Host David Livingston says, " Listen to the live webcast here. An additional streaming site has been provided Space Show listeners by Jeff Birk at Pioneer Radio in the UK, here. After the live broadcast, the report will be archived TheSpaceShow.com, and it will be streamed for ongoing play at Live365.com." Previous SpaceShipOne-related BoingBoing post: Link

Update: EvilHippy points out that this site has even more media-themed typefaces

“The idea of crime based on wit is kind of wonderful,” Jay told me. “There’s not much admirable in a guy who comes at you with a gun and says, ‘Give me your money.’ But a guy who makes you sign a piece of paper, and then you find out you’ve bought the Brooklyn Bridge—the con is enormously appealing. And it’s theatrical. The con—the big con, especially—is an entire theatrical orchestration for an audience of one. It’s both lovely and diabolical at the same time.”

See pics from the NYC premiere here

Support the film by buying advance tickets here

You can find scenes from the movie here

Watch the trailer here

Anyways, everything we've played in this set up to this juncture, this crossroads, this... interlude... is released on Positron Records, which we own and operate, the representative of which [at the merch booth] will be happy to supply you with a fix in that regard, for a modest fee which will go toward letting us sleep in a hotel room instead of the van...

Everything after that juncture (that interlude) is released on Wax Trax Records. which means it's owned by -- actually it's not owned by TVT Records, it's owned by Credit Suisse. so technically speaking, the first four Sister Machine Gun albums are released on Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank, which is kind of cool when you think about it.

The point being, I don't get fuckin' paid for that shit, not a dime, not a single red cent. So you can go ahead and go home, and -- hey, you can download it right the fuck here, they got WiFi. Just get up on Morpheus or some fuckin' thing and get that shit for free.

"Genetic algorithms mimic the principles of evolution to breed solutions to a problem. A population of potential solutions is tested for fitness and the best are cross-bred and mutated. The unfit members of the next generation are weeded out, simulating natural selection, leaving the fittest solutions to go on to breed."

"A model in a kimono has two dragons, sculpted out of braids, perched atop her head. When she reaches the end of the stage, billows of smoke emit from the dragons’ mouths, and the audience oohs and aahs. Backstage, Mz. Jade reveals the secret: inside each dragon is a bottle of aerosol sheen spray, rigged by remote so a press of a button triggers the spray. Under the bright lights the mist looks like smoke."

I believe him. He's doing the thing that Asimov and Heinlein did at the ends of their careers, tying in the loose ends of all his old work and name-checking and referencing all the writers who influenced him.

But unlike bad end-of-career novels like Heinlein's Cat Who Walks Through Walls, Song of Susannah is a sharp and tight book, a comparatively slim book of only 400 or so pages. I raced through it in just a couple sittings, devouring the yarn at speed and wanting at once for it to be over and for it never to end.

For King's Dark Tower quest is an astonishing series of novels, rich and wide and deep, drunk on prose and on the best characterization of King's creer. There's plenty King's written that I haven't cared for, but I'd crawl on glass to get my hands on the final installment of the series.

This volume in the story is about itself as much as it is about the characters and their quest. King's theories on writing are very sound, and this story is as much about how we read and understand and use stories as it is a story in and of itself.

But it's never preachy and it's never dull. King's story, which has all the hallmarks of cliche, manages to be both startingly original and utterly sane and crazy. Link

Update: Apparently, King has repudiated his vow to stop writing

Hi All, The FAA spaceport license came through today, and almost immediately, signs went up at the airport. Pics are now up on the Mojave Airport Weblog as well as a couple aerials showing the parking & RV areas that I shot this morning from our helo. For those who'll be in the RV park, sounds like the NASA interns will be throwing a big party with a band and all.

Symposium on Copyright, Piracy, and the Future of Independent Filmmaking: The MPAA's screener ban was a wake-up call to the independent film community. With our future threatened, the community joined together and was eventually successful in defeating the ban in federal court. But policy is being created every day, at every level, that impacts the channels for distribution, access to independent films, and the protection of creative rights. This symposium (the first of two parts) offers a forum for critical analysis and debate about these important issues -- issues that are not easily or often addressed among the very people they impact most: independent filmmakers. Our goal is to form strategic alliances that will help us maintain and extend a production and distribution environment where independent filmmaking can continue to thrive. Part II of the Symposium will take place at the IFP Market in New York on September 26.

Join Lawrence Lessig, named one of Scientific American's Top 50 Visionaries and author of The Future of Ideas and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace examine copyright and anti-piracy policies affecting the motion picture industry today and the future of the independent filmmaker. Following a coffee break, a panel of experts and advocates will join him, including Robert Greenwald, (Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War, Burning Bed), producer, director and documentary filmmaker.

According to this British Medical Journal article, "Lilly made $1.6m in political contributions in 2000—82% of which went to Bush and the Republican Party. "

So it's not surprising that the President announced a plan to screen the entire US population for mental illness and pump lots and lots of people full of expensive Eli Lilly drugs. Bush's commission has recommended that the federal government adopt a model based on the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP) a medication treatment plan that recommends Zyprexa as a first line antipsychotic drug for patients. Bush was governor of Texas when the plan was adopted, and Zyprexa coincidentally happens to be made Eli Lilly. It's the drug company's top seller, grossing $4.28 billion dollars last year. According to the article, "A 2003 New York Times article by Gardiner Harris reported that 70% of olanzapine sales are paid for by government agencies, such as Medicare and Medicaid."

But the Texas project, which promotes the use of newer, more expensive antidepressants and antipsychotic drugs, sparked off controversy when Allen Jones, an employee of the Pennsylvania Office of the Inspector General, revealed that key officials with influence over the medication plan in his state received money and perks from drug companies with a stake in the medication algorithm (15 May, p1153). He was sacked this week for speaking to the BMJ and the New York Times.

Mr Jones told the BMJ that the same "political/pharmaceutical alliance" that generated the Texas project was behind the recommendations of the New Freedom Commission, which, according to his whistleblower report, were "poised to consolidate the TMAP effort into a comprehensive national policy to treat mental illness with expensive, patented medications of questionable benefit and deadly side effects, and to force private insurers to pick up more of the tab."

"Grappling with a wonderful assortment of objects--from antique orreries to modern spectrographs--Davis Baird draws the reader deep into fascinating questions about the nature of knowledge. As lucid on the semantic account of theories as it is on the inner workings of the cyclotron, this book that brings the laboratory to philosophers and philosophy into the laboratory."

Hi all, Not sure what the hitch is, but the designation of MHV as the first commercial inland spaceport didn't happen by the FAA as expected yesterday... stay tuned.

Regarding broadcasts and webcasts of the launch: CNN is reportedly going to do a live broadcast, don't know if that'll reach Europe. Local radio station KLOA FM 104.9 has the exclusive radio rights to direct feed, and it now sounds as if they'll be live webcasting the audio here. There is now a map of the public parking area up on the the airport site here. There really is no other news to report this morning. It's a gorgeous, if somewhat warm day.

-- Alan Radecki

[The exhibit] starts with a live television news broadcast that is displayed at the center of a wall-mounted array of nine computer monitors. A software program scans the broadcast's closed-caption stream and selects keywords that prompt Internet searches for images. Seconds after the live audio is heard, the news broadcast is surrounded by pertinent photographs and illustrations on adjacent screens, as well as some images completely unrelated.

"The words tend to be linked to a strange combination of images that are on point and strikingly bizarre," Professor Hammond said.

For instance, during a recent televised briefing by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a reference to troops was as likely to retrieve a photograph of Girl Scouts as one of soldiers. But a mention of the secretary's title only generated a cartoon drawing of an administrative assistant.

we do know a couple of things that stimulate brain cell production. One of them, of course is anti-depressants, which we now know probably the key molecule by which this acts, because we’ve been able to purify these cells that make neurons and we know what are the receptors that bind molecules. And one of these receptors turn out to be a receptor for a neurotrophine, a molecule that keeps nerve cells alive traditionally. But we know that anti-depressants raise the molecule that binds to this receptor and we now know that this is the factor that can stimulate the production of new nerve cells. So we think we’ve made the connection between anti-depressants and production of new nerve cells. But there are many other ways of stimulating the production and some of them are pretty damned interesting. One is if you put an animal on a wheel and let it run ad libitum and they run up to about 10 kilometres overnight, they make about twice as many neurones.

The other thing is that certain molecules produced during sex also appear to be highly stimulatory of neuronal production. Prolactin levels, which pregnant women have enormous amounts of, also stimulate large amounts (of neurons).

"The more you post the evidence of legislative control, such as traffic signs, the less the driver is trying to use his or her own senses," says Hamilton-Baillie, noting he has a habit of walking randomly across roads -- much to his wife's consternation. "So the less you can advertise the presence of the state in terms of authority, the more effective this approach can be." This, of course, is the exact opposite of the "Triple E" traffic-calming approach, which seeks to control the driver through the use of speed bumps, photo radar, crosswalks and other engineering and enforcement mechanisms.

The "self-reading street" has its roots in the Dutch "woonerf" design principles that emerged in the 1970s. Blurring the boundary between street and sidewalk, woonerfs combine innovative paving, landscaping and other urban designs to allow for the integration of multiple functions in a single street, so that pedestrians, cyclists and children playing share the road with slow-moving cars. The pilot projects were so successful in fostering better urban environments that the ideas spread rapidly to Belgium, France, Denmark and Germany. In 1998, the British government adopted a "Home Zones" initiative -- the woonerf equivalent -- as part of its national transportation policy.

"What the early woonerf principles realized," says Hamilton-Baillie, "was that there was a two-way interaction between people and traffic. It was a vicious or, rather, a virtuous circle: The busier the streets are, the safer they become. So once you drive people off the street, they become less safe."

Here's what I'm here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don't work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

It's a big brief, this talk. Microsoft has sunk a lot of capital into DRM systems, and spent a lot of time sending folks like Martha and Brian and Peter around to various smoke-filled rooms to make sure that Microsoft DRM finds a hospitable home in the future world. Companies like Microsoft steer like old Buicks, and this issue has a lot of forward momentum that will be hard to soak up without driving the engine block back into the driver's compartment. At best I think that Microsoft might convert some of that momentum on DRM into angular momentum, and in so doing, save all our asses.

After chit chatting for a few minutes, he took me to a small room - no wider than my outstretched arms - at the far end of which stood one of those classic red English phone booths. We stepped inside - a bit cramped - and Danny lifted the receiver and dictated a passphrase of some sort. Presto - the rear wall of the booth opened, and we stepped into - nerdvana.

From a cramped phone booth into massive pure-white-lit space two-stories high, adorned with all manner of things strange and beautiful. Over to one side stood the Terminator-like skeleton of a forty-foot dinosaur, its 15-foot pneumatic legs gleaming and exposed. Nearly blending into the walls, itself painted movie-set white, was a tricked out Hummer-like RV refitted as a communications/command center - complete with built-in kitchen and bedroom. The space was a great big project lab, with happy geeks combing over various assemblages of wiring, motors, processors and plans like ants on a summer picnic. It's Willy Wonka's chocolate factory for geeks.

A flashlight ... hacked to use three 2300-millicandela LEDs will be as bright as an incandescent and last 5 to 10 times longer. Of course you can add up to 20 LEDs (as long as they fit in the reflector) if you're planning to, say, man a lighthouse with the thing.

Mr. Besud has spent years poring over the dusty archives of the state library to compile a book of possible surnames for the nameless. He obtained access to the highly secret archives of the country's Communist Party, which included detailed lists of the names of noble families who were prohibited from party membership.

He discovered his own long-lost surname, Besud, by finding his grandfather's name on a 1925 list of conscripts in a Communist army.

His book, called Advice on Mongolian Surnames, provides maps and lists of historically used surnames in each region of the country.

90 mph baseball pitch: 40.0 m/s

Stone from Commercial Slingshot: 42.5 m/s

Crossbow Bolt: 45.7 m/s

"...the $9000 Close Quarters Shock Rifle projects an ionised gas, or plasma, towards the target, producing a conducting channel. It will also interfere with electronic ignition systems and stop vehicles.

'We will be able to fire a stream of electricity like water out of a hose at one or many targets in a single sweep,' claims XADS (Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems) president Peter Bitar."

• "I have trouble seeing what I'm scooping in my yard. Can your food turn my dog's poop pink?" -dog owner, Ronkonkoma, NY
• "When my dog pees, he leaves brown patches all over the lawn. Is he peeing fire?" – dog owner, Covington, KY.

Hi all, The folks at MHV are continuing to get the various sites ready for the influx of people, who seem to already be arriving. Several RVs drove slowly down the flightline.

The White Knight, which was doing a number of touch and goes day before yesterday, was out doing maintenance runs today.

Yesterday's update generated a couple of questions:
1 -- Can a person sleep in their car on the airport overnight Sunday night? No. The general parking area won't open till 3am. Only self-contained RVs will be allowed on the airport overnight. There is a large open lot across Hwy 58 from where big-rig trucks usually overnight, and that might be an option. I do understand, however, that a number of people plan on lining up on the shoulder of 58 around midnight. Don't know if they'll get chased away or not. There's a CHP (California Highway Patrol, for you out-of-staters) station adjacent to the airport, so they may be out in force.
2 -- Is there any European live broadcasts planned? I've no clue. AFAIK, there are a bunch of satellite trucks scheduled to start arriving on Saturday, no idea who they might be from. I have not heard of anyone planning a live webcast, but you might want to check at space.com to see if they're doing anything...I know some of their folks will be here.

One caution to those planning on being here but aren't used to life in the desert: BRING LOTS OF WATER! Even at 7am, it's getting quite warm now, and you will get dehydrated much faster than you'll realize. There will be vendors selling water, but count on it being pricey. Our rule of thumb out here: if you're not peeing every couple of hours, you're not drinking enough.

Other news: I haven't received confirmation yet, but my understanding was that the FAA was supposed to issue the airport the first ever civilian spaceport license today. There's going to be about a 2 hour gap between the flight and the offical press conference, and they are tentatively planning to do a formal presentation of the license during that time, and it should be within view of the public viewing area.

The public viewing area is set up southeast of the new Taxiway Bravo (map is available at mojaveairport.com ), at the approach end of Rwy 30, so everyone will get an excellent view of the landing.

When Burt came in for lunch at the Voyager Cafe yesterday, he was all grins...looks like he's really having a lot of fun with this. Five days and counting!

Alan

In "Chip Miniaturizes Holography," Technology Review says that Japanese researchers have developed a hologram generator on a single circuit board. The electroholographic system consists of a special-purpose computational chip and a high-resolution, reflective mode, liquid-crystal display panel as a spatial light modulator. With this system, they were able to generate an hologram at a resolution of 800x600 in half a second for an object of 1,000 points. Their solution is scalable in two ways: the computation is done in parallel streams, and several chips can work on a single hologram. The researchers think that there will be real-time 3D applications for television or medical imaging within five to ten years. This overview includes other details and references, including a diagram and a photograph of the hologram generator.

Background: Link to Mojave airport site with launch info. Link to Rutan's press release on the June 21 launch. Link to Rutan's FAQ. And finally, Alan's first update follows:

Starting today, I plan on sending out a daily update on the activities surrounding the SpaceShipOne launch.

The flight is scheduled to commence at 0630 Monday 6/21, however that is dependent on weather. Should there be a weather delay, such as winds, the folks at Scaled plan on waiting and launching as soon as the weather permits, even if it stretches to the next day.

The public will enter the airport from the main Airport Blvd entrance off of Hwy 58. The airport will open at 3am, but it is pretty much assumed around here that there will be so many people showing up that the roads will be clogged. RVs will be permitted in the day before, with reservations (661/824-2433). I know that there's already 89 coming, some of whom are NASA folks who are bringing a band and everything. Regular vehicles will be charged $10 entrance fee (to help mitigate the huge cost of security that the airport has to bear), and I can't remember the RV cost...check mojaveairport.com for details. Don't try to avoid the traffic by coming in the back entrances...these are for VIPs with passes and tenants with ID badges.

There will be a TFR, and only aircraft with PPR numbers will be permitted into the airspace, starting on Saturday, I believe. Again, see mojaveairport.com for details. If you don't make it onto the airport, you'll still see the firing...it'll be visible for miles. (...) I'll be here starting Sunday afternoon, sleeping in the Mercy quarters. -- Alan

Rumor has it that Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) will be introducing a bill tomorrow that would add a new Section 501(g) to the Copyright Act granting copyright owners a cause of action against those who "induce" copyright infringement (cf. patent law). This bill, dubbed the INDUCE Act, would apparently also reach those who "counsel" infringers.

Even a moment's reflection should make the danger to innovators clear -- you now have to worry not just about contributory and vicarious liability, but an entirely new form of liability for building tools that might be misused. It will be interesting to see whether the bill expressly precludes any Betamax-type defense. This may also pose First Amendment problems, to the extent a journalist or website publisher might be liable for simply posting information about where infringement tools might be found or how to use them.

This is also the kind of country where the president meets with the members of a radical, far-right millennialist Christian sect three weeks before he counteracts all known international law and opinion regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation. That sect, known as the Apostolic Congress, opposes any deal with the Palestinians because it believes that Christ won't return to Earth until all of Israel belongs to the Jews and Solomon's temple is rebuilt.

Bottom line? My guess is that within 4-6 hours there would be scattered blackouts and brownouts in numerous areas, within 12 hours much of the system would be unstable, and within 24 hours most portions of the United States and Canada, aside from a rare island of service in a rural area near a hydroelectric source, would be without power. Some installations served by wind farms and solar might continue, but they would be very small. By the end of a week, I'd be surprised if more than a few abandoned sites were still supplying power.

This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Helzer, a former stockbroker who has already pleaded guilty and faces the death penalty, exerted a charismatic hold over an eclectic group of followers including his younger brother, a former girlfriend turned Playboy centrefold model, and a self-described "good witch" who once offered to raise money for Armageddon by appearing in porn films.

"Cockroach races have been up and about here in Berlin for a couple of years now, apparently introduced by the russian painter Nikolai Makarov. He claims (and I have no way of disprove him) that this is an old Russian tradition. I attended one of these races in January 2001 - it was a celebration of the Russian New Year, and a very odd mixture of betting on the cockroaches, drinking, eating and socialising.

"The race I attended was also quite fun because of the silly stories they made up about the roaches racing against each other. Apparently, one of them (Olga) was the daughter of another one, had then killed and eaten her father, but only after mating with him and having a child (Olga II), which was now racing not only against her mother, but also (I think) against another one of her father's children... or something. It was pretty weird, and quite funny.

"There are photos online (not mine, though) of a similar event in November 2002 here."

I should state outrIght that i'm Not a real person. i'm an imaginary friend. in front of the computer, of course, who could tell the difference? i loVe getting involved In a chat and forgetting all about the outSide world; for a moment then i can believe I am real. furthermore, i'm not entirely human. my mother was a human and my father was - or is - a dragon. i've had a very, very long life full of dragedy and adventure, Beautiful worlds have crumbLed before my Eyes. . . i'm dramatizing, yeah, i love playing the drama QUEEN, but there's really been more than i can easily talk About. three daughTers i've Had, marvellOus things have lived in my veins and leT Me work miracles. i've Always believed In doing good by alL the people in the world. but i'm retired from saving the world now. it all got too much, and now i'm just looking for a good time.

he Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally believed.

I was curious to see if the fibers would even allow water, being coated with Teflon and all. They did, but not before showing a curious phenomenon: the water lodged itself in the pockets of each stitch, making hundreds of tiny diamond-like bubbles all over the fabric surface.

"These places contain the residue of the many souls that have passed through over the years," she says. "The less a place has been explored, the better, because the air hasn't been diluted and the soul marks are fresh."

Griffin's stated range for the iTrip is a little inaccurate: I once left my iPod playing over the radio in the office, got in my car and drove out of the parking lot, around the corner and down the street. The signal petered out at about 150 feet. This is through the walls of my office and several intervening buildings! I've been running around for the past several months with this bumper sticker on my car. It's an ink-jet job and as you can see, it's getting a little faded. I figure that anyone that can read the bumper sticker-- on the I-5, at a stop light-- if intrigued could tune in and listen to whatever I'm listening to. No, I don't take requests. T-Shirt coming soon!

Here's the quote I gave to Ace:

"Neuromancer didn't predict the future. Neuromancer *created* the future. If you would understand the past twenty years' technological advance and retreat, this book is required reading. I re-read it every year, just to get an edge on the year that's coming, and to glory in Gibson's prose and cunning artifice."

Our next guestbar resident, Christopher Coppola, has completed eight feature motion pictures. The latest of these is Creature of the Sunny Side-Up Trailer Park (a.k.a. Bloodhead), which had its world premiere during the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars screen legends Frank Gorshin and Shirley Jones, and television icons Lynda Carter and Bernie Kopell. His other film credits include the Trimark Pictures release Deadfall (1993) starring Nicolas Cage, Michael Biehn, and James Coburn; Gunfighter (1998) starring Martin Sheen, Robert Carradine, and Clu Gulager; Palmer's Pick-Up: An American Roadshow Odyssey (1999) starring Robert Carradine and Rosanna Arquette; Dracula's Widow (1989) which he produced for De Laurentiis Entertainment Group; G-Men From Hell (2000) starring William Forsythe, Tate Donovan, and Gary Busey; Bel-Air (2000) starring Charles Fleischer and Barbara Bain; and Clockmaker (1998), a children's fantasy film shot on location in Romania for Kuschner-Locke.

Christopher is co-founder and spokesperson for Ars Nova XXI, the mother company of PlasterCITY Productions (an independent feature and television production company that concentrates on HD digital format) and PlasterCITY Digital Post (a post-production facility that specializes in editing and onlining for feature films, television, shorts, commercials, and music videos.)

Welcome, Christopher!

- Mark, Cory, Xeni, David, and John

This strikes me as an interesting new use of social nets, but also a potentially frightening one. It's bad enough that some folks are bold enough to belong to tribes like Vegan Oral Sex Enthusiasts Who Own Semiautomatic Weapons And Aren't Wearing any Underwear, but now such excessive displays of intimate information will be really, really public. Yikes. Link

[Iraqi Union of Artists deputy chairman Qasim Alsabti] created a life-size figure of a woman wrapped in a bloodstained white shroud. It symbolizes the rape of women detainees in Abu Ghraib, says Alsabti, who heard of allegations of women prisoners being raped at Abu Ghraib five months before the scandal broke. "There was a letter circulating in Fallujah from a woman inside Abu Ghraib," he says. "She was begging the resistance to bomb Abu Ghraib and bring down the walls on their heads so that their suffering would end. I felt like screaming when I heard this. I wanted to draw the attention of the American people."

[F]or many Iraqis, including artists like Alsabti, Abu Ghraib has become synonymous with what they see as the injustices of the occupation. "It's like an adviser from Saddam Hussei's regime has come back to Iraq and is now advising the Americans," he says.

Link. Incidentally, survivors of Pinochet in Chile know a thing or two about torture: Link

"The BBC's doing these shockwave replays of goals and stuff from the European football championships. It's pretty nifty. I recommend choosing the Sweden-Bulgaria game, then the 57th minute goal by Larsson, then the ball-cam."

Supported by his large extended family -- and his identical twin brother Jesse -- Cameron fought against his disability to make an astounding recovery. Not only can the young man swim, run, drive a car, and even play golf again, he recently won four gold medals at the Endeavor Games, a sports competition for amputees. He can do this in part because of advanced prosthetic limb technology called the "C-Leg," short for "computer leg." The device (which Cameron demonstrated at Wired Magazine's NextFest) includes many tiny sensors controlled by a computer chip, and provides much greater mobility and control than conventional hydraulic limbs. Link to archived audio (after 12PM PT), a photo gallery, and more on both Cameron and the high-tech prosthetics he uses.

EPOC.Cabir is a proof-of-concept worm that replicates on Nokia Series 60 phones. It repeatedly sends itself to the first Bluetooth-enabled device that it can find, regardless of the type of device (ie even a Bluetooth-enabled printer will be attacked if it is within range).

I have been running Bio Diesel in my truck for over a year now. Bio Diesel is basically slightly refined vegetable oil that can run in ANY diesel vehicle with little to no modifications. The vegetable oil used can be virgin, but it is generally recycled from fryers at restaurants. Yes, the exhaust smells like whatever was fried in it. The best part of running Bio Diesel is that no wars need to be fought over it: it's entirely domestic, supports US farming, it's totally renewable, and it cuts almost all aspects of a diesel vehicle's emissions by more than 50-75%. (The exception is NOx which is about the same). You get slightly less mileage and power (5% decrease) from petro-diesel, but your exhaust smells a lot better and its actually easier on your engine.

Excellent pictures on this site! A USC roboticist has created a robot that can build large structures by extruding semi-liquid material from a pump in inch-thick layers to form a wall or a building, and then return to fill in the hollow wall. This looks like a macro version of 3-D prototyping in that you could essentially set up a machine, fill it with the right goo and programming, switch it on, and have a house in a few hours that was built completely without the intervention of human hands.

The Field Robot event is kind of a miniature DARPA Grand Challenge, small robots must navigate through a maize field. Join Corn2Bwild, SANDRA, Wiedrobot and many others on june 17th and 18th as 22 teams from the Netherlands, Germany, USA, Hungary, Israel, Gambia, Poland, Nigeria,Ireland and Belgium compete in Wageningen, the Netherlands.

JPL's Cassini spacecraft is making it's final approach to Saturn after seven years of whipping around our solar system. This weekend the probe flew by an outer retrograde moon, Phoebe, and based on stunning pictures unspooling today it seems Phoebe is an ice rich body, perhaps even a captured comet! If all goes well on July 1st Cassini will enter into orbit around the ringed planet and provide four years of exploration including the December landing of the 700 pound Huygens probe on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

[Iranian Deputy I.T. Minister] Nassrollah Jahangard wished that every Iranian could have a blog one day and expressed the government's support for persian blogs which, in his mind, are defining the presence of Iran on the Net and make an identity for the Iranian community on the Internet. He also added that blogs are sort of cultureal heritage for Iran and they will make the future of it.

The latter, Sohrab Razeghi, said that blogs and the values they carry with themseves are the begining of a modern society in Iran. He said that the openness, subversiveness, and a sense of individualism which are visible among Iranian weblogs are completely new things in the society. he then rejected the idea of government support and said that they should leave the persian blogoshpere alone and let it go in whatever direction it wants.

Further, copyright reform proceedings must also be perceived to be balanced. According to Elections Canada, Bulte and her riding association have accepted thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from rights holder groups and broadcasters. Parliamentarians involved in the copyright reform process should refuse all such contributions to ensure that the perception of absolute impartiality is preserved.

At Matsushita, a night of rest isn't cheap. Rieko Saitoh, a company publicist, says the whole system is expected to go on sale in June 2005 — to the tune of $30,000.

Still, company officials say that even if the price is high, customers won't lose much sleep over it.

"Nobody who's come in here for 30 minutes hasn't fallen asleep," said Heiuchi.

Every participant receives special race money and can purchase with them one of six cockroach. Other participants bet for the couple of player and cockroach they liked the most and watch the competition on the big table (4.5x1.5 m).

The game will be a surprise to all guests. As much as they would load the poor insect from the beginning, they will love them be the end of the race. Players stimulate theirs cockroaches to run by knocking the glassed surface of the course with the special small sticks and joy of every step of cockroach. The finish of the race is quite unpredictable and every step of a cockroach brings lots of emotions to all the guests.

"In the light of controversy regarding scenarios based on runaway replication (so-called 'grey goo'), a review of current thinking regarding nanotechnology-based manufacturing is in order. Nanotechnology-based fabrication can be thoroughly non-biological and inherently safe: such systems need have no ability to move about, use natural resources, or undergo incremental mutation. Moreover, self-replication is unnecessary: the development and use of highly productive systems of nanomachinery (nanofactories) need not involve the construction of autonomous self-replicating nanomachines.

Accordingly, the construction of anything resembling a dangerous self-replicating nanomachine can and should be prohibited. Although advanced nanotechnologies could (with great difficulty and little incentive) be used to build such devices, other concerns present greater problems. Since weapon systems will be both easier to build and more likely to draw investment, the potential for dangerous systems is best considered in the context of military competition and arms control."

"Controversy surrounded Stanley Milgram for much of his professional life as a result of a series of experiments on obedience to authority which he conducted at Yale University in 1961-1962. He found, surprisingly, that 65% of his subjects, ordinary residents of New Haven, were willing to give apparently harmful electric shocks-up to 450 volts-to a pitifully protesting victim, simply because a scientific authority commanded them to, and in spite of the fact that the victim did not do anything to deserve such punishment. The victim was, in reality, a good actor who did not actually receive shocks, and this fact was revealed to the subjects at the end of the experiment. But, during the experiment itself, the experience was a powerfully real and gripping one for most participants.

Milgram's career also produced many other creative, though less controversial, experiments; such as, the small-world method (the source of 'Six Degrees of Separation'), the lost-letter technique, and an experiment testing the effects of televised antisocial behavior which, though conducted 30 years ago, remains unique to the present day."

American, as well as Canadian and European churches, are sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India. About 2 percent of India's more than one billion people are Christians, most of them Catholics.

In Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast with one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India, churches often receive intentions from overseas. The Masses are conducted in Malayalam, the native language. The intention - often a prayer for the repose of the soul of a deceased relative, or for a sick family member, thanksgiving for a favor received, or a prayer offering for a newborn - is announced at Mass.

The reason that it has been possible to operate freenetwork access point type nodes without charge is that once the equipment is installed, the incremental cost of allowing others to use it is very low. If you are already paying for network access for yourself, and have installed a wireless network, the additional cost of offering it to the public is negligible. The initial hardware costs are also low, at less than 100 GBP for an access point, and with running costs of 25 GBP per month it makes for a very affordable system.

However, commercial hotspots are faced with significantly more costs over and above the minimal equipment and networking costs, such as a billing infrastructure, help desks, credit checking, location payments, maintenance contracts, share holder dividends and marketing, to name a few. This is inevitably reflected in prices charged for the service.

It remains to be seen how these commercial models burdened with such overheads will compete with the freenetworking ones, and whether the marketing spend, and the strategy of local monopoly will be justified by the returns.