Convert Your Nation Into Star-Shaped Islands And Save It From Sinking [Concepts]

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The Maldives, a small nation consisting of 1,200 islands is gradually disappearing as sea levels rise. In an attempt to save the place, their government has signed off on the development of several "floating facilities" like this one.

Dutch Docklands/Dutch Watervalley, makers of many floating homes, are the starry-eyed folks working with the Maldives government on this project and they intend on creating tiered—and yes, star-shaped—mini-cities which won't be bothered by rising sea levels.

There doesn't appear to be a timeline for the project yet, but I'm assuming they'll get around to completing it before the entire nation disappears. [Inhabitat]


Microsoft Dev Team Sends Flowers to Internet Explorer 6’s Funeral [Image Cache]

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The funeral for Internet Explorer 6, one of the older members of the Microsoft family, was a pleasant affair with only a few protestors. Unfortunately representatives of the family were unable to attend and sent flowers and a note instead:

Thanks for the good times, IE6. See you all @ MIX, where we'll show a little piece of IE heaven.
-The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft

IE6's funeral arrangements—right down to the photographer— were made by design company Aten Design Group. They actually made it into a rather decent looking event:

Rest in peace, IE6. Even if we were enemies half the time. [Flickr via TechCrunch]


Google Beats ‘Em AND Joins ‘Em With DocVerse Acquisition [Google]

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Google's shopping spree continues. This time they've picked up a company called DocVerse, whose software will eventually allow seamless interoperability between Google Docs and Microsoft Office. That's right, Microsoft... the call is coming from inside the house.

You can already store and share Office files through Google Docs, but DocVerse adds the functionality of letting users collaborate directly on Office documents. As the crowing Google Blog puts it:

DocVerse is a small, nimble team of talented developers who share our vision, and they've enabled true collaboration right within Microsoft Office. With DocVerse, people can begin to experience some of the benefits of web-based collaboration using the traditional Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint desktop applications.

Current DocVerse users won't be affected, but you won't be able to sign up for a new account until Google figures out exactly how they're going to incorporate the company. Of course, Microsoft was moving Office to the cloud on their own anyway; it's just that it'll be a bit more crowded there than they'd thought. It's official, though: even productivity software is a battleground now. [Google Blog via TechCrunch]


Giuliani endorses Michael Grimm, Republican for US Congress – Staten Island, NY

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A Combat Veteran and 9/11 First Responder

Michael Grimm is the hardline conservative choice for US Congress in the GOP primary for NY CD 13 - Staten Island (and small section of Brooklyn). This is the former Vito Foreselli seat, that is now held by a Pelosi Democrat. It is an expected potential GOP pick-up.

From GrimmforCongress.com

Michael Grimm's service to our nation began at the age of nineteen, when he left college after his freshman year and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to serve a country that he loves and respects. After serving in the Persian Gulf War and being awarded a Combat Meritorious Promotion to NCO, he returned as a combat veteran to an active reserve status.

"I am proud to be an American and will never apologize for our greatness, nor will I lament our lack of perfection. The good that America does in the world is unique in the history of mankind, and even if some may denigrate it, we, the people who believe in the innate goodness of the United States, have a right to be proud of our country and its achievements."

On fiscal matters:

Immediately lower taxes across the board to stimulate the economy and create jobs. I will fight for the following tax-cutting principles:

•Dispense with the Capital Gains Tax for then next two years so that investors have incentive to go back into the market to invest in small businesses, technology and the surplus housing stagnating throughout the country.
•Temporarily reduce the Employment Tax by 30 to 40 percent which will enable business owners to hire more workers and provide employees with more money to spend.
•Extend the Bush Tax Cuts.
•Reduce the Corporate Tax to a flat 18 to 20 percent.

He staunchly opposes Obama's Health Care and calls it not only unConstitutional but outright "Socialism."

CeBIT Remainders: 8 Reasons We Didn’t Go [Remainders]

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Every year, Hanover, Germany hosts hordes of tech journalists, analysts, and PR people for CeBIT. It's like CES, sort of, except further away, and more boring. We decided not to go this year; it ends tomorrow. Here's what we missed!

To be clear, these were some of the bigger stories of the conference, at least for American audiences. We've written a few other CeBIT stories up as well, which you can find here, but by and large, the event just sort of came and went. So, this is what was happening over in Hanover this week, while the rest of the tech world was going about their business.

Pierre Cardin Tablet: Wikipedia tells me that Pierre Cardin is a "Italian-born French fashion designer" who is famous for his "space age" clothing designs. He's paired up with a small Taiwanese OEM to make a tablet—the old foldy kind, not the slate-like new kind. It's pink, and it will cost $450, if it ever hits stores in the US.

ASUS EeeTop ET2010PNT and ET2010AGT On the exterior, ASUS EeeTops are basically a budget take on the AIO concept you're familiar with from the likes of the iMac and HP's Touchsmarts. On the interior, as with most ASUS products, they're incomprehensible parts soup.

Shuttle I-Power External GPU: Breaking news, for people who would like to buy a box that's nearly the size of a netbook and which can help boost their notebook's graphics capabilities! (But only certain notebooks, because you need a special adapter!) The Shuttle I-Power External GPU is ready to accommodate your fantasies.

1Cross B'ook ereader: Entourage eDGe on a budget: The first step here is to try to remember what the Entourage eDGe is. Now that you've done that, the second step is to figure out why you care about this cheaper, gaudier, and somehow less practical take on the same concept.

Intel Atom for Storage Devices: Intel's Atom processors, traditionally meant for netbooks and cheap laptops, are about as unglamorous as tech products get. I'd even hold that this was true five minutes ago, which was before I'd even heard about the Intel Atom for storage devices, which is a special version of the platform for household and small business network storage devices.

New Intel Classmate: Intel's ultra-budget Classmate convertible tablet PCs are evolving! (Slightly!) Here is the reference design for the newest one, which is quite similar to earlier reference designs on the outside, but adjusted slightly for cost and performance reason on the inside.

LG 12x Blu-ray drives: Did LG not have 12x Blu-ray writers before? Are these just new versions of their old Blu-ray devices? Such are the mysteries of CeBIT, which could easily be solved, if anyone cared enough to Google for backlinks.

ASUS O!Play USB 3.0: We're big fans of the ASUS O!Play set-top boxes around here and we're not very slightly more enamored with the concept, now that it supports USB 3.0.


Lip-Reading Cell Phones Will Be Great For Phone Six [Science]

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German researchers are working on mobile phone technology that would convert silent mouth movements into speech. It's an ingenious way to have a noiseless conversation, but if they don't get it right there could be some unfortunate mix-ups.

The tech—developed at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology—involved uses electromyography, and measures the electrical potentials generated by muscle activity in the face to translate mouth movements into speech. You'd be able to speak silently, but the person on the other end of the line would hear what you were saying loud and clear.

Of course, lip-reading is an inexact science—even more so, I would imagine, when implemented by a machine. So while you'll be able to share PIN numbers without sharing it with the whole room, you'll want to proceed with caution on more intimate conversations. [Cellular News via Dvice]


Assorted friends of Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell: PETA, GreenPeace, NPR, Michael Moore, Al Franken and Middle Easterners

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From Eric Dondero:

Friend and Contributor to Libertarian Republican blog, Tim Daniel of California, has been doing the yeoman's work of investigating Pentagon shooter John Patrick Bedell, who is also from California.

What Tim has come up with clashes greatly with the major media spin emerging on Bedell. Perhaps the very worst media spin today came from the Christian Science Monitor that headlined: "Bedell a Rightwing extremist." Others even called him an "anti-government libertarian."

Bedell, it's now being learned, seems to be much more of a leftwinger, and though he had some views that could be described as libertarian such as pot legalization, the overwhelming majority of his views leaned decidedly to the far leftside of the political spectrum such as 9/11 Trutherism. He defintely was not a rightwing libertarian, pro-military, or conservative. In fact, he went out of his way to bash former President Bush.

Some excerpts from Tim's investigations:

* I do have though is a list of the friends that his profile is linked to. Right off the bat I see several middle eastern sounding names many students.

* Here's something juicy. John Patrick Bedell is (was) friends with a certain individual linked to TrineDay Publishing (conspiracy), First World, Michael Moore, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (why?) and CLG (check out the Facebook group that resists corporaterrorism, and the New World Order).

* John Patrick Bedell was also Facebook friends with noted libertarian/anti war guy Lew Rockwell (as are 5,000 other people), which doesn't surprise me being that Lew Rockwell is one of the most noted antiwar spokesmen in the country. From what I have gleaned I can see that Bedell clearly had an anti-government bent. I don't see it as a left/right anti government bent, I see it as a fringe blend of tortured ideas.

Finally, this bit of breaking news as noted by Tim in another updated blog post:

Per Michelle Malkin I have a doozy of a detail about John Patrick Bedell the deceased Pentagon shooter that the main stream media is trying to pin on the Tea Party movemnent or conservatives in general.John Patrick Bedell, aka the Right Wing Extremist, Tea Party John Patrick Bedell was registered to vote and actively registered up to 2008. Tea Party guy John Patrick Bedell who decided to drive across the country (from Hollister, CA) and engage in a shootout with the Pentagon (not exactly a bright idea) was registered to vote --- as a Democrat.

You can see all the documentation, including Bedell's voter id information at Left Coast Rebel.

Methane is Increasing Global Warming

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CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas to worry about.  According to Lisa Jackson of the EPA, the  ‘methane expo’  (that ended today) will help us mitigate climate change by finding ways to capture and use it.  A ‘methane partnership’ between  several countries has been in existence since 2004 and has already been capturing methane (according to the EPA) for years.

Methane comes from a lot of sources.  It’s coming up from the melting ocean beds, it’s emitted right now from the melting permafrost, mostly in Siberia and Canada, and global warming is going to make this situation worse. This excerpt is from the Atlantic, today:

“Unexpectedly huge quantities of Siberian methane are being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. The resulting feedback loop could dramatically outpace the climate models that scientists and policy makers have been using as they attempt to roll back emissions.

When it comes to climate change, methane is bad news: It is 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide in causing increased atmospheric temperatures.  A National Science Foundation study in today’s issue of Science found that melting permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is causing an annual release of nearly 8 million tons of methane.   Eight million tons is a relative a pittance compared to the 80 million metric tons produced by livestock around the world each year.”

That’s a lot of methane! It’s true that cows produce a lot of CO2 and methane (they emit both) and there is a fear that some day cows will become illegal to raise for food.  I doubt that will ever happen completely, but it’s true that if people stopped eating beef and other mammals the CO2 and methane levels would decrease a lot. There is no need at all for humans to eat other mammals, and mammals bred for meat are responsible for a surprising amount of greenhouse emissions.  Many of these emissions could be eliminated by eliminating these animals as a food source, which would decrease their populations, and decrease the pollution commercial animal farms produce too.

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that livestock accounted for 18% of greenhouse gases, making livestock emissions “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.” However recently, Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C. environmental think-tank, reported that livestock emissions actually account for 51% of greenhouse gases.  Source.

It’s very clear that we need less cattle in the world raised for food.   Also see this from today: Huge methane leak in Arctic Ocean. More on the methane expo after the break . . .

From the EPA:  Why is there so much concern about methane emissions?

Methane is [30-50] times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Over the last two centuries, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled, largely due to human-related activities. Methane now accounts for 16% of [...]

Show Us The Money

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Garver: Battle Over Obama Plan Imperils NASABudget Growth, Space News

"Think of it this way: If you are focused on getting the Constellation budget continued in the future -- and I harbor no ill will against those of you who do ... but if Constellation is put back in the budget without that $5 billion-a-year increase, where will we cut the budget?" she asked."

Maintaining America's lead role in space (Rep. Bill Posey), The Hill

"Providing sufficient funding for Constellation will ensure that we do not abandon the investments already made. To that end, we should work to see that America's lead role in human space exploration is maintained, not surrendered to Russia and China."

Sen. Hutchison pitches sizable expansion to proposed NASA budget, The Hill

"The space program's proposed 2011 budget would see a $1.3-billion boost under a new bill proposed by Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R). Her legislation, unveiled Thursday, would also postpone indefinitely the retirement of NASA's manned-spaceflight program, and establish an independent commission to assess the agency's shuttle system."

The Apple Lawsuit Rampage We’d Love to See [Humor]

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Apple's lawsuit against HTC made one thing clear: Steve. Jobs. Will. Cut You. And with all the patents they've got? Nobody's safe. Here's who's next on the subpoena warpath:

Patent #8,567,301: A Process to Cryogenically Microbead Pasteurized Dairy
Defendant: Dippin' Dots

Patent #5,475,939: Inexpensive Self-Assembled Home Furnishings With Names That Sound Like Lesser Norse Gods
Defendant: Ikea

Patent #6,374,752: Constructing an Opulent Hyper-Futuristic City Without Having the Resources to Maintain It
Defendant: Dubai

Patent #3,405,356: Music Composition Utilizing Three Chords In Sequence and Repetitive Anti-Establishment Lyrics
Defendants: Joey Ramone; Iggy Pop; Johnny Rotten; et al

Patent #2,366,291: How a Bill Becomes a Law
Defendants: Congressional and Executive Branches of US Government; "School House Rock"

Patent #4,769,002: Placing "I" Before "E" (Excepting Those Occasions In Which Preceded By "C" Or When Phonetically Comparable to "A")
Defendants: Strunk and White; My Third Grade Homeroom Teacher; the English Language

Patent #9,753,482: Achieving Fame Despite Lack of Discernable Talent or Drive
Defendants: Paris Hilton, Spencer Pratt, the Cast of "Tool Academy," et al

Patent #1,749,682: Dogs
Defendants: Dogs


high altitude oven oriface

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is there a way that a range/oven can be installed and tested properly at 8'000 ft without voiding the factory warrentee. My oven was putting out 450 ppm of CO and my frend (an old plumber) was able to de-rate it so it was putting out 7 ppm. But it was not by the book (tighten down the hood oriface)

Citizen Scientists Find Interstellar Dust Retrieved From Space | 80beats

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IDustStardust just can’t seem to stay out of the news. NASA’s comet chaser, named Stardust, returned a sample of celestial material to Earth in 2006 that has produced numerous fascinating findings. Those include the study we covered last week, in which scientists showed that materials that formed near our sun made it out to the far reaches of the solar system to collect on comets. This week, it’s not NASA astronomers making the headlines, but rather citizen scientists who appear to have found the first evidence of interstellar dust in the Stardust samples.

Stardust’s main mission was to gather material from the comet called Wild 2. But on the way, the team deployed a secondary panel of aerogel to try to catch interstellar dust. The researchers hoped to catch 100 or so interstellar grains from the weak but continuous flux in open space. The elements in these grains were forged in stars, but coalesced into grains in the empty space between stars [Nature News]. However, there’s much less dust in interstellar space than there is in a comet tail, and it moves faster, making it harder to catch. When scientists started looking at the sample dropped down to the Utah desert in 2006, it wasn’t clear if Stardust had nabbed any interstellar dust at all.

So NASA called in reinforcements, starting the Stardust@Home project in 2006. Over the last four years, “dusters” scanned millions of tracks in the sample looking for these grains. The first winner was Canadian Bruce Hudson, who named his grain “Orion.” Hudson suffered a stroke in 2003, and he turned to the Stardust@Home project in 2006 as a productive way of passing the time. For a year or so, he spent as much as 15 hours a day scanning thousands of pictures, five seconds per slide [Nature News]. Two probable dust particles have been found thus far.

Orion, say the Stardust researchers who checked it out, is glassy and rich in aluminum. Andrew Westphal of the University of California, Berkeley who announced the find, said the project leaders would use the discovery to try to fine-tune the search for more. “The interstellar dust is fundamentally the stuff we’re made of” [Nature News], he says.

Related Content:
80beats: Spacecraft-Collected Comet Dust Reveals Surprises from the Solar System’s Boondocks
80beats: Dust Collected From Comet Contains a Key Ingredient For Life
80beats: Meteorite, Maybe Older Than The Sun, Shows Chemistry of Ancient Solar System
DISCOVER: NASA Takes a Wild Comet Ride
DISCOVER: 14 Ways to Use Your Computer’s Spare Time
Bad Astronomy: Stardust@home Starts NOW

Image: NASA


The Prettiest Way To Learn About Satellites [Satellites]

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This Is Real Art, a company that aims to "bridge the gap between design and advertising," recently completed a series of animated videos on the subject of satellites. They're the perfect combination: the subject matter is geeky, the animation gorgeous.

The series, which was produced for European satellite maker Astra, covers every aspect of the machines over the course of seven videos: History, Physics, Control, Launch, Why We Need Satellites, Business, and The Future.

Here's the second video of the set on the physics of satellites:

You can watch the entire series over at This Is Real Art. The company says they'll be used for education as well as marketing, and I must say, I'd be a lot more receptive to advertising if it always looked this good. [This Is Real Art via Creative Review]


The little black bikini

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During a recent conversation, my friend (who wears black exclusively) expressed that it is surprisingly difficult to find a black bikini. Most are embellished with metal, plastic, stone, beading, or jewel accents to add oomph to the simplicity of the design and color. Always up for a challenge, I set out to find black bikinis that rely on fabric and construction to make their designs unique and interesting.

All the two-pieces below are shown in, or available in, black fabric.

Retro Black

The cut, draping, and fabric appliques up the ante on the little black bikini.

Retro-chic Black. Images courtesy of Eres, Seafolly, and Betsey Johnson

Left: Belem-Santiago by Eres (available in black on black)
Center: Goddess by Seafolly
Right: Ladies & Gentlemen by Betsey Johnson

Affordable and Chic
Victoria’s Secret offers chic selection for under $40. Look for details such as stitching and side ties to make your black bikini more interesting.

Affordable and Chic. Images courtesy of Victoria's Secret.

Left: Adjustable triangle top with Brazilian bottom

Right: Triangle top with double-string bottom

Look to the bottom for details

Two-piece suits tend to emphasize the top but these suits add interesting details to the bikini bottom, such as delicate tassles and sassy ruching.

Look to the bottom for details. Images courtesy of Eres and Vix

Left: Severa-Fado by Eres (available in black)
Right: Ripple Rio by Vix

Construction

The construction of the top makes this my favorite by far.

Construction details are subtle and super chic. Image courtesy of Eres

Wanda-Mescalito by Eres (available in black)

Just for Fun

The design is too clean and the fabric too luxurious to let a teeny, tiny metallic detail (that can easily be taken off with a stitch remover) get in the way of Ondademar’s hot black two-piece.

Beach Solids by Ondademar. Image courtesy of Ondademar

The tie knot and the draping detail on the bottoms make Jubilation by L*Space all-around adorable.

Jubilation by L*Space. Image courtesy of L*Space

Fringe Benefits Dolly Bandeau by L*Space is au courant and balanced with a simple design on the bottom.

Fringe Benefits by L*Space. Image courtesy of L*Space