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Comment Re:Thinking through the uses... (Score 5, Interesting) 50

by CheeseyDJ (#38289440) Attached to: 'Merging Tsunami' Amplified Destruction In Japan

What might be practical, however, is to think about how to site critical pieces of infrastructure (such as... say... nuclear power plants...

Honest question - does anyone know why the Fukushima plant was built on the east coast of Japan, facing the bomb-waiting-to-go-off that is the massive subduction zone a few miles off shore?

Why wasn't it built on the west coast, so it was sheltered by the island itself? I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but looking at the map this seems like a schoolboy error to me.
Music

After 3 Years, Rockbox 3.0 Released 248

Posted by timothy from the adding-versatility dept.
DarkkOne writes "Rockbox version 3.0 is out. Three years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it is FLOSS, under the GPL v2 license (or later), and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software."
Science

Magpies Are Self-Aware 591

Posted by kdawson from the who-you-callin'-birdbrain dept.
FireStormZ writes "Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals. It had been thought only four species of apes, bottlenose dolphins, and Asian elephants shared the human ability to recognize their own bodies in a mirror. But German scientists reported on Tuesday that magpies, a species with a brain structure very different from mammals, could also identify themselves. It had been thought that the neocortex brain area found in mammals was crucial to self-recognition. Yet birds, which last shared a common ancestor with mammals 300 million years ago, don't have a neocortex, suggesting that higher cognitive skills can develop in other ways."

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