On 5 May 2005, the Colorado Wildlife Commission agreed to accept the Colorado Wolf Management Working Group’s (CWMWG) policy allowing migrating wolves from Yellowstone National Park and the Arizona-New Mexico borders to roam freely in Colorado. This decision came after a public comment period earlier this year and with a unanimous vote by all 14 members of the CWMWG
UK schools are to be transformed into learning and community centres serving the needs of hard working families
said Ruth Kelly, the UK Education Secretary, as she announced the biggest overhaul of the school timetable for decades. Teaching the curriculum and preparing children for exams will be only part of the wide-ranging services every school will be expected to offer from 2010. They will open their doors early for breakfast and provide after school clubs and child care until six in the evening. The premises will no longer be used for 39 weeks a year but will stay open to provide child care in school holidays
What has been claimed as Europe’s oldest civilisation has been discovered by archaeologists across the continent. The report says more than 150 large temples, constructed between 4800 BC and 4600 BC, have been unearthed in fields and cities in Germany, Austria and Slovakia, predating the pyramids in Egypt by some 2,000 years. The network of temples, made of earth and wood, were constructed by a religious people whose economy appears to have been based on livestock farming
Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in growing a date palm from a seed that is 2,000 years old. The seed was unearthed during an excavation of the ancient mountain fortress of Masada 30 years ago and is thought to be the oldest seed ever germinated
A Russian site, IframeDollars, is paying web developers 6 cents for each machine they infect with spyware or adware. One security expert estimates that iframeDollars could collect as much as $75,000 annually from the adware it placed on the infected machines during the third week of May, which cost approximately $12,000 in payments to place
Same-sex couples are to be allowed to adopt children under a radical overhaul of adoption laws in Scotland. In the first major change to the laws governing adoption for 25 years, unmarried couples, including gay couples, will be able to adopt jointly. At present, only married or single people can adopt and although homosexual or unmarried couples can currently raise children, only one can be recognised as the legal parent
Just had a Windows crash. Whether it was related plugging in a USB Flashcard reader or transferring stupidly large files across the hard drive is anyone’s guess. But there were several blue screens on restart, a refusal to go into safe mode and then a restart as if nothing had ever gone wrong.
The point of this is a reminder to myself of stupid things W2K does for the next time it spits the dummy.
NTFS does not like most video file formats. This meant I got around to converting the NTFS partitions over to FAT32. Still didn’t make the AVI files play.
As the AVI files were equally borked on both Winamp and WMP — I got audio, but no video — at least it narrowed down the weirdness. I reinstalled the ffdshow codec pack and have video again. It looks like W2K can sometimes eat or corrupt video codecs on crashing.
It might be time to upgrade to the horror of XP.
Ken Kutaragi, president of Sony Computer Entertainment, has disclosed in an interview that PlayStation 3 will natively run Linux. In fact, it will come bundled with it, if you purchase the HDD peripheral
iPods may soon shrink slightly in size, with news that Toshiba has managed to make 46mm drives a little smaller. The move reflects industry-watchers doubts that new generation music players can be marketed solely on higher-capacities — portability and weight are emerging as equal considerations for future generations of such devices
British explorer, Colonel John Blashford-Snell, has found an early submarine that he believes was the inspiration for Nautilus, Captain Nemo’s vessel in Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. She was built in 1864 by a visionary craftsman, Julius Kroehl, for the Union forces during the American Civil War. But the boat, called Explorer, was never used in the conflict and was subsequently taken to Panama where she was used to harvest pearls. She was ideal for this purpose because of a unique lock-out system, identical to the one in the Nautilus from Verne’s book, published in 1870
I have a long and annoying history of attracting the insane on public transport. Of late, my ability to look like a new bestest friend for the loon in the community has waned. Unfortunately, I’ve picked up an online loon instead, but I do get to share him.
Going back almost a year, the lovely Feòrag, of the Pagan Prattle, posted an article about a loon attempting to sell his insane conspiracy theorum on eBay. I commented on the article and, since then, he keeps in semi-regular contact with both of us, usually to update us on his latest bizarro theory or eBay scam.
Although he doesn’t like direct e-mail as a rule and favours communicating via comment forms, which does leave a nicely public trail of insanity in his wake.
Today’s missive from the almighty QuePirate was to reinforce his latest Prattle comments:
reminder to look tonight at sundown — Is the crescent of the moon mostly on it’s back or perpindicular as it used to be? Cheshire Moon or not?
In all honesty, the grammar has improved, but he still makes as little sense as he always does. Still, you’ve got to laugh
Scientists at Sandia National Labs have created a magnetic pulse gun (rail gun) that can accelerate small aluminum plates at 34 kilometres per second, faster than the Earth travels through space. The accelerated plates strike a target after traveling only five millimeters, or less than a quarter-inch. The impact generates a shock wave — in some cases, reaching 15 million times atmospheric pressure — that passes through the target material turning matter into various states almost instantly (solids into liquids, liquids into gas, and even gas into plasma)
Kidnappers
who stole a Dalek from a Somerset tourist attraction have sent its owners a ransom note and the robot’s amputated plunger. The 5ft model, believed to be an original from the cult BBC Dr Who series, was taken from Wookey Hole Caves near Wells on Monday. On Thursday, staff found the plunger arm and a ransom note on a doorstep. The note read: We are holding the Dalek captive. We demand further instructions from the Doctor.
The group, signing themselves Guardians of the Planet Earth, added: For the safety of the human race we have disarmed and removed its destructive mechanism
The spy was definitely not called Bond, for that name is not among the military officers selected 40 years ago to conduct reconnaissance missions for the US from an orbital laboratory in space. But secret agent Bond shares a number — 007 — with one of the US spies-in-training. Space historians are trying to find out who the mystery man is after his spacesuit turned up, along with an identical outfit bearing number 008, in an abandoned space agency (Nasa) blockhouse last used to launch Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom into space in 1961 — via Warren Ellis
Pieces of a man’s body fell from the wheel well of a South African Airways passenger plane bound for John F Kennedy International Airport Tuesday and landed in the yard of a suburban home. A South African Airways spokeswoman said it appeared to have been a stowaway attempt. She said the plane had stopped in Dakar, Senegal, on its way to New York. The body parts, which included the right leg, part of the spine and a hip, struck a garage roof of the home in South Floral Park, New York, before landing in the backyard — via Warren Ellis
The future for pianolas in Australia looks grim, with the country’s only manufacturer of pianola music set to close down. A collapse in demand for the music is sending the unique business to the wall. For 45 years, Barclay Wright has operated the Master Touch Piano Roll Company in Sydney. It is one of only two companies in the world that makes the rolls that guide the keys on pianolas. He has now been forced to put his building on the market
The MARC commuter trains between Baltimore and DC are sporting these terrornoia posters styled after the heyday of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, when Soviet citizens were exhorted to spy on their neighbours and fink them out for suspicious behaviour. And they say irony is dead — via boingboing
Download all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies the day after they are broadcast in MP3. All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda — via boingboing
I’ve been looking at the City Rail logo and have thought of some enhancements that would truly reflect the quality of service they offer their commuters.
Crude – yes.
Childish – yes.
Truthful – fuck yeah!
The UK is considering doubling the copyright term for popular music to 100 years. That means the Beatles’ Love Me Do
and Please Please Me
, scheduled to to go into the public domain in 2013, would earn royalties for record companies until 2063
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