The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to drop Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in the eastern United States, despite the fact that the removal of protections would likely preclude the return of wolves to their historical range in the Northeast. Although wolves in the upper-Midwest have made many gains, and now number more than 3,000 in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, wolf experts believe that the Northeast has prime wolf habitat and could support a population of the canines. The new plan would make it difficult to either reintroduce wolves in the Northeast, or protect those that naturally migrate from Canada
A number of start-ups are tinkering with technology that could enhance or replace hard drives, flash memory cards and other storage devices. The new technology will benefit consumers, but, just as important, reduce the onerous capital budgets facing manufacturers. The only question is which approach will work best — using molten silicon, designer molecules, or maybe protein globules?
Five big US power companies were sued for creating a public nuisance on Wednesday, accused by eight states and the city of New York of being the largest global-warming polluters in the country
A rather unusual crop formation has appeared in a Wiltshire field. The Hello Kitty crop circle was created by Circlemakers and New York artists surface2air to celebrate her 30th birthday and is approximately 60m in diameter. The photo is by Steve Alexander, whose web site includes a lot of impressive aerial photos of crop formations.
You can bet the wingnuts from Crop Circle Radius will be insisting that it’s all the work of aliens — via Pagan Prattle
Thought you’d enjoy this interesting hacker food blog I discovered via Slashdot. Nothing vegan there, sadly, but the chap blogs each recipe good and proper and includes a mouthwatering picture. I’m all inspired to hax0r some rice paper rolls for dinner.
Charleston City Council apologised to two protesters who were arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to the president’s 4 July rally at the West Virginia Capital — via Meta-Roj Blog
The directors of escrow services provider Trade Secure are considering closing down the company after discovering that several fake Web sites are using the company logo and address and deceiving customers all over the world
Law enforcement agencies that have been using a reverse white pages
directory found to breach Telstra’s copyright will face a more cumbersome and expensive procedure each time they search for details of phone number owners. Melbourne-based Desktop Marketing Systems, publisher of a reverse-white-pages CD-ROM, is winding up after losing a legal battle with Telstra
70-year-old Aldo Busato, a retired Italian farmer, died on Saturday when a World War One bomb, part of his collection of military memorabilia, exploded while he was showing it to a friend in his garden
Work has been trying to get everyone to get their holidays down by the end of June. Hey, I’m down with forced time off, no prob. Well no prob for me any way.
So far every set of dates I put through, (I need to take a week), gets knocked back, Sorry, Redtape Corp work is suppose to start any day now, and so is Super Confused’s work
. Redtape Corp’s work is yet to manifest in my inbox, and Super Confused work is just starting up, albiet VERY slowly.
So I’ve locked in next week.
I’m looking forward to my activites next week, I’ll be floating around the art rooms at the Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, brushing up on my drawing and painting. I rang up to enroll this morning and got a delightfully airy receptionist. After giving her my credit card details, I asked her if she could email me a list of the art supplies. She laughed and replied, Oh, we don’t even have a computer, just bring what you feel comfortable with. We’ll see you next week.
How cool is that? Being a web/graphic designer, THIS is exactly what I needed.
Needless to say, my geekier work colleagues found the idea of a week without computers quite scary.
One Plus One Equals Three has a quite an interesting page of what is design quotes for you to stroke your chin at
Police in the Florida Keys are mystified by a bizarre new pastime, young people dangling themselves from meat hooks on a popular sandbar. For mystified, read can’t figure out what to charge them with yet, but their definitely up to something
. Photos should be up soon on BMEzine
Apple Computer has created a fourth-generation iPod that offers a slimmer case, click-wheel navigation and significantly improved battery life
Britain’s Science Museum says it is considering a radical way of paying its hefty energy bills by using visitors’ excrement. The central London museum said it was considering taking the waste from its 14 toilet blocks and converting it into electricity
Noticing that the typical meat packing plant produces 7 tons of blood a day, Russian at the Voronezh State Technological Academy have come up with a process to convert the proteins in the blood into the basic ingredients for milk, yogurt, chocolate, and coffee
— via BoingBoing
A Sydney public relations firm, led by a former Labor staffer, has taken responsibility for a contentious web site critical of John Howard. But despite howls of protest from the Government, johnhowardlies.com appears to be gathering momentum, with its subscribers now numbering in the thousands
A sophisticated skimming device designed to steal the personal details of ATM users has been uncovered in Sydney
Bitoogle is a front-end for Google that finds BitTorrent files
Goldfish could be banned as prizes at fairs and children prohibited from buying pets under a new UK draft animal welfare bill. Ministers believe children under 16 are not mature enough to have pets
A Russian taxi driver got a rude shock when he discovered his blind ex-wife, who thought he had died in an explosion, had him buried in a Moscow cemetery. Oleg Lunkov learned of his apparent death when he applied for a passport and was told he died in a bomb blast on Moscow’s metro on February 6. His ex-wife thought he was on the train, but being blind, she got her mother to identify the remains — via Rogue Sun
RSS – Posts