mrgarci1 - Slashdot User

Freshman Representative Opposes "TSA Porn" 620

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday May 20, 2009 @11:42AM from the things-we-really-really-don't-want-to-see dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Not content to simply follow the 'anything to protect American lives' mantra, freshman Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) has introduced a bill to prohibit mandatory full body scans at airports. Chaffetz states, 'The images offer a disturbingly accurate view of a person's body underneath clothing ... Americans should not be required to expose their bodies in this manner in order to fly.' He goes on to note that the ACLU has expressed support for the bill. Maybe we don't need tin-foil sports coats to go with our tin-foil hats. For reference, the Daily Herald has a story featuring images from the millimeter wavelength imager, and we've talked about the scanners before."

NASA Names Space Station Treadmill After Colbert 383

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @08:58AM from the running-man dept.

willith writes "The SF Chronicle reports on the results of the International Space Station Node 3 naming contest (which we previously discussed). Comedian and fake-pundit Stephen Colbert conducted a bombastic write-in campaign and repeatedly urged his show's fan base (the 'Colbert Nation') to stuff the ballot box with his name, which resulted in 'Colbert' coming in first in the write-in contest with almost a quarter-million votes. Although the Node 3 component will not be named 'Colbert' — NASA has instead chosen to call it 'Tranquility' — one of the Node 3 components will bear the honor: the second ISS treadmill, which will be installed in Node 3, will be named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill. The formal announcement was made on the air yesterday at 22:30 EDT on the Colbert Report by astronaut Sunita Williams."

Are Human Beings Organisms Or Living Ecosystems? 397

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday April 15, 2009 @08:14AM from the little-of-column-a,-little-of-column-b dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Every human body harbors about 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering human cells 10 to one. There's been a growing consensus among scientists that bacteria are not simply random squatters, but organized communities that evolve with us and are passed down from generation to generation. 'Human beings are not really individuals; they're communities of organisms,' says microbiologist Margaret McFall-Ngai. 'This could be the basis of a whole new way of looking at disease.' Recently, for example, evidence has surfaced that obesity may well include a microbial component. Jeffrey Gordon's lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis published findings that lean and obese twins — whether identical or fraternal — harbor strikingly different bacterial communities that are not just helping to process food directly; they actually influence whether that energy is ultimately stored as fat in the body. Last year, the National Institutes of Health launched the Human Microbiome Project to characterize the role of microbes in the human body, a formal recognition of bacteria's far-reaching influence, including their contributions to human health and certain illnesses. William Karasov, a physiologist and ecologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison, believes that the consequences of this new approach will be profound. 'We've all been trained to think of ourselves as human,' says Karasov, adding that bacteria have usually been considered only as the source of infections, or as something benign living in the body. Now, Karasov says, it appears 'we are so interconnected with our microbes that anything studied before could have a microbial component that we hadn't thought about.'"

Comment Re:Can't pay for your car? Ride a bicycle! (Score 1) 253

by mrgarci1 on Wednesday April 01, 2009 @10:51AM (#27417225) Attached to: Cellular Repo Man

Ride an electric bike. I commute on one in Phoenix every day, don't have to worry about being sweaty when I get to work (even in our consistently 115f summers), fast enough to make it to your "important" things (faster than city traffic at most times of day), and doesn't burn hydrocarbons for fuel. It's self-absorbed folks like yourself who think their lives are somehow more important than everyone else that are the problem - everyone faces challenges every day, and everyone has deadlines to meet. And let's not even get into the "live locally" discussion - if you have to drive 50 miles one way to get from your home to your place of business, you're doing it wrong. You probably spend more money on fuel in a year just getting to work than I spend on all my electricity (including charging my electric transportation, heating/cooling my house, cooking, slashdotting, etc.) for the same time period.

Anonymous Blogger Outed By Politician 300

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 30, 2009 @11:46PM from the by-what-right dept.

Snoskred writes with the story of a blogger who chose to remain pseudonymous, who has been outed by an Alaskan politician in his legislative newsletter. Alaska Rep. Mike Doogan had been writing bizarre emails to people who emailed him, and the Alaskan blogger "Mudflats" was one of those who called him on it. (Mudflats first began getting noticed after blogging about Sarah Palin from a local point of view.) Doogan seems to have developed a particular itch to learn who Mudflats is, and he finally found out, though he got her last name wrong, and named her in his official newsletter. The Huffington Post is one of the many outlets writing about the affair. The blogger happens to be Democrat — as is Doogan — but that is immaterial to the question of the right to anonymity in political speech. Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously? May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?

TomTom Settles With Microsoft 273

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 30, 2009 @04:48PM from the caves-not-just-for-bears dept.

Surrounded writes "It appears TomTom bowed to the pressure and settled with Microsoft over the recent patent infringement claims from the Redmond software giant. In the agreement, TomTom will pay Microsoft for coverage under the eight car navigation and file management systems patents in the Microsoft case. Also as part of the agreement, Microsoft receives coverage under the four patents included in the TomTom counter-suit. TomTom also has to remove functionality related to two file management system patents (the 'FAT LFN patents')."

Robot Love Goes Bad 101

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 09, 2009 @02:54PM from the become-my-robot-bride dept.

hundredrabh writes "Ever had a super needy girlfriend that demanded all your love and attention and would freak whenever you would leave her alone? Irritating, right? Now imagine the same situation, only with an asexual third-generation humanoid robot with 100kg arms. Such was the torture subjected upon Japanese researchers recently when their most advanced robot, capable of simulating human emotions, ditched its puppy love programming and switched over into stalker mode. Eventually the researchers had to decommission the robot, with a hope of bringing it back to life again."

Comment Re:Mr. Anecdote (Score 4, Interesting) 357

by mrgarci1 on Wednesday March 04, 2009 @02:00PM (#27066925) Attached to: Outliers, The Story Of Success

Actually, I'm almost done with Outliers and there is a fair amount of scientific evidence (as well as the usual anecdotes), especially with regard to things like relative age. More evidence than he used in his previous books, anyway.

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