Tuesday, February 10, 2009
And in South Carolina: Bomb Smell Just a Stink...
The Oakbrook post office in Summerville had to be evacuated last week when officials suspected a parcel bomb was in the building. They reported what they called a ‘bomb-like smell.’ A search by a bomb squad turned up nothing. “There was stink. It just stunk,” said a firefighter. The bomb scare was...
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Monday, February 9, 2009
And in Britain: When Monkeys Fly...
Bili, a baby bonobo chimp, was invited to fly economy class with the humans on a Lufthansa flight from Birmingham to Frankfurt. The tiny primate had been rejected by his birth mother, Maringa, at the Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire, and was bound for the Frankfurt Zoo, where he would be welcomed by a...
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Sunday, February 8, 2009
And Somewhere Between France and Switzerland: A Smashing Delay...
That old nursery rhyme about a battle being lost for a want of a nail has come home to roost [I don't think it has come 'home' to roost there, Calamai, but we'll let it ride] at the world's most ambitious scientific experiment, the $6-billion proton accelerator beneath the French-Swiss border near...
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Saturday, February 7, 2009
And in Science: End in Sight for Spacetime? The Jury is Still Out...
“The results confirm that dark energy is no illusion; there really is an unseen force pushing the universe apart.” (M. Lemonick, Discover, Feb 2009) “Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their...
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Friday, February 6, 2009
And in Britain: Torn Socks Prevent Progress...
In 1925, John Logie Baird, the inventor of television, built something that “looked like a peep-show device, held together with scrap wood, darning needles, string and sealing wax. His invention was partly mechanical, relying on a spinning metal disk with a spiral of holes to chop up images for...
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Thursday, February 5, 2009
And in Britain: We are Amused...
Fifty years after her first televised Christmas address to the people of the UK, Queen Elizabeth II launched her own YouTube channel. (Discover, Feb 2009) Her first appearance will be on the throne - no, not that one, silly...
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009
And in Britain: Birds are in for a Scary Season...
President Obama was not the only winner on inauguration day. Luke Song, the 36-year old designer who made the enormous bejewelled hat worn by Aretha Franklin during the singing of My Country, ‘Tis of Thee, has become “an overnight fashion sensation.” “People are calling from England, asking for the...
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Tuesday, February 3, 2009
And in Canada: On the Path to Very Small Computers...
A clever animation explains how a Canadian nanotechnology advance could be a major step on the path to low-power computers. National Research Council star Robert Wolkow led the team responsible for creating the revolutionary single-atom quantum dots in the National Institute for Nanotechnology at...
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Monday, February 2, 2009
And in Sao Paulo: Pole Dancing in the Streets...
Sao Paulo ’s notorious traffic slowed even further recently when 20 women leapt into traffic and onto street signs to perform pole dances. Wearing jeans instead of bikini bottoms to avoid injury from the poles, the women were led by Brazilian dance teacher Renate Wilke, who is trying to promote pole...
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Saturday, January 31, 2009
And in Mississippi: Cab Fracas Leads to Too Much Bench Time...
Kimber Kennedy, wife of University of Mississippi men’s basketball coach, Andy Kennedy, is going to court over a lack of sex. In December, Andy was arrested for allegedly punching a taxi driver, Mohammed Jiddou, and likening him to Osama bin Laden. Kimber says that the driver’s claims dampened...
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