Two Cambridge mates say they may turn their unusual method of trimming hedges into a business, after they suspended a ride-on mower from a crane to do the job.
"This is how the Waikato boys mow a hedge," the ride-on mower operator told the Waikato Times.
The operator, who did not want to be named, is now nursing a broken hand, but said it wasn't a fall from the mower that caused the injury but one off the crane.
He admitted it was not the safest method of trimming the hedge, but said it was all done as a bit of a joke.
The man had expected a real hedge trimmer to turn up on Sunday to mow the hedge, but when he didn't his mate arrived with his crane and a ride-on mower.
The next thing he knew he was being hoisted up on top of the two-metre high hedge.
"We were supposed to get all dressed up in our Mooloo gear and show people that this is how the Waikato boys mow their hedges."
The unusual sight bemused passing motorists. One passer-by, Bart Dinger, said it was a classic case of Kiwi ingenuity.
"A kiwi classic – jandals and all," he said.
The mower operator's wife burst out laughing when she drove home to see her husband on the hedge.
"I saw the crane first and thought 'great, the hedge is getting trimmed', but I didn't realise this was what they were planning," she said.
Her husband spent about 20 minutes mowing the hedge which had "got out of hand over winter".
"The mower was doing an all-right job, but I reckon it would work better on a hedge that's not so spiky." He said there was nothing in the instructions to say the mower couldn't be used on hedges and joked that they should go into the contracting business.
"I don't think Lady Macbeth is a bad person. I don't think anyone is intrinsically bad. Maybe she is just trying to revitalise her marriage?"
The Naval Research Laboratory's Ion Tiger, a hydrogen-powered fuel cell unmanned air vehicle (UAV), has flown 26 hours and 1 minute carrying a 5-pound payload, setting another unofficial flight endurance record for a fuel-cell powered flight. The test flight took place on November 16th through 17th.
The electric fuel cell propulsion system onboard the Ion Tiger has the low noise and signature of a battery-powered UAV, while taking advantage of hydrogen, a high-energy fuel. Fuel cells create an electrical current when they convert hydrogen and oxygen into water and heat. The 550 Watt (0.75 horsepower) fuel cell onboard the Ion Tiger has about four times the efficiency of a comparable internal combustion engine and the system provides seven times the energy in the equivalent weight of batteries. The Ion Tiger weighs approximately 37 pounds and carries a 4- to 5-pound payload.
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NRL has now demonstrated that PEM fuel cell technology can meet or surpass the performance of traditional power systems, providing reliable, quiet operation and extremely high efficiency. Next steps will focus on increasing the power of the fuel cell to 1.5 kW, or 2 HP, to enable tactical flights and extending flight times to 3 days while powering tactical payloads.
United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), the central research and innovation arm of United Technologies Corporation (NYSE:UTX), achieved first flight of a hydrogen/air fuel cell-powered rotorcraft. The successful technology demonstration was accomplished using a remote-controlled electric helicopter model modified to incorporate a custom Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) fuel cell power plant.
"Achieving vertical flight represents a key milestone in fuel cell-powered flight as the power density requirements are much greater than for fixed wing aircraft," said Dr. David Parekh, Vice President, Research, and UTRC Director. "In addition, this environmentally friendly power system produces zero pollution, zero emissions of greenhouse gases and operates with very low noise."
The pioneering flight using a high power-density PEM fuel cell took place on Oct. 11, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., on the East Hartford campus of UTRC. The remote-controlled helicopter originally designed to run on batteries had a rotor diameter of 2 meters and a takeoff weight of 10 kg. The duration of the fuel cell powered flight was approximately 20 minutes. The team plans to demonstrate longer flight durations in the future.
On October 1st, 2009 California Attorney General Jerry Brown announced that an investigation had been opened into ACORN’s activities in California, resulting from undercover videos showing employees seemingly offering to assist the undercover film makers with human smuggling, child prostitution and even tax advice to boot.
Although ACORN has denied any wrongdoing, some of the employees involved were terminated, and ACORN has publicly stated that they would fully cooperate with any investigations that followed.
Interestingly, the local head ACORN organizer in California, David Lagstein was caught on tape earlier this month speaking to an East County Democratic Club.
Mr. Lagstein stated: “…the attorney general is a political animal, but certainly every bit of the communication we have had with them has suggested that the fault will be found with the people that did the video and not the people with ACORN.”
Continuing, Mr. Lagstein stated: “…we are fully cooperating, some of the investigators visited our office this morning and I think they really understand what’s going on.”
Shockingly, we now learn that the ACORN office in National City (San Diego County) engaged in a massive document dump on the evening of October 9th, containing thousands upon thousands of sensitive documents, just days prior to the Attorney General’s visit.
BigGovernment.com has learned that not only did this document dump occur, but the documents in question were irresponsibly and brazenly dumped in a public dumpster, without considering laws and regulations as to how sensitive information should be treated.
I am a local licensed private investigator. I took it upon myself to keep an eye on what the local ACORN office was up to, in light of the release of the undercover videos. I retrieved these documents from the public dumpster.
Documents shared with BigGovernment.com include information exposing not only the inner workings of ACORN in California, but also personal, sensitive information belonging to employees, members and clients of ACORN. ACORN and its few remaining defenders insist that the “good” ACORN provides outweighs the transgressions exposed in the recent undercover video sting. But, ACORN’s massive dumping of these documents and the cavalier manner in which it betrayed the trust of its supporters betrays that talking point.
ACORN’s political agenda is also exposed, with thousands upon thousands of documents revealing the depth of the political machine that is ACORN, and its disturbing ties to not only public employee labor unions but some of the most radical leftist organizations.
The laws governing how sensitive, personal information such as social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, immigration records, tax returns, etc. must be treated are very stringent, and thus it seems as if ACORN may have committed serious violations in that department alone, with thousands upon thousands of potential plaintiffs.
Cheques are to be abolished under controversial plans being drawn up by bankers.
They are widely expected to vote next month for the chequebook to be consigned to history.
Yesterday, the move was criticised by consumer groups, business lobbyists and charities representing the elderly.
They raised fears that vulnerable people, who have relied on their chequebook all their lives, will be left confused.
Many others simply prefer to pay by cheque, instead of by direct debit or bank transfer.
The Payments Council said its research shows the number of cheques being written every day has fallen dramatically in recent years.
At their peak in 1990, around 11million cheques were written every day. Latest figures show the number has dropped to around 3.8million.
Cheques, which were first used in Britain 350 years ago, are also an expensive form of payment for banks.
They cost around £1 each to process, which is four times as much as electronic payments.
Human capital means the mental toolkit a person has—the stock of knowledge and skills that enable him to produce and solve problems. We benefit from accumulating human capital just as we benefit from accumulating physical capital (tools); both increase our productivity.
We augment our human capital through learning. That fact leads many people to jump to the conclusion that schooling necessarily adds to human capital. After all, when students take classes in grade school, then high school, then college, they’re engaged in learning. So the more time people spend in education, the more human capital they acquire.
. . .
Are we sure that students who attend (and perhaps graduate from) those school gain in human capital?
I don’t think so. Human capital gains occur when an individual improves his mental ability; when his learning enables him to better think through problems, produce value, communicate, evaluate options, and so on. Unfortunately, at many colleges and universities, students can easily pass courses with just the mental toolkit they possessed in high school. Yes, they briefly learn enough about subjects to pass their exams, but they could do that before. Short-term learning isn’t the same as improving your mental capacities.
Let’s put it this way: passing a college course no more indicates a human capital gain than just going to a gym indicates an improvement in physical fitness.
To get through college, many students don’t have to become better at reading, at writing, at math, at logic. Sadly, the key consideration at many colleges is not educational excellence or even modest progress, but simply enrolling and collecting tuition from as many students as possible. Therefore, course content has been watered down and expectations lowered so that even the weakest and most disengaged students can pass. As Steve Balch, founder of the National Association of Scholars says, “We don’t so much have higher education these days, as longer education.”
. . .
Taking college classes isn’t the only way to learn useful things. For many young Americans, it isn’t the best way and it’s a costly mistake to push them into college if they aren’t prepared for or interested in academic pursuits.
Although education is celebrated as one of the most important institutions of society, there is a casual disrespect for the content of what children are taught. Curriculum engineers often display indifference, if not contempt, for abstract thought and the knowledge developed in the past. Both are criticised for being irrelevant or outdated; only new information that can be applied and acted on is seen as suitable for the training – and it is training and not teaching – of digital natives.
In policy deliberations about education, the acquisition of subject-based knowledge is often dismissed as old-fashioned. Typically, an emphasis on the intellectual content of classroom subjects is labelled an outdated form of scholasticism that has little significance in our era. Policymakers often represent change as an omnipotent force that renders prevailing forms of knowledge and schooling redundant. In such circumstances, education must transform itself to keep up with the times. From this perspective, educational policies can be justified only if they can adapt to change.
Since they are likely to be overtaken by events, classroom innovations by definition have a short-term and provisional status. The instability that afflicts the education system is turned into the normal state of an institution that needs to be responsive to the uncertain flow of events. Although fads come and go, the constant feature of today’s throwaway pedagogy is a deep-seated hostility to teaching academic subjects to young people, especially to those who come from disadvantaged socioeconomic groups. So-called modernisers regard the subject-based curriculum as far too rigid for a school system that must adapt to a constantly changing world.
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In the worldview of the educational establishment change has acquired a sacred character that determines what is taught. It creates new requirements and introduces new ideas about learning. And it encourages the mass production of a disposable pedagogy. Educationalists adopt the rhetoric of ‘breaks’ and ‘ruptures’ and maintain that nothing is as it was and that the present has been decoupled from the past. Their outlook is shaped by an imagination that is so overwhelmed by the displacement of the old by the new that it often overlooks historical experience that may continue to be relevant.
The discussion of the relationship between education and change is frequently overwhelmed by the fad of the moment and with the relatively superficial symptoms of new developments. It is often distracted from acknowledging the fact the fundamental educational needs of students do not alter every time a new technology influences people’s lives. And certainly the questions raised by Greek philosophy, Renaissance poetry, Enlightenment science or the novels of George Eliot continue to be relevant for students in our time and not just to the period that preceded the digital age.
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The fetishisation of change is symptomatic of a mood of intellectual malaise, where notions of truth, knowledge and meaning have acquired a provisional character. Perversely, the transformation of change into a metaphysical force haunting humanity actually desensitises society from distinguishing between a passing novelty and qualitative change. That is why lessons learned through the experience of the past are so important for helping society face the future. When change is objectified, it turns into spectacle that distracts society from valuing the truths and insights it has acquired throughout the best moments of human history. Yet these are truths that have emerged through attempts to find answers to the deepest and most durable questions facing us, and the more the world changes the more we need to draw on our cultural and intellectual inheritance.
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One of the key tasks of education is to teach children about the world as it is. Although society is subject to the forces of change, education needs to acquaint young people with the legacy of its past. The term ‘learning from the past’ is often used as a platitude. Yet it is impossible to engage with the future unless people do draw on the centuries of human experience. Individuals gain an understanding of themselves through familiarity with the unfolding of the human world.
The transition from one generation to another requires education to transmit an understanding of the lessons learned by humanity through the ages. Consequently, the main mission of education is to preserve the past so young people have the cultural and intellectual resources to deal with the challenges they face. This understanding of education as renewal stands in direct contrast to the present predilection to focus the curriculum on the future.
If the parents are able to spend enough time with the child in the early years before school, and if they are able to supplement the child's official schooling with an authentic education provided at home and under the direct supervision of the family, the child will likely turn out fine. But most parents are too busy working for the tax collector and the bill collector to provide a child with a quality, meaningful contact education. And so the child is thrown to the experimenters.
Change is, undeniably, an everpresent condition of life -- particularly young life. But for the health of the child's mind it should be a background condition, not a foreground condition. If perverse educators and curriculum planners push the idea of "change" to the forefront, it too easily becomes a euphemism for meaningless emptiness and void substituted in the place of the deep and vital truths that all children must learn to create their own meaning within themselves.
Modern pedagogy assumes that this will happen on its own -- or they assume that if teachers of the proper ideology control education from top to bottom, the child can be set on the (politically) correct path by means of proper indoctrination.
But indoctrination is not education, and it has nothing to do with the deep morality that every child must learn -- regardless of the presence or absence of any religion in his life. The overriding emphasis upon political and ideological indoctrination combined with the fetish of "change" leaves an empty mind, a change zombie.
It is happening at all levels of education. It is reflected in our culture, in rampant political corruption. The widespread abandonment of books and solitude. The irritated dismissal of deep meanings that require more than a minute or two to absorb. The susceptibility to emotional pitches from well-cadenced politicians with speechwriters who understand the necessity of a short-attention-span appeal.
There is change, and there is meaningful change. The difference is lost to modern professors and graduates of university schools of education, but it is a critical difference. Most of the change that the young experience is meaningless, because they are moving from nowhere to nowhere. Meaningful change is moving from a significant somewhere to another significant somewhere.
But children are never given the opportunity to get anywhere -- they are pushed, twitter-like, from one distraction to the next without significant meaning ever setting in. Curriculum designers and educators are themselves lost in distraction, drifting in turbulent currents, having burned all their navigational charts as a demonstration of their independence of thought.
It is an ongoing tragedy of the wide-scale destruction of mind potential. It is simply how things are done in the age of change. Throw in a dash of hope for good measure. Better than nothing....
The way that lobsters are cooked causes concern to many chefs and animal-lovers alike - not to mention the unfortunate crustacean itself.
Traditionally, it is dropped alive into a pan of boiling water, where it emits a shrieking noise as it takes several minutes to die.
But all that could be about to change with a more humane device which kills the shellfish almost instantly - and, so its inventor claims, makes it taste better.
Entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven, 50, has created a device named the CrustaStun which uses an electric current to stun and painlessly kill shellfish such as lobsters, crabs and langoustines.
The machine can knock a large crustacean unconscious in less than 0.3 seconds and kill it in five to ten. Crabs take four to five minutes to die in boiling water, while lobsters take three minutes.
Some believe the noise made by lobsters in the pan is evidence of them experiencing pain, although others insist it is caused by the release of gases under the shell. The lobster's tail also flaps around as it tries to escape and it dies only when its core temperature reaches 34C.
While crabs remain silent when boiled alive, they shed their claws and legs as a defence mechanism and, because of this, are often put in fresh water and drowned for eight hours as an alternative.
. . .
The CrustaStun comprises a stainless- steel box roughly the size of a microwave containing a tray with a wet sponge and an electrode.
The crustacean is placed in the box and when the lid is closed the wet sponge conducts the current which electrocutes it.
The RSPCA and Peta are backing the device and there are hints of a possible EU directive recommending its use.
Crackpot planners have driven motorists up the pole - by leaving a 40ft pylon in the middle of a six lane highway.
The unmarked and unlit pole - in Zhengzhou, central China - has been the cause of dozens of accidents as unwary drivers smash into it.
And road signs only a few yards from the pole show an arrow directing drivers right into it at 50mph.
"We have complained to the council but they say it would cost too much to bury the cables underground so we are stuck with it," said local resident Chang Feng, 33.
The problem was caused when the road was widened and made worse when builders added an arrow less than 350 feet from the pole pointing straight at it.
The utility pole belongs to the local power authorities which explained that the pole used to be on the road side, but due to the widening of the road, the pole is now in the middle of the road.
A spokesman from the power authorities said: "They should have informed us before the road widening project, but none of us knew this. Now it's too expensive to move the pole."
Lazy workers are giving bosses' new security measures the finger - by sending off for kits to fake their own fingerprints.
Customers send their prints to an online company in Shandong, eastern China, which for 10 GBP sends back fake fingertips with perfect copies of the dabs.
It means anyone can fool fingerprint security systems just by slipping on the silica gel moulds.
The product has found a massive market in China where companies are scrapping old-fashioned sweep cards for fingerprints to clock on and off.
One customer Xiao Liu, 38, said: "We're fined 20 pounds (US $33) every time we're late and I used to ask a friend to punch me in until my bosses switched to fingerprints.
"Now I've just given some copies of my fingerprints to people on the early shift and I'm never late no matter what time I get up."
But the technology has massive implications for police and anti-terrorist authorities.
"People can simply steal a set of fingerprints and cause chaos with identity theft," said one expert.
At less than half an inch long, this tiny violin is, frankly, a bit of a fiddle to play.
But it's likely to scoop its creator Chen Lianxhi, 66, a world record for making the globe's smallest violin.
Chen, of Beijing, China, took seven years to craft the tiny instrument from 30 separate parts with strings thinner than a human hair.
"Although it's small each part is just as it would be on a full size violin. It can even play a tune, maybe not as pleasant as a larger instrument but it can make music," said Chen.
Scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains.
The scientists say the plan is not a scene from a sci-fi movie -- Big Brother won't be planting chips in your brain against your will. Researchers expect that consumers will want the freedom they will gain by using the implant.
"I think human beings are remarkable adaptive," said Andrew Chien, vice president of research and director of future technologies research at Intel Labs. "If you told people 20 years ago that they would be carrying computers all the time, they would have said, 'I don't want that. I don't need that.' Now you can't get them to stop [carrying devices]. There are a lot of things that have to be done first but I think [implanting chips into human brains] is well within the scope of possibility."
Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau told Computerworld that users will soon tire of depending on a computer interface, and having to fish a device out of their pocket or bag to access it. He also predicted that users will tire of having to manipulate an interface with their fingers.
Instead, they'll simply manipulate their various devices with their brains.
"We're trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves," said Pomerleau. "Eventually people may be willing to be more committed ... to brain implants. Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts."
To get to that point Pomerleau and his research teammates from Intel, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, are currently working on decoding human brain activity.
Pomerleau said the team has used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FMRI) machines to determine that blood flow changes in specific areas of the brain based on what word or image someone is thinking of. People tend to show the same brain patterns for similar thoughts, he added.
For instance, if two people think of the image of a bear or hear the word bear or even hear a bear growl, a neuroimage would show similar brain activity. Basically, there are standard patterns that show up in the brain for different words or images.
Pomerleau said researchers are close to gaining the ability to build brain sensing technology into a head set that culd be used to manipulate a computer. The next step is development of a tiny, far less cumbersome sensor that could be implanted inside the brain.
Such brain research isn't limited to Intel and its university partners.
Almost two years ago, scientists in the U.S. and Japan announced that a monkey's brain was used to to control a humanoid robot. Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University and lead researcher on the project, said that researchers were hoping its work would help paralyzed people walk again.
And a month before that, a scientist at the University of Arizona reported that he had successfully built a robot that is guided by the brain and eyes of a moth. Charles Higgins, an associate professor at the university, predicted that in 10 to 15 years people will be using "hybrid" computers running a combination of technology and living organic tissue.
Jamar Pinkney allegedly beat up 15-year-old Jamar Jr then marched him to wasteland, where he forced him to strip and kneel.
The teenager's mother, Lazette Cherry, told how he begged, 'No, Daddy! No' before Jamar Sr shot his son once in the head.
Cherry told reporters that Pinkney turned up at her home in Highland Park, Michigan, with a gun after she told him of his son's confession.
'I called and told his father this isn't something you sweep under the rug,' Cherry said.
'He started beating him right here,' Cherry added. 'I said, "No, please stop!"
But the father marched Jamar, a pupil at King High School, outside.
'He got on his knees and begged, ‘No, Daddy! No!’ and he pulled the trigger,' Cherry said. 'There wasn’t nothing that my son wouldn’t do for his father.
'He loved his father so much.'
Pinkney has been charged with one count of first-degree murder, three counts of felonious assault and one count of felony firearm.
He stood stoically in a Highland Park courtroom as Judge Brigette Officer ordered him back to jail without bail.
. . .
If something were to happen that would cause a reasonable person to lose control of himself, that is something the prosecution would have to take into account.'
Highland Park police investigators said Pinkney had reacted with rage when he attacked his son.
Cherry said the three-year-old's mother took the girl to a hospital to be examined. She said her son claimed that he didn't rape the little girl and kept his clothes on.
The exam showed no physical evidence of sexual trauma, Cherry said.
'He told because he knew it wasn't right,' she said.
