What are you gonna do, play with your prick for another 30 years? ... George Carlin
Slurp free at 7-Eleven today :: Business :: Daily Southtown
Topic: Business
9:40 am EDT, Jul 11, 2007
Convenience store chain 7-Eleven plans to hand out nearly 3 million free Slurpees today to celebrate its 80th birthday.
Each year on July 11, the chain hands out free Slurpees to mark 7-Eleven's founding in suburban Dallas in 1927. The company expects to give away close to 3 million drinks in 7.11-ounce cups today.
And when it comes to selling the semi-frozen beverage, Bob Stella is the Chicago area's Slurpee king.
New York plans surveillance veil for downtown | CNET News.com
Topic: Society
10:27 am EDT, Jul 10, 2007
By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London's so-called ring of steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects after the London subway bombings in 2005 and the car bomb plots last month.
If the program is fully financed, it will include not only license plate readers but also 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, as well as a center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.
How exactly does this prevent terrorism? Guys who are willing to blow themselves up are camera shy??? If the cameras DO catch a terrorist act, its pretty much too late. I bet these will catch plenty of petty crimes, traffic disturbances and other things with hefty fines. Bull Shit.
Armed autonomous robots cause concern - tech - 07 July 2007 - New Scientist Tech
Topic: Technology
10:40 am EDT, Jul 9, 2007
A MOVE to arm police robots with stun guns has been condemned by weapons researchers.
On 28 June, Taser International of Arizona announced plans to equip robots with stun guns. The US military already uses PackBot, made by iRobot of Massachusetts, to carry lethal weapons, but the new stun-capable robots could be used against civilians.
"The victim would have to receive shocks for longer, or repeatedly, to give police time to reach the scene and restrain them, which carries greater risk to their health," warns non-lethal weapons researcher Neil Davison, of the University of Bradford, UK.
"If someone is severely punished by an autonomous robot, who are you going to take to a tribunal?" asks Steve Wright, a security expert at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK.
"I'm not harming you.... I'm not harming you..."
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
New Scientist Technology Blog: A programmable robot from 60 AD
Topic: Science
12:32 pm EDT, Jul 6, 2007
Who built the first programmable robot? It's almost impossible to tell, and most people would put good money on Leonardo da Vinci. But now Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield, UK, has traced the technology way back to ancient Alexandria.
In about 60 AD, a Greek engineer called Hero constructed a three-wheeled cart that could carry a group of automata to the front of a stage where they would perform for an audience. Power came from a falling weight that pulled on string wrapped round the cart's drive axle, and Sharkey reckons this string-based control mechanism is exactly equivalent to a modern programming language. He describes it in this week's issue of New Scientist magazine.
They should have kept developing this.. we'd probably have mecha all over the place by now.
Scientists find drug to banish bad memories | Science | Earth | Telegraph
Topic: Society
9:54 am EDT, Jul 5, 2007
Researchers have found they can use drugs to wipe away single, specific memories while leaving other memories intact. By injecting an amnesia drug at the right time, when a subject was recalling a particular thought, neuro-scientists discovered they could disrupt the way the memory is stored and even make it disappear.
I have a feeling this will be the drug of choice for politicians.
This page is your resource for highly uncommon phobias -- many of which you won't even find in the most comprehensive of books about Phobias. ALL, however, are 100% legitimate (as far as I know).
Send me descriptions of unusual phobias you currently have or may have experienced in the past. Feel free to suggest a name for it if it's 'unlisted'. This page thrives off your various neuroses!
So my roommate and I were doing some research and typed "things that come in clusters" in to our search engine and got this page full of submissions of people who have a fear of things in clusters. This is intriguing to me....
