In January of 2010, an elementary school teacher decided to eat school lunch every day for a year and write about it anonymously as Mrs. Q. on her blog, Fed Up With Lunch.
She secretly photographed the meals, ate them and then described the taste and texture of heavily processed chicken nuggets, an unusual peanut butter and jelly sandwich that made her sick, mystery meats and reheated vegetables. She developed a following of thousands of people.
This week she is revealing her identity for the first time — Sarah Wu, 34, a speech pathologist in the Chicago public schools — and releasing her new book, Fed Up With Lunch (Chronicle Books). "With the blog, I really wanted a public record of these meals that I couldn't believe were being served to kids," she says. "I thought the book would reach a wider audience."
It all started one day when Wu didn't have time to pack her own lunch and bought a school lunch instead. It was a hot dog encased in soggy dough, six tater tots, a Jell-O cup and chocolate milk, she says. "I thought to myself, 'I cannot believe this is the food the kids are eating'."
He oozed arrogance, was vicious about business rivals, and in contrast to, say, Bill Gates, refused to have any truck with notions of corporate responsibility. He habitually parked his Mercedes in the disabled parking slot at Apple headquarters and one of his first acts on returning to the company in 1997 was to terminate all of its corporate philanthropy programmes.
Jobs's management style owed less to Zen Buddhism than to George Orwell. No aspect of corporate life was immune from his authority and he was almost pathologically controlling when it came to dealing with the press.
Journalists found that he would try to stifle even anodyne stories if they had not received his blessing. One described getting an interview with Jobs as about as easy as getting an interview with Saddam Hussein, "except Saddam would probably be more helpful and certainly more polite".
He ruled Apple with a combination of foul-mouthed tantrums and charm, withering scorn and carefully judged flattery. People were either geniuses or "bozos", and those in his regular orbit found that they could flip with no warning from one category to the other, in what became known as the "hero-shithead roller coaster". Employees worried about getting trapped with Jobs in a lift, afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened.
One senior executive admitted that before heading into a meeting with Jobs, she embraced the mindset of a bullfighter entering the ring: "I pretend I'm already dead."
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Millions of Japanese were stranded in downtown Tokyo on March 11 afternoon after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake closed down the sprawling mass transit system. “Suddenly, bikes became a lot more attractive to many people,” says the Nikkei. In a matter of minutes, bicycle stores were empty.
In the aftermath, saving power replaced Buddhism and Shinto as a religion in Japan. Salary-men were urged to ditch their blue suit and tie for “super cool biz” (short sleeves and open collars). Thermostats of the A/C were set to barely bearable, the nation perspired for a noble cause, and the bike race was on.
In short order, bikes turned into big business. Downtown office buildings opened high-tech full-service indoor bicycle parking operations: Racks for the bikes, showers, lockers. The monthly fees are steep: They range from $200 to $300 a month per bike. That approaches Manhattan fees – for a car. But in Tokyo, I get a free shower and don’t have to tip Gonzalez. I can also buy a bike for the same price. A really cool bike.
The real craze in Tokyo is not the Roppongi daytraders that switched his Porsche for a Miyata (the bicycle.) The REAL craze in Japan is mamachari.
That’s a Japanese portmanteau of “mama” (mama) and “charinko” (bicycle): It denotes a utility bike with chainguard, fenders, rack, skirt guard, dynamo lights, baskets, and child carriers. It used to be to conveyance of choice of a housewife with two small children and shopping bags. Helmets? Who needs them?
Now, mamachari have been co-opted by the super-cool set. There are weekly mamachari meets, mamachari races, and of course, gobs of mamachari blogs.
The mamachari is a cultural icon, it's the Japanese equivalent of the family station wagon. It's the family workhorse used on shopping runs, for riding to the local station, taking the kids to school or picking them up from sports practice. Without it families around the country would be in a right pickle.
The defining features include a top tube bent low that is easy to step over, a shopping basket on the front, a luggage rack on the back, mudguards, chain guards, dynamo lights, an integrated lock, a bell and a hefty rear stand that keeps the bike stable and upright when parked.
Oh, I forgot one of the most defining features of the mamachari, which is brakes that go "SCREEEEEEEEEEEECH!" when even slightly feathered, startling everyone within earshot.
After purchasing a mamachari, the upgrade of choice is a child seat. These can be mounted on the rear luggage rack or behind/between/in front of the handlebars. It's not unusual for a mamachari to sport two child seats, and on occasion you'll spot one with three! When the government implemented a ban recently on carrying two children on a mamachari mothers across Japan campaigned against the ruling and the government was forced to back down.
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When buying a bicycle most Japanese don't consider anything other than a mamachari and initially I found this odd because when I think of bicycles I think recreation, mountain biking, commuting, racing, or for getting air off the top of a set of stairs. But in Japan I realized I'm in the minority, as even your average Japanese male purchases a bike for its utility, for making short trips to the station with a briefcase in the basket and carrying groceries home from the supermarket etc.
In a country of 130 million people 85% own a bicycle. Who'd have guessed that the majority use their bikes for practical purposes rather than jumping gaps?
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For those of you saying "Well thats fine but you can't race a mamachari can you?" I'd like to direct your attention to the Mamachari Endurance Race held annually at the Tokachi International Speedway which attracts hundreds of participants and thousands of spectators all of whom enjoy the festival like atmosphere. Suffice to say its all just a little fun with few serious racers, but plenty of great costumes.
An explosive investigation into the massive mistakes being made with power bills reveals serious flaws that affect nearly every electricity user.
A whistleblower has told how his his power company offered to pay him off when he uncovered issues with their smart meter billing, sparking calls for a national inquiry.
Australia's Energy bosses have reason to be concerned, as one man's discoveries are about to become public knowledge.
Evidence of serious systemic billing errors affecting Australia's largest power company Origin Energy have come to light - resulting in overcharging and usage mistakes as high as 200 per cent.
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With a Bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering, a Master's in digital communication, a Doctorate in computer science and a stint as a forensic software analyst, [Dr.] Jayasooriah is the last person a company would want ‘questioning’ their business.
But Origin had little choice, and having suspected his bills were corrupt, Jayasooriah asked the Energy Ombudsman to review them. This is when cracks began to appear for Origin.
On the 16th of April a senior investigator with the Energy Ombudsman's office emailed Jayasooriah to ‘acknowledge the possibility of error’, confirming the bill was incorrect. However when Origin tried to correct it, they couldn't.
“They have tried to bill me three times, and they have given me three different figures,” he said.
For the same period he was billed for $460.08, $442.96, and $579 – not knowing if any of the amounts were actually correct.
Nor, it seems, does Origin or the Ombudsman.
. . .
... when Jayasooriah finally got a hold of ... consumption data, he uncovered information that may rock the foundations upon which our bills are constructed.
“They have given me something that is impossible to happen from a technical perspective.”
According to his calculations the company is suggesting he used more energy than he was actually supplied.
Origin claim the data comes from distributor Ausgrid. Ausgrid and Origin claim usage data is not fiddled with, and yet every time Origin issue Jayasooriah with a new bill, his usage information changes. In some cases by more than 300 per cent.
David Levy is an associate professor in electronic engineering at Sydney University. He acknowledges these mistakes could affect everyone with interval or smart meters.
“It means that there's some error in the processing or in the capturing of the data, which applies broadly to all users of such meters,” he said.
“It suggests that there is probably broader implications.”
If you bought a major appliance in the last three years, odds are it was "smart," even if you didn't know it. Meaning: it probably contains a wireless radio that can broadcast and transmit over a small personal area network, sending out information about a device's status and energy use, as well as receiving commands that alter its behavior.
Many appliances that don't even announce they have this capability are equipped with it, says Mike Beyerle, an engineer at GE whom I recently interviewed about GE's coming Nucleus home energy management system.
"We want to build up a base before we make a big deal out of it," says Beyerle.
It's an intriguing twist on the old business maxim "under-promise, over-deliver." In this case, manufacturers aren't even telling consumers what their devices are capable of because, in part, those abilities are useless without an energy management hub like GE's Nucleus or a utility company's smart meter.
. . .
Once a device is hooked up to an energy management system, things get interesting. Did you realize, for example, that your refrigerator's ice maker's defrost cycle can be shifted to another time of day by your utility in order to drive down power use during times of peak demand?
Ditto your clothes dryer. If a user is signed up for a "demand response" program in which they agree to have their energy consumption remotely reduced by a utility in exchange for a lower bill, various elements of a dryer can be shut down. For example, it might be set to dry at a lower heat but for longer, allowing the same level of drying but with less energy consumed.
Under pressure from FIRE, national media, and actors Nathan Fillion and Adam Baldwin, the University of Wisconsin-Stout (Stout) has reversed its censorship of theater professor James Miller's poster featuring a line from Fillion's character in Joss Whedon's television series Firefly.
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At least 1,000 people wrote Sorensen in defense of First Amendment rights at Stout, and dozens of articles about the case appeared in the national media. Today, Baldwin (co-star of Firefly) wrote about Stout's apparent double standard in censorship. Baldwin noted that earlier this year, Stout apparently had no problem with "Kill the Bill" posters based on the film Kill Bill, which depicted Uma Thurman with a sword and advocated against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's budget bill.
Finally, in a letter to all faculty, staff, and students today, the three senior administrators announced that Stout had reversed its decision, is developing a new protocol for handling such cases, and "will schedule workshops and/or forums during this academic year on First Amendment rights and responsibilities in higher education."
I was always drawn to the fun side of image manipulation, the kind of stuff you can do using photos of your friends.
When I first started using photoshop I learnt quite a lot by trying to do that sort of stuff, turning people into JEDI’s, putting them onto movie posters, etc. Then gradually as the years went by I moved on to doing more professional retouching jobs and as I started to learn a different set of techniques I didn’t really do as much of the fun stuff anymore.
So… With that in mind. I decided to do some fun stuff! Yeah, why not!
One thing I’ve always wanted to try (I have a list) is to incorporate someone into a painting, mimicking the painterly brush strokes and making everything fit and work nicely and look natural and stuff. There’s an art to head swapping, I’ve seen so many awful attempts. The most important things to consider are anatomy, perspective and lighting. If you can get those things right, you’re more than halfway there. My artistic ability serves me well with this stuff, I can just tell if something looks wrong.
So I found a bunch of images online, faithful photographic reproductions of original artwork by George Dawe. He was an English portrait artist who lived in St Petersburg in 1819. He was commissioned to paint portraits of Russian Generals who had successfully fought Napoleon in the Patriotic War of 1812 and over a nine year period he completed over 300 of them.
Luckily for me the two dimensional works of art are in the public domain because the copyright has expired (under UK law this typically means the author died over 70 years ago) this means they can be used as a basis for a derivative work without permission.
... country music is the sound of American politics. Think about it. There are always references to family, church, farmers, factory workers, small towns, etc. Politicians use the same approach word for word whether it’s referring to kitchen tables or visiting small towns. Furthermore, politicians never forget their obligatory mentions of farmers – which is particularly confusing since the vast majority of Americans no longer farm. According to the BLS, fewer than 1.2 million Americans are employed in farming, fishing, and forestry. Frankly, most Americans aren’t farmers and neither are most listeners of country music. So why the constant appeal to the farming profession? In my opinion, it’s a national obsession with a pastoral fantasy that no longer exists. And for this reason, it manages to pull at our heart strings.
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While country music artists sing about working on the farm, many rap singers recount tales of growing up on welfare. With 46 million Americans collecting food stamps, which story better fits the modern American experience: the farmer or the welfare recipient? Exactly, but let’s take it one step further. The US currently has 2.3 million inmates behind bars. There are about 5 million Americans on parole or probation. Compare those numbers to the less than 1.2 million farmers.
In my opinion, rap music is a refreshing reminder that we’re not in Kansas any more. We don’t live in a country where everyone is really hard-working and was raised with good values. A sizeable portion of the population has no intention of staying out of trouble and getting a solid job. Their career ambitions amount to being the toughest and most-respected thug on the street. Their idea of a good time is some cheap drinks and if in luck, smoking a little crack or crystal meth in front of the TV. A good chunk of the US citizenry is not interested in balancing the budget and steering the nation to the “right” course. They do not give a damn if Rome burns the ground. In fact, they’re ready to partake in its destruction.
While country music may make us feel good, it’s just not a reflection of reality. Travel to an urban hellhole near you, and the whole rap music thing will make a whole lot of sense.
The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.
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In academic papers and a popular book, American Mania, Whybrow argues, in effect, that human beings are neurologically ill-designed to be modern Americans. The human brain evolved over hundreds of thousands of years in an environment defined by scarcity. It was not designed, at least originally, for an environment of extreme abundance. “Human beings are wandering around with brains that are fabulously limited,” he says cheerfully. “We’ve got the core of the average lizard.” Wrapped around this reptilian core, he explains, is a mammalian layer (associated with maternal concern and social interaction), and around that is wrapped a third layer, which enables feats of memory and the capacity for abstract thought. “The only problem,” he says, “is our passions are still driven by the lizard core. We are set up to acquire as much as we can of things we perceive as scarce, particularly sex, safety, and food.” Even a person on a diet who sensibly avoids coming face-to-face with a piece of chocolate cake will find it hard to control himself if the chocolate cake somehow finds him. Every pastry chef in America understands this, and now neuroscience does, too. “When faced with abundance, the brain’s ancient reward pathways are difficult to suppress,” says Whybrow. “In that moment the value of eating the chocolate cake exceeds the value of the diet. We cannot think down the road when we are faced with the chocolate cake.”
The richest society the world has ever seen has grown rich by devising better and better ways to give people what they want. The effect on the brain of lots of instant gratification is something like the effect on the right hand of cutting off the left: the more the lizard core is used the more dominant it becomes. “What we’re doing is minimizing the use of the part of the brain that lizards don’t have,” says Whybrow. “We’ve created physiological dysfunction. We have lost the ability to self-regulate, at all levels of the society. The $5 million you get paid at Goldman Sachs if you do whatever they ask you to do—that is the chocolate cake upgraded.”
The succession of financial bubbles, and the amassing of personal and public debt, Whybrow views as simply an expression of the lizard-brained way of life. A color-coded map of American personal indebtedness could be laid on top of the Centers for Disease Control’s color-coded map that illustrates the fantastic rise in rates of obesity across the United States since 1985 without disturbing the general pattern. The boom in trading activity in individual stock portfolios; the spread of legalized gambling; the rise of drug and alcohol addiction—it is all of a piece. Everywhere you turn you see Americans sacrifice their long-term interests for short-term rewards.
What happens when a society loses its ability to self-regulate, and insists on sacrificing its long-term interest for short-term rewards? How does the story end?
Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors.
Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
Demand four: Free college education.
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Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now.
Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants.
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Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live.
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Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period.
Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies.
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For political context we ... need to step back to April 16, 2009 — four or five months before we think Fast and Furious began. On this day President Barack Obama was visiting Mexico. While there he said, “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here but in the United States … more than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States, many from gun shops that lay in our shared border.”
This 90% statistic was, to be kind, math so shoddy a third grader should know better.
The figure was based only on guns the Mexican government sent to the ATF for tracing. On April 2, 2009, Fox News reported that, according to statistics from the Mexican government, only about a third of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico are submitted to the ATF. The Mexicans, as it turns out, only send guns to the ATF they think came from the U.S. Also, many guns submitted to the ATF by the Mexicans cannot be traced. As a result, the reporters determined that only 17% of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced by the ATF to the U.S.
Now, because President Obama used the made-up 90% figure to push political positions — he was using the statistic to argue that the U.S. needs more gun-control laws — it’s difficult not to sniff politics in what happened next.
Later in 2009 the ATF started the Fast and Furious program by allowing firearms to be smuggled from U.S. gun stores into the arsenals of Mexican criminal gangs. As these guns wouldn’t be seen again until they resurfaced in crimes (there were no tracking devices installed or other means to trace these guns), the only purpose for letting these guns “walk” seems to be to back up the president’s position that guns used in Mexican crimes mostly come from the U.S. (Though the Obama administration insists the gun sales were a part of a new crime-fighting technique.) Also, given the cover up that has ensued since Fast and Furious broke, it doesn’t seem like a conspiratorial leap to conclude that politics mixed with policy to create this crazy program. (But again, administration officials insist this wasn’t about politics.)
Gun storeowners have a right to think it was about politics.
Sometime around September 2009, ATF agents began pressuring gun storeowners in Arizona to sell firearms to people the ATF thought would sell the guns to Mexican cartels and gangs. As gun-storeowners can’t do business without federal licenses, and because the ATF has the authority to shut down a gun store if the establishment’s paperwork isn’t in order, these requests were likely taken as orders. This put the gun storeowners in a catch-22: the law requires them to report suspicious activity and not to sell to people they think are breaking the law, yet the ATF was telling them to sell to suspicious people who wanted to buy AK-47s by the dozen.
Actually, it’s even worse than that: According to court records obtained by Fox News, two of 20 alleged smugglers who were later indicted in the Fast and Furious investigation had felony convictions. As gun-stores must run a person’s name through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before selling that person a firearm, this should have stopped these felons from buying even one measly.22 rifle.
Congressional and law-enforcement sources say this situation suggests the FBI, which operates the NICS system, had to have knowingly allowed the purchases to go forward after consulting with the ATF. Given that we know the director of the FBI was in on at least one early meeting on this issue, this seems logical.
Given all the politics and the cover up that even the former ATF director says has occurred, could operation Fast and Furious have been about anything other than pushing for new gun-control laws? And given all of this obfuscation from the Obama administration, isn’t this scandal comparable to the cover up that surrounded Watergate?
The Ig Nobel Prizes are an American parody of the Nobel Prizes and are given each year ... for ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. The stated aim of the prizes is to "first make people laugh, and then make them think".
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The first Ig Nobels were awarded in 1991, at that time for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Ten prizes are awarded each year in many categories, including the Nobel Prize categories of physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace, but also other categories such as public health, engineering, biology, and interdisciplinary research.
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The awards are sometimes veiled criticism (or gentle satire) ... Most often, however, they draw attention to scientific articles that have some humorous or unexpected aspect. Examples range from the discovery that the presence of humans tends to sexually arouse ostriches, to the statement that black holes fulfill all the technical requirements to be the location of Hell, to research on the "five-second rule", a tongue-in-cheek belief that food dropped on the floor will not become contaminated if it is picked up within five seconds.
Medicine: To two teams from the Netherlands and the United States who studied how having the urge to pee can affect one’s decision-making. The first team found that when people have to pee a little, they make quicker, better decisions. The second group found that when they really have to pee, they become basket cases, more dangerous on the road than drunk drivers (“Hey! There’s a gas station! I’ll pull over!”). To quote from their paper in Neurourology and Urodynamics: “The magnitude of decline in cognitive function associated with an extreme urge to void was as large and equivalent or greater than the cognitive deterioration observed for conditions known to be associated with increased accident risk.”
Psychology: To Karl Halvor Teigen of the University of Oslo “for trying to understand why, in everyday life, people sigh.” (No, we don’t do it when we’re sad, or breathe sighs of relief. Teigen’s survey showed we do it when we’re ready to throw in the towel.)
Physics: To four French physicists and one Dutch colleague, “for determining why discus throwers become dizzy, and why hammer throwers don’t.”
Chemistry: Ever had too much wasabi, the bright green stuff at a Japanese restaurant? Makes your mouth feel like it’s on fire, right? Seven Japanese researchers applied this observation in order to make perhaps the world’s most original alarm for real fires. They calculated “the ideal density of airborne wasabi (pungent horseradish)” to spray on sleeping people in case of emergency.
A SMALL Japanese company has developed a modern, miniature version of Noah's Ark in case Japan is hit by another massive earthquake and tsunami: a floating capsule that looks like a huge tennis ball.
Japan's Cosmo Power says its "Noah" shelter is made of enhanced fiberglass that can save users from disasters like the one on March 11 that devasted Japan's northern coast, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead or missing.
Company president Shoji Tanaka says the 300,000 yen [about US $3,900] capsule can hold four adults, and that it has survived many crash tests. It has a small lookout window and breathing holes on top. It also can be used as a toy house for children.
Scientists are developing a "stay sober" pill which allows you to drink as much as you want while limiting the effects of alcohol on their brains.
In tests for the drug, mice given the drug did not even display signs of getting tipsy, despite being fed enough alcohol to make them stumble and fall over.
The research paves the way for a tablet that stops people embarrassing themselves on nights out.
Facebook has touched a nerve with a broad range of critics upset about the social network's latest batch of online sharing technology.
Ten consumer and privacy groups have joined Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Tex., in calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate new sharing mechanisms designed to accelerate the collection and dispersal of information about Facebook users' Internet activities.
In the spotlight are Timeline, a feature that maps everything a user has ever done on Facebook, and several "Open Graph" applications designed to broadcast a user's surfing patterns and Web interests to friends and friends of friends.
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Laura Antonini, research attorney at Consumer Watchdog, says Facebook's new sharing features "disregard the privacy of its users by making sweeping changes that expose personal information without giving users the chance to choose what information they want shared with the world."
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Meanwhile, security experts say Facebook has also raised fresh security concerns, as well. The company has recently rolled out new mechanisms to encourage users to share more educational, career and health information, and to recruit "subscribers" to follow them on Facebook, akin to how people follow each other on Twitter.
Crime gangs will almost certainly tap into the richer information Facebook users divulge about themselves to trick victims into infecting their PCs with a virus, says Catalin Cosoi, researcher at antivirus firm Bitdefender. "This will make it a lot easier to obtain valuable information about an individual," Cosoi says.
And as the company promotes Twitter-like following of recent wall posts among Facebook users, spamming scams now common on Twitter almost surely will migrate to Facebook. "Facebook has underestimated the sophistication of the cyber underground," says Tom Kellermann, chief technical officer of mobile security firm AirPatrol. "If you build it they will come."
The donkey-sized machine is designed to carry up to 400 pounds of gear and follow troops over rough terrain on missions of 20 miles and up to 24 hours.
That's more than BigDog's payload of 340 pounds and 12 miles; as a general rule, horses can comfortably carry up to 240 pounds. AlphaDog will have some degree of autonomy like animals, using computer vision to follow a leader or automatically trotting to GPS way points.(Image courtesy of Boston Dynamics)
AlphaDog is also quieter than BigDog, and obviously doesn't run on the latter's noisy Leopard go-kart engine. We should see more details about the beast over the next six months.
"We expect to have the full-up system ready for initial field testing in mid-2012," says Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert.
I just hope he has enough Milk-Bones to keep it happy.
AIR safety investigators will examine why a Ferris wheel was installed next to an airstrip following yesterday's dramatic plane crash at a carnival on the mid north coast.
Amber Arndell, 13, and her brother Jessie, 9, had to be rescued from the top of the Ferris wheel. The pilot of the microlight, Paul Cox, 53, and his passenger, John Rowan, 32, were trapped for almost three hours inside the wreckage as it dangled 10 metres off the ground after it struck the ride at the Old Bar Festival at Taree about 10.20am yesterday.
''I went nose up and straight into it. Next thing I know I was stuck inside the Ferris wheel,'' he said.
At one stage, emergency services were forced to spray the plane with foam because it was leaking fuel on to the wheel, heightening fears of an explosion.
A Rural Fire Service spokesman confirmed all four people involved escaped unharmed.
Witnesses said the Cheetah S200 took off from a grass airstrip but failed to gain sufficient altitude to clear the Ferris wheel, which was placed at the southern end of the strip for the festival.
Following a loud ''crunch'', crowds of festivalgoers gathered at the scene, gasping at the sight of a plane dangling from the ride, and how close it had come to hitting the children.
When congressional leaders earlier this month named six lawmakers from each party to a debt reduction “supercommittee,” investing unprecedented power in a tiny cadre to slash funding, they set off a wild scramble among special interest groups to gain access and protect their interests.
Yet many groups with the most at stake didn’t have to change their plans. Some members of the supercommittee received more campaign contributions in July from political action committees controlled by corporations, unions and other lawmakers than anyone else in Congress, disclosures filed this weekend show.
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The bulk of the nearly half-million dollars given to supercommittee members came from PAC's linked to the finance, insurance, real estate, and health industries — all of which stand to lose billions if committee members don’t protect their interests.
“They’ve already had longstanding relationships with these members and had them in their sights,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political influence. Now, the supercommittee members are “going to attract donations by virtue of living.”
Nearly all of the PAC contributions are in the thousands of dollars and come from groups aiming to further the mission of a trade group, corporation or labor union. The totals aren’t complete, because many groups report spending not on a monthly basis, but twice a year.
Doctors’ groups, whose business would be roiled by Medicare reform, gave tens of thousands of dollars to debt committee members; the PAC of the United Services Automobile Association, which sells insurance to military families, gave $27,000; the American Bankers Association gave $14,000; and two labor groups representing government employees even made donations to Republican supercommittee members.
