World's largest laser fires up for attempt to build new star on Earth

SCIENTISTS are using the world's largest laser in an attempt to build a star on Earth.

The laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is roughly the size of three American football fields, and those in charge of it aren't joking when they say they'll create a tiny sun in the next few months.

It's called the National Ignition Facility and it's all about finding the holy grail of energy production - nuclear fusion - a high-energy reaction that would theoretically provide limitless energy for humanity.

In a nutshell, the laboratory hopes to split its laser beam up into 192 beams, then fire them at a tiny target wrapped in gold that's smaller than a fingernail.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/worlds-largest-laser-fires-up-for-attempt-to-build-new-star-on-earth/story-e6frfro0-1225859764407

Burning Meteorite on Tel Aviv Beach

At Least Five Deadly Grenade Explosions in Thai Capital

Iceland volcano eruption intensifies again, altering UK and Ireland plans

http://www.examiner.com/x-3122-Chicago-International-Travel-Examiner~y2010m4d19-Iceland-volcano-eruption-intensifies-again-altering-UK-and-Ireland-plans

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano giveth and the Eyjafjallajökull volcano taketh away.

The trouble-making volcano under an Iceland glacier blew hot and less hot Monday, alternately creating despair and hope among European airlines.

The National Air Traffic Services in the United Kingdom was optimistic that some flights might be able to get in and out of London tomorrow, but late this evening was sounding pessimistic again.

“The volcano eruption in Iceland has strengthened and a new ash cloud is spreading south and east towards the UK,” a NATS statement noted. “This demonstrates the dynamic and rapidly changing conditions in which we are working.”

Google, YouTube Received 10,000 Government Requests for User Data

and the Google-owned YouTube received more than 10,000 requests for user data from government agencies in the six months ending Dec. 31, 2009, according to newly released data.

"Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products," Google says on a new site that sheds more light onto government demands for user information and requests to take offensive material off the Web.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194651/google_youtube_received_10000_government_requests_for_user_data.html

Working in a Chinese sweatshop for HP, Microsoft, Dell and IBM

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090212-working-hp-microsoft-china-serving-prison-sentence-sweatshop-dell-ibm-china

A report issued by human rights activists reveals that young migrant workers are labouring under sweatshop conditions for IBM, Microsoft, HP and Dell in a factory in China. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, the people who put your keyboard keys into place are paid 60 euro cents an hour to do it. And they're not even allowed to raise their heads or go to the toilet...

Taiwanese-owned Meitai factory in Dongguan City, Guangdong province (southeast), employs two thousand young workers, 75% of them women, to produce computer equipment including keyboards and printer cases for Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM (as we go to press IBM and Dell are yet to confirm this). The damning research, published online by the National Labor Committee, was carried out between June and September of 2008, and updated mid January 2009. When we contacted the companies cited in the report, only Microsoft and HP replied to say that they had been made aware of the report. Both gave similar statements about their commitment to the "fair treatment and safety" of workers contracted to produce their software.

Microsoft's Skinput turns hands, arms into buttons

tlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- In Chris Harrison's ideal world, mobile phones would be the size of matchbooks. They'd have full-size keyboards. They'd browse the Web. They'd play videos.

And, most importantly, you'd never have to touch them.

Sound like too much to ask? Maybe not.

Harrison, a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University and a former intern at Microsoft Research, has developed a working prototype of a system called Skinput that does just that, essentially by turning a person's hand and forearm into a keyboard and screen.

"People don't love the iPhone keyboard. They use them. But they don't love them," Harrison said in a interview at the recent Computer-Human Interaction conference. "If you could make the iPhone keyboard as big as an arm -- that would be huge."

The story of your enslavement

Europe's airlines and airports question flight bans

Europe's air industry has called for an urgent review of flight bans imposed because of volcanic ash from Iceland.

The bodies representing most European airlines and airports have questioned the need for the unprecedented curbs, which affect millions of travellers.

Airlines that have carried out test flights say planes showed no obvious damage after flying through the ash.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas said he hoped 50% of Europe's airspace would be risk-free on Monday.

He said the current situation was "not sustainable" and European authorities were working to find a solution that did not compromise safety.

EU Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas: "We have an unprecedented situation"

"We cannot just wait until this ash cloud dissipates," he added.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8628323.stm

Volcanic ash disrupts more flights across Europe... :-/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/04/16/iceland.flights.volcano/?hpt=T2

London, England (CNN) -- Volcanic ash from Iceland snarled air traffic across Europe for a second day Friday, causing the cancellation of some 16,000 flights, according to the intergovernmental body that manages European air travel.

Bangkok: Red Shirts

Economic Hitmen

Disclose.tv Economic Hitmen Video

High-Speed Robot Hand

The Facts - Marijuana

Wtf...

Last night I was drunk
I don't remember much
But what I do constant pictures
Thats how going I was
But he was tall and he was buying
So I gave him a trying
Said he was like a stallion
And the man wasn't lying

Last I remember I was face down
Ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off
Even though I'm not sure of his name
He could get it again if he wanted
Cause the sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular (yeaaah)
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular

So it was the morning after
I couldn't get home faster
Doing the walk of shame
In the same clothes from yesterday
I think he pulled a track out
When he was blowing my back out
What was I drinking
I cant believe I blacked out

Last I remember I was face down
Ass up, clothes off, broke off, dozed off
Even though I'm not sure of his name
He could get it again if he wanted
Cause the sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular (yeaaah)
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular

You can say what you want but
You can call me a slut but
What he did to me last night felt so good
I must have been on drugs
I hope he used a rubber
Or I'mma be in trouble
Promise I don't remember
Except for
Give it to me, give it to me
Ooh baby what a ride ride
Oh ride ride
So smooth like it beats
I like the heat
Ooh baby what a night night
Right right

Cause the sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular (yeaaah)
The sex was spectacular
The sex was spectacular



Butterfly Butterfly on the wall...

Vivos Underground Shelter - Barstow, CA

UN judge calls for prosecution of Pope Benedict

Geoffrey Robertson, a renowned human rights lawyer and United Nations jurist, wants to see Pope Benedict put on trial for allegedly protecting predator priests.

In a Guardian UK piece making its rounds this week in Catholic circles, Robertson demanded the pope be "put in the dock" so that the church might "feel the full weight of international law" over its thousands of pedophilia scandals.

The pope's conduct, he said, "amounted to the criminal offence of aiding and abetting sex with minors," making Benedict a justifiable target for either the International Criminal Court or a British court acting under the legal principal of universal jurisdiction.

Other international figures who've recently been pursued by various courts under universal jurisdiction include several former Bush administration attorneys and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for the torture of terror war prisoners, along with Israeli officials who helped launch the 2008 Gaza offensive.

"Universal jurisdiction — a concept in international law — allows judges to issue warrants for nearly any visitor accused of grievous crimes, no matter where they live," the Associated Press reported. "British judges have been more open to the concept than those in other countries."

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0410/judge-calls-prosecution-pope-benedict/

New Element Discovered 117

A little square that has been left blank on the periodic table for all these years might finally be filled in. A team of American and Russian scientists have just reported the synthesis of a brand new element–element 117. Says study coauthor Dawn Shaughnessy: “For a chemist, it’s so fundamentally cool” to fill a square in that table [The New York Times].

If other scientists confirm the discovery, the still-unnamed element will take its place between elements 116 and 118, both of which have already been tracked down. A paper about element 117 will soon be published in Physical Review Letters, and scientists say the new element appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/04/06/new-element-discovered-but-dont-ask-about-its-name/

Military Craft dropping chaff

To Crack the Mystery of the Hexagon on Saturn, Researchers Model it in Water

A giant hexagon circling Saturn's north pole has puzzled scientists for decades. Now researchers have managed to recreate the pattern in the lab using little more than water and a spinning table, Science Now reports.

The Saturn hexagon seems to represent the strange rigid path of a jet stream, with each of the six sides being one Earth diameter in length. NASA's Voyager spacecraft first spotted it in the early 1980s, and the Cassini spacecraft has followed up with more visible-light and infrared images.

Physicists at the University of Oxford set out to recreate the Saturn pattern by placing a 30-liter cylinder of water -- almost 8 gallons -- on a slowly spinning table. They also placed a small ring inside the water tank that whirled more rapidly than the cylinder and created a miniature lab version of the jet stream.


Green dye helped the team see how the jet stream changed over time. It turned out that the rate of ring rotation changed the shape of the pattern from a circle to just about anything, including ovals, triangles, squares and various polygons. A bigger difference between the planet and jet stream led to fewer-sided polygons.

The experiment suggests that Saturn's north polar jet stream spins at a certain rate compared to the rest of the planet's atmosphere which favors the hexagon pattern. Similar phenomena have shown up in the centers of hurricanes.

A full report appears in this month's issue of the journal Icarus. But anyone craving a time-lapse spinning image of the Saturn hexagon can look here at some of Cassini's latest handiwork.

Plane crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski

WARSAW, March 29, 2010 (AFP) - Poland's economy is stable and no longer needs its 21.8-billion dollar (16.2-billion euro) credit line from the International Monetary Fund, the Polish central bank said on Monday.

"The situation with the Polish economy and the financial system is sufficiently good ... that it is not necessary to ask the IMF for a further extension of the flexible credit line," the bank said in a statement.

The central bank said it could instead provide the IMF with a loan to "help other countries overcome the effects of the global crisis."

The finance ministry, however, insisted it still wanted to have a reserve at hand if the economy ran into fresh headwinds.

Reis naar Bangkok ontraden :(

Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken ontraadt naar de Thaise hoofdstad Bangkok af te reizen. In de hoofdstad eisen zogenoemde roodhemden al weken nieuwe verkiezingen. Dit weekeinde kwam het tot geweld, waarbij zeker achttien doden vielen.

Het ministerie adviseert degenen die toch gaan, samenscholingen en demonstraties te mijden. Ook het dragen van een rood shirt wordt afgeraden. Dat kan worden gezien als steunbetuiging aan de aanhang van voormalig premier Thanksin Shinawatra. Ook een geel shirt valt niet bij iedereen in even goede smaak, omdat dat de kleur van zittend premier Abhisit Vejjajiva is.

Ook wordt degenen die toch gaan, aangeraden dat te melden via de website van de Nederlandse ambassade in Bangkok, zodat zij in geval van nood snel bereikt kunnen worden.

Voor sommige andere delen van Thailand ontraadt het ministerie al langer er heen te reizen. Dat heeft onder meer te maken met spanning tussen Thailand en Cambodja over de tempel Preah Vihear.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Scopolamine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine

Recent Earthquakes in Nevada

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/116-33.html

Upcoming close approaches to earth

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/

Magnitude-7.7 quake rattles Indonesia

SUMATRA, Indonesia - A 7.7 earthquake shook Indonesia's northwest island of Sumatra early Wednesday, prompting a brief tsunami warning and sending residents rushing for higher ground. There were scattered reports of injuries, but only minor damage was immediately reported.

The quake struck at 5:15 a.m. and was centered 125 miles northwest of the coastal town of Sibolga in Sumatra at a depth of 19 miles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had earlier said the quake measured 7.8.

Indonesia's Meteorology and Geophysics Agency and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Honolulu issued tsunami warnings following the quake, but lifted them two hours later.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36201951/ns/world_news-asiapacific/

Mexican mountains shake during e.q.

MEXICAN MOUNTAINS SHAKING DURING E.Q

Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada 1081