Enviro stuff
June 23, 2008Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (withouthotair.com)
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
Archive for the ‘Link farming’ Category
Dystopia link farmlet
June 20, 2008DIY Wiretapping: The Ultimate Guide (and How to Fight Back) - IT Security
Did you think wiretapping was just for the FBI and mobsters? It’s actually so easy that we can show you how to install and manage different wiretapping systems yourself.
* Tap in using your own phone: Listen to other people’s calls through your own basic telephone by hooking up your phone to a part of the original line that runs outside the house of your target. By cutting one of the plugs so that the red and green wires are exposed, you can figure out which part to plug into your phone and complete the connection.
PC World - Privacy Crusader Sues Virginia
Betty “BJ” Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate who has been fighting to stop county and state government offices from posting public records containing Social Security numbers and other personal records on their sites. As part of her campaign to publicize the issue, Ostergren has routinely downloaded documents containing Social Security numbers from county Web sites and reposted them on her own site .
Ostergren and the ACLU had previously said that a recent bill amending Virginia’s Personal Information Act would do nothing to prevent county governments in the state from posting documents without first redacting Social Security numbers and other sensitive days. Rather, she claimed , the measure seems to have been designed specifically to curtail her campaign to publicize and end that practice
BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate
‘You can’t have your cake and eat it, so you have to step up to the plate and face the music.’ It was in that moment I knew I had to resign before somebody got badly hurt by a pencil.”
Bruce Schneier and the King of the Crabs
June 17, 2008The singularity goes horribly awry
“Ah,” said Bruce, before he rightly thought it through. “Seems some firearms would be more useful than these little swords of yours.”
The king, who was already turning away, froze in his tracks. He didn’t have to turn back, because the eyes of crabs already look in all directions, but Bruce could tell – he had gotten the renewed and full attention of his royal highness. And he winced mightily, because that was the one and only time in his life that Bruce Schneier had made a security-related mistake.
Online Medical Information
June 17, 2008Because I’ve already needed this.
NursingDegree.net » 50 Best Medical Libraries on the Web
When searching for information on health and well-being, there is an incredible number of websites to visit. Several sites offer quite a bit of information, and it’s not always easy to know where to go for your research. Below, find the 50 best medical libraries grouped within five different categories to help you find what you need to know.
For Non-Professionals Everyone from parents to the individual will at some time have a health question or concern. The websites below offer comprehensive, helpful information that is easily understandable for the average person.
So all you have to do is eat 400 calories worth of spinach
June 13, 2008The Minimalist - The Minimalist - Putting Meat in Its Place - NYTimes.com
1. Forget the protein thing. Roughly simultaneously with your declaration that you’re cutting back on meat, someone will ask “How are you going to get enough protein?” The answer is “by being omnivorous.” Plants have protein, too; in fact, per calorie, many plants have more protein than meat. (For example, a cheeseburger contains 14.57 grams of protein in 286 calories, or about .05 grams of protein per calorie; a serving of spinach has 2.97 grams of protein in 23 calories, or .12 grams of protein per calorie; lentils have .07 grams per calorie.) By eating a variety, you can get all essential amino acids.
You also don’t have to eat the national average of a half-pound of meat a day to get enough protein. On average, Americans eat about twice as much as the 56 grams of daily protein recommended by the United States Department of Agriculture (a guideline that some nutritionists think is too high). For anyone eating a well-balanced diet, protein is probably not an issue.
2. Buy less meat. How many ounces of meat is a serving? For years, the U.S.D.A.’s recommendation has been four ounces a person, yet most of us have long figured one-and-a-half to two pounds of meat is the right amount for four people. (Our per capita consumption of meat hasn’t changed much over the years, and remains at about a half-pound a day.) Change that amount, and both your cooking style and the way the plate looks will change, and quickly.
Remember that most traditional styles of cooking use meat as a condiment or a treat. This is true in American frontier cooking, where salt pork and bacon were used to season beans; in Italy, where a small piece of meat is served as a secondo (rarely more than a few ounces, even in restaurants); and around the world, where bits of meat are added to stir-fries and salads, as well as bean, rice and noodle dishes. In all of these cases, meat is seen as a treasure, not as something to be gobbled up as if it were air.
For many of us who grew up in the United States in the last 60 years, this is the toughest hurdle. The message (remember “Beef: it’s what’s for dinner”?) was in our psyche from before we could hold a fork. We may have vegetarian nights, or seafood nights, but when we have meat nights, there’s often a big piece of meat (or poultry) on the plate, with starch and vegetable to the side.
3. Get it out of the center of the plate.
You don’t have to jump into utterly unfamiliar territory; just try tweaking the proportions a bit. You might start by buying skinnier pork chops, or doling out smaller slices of steak .
Build the meal around what you used to consider side dishes — not only vegetables, but also grains, beans, salads and even dessert, if you consider fruit a dessert — rather than the meat. Nearly every culture has dishes in which meat is used to season rice or another grain. Consider dirty rice, fried rice, pilaf, biryani, arroz con pollo: the list is almost endless.
Similarly, there isn’t a country in the world that cooks legumes that doesn’t toss a little meat in now and then. And mentioning stir-fries and pasta dishes here seems almost too obvious.
But you need not go transcultural. When you make stew, soup or another dish with many ingredients, you make a decision about its main ingredient and about the quantity of that ingredient. If you think of meat stews or soups, chicken pot pie, even lasagna, you’ll quickly recognize that the decision to load them up with meat or to use meat as an ingredient of equal importance to the others is entirely yours.
The same is true when you’re grilling. Compare these statements: “We’re grilling a leg of lamb and throwing a few vegetables on there,” and “We’re grilling vegetables and breads, and will throw a few chunks of lamb on there.” Again, if you see the meat as a treasure, things change.
4. Buy more vegetables, and learn new ways to cook them.
If you’re a good cook, you already know you can make a meal out of pretty much anything. If you open your refrigerator and it’s stocked with vegetables, that’s what you’re going to cook. You’ll augment the vegetables with pantry items: pasta, rice, beans, cheese, eggs, good canned fish, bacon, even a small amount of meat. We’re not discussing vegetarianism, remember?
If you’re not a good cook, you have the opportunity to learn how to cook in what could turn out to be the style of the future.
5. Make nonmeat items as convenient as meat. There is a myth, even among experienced cooks, that few things are as convenient as meat. And while there’s no arguing that grilling, broiling or pan-grilling a steak or chop is fast, it’s equally true that almost no one considers such a preparation a one-dish meal.
By thinking ahead, and working ahead, you can make cooking vegetables as convenient as what in India is often called “non-veg.” Spend an hour or two during the course of the week precooking all the nonmeat foods you think take too long for fast dinners.
Store cooked beans in the refrigerator or freezer and reheat as needed, with seasonings. Keeping precooked beans in the freezer will change your cooking habits more easily than any other simple strategy.
Reheat cooked whole grains (the microwave is good for this) for breakfast with milk or dinner with savory seasonings. Wash tender greens and store in a salad spinner, covered bowl, or plastic bag. Most other vegetables can be poached, shocked in ice water, drained, and served cold or reheated in any fashion you like — sautéed quickly in butter, steamed, grilled or made into a gratin or something equally substantial.
6. Make some rules. Depending on your habits, it may be no bacon at breakfast; it may be no burgers at lunch; it may be no fast food, ever; it may be “eat a salad instead of a sandwich three times a week,” or “eat a vegetarian dinner three times a week.” It may mean meatless Fridays. It may mean (this is essentially what I do) meatless breakfasts and lunches and all-bets-are-off dinners.
7. Look at restaurant menus differently. If you’re cutting back on meat, there are three restaurant strategies. Two are easy, and one is hard, but probably the most important.
The first: go to restaurants that don’t feature meat-heavy dishes. It’s harder to go overboard eating at most Asian restaurants, and traditional Italian is fairly safe also.
The second: Once in a while, forget the rules and pledges, and eat like a real American; obviously you can’t do this every time, but it’s an option.
The third is the tricky one: Remember you’re doing this voluntarily, for whatever reasons seem important to you (or at least seemed, until you were confronted with the lamb shanks on the menu). Then order from the parts of the menu that contain little or no meat: salads, sides, soups and (often, anyway) appetizers. If all else fails, offer to share a meat course among two or even three or four people
Want, don’t want
June 13, 2008Wall Racers: Wall Cars Will Race Automagically for Eternity
This is what happens when you get a couple of cheap RC cars and add proximity sensors, extra batteries, robot brains, and name them Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds: totally-automated racing all around your house. These electric robocars can detect the walls around them and race against each other for as long as the batteries last. The resulting Tron-lightcycle-like action is impressive.
Want! Can’t wait for the instructions
Superconductor electric vehicle ::: Pink Tentacle
Sumitomo’s motor uses high-temperature superconducting wires instead of the copper wire typically used in the coils in electric vehicle motors. When cooled to an extremely low temperature, electrical resistance and current loss are reduced to nearly zero, so the motor can operate with greater energy efficiency and torque — in other words, the motor uses less electricity to do the same amount of work. The company says the prototype vehicle can travel 10% farther than conventional electric vehicles running on the same type of battery.
Because the hassle of liquid-nitrogen cooling is definitely worth a 10% improvement in performance. Don’t want.
So much stupid, so little time
June 9, 2008This is sweet, although I do wonder a little about people who
just don’t know where thereal bus stop is.
They know the green and yellow bus sign and remember that waiting there means they will go home.” The result is that errant patients now wait for their trip home at the bus stop, before quickly forgetting why they were there in the first place.
“We will approach them and say that the bus is coming later today and invite them in to the home for a coffee,” said Mr Neureither. “Five minutes later they have completely forgotten they wanted to leave.”
Stupid flies live longer: study - Yahoo! News
The flipside was that the flies left in their natural state lived longer on average than their “cleverer” counterparts, with a lifespan of 80-85 days rather than the normal 50-60..
“In other terms, the more the fly becomes intelligent, the shorter its lifespan,” the scientists said.
This is most probably because the increase in neural activity weakens the fly’s life-support systems, they speculated.
“This would explain why flies, like most other animals, have hardly developed their neural capacities,” they said.
Then again, if you’re basing reproduction on something other than the ability to produce healthy offspring that will survive in the local environment, duh. It doesn’t have to be more costly to be smart, any more than it’s energetically more costly to be nearsighted.
Officials OK Jail Time For Failing To Mow - News- msnbc.com
Homeowners in the northeast Ohio city who don’t mow their grass now face stiffer penalties — including a possible 30-day jail term.
The council on Monday night unanimously passed the proposal, which makes a second high-grass violation a fourth-degree misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $250 and up to 30 days in jail.
And of course while you’re in jail the grass keeps growing…
TheStar.com | GTA | Man charged in shower electrocution case
Sgt. Paul McCurbin of Durham Police said the woman found the drywall missing in the master bedroom, which adjoins the bathroom. An extension cord with open wires ran to the plumbing. Police did not lay attempted murder charges because while they determined it was dangerous, the woman would not have died from the incident.
When she confronted her husband early at about 12:15 a.m. Monday, he attacked her and choked her almost to unconsciousness, police say.
This report seems to imply that if you try and kill someone, but you’re really bad at it, you’ll just get tagged for assault. Or maybe just if you try to kill your wife…
The law of the excluded middle
May 28, 2008Paedophile escapes jail for abusing girl, 11, after judge says ’she welcomed sex’ | the Daily Mail
Judge Robert Atherton triggered outrage when he told Manchester Crown Court the child had invited Jon Dixon’s attack as she had a “sexual awareness” that would make someone twice her age blush.
…
Last night children’s charities condemned his words.Michele Elliott, of the child protection charity Kidscape, accused the judge of “partially blaming” the victim and called for him to be removed from hearing cases involving child abuse.
The court heard that the pair met in an internet chatroom called Flirtomatic in February last year where the girl was posing as a 20-year-old.
Dixon and his victim exchanged 900 text graphic messages over a two-week period before the girl told Dixon she was actually aged 12 - although her real age was 11.
He continued to pursue her with more graphic sexual text messages, emails and a request for pornographic photos before they met.
On my planet, once an adult learns that the object of their sexual desires is 12 instead of 20, that should be the end of the story. But if you do think this pedophile isn’t to blame for grooming an 11-year-old girl to have sex with him, the proper conclusion is not that the girl herself somehow magically came up with the flirting savvy and sexual knowledge typical of someone much older. Somewhere in her family or circle of acquaintances I’m betting on another pedophile who wittingly or unwittingly set this up.
Half the fuel bill sure sounds nice
May 23, 2008Wood Pellet Burner Systems for Retrofit Applicaitons
Pellergy LLC is currently working on three models of pellet burners for varying applicaitons. All burners include a 500lb capacity working hopper and 8FT conveyor system for wood pellets, pre-programmed PLC for fully automated control, and conversion plate for adaptation to your boiler.
You have to load the hopper kinda often (500 pounds is about 30-35 gal of oil equivalent) and remove clinker, and there may be chimney issues. But a current price of about half what the same energy content of oil would be, plus carbon-neutrality, is kinda tempting.
Useful sites for government info
May 19, 2008Hullabaloo
Requests And Complaints
…This website helps Americans get copies of complaints filed with the Federal
Communications Commission about television programs:http://www.TVshowComplaints.org
This website helps Americans get copies of their FBI File:
http://www.GetMyFBIfile.com
This website helps Americans get copies of their GRANDFATHER’s FBI file, or
the FBI File of any dead person:http://www.GetGrandpasFBIfile.com
