Born on 2 October at Zoos South Australia’s Monarto Zoo, this female Southern White Rhinoceros baby is significant to the regional population of the species. Parents Uhura and Satara have bred successfully before, producing two male calves — Watoto, in 2005 and, Jubari, in 2007 — via ZooBorns
Google has used the PubCon conference in Las Vegas to release a Disavow Links
tool, allowing webmasters dump links into their site that are hurting search rankings.
Most people should not need to use this,
saidMatt Cutts, head of webspam at Google. We build our algorithms such that in most cases we handle things just fine. It’s also an advanced tool, so be careful.
The new tool is designed for websites that have already been warned by Google that they have unnatural
links pointing to their site, typically content farms for SEO gamers. These have most likely come from people either deliberately or accidentally hiring bad SEO firms that try and game the Chocolate Factory’s search ranking systems — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Earlier this week, Apple secured a license from the Swiss Railway to use its iconic Swiss Clock on the iPad. This agreement was lauded by the SBB, but it wasn’t so favorably received by Swiss watch maker Mondaine, according to a report in MacWorld UK. The watchmaker has held an exclusive license to use the design since 1986 and said it was surprised by the SBB’s agreement with Apple.
Mondaine holds a long-term exclusive licensee according to a contract with SBB to produce, distribute and market watches and clocks based on the SBB design since 1986 and got surprised to hear about a license agreement between SBB and Apple.
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
2 inches across and comes with a fancy adjustable necklace. I’ve made these so the cord can easily slip between the head and back tentacles. There are no gaps for the cord to slip through so don’t worry about it falling off — via Etsy
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the nation’s guardian of consumer rights and regulator of competition and consumer law, has commenced legal action against HP over its warranty and repair practices.
The ACCC is upset with HP for five reasons, namely:
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
Spider silk is pretty amazing stuff. Pound for pound, it’s as strong as steel and more durable than Kevlar. It can be stretched to incredible lengths, but it’s no more cumbersome than cotton or nylon. Because it’s so awesome, scientists have long been searching for good ways to synthesize the stuff (it’s not exactly easy to milk spiders in any meaningful quantity), and they’ve made some good progress. Thanks to the latest work from biomedical engineer Fiorenzo Omenetto of Tufts University in Boston and Nolwenn Huby from the CNRS Institut de Physiques de Rennes in France, they’ll have a little extra motivation to get it done soon.
Omenetto and Huby are both presenting their work on Monday at a conference in Rochester, New York. It’s hard to tell who’s more impressive. Omenetto’s team is developing silk-based materials that look and act like plastic, but because of their unique chemical makeup, are completely and safely biodegradable. That means they could build special microchips that could be implanted inside of the body to serve a particular purpose and simply dissolve when the job’s done. A broken bone, for instance. Doctors might not be completely sure when the bone will be healed could theoretically implant one of their spider silk microchips onto the bone to monitor the progress, and it would simply disappear when everything is back to normal — via redwolf.newsvine.com
British computer hacker Gary McKinnon will not be extradited to the US, Home Secretary Theresa May has announced.
Mr McKinnon, 46, who admits accessing US government computers but claims he was looking for evidence of UFOs, has been fighting extradition since 2002.
The home secretary told MPs there was no doubt Mr McKinnon was seriously ill
and the extradition warrant against him should be withdrawn.
Mrs May said the sole issue she had to consider was his human rights.
She said it was now for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, to decide whether he should face trial in the UK — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dutch police are reporting that seven paintings, including works by Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet, and Henri Matisse, were stolen today in a 3.00am burglary at the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. The details are still sketchy, but the Associated Press says the masterworks are potentially worth hundreds-of-millions of Euros.
To the museum, anyway. For the crooks themselves, the loot might well turn out to be worthless. According to Robert Wittman, founder of the FBI’s art crime team and author of the memoir Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures, it’s nearly impossible for thieves to sell famous pieces of art, even on the black market. I talked to Wittman today about why yanking a Picasso is such a bad business plan, his investigations into art capers around the world, and why cheap paintings might be more valuable for a crook — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In Rhode Island’s Narragansett Bay, a truly unusual home sits perched atop a jutting rock. Its owner and principal restorer, Henry Wood, has turned the beautiful home into a green, sustainable home with its own dedicated work force.
In the 40 years since Wood and his wife purchased Clingstone (known to locals as The House on a Rock), Wood, a working architect, has poured his talents and his energy into restoring and improving the incredible 10,000 square foot, 10-bedroom mansion. It sat empty for some 20 years before Wood and his ex-wife purchased it in 1961 for $3,600 — via Dornob
This is a cast polished aluminium Caterpillar Bench by British designer Philip Watts — via CONTEMPORIST
Medical giant Johnson & Johnson is facing its third class action in Australia in as many years, with a case filed in the Federal Court yesterday which relates to a product called transvaginal mesh.
It has helped many women who have suffered prolapsed organs by assisting their muscles with support, but for a significant number it has caused life-changing harm.
Lawyers believe it could be the largest product class action in Australian legal history.
It has also cast fresh light on the system of approvals because the mesh was introduced without any pre-market testing — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In July of this year, in an admirable attempt to secure him as a guest on his Nerdist Podcast, Chris Hardwick sent a beautiful 1934 Smith Corona to noted typewriter collector Tom Hanks and popped the question. Within days, Hanks responded with the charming letter seen below, typed on the Corona.
Unsurprisingly, the anecdote-filled podcast that resulted is wonderful. It can be heard here — via Letters of Note
A member of the anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church has been tackled at a military funeral for an openly gay US soldier.
Army Staff Sergeant Donna Johnson was killed along with two others in Afghanistan earlier this month when an insurgent detonated a suicide vest while they were on dismounted patrol, according to the US Department of Defense. She was married to her female partner, Tracy Dice.
At her funeral yesterday, a Westboro member stomped on the American flag which led to a soldier hitting one of the protesters, Guardian of Valor reports.
As he was being arrested, two other soldiers rescued the flag — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Dumai, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium‘s Sumatran Tiger cub, is getting a new buddy. Meet Berani, a 5-week-old Malayan male cub scheduled to arrive at Point Defiance this week from Tulsa Zoo and Living Museum. Each was the only cub in a litter and pulled from mum within days of birth because the tiny Tigers were not thriving. Once Berani arrives and is checked out, you will be able to see him in the cub den playing and pouncing with Dumai — via ZooBorns
PROBLEM: We know that domestic violence rates spike during Christmas and New Year’s. Following the 2006 World Cup (in which Italy defeated France in a shootout), the UK’s Home Office released a report claiming that domestic violence had risen during the tournament. Are sporting events really as emotionally fraught as the holidays?
METHODOLOGY: Professor Allan Brimicombe and BBC News journalist Rebecca Café applied more vigorous analysis to the Home Office’s theory. Invoking England’s Freedom of Information Act, they obtained statistics from police reports from the 2010 World Cup and the analogous, football-free period in 2009. In addition to studying the overall rate of domestic violence, they looked specifically at the outcomes of the tournament games, predicting that losses would spur more domestic disputes, while wins might be associated with joy, conviviality, and, consequently, fewer incidences of violence.
RESULTS: When England lost 4-1 to Germany, its heaviest defeat at the World Cup finals
, domestic violence rose by 31.5 percent. But a few days earlier, when hope for the championship was still alive and England defeated Slovenia, domestic violence also rose, by a similar 27.7 percent.
Interestingly, when England tied Slovenia, incidences of violence only increased by 0.1 percent, and when its match against the US ended in a draw, the domestic violence rate actually dropped by 1.9 percent.
CONCLUSION: Both dramatic wins and devastating losses during the World Cup were associated with significantly increased domestic violence in England, while ties didn’t appear to have any effect — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Sixty-five years after becoming the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound, retired Air Force Brigadier General Chuck Yeager is still making noise.
The 89-year-old Yeager, who was featured in the movie The Right Stuff, flew in the back seat Sunday of an F-15 Eagle as it broke the sound barrier at more than 30,000 feet above California’s Mojave Desert — the same area where he first achieved the feat in 1947 while flying an experimental rocket plane.
The F-15 carrying Yeager took off from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas and broke the sound barrier at 10.24am Sunday, exactly 65 years to the minute the then-Air Force test pilot made history — via redwolf.newsvine.com
One of the world’s most notorious internet trolls, who created an online forum to share sexualised images of underage girls, has been exposed as a middle-aged Texan grandfather who loves cats.
When confronted about his secret double life, Michael Brutsch pleaded with the New York-based blog Gawker not to expose his identity, saying he had a disabled wife and could lose his job.
I just like riling people up in my spare time,
he said.
But the 49-year-old, who used the Reddit name Violentacrez (pronounced Violent-Acres) to post vile messages across the internet, said he did not regret any of his online activities, which include creating or moderating Reddit forums called Chokeabitch, Niggerjailbait, Rapebait, Hitler, Jewmerica, Misogyny, Incest.
Advertisement
He also led Jailbait, where Reddit users submitted images of scantily-clad tween and teenage girls, often in bikinis or skirts. The images were taken from social media sites, and photos of girls older than 16 were usually deleted — via redwolf.newsvine.com
It is fallacy that anonymity breeds terrible behaviour — poor community management and poorly designed reputation systems do that.
Being made to use your real
name online does not hold most accountable. If that were the case hundreds of facebook/social media managers around the world would be out of work while people behaved politely online and with civility towards fellow humankind.
Persistent identity
— because real can’t be regulated (yet anyway) — does not stop people from behaving badly, if anything it stifles their ability to say what they really think. Which as a society, is something we should all hold in high regard. And defend.
Most people I meet who are anti-anonymity have never inhabited an online forum because almost everyone who ever has, has a completely different understanding of the issue. (Quite possibly Randy Zuckerberg also falls into this category, and no doubt her anti-anonymity views of indicative of what gets said in the halls of facebook) — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The Zoological Society of London’s Whipsnade Zoo is getting a glimpse of their Red Panda twins for the first time since they were born in June. The girls, named Yin and Yang, have stayed close to first-time mum, Tashi, for the last few months, and are only now beginning to take tentative steps to explore their surroundings — via ZooBorns
A worker at a Bumble Bee Foods factory in Santa Fe Springs, California, died in industrial oven accident this week, NBC News reported.
Safety officials said Jose Melena, 62, was accidentally cooked in a steamer machine
at the seafood canning company’s plant, NBC News reported. Police pronounced him dead at the scene at 7.00am Thursday.
California Division of Occupational Safety and Health spokeswoman Erika Monterroza said it was unclear how Melena ended up inside the oven, the Contra Costa Times reported. Cal-OSHA has launched an investigation into the accident which it plans to complete in six months, she added.
If it turns out that the factory did violate state health and safety regulations, Bumble Bee Foods will face civil penalties, Monterroza said, according to the Contra Costa Times. In addition, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office could decide to indict the company on criminal charges — via redwolf.newsvine.com
RSS – Posts