] The Bush administration has proposed scuttling a Clinton
] administration rule that put nearly 60 million acres of
] national forest largely off-limits to logging, mining or
] other development in favor of a new system that leaves it
] to state governors to seek greater - or in some cases,
] fewer - strictures on road construction in forests.

[ Maybe a minor issue, but another pebble on heap of reasons to change leadership ... -k]

IHT: Bush seeks to cut rule protecting forest lands

] Don't be so quick to toss out your old PCs, fax machines
] or digital cameras -- office supply retailer Office Depot
] is offering to recycle one electronic product a day for
] free all through the summer, according to a published
] report Tuesday.

[ This is very good news! I know Chez Biltmore has about a ton of worthless electronic gear sitting around, which we had been saving for the biannual GATech recyclefest, but this is much easier... there's an office despot right around the corner and we can just drop one thing off per day... do it people!

edit: this'll take you to the office depot site regarding the program -- http://tinyurl.com/6n5ff

-k]

Office Depot offers to recycle electronics for free - Jul. 13, 2004

] If you can conjure up an image of wincing and sympathy,
] you've got the look on the faces of PBS execs. Here's a
] fight -- a line in the sand, as Dreyfuss said -- that PBS
] can't engage in because it simply doesn't have the money
] to stand up for what it believes in.
] ...
] "We believe, however, that the new FCC regulations
] represent an unacceptable assault on our First Amendment
] rights -- on everyone's First Amendment rights. An act
] unworthy of a free country. An act of censorship."

[ hear hear -k]

PBS watches its mouth rather than pay big fines. Now it's up to the other networks to fight the FCC. / 3 no-nos bleeped from new crime drama -- Richard Dreyfuss blasts government censorship

] I think that Kansas City may have better barbecue, Texas,
] but they don't have the sweltering, molten heat that
] subdues human intellect. So, you guys each have
] something.

[ Tycho always knows just how to phrase things... -k]

Penny Arcade!

] Called Facetop, the system simultaneously transmits a
] video feed of users along with a shared, transparent
] image of the desktop. It allows two colleagues to work on
] the same document, Web page or graphic, while
] communicating face to face.

[ Neat! I'm not particularly interesting in extreme programming, but this seems like it could be a very good collaboration tool, in general.-k]

Wired News: Transparent Desktop Opens Doors

] By raiding nature's tool cabinet, researchers have
] developed a potentially faster and more practical version
] of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), itself a
] foundation of modern genetics.
]
] The breakthrough, called helicase-dependent amplification
] (HDA), could result in small, hand-held devices which
] enable doctors to test blood samples directly in the
] surgery and forensic teams to detect a suspect's DNA at a
] crime scene.

I am going to go ahead and file this one under "Damnit, why didn't I think of that". This is a discovery that someone could have made ~25 years ago. Helicases were discovered in 1976, and Mullis presented PCR to the world in the early 80s. If Kary had of thought about adding helicases to his tube of nucleotides and polymerase, it would have saved alot of work for grad students in the 80s (of course, just the fact that he came up with PCR already saved grad students from alot of work, but whose counting). PCR sans helicases require temperature changes in a cyclic fashion in order to make the copies of the DNA. Before the invention of the thermal cycler (god bless this machine), grad students would have to move tubes from water bath to water bath by hand (keep in mind that to make enough copies to work with, the PCR reaction has to be cycled through all required temps ~25-30 times, which resulted in hours of moving tubes every couple of minutes to a different water bath (once again, god bless the thermal cycler).
Adding helicases to the mix was a genious idea - could be nobel worthy. With helicases, the reaction can take place at 37 degrees, which means that PCR just got portable, and cheaper too (helpful for labs without alot of money to buy a thermal cycler). My hats off to these scientists....its always those discoveries that were sitting right in front of our faces for years that are sometimes the most amazing.

[cool -k]

New Scientist

] "I don't know what this couple were playing at, but there
] must have been tremendous pressure inside the penis to
] make this happen."

[ Sweet mother of god... that is the absolute suck. -k]

Ananova - Penis explodes during sex

[ Wow... these are case mods as art... really truly gorgeously concieved pieces. Well worth a look. -k]

Bootleg Objects

] Talking Panda sets a new standard for language
] translation software. Designed for the iPod, it’s
] stocked with over three hundred essential words and
] phrases of the language you want to speak, organized for
] instant access.

[ Kinda neat... 300 isn't too many, but as a lifeline kinda thing, could come in handy...

-k]

Talking Panda

] Matthew Somerville is a public-spirited UK geek who
] specialises in hacking badly designed websites into
] accessible websites, by scraping their info and
] repoublishing it to comply with accessibility standards.
]
] He did this service for Odeon Cinemas, whose unusably bad
] website is doubly impossible if you have any disability,
] and made a small splash: he'd disovered a bunch of
] security holes in their user-data collection that he
] brought to their attention, he turned their website into
] something that all their customers could use, he put in
] many hours of unpaid labour to improve their public
] offering.
]
] At the time, Odeon told the press that they were OK with
] this (how generous!), but now they've threatened to sue
] him, siccing lawyers on him and accusing him of
] infringing their trademarks, copyrights, and "database
] rights" (database rights are a really stupid
] psuedocopyright that the EU has created to allow people
] to copyright collections of public facts, like the names
] of all the colours or the start times of all the movies).

Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things