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Bo Diddley, the musical pioneer whose songs, such as “Who Do You Love?” and “Bo Diddley,” melded rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll through a distinctive thumping beat, has died. He was 79.

Diddley died Monday, surrounded by family and loved ones at his home in Archer, Florida, a family spokeswoman said.

The cause was heart failure, his family said.

[..]

Guitarist George Thorogood, a Diddley disciple, put it more bluntly.

“[Chuck Berry's] ‘Maybellene’ is a country song sped up,” Thorogood told Rolling Stone in 2005. ” ‘Johnny B. Goode’ is blues sped up. But you listen to ‘Bo Diddley,’ and you say, ‘What in the Jesus is that?’ ”

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The U.S. Climate Change Science Program has just released “Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3: The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States.” It makes for pretty interesting reading.

• Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.
• Higher temperatures will negatively affect livestock. Warmer winters will reduce mortality but this will be more than offset by greater mortality in hotter summers. Hotter temperatures will also result in reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals.
• Forests in the interior West, the Southwest, and Alaska are already being affected by climate change with increases in the size and frequency of forest fires, insect outbreaks and tree mortality. These changes are expected to continue.
• Much of the United States has experienced higher precipitation and streamflow, with decreased drought severity and duration, over the 20th century. The West and Southwest, however, are notable exceptions, and increased drought conditions have occurred in these regions.
• Weeds grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2. Under projections reported in the assessment, weeds migrate northward and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.
• There is a trend toward reduced mountain snowpack and earlier spring snowmelt runoff in the Western United States.
• Horticultural crops (such as tomato, onion, and fruit) are more sensitive to climate change than grains and oilseed crops.
• Young forests on fertile soils will achieve higher productivity from elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Nitrogen deposition and warmer temperatures will increase productivity in other types of forests where water is available.
• Invasion by exotic grass species into arid lands will result from climate change, causing an increased fire frequency. Rivers and riparian systems in arid lands will be negatively impacted.
• A continuation of the trend toward increased water use efficiency could help mitigate the impacts of climate change on water resources.
• The growing season has increased by 10 to 14 days over the last 19 years across the temperate latitudes. Species’ distributions have also shifted.
• The rapid rates of warming in the Arctic observed in recent decades, and projected for at least the next century, are dramatically reducing the snow and ice covers that provide denning and foraging habitat for polar bears.

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Twice a year, Steve Jobs takes the stage extending his reality distortion field over the masses. It is a wildly celebrated holiday for Mac fanatics all over the world. And since 2006, thousands of people follow the keynote with our Keynote Bingo application in hand - and Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 will be no different! The Swedish Bingo team, comprised mainly of trolls, polar bears and snowpeople, have once again produce a new, jaw-dropping version of Keynote Bingo: WWDC Bingo 08!

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Many juniors and seniors were driven to tears – a few to near hysterics – May 26 when a uniformed police officer arrived in several classrooms to notify them that a fellow student had been killed in a drunken-driving accident.

The officer read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on the deceased student’s seat, then left the class members to process their thoughts and emotions for the next hour.

The program, titled “Every 15 Minutes,” was designed by Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Its title refers to the frequency in which a person somewhere in the country dies in an alcohol-related traffic accident.

About 10 a.m., students were called to the athletic stadium, where they learned that their classmates had not died. There, a group of seniors, police officers and firefighters staged a startlingly realistic alcohol-induced fatal car crash. The students who had purportedly died portrayed ghostly apparitions encircling the scene.

[..]

“I want them to be an emotional wreck. I don’t want them to have to live through this for real.”

In other words, child abuse is a good method to prevent drunk driving, and lying and cheating are acceptable to promote your cause. What’s wrong with these people?

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The price of regular at a Shell gas station in Petworth gleamed defiantly in the midday sun: $3.91 a gallon.

But unlike the customers rolling up to the station’s pumps this week, resigned to the fact that their wallets were about to take a beating, Rocky Twyman and company had a plan to bring that number tumbling down.

They would ask God to do it.

[..]

It was the latest demonstration by Twyman’s movement, Pray at the Pump, which began in April. Since then, he has held group prayers at gas stations as far away as San Francisco, garnering international media attention and even claiming success in at least a couple of cases.

Some would say the proof of whether Twyman has the ear of the Almighty is in the result. On the first day of the movement, April 23, the national average price of a gallon of unleaded was $3.53, according to AAA. As of yesterday, it was $3.96.

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A subsidiary of U.S. military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide has purchased a fighter plane from the Brazilian aviation company Embraer, a Brazilian newspaper reported Sunday.

The 314-B1 Super Tucano propeller-driven fighter — the same used by the Brazilian military — was bought for $4.5 million and delivered to EP Aviation at the end of February, according to the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper.

The report included the plane’s registration number with the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency, and the FAA website confirmed it is registered by EP Aviation.

How’s that for outsourcing war?

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