A pair of suicide bombers struck in the Israeli town of Dimona yesterday -- the first strike of its kind in more than a year. Once it was all over, a bomb disposal robot removed one of the attacker's jacket, to make sure there were no more explosives on him. (His bomb failed to go off, and police shot and killed him.) Then the machine rolled over him, to double-check. The likely NSFW picture is after the jump.

Picture: Israeli Robot Crushes Suicide Bomber (Updated) | Danger Room from Wired.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Sometime next year nurses may put active band-aids on hospital patients to wirelessly monitor as many as three vital signs. Startup Toumaz Technology (Abingdon, U.K.) described its custom chip to power such a disposable device at the International Solid State Circuits Conference here Monday (Feb. 4).

The chip is one of an emerging group of smart wearable devices that ultimately aim to help patients get medical monitoring from the comfort of home.

"We not only have an aging society, but one that does not have healthy lifestyle,"

I wonder if they will now have to make tin foil bandaids too.

EETimes.com - Startup puts wireless monitor on a band-aid

JACKSON, Miss. - A state lawmaker wants to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers — but please, don't be offended. He says he never even expected his plan to become law

Congratulations! We needed another profiled discrimination group.

Miss. law would ban serving obese diners - Yahoo! News

My Own Kind of Freedom
A Firefly Novel
by Steven Brust

My Own Kind of Freedom has been released under a creative commons license. You are free to download it and share it with your friends as long as it is not used for commercial purposes.

The novel is currently available in two formats. Click below to download in:

Whoo Hoo! I've been looking forward to reading this. Its an unofficial sequel to Serenity by the author of the Jhereg series.

My Own Kind of Freedom: A Firefly Novel by Steven Brust -- The Dream Caf�

HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) -- Police searching a downtown home found a man hiding 15 plastic bags of crack cocaine in his buttocks.

Best headline so far this year.

MyFox Washington DC | Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks

There are a lot of things that are just plain wrong with Hello Kitty fanatics. Getting a Hello Kitty tattoo is one of them. Getting a Hello Kitty Star Wars tattoo is even worse. But when Hello Kitty fanatics start tattooing their dog with Hello Kitty, there has been a boundary that has been crossed. Can there be a bigger insult if you are a dog? Having to go around in life with a Hello Kitty tattoo because you owner thought it would be “cute.” That dog must have been teased mercilessly by the other dogs at the park…

Hello Kitty Dog Tattoo - Hello Kitty Hell

Would you like to play a game?

Explanation of the TIV Tables

SIPRI data on arms transfers refer to actual deliveries of major conventional weapons. Data on arms transfers are presented in the form of SIPRI Trend Indicator Values (TIVs). TIVs are expressed in US$ m. at constant (1990) prices. However, although figures are expressed in US$, TIVs do not represent the financial value of goods transferred. Instead, TIVs are an indication of the volume of arms transferred. Hence, TIVs can be used to measure trends in international arms transfers, such as changes in the total flow of weapons and the geographic pattern of arms exports or imports. The data can also be used to measure a particular country's share of the overall import or export market or the rate of increase or decline in its imports or exports. However, since TIVs do not represent the financial value of the goods transferred, they are not comparable to official economic data such as gross domestic product or export/import figures.

In order to calculate the financial value of the arms trade, the Arms Transfers Project collects official government and industry data on the value of countries arms exports. This information is available here.

It looks like a nuclear war.

ARMSFLOW

Perched atop a strip of cliffs lining a beautiful section of the Pacific Ocean, the Space and Naval Warfare System Command in San Diego develops semiautonomous armed robots for use in combat by the U.S. military. "We're not building Skynet" says Bart Everett, the technical director for robotics at SPAWAR. Though Everett assured me that the use of the robots' on-board weapons is under the strict control of their operators, the lab's bots can navigate and map complicated terrain, work cooperatively with soldiers and identify and confront hostile targets. Sure, they're no Johnny Five, but robots with guns are both creepy and fascinating.

I really love that as soon as the technology allows, Asimov dies a little more than he already is.

Gallery: Inside the Navy's Armed-Robot Labs

Wow, flying out of SFO just became much worse. While traveling this morning I surprised to find out that TSA is now requiring that you remove all electronic devices from your carry-on bags, including cables etc. and place them in a separate bin to be scanned at the security checkpoints. Along with slowing down the line to a crawl, this will undoubtedly lead to people losing expensive equipment, not to mention the possiblity for your stuff to be accidentally taken by someone else or even stolen.

Of course none of this information is mentioned on either the TSA or SFO websites.

Does anyone know if TSA is requiring this at any other airports?

What horseshit.

New Arbitrary TSA requirement: all electronics out of your bag (cables, too) - Boing Boing

Really simple device to make to stabilize a camera without a tripod.

Neat idea, I'm going to have to make one.

$1 Image Stabilizer For Any Camera - Lose The Tripod