Most spiders are web-building, solitary creatures. So the social huntsman spiders, which live in webless retreats
with hundreds of other spiders, are very unusual — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In the ongoing debate about asylum seekers, it’s not unusual for misinformation to be spouted as if it is fact.
The recent publicity about how Malaysia treats non-citizens, confirmed by UNHCR officials, at least puts paid to the nonsense that asylum seekers moved on from that country where they had the option of living in safety. Not possible without work rights, without access to education for children and in a country where caning is normal practice for people without visas.
But the misinformation around the asylum seeker issue abounds. In particular, it intrigues me that there continues to be calls for Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) to be reintroduced as a deterrent to asylum seekers when all the evidence points to them being a factor in increasing the number of boat arrivals — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Dam Busters’ dog will be renamed for a new version of the classic war movie, it has emerged.
Stephen Fry, who is writing the film’s screenplay, said there was no question in America that you could ever have a dog called the N-word
.
In the remake, the dog will be called Digger
instead of Nigger
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
All things must pass, and now so has Trouble, the lapdog turned multimillion-dollar heiress who most likely lived out her golden years without realising she was the world’s most hated Maltese.
Her adoring owner, billionaire real-estate and hotel tycoon Leona Helmsley demanded that Trouble, her Maltese, be referred to as Princess
rather than the dog
. She left Trouble $US12 million ($11.3 million) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
More than 60,000 Americans were sterilised, many against their will, as part of a eugenics movement that finished in 1979, aimed at keeping the poor and mentally ill from having children. Now, decades on, one state is considering compensation — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Scientists using the world’s largest atom smasher have made some of the hottest and densest matter ever achieved on Earth.
The state of matter called a quark gluon plasma existed in the milliseconds after the big bang 13.7 billion years ago — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Cleveland City Council voted to amend part of the City’s vicious dog ordinance (Ord. 712-11) during its Monday night meeting. Major changes to the law include two classifications for threat dogs: Level I – Dangerous & Level II – Vicious. Emphasis on the classification is based upon evidence of behaviour of the dog, not the breed. The pit bull breed will no longer be considered vicious. — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A study into a deadly snake found on the Eyre Peninsula may unlock the secret of why the species comes in two different colours.
Death adders are one of the world’s most venomous snakes and come in grey and red varieties — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Luke Skywalker, eat your heart out — Australian Chris Malloy and his partners claim to have invented an actual, working hoverbike that zips along above the terrain like a Star Wars landspeeder cruising over the deserts of Tatooine.
Our goal is to produce an extremely reliable helicopter, designed with rugged simplicity at its heart and true pilot safety built into the design and operation of the aircraft,
Malloy’s hoverbike website states — via redwolf.newsvine.com
It appears as if PayPal global president Scott Thompson has landed in Australia briefly. We’re not sure why he’s here, at this point, but he did stop in for a brief interview with Business Spectator supremo Alan Kohler as a guest on Kohler’s Inside Business slot on the ABC. Perhaps the most interesting part of the interview is Thompson’s statement that PayPal could become a viable option for customers to pay for items at normal retail store checkouts — instead of just online:
Well one of the big trends that’s happening in Australia and around the world is all those devices in retail stores are actually now being connected to networks, and we view that as a massive opportunity for PayPal because now we can be a tender type, an option for payment at point of sale because that device is essentially a computer when it’s connected to a network
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
There is no logical reason for anyone — let alone an efficiency-minded, business-focused, cost-benefit-analyzing IT manager — to build, buy or use computer hardware tarted up with brash, shiny wood, aluminum, scrollwork, gearwork and all the other tropes of steampunk that should combine into absolutely hideous aesthetics but, in the right hands, don’t.
There is no defensible reason to pay between $1,100 and $1,500 for a custom-made keyboard. There’s not even a good work-related reason to look at the images here, let alone go see artist Datamancer’s other work, except that they are beautiful — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Swiss Competition Commission (Comco) has announced that it is opening an investigation against Swatch Group arising out of the Group’s plan to stop supplying mechanical watch movements and components to third parties. Comco said yesterday that the purpose of the investigation is to determine whether Swatch Group’s decision is an abuse of its dominant market position and so a violation of the cartel law — via redwolf.newsvine.com
For more than a month now, a slow-motion landslide
near the New York/Vermont border has been dismantling a small town, day by day, square foot by square foot. The landslide is oozing slowly
, New York state geologist Andrew Kozlowski explains to National Public Radio, no faster than three feet per day. But it’s so big that scientists have been arriving from all over the country to study it
— via BLDGBLOG
Earlier this year Google launched a piracy blacklist and began filtering keywords from its Instant and Autocomplete services. A necessary measure to counter online copyright infringement according to the search giant, but not everyone agrees. To partially undo Google’s censorship efforts, the MAFIAA Fire
team has now released the Gee! No evil!
Firefox add-on.
When Homeland Security’s ICE unit started seizing domain names last year, a group called MAFIAA Fire
decided to code a browser add-on to redirect the affected websites to their new domains.
A perfect illustration of John Gilmore’s famous quote: The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Another picture which was very influenced by Hajime Sorayama’s techniques. I tried some new tones for testing — via Serge Birault
Creating an email alias for a group of contacts isn’t usually considered quick or easy, but Fiesta makes it a two-minute process. There’s no signup required, and setting up a group email is as simple as sending a message to every contact you want in the group, and adding your desired group address in the CC field (like lifehacks@fiesta.cc). Fiesta then sends a message confirming the list name and informing everyone in the list that they’ve been successfully added. Easy as that, every contact on the list can now communicate with every other member by using a single email address — via Lifehacker
German authorities have found vultures as very valuable creatures and as such have trained some of them to be detectives. The work of the vultures are well defined – find hidden corpses — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A cryptology instruction book… 202 years old. A photograph of the U.S. Army’s cypher bureau… from 1919. A breakdown of Russian electoral districts… circa 1948. Schematics for a magnetic tape memory system… nearly half a century old.
These are just some of the items that, had you seen them, would have irreparably damaged US national security. These are just a few of the documents, mere citizen, that for decades were far too sensitive for your uninitiated eyes — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Yorick Scarf Detail originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Interesting felting contrast between the dark cat/silk section and the lighter camel/silk section. The cat fuzz felted extremely well, where the camel barely felted at all.
Yorick Scarf Detail originally uploaded by Red Wolf
The skulls lose some definition when the Samoyed felted up and showed its fuzzy nature. This section is very warm and light.
Can you feel that weird sensation in the pit of your stomach? That’s future shock. We’ve toiled 15 years through the Web era, building up tool after tool after tool to make it easier for people to connect, communicate, share, trade, and coordinate. We have systematically removed every bit of friction our culture has ever had that prevents people from coming together — to whatever end. So now they do. Some create the nearly endless factuality of Wikipedia, others want to pop some pills and watch the pretty colours.
Government — every government, everywhere in the world — is in roughly the same position the recording industry occupied in early 1999, just as Shawn Fanning unleashed Napster and changed media distribution forever. Now it’s power that’s being shared — power that states have held onto zealously, power which increasingly slips through their fingers, because it has become a slippery, digital quantity, and governments are fundamentally unprepared for this. Just as the record companies were unprepared for filesharing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
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