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U.S. retailer Toys ‘R’ Us is being accused of discrimination for disqualifying the winner of its sweepstakes for first baby born in 2007.

Yuki Lin entered the world at midnight New Year’s Day at New York Downtown Hospital, the New York Times reported Saturday.

However, Toys ‘R’ Us disqualified her and rescinded the $25,000 savings bond prize because her mother was a Chinese immigrant whose legality in the United States was in question, the newspaper said.

The prize was instead awarded to a baby born in Georgia 19 seconds later.

Yuki’s parents could not be reached for comment and it was not known whether they were legal immigrants, but the infant became a U.S. citizen upon birth, the newspaper noted.

What began as a publicity stunt has now drawn criticism and threats of a boycott from Chinese-Americans just one month after Toys ‘R’ Us opened its first store in Shanghai, China, The Times said.

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The obvious objections to the execution of Saddam Hussein are valid and well aired. His death will provoke violent strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and between Iraqis in general and the American occupation forces. This was an opportunity to set a good example of civilized behavior in dealing with a barbarically uncivilized man. In any case, revenge is an ignoble motive. If President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are eventually put on trial for war crimes, I shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged.

But I want to add another and less obvious objection: Hussein’s mind would have been a unique resource for historical, political and psychological research, a resource that is now forever unavailable to scholars.

Imagine that some science-fiction equivalent of Simon Wiesenthal built a time machine, traveled back to 1945 and returned to the present with a manacled Adolf Hitler. What should we do with him? Execute him? No, a thousand times no. Historians squabbling over exactly what happened in the Third Reich and World War II would never forgive us for destroying the central witness to all the inside stories, and one of the pivotal influences on 20th century history. Psychologists, struggling to understand how an individual human being could be so evil and so devastatingly effective at persuading others to join him, would give their eyeteeth for such a rich research subject.

Kill Hitler? You would have to be mad to do so. Yet that is undoubtedly what we would have done if he hadn’t killed himself in 1945. Hussein is not in the same league as Hitler, but, nevertheless, in a small way his execution represents a wanton and vandalistic destruction of important research data.

He should have been locked up, by all means. Kept him in jail for the rest of his life, to be sure. But to execute him was irresponsible. Hussein could have provided irreplaceable help to future historians of the Iran-Iraq war, of the invasion of Kuwait and of the subsequent era of sanctions culminating in the invasion. Uniquely privileged evidence on the American government’s enthusiastic arming of Hussein in the 1980s is now snuffed out at the tug of a rope (no doubt to the relief of Donald Rumsfeld and other guilty parties; it is surely no accident that the trial of Hussein neglected those of his crimes that might — no, would — have implicated them).

Remember the accident with my car on December 4th? Well, here’s the brand new replacement…

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As a scholar of the Maya civilization, I was anxious to see Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the Maya in “Apocalypto.” Of course, I realize the movie is not a documentary and was mindful of the director’s artistic license. I was happy to see that Gibson got some details right, like personal adornment, tools, and body decoration. Although the main actors are native North Americans, I applaud Gibson’s use of some Maya actors, as well his decision to have the characters speak in a native Maya language, Yukatek, still heard in Mexico. While these are brave and ambitious choices, they also imply that “Apocalypto” is a sincere depiction of Maya society. In fact, the movie is not an accurate portrayal of the Maya at all; rather, it is a reflection of Gibson’s own feverish imagination.

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In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first computer with a hard disk drive (HDD). The HDD weighed over a ton and stored 5MB of data.

IBM 350 Disk Storage – 5MB Hard Disk

The IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit provides storage capacity of the disk drive was 5MB (referred to at the time as 5 million characters). It was configured with 50 magnetic disks containing 50,000 sectors, each of which held 100 alphanumeric characters.

With the cabinet covers on, the IBM 350 Disk Storage Unit measured 5’ 8�? tall, 5’ wide and 2’ 5�? deep, whilst it weighed in at massive 250kgs. The unit comprised fifty 24�? platters, one pair of read/write heads and a pulley system that provided both the vertical and horizontal head movement.

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Richard Hammond’s infamous crash will be shown on television, according to Jeremy Clarkson.

Top Gear is set for a new series this month, and is likely to screen the footage after Hammond gave his permission.

“Half the world wants to see the crash so I’m sure we will show it,” Clarkson conceded. “We’re looking into whether we’ve enough footage of good quality. I imagine we’ll be using it in the first show.�?

Hammond, who miraculously now has a full bill of health, will return to the programme himself to film the new series, which begins shooting on January 24.

Clarkson added that the new series would not be toned down, despite Hammond’s accident, claiming there would be a total of 35 new stunts.

“We have also got footage of us being chased out of Alabama after locals thought we were homosexuals,” the presenter laughed.

The first episode of the new series will be screened on January 28.

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Strangers on my flight,
turbans they’re packin’.
Wonderin’ if they might,
plan a hijacking.
They could pull a stunt,
before this flight is through.

(click for the full song and the soundtrack…)

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And the Apple booth carefully hidden from sight…

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)