KPFK Transmitter Down

The KPFK transmitter is temporarily down due to a power outtage at Mount Wilson as a result of current weather conditions. However the station is still streaming live online.

Click [ here ] to listen.

Presidential Paintball

An online game where players shoot presidential candidates with virtual paintball guns is causing some controversy. Surprised? I didn't think so.

Majority Oppose Telecom Immunity

According to a new ACLU poll of 1000 likely voters.

Paper Plane to be Launched from ISS

A Japanese team is planning on launching a paper airplane from the International Space Station. It will be made of heat resistant paper and the makers hope that it will survive reentry. They will soon begin testing an 8cm long prototype, subjecting it in wind tunnel speeds of Mach 7.

No launch date has been set for the paper spaceplane, but Shinji Suzuki, an aerospace engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, is thinking ahead. "We hope the space station crew will write a message of peace on the plane before they launch it," says Suzuki. "We don't know where in the world the plane will land, but it would be nice to send a message to whoever finds it."

via boingboing

The Smell of Fear

The U.S. Military wants to know if you smell scared.

Now, the US Army is trying to track down and harness people's smell of fear. The military has backed a study on the "Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones," which "focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat." The so-called "skydiving protocol" was the researchers' method of choice.

The Photoshop Candidate

Dean Hrbacek, mayor of Sugar Land, and Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress is too fat. Or at least his campaign thinks so. Why else would they paste a photo of his head onto the body of a slimmer man?

The picture, presented as a true image of the candidate, is actually a computerized composite of Hrbacek's face and someone else's figure, in suit and tie, from neck to knee caps. The give-away is a flawed fit of head and collar.

via wonkette

No White House Email Backups

The White House said it reused backup tapes used to archive emails, meaning that copies of several million electronic messages may be gone forever. The folks at CREW are wondering why it took so long to say this. The recyling of tapes was "consistent with industry best practices," according to a White House aide.

The recycling of backup tapes by the Bush White House represents a reversal in policy from the final year of the Clinton administration. The Clinton White House halted recycling of backup tapes in March 2000, when it was discovered that some e-mail from the office of Vice President Al Gore was not preserved.

via tpm

Sun to Buy MySQL

Yes, the announcement did surprise me.

FDA: Clones Are OK

A soon to be released final risk assessment from the FDA will clear the way for the selling of cloned meat and dairy products. According to the report there is no danger from human consumption. The FDA says they don't expect cloned food to be labeled, but may allow non-cloned food to be labeled as such.

Finally, there was the overarching problem of deciding which measures would best predict whether the food was safe. Most puzzling was whether to take into account the subtle alterations in gene activity, called epigenetic changes, that are common in clones as a result of having just one parent.

In the end, facing the reality that epigenetics have never been a factor in assessing the wholesomeness of food, agency scientists decided to use the same simple but effective standard used by farmers since the dawn of agriculture: If a farm animal appears in all respects to be healthy, then presume that food from that animal is safe to eat.

Network Solutions "Steals" Domain Names

Well, they don't steal them outright, but it seems that they do buy any domain searched for which isn't already registered. Thus, the person doing the searching must then buy the domain from Network Solutions. In a comment left to a different post about the story, a person claiming to be a Network Solutions employee says that the company is not Front Running since they are not trying to sell the domain at an inflated price, but instead is "protecting" their customers from people who.

Did Diebold Machines Favor Hillary?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Is Blogging a Health Hazard?

Some bloggers think so.

NJ High School Breathalyzes Students

Pequannock High School in New Jersey is requiring students to sign a contract where they agree to submit to a Breathalyzer test if they want to attend school social events.

"It actually came to a head when last year at the graduation senior trip, that we had students who actually couldn't graduate as a result of their drinking," school board member Dr. Larrie Reynolds said.