Interesting Reading…

Teenagers to take embarrassing ailments to Second Life doctors - “Spanish health authorities launched a virtual portal through the Second Life website yesterday designed to help young people too embarrassed to speak to a doctor about sexually transmitted disease or a drug problem…”

Broadband: other countries do it better, but how? - “One of the ironies of the current broadband situation in the US is that staunch free marketeers defend the status quo even though the result of their views has been duopoly and high prices. Meanwhile, other countries (including those with a reputation in some quarters for “socialism”) have taken aggressive steps to create a robust, competitive, consumer-friendly marketplace with the help of regulation and national investment…”

“No Dashes Or Spaces” Hall of Shame = “Credit card numbers are always printed and read aloud in groups of (usually) four digits, and when verifying a number after entry (which involves looking back and forth between the card and the web form) one uses the spacing to resynchronize. If there were some security or integrity reason for disallowing these characters, I guess I’d buy it, but I’ve not found a single good reason for it. The consensus among those that I’ve spoken to is that it’s nothing but lazy, sloppy programming. I completely agree…”

The Mystery of the Dying Cheetahs - “Although famously speedy, cheetahs can’t seem to outrun a deadly disease called amyloid A (AA) amyloidosis. The illness kills up to 70% of the cats in captivity and has frustrated breeding efforts. In a new study, researchers provide the first compelling evidence that may explain how the disease is transmitted…”

How the world’s oceans are running out of fish - “The future of our seas has never been more precarious. Ninety years of industrial-scale overfishing has brought us to the brink of an ecological catastrophe and deprived millions of their livelihoods. As scientific guidelines are ignored and catches become ever bigger, Alex Renton tells why the international community has failed to act…”

SOLAR LILY PADS Proposed for Glasgow’s Clyde River - “In a stunning example of biomimicry, Scottish architecture firm ZM Architecture have come up with a brilliant scheme to provide solar power to the city of Glasgow - and do so in a way that is provocative, creative, and aesthetically appealing. The proposal? To design Solar Lily Pads which will float in Glasgow’s River Clyde and soak up the sun’s rays, sending electricity to Glasgow’s grid while also stimulating urban riverfront activity…”

Data Centers, Power Consumption, and Global Warming - Will the web crash? - “So you now know one single Google search query consumes 2 to 8 watt-hours of energy. To put this on a scale, Google processes petabytes of information on a daily basis while indexing the web and doing other various things. If we average this out to 4.5 watt hours per query, and consider Google is easily handling 400 million queries a day based on comScore metrics, then we can see 1,800,000,000 (1.8 billion) watt-hours of energy being used daily just for basic search queries. The Google Complex itself uses the amount of power as 3,333 California homes…”

Sioux Indians reclaim their land with hard cash - “Native Americans, flushed with casino profits, are buying up vast tracts of land in Minnesota - taken from them two centuries ago - with hard cash. The recession has seen land values plummet and the Sioux are taking advantage. Who could possibly not cheer?”

Can We Return Man to the Moon? - “Once you’ve used the moon as your trampoline, you spend the rest of your life waiting for a second turn on the ride. It’s no surprise, then, that Gene Cernan and Alan Bean, two Apollo-era astronauts who have bounded on the lunar surface, are thrilled with NASA’s plans to return Americans the moon. Thrilled, but not entirely convinced it will ever happen. “To be honest with you,” says Cernan, the last man to leave the moon in December 1972, “I’ll be surprised if this happens [by] 2020.”"

Dear Apple, Why Doesn’t My iPhone Have A Scramble Pad? - “A scramble pad would make this type of basic (yet time consuming) attack futile at best since the numbers would never be in the same place as the previous instance…”

Genetically modified human embryo stirs criticism - ” News that scientists have for the first time genetically altered a human embryo is drawing fire from some watchdog groups that say it’s a step toward creating “designer babies.”"

Giant bacterium carries thousands of genomes - “It seems like a peculiar case of genomic overkill: a single-celled bacterium has been found that keeps tens of thousands of copies of its genome. The finding sets a record for most genomes per cell, but also poses an obvious question: what could be the advantage of stashing away as much as 200,000 copies of your genome?”

First Pics! Fisker’s $80K Hybrid Hits the Road - “Fisker isn’t saying anything about what’s under the hood of the prototype, but we know the company is working with Quantum Technologies on a series parallel drivetrain that will use an electric motor to drive the wheels and an internal combustion engine to charge the lithium-ion batteries. Autocar says it could be a 1.4 liter Volkswagen engine, but all Henrik Fisker would tell us, through a spokesman, is “the car MAY have a German engine that turns the generator.” ”

We ask PC World staffers how they might spend their $600 economic stimulus payment - “A stack of crisp new dollar bills, delivered to your doorstep courtesy of Uncle Sam. Can an economic stimulus package really help pump up a faltering economy? No matter your political stance or your take on deficit spending, $600 that you previously didn’t have is still better than nothing. Considering all of the gear that comes across our desks, some PC World staffers know exactly what to do with the sudden cash infusion…”

Hot climate could shut down plate tectonics - “A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet’s crust to become locked in place…”

Change We Can Stomach - “Farming has the potential to go through the greatest upheaval since the Green Revolution, bringing harvests that are more healthful, sustainable and flavorful…”

It’s Now Completely Impossible To Sell A Laptop On Ebay - “eBay seems now to be essentially broken. What used to be a ‘virtual yard-sale’ where one could hunt for - and potentially find - a good deal on a broad variety of eclectic items has now turned (in my opinion at least) into a hybrid mass of scammers and shady garage-retailers, clumped together with a straggling, dying breed of people who used to be excited about eBay, but who are now wishing it would return to what it used to be…”

Unusual German Street Performer - “Berlin street performer Johan Lorbeer has an unusual approach to street performance. Just by “hanging out” on the side of a building, thousands of locals and tourists marvel as they walk by. He calls the performance “Still Life.”" - there is a hint on how he doesit at the very end of the article.

South Korea Surging Ahead In The Sciences - ” Newly-elected S. Korea President Lee Myung-bak spoke at the opening ceremony and reminded the audience his country now has the tenth strongest economy in the world. Ninety percent of all Korean kids go on to college. In 60 years, per capita income went from $100 per year, to $20,000. He also recalled that he comes from the world of business and entrepreneurialism — and he’s determined that his country will be a leader in neuroscience and related technologies…”

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