NSA Headquarters
There’s an interesting article in the current New York Review of books (predictably, a book review) detailing the history of the National Security Agency, that shadowy power-behind-the-power to which we surrender much of our privacy. That in itself is interesting, but I found the introduction a bit shocking: the NSA is constructing a datacenter [...]

Message-sent is often different than message-received
Professing your love (or lust) takes just a few seconds of typing in the age of flirtexting, also famously known as sexting. While ‘XOXO’ stands for hugs and kisses, ‘French’ is the new tongue-incheek for French Kiss and ‘IWSN’ (I want sex now) is the best way to tell your [...]

The world is indeed changing with the acceptance of married priests
The Vatican said Saturday that married Anglican priests will be admitted to the Catholic priesthood on a case-by-case basis as Rome makes it easier for disillusioned conservative Anglicans to convert.
A surprise Vatican decision, announced 10 days earlier to make it easier for Anglicans to become [...]

Will the real Kim Jong -il please stand up?

 
Jong-il? Or was it a fake North Korean leader that entertained Bill Clinton on that mission to Pyongyang to retrieve the two imprisoned American journalists?
In the absence of fact, the Hermit Kingdom has long been a free-fire zone for outlandish rumour. And they got more outlandish than ever [...]

Don’t you think a lot more people need to be aware of this?
Kevin Poulsen at Threat Level has a great item up about the growing menace of “money mules.” The term refers to bank customers who’ve been conned into unwittingly laundering cash that hackers have stolen from business bank accounts. The con and the funny [...]

(YouTube Link)
 High school science teacher “Mr. Kent” has a YouTube channel full of neat chemistry demonstration videos. In this one, he sets ice on fire. Here’s how…

A group of rich Germans has launched a petition calling for the government to make wealthy people pay higher taxes. The group say they have more money than they need, and the extra revenue could fund economic and social programmes to aid Germany’s economic recovery.
Germany could raise 100bn euros (£91bn) if the richest people paid [...]

Politically Incorrect Balloon Boy Halloween Costume in Action.

I think we laughed for about 20 minutes when we came across this…
“Now you too can enjoy all the media attention you want with Plantraco’s Balloon Boy Hoax kit. A great flying saucer that is going to put a big smile on your face. Colorado flying saucers and [...]

California to ban big screen tv’s
The “guvernator” is leading California where no state has dared before. In a world first, big screen plasma televisions are to be banned in California because they use too much energy.  Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has given his backing to the move which would prohibit the sale of TV sets more [...]

Couple relationships are both more complex and vital than ever
In Today’s Economy More People are Traveling via the Internet than by Cars and Planes. Fortunately the Internet is Opening New Opportunities for Couples to Get a Picture of Their Relationship on the Web that Cuts Through Historic Therapy Approaches. ThriveSphere is the First in a [...]

The US airlines that created the largest, most redonkulous and abusive fees this year lost the most money last quarter. Airlines with low or no fees lost the least.
Accountants have rigged the system. They create a stream to track the ancillary revenue from fees and they look like heroes when they can report they earned [...]

Will the Dead Sea cease to exist as we know it?

The country of Jordan has decided to refill the shrinking Dead Sea with salt water despite concerns from environmentalists about the threat to its unique eco-system.
Water levels in the lowest and saltiest body of water on the planet are falling by more than four feet a [...]

Even with the success of Twitter many people have wondered how the company would begin to make money of off all the millions of tweets users post. Most people assume that Twitter will finally cave in and begin offering advertising on their website, though it seems the company is opposed to that currently, but has [...]

Engineeer and cartoonist Tim Hunkin created an arcade game that at first appears to be an ATM or banking kiosk. When coins are inserted, the banking poster drops and reveals Wack-A-Banker, giving you an opportunity to take your aggressions out on a group of financially oppressive stereotypes.

One Smart Suit

A Japanese company, Haruyama Trading Co., has developed a suit that it claims protects the wearer from the deadly H1N1 strain of influenza.
The company has produced 50,000 of the suits and will start selling them on Thursday, according to a company spokesman.
The suit is coated with the chemical titanium dioxide, which reacts to [...]

Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!!!

Katherine Harmon writes in Scientific American that pharmacology researchers are developing a drug that could diminish the pleasurable effects of cocaine. Taking the drug might help addicts detoxify with greater success:
The vaccine itself does not destroy cocaine molecules, rather it induces antibodies that bind to it, making the opiate lose its ability to [...]

GOOD’s executive compensation infographic shows the compensation levels of the business world’s top execs, with the number of minimum wage earners each super-suit’s take-home pay would support. Wow that is a lot of capitalistic greed!

American mega megacorp Cargill, which brought in $116.6 billion in revenue last year, is in the spotlight this week around the story of Stephanie Smith: the 22 year old children’s dance instructor was paralyzed from the waist down after eating E. coli-tainted hamburger traced back to the meat supplier.
She was in a coma for nine [...]

India is sucking 54 trillion liters of water out of the ground every year
India’s thirst for groundwater is threatening a major water crisis, and adding to global sea level rise, says a report.
Virendra Tiwari, from the National Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad, says that satellite measurements have shown that northern India is sucking some 54 [...]

Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to new research.
Children who eat sweets and chocolate every day are more likely to be violent as adults, according to new research.

A new study estimates that people with a gun are 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun.
In a first-of its-kind study, epidemiologists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that, on average, guns did not protect those who possessed them from being shot in [...]

Two Romanians accused of sophisticated phishing attacks targeting major financial institutions have been extradited to the US for trial.
25 year old Petru Bogdan Belbita and 28 year old Cornel Ionut Tonita, both from Romania, were arrested in Canada and Croatia respectively.  They stand accused, along with five other defendants, of duping customers of financial institutions, [...]

Doesn’t this make you want to go for a swim?
Waterways across the upper Midwest are increasingly plagued with ugly, smelly and potentially deadly blue-green algae, bloomed by drought and fertilizer runoffs from farm fields, that’s killed dozens of dogs and sickened many people.

Each inmate costs US taxpayers more than $22,000 a year
From the death penalty to “three strikes” laws, Americans love tough responses to crime—but not necessarily smart ones. Nils Christie has a better idea: Stop treating lawbreakers like criminals.
“I don’t like the term crime—it’s such a big, fat, imprecise word,” says the renowned University of Oslo [...]