Pennsylvania experiments with painted “speed bumps” - optical illusions - which can be produced for much less than the real thing.
Man from Oregon uses helium balloons strapped to a lawn chair to safely fly 200 miles, using a BB gun to slowly pop enough balloons to lower him to earth.
Ethics
In contrast to heroic stories from the Sichuan earthquake, a secondary schoolteacher tells of how he fled rather than help his students evacuate: “I’m only really concerned about myself”.
Writer Christopher Hitchens, who had initially opposed the designation of waterboarding as torture, decides to undergo the procedure himself. His conclusion: “Believe me, it’s torture!”
Romanian rape victim is allowed to have an abortion that would usually be considered illegal
Should we give convicts the same opportunity for (expensive) treatment?
Internet
France government strikes a deal with its ISPs to block porn, terror, and hate web sites
Associated Press draws up rules that require you to pay $12.50 every time you quote more than 5 words from any of their syndicated articles. Uh-oh!
A stroll through Wikipedia shows disparities between the attention given to certain subjects: Call of Duty, the popular WWII game, has a longer content total than actual WWII articles.
Speed test of the latest browsers shows Opera still ahead of the pack! (FF3 is ahead in RAM usage, but most computers have enough RAM, and most browsers use up unused RAM anyway to cache data.)
Science
Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski takes a single e. coli bacterium and cultivates its offspring, which make a significant evolutionary shirt in the 31,500th generation.Some editors at Conservapediatake offense, demonstrating their ignorance of scientific research while hassling Lenski to reveal “his data”.
Survey of undergrads finds the more men choose romance over success.
Consumer
P&G evades sales tax by claiming that Pringles “are not potato chips”
Russian Communist Party members threaten to beat up Harrison Ford if he ever steps foot there, following the negative portrayal of Russians in the latest Indiana Jones film.
A US-based monitoring group mistakes concept art for the post-acolyptic game Fallout 3 as al-Qaeda simulations for the aftermath of a terrorist attack.
The award-winning game Bioshock has been confirmed for a movie adaptation. The director, Gore Verbinski, worked on Pirates of the Carribean.
A pole-dancing game is being developed for the Wii (no, not Polish artists).
PC version of the Bioware hit Mass Effect is launched. Complaints abound regarding its strict anti-piracy measures, among them an online check every 10 days.
World, Politics
Bush claims to have given up golf in 2003, to honour fallen soldiers in Iraq. The claim is promptly debunked with video evidence.
Barack Obama has finally cut ties with Trinity United Church of Christ, following months of controversy because of its pastor’s beliefs.
India is hopping mad after the US apparently blames them and other developing nations for food price increases.
Internet
A Singapore firm claims that they hold a patent on image-linking “technology”, planning to claim millions from Google.
Science
South Korea puts its cloning research to good use - by cloning seven Labrador retrievers from a highly-trained “original”, to sniff out drugs an explosives. They are all named “Toppy”.
A group based in San Diego calls for a boycott of Starbucks after the company reverted to an adaptation of its old logo, featuring a mermaid. The image apparently “has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute.”
Interest
Homeless Japanese woman lives undetected in a stranger’s closet for a year.
Teacher faces criminal charges after giving out too much information in a sex-ed class.
Newly appointed CM of Penang Lim Guan Eng is spotted flying economy class. Meanwhile, in a written reply to a question in Parliament, PM Abdullah Badawi says that the government spent RM792,325 for the use of executive jets for himself and DPM Najib in the two weeks before the polls. (Yes, somehow it’s hard to believe that we don’t have money for projects in Penang).
Jakim has rejected the PM’s proposal to compel Muslim converts to inform their families about their conversion. (Apparently the PM is not in their list of influential people).
Hishammudin Hussein finally “apologizes” over his usage of the keris. The Star calls him a “big man” for this. (WTF - it bore all the hallmarks of a non-apology apology, was much belated, and he was practically forced to do it. “Big Man” my ass. )
The much-ballyhooed sports complex to be built in England is scrapped. Citizen Nades of The Sun reports.
South Korea has cloned seven dogs from an active drug-sniffer in active service. All of them will be named Toppy.
Entertainment
JK Rowling is suing a (former?) fan who planned to publish his own Harry Potter lexicon, an encyclopedia to the series. He reportedly cried on the witness stand.
A million WoW players were online at the same time over the weekend, reports the company that hosts WoW servers in China.
Interest
A New Yorker survived being trapped in an elevator for 41 hours. The ordeal was captured on CCTV.
Six Masai warriors were invited to run in the Flora London Marathon. “The marathon was easy, there were no lions!”
World/Politics
A Russian newspaper reported plans by President Putin to wed a former Olympic gymnast half his age. He denied the rumour, and the paper was promptly shut down.
60% of the world’s paintings apparently are churned out from a single village in China.
An Italian performance artist who planned to hitchhike from Italy to the Middle East in a wedding dress to “send a message or peace” is found brutally murdered in Turkey.
Tech
A writer from MacWorld builds and successfully runs Mac OS X on a “clone” computer.
The latest beta of Opera 9.5 blows competitors out of the water - yes, including FF b3!
You reach the season end of a show you recently started watching… :(
BUT then you notice the scrollbar at the bottom - there was another episode left to watch!!
How I Met Your Mother has been growing on me . Been getting cranky after being too long away from sitcoms! It seemed lame at first but blossomed out after the middle of the first season. Surprising for a show that tells you in the first episode that the main love plot ala “Ross and Rachel” is doomed not to work out! Not quite up there with WnG or Friends yet, but I’m giving it time. Barney especially is a legendary character.
Note: I was planning Snippets to be just a mishmash of everything interesting I find on the Web but would never have the time to blog about. I thought making it a fortnightly thing would be fine, but it appears a lot happens in two weeks :/. Oh well.
Malaysia
Hamilahton, mother of maths prodigy Sufiah Yusof who was recently revealed to be working as an escort girl in UK, starts a blog to tell her side of the story.
GSC’s website is hit by a trojan that can potentially exploit IE to steal user passwords.
Malaysia Airlines is hit with an RM900k loss after a ticket price typo.
Faizal Tahir, who was recently censured for baring his chest onstage during an 8TV concert, receives the most AIM (Anugerah Industri Musik) nominations this year.
A Samad Said hits out at the Education Ministry for omitting his works from the national curriculum because they are too “difficult”, also blames DBP for the decline of Malay literature.
A class action lawsuit is being brought against Apple for fitting newer iMacs with inferior TN displays. (For those who don’t know, the widely-used TN panels cost roughly half of a higher quality S-IPS/PVM panel, and have much worse viewing angles and colour reproduction.
Sony BMG is found to be using pirated software after one its employees called tech support with an invalid key.
It seems that buying an upgrade edition of Vista without actually “upgrading” allows you to nearly halve the price.
President Bush is apparently caught with pirated songs after talking about his iPod in an interview.
Two bloggers die “on the job”, sparking reflections on the frenzied pace of news today. (One of the victim’s final emails said: “Have come down with something. Resting now posts to resume later today or tomorrow.”).
TIME begins compiling its annual index of the top 100 most influential people in the world. The online version again sees Korean pop-star Rain at the top, followed closely by Stephen Colbert and Shigeru Miyamoto.
In a case of legality over morality, two public defense attorneys disclose that their client had boasted of committing a murder he was on trial for 20 years ago. They felt it would breach the lawyer-client privilege.
The family of a baby born with two faces in India refuse medical care, claiming that she is the incarnation of the goddess Shakti.
An 80-year old man has been phoning his wife’s voicemail every day to hear her voice. She passed away in 2005. In a network upgrade, the voicemail was lost, but after hearing of the story, the telco restores the voicemail from their archives.
60% of all Photoshop users are pirates (sample size: 500).
Adobe launches Photoshop Express, a stripped down version of its flagship product. Focus is on community and “family” functions.
Torrentspy.com, which was once the most visited BitTorrent site, shuts down in the face of MPAA suits.
Firefox 3 will debut in June 2008, fixing its memory-hogging. [I still have faith that Opera9.5 will reclaim its position as the fastest browser when it’s released >:( ]
Facebook widget-maker Max Levchin sells a 9% stake in his company (known for widgets like SuperPoke ) for USD $50mil.
Elected MP M. Manoharan, who is currently being detained under the ISA, has been denied release by the Govt. [Reuters]
UMNO flip-flops on the Terengganu MB drama, agreeing to the appointment of Ahmad Said. Pak Lah had earlier insisted that appointing anyone but Idris Jusoh would be unconstitutional.
The chief of the Penang branch of the National Union of the Teaching Profession (NUTP) has said that attending state functions are no longer compulsory. Teachers are also being discouraged against inviting the new MPs for school events.
World
A major ice shelf in Antartica is beginning to break apart, as chillingly (pun unintended) captured by time-lapse videos.
Religion/Culture
The Vatican releases a list of new sins. Among them: stem-cell research, and pollution.
Statistics show that monogamous men have the most children if they marry women younger than themselves.
A Macbook is hacked in less than 2 minutes in a 3-day hacking contest. A laptop running Vista was only cracked after relaxing the rules on the last day, while a laptop running Ubuntu was left unscathed throughout.
Certain cows are fitted with fistulas, man-made, permanent “holes” into their stomachs, to help research their digestive system.
Yum yum.