The system called SNAP (SNAil-based data transfer Protocol(, uses biological carriers, and, for the first time, taking advantages of the unique merits of the wheel for data transfer.

קצה - RIM - Ami Ben-Bassat's Blog

Two passenger planes of Macedonia's national carrier MAT were stacked above Skopje airport until a pack of stray dogs could be cleared from the runway to let them land safely, officials said Thursday.

Oddly Enough News Article | Reuters.com

The most recent Hajj occurred during the first half of January 2006.

There were a number of stampedes, called "tragedies" in the press, during the Hajj which killed several hundred pilgrims.

These were not unavoidable accidents, they were the results of poor planning by the Saudi government.

And while the deaths of these pilgrims was a mere blip on the traditional western media's radar, it was a huge story in the Muslim world. Even the most objective news stories were suddenly casting Saudi Arabia in a very bad light and they decided to do something about it.

The 350 pilgrims were killed on January 12 and soon after, Saudi newspapers (which are all controlled by the state) began running up to 4 articles per day condemning the Danish cartoons.

There rarely is a clearer case of "Death to the West" being used to divert attention away from local problems.

Daily Kos: Muslim Cartoon Controversy: What the Media Isn't Telling You

The Trader, realizing he would have another valuable trading tool if hypothesis held true, graciously funded my research into this theory. For a month I did nothing but read back issues of fashion rags and the Wall Street Journal. I developed what I call a flesh gradient; it’s a measure of the amount of skin showing in proportion to the woman’s torso. I charted both the historical measures of the flesh gradient (as determined by back issues of Vogue, Elle, In Style, Cosmopolitan, and other fashion magazines) and the corresponding historical measures of market strength (as determined by the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and the NASDAQ 100).

Long or Short Capital » The Down Low on Low Cut: Cleavage Hypothesis

While taking a break from updating his World of Warcraft server Ross turned me on to wankr. With a little more AJAX I think this could be fundable.

Venture Chronicles

wankr will be a place for web 2.0 people to gather together in one humongous circlejerk so they can masturbate each other into a sticky frenzy over useless, meaningless bullshit.

If you're an idiot VC who is willing to throw money at any website that features the words "collaborative", "social", "tagging" or "AJAX", then please get in touch with us at: wankr@flat3.org. Please set the subject to "I have more money than sense".

wankr beta - collaborative masturbation network

Your feed-back made us feel more and more convinced that we had an IP hijacker within our network who had stolen your identity. This is why our Abuse Team asked you to use our Forensic Tool, to be found in you personal Control Center, to protect your server from further abuse and to alert you of the situation.

As you probably are aware of, we take pride in providing you with the real story when incidents happen – the facts, the causes, the solutions and the recommendations. That’s how we do business.

This is what happened

A skilled spammer, unfortunately a customer of ours, designed fake mailheaders in a number of ways including spoofing your IP address and using third party ‘Return-Path’ and/or ‘From’ addresses – often @gmail.com addresses. The real server with the abused IP (belonging to you) gave the target MTA a valid response and the third party ‘Return-Path’ and/or ‘From’ addresses received the bounce, if any. Mails from owners of these ‘From’ addresses started complaining Jan. 17-18 2006 increasing in numbers over the days that followed. So did spam complaints on your IP!

Good example of how to deal with security

Fans poured out of bars all across Pittsburgh as the clock wound down to a Steelers victory in Super Bowl XL tonight. Small fires were reported at S. 19th Street on the South Side, but firefighters told police to hold back, things were under control.

As the evening wore on, police communicaton channels crackled with reports of rowdiness and police crowd control action.

I was there. It really was pretty crazy. That picture is accurate; thousands of people along about 10 blocks of a major road -- closed, covered in snow, and then with people in Steelers' gear.

Jubilant Steelers fans celebrate in Pittsburgh

The fresh snapshot of the jobs climate, released by the Labor Department on Friday, suggested that the economy started the new year on fairly good footing.

No it didn't.

Although the 193,000 gain in payroll jobs in January fell short of the 250,000 new jobs that economists said to anticipate before the release of the report,

it still marked a sturdy showing and was the biggest increase in jobs since November.

Looking for a silver lining... oh, right, December really stunk, so we can claim it is the best since November! Hurrah!

(Tip: You make a dollar, then a dime, followed by a nickel and then a dime. Shouting about the dime being much better than a nickel doesn't make it worth anything like the dollar).

"There's no question we're getting back to better days for job creation," said Ken Mayland, economist at ClearView Economics. "There's been a sense of unease in the American workplace and this should help relieve that. The economy is getting on off to excellent start in 2006."

Ah yes, ClearView economics. They're pretty influential. Or at least, they're willing to give positive copy about what most economists would not cheer.

Moreover, job growth in December turned out to be stronger than previously thought. Revised figures showed payrolls expanded by 140,000 — an improvement over the 108,000 new jobs first estimated a month ago. Employment was revised up for some previous months as well.

Unemployment Rate Declines in January - Yahoo! News

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire known for his philanthropy, anonymously donated $100 million Thursday to Johns Hopkins University to support stem cell research, a new children's hospital and other projects, The Associated Press has learned.

Billionaire NYC Mayor Gives Hospital $100M - Yahoo! News