China’s central bank on Monday proposed replacing the US dollar as the international reserve currency with a new global system controlled by the International Monetary Fund.

“This is a clear sign that China, as the largest holder of US dollar financial assets, is concerned about the potential inflationary risk of the US Federal Reserve printing money,” said Qu Hongbin, chief China economist for HSBC.

This is basically a threat - inflate (read default) and you'll loose your influence.

naked capitalism: China Calls for New Reserve Currency

Unlike traditional gene therapy, which attempts to replace a mutated gene with a functional copy, exon skipping relies on a variation of a technique called antisense, in which short synthetic DNA or RNA molecules are designed to bind to a region of DNA or RNA and block its function. Companies are developing antisense therapies for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases, among others.

Technology Review: Fixing a Genetic Flaw

noteworthy wrote:
Henry Blodget:

If the "TARP bonus" bill the House passed today becomes law, any of the hundreds of thousands of people who work for Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, and nine other major US corporations will have to fork over 90 cents of every bonus dollar that puts their household income over $250,000.

That's household income, not individual income. If you're married and filing singly, you'll have to surrender anything over $125,000. Indefinitely.

What a load of crap. This person barely understands the bill. There are systemic problems with the system of bonus compensation at these banks. I'm sure there are many nice people who are effected who are not personally responsible for the financial meltdown, but the sympathy plea is just so tone deaf!

Take away the bonuses, and the financial class has no safety net.

Cry me a fucking river!

$250,000 is a decent chunk of change (though, trust me, it doesn't buy that great a lifestyle in New York).

Doesn't buy that great a lifestyle in New York? Thats FIVE TIMES the average annual salary in the city.

If they want to endear the American public to an alternate solution than this 90 percent tax they seriously need to cut this "if I'm not a millionaire how will I ever survive" crap. No one buys that.

RE: Now We Really ARE Screwed

The List.

YouTube - Banned from TV Family Guy Clip

President Obama’s trade officials met with several civil society groups and promised a thorough review of the USTR policies regarding transparency.

This may have been prompted by the controversy over their decision to keep the copyright treaty a national security secret.

Knowledge Ecology Notes- Obama trade officials promise thorough review of transparency policies

The indispensible jamie found a report out of Kentucky of exactly the kind of shenanigans that voting-transparency advocates have been warning about: a circuit court judge, a county clerk, and election officials are among eight people indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. As described in the indictment (PDF), the election officials divvied up money intended to buy votes and then changed votes on the county's (popular, unverifiable) ES&S touch-screen voting systems, affecting the outcome of elections at the local, state, and federal levels.

Slashdot | Kentucky Officials "Changed Votes At Voting Machines"

I need to loose weight. I'm obese and I have multiple risk factors for heart disease. If I don't exercise I'm literally going to die. So, I did a lot of snowboarding this season. It was fun, and it helped. I lost 10 pounds. I was proud of myself and looking forward to next year. Then wham, some celebrity dies after an accident on the bunny slope and all of a sudden everyone thinks skiing is crazy!

Besides the obvious high-risk activities such as smoking, being overweight, and failing to exercise, there are pastimes like skiing, riding a motorcycle, operating a motor vehicle without wearing a seatbelt, hunting, and consuming alcohol at neighborhood bars, which are consistently proven to subject the individual to injury or death at an inordinate rate.

Seriously? You're equating skiing with refusing to wear a seat belt? Maybe CNN will have a more balanced take?

Accidents pick up in the afternoon -- a time ski patrollers call the "witching hour"

The "witching hour?" Do ski patrollers really call the afternoon the "witching hour?" Great. Maybe I should wear a helmet?

"What we've found is that helmet usage did not affect fatalities," Byrd says.

He says helmets tend to be helpful in preventing lesser head injuries such as scalp lacerations or mild concussions.

In almost a decade of snowboarding I've never gotten a scalp laceration or mild concussion and if I ever did get one of those things - it would heal. So there is no point in wearing a helmet, is there? Maybe I should try bicycling instead? Or perhaps surfing?

According to the most recently available data from 2006, there were 2.07 skiing/snowboarding fatalities per million participants, whereas there were 29.4 bicycling fatalities per million participants, and 72.7 swimming fatalities per million participants.

Argh. Maybe there is some other sort of exercise I can engage in?

The National Safety Council (Injury Facts, 2008 edition) points out: 44,700 Americans died in motor-vehicle accidents (2006); 6,100 pedestrians were killed (2006); 8,600 died from unintentional public falls (2006); 5,100 died from unintentional public poisoning (2006); 43 died from lightning (2006); and 67 died from tornadoes (2006).

Maybe the problem is more fundamental...

Most fatalities occur in the same population that engages in high-risk behavior. Victims are predominantly male (85 percent) from their late teens to late 30s (70 percent)... Most of those fatally injured are usually above-average skiers and snowboarders who are going at high rates of speed on the margins of intermediate trails. This is the same population that suffers the majority of unintentional deaths from injury. For example, in 1995 this population suffered 74 percent of fatal car accidents and 85 percent of all industrial accidents, Dr. Shealy reports. Males comprise about 60 percent of skiing participants, and more than 75 percent of snowboarding participants.

Sigh. I can see where this is heading.

Dangers of skiing -- chicagotribune.com

Twitpay has raised an undisclosed amount of angel financing and will launch a service that allows users to order and buy downloadable content, via Twitter.

The Atlanta-based social payments startup, launched four months ago, allows users to make payments of up to $1,000 through the micro-blogging phenomenon that Twitter has morphed into.

Twitpay is part of an eco-system of services and applications that is transforming Twitter from a social media site into a communications — and now an ecommerce — platform.

CEO Michael Ivey was tight-lipped on the details of the fundraise. After some prodding, he ventured to say that seed funding for Internet startups at Twitpay’s stage is generally less than $300,000.

Congratulations to Twitpay, the hottest concept to come out of Atlanta in some time.

Twitpay Raises Seed Funding - AtlanTech

You are twice as likely to die from being struck by lightning than suffer a fatality from skiing or snowboarding.

This is a bit of a statistical slight of hand, but really the risk is very low.

NSAA : National Ski Areas Association : Helmet safety fact sheet

Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future.

Robots - The Big Picture - Boston.com