Onewheeler

Who need a Segway when Bombardier is making such a hit as this Embrio-concept? For the moment it's just a prototype but using the same gyroscope-technology as the Segway Human Transporter do but is more of a moto-bike than the reversed skateboard the Segway is.

"The Embrio is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, a technology that creates power by mixing hydrogen and oxygen, ideally resulting in water as the only exhaust. The Embrio also borrows several other advanced technologies from cars, like infrared night vision and an active suspension, which can vary its damping rates based on road conditions. To move the Embrio, you use an accelerator trigger on the left handlebar and a brake trigger on the right.
The vehicle is made of lightweight materials, like aluminum, magnesium and nylon. It weighs only 360 pounds. The vehicle is also kept longitudinally stable by a smaller wheel that operates like an airplane's landing gear. It touches the ground when the vehicle is stopped or just starting. Once the Embrio is in motion, the landing gear will retract when the vehicle reaches about 12 mph. During braking, the gear redeploys when the vehicle slows to 12 mph."

Department of Comp.Science

Have you ever wondered about what's the "Scroll Lock" key on my computer for?

"The main intent of the Scroll Lock key was to allow scrolling of screen text up, down and presumably sideways using the arrow keys in the days before large displays and graphical scroll bars. You can see where this might have been handy in the DOS era, when screen output typically was limited to 80 characters wide by 25 rows deep. For some types of programs, spreadsheets being the obvious example, it's still handy now. In Microsoft Excel, Scroll Lock allows you to scroll a spreadsheet with the arrow keys without moving the active cell pointer from the currently highlighted cell. In Quattro Pro, another spreadsheet program, Scroll Lock works in a similar manner, although in contrast to Excel it's not possible to scroll the active cell pointer completely off the screen."

JenniCam goes dark

After seven years she is pulling the plug from her website: Jenni Ringley who the netizens have been able to follow in her everyday life. CNET News is telling the sad story: "Ringley, a self-described former computer geek who works at a non-profit social service agency near Sacramento, Calif., says in her mission statement that she wanted to create a 'window into a virtual human zoo. ' "

There's no explanation on her site but it might be because of Paypals redlisting of her account since she is showing her tits and that's against Paypals "rules". Americans...

Barbie with burka

No way that girls in Arab-countries should not be able to play with Barbies but of course their Barbies can't show their hair. So Razanne is here.

A muslim version of Barbie: "the doll not only fills a marketing gap but also offers Muslim girls someone they can relate to" as Noorart Inc., the company who made the doll explains. It fills a market void where muslim parents don't want their girls to play with the curly, blonde and curved original-Barbie. But Razanne have aspirations of being a modern Muslim woman and the target groups seem to be the Muslimcommunity in Britain and USA.

Mattel - the Barbiecompany, is selling a Morrocan Barbie called Leyla, and of course her accessoires is the one of belly dancing and concubine. And the company is rather silent about the competition from the Noorart Inc. and Razanne.

Don't eat this

As it didn't was enough that the wellknown Bush-turkeydinner in Iraq at last years Thanksgiving.

Now there been proven that the turkey El Presidente gave to the soldiers was fake. A turkey made of plastic for photo-ops. "[M]ilitary sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines."

List the reality

Some lists:

All-Time Top 100 Best Singles

Supercars with top acceleration

Top 100 Women

The 100 greatest novels of all time

Top Charities

400 Richest in America

Letters from outer space

The NASA ISS Science Officer Ed Lu is writing kind of a diary when on his mission on the ISS. In the nowhere of the space, orbiting the earth.

"There really isn't an up or down anywhere else here, but there is a direction we think of as the floor and a direction we think of as the ceiling in each module. Most of the labeling on panels and equipment is written so that it is right side up assuming this orientation, and also most of the lights are on the "ceiling" so they cast light "downwards." To add to the effect, there is a simulator back on Earth we spent a lot of time in where we got used to one direction as the floor and the opposite direction as the ceiling. So up here, when Yuri and I say downwards or upwards, we mean the equivalent directions as in the training module on Earth."

But hopefully he won't have to buy the spacestamps.

Do they pick them from the trees?

The question How LEGO is made might not be as hard as one could think even for a four-year old. But this is a really good way to show a sometimes difficult production with a mix of animations and film.

A man of order

In the SG-article The Una-Bombers life in prison you get a picture of the life in an american High Security Prison and the life of the Una-bomber Ted Kaczynski in his life-sentence.

He is a model prisoner and surely just cope with his life inside the penitentiary and bad working postal service (remember that he was using the postal service to send his deadly packages). And of course he also have things to say about the food and that sort of things.

No sex but breeding

" 'The question of, 'Why sex?' is a very central one to biology,' says David Mark Welch of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass."

And of course have the geneology-science found out that the asexuality isn't the deadend that was believed during the years.

The question is how the variation of genes fostered by sex. A flexibility of the genetic pattern in a population have been seen as only possible through breeding.

"an entire class of organisms, containing 360 species, seems to have evolved perfectly well without sex. This group of tiny water creatures, called bdelloid rotifers, is thriving in fresh water and soggy land worldwide despite, seemingly, no sex for at least 40 million years."

One shouldn't be sad when not getting some in a couple of weeks. (Science News Online)

Keats' neuron up two points

There's not only your soul you can sell. "Jonathon Keats, a 32-year-old conceptual artist and novelist, has announced plans to auction off futures contracts on 6 billion neurons in his brain, which he copyrighted this spring. The copyright, like all copyrights, lasts for the life of the creator plus 70 years." And the way of doing it was to copyright it as a sculpture which made it as an unique piece of art.

But Keats have also made Berkley to consider to pass the A=A-law: that everything in Berkley should be mandate to be equal to themselves. Keats, who is sort of a performance-actor in thinking, have really done a solid research to let the shareholders of his brain make a sustainable prediction of the financial value in buying his brain.

But the problem is that if the shareholders should get value from their investment Keats have to find a way to let his brain live after his bodily death. And he truly have the problem that he faces possible pressure not to endanger their investments. The days of hard partying could be over though "Thing is, though, if you get drunk enough, you can get lost and fall into the ocean and disappear, and then there is no brain. So the contract says you get a refund at full purchase price if the brain goes missing." (Wired News: He Thinks, Therefore He Sells)

Dinosaurs didn't die of the asteroid

Pretty interesting article about the discussion of the extinction of the great dinosaurs and of the theroy that made Gerta Keller a scientist of discussion:

"Keller and a growing number of colleagues around the world are turning up evidence that, rather than a single event, an intensive period of volcanic eruptions as well as a series of asteroid impacts are likely to have stressed the world ecosystem to the breaking point. Although an asteroid or comet probably struck Earth at the time of the dinosaur extinction, it most likely was, as Keller says, "the straw that broke the camel's back" and not the sole cause."

Mash your discohits

Mash up wellknown disco-hits and slice and cut some hitflicks.

That's the new idea in a lot of sites where the slice&cut-technique have been taken to new heights with the help of the digital equipment and computers.

Dsico Archives is one of them.

Updated Moog

An article about Robert Moog and the updating of the analog syntheziser.

Minimoog Voyager is the new version of the classical syntheziser and wired have a interview with Robert Moog. 69 years old he is still active and probably the most important person in modern music. (Wired 11.07: Heart and Soul in the Machine )

Brand new or just branding an old one?

A bright's worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements. The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview.

The atheists' is branding themselves and trying to make themselves a little more in the style of New Age. (The Brights)