[Quote:]

Just by gazing at the stars, earthling astronomers might have unwittingly picked up broadcasts from extraterrestrial civilizations. So says a neutrino physicist, adding that it might take researchers just a few months of searching to find evidence of this alien internet.

[..]

To send messages using a Cepheid, Learned and his colleagues suggest that extraterrestrials might change the star’s cycle. A Cepheid becomes dimmer as ionized helium builds up in its atmosphere. Eventually, the atmosphere expands and deionizes, restarting the cycle.

Firing a high-energy neutrino beam into a Cepheid could heat its core and brighten the star early — “just as an electric pulse to the heart can make it skip a beat,” Learned says.

The neutrinos could be made by blasting a proton beam at a target — sapphire, carbon or tungsten would work, says Learned. The target produces subatomic particles, mostly pions, which decay to produce neutrinos.

Just fire an inverse tachyon beam through a re-polarized deflector dish, if my Star Trek techno-babble is still up-to-date. Amazing…

In the left column, almost at the bottom, you’ll find a little world map with the estimated locations of the last 100 visitors to this weblog, based on ip address.

I’ve been looking at it a few times, and I’m amazed by all the locations you people live at who managed to find my little weblog.

Welcome, all of you! I’d love to visit quite a lot of the places I see on that map…

It’s a pity you have to turn to al jazeera to find a simple explanation of what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are.

[Quote:]

One hundred per cent reliable on high-volume trading days

Oh.

Okay.

So that’s what happened…

Google Placed Wrong Date on Story

[Quote:]

Some new and disturbing footage following an air raid on Azizabad seems to be forcing the US military to do a U-turn on civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

The US claims that only seven civilians died, while Afghan and UN officials say the death toll is closer to 90. The cell phone camera footage will be part of “new evidence” considered in the reopening and review of the investigation into the events of the Azizaban air strike. Human Rights Watch claims that overall civilian deaths have nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007 to at least 321 fatalities, while the International Red Cross has called for greater precautions against indiscriminate killings.

[Quote:]

The biggest project that Sarah Palin undertook as mayor of this small town was an indoor sports complex, where locals played hockey, soccer, and basketball, especially during the long, dark Alaskan winters.

The only catch was that the city began building roads and installing utilities for the project before it had unchallenged title to the land. The misstep led to years of litigation and at least $1.3 million in extra costs for a small municipality with a small budget. What was to be Ms. Palin’s legacy has turned into a financial mess that continues to plague Wasilla.

“It’s too bad that the city of Wasilla didn’t do their homework and secure the land before they began construction,” said Kathy Wells, a longtime activist here. “She was not your ceremonial mayor; she was in charge of running the city. So it was her job to make sure things were done correctly.”

[Quote:]

Gov. Sarah Palin made her first potentially major gaffe during her time on the national scene while discussing the developments of the perilous housing market this past weekend.

Speaking before voters in Colorado Springs, the Republican vice presidential nominee claimed that lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.”

[..]

Economists and analysts pounced on the misstatement, which came before the government had spent funds bailing the two entities out, saying it demonstrated a lack of understanding about one of the key economic issues likely to face the next administration.

“You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country’s mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn’t speak well for her, I’d say.”

So that’s why they’re preventing her from visiting any talk show. She’s too uninformed.

I guess I like being mentioned more than most politicians would…

[Quote:]

It was in St. Paul last week that Palin drew raucous cheers when she delivered this put-down of Obama: “Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.”

Obama had a few problems with that.

“First of all, you don’t even get to read them their rights until you catch ‘em,” Obama said here, drawing laughs from 1,500 supporters in a high school gymnasium. “They should spend more time trying to catch Osama bin Laden and we can worry about the next steps later.”

If the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks are in the government’s sights, Obama went on, they should be targeted and killed.

“My position has always been clear: If you’ve got a terrorist, take him out,” Obama said. “Anybody who was involved in 9/11, take ‘em out.”

But Obama, who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for more than a decade, said captured suspects deserve to file writs of habeus corpus.

Calling it “the foundation of Anglo-American law,” he said the principle “says very simply: If the government grabs you, then you have the right to at least ask, ‘Why was I grabbed?’ And say, ‘Maybe you’ve got the wrong person.’”

[..]

“The reason that you have this principle is not to be soft on terrorism. It’s because that’s who we are. That’s what we’re protecting,” Obama said, his voice growing louder and the crowd rising to its feet to cheer. “Don’t mock the Constitution. Don’t make fun of it. Don’t suggest that it’s not American to abide by what the founding fathers set up. It’s worked pretty well for over 200 years.”

[Quote:]

As simple as a typo. Your vote in the 2008 U.S. election won’t [2:00-9:00] count if voter caging parties can help it. Vote caging works basically like this – (1) Send do-not-forward mail to the address listed on your registration. (2) If it comes back return to sender, your registration is challenged and can be thrown out without notice. “A challenged voter will likely cast a provisional ballot….Nearly a third of all 1.6 million provisional ballots cast in 2004 were thrown out.”

If you think you have anything in common with the delegates to either RNC or DNC, check this;

Voices of the Delegates: Democrats : Republicans

[Quote:]

The campaign to save Bletchley Park from decay and disrepair is moving stateside.

On Tuesday, a fundraising group organized by IBM and the cryptography firm PGP plan to launch a US campaign to raise awareness of the historical landmark and raise donations for its preservation.

Bletchley Park was home to UK code-breaking operations during World War II, and the site where the German Enigma code was cracked. It also housed Colossus, the world’s first programmable computer.

Today, Bletchley is home to the National Museum of Computing — but a lack of funding has sadly made the facilities fall into a state of decay.

PGP said as an encryption firm, the company has a strong connection to the pioneer work that went on at Bletchley Park. PGP CEO Phillip Dunkelberger said the company also believes the technology industry as a whole owes a huge historical debt to Bletchley Park and has a duty to preserve and protect the site for future generations.