Fun with shredding

I posted this 2 years ago on another site and just dug it up for repost here. Simply amazing. I can watch this for hours on end.

http://www.ssiworld.com/watch/watch-en.htm

This will be the only item on my wedding registry.

 

Artist of the Month

My friend recently introduced me to this Canadian duo that sings songs in an old-time style, but with very naughty lyrics. Very creative and driven, this band has been slowly taking over NYC in October. They've been around for a little longer, getting their break on The L-Word.

This is their website, where they have 2 videos samples, a view into their most recent CD, and the opportunity to own their DVD.

http://www.wetspotsmusic.com/buystuff.html

Take a look though their past. Lead singer Cass King has been pervy her whole life:

http://www.cassking.com/bio_frameset.htm

I just wonder how they can follow up their Hello Kinky album. It is really so perfect in so many ways.

Lion mutilates 42 midgets

It’s a fun little story made by someone with too much free time on their hands.

 

http://www.fmft.net/archives/BBC_NEWS.htm

 

Watch Paris Slowly Relapse

Some cities never learn. But really, didn't Paris make some effort to improve the situation after $160m in damage and more than that in negative PR and opportunities. I don't know Celestine, but she seems to paint a clear picture.

---------------

France Braces for Violence in Paris Ghettos a Year After Riots
By Celestine Bohlen, Bloomberg, Oct 27, 2006

Epinay-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris with immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa squeezed into high-rise buildings, is bracing for the worst.

A year ago, this town of 49,000 people remained unscathed when youths went on a rampage across France's suburban ghettos, leaving 10,000 burned-out cars and 160 million euros ($200 million) in damage. Then, on Oct. 13, between 30 and 50 Epinay teenagers lay in wait at night for a police car, which they pelted with some 300 stones carried to the scene in sports bags.

The premeditated targeting of the police shows a deepening divide in French suburbs. It also raises the specter of a repeat of last year's riots and violence. Six months before France's presidential elections, the debate is reopening on the nation's failure to integrate its growing immigrant population, and more particularly their French-born offspring.

``The riots last year were an illustration of a dramatic rupture between the young in the suburbs and the institutions of the authority of the French republic, and we have seen a radicalization on both sides,'' said Christophe Bertossi, a researcher at the Institute of International Affairs in Paris. ``It's a guerrilla war.''

The October 2005 riots, which began in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois after two young boys fleeing a police check were accidentally electrocuted, spread to other parts of France and lasted about three weeks. The riots revealed tensions in districts marked by youth unemployment of more than 30 percent -- three times the national average of 9 percent.

Mistrusting the Police

They also showed mistrust of the police among suburban youth, which Manik, a 17-year-old high-school student in Epinay, says has gotten worse.

``They come looking for us, and we go looking for them,'' he said during a half-hour suburban train journey into Paris, warning that the violence is ``going to start again.''

It already may have. The Epinay incident, which put four men between the ages of 17 and 21 behind bars, was followed by other violent episodes. In the Paris suburb of Grigny, a bus and three cars were burned in reaction to a police check at a local tea- house. On Oct. 17, about 30 young people set fire to garbage cans and cars in La Source, in the city of Orleans, before stoning vehicles outside the local police station.

``Now there are rumors that are going in all directions,'' said Jean-Michel Genestier, an aide to Epinay's mayor, adding that police in sensitive areas have been asked by the Interior Ministry to keep a low profile. ``Any element could set things off,'' he said.

Police Report

The intensifying attacks were noted in a police report published in the French newspaper Le Figaro on Oct. 23.

``The danger now is of outbursts that are not spontaneous but structured, taking on one of the last institutional presences in some neighborhoods: the police,'' the report said. Ile-de- France, the region around Paris, is cited in the report as the most volatile.

The government of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has held several meetings of officials and community representatives from the suburbs, with another planned for Nov. 7.

In December, de Villepin said he would free 100 million euros for local agencies in the low-income suburbs. About 46,000 jobs were created for young people in these areas and a plan to cut discrimination with anonymous resumes is being studied.

Haunting a Nation

Last year's riots, which produced television images of hooded youths silhouetted against blazing cars, have haunted France. A TNS-Sofres poll shows that the number of people concerned about violence rose to 23 percent in October from 19 percent in September. The same poll shows 60 percent expect to see ``social conflicts'' in the next three to four months. The poll on Sept. 27-28 surveyed 1,000 people 18 years and older.

Segolene Royal, who leads the polls in the contest for the Socialist Party nomination for presidential elections, has proposed military-style ``boot camps'' for recidivist delinquents. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who heads the ruling party and is its leading candidate in the race, has built a campaign on law-and-order themes.

``Those who ambush police or firemen must know that it's not acceptable,'' he said in a speech last week.

The anniversary of the riots coincides with the conclusion of Ramadan, the month-long Muslim fasting period, and French school vacations timed to the All Saints holiday.

``We are very worried,'' said Jean-Marc Bailleul, a national secretary of the National Union of Police Officers, which represents 56 percent of the nation's 13,500 officers. ``We didn't need the intelligence service to tell us there is reason to be worried about this anniversary.''

The police report said violence could start again in Clichy- sous-Bois. Unlike Epinay, Clichy has no rail links to Paris, no police station or movie theater and nearly half its population is under the age of 25. Back in Epinay, Manik said the police should back off from youth in these areas.

``I am searched all the time, my book bag is searched,'' he said. ``It is not working.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen1@bloomberg.net .

Weblink To Story

site for cancer research

This site is one of my favorites, not just for their pediatric oncology content but for people of all ages and for patients at all stages of their life. Incredible breadth and depth of information.

http://www.curesearch.org/

Also, in terms of website design and organizing data, these guys did a phenomenal job.

If you are in the market for med info, checkout www.pubmed.org and allow your inner geek to dig through medical journals.

audio in the bedroom, part 2

Musical condom hits the high notes

(ananova.com: 2 Oct 2006) A musical condom designed to play louder and faster as lovers reach a climax is to go on sale in Ukraine.

Grigoriy Chausovsky, from Zaporozhye, said his condoms came fitted with a special sensor that registers when the condom is put on.

It transmits a signal to a miniature speaker in the base of the condom which play a melody.

He told local media: "As the sex becomes more passionate, it registers the increased speed of the movements and plays the melody faster and louder."

 

Renewable Energy - Using tidal shifts, like wind power

Images and full article available here:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03tides.html?ex=1312257600&en=a0172afbc7c00d14&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Energy From the Restless Sea

NYTimes, HEATHER TIMMONS, Published: August 3, 2006

There is more riding the waves here than surfers, thanks to a growing number of scientists, engineers and investors.

 

A group of entrepreneurs is harnessing the perpetual motion of the ocean and turning it into a commodity in high demand: energy. Right now, machines of various shapes and sizes are being tested off shores from the North Sea to the Pacific — one may even be coming to the East River in New York State this fall — to see how they capture waves and tides and create marine energy.

The industry is still in its infancy, but it is gaining attention, much because of the persistence of marine energy inventors, like Dean R. Corren, who have doggedly lugged their wave and tidal prototypes around the world, even during the years when money and interest dried up. Mr. Corren, trim and cerebral, is a scientist who has long advocated green energy and pushed through numerous conservation measures when he was chairman of the public energy utility for the city of Burlington, Vt.

Another believer in the technology is Max Carcas, head of business development for Ocean Power Delivery of Edinburgh. "In the long run, this could become one of the most competitive sources of energy," said Mr. Carcas.

His company manufactures the Pelamis, a snakelike wave energy machine the size of a passenger train, which generates energy by absorbing waves as they undulate on the ocean surface.

With high oil prices, dwindling fuel supplies and a growing pressure to reduce global warming, governments and utilities have high hopes for tidal energy. The challenge now is turning an accumulation of research into a viable commercial enterprise, which for many years has proved elusive.

No one contends that generating energy from the oceans is a preposterous idea. After all, the "fuel" is free and sustainable, and the process does not generate pollution or emissions.

Moreover, it is not just oceans that could be tapped; the regular flow of tides in bodies of water linked to oceans, like the East River, hold promise too. In fact, it seemed like such a sensible idea that inventors started making the first wave of such generators centuries ago. Many operated like dams, trapping water and then releasing it after the tides fell. But they were outmoded with the rise of steam engines and other more efficient fuel sources.

Ocean energy had a brief revival when oil prices rose in the 1970's, and prototypes were tested in Europe and China. But financing dried up when oil prices were low in the 1990's, and advances in wind turbines and other renewable energy elbowed out tidal projects.

These days, wave power designs vary from machines that look like corks bobbing in the ocean to devices that resemble snakes pointing into waves. There are shoreline machines that cling, like limpets, to rocks.

Tidal power machines, in contrast, often come in the form of turbines, which look like underwater windmills, and generate energy by spinning as tides move in and out; some inventors also are testing concrete-and-steel machines that lie on the seabed and pipe pressurized water back to the shore.

Even big commercial power companies are joining the action. General Electric; Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian company; and the Germany power giant Eon have recently pledged money for new projects or investments in tiny marine energy companies.

"It is an untapped renewable energy source," said Mark Huang, senior vice president for technology finance in General Electric's media and communications business, which is financing marine projects. "There is no where to go but up," Mr. Huang said. He added that solar or wind energy should be viewed "as a case study" for the direction marine energy could take.

Right now, wave power generators are being tested near the shores of New Jersey, Hawaii, Scotland, England and Western Australia. A long-awaited East River tidal turbine project is to start this fall, and Representative William D. Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, has proposed that the United States follow in Britain's footsteps to build an ocean energy research center, the country's first, off the Massachusetts coast.

A handful of commercial projects are also in the works, including the world's first "wave farm," as the fields of machines are known, being installed off the north coast of Portugal. A field of tidal turbines is also being built off the shore of Tromso, Norway.

Britain could generate up to 20 percent of the electricity it needs from waves and tides, according to an estimate by a government-financed group here called the Carbon Trust. That is about 12,000 megawatts a day at current usage, or three times what Britain's largest power plant produces now. In fact, England and Scotland have become experimental laboratories for ocean energy development. As reserves shrink and the offshore oil business in the North Sea winds down, governments are trying to capture the accumulated knowledge and transform oil industry jobs into other ways of generating energy.

One research center here in Newcastle is putting marine devices to the test in a wave pool, and another is deploying them in the roiling ocean off the Orkneys, the low islands off northernmost Scotland. The Scottish government has pledged to generate 18 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2010.

If marine energy replaces the burning of some fossil fuels like coal, it can help reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions and possibly increase the diversity and security of energy supply, said John Spurgeon, a marine energy specialist in the British Department of Trade and Industry. Since 1999, the government has committed more than $47 million to research and development, $93 million to commercialize that research and additional money to bring the energy into the electrical grid, Mr. Spurgeon said.

No energy source is perfect, though, and marine energy developers are running into some hurdles. While such generators do not emit smoky pollutants or leave behind radioactive waste, the machines are not small or delicate, and can be an eyesore. To draw energy from the ocean, they often need to be rooted on sea floors relatively close to shore, or mounted on rocks on the shore — places that have not traditionally been used for energy generation.

And despite their green-friendly intentions, inventors are finding some of the stiffest resistance is coming from environmental groups.

Take the case of Verdant Power, Mr. Corren's company, which has been trying for years to erect a small field of tidal turbines in the East River — a project that may finally get started this fall. Mr. Corren, the company's technology director, first developed the turbines as part of a New York University project in the 1980's and planned to attach them to the Roosevelt Island Bridge.

After the school pulled the plug on the project, the design team spent years trying to find a new home. One executive even brought a prototype to Pakistan, but the data it collected was lost when the computers and instruments went missing.

Verdant embarked on a new East River turbine project in 2003, but it has taken two and a half years to get regulatory approval for the project from environmental agencies and the United States Army Corp of Engineers. The issue was not blocking the river to boat traffic, or how it would hook up to the electrical grid or even how it might mar the view, because it is mostly underwater. It was the fish population of the East River.

"We had eight fish biologists against it, and no one on the other side advocating for clean air" or other environmental issues, said Ronald F. Smith, the chief executive of Verdant Power. "You can see that the regulatory process is extremely biased towards doing nothing," Mr. Smith said, adding that regulators were worried about complaints that could arise from any new projects.

To get approval, the company is installing $1.5 million in underwater sonar to watch for fish around the turbines "24 hours a day, 7 days a week," and the data will be shown online, Mr. Smith said. Verdant Power executives warn against looking forward to a live "East River cam" that broadcasts the murky mysteries beneath the water. Sonar transmissions look more like fuzzy black and white television, they say, and besides they have seen "very, very few fish" on their visits to the river.

Ultimately, Verdant estimates it can generate 10 megawatts of electricity from the East River's tidal flows — enough to power several thousand homes, though its test turbines will be used primarily to power a Gristedes grocery store on Roosevelt Island.

To date, studies on the effect of wave and tide machines on marine life have been sporadic and sometimes bizarre. For example, in one British trial, frozen fish were shot like projectiles onto a piece of metal that was supposed to estimate the effects of the turning blades of marine turbines.

Proper testing will involve putting some of these devices where they are not wanted, a problem reminiscent of the wind industry's battle to construct new turbines. Some leading environmental advocates say that the issue is part of a larger wrenching change being thrust on the green movement.

"It's a major psychological and cultural challenge for the environmental and conservation movement," said Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace UK. "What we need to combat climate change is a complete transformation of our energy system, and that requires a lot of new stuff to be built and installed, some of it in places that are relatively untouched."

But the potential of marine energy is too strong to ignore. For example, a recent report identified San Francisco Bay as being the largest tidal power resource in the continental United States. "There are tremendous resources for generating power along the northern coast of California," said Uday Mathur, a renewable energy consultant to government agencies and private enterprises.

The biggest hurdle is creating a landscape for development "where these technologies can thrive," he said, which includes a combination of government involvement, community support and of course the availability of financing.

"The situation is very similar to wind 15 years ago," said John W. Griffiths, a former British gas executive and founder of JWG Consulting, which advises on renewable energy projects. He added: "We think that this is an industry waiting to happen."