Broadcasting pioneer Ralph Edwards, who spotlighted stars and ordinary people as host of the popular 1950s show "This Is Your Life," died Wednesday of heart failure. He was 92.

Edwards, whose career as producer and host included "Truth or Consequences" and "People's Court," died in his sleep in his West Hollywood home, publicist Justin Seremet said.

'This Is Your Life' Host Edwards Dies

Four state legislators in Massachusetts have introduced a bill that would soften the crime of bestiality, a move pro-family activists say is a natural progression of the state's legalizing same-sex marriage.
Stated traditional-values organization Article 8: "State Sen. Cynthia Creem, Sen. Robert O'Leary, Rep. Michael Festa and Rep. David Linsky have some interesting things in common.

Hmmm... Ok... :)

Bill softens bestiality statute...

On Jan. 17, 1946, a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of mental illness in this country. On that day, he performed the first-ever transorbital or "ice-pick" lobotomy in his Washington, D.C., office. Freeman believed that mental illness was related to overactive emotions, and that by cutting the brain he cut away these feelings.

NPR : 'My Lobotomy:' Howard Dully's Journey

The ARRL again has urged the FCC to provide meaningful operating privileges to entry-level Amateur Radio licensees, including access to HF, even if the Commission doesn't want to create a new license class. Commenting in response to the FCC's July 9 Notice of Proposed Rule Making and Order (NPRM&O) in WT Docket 05-235, the League also stood by its stance that the Commission retain the 5 WPM Morse code requirement for Amateur Extra applicants, but do away with it for General applicants.
"Retaining Morse telegraphy as a requirement for only the Amateur Extra class license, in ARRL's view, places Morse telegraphy in a proper, balanced perspective," the League told the Commission October 31, the deadline to comment in the proceeding.

Meaningful Entry-Level License Privileges are Top Priority, ARRL Says:

Experimentation by radio amateurs in the nether regions of the radio spectrum continues quietly and largely unnoticed outside of the LF community. Since the FCC turned down the ARRL's 1998 petition to create an Amateur Radio "sliver band" in the vicinity of 136 kHz, some US amateur licensees have obtained FCC Part 5 Experimental licenses to research the possibilities of LF, including transatlantic and transpacific propagation. A few hams in Canada have obtained special permission from Industry Canada to operate on LF using Amateur Radio call signs. The latest noteworthy accomplishment was a 137 kHz QSO http://www.w1tag.com/XDWQSO.htm October 29 between US Experimental licensees Laurence Howell, KL1X--operating as WD2XDW--and John Andrews, W1TAG--operating as WD2XES.
"This is the second two-way between US Experimental licensees in that frequency range, the first being a 25-mile CW contact between K2ORS/WD2XGJ and myself last year," said Andrews. The QSO between Andrews, in Massachusetts, and Howell, in Oklahoma, spanned some 1340 miles.

LF Experimentation by Radio Amateurs Continues Quietly:

In the mid-1960s, it was not uncommon for Captain Kirk's banter with the crew of the Starship Enterprise to be interrupted by a request to give his approval signature on a tablet. That's about as far as the show's writers took the idea but, as any visiting UPS delivery driver can show you, it proved prescient.
The greater promise of tablets as a replacement to mobile computers -- and even as a new kind of mobile information and communications device -- is starting to be realized in education and business.

Schools Tap Tablet's Flexibility

Research from VeriSign (Quote, Chart)and Info-Tech Research Group said security risks surrounding increasingly-popular Internet phone software could put networks at risk and should be addressed.
Ross Armstrong, senior research analyst at Info-Tech, is also urging businesses to ban the use of free Voice over IP software provider Skype in the workplace -- especially if they already have similar policies regarding the use of peer-to-peer technologies.
Skype usage in the enterprise, he said, is in many ways similar to the steady growth of public instant messaging (IM) services the past couple years. The real danger, he said, is if Skype is downloaded and used in an enterprise as an unsanctioned software application.
While Armstrong said he has not seen any Skype vulnerability exploits in the wild, he pointed to vulnerabilities that have been patched in Skype. Last month, the company reported two high-risk security bugs.

Researchers: Skype, VoIP Are Hot And Risky

A set of four priceless archival recordings from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) of the outstanding Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman - arguably the greatest science lecturer ever. Although the recording is of modest technical quality the exceptional personal style and unique delivery shine through...

And more great video to watch for FREE

The Vega Science Trust - Richard Feynman - Freeview Video

William H. Masters, MD, the Vasco de Gama of the inner vagina, died last week, but his fraught sexological legacy lives on. He left a map of human sexual functioning that is gorgeously detailed in some respects, amazingly incomplete in others. A champion of the clitoris in one of the twentieth century's major sex wars and a vigorous opponent of the sexual double standard, Masters earned his stripes as a feminist hero. He insisted that people could not make assumptions about their sex partners' desires or pleasures, and the importance of his and Virginia Johnson's message — take responsibility for your own pleasure — cannot be overestimated as part of women's sexual emancipation. Yet, for all the talk about pleasure, Masters' research was all about new ways of measuring physical performance — a strain which helped set us on the path to today's gleefully mechanical sex research: the Viagrification of sexual relations.

Old news but a good read...

William H. Masters, MD

The first pies, called "coffins" or "coffyns" were savory meat pies with the crusts or pastry being tall, straight-sided with sealed-on floors and lids. Open-crust pastry (not tops or lids) were known as "traps." These pies held assorted meats and sauce components and were baked more like a modern casserole with no pan (the crust itself was the pan, its pastry tough and inedible). The purpose of a pastry shell was mainly to serve as a storage container and serving vessel, and these are often too hard to actually eat. A small pie was known as a tartlet and a tart was a large, shallow open pie (this is still the definition in England). Since pastry was a staple ingredient in medieval menus, pastry making was taken for granted by the majority of early cookbooks, and recipes are not usually included. It wasn't until the 16th century that cookbooks with pastry ingredients began appearing. Historian believe this was because cookbooks started appearing for the general household and not just for professional cooks

Pies, History of Pies