News Stories

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Another invisible 800 pound gorilla is the sheer number of working class that would be negatively impacted by cuts in military spending (support for families, employment for those who can't find work in civil economy, etc).
Yes, it sucks that the ultra-wealthy have trapped people into the military being their only path.

I had 500 billion surplus at the end. I missed opportunities to spend this money (like R&D + education + incentives for low profit organizations).
You have a point there.. the spending table does not seem to include indirect costs for cutting spending.
But imo the whole thing cannot be taken seriously anyway - who wants to trust a 20 year forecast of cost development.
I could ask a person with a crystal ball as well whats going to happen in 20 years.

[FDW]

Going through that game, I got this:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...oices=43bpd5qv

I'm thinking of spending the surplus on some badly needed upgrades to US infrastructure, with the exception of new roads.

[MrTerrorist]

Cocoa genome 'will save chocolate industry'
Well at least it's good to know chocolate won't be going extinct.

[ganbaru]

Smoke in cockpit forces Qantas plane to turn back
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1798856/
Third problem in this month for Qantas...

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Smoke in cockpit forces Qantas plane to turn back
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1798856/
Third problem in this month for Qantas...

Qantas is seriously gonna end up like the Concorde planes back in the early 2000's if this keeps going.

[Rahan]

Originally Posted by Tsuyoshi

Qantas is seriously gonna end up like the Concorde planes back in the early 2000's if this keeps going.

The situation is not really comparable.
Qantas is a company, Concorde was a non-profitable airplane that was only still used by the national airlines of its home countries. (Air France and British Airways).

Quantas is a national airline, so there is no way they are going to disappear.

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Rahan

The situation is not really comparable.
Qantas is a company, Concorde was a non-profitable airplane that was only still used by the national airlines of its home countries. (Air France and British Airways).

Quantas is a national airline, so there is no way they are going to disappear.

Maybe so, but with all these incidents occurring, the company would likely lose a lot of customers using their airplanes in general and would cause it to go bankrupt. A similar thing happened with Alitalia, albeit not for technical matters but because of staff negligence. If this keeps going, they'll have to form partnerships or merge with other airliners to keep moving, else another national airline company will take its place.

[Azumanga Davo]

Originally Posted by Tsuyoshi

Maybe so, but with all these incidents occurring, the company would likely lose a lot of customers using their airplanes in general and would cause it to go bankrupt. A similar thing happened with Alitalia, albeit not for technical matters but because of staff negligence. If this keeps going, they'll have to form partnerships or merge with other airliners to keep moving, else another national airline company will take its place.

Not likely. There's no other "real" national carrier in Australia, the others tend to focus on budget flights and are of an inferior quality in my opinion. QANTAS still leads the way.

Anyway, no airline has a trouble-free week. Just depends on the press really.

[Vexx]

You can't really blame Qantas for any of this unless their air mechanics and inspectors were negligent. This is "warranty problems" from the engine and component manufacturing. Rolls-Royce makes a huge portion of jet engines for the entire world so everyone is sweating a little, not just Qantas.

Totally separate news item -- a bit of science on food allergies (rather than the usual hyperbole, gossip, hearsay, and just plain uninformed-on-the-facts nonsense):

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010...es?ft=1&f=1001

Sami Bahna, president of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, tells Shots that the confusion has led to unnecessary public banishment of a frequent suspect - the peanut.

"If we are going to eliminate peanuts, and another child is allergic to hazelnuts, and another child is allergic to milk, and another child to wheat — there's no end to this," he says.

While the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease says food allergies occur in 6 to 8 percent of kids, and about 4 percent of adults, there's a lot of self-diagnosis, overdiagnosis, and just plain misdiagnosis Bahna says.
"Many patients claim food allergy without having them," says Bahna, who helped develop the guidelines. This has people unnecessarily steering clear of shellfish and peanuts and milk.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

You can't really blame Qantas for any of this unless their air mechanics and inspectors were negligent. This is "warranty problems" from the engine and component manufacturing. Rolls-Royce makes a huge portion of jet engines for the entire world so everyone is sweating a little, not just Qantas.

Totally separate news item -- a bit of science on food allergies (rather than the usual hyperbole, gossip, hearsay, and just plain uninformed-on-the-facts nonsense):

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010...es?ft=1&f=1001

Penultimate foolproof solution : Don't feed the child anything.

Honestly speaking, the "allergy scare" amongst parents may be common, but on a logical POV it is certainly ridiculous. What is next, starting a drive to ban castor beans from being sold on the market just because the skin contains ricin?

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Vexx

You can't really blame Qantas for any of this unless their air mechanics and inspectors were negligent. This is "warranty problems" from the engine and component manufacturing. Rolls-Royce makes a huge portion of jet engines for the entire world so everyone is sweating a little, not just Qantas.

Well, considering Quantas has been having so many problems as opposed to others, I'm under the impression something's going on there. Rolls Royce is making engines for a lot of other airliners but why is it just Qantas? But I'll stop pointing fingers. It's true that other airliners have their problems as well, so it really depends on where the eyes of the media are resting.

Originally Posted by Vexx

Totally separate news item -- a bit of science on food allergies (rather than the usual hyperbole, gossip, hearsay, and just plain uninformed-on-the-facts nonsense):

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010...es?ft=1&f=1001

Right, singling out peanuts but forgetting all the other nut products? Not to mention while they may ban peanuts on planes, when the airline offers food that may or may not contain nuts, what do people who really are allergic to it do? I think this is another overreaction imho

[AnimeFan188]

"The Navy has lots of plans for the “Holy Grail” of energy weapons, from burning
enemy missiles out of the sky to helping aim a ship’s traditional guns. But the
Navy has a more expansive use in mind for its Free Electron Laser: find the basic
power source of the universe."

"Find dark energy, figure out how to make it an applicable power source, and
humanity enters a new era. Hydrocarbons become irrelevant against a
theoretically unlimited power supply. And that’s just the start: imagine sending
emails to the furthest reaches of space. Theoretically, “dark matter particles can
go through entire planets with no degradation, so we could communicate through
suns, planets and stars,” Baker says. “They have all kinds of applications if we
could prove their existence. Energy is just one of them.”"

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010...r-dark-energy/

[ganbaru]

Video of man refusing body scan at airport becomes internet sensation
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1799470/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7txGw...layer_embedded

I do wonder if more peoples will react ton those security mesure?

[Kaijo]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/m...-might-tailor/

"Microsoft's Dennis Durkin voiced an interesting idea at an investment summit last week -- the idea that the company's Kinect camera might pass data to advertisers about the way you look, play and speak. "We can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are," he told investors, suggesting that the Kinect offered business opportunities that weren't possible "in a controller-based world."

And over time that will help us be more targeted about what content choices we present, what advertising we present, how we get better feedback. And data about how many people are in a room when an advertisement is shown, how many people are in a room when a game is being played, how are those people engaged with the game? How are they engaged with a sporting event? Are they standing up? Are they excited? Are they wearing Seahawks jerseys?

So, buy a kinect, and let Microsoft take pictures of you, regarding what you say, do, eat and drink, and then sell that to advertisers. Or anyone else with a couple of bucks, really.

[flying ^]

wow

legal immigrants and citizens from other states just got shafted.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/1..._n_783817.html

this makes me wanna break some laws (so I can get in-state tuition)

Spoiler for :

jrb35
1 hour ago (6:40 PM)
38 Fans

My wife is a Japanese citizen and permanent LEGAL resident of the US (i.e. Green Card holder). She entered the country legally (prior to our marriage) on a student visa to attend a junior college in CA and then UCLA. At UCLA she was charge approximately $30,000 a year in tuition. That's the international student tuition rate. Even after we were married and she was granted permanent legal status, UC required that a year must first pass (and another $30,000 collected) before she would be considered a CA resident and charged the in-state tuition rate.

If my wife had broken the law and entered the US illegally and then did a few years of high school (at CA taxpayer's expense) she'd have been given a tuition break from day one at UCLA and we would have saved tens of thousands of dollars.

That's what we get for following the rules and obeying the law.

[ganbaru]

Haitian protesters blame Nepalese UN peacekeepers for cholera outbreak
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1800366/

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

Haitian protesters blame Nepalese UN peacekeepers for cholera outbreak
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1800366/

This is what happens when a population is so under-educated and unaware of how anything works (including disease) they're actually a detriment to their own survival. Follow up on this and you'll see a nasty real world playing out of "She's a witch!!!" ala Monty Python.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by Vexx

This is what happens when a population is so under-educated and unaware of how anything works (including disease) they're actually a detriment to their own survival. Follow up on this and you'll see a nasty real world playing out of "She's a witch!!!" ala Monty Python.

It's not quite that bad. They're attributing it to the Nepalese peacekeepers because apparently their latrines are close to a nearby river used as a water source. Infected human fecal contamination of water is a major source of cholera. They're jumping to a conclusion without evidence and it's implausible given the scale of the outbreak, but it's not like they're attributing it to magic.

[Kaijo]

What needs to be done, is a foreign power needs to roll in, take control of the entire country and build it up, probably with the aid of martial law. Then later hand it off to the locals once they've been suitably educated. And this is a process that will take at least 20 years, but it's not PC.

[ganbaru]

Iran starts "biggest" air defense war games
http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNew...6AF4P320101116
I don't know how much we should take this as a capacity demonstration and how much bluffing .