday, but the construction barge scheduled to deliver the turbines was delayed. A company spokesman says the installation will now take place later in 2007. It will be the world’s largest tidal power project.
Let’s hear it for nearly-free, environmentally-friendly, geopolitically- undevisive power generation! Link
Categories: Yay Science!, Technology Porn
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 5:30 am
 Norweigan mooses (meese?) are apparently responsible for the production of large amounts of methane:
Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.
Link
(Thanks, The Wife!)
Categories: Global Death Wish, Conservative Heresy
2 Comments »
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 21, 2007 at 5:50 am
Thus spake Evil Overload
at 5:39 am
First dog food, then toys, now pajamas:
The Warehouse, a New Zealand retailer, issued a recall at the weekend for children’s pyjamas made in China after two children were burned when their flannelette nightclothes caught fire.The New Zealand investigation is the first time that the safety of Chinese clothes has been called into question; concerns have been raised over a series of Chinese products in recent months, including toys, food and toothpaste. Last week, Mattel said it was recalling 18.2m toys globally because of hazards such as the use of lead paint.
If this keeps up, our trade deficit with China might be fixing itself shortly. Link
Categories: Global Death Wish, arses
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Thus spake Evil Overload
August 20, 2007 at 12:42 pm
“A MIRACLE material for the 21st century could protect your home against bomb blasts, mop up oil spillages and even help man to fly to Mars.
Aerogel, one of the world’s lightest solids, can withstand a direct blast of 1kg of dynamite and protect against heat from a blowtorch at more than 1,300C.
Scientists are working to discover new applications for the substance, ranging from the next generation of tennis rackets to super-insulated space suits for a manned mission to Mars. “
Link
Categories: Yay Science!, Technology Porn
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 12:34 pm
Aug. 20-27, 2007 - In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.” But beyond the irony lies China’s true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region’s Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new human to continue the work of relieving suffering.
Does this mean you can bribe your way out of the Wheel of Death and Rebirth? Link
Categories: Wot's All This Then?, arses
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:49 am
This article details some of the dangers to worldwide finance caused in recent years by overly clever financial wizardry. A fairly recent example of this is the rise of credit derivatives, which provided the financial incentive about five years ago for all the crazy mortgages, many of which are now in foreclosure, bringing about a growing global financial crisis:
The overall problems are structural, and include the greatly varying ratios between corporate debt loads and core earnings, which have grown substantially from four to six times over the past year because there are fewer legal clauses to protect investors from loss. They also keep companies from going bankrupt when they should. As long as interest rates have been low, leveraged loans. With these loans it is possible to buy a company with a very small have been the solution. Because of hedge funds and other financial instruments, there is now a market for incompetent and debt-ridden firms. When the Ford Motor Company announced last month that it was losing over $7bn annually, its bonds actually shot up 20%. The rules once associated with capitalism, such as probity and profit, no longer hold.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think this just goes to show what happens when you make money without adding value.
Link
(accolades and kudos to monochrom)
Categories: Wot's All This Then?, Global Death Wish, arses
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 10:32 am
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 17, 2007 at 7:50 am
These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.
NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.
Huh. Link
Categories: Yay Science!, Global Death Wish, Conservative Heresy
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 5:33 am
It’s looking like it might be the US vs. the comedy duo of China and Russia, and to the winner goes control of middle eastern oil:
“President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and other leaders of the SCO nations attended the exercise, which followed their summit Thursday in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
The summit concluded with a communique that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the strategically placed, resource-rich region.
“Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region on the basis of the existing regional associations,” the statement said.”
Link
Categories: Wot's All This Then?, Global Death Wish
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Thus spake Ennui
August 16, 2007 at 7:07 pm
Thus spake Ennui
at 12:04 pm
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese couple tried to name their baby “@,” claiming the character used in e-mail addresses echoed their love for the child, an official trying to whip the national language into line said Thursday.
The unusual name stands out especially in Chinese, which has no alphabet and instead uses tens of thousands of multi-stroke characters to represent words.
“The whole world uses it to write e-mail, and translated into Chinese it means ‘love him’,” the father explained, according to the deputy chief of the State Language Commission Li Yuming.
While “@” is familiar to Chinese e-mail users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out — which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta,” or “love him,” to Mandarin speakers.
Li told a news conference on the state of the language that the name was an extreme example of people’s increasingly adventurous approach to Chinese, as commercialization and the Internet break down conventions.
Another couple tried to give their child a name that rendered into English sounds like “King Osrina.”
Li did not say if officials accepted the “@” name. But earlier this year the government announced a ban on names using Arabic numerals, foreign languages and symbols that do not belong to Chinese minority languages.
Sixty million Chinese faced the problem that their names use ancient characters so obscure that computers cannot recognize them and even fluent speakers were left scratching their heads, said Li, according to a transcript of the briefing on the government Web site (www.gov.cn).
One of them was the former Premier Zhu Rongji, whose name had a rare “rong” character that gave newspaper editors headaches.
Categories: arses
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 11:48 am
“A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.
According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.
However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.
The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled “instantaneously” between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.”
Link
Categories: Yay Science!, Technology Porn
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Thus spake Evil Overload
August 13, 2007 at 11:36 am
Second Life appears to be made for people like Warren Ellis:
“And, sure enough, people started teleporting in. They’d stand and look around. And four zombies would appear and chew them to death. Again and again. After a while, repeat visitors got what was happening, and arrived with guns drawn, firing wildly. But with the land unsafe, the guns did damage to people too. The scene quickly degenerated into utter chaos, with people accidentally blowing other people away while zombies gnawed on their sweet digital flesh.
It was a wonderful way to say goodbye to the land. Of course, the people on the Army Of Filth group will never trust me again. This is why I have no friends.”
Link
Categories: Wot's All This Then?, Technology Porn
One Comment »
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 10, 2007 at 7:17 am
 On August 28th, between 5:52 am and 7:22 am EST, there will be a full lunar ecipse, optimally visible from right here in Oconee River City. As an added bonus, the moon will apparently be glowing red for most of those 90 minutes (except for the eclipse part of the eclipse). Sounds like a sight not to be missed. I, for one, plan to sincerely intend not to miss it. Link and More Link.
Categories: Yay Science!, Happy Happy Joy Joy
3 Comments »
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 9, 2007 at 7:19 am
“…We live well back from the windshield of the present moment as it’s encountering the wind of the future.”
- William Gibson
from fascinating interview here.
Categories: Smart Art
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Thus spake Ennui
August 7, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Here today, gone tomorrow tattoos. Brilliant! The perfect way to say, “I’ll love you as long as this lasts.”
Categories: Smart Art
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 7:04 am
Thus spake Evil Overload
August 6, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Thus spake Evil Overload
at 1:10 pm
Between this analysis and the recent revelation that Madonna is an environmental disaster, I’m very much enjoying the whole Carbon Footprint meme:
“Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”
“The troubling fact is that taking a lot of exercise and then eating a bit more food is not good for the global atmosphere. Eating less and driving to save energy would be better.”
Link
(Thanks, The Wife!)
Categories: Yay Science!, arses
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Thus spake Evil Overload
August 2, 2007 at 8:15 am
Apparently, Putin’s administration has initiated nationalistic youth programs promoting Russia’s new ideology of “Soveriegn Democracy” whch promote, among other agendas, the creation of more Russians:
“Remember the mammoths, say the clean-cut organisers at the youth camp’s mass wedding. “They became extinct because they did not have enough sex. That must not happen to Russia”.
Obediently, couples move to a special section of dormitory tents arranged in a heart-shape and called the Love Oasis, where they can start procreating for the motherland.”
Link
Categories: Wot's All This Then?
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Thus spake Evil Overload
at 5:17 am
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