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Security

Submission + - TSA: Cupcakes are Potential Threat (thenewamerican.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Rebecca Haines was stopped at McCarran International Airport for attempting to carry two cupcakes on board an airliner, while seeming to overlook a sword on a different flight. Meanwhile, CNJ Online is reporting on the expanding responsibility of this agency beyond airports to include subways, buses and other forms of transportation. FTA: "“TSA teams are increasingly conducting searches and screenings at train stations, subways, ferry terminals and other mass-transit locations around the country,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Ray Dineen, the air marshal in charge of the TSA office in Charlotte, N.C., told the paper, “We are not the Airport Security Administration. We take that transportation part seriously.”" Hopefully, they will avoid some of these unusual events when they do.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Superphone to Dethrone iPhone5? (forbes.com) 2

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Forbes is running an intriguing story on a new "Superphone" under development by the folks at Microsoft. According to this leaked MS roadmap document, the plan is to build the Apollo based phone in the 4th quarter of 2012. FTA: "In the end, however, none of this matters. Microsoft’s “peek into the future” is barely a glimpse into what the company may or may not have planned for 2012. While the “superphone” bullet is worth noting, it is not the confirmation of a revolutionary new product. At best, it indicates that Microsoft wishes to compete with Apple by offering a product that is, well, super.". It's also interesting that Sony and AT&T also appear to be working on superphones of their own. All this hype left me wondering what actually does make a phone "super" anyway?
Science

Submission + - Maze Learning Slime Mold "More Intelligent Than Co (metro.co.uk) 2

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Professor Toshiyuki Nakagaki of the at Future University Hakodate have discovered an "intelligent slime mold" that is capable of navigating a maze. According to the article: "Nakagaki said: 'Humans are not the only living things with information-processing abilities, simple creatures can solve certain kinds of difficult puzzles. 'If you want to spotlight the essence of life or intelligence, it's easier to use these simple creatures.' Slime mould, which resides on rotting leaves, may not be the most advanced target of study with regards to intelligence but scientists believe it could hold the key to biocomputers of the future.
According to this Newspoint article, the organismis were chosen because "the cells in these organisms get perfectly organized prior creating the best possible and the exact guided route through any toughest maze".

Submission + - 2011: Record Year for Airline Safety (wsj.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Unless something bad happens in the next two days, we are on track for having a new record for airline safety. The new record of one death for every 7.1 million passengers beats the 2004 record of 1 to 6.4m. The WSJ also notes:
— Another low is the total number of passenger deaths; as of today that number stands at 401. Though it was lower in 2004, when 344 passengers were killed in commercial aviation accidents, that year saw 30% fewer passengers as well as far fewer flights.
— Western-built planes have fared best, with one major crash per 3 million flights, the best number since the International Air Transport Association began tracking crashes in the 1940s. When factoring in other types of airliners, the crash rate is about two per million flights.
— We are also in the midst of the longest period without a fatal airliner accident in modern aviation; nobody has died in an airliner since an Oct. 13 propeller plane crash in Papua New Guinea. The previous record was 61 days in 1985.
There was also the North American and Russian numbers as well — the only country that saw a drop.

2011 also seemed to break the record for unusual airline travel events as well.

Comment Re:Babylon is in Central/Southern Africa? (Score 1) 309

by smitty777 (#38517986) Attached to: Recent Discovery Contains Oldest Depiction of the Tower of Babel

I think you're making a logical leap that is unfounded. It could be that either the king is taking credit for something that was already built, or that the scholars are wrong about it being the original tower. I do agree with you about the timing of the original tower, though.

Comment Re:Tower of Babel (Score 3, Informative) 309

by smitty777 (#38517434) Attached to: Recent Discovery Contains Oldest Depiction of the Tower of Babel

Need to do a bit more reading, my friend. The account doesn't have anything to do with women performing manual labor:

"(The Babylonians) said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9That is why it was called Babelc—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

So, it had nothing to do with labor practices. Many scholars think the tower was some sort of astrological artifact, and that the scrambling of the languages had to do with dispersing the population of the earth. That is, according to the scripture.
Medicine

Submission + - How Doctors Die 6

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Dr. Ken Murray, a Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at USC, writes that doctors don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about doctors is not how much treatment they get when faced with death themselves, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves because they know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. "Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people," writes Murray. "What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, 'Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.'" Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming. "If there is a state of the art of end-of-life care, it is this: death with dignity. As for me, my physician has my choices," says Murray. "They were easy to make, as they are for most physicians. There will be no heroics, and I will go gentle into that good night.""

Submission + - Recent Discovery Shows Oldest Depiction of Tower o (discovery.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: The recent discovery of the Tower of Babel stele by a team of scholars shows what might be the earliest depiction of the ancient Tower of Babel. The stele belongs to Martin Schøyen, who also owns a large number of pictographic and cuneiform tablets, some of the earliest known written documents. The tablet also contains a depiction of King Nebuchadnezzar II, a time when Babylon was a cultural leader in astronomy, mathematics, literature and medicine. It's also interesting to note the somewhat recent Slashdot article linking the common ancestry of languages to this area.

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