Category: News

My take on news from around the world…

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News Roundup, AFC Champs edition

Wow… I’m just now coming down from the Steelers’ victory over the New York Jets in last night’s AFC Championship game. What can I say about it? The first half was simply an old-fashioned Steelers beatdown of epic proportions… and the Steelers D did just enough in the second half to secure the victory over Gang Green and their curiously slow offense. Kudos to the much-maligned Bruce Arians for his aggressive playcalling on the last Steelers drive; many other OCs would have run the ball, milked the clock and punted. But not last night. And now… the news:

– Contrast my joy with the Steelers’ win with the bitterness of the Atlanta Falcons’ defeat at the hands of the Packers a week ago. Long time Atlanta Journal sports columnist Mark Bradley has this piece about Atlanta’s sad history in pro sports: 148 seasons with only one title. Read it and weep.

– Baltimore mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake bet Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl that her Ravens would beat Pittsburgh last week. She lost. Here’s the YouTube video she made per the terms of the bet, complete with Hines Ward jersey and the pronouncement that Pittsburgh has the “superior football team”:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ9KSyNsy68

– I certainly won’t be attending the Super Bowl this year. Why? Because face value of club seat tickets is now $1,200. This article at Yahoo! also notes that the NFL will charge you $200 to watch the game on a huge TV in the plaza outside the stadium, and $350 to watch the game in the standing room only section… it’s a bargain!

– One last sports item: the Utah Jazz mascot taunted a fan of the opposing team, and the fan got mad and punched him. Security began escorting the fan from the arena… but the fan wrestled away from their grip and charged the mascot one last time… something he probably ended up regretting:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wszRTE8BS0

– One Alabama law firm is suing Taco Bell, claiming the quasi-Mexican food giant is breaking the law by advertising “ground beef” in its products when it should use the term “meat filling”. It’s not a silly as it sounds: the USDA has a legal definition for ground beef which is “chopped fresh and/or frozen beef with or without seasoning and without the addition of beef fat as such, shall not contain more than 30 percent fat, and shall not contain added water, phosphates, binders, or extenders”. Taco Bell’s “meat” products are said to include “wheat oats, soy lecithin, maltodrextrin, anti-dusting agent, autolyzed yeast extract, ‘Isolated Oat Product’, modified corn starch and sodium phosphate”, and thus aren’t legally “ground beef”.

– From the Department of Duh: Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at University College London, says that Ikea stores are purposely laid out like a maze to get you to spend more. Thanks for the tip there, Einstein!

– The £20 million home used as Geoffrey Rush’s home and office in The King’s Speech was also used to have “wild sex parties”, according to sources.

– Earth may (or may not) get a second sun this year. The star Betelgeuse is set to finally go supernova… and when it does, it will be so bright in our sky that we’ll have a second sun for a week or two. Don’t get too excited, though. As the linked article says: “Brad Carter, Senior Lecturer of Physics at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia, claimed yesterday that the galactic blast could happen before 2012 – or any time over the next million years” (emphasis mine).

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2011’s first News Dump

– Veteran character actor Pete Postlethwaite has died. It seems like Postlethwaite was in a million films, but he’ll be most remembered for his roles as Mr. Kobayashi in The Usual Suspects and an Oscar-worthy role as Danny in Brassed Off. History nerds will also remember him as Sargent Hakeswill in the BBC’s Richard Sharpe films. Postlethwaite was only 64.

– In happier news, Mila Kunis is single. The actress, known both for her role in That 70s Show and her love of videogames, had dated fellow actor Macaulay Culkin for years. With Scarlett Johansson and Kunis single, losers everywhere are getting their expectations up!

– Ever wonder why new prescription drug names seem to be overloaded with Xs and Zz? Hit up the Freakonomics Blog to find out.

– Someone wants to sell a disused public toilet for £100,000 in the UK. It’s in Sheringham, on the Norfolk coast, and has a hell of a view. It’s estimated that a buyer would also have to pay £50,000 to convert it into a house, on top of any redecorating costs.

– Criterion is a company which lovingly restores older, artistically-relevant films to the latest format… initially laserdisc, then DVD, and now Blu-Ray.  To collectors, the “Criterion Collection” is the gold standard of home video. But what if Criterion lowered their standards? What would their packages look like if they restored crappy films like Driven and Mrs Doubtfire? Check out this site for some funny!

– Lastly, “Easter Eggs” are fun little things hidden in software, DVDs and other types of media. One usually “unlocks” them by pressing keys in a certain combination, either on a keyboard or DVD remote. But the folks over at Cracked.com have found ten really good Easter Eggs hidden in famous albums. From aliens conversations embedded in Jimi Hendrix songs, to spectrographs hidden in Apex Twin songs, to Tool’s “do-it-yourself” song, to Monty Python’s double-grooved record, to Led Zepplin’s changing artwork to Information Society embedding a text file on an album, this list has something for everybody!

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Friday’s Unrelated News Roundup

Here’s a bunch of random, unrelated stuff I’ve been meaning to post over the past couple of days:

– Move over, Bhut Jolokia! Gerald Fowler, a British pub owner and pepper enthusiast, has cross-bred three types of peppers to create the Naga Viper, a pepper that beats the Bhut Jolokia – the former “world’s hottest pepper” – by 300,000 Scoville units. The new pepper comes in at 1,359,000 on the Scoville scale, or around 270 times hotter than an average jalapeño, which ranks at a relatively wimpy 2,500 to 5,000 on the Scoville scale.

– This is the saddest thing I’ve read in ages: the Holy Thorn Tree, an ancient tree in Glastonbury, England was cut down by vandals this week. According to legend, the tree was created by Joseph of Arimathea, who had come to England after Jesus had been crucified. He stopped on Wearyall Hill, stuck his walking cane (which allegedly belonged to Jesus) into the ground and went to sleep; when he awoke, the cane had sprouted into a tree. The original tree was cut down during Oliver Cromwell’s time, but residents had saved some cuttings, which were used to create new trees around Glastonbury. The current tree was planted in 1951. The tree is (or rather, was) something of a genuine mystery, because the species, Crategus Monogyna Bi Flora, really did originate in the Middle East, and the tree was ancient when Cromwell’s folks cut the original one down. Every year, cuttings from this (or one of the “daughter trees”) are taken and sent to the Queen, were they sit on her dinner table at Christmas time.

– Strangely, Microsoft hasn’t said much about this, but the Xbox 360 has been the best selling game console in the United States for six months in a row! And I can remember when the original Xbox was just a rumor on message boards… who knew it would one day kick Sony’s ass?

– The latest AccuScore projections are out, and they give the Pittsburgh Steelers a 99.3% chance of making the playoffs and a 78.6% chance of winning their division (the hated Ravens are given an 87.8% chance at the playoffs and a 21.4% chance of taking the division from Pittsburgh). And, on this page, Doug Farrar discusses the fastest receivers in the NFL; Brandon Lloyd gets the top slot, barely inching out my main man Mike Wallace.

– A&E canceled their new reality show The Hasslehoffs after just one episode. That seems pretty harsh, given David Hasslehoff’s popularity and the fact that it’s basic cable.

– ACS: Law is a British law firm that’s trying to make copyright infringement a business. They’ve sent out tens of thousands of letters demanding that file sharers pay them $1,500… or legal action will follow. The theory being, of course, that people would willingly cough up the relatively small $1,500 fee instead of risking far more money taking it to court. After months of threats, the firm finally filed its first cases in the UK this week, and it was a complete disaster… for ACS:Law!

– The site verysmallarray.com created this map of the United States by entering each state’s name into Google and posting the first entry from the search giant’s autocomplete feature. I’m especially fond of the result from the state of Georgia! 🙂

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Art News

A couple of interesting stories from the art world today:

– Henry VIII owned at least 55 houses that we know of. They range from modest hunting lodges to gigantic palaces like Hampton Court. But Henry’s grandest property – by far – was Nonsuch Palace (even the name, “none such”, tells you that there was no other property like it anywhere in England). Amazingly, the palace no longer stands; Charles II gave it to his mistress, the Countess of Castlemaine, who had it torn down in 1682 so she could sell the building materials to pay off gambling debts. More amazingly, although the building was considered the greatest house in England, only one known image of it exists:

Nonsuch Palace

This watercolor, painted by Georg Hoefnagel in 1568, is not only one of the first watercolors ever painted in England, historians consider it the only reputable likeness of the palace. And it can be yours! It’s going up for auction next month, where it’s expected to fetch £1.2 million. The palace itself was said to “only” cost around £24,000… although that’s around $165,501,000 when adjusted for inflation and converted to dollars!

– Can you spot Chinese artist Liu Bolin in this picture?

Liu Bolin

What you’re seeing isn’t a camera or photoshop trick. Bolin studies a scene, then carefully paints his own body and has an assistant photograph him. Bolin got the idea for this because he’s often felt like an outsider in Chinese society. His art allows him to “blend in” with whatever’s around. Check out this article for several more amazing shots!

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Monday’s News Roundup

From the international news desk at jimcofer.com… which is also occupied by a spoiled cat… let’s do the news!

– Even though the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles over fifty years ago, Major League Baseball’s lawyers have filed suit against a Brooklyn restaurant that’s using “Brooklyn” in the Dodgers’ font in their logo. I get that you have to actively defend your trademarks, which is why local TV and radio personalities sometimes get letters from companies reminding them that “Xerox” and “Kleenex” are trademarks. But this is ridiculous. Brooklyn Burger isn’t using the “Dodgers” name in any way… just the name of the city they left a half century ago!

– Quick: what has more cholesterol: one egg yolk, or a Hardee’s Monster Thickburger… which is has 10 ounces of beef, four strips of bacon and three slices of cheese? If you guessed the egg, you’re right!

– Halloween is becoming more and more popular in the UK, but it has been overshadowed by Bonfire Night for centuries. Held on November 5th to commemorate the failed attempt to blow up Parliament, the night features drinking, fireworks and bonfires, where effigies of plotter Guy Fawkes go up in flames. But this year someone else got burned. Footballer Wayne Rooney, the Manchester United star who makes $322,840 a week and was roundly criticized for his tepid play at the World Cup (and for the poorly-handled renegotiation of his Man U contract) was burned in effigy. You should check out the pics – they’re priceless!

– It seems like every week we hear of some new way crooks are cleverly using technology to scam people. Whether it’s ATM skimmers with mobile broadband connections, or tiny hi-def cameras recording PINs, it just seems like technology is moving faster than police can keep up with it. But let’s not lose sight of the low-tech scammers, too. A man in San Francisco was arrested for jamming paper napkins into the cash slots of ATM machines. People would use the ATM and simply assume that the machine was broken; the man would would come along a few minutes later, remove the napkins and the money, then replace the napkins and wait for the next victim to come along.

– A 10 year-old British girl has become one of the youngest “women” to successfully give birth… after she was impregnated by her 13 year-old cousin.

– You know Wendy… the smiling, red-headed mascot for the Wendy’s hamburger chain? Not only is Wendy Thomas, daughter of the chain’s founder Dave Thomas, alive and well, she’s about to appear in a series of commercials for the restaurant.

– And lastly, a partial victory for Dutch smokers: last week the government of the Netherlands announced that an exception to the county’s smoking ban would be allowed for small bars of 743.5 sq ft or less who have no employees other than the bar’s owner. Such bars are actually fairly common in the Netherlands (there are over 2,000 of them) and many of the owners of such bars had allowed smoking anyway, as the money they made off smokers more than offset the occasional fine. In fact, according to a friend of mine who lives there, it wasn’t uncommon for a health inspector to stop at a bar and fine the owner $250, and patrons would immediately chip in to a “fine fund” and keep on smoking.

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Monday’s News

From the International News Desk (or, as I just call it… my desk) at jimcofer.com… let’s do the news:

– Don’t like your home or business showing up in Google Maps? Then Google CEO Eric Schmidt has a helpful suggestion: just move! Somehow Microsoft is still the “evil” company out there, yet Schmidt recently told The Atlantic that his company’s policy was to “get right up to the creepy line and not cross it”. Yeah, I trust them with that!

– Prostitutes in one area of Spain have been ordered to wear fluorescent safety jackets. It seems that working girls near the town of Els Alamus ply their trade on a highway just outside of town, and the measure was put in place to ensure their safety. The linked article also notes that prostitution is not illegal in Spain, that there are an estimated 300,000 prostitutes in the county, 95% of them are from North Africa or South America, and a whopping 25% of Spanish men admit to using their services.

– Speaking of whores, The Episcopal Church is shutting down several services in an attempt to save money… instead of just, you know, not suing their parishioners. The “church’s” legal bills are expected to be in the $3m range this year, and the cuts are expected to save $2.1m. What’s worse? Many of the items being cut actually generate revenue for the “church”.

– Sony has ceased production of the cassette Walkman in Japan. I bet you didn’t even know they still made them in the first place, huh? Apparently they’ll still be manufactured in China, for some reason.

– Mobile phones can’t cause cancer. You know who says so? The laws of physics.

– Britain’s decent into politically correct mamby-pamby idiocy continues: several museums in the country are now covering up mummies or placing large warning signs about them… so as not to offend pagans. :eyeroll:

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Tuesday Randomness

From the International News Desk at jimcofer.com… let’s do the news!

– One of my favorite people in the whole world, Stephen Fry, has been tapped to play Sherlock Holmes’ brother Mycroft in the upcoming sequel to the hugely successful 2009 Guy Ritchie film.

– For over 80 years, British company Cadbury has used the phrase “a glass and a half” to describe the milk content of their 8 ounce chocolate bars. Thanks to Britain’s metrification, the company announced yesterday that it was changing the verbiage on its packaging to the much catchier “equivalent of 426ml of fresh liquid milk in every 227g of milk chocolate”. Nice!

– Keep your eyes peeled: if you’re lucky, you might find a copy of Norton SystemWorks 2006 at your local Walmart… for the low, low price of $59.72!

– Hand sanitizers apparently aren’t much good at stopping cold and flu bugs.

– Sarah Murdoch, daughter of Rupert Murdoch, is the host of Australia’s Next Top Model. Imagine her embarrassment when she announced the name of the wrong winner live on Australian TV!

– Do you have Outlook 2010? If so, you might have noticed the blank “placeholder” images in the Contacts folder. They’re much like the “default” image on Facebook profiles, just sitting there waiting for you to add a photograph of the Contact in question. However, look closer at the default image and you might see someone familiar:

jailbirdgates

Yep, it appears that someone on the Office team has a sense of humor, using Bill Gates’ infamous mugshot from the late 1970s as the basis for the placeholder picture.

In case you’ve never heard about it before, Gates was arrested outside Albuquerque, New Mexico (the home of Microsoft from 1975 to 1979) for reckless driving. Gates has always loved fast cars, and has said that he often gets good ideas when driving at 100+ mph.

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Thursday’s Roundup

From the international news centre here at jimcofer.com… let’s do the news!

– Governments are at it again! Britain’s Race Relations Act 2000 apparently requires teachers to report any racist language thoughtcrimes committed by children as young as three, even if the kids have no idea what they’re saying; the U.S. Department of Energy apparently thinks it alone can decide what appliances Americans can buy in the future; and legislation has been introduced in Congress that would give the US government the power to shut down any piracy site anywhere in the world by invalidating their domain registration. One wonders how the U.S. would feel if say, China, could do the same to US sites. Regardless, more freedom down the drain, and no one seems to care.

– The Commonwealth Games are a sort of “mini-Olympics” held between nations of the (British) Commonwealth every so often. India is up to host the games this year, and it looks to be a complete disaster so far. The linked article has several pictures showing filthy bathrooms and beds with animal footprints in the athletes’ quarters, exposed electrical cables and giant holes in buildings, and child laborers working furiously to get stadiums ready for the games. Epic fail, India!

– On the other hand… the Chinese are known for ripping off the intellectual property of Western companies… but now China has duplicated an entire British private school, even down to the uniforms and house names.

– I have vague memories of seeing Burger Chef restaurants on interstate highways during family car trips when I was a kid, although we never stopped at one. Did you know that the chain was once America’s second largest fast food chain, second only to McDonalds, and then only by a couple hundred restaurants? What’s more amazing, the chain completely vanished almost overnight in the 1980s. Read more about it here.

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Stuxnet and You

There’s a new computer virus out there called Stuxnet. While I sometimes post about new computer viruses that can mess up your system, this one actually won’t. Because it’s not your average virus. This one wasn’t written by a lovesick teenager trying to impress a girl or Russian mobsters trying to extort a few dollars from you. No, Stuxnet is something else entirely. This virus is looking for one particular computer, and like The Terminator, it won’t stop until it finds it.

The virus is typically transmitted to Microsoft Windows computers via infected USB sticks. But the virus isn’t looking to infect Windows. It’s actually looking for a particular kind of Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software built by the German industrial giant Siemens. This software is used to run industrial facilities like chemical and power plants. Once Stuxnet finds such a controller, it checks the SCADA software every five seconds to see if it’s the particular computer it’s looking for. If not, it simply does nothing but check again every five seconds. If it does find the computer it’s looking for… well, we don’t know what it’s programmed to do, but we know that it would execute certain commands, commands that would probably physically destroy the facility by opening valves or pipes or overloading turbines until something exploded.

Although the virus uses Windows to move from facility to facility, it should be noted that the hardware and software it’s targeting are proprietary to Siemens. This isn’t off-the-shelf stuff the virus is attacking. Whoever is behind the virus attack has deep pockets and really wants something destroyed… and that something is probably in Iran. And it’s probably the facility where nuclear weapons are being developed.

We don’t know enough about the origins of Stuxnet to say whether the CIA, Mossad or MI-6 is behind it… but we do have a precedent from the waning days of the Cold War.

Continue reading “Stuxnet and You”

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The Friday Roundup

– UNC is considering installing rails on the 8,500 bunk beds on campus after a woman rolled off one and died recently. No word on whether the “university” is considering requiring binkies, naptime and Baby Einstein videos as well.

– Remember Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who went nuts and left down the emergency slide not too long ago? Well, it seems that two different government agencies have interviewed everyone who was on that plane, and no one – not a single passenger or crew member – backs up Slater’s version of the story.

– One of the huge downsides to the smoking ban in restaurants here in North Carolina is there’s no longer that informal barrier between smokers (without kids) and families (with kids). So now you go out to eat and someone’s demonspawn runs around yelling and screaming, making dining out a far less pleasurable experience than it once was. However, a restaurant in Carolina Beach is fighting back, banning screaming children from the premises. Can I get an AMEN?

– When you were a kid, did you ever sort through a box of Lucky Charms to get a bowl full of mostly marshmallows? Well, sort no longer, my friends: a company is now selling bags full of just the marshmallow bits. Prices start at $7 for two 7 ounce bags of the glorious stuff and go all the way up to $400 for a 95lb bag. Man, if I ever win the lottery, I’m so buying a 95lb bag of cereal marshmallows!

– For some time now, I’ve been for abolishing the penny and nickel. It’s just simple math, folks: it costs the US Mint 1.7¢ to make each 1¢ coin, and it costs the mint 9¢ to make each 5¢ coin. And not only that, pennies and nickels are basically worthless. I challenge anyone to go to a store and find anything for 1¢ and anything for 5¢ that isn’t “penny” candy! But don’t just take my word for it, watch this video from a guy who understands economics… and talks really fast:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77C47XYm_3c&feature=player_embedded