Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Image

Disputed Island Disappears Into Sea 460

RawJoe writes "India and Bangladesh have argued for almost 30 years over control of a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal. Now rising sea levels have ended the argument for them: the island's gone. From the article: 'New Moore Island, in the Sunderbans, has been completely submerged, said oceanographer Sugata Hazra, a professor at Jadavpur University in Calcutta. Its disappearance has been confirmed by satellite imagery and sea patrols, he said. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Hazra.'"

Comment Census Hypocricy (Score 1) 902

Funny how most of the people who are suddenly concerned about the census invading their privacy by citing examples of WWII Japanese interment camps and Muslim tracking the same people who just a couple years earlier defended WWII Japanese internment camps (see Michelle Malkin) and advocated keeping a closer eye on American Muslims.

Now that a black man is President, they're scared that the government is asking them what race they are.

Comment Sounds Like A Bad Idea to Me (Score 1) 806

I don't like this idea. Sure, abandoned structurally unsafe buildings should be torn down. Tearing down empty big box stores might not be a bad idea either, but tearing down usable homes and entire neighborhoods seems like very short-term thinking to me.

I've noticed that often poorer neighborhoods have some very nice old homes. We shouldn't be tearing them down, we should be restoring them. There's lots of historic architecture out there that helps give cities their character, and already too many beautiful buildings have been torn down to build CVSs and parking lots.

What happens when the economy does rebound and the demand for housing rises? The remaining housing will be costlier and developers will just go ahead and replace the demolished neighborhoods with expensive "luxury" apartments, condos and McMansions that people will need to take out expensive mortgages to afford. It will be the housing/mortgage bubble all over again.

We should be encouraging more people to move to cities. They're more environmentally sustainable then suburbs. If there's a glut of empty homes, we should be making home ownership easier and affordable, not tear them down.

Tearing down blocks of buildings to return them to nature might make city government accountants and narrow minded environmentalists happy, but it's really a wasted opportunity.

Comment Saw it for the first time a few years ago. (Score 1) 612

I'm 31. I grew up in the suburbs and moved to the city after college. I'm used to seeing a few random stars scattered in the empty sky and that's all I ever thought of the night sky as. I think I had only ever seen one or two shooting stars. Finally in 2003 I went on a vacation to Las Vegas and also spent two days at the Grand Canyon. WOW! There was almost no light around the hotel I stayed at near the Canyon and I could see the sky packed full of stars and quite a few shooting stars. It was really incredible. It's sad that so many of us have missed out on this for much of our lives. Most people have no idea what they're missing.

Comment A Shame (Score 1) 834

I see a lot of people bashing the show, having only seen one or two episodes (or seen none at all), but I enjoyed the show and am really sorry to see it go. It wasn't all just Another-Terminator-out-to-kill-John-Conner-Again-This-Week like some people suggest. That definitely would have gotten old fast.

I think the biggest problem was that it was too slowly paced. There was definitely a larger storyline being built up to about the creation of Skynet and a possible rift between the machines themselves, but it was being built up way too slowly. A little too much inner-turmoil and drama that dragged at times. Battlestar Galactica suffered from the same problems, but at least Terminator was clearly building toward something planned out, while Galactica felt like it was just making up shit as they went along after awhile.

Unfortunately the pace really picked up at the end, just in time for cancellation.

I think many continuing-story-arc shows make the mistake of starting out too slow in their first season or two (Even the first season of Babylon 5 was pretty dull). I'm sure they do it to let people jump into the show without having seen the first few episodes, but without the continuing story, there's less reason for folks to keep watching every week. Hopefully the writers of T:SCC will get a chance to continue the story in another medium, like novels or comics, just as Pushing Daisies will.

Slashdot Top Deals

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Working...