Want to watch the Olympics on-line?

At Work?! Me too! Well, not really. But, more for those of us that don't have cable at home... Try this: http://atdhe.net

Rip Torn is trying to break your heart

Actor Rip Torn charged with breaking into Conn. bank while drunk and carrying a loaded gun.

State police say the 78-year-old Salisbury resident was arrested Friday night after police found him inside the Litchfield Bancorp with a loaded revolver.

(LaTimes)

Download Larry Sanders Show seasons here.

New Hidden Cameras video!

Directed by Scott Cudmore



In a recent interview with himself in the bathroom mirror, Scott said to himself, "Scott, do you believe that the music video still has room to grow and expand as an art form, and if so, are you up for that challenge?" to which Scott replied, "Yes Scott...Yes I am."

Do you think this would help?

Warnings are good.

In Seattle, they are trying something I have never seen before that goes beyond the usual warning signage: the DOT is using "sharrows" and markings to visually guide cyclists in the art of making some of these crossings. Anecdotally, it seems to work well. I found it reassuring that my path was predetermined as I approached instead of having to guesstimate. Stay within the lines - and all will be good.

But as John Mauro from the Cascade Bicycle Club points out, this is only an interim solution. This is the missing link in the famous Burke-Gilman greenway, and families out cycling for the day shouldn't have to contend with dangerous sets of tracks in the first place. Still, it is nice to see DOT's all across the country are getting creative and using cost effective solutions (just a few marks with paint) to keep us a little safer. (Streetfilms via Sockpuppet)

I wonder if Toronto has any stats on bike injuries caused by cyclists slipping on/because of streetcar tracks. They certainly do acknowledge them; Streetcar and railway tracks can be dangerous.



Anecdotally, while I was in high school a teacher ended up getting reconstructive jaw surgery because she got her bike tire stuck in a track along St. Clair. I know of two or three friends that have wiped out as well because of them, and it has deterred them from ever riding again. I have too, in the middle of the King and Differin intersection; luckily picking myself up with only a few scratches. I wiped out on manhole covers as well... it was an older slick, non-bezelled one.



Btw, speaking of manhole covers, Copenhagenize found a nice, understated one at the local University acting as a ramp from street to cobblestone. Nice master planning!

More ramblings!

Life's true essential needs you say, Thoreau? Reminds me of Marcy Playground's All Lights Went Out, which surprisingly, I couldn't find a good version on the net!!! Anyway, download and listen here. Certainly not the greatest love song, but one that always comes to mind.

As for the greatest love song? That's a really tough/impossible endeavour. So personal. However, greatest love song video? That's easy.

Air Supply - Making Love Out Of Nothing

Air Supply - Making Love Out Of Nothing At All (featuring Roy Bittan on keyboards and Max Weinberg on drums!)

The song was first recorded by Air Supply, gaining them a number two hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States of America (US). It was another Steinman production, Bonnie Tyler's recording of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", that was at number one while "Making Love..." sat in runner-up position, keeping Air Supply from scoring their second number-one single in the US (the first being The One That You Love in 1981). The song subsequently became the title track of their 1983 greatest hits album.

Steinman offered the song, along with "Total Eclipse of the Heart", to Meat Loaf for his Midnight at the Lost and Found album; however, Meat Loaf's record company refused to pay Steinman for the material so Meat Loaf ended up writing compositions for the album himself. Steinman's songs were then offered to Bonnie Tyler & Air Supply. (Wikipedia)

My first ever favourite song, and one of my first ever memories, I suppose. I still remember spinning that single endlessly in 1983/84/85.

BONNIE TYLER - TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART, also with Bittan and Weinberg.

Bonnie Tyler stated in a September 2007 interview with UK radio station Magic 105.4 that she plans to collaborate with Steinman on a country/rock album. In the interview she said that Steinman intends to provide one or two of his songs for the album. In July 2008, Tyler said regarding this project, "We are trying to finish our recordings before the summer of 2009. So far we have recorded only four songs." (Wikipedia)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's day! An opportunity to say thank you to my family and friends; I'm just so lucky to have so many great people around me and I hope I return that love and inspiration, and more, more often than not. It's just another reminder day, really. Have passion, love, question, work hard, enjoy, develop, have perspective, be open to change and experience. Love.

This year's February 14th also happens to fall on Chinese New Year.

In the Chinese Zodiac, this is the Year of the Tiger, and the tiger, of course, connotes bravery. The ancient Chinese admired the tiger for its courage and fearlessness, and believed it kept away the three main tragedies of the household: Fire, thieves and ghosts. (VanSun)



---

Love must be as much a light as it is a flame.

- Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books, articles, essays, journals, and poetry total over 20 volumes. Among his lasting contributions were his writings on natural history and philosophy, where he anticipated the methods and findings of ecology and environmental history, two sources of modern day environmentalism. His literary style interweaves close natural observation, personal experience, pointed rhetoric, symbolic meanings, and historical lore; while displaying a poetic sensibility, philosophical austerity, and "Yankee" love of practical detail. He was also deeply interested in the idea of survival in the face of hostile elements, historical change, and natural decay; at the same time imploring one to abandon waste and illusion in order to discover life's true essential needs. (Wiki, of course!)

blah, blah, blah!.. take home message: Thoreau kinda rocks. Get on with your day!

Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Happy Hastings Day!

Please replace Mr. Burns and "Burnsie" with Hastings.

Cancer?

Eat above to starve cancer.

In autopsies of people who died in car accidents, doctors have found microscopic cancers in 40% of woman (breast) and 40% of men (prostate). Something like 70% of older people have microcancers in their thyroid. But the cancer is harmless -- "cancer without disease." If you block angiogenesis the cancer can't grow. "It's a tipping point between harmless cancer and deadly one."

Li showed a photo of a poor dog with gnarly tumor hanging off its side. The vet gave the dog three months to live. They started antiangiogenesis drugs. In a few weeks, the tumor shrank away completely. They also cured a dolphin of mouth cancer and saw a complete remission of a deadly lip cancer on a horse.

Today there 12 different antiangiogenesis drugs available for people and dogs. They are quite effective for many cancers, but not much for liver, lung, and breast cancers. The problem with these cancers is that by the time they are detected they have progressed too far for antiangiogenesis drugs to do their work.

The good news, Li says, is that "we eat to starve cancer." Lots of foods contain naturally occuring inhibitors of angiogenesis, and many are even better than drugs for blocking angiogenesis (see image above).

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/02/10/highlights-from-ted.html

Song of the Day: The Hidden Cameras - I Believe in the Good of Life

I believe in the good of life as I kneel for a taste of man
I believe in the taste of wine as I do not step on a land mine

I believe in the good of life as I kneel for a taste of man
I believe in the taste of wine as I do not step on a land mine

I'll testify on the word of a radio that I dream of the fate of democracy, as I flee on my bike from the crimes we made, and that I did not do those drugs or steal those army pants.

I believe in the good of life as I plead for a taste of man
I'm thirsty for a taste of wine as I do not step on a land mine

I'll testify on the word of a radio that I dream of the fate of democracy, as I flee on my bike from the crimes we made, and that I did not do those drugs or steal those army pants.

I believe in the good of life as I plead for a taste of man
I'm thirsty for a taste of wine as I do not step on a land mine

I'll testify on the word of a radio that I dream of the fate of democracy, as I flee on my bike from the crimes we made, and that I did not do those drugs or steal those army pants.

I believe in the good of life as I plead for a taste of man
I'm thirsty for a taste of wine as I do not step on a land mine

I believe in the good of life

Hand claps.

Entanglement Energy

Remember the quantum theory of entanglement?

Well, new implications have just come to light, so to speak.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24759/ (via Geekpress)

But Masahiro Hotta at Tohoku University in Japan has come up with a much more exotic idea. Why not use the same quantum principles to teleport energy?

Today, building on a number of papers published in the last year, Hotta outlines his idea and its implications. The process of teleportation involves making a measurement on each one an entangled pair of particles. He points out that the measurement on the first particle injects quantum energy into the system. He then shows that by carefully choosing the measurement to do on the second particle, it is possible to extract the original energy.

All this is possible because there are always quantum fluctuations in the energy of any particle. The teleportation process allows you to inject quantum energy at one point in the universe and then exploit quantum energy fluctuations to extract it from another point. Of course, the energy of the system as whole is unchanged.

There is a growing sense that the properties of the universe are best described not by the laws that govern matter but by the laws that govern information. This appears to be true for the quantum world, is certainly true for special relativity, and is currently being explored for general relativity. Having a way to handle energy on the same footing may help to draw these diverse strands together.

Matter, building blocks are everywhere. Information is the key. It's weird to think, but makes total sense at the same time. We're all made up of the same things; we're just full of different information and arranged differently. Just like transferring information through maps, people can visit the exact same spot at different times. Likewise, and perhaps trivially so, but related to the point of instant information transfer, you can know that given a certain exact time, where or what I am doing if that information is passed instantly, or even before hand. Furthermore, given all the information that you possess in your body, it can theoretically be recreated somewhere else.

This isn't a new idea, but I believe this may have been the first time that energy has been transferred in non-classical ways; by sending information from point A to point B, and then processing this information at point B, and then rearranging point B building blocks to rebuild what there was originally at point A. This isn't a copy either; the system does not gain or lose any energy, it's just transferred, through information.

This reminds me of the article posted by Jeremy: ‘A free society requires access to the facts’.

Scotch on the Rocks, part 2

Remember that Shackleton story a few months ago? How they were going to drill 200 kms outside the South Pole to recover some of Shackleton's buried Scotch Whiskey? Well, it looks like they got it. Along with a little extra brandy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8499931.stm



Richard Paterson, whose firm supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, said: "If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analysed, the original blend may be able to be replicated.

"Given the original recipe no longer exists this may open a door into history."

The alcohol was removed from the ice by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, which had initially believed there to be just two crates.

This is gonna soon be marketed to high hell, and I will buy some.