terratogen wrote:

This is just incredibly stupid.

Is it? The town of 120 gets more recognition, and as suburb, that's a good thing. They get free publicity, along with free TV and signage. There is a set of people who will now visit Dish, Texas who otherwise would never have visited Clark, Texas. Dish gets cheap media coverage and advertising. Where is the downside?

RE: Texas town renames itself 'Dish' to get free TV - Yahoo! News

Signs are scheduled to go up in about a week advising motorists that reconstruction on the Homestead Grays Bridge will start after Thanksgiving weekend.

From Nov. 28 through the end of February, some bridge lanes will be closed only during the day for preparation work, then for the main event, two of the four lanes will be closed around-the-clock up to May 4, 2007.

If Balfour-Beatty, the prime contractor, doesn't have the new deck and sidewalks totally open by the then, it is to be assessed a $15,000-a-day penalty.

If there's anything positive to be said about such a disruptive project, it's this: "The bridge will be wide open for the upcoming shopping season," said Doug Aiken, construction manager for the Allegheny County Public Works Department.

I will probably just move if I'm not actually leaving in December... This is going to be royal pain.

Homestead bridge work to start Nov. 28

Gunfire in the Loews Waterfront movie theater killed a man Wednesday night, West Homestead police said.
...
As of Thursday afternoon, the movie is no longer showing at the Waterfront theater.

ThePittsburghChannel.com - Channel 4 Action News - Waterfront Slaying Investigated; Rapper's Movie Gone

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BurningWell.Org - Free Public Domain Images and Photos

Triumph International modeled the bra in Japan which has launched a "Warm Biz" campaign urging people to bundle up to save on heating.

The bra pads are filled with an eco-friendly, reusable gel that can be heated up in a microwave or with hot water. For good measure, a pendant of a hot pepper dangles from the front.

Microwave your bra to stay warm this winter - Yahoo! News

The common form of sleep apnea, in which the throat closes off throughout the night, at least doubles the risk of stroke or death, a study released on Wednesday showed.

The researchers at Yale University also raised questions about whether existing apnea treatments reduced that risk, the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed.

A separate Canadian study also published in the journal concluded that breathing machines used to treat a form of apnea common in people with heart failure do not prevent death or the need for a heart transplant.

About 4 percent of Americans suffer from extreme daytime fatigue because their sleep is disrupted by sleep apnea, forcing them to repeatedly wake up if only for a second. Another 16 percent of Americans have apnea without fatigue.

Sleep apnea doubles risk of stroke, death - study - Yahoo! News

The cable channel will feature Lewis Black _ known for his rants on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" _ in a handful of segments starting Wednesday night.

He's the first in what the Weather Channel hopes is a series of celebrity guests.

The Weather Channel Brings in Lewis Black

k wrote:

Two NASA astronauts have figured out a way to create a real-life version of a "Star Wars" "tractor beam" to keep an asteroid from crashing into Earth.

By hovering nearby for perhaps a year, the astronauts say, the spacecraft's own gravity could minutely slow the asteroid's progress or speed it up, a process that 10 or 20 years later would cause the rogue rock to miss Earth by a comfortable margin.

[Uh, not *exactly* a tractor beam, but still an ok idea. -k]

The APoD photo and description are ever so much better. You've quoted a science journalist out of their depth.

They're proposing a space tractor or tugboat. Big, slow moving, mechanically simple (well, if ion propulsion can be considered simple) -- tractor.

RE: A New Path for Asteroids

Maybe not as world shaking as milbots or healthbots, but if you're Google or Amazon, or possessed of a very large dead tree library, you'll want Kirtas Technologies' Bookscan (check out the video).

Bookscan 1200 -- robots that read books!

Due Diligence: Bookbots

Decius wrote:

If, based on their zip code, voters could access wiki based information about upcoming local and federal races and referenda items relevant to their districts, working families would have a powerful and democratic information resource at their disposal in the ballot box.

If by wiki you mean writeable by anyone... it seems like the wikispam and wikiattacks would render the system unusable.

Around here, we have the League of Women Voters, as well as prominent left and right newspapers having dedicated election sections. Would it be nice to have a place for individuals to transcribe all the bits they know about a particular candidate? Certainly. Could you imagine that source being even remotely less biased than the League of Women Voters? I can't.

RE: A wiki voter information guide | SinceSlicedBread.com