Blog Heap of Links for the day 18 May 2009
Digital Age Violence
terror groups were using popular social networking Web sites like Facebook to recruit, and possibly kidnap, Israeli citizens.
You can run, but you cannot hide ... and if you try, one push of a button will cause a lethal poison to immediately begin flowing through your body. That's the Orwellian future a Saudi inventor was seeking to bring to Germany until that nation's patent office announced last week it was rejecting his request to patent what has been dubbed the "Killer Chip."
Animals can be Dangerous
A British tourist was recovering last night after being stung more than 500 times when a swarm of bees attacked visitors to an art gallery in France.
Violence
Authorities say a student shot himself in the head at a Louisiana middle school after firing a handgun in a student-filled classroom. There were conflicting reports about whether the student fired the .32-caliber handgun at a teacher.
According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president. The bunker is believed to be the secure, undisclosed location former Vice President Dick Cheney remained under protection in secret after the 9/11 attacks.
Transport Threat
Privacy advocates plan to call on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to suspend use of "whole-body imaging," the airport security technology that critics say performs "a virtual strip search" and produces "naked" pictures of passengers
Big Whoops Cascade
The Belgian bodybuilding championship has been canceled after doping officials showed up and all the competitors fled
Art of
NBC has finalized a deal to bring Chuck back for a third season, multiple sources confirm. That's the good news. Here's the bad news: The 13-episode pickup came after Warner Bros. agreed to make significant budget concessions, including scaling back the number of episodes several members of the show's stellar supporting cast will appear in and, per one insider, possibly eliminating one actor altogether (R.I.P. Anna Wu?).
Liberty and Justice
Drew Peterson pleaded not guilty Monday to a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.... Investigators have named Peterson as a suspect in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson. His third wife's death was originally deemed an accident, but after the case of the fourth wife sparked new questions, Savio's body was exhumed and a grand jury indicted Peterson this month on a charge of first-degree murder in her death.
Healing Ourselves
A millionaire is selling his £16 million country house hotel and donating the entire proceeds to a cancer charity after his wife survived the illness.
Star Trek - still with us
Repeal! Repeal! Repeal!
"I think that amount of time is excessive, but it's not up to me," U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors' case against medical marijuana reached a legal dead-end Monday. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which sought a ruling on whether California's medical marijuana law trumps the federal controlled-substances law banning the drug's use. In reaction to the court's decision, the county's lead attorney said he will recommend the board approve giving the ID cards to patients at its meeting on June 16.
Digital Business
A revolutionary new search engine that computes answers rather than pointing to websites will be launched officially today amid heated talk that it could challenge the might of Google. WolframAlpha, named after Stephen Wolfram, the British-born computer scientist and inventor behind the project, takes a query and uses computational power to crunch through huge databases
Housing Ourselves
"I feel at home here," said Barnouw, who turned 102 last month.
Prehistory - still with us
An Albuquerque archeologist and his team have returned with artifacts from a dig site near the Dead Sea which they believe reveals the lost city of Sodom. ...
History
Our first list on Historical Oddities was very popular, so we are now presenting you with a second list! Here are 20 strange facts of history that you are probably not aware of.
Transport Pre-Automation
charges of evading police with disregard to public safety, driving with a suspended license, throwing objects from the vehicle while moving, driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, reckless driving, and felony hit and run.
Families Today
DNA tests have revealed that a 13-year-old British boy who claimed to have fathered a child with his 15-year-old girlfriend was not the dad.... story... sparked claims from other boys who lived nearby that they could also be the father and social workers organised a DNA test. ... father was 15-year-old Tyler Barker, who lived on the same housing estate
Defending Ourselves
An off-duty FDNY chief fought off a disturbed man who tried to snatch his son off a crowded Brooklyn street Sunday afternoon