Blog Heap of Links for the day 15 May 2009

President Obama has been accused of a major policy U-turn after he decided to restore the controversial military commissions set up by George Bush to prosecute terror suspects. The surprise White House announcement reversed his campaign pledge to rely on the conventional court system. [Surprise??]

The bodies of four U.S. citizens were found strangled, beaten and stabbed in a van in this border city, two days after they reportedly left their Southern California homes for a night at the Mexican clubs.... ages 19 to 23 years old, were found tied up on Saturday.... latest in a string of violence in Tijuana that authorities blame on a bloody turf war between drug cartels....

Nimzay Aponte met Raymond Dennis via AOL, but ultimately refused to meet him face to face. He responded by stabbing her in broad daylight as she sat with a friend, William Sherief, on a park bench in the Bronx... died a short time after the Tuesday afternoon attack - but not before she gave police a dying declaration: "Mike did it." ...

Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Unhappy about being asked to leave a local watering hole, Naples police say a 21-year-old man took revenge: He unzipped his pants and urinated at the bar. But if his mug shot is any indicator, the rest of his plan didn't go so swell.

Troy -- It was supposed to be a shining example of the green movement -- a completely independent solar-powered house with no gas or electrical hookups. Seven months ago, officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the $900,000 house owned by the city of Troy that was to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot. But it never opened to the public. And it remains closed. Frozen pipes during the winter caused $16,000 in damage to floors, and city officials aren't sure when the house at the Troy Community Center will open.

video... all the manipulated images are "found art" from the Library of Congress.

The Washington County District Attorney's office is in the process of preparing charges against a woman accused of attacking an umpire following a game last week in Bartlesville.

Arizona's oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the Tucson Citizen, will publish its final print edition Saturday but will continue operating online.

The Ann Arbor News plans to publish its last newspaper July 23, with a twice-weekly online-focused operation taking its place. ... after 174 years because of steep revenue losses. ... A Web-based media company called AnnArbor.com will emerge....

[Photos]

The mural comes alive. The photo of a beaming Lewis in formal attire transforms into Lewis the basketball player, streaking down the court [video]

I noticed something interesting in the Google outage and its aftermath on Thursday ... there doesn't appear to be the same lasting hostility and call to arms that often follows such incidents. ... Within about 20 minutes, though, Google made a statement ... An hour later, another statement came in: ... a sign of ongoing communiqué and a promise of information. Here's where the good part comes in: Google actually kept the promise. ....

The outage that took Google offline for scores of users on Thursday was caused by a traffic routing error, the company now says ... Because of a system mistake, too many users were being routed through the same location. ...

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Massachusetts directed employees earlier this month not to log onto the Drudge Report website with government-issued computers due to potential viruses on the site.

When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they'll read each other's minds. At least, that's the hope of researchers at the Pentagon's mad-science division Darpa. The agency's budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to "allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals."

A new Gallup Poll, conducted May 7-10, finds 51% of Americans calling themselves "pro-life" on the issue of abortion and 42% "pro-choice." This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995.

first born... attention-seeking authoritarian strict ... second born... perfectionism competitive wants to overtake older child... third born... strong-willed even tempered "take it or leave it" attitude has trouble finding a place... fourth born... wants to be bigger than the others may have huge plans that never work out spoiled...

The Birth Order Effect for Couples: How Birth Order Affects Your ... By Cliff Isaacson, Meg Schneider [Google Books]

CLINTON, Maine — Police in Clinton say a 500-pound moose fell 18 feet to its death when it apparently leaped a guardrail on an Interstate 95 overpass and landed on Hinckley Road. Officials learned of the incident when a motorist called the town office shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday and told Assistant Town Clerk Shirley Bailey that "a moose just fell out of the sky."

It suffers from shrinkage.

Researchers at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan have developed a new method for bracing high rise concrete buildings. By reinforcing the concrete with steel fibers, they were able to design coupling beams (beams used to connect walls around openings like windows and door frames) that are both easier to construct and more effective than traditional coupling beams. A test structure using these new beams was shown to be able to withstand a fake earthquake stronger than any real earthquake ever recorded.