Discovery Channel :: News

A dreary weed that grows in the cracks of parking lots has caused an uproar amongst biologists by challenging one of the basic laws of genetics.

U.S. researchers, reporting Wednesday in the journal Nature, say their lab samples of thale cress (Arabidopsis thaliana) appear to bust a fundamental rule of inheritance.

Convention dictates that all of one’s genetic toolbox, for better or for worse, is handed down from one’s parents.

But in the bizarre case reported in Nature, the weeds seem to have genes that existed in their grandparents, but not in their parents.

adaptive path ajax

If anything about current interaction design can be called “glamorous,“ it’s creating Web applications. After all, when was the last time you heard someone rave about the interaction design of a product that wasn’t on the Web? (Okay, besides the iPod.) All the cool, innovative new projects are online.

A new approach? WTF? This shit isn’t new. Get real! Yay buzzwords!. Yes, it’s cool. It’s been cool for years.

Here’s something else that is cool: BAM.

CNET News.com

The Net’s top standards body is getting closer to speeding up XML-based software, a move that could benefit everyone from cell phone carriers to television broadcasters to the military.

But critics say the group’s favored approach could cause major compatibility problems, among other things.

If you BIN it they will come (Mobile Apps).

CNN.com

A diner at a Wendy’s fast food restaurant in San Jose, California, found a human finger in a bowl of chili prepared by the chain, local officials said Wednesday.

“This individual apparently did take a spoonful, did have a finger in their mouth and then, you know, spit it out and recognized it,” said Ben Gale, director of the department of environmental health for Santa Clara County. “Then they had some kind of emotional reaction and vomited.”

SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!! And apparently Wendy’s is serving it up.

Star Tribune

LINDALE, Texas -— When Smith County Constable Dennis Taylor got a call reporting a stolen house, his first question was, “Is it a trailer house, ma’am?”

“No, it’s a brick house,” the real estate company representative replied.

Board by board, shingle by shingle, for nearly three months, thieves dismantled a three-bedroom brick house in this East Texas town and carted it away until only a pile of rubble was left.

Authorities allege Brandon Ray Parmer, 29, and Darrell Patrick Maxfield, 44, both of Tyler, took the house apart and sold it for drugs, in plain view of everyone cruising by along Lindale’s main street.
…
“It’s the strangest case I’ve ever worked in my life,” Taylor said. “Everybody drove by and waved at them.”

Put a frog in boiling water….

ABC News

In a case that could set limits on Internet search engines, the French news agency AFP is suing Google Inc. for pulling together photos and story excerpts from thousands of news Web sites.

Agence France-Presse said the “Google News” service infringes on AFP’s copyrights by reproducing information from the Web sites of subscribers of the Paris-based news wholesaler.

The issues raised by the case have profound implications for the Internet, where anyone can be a publisher and Web journals, or blogs, are becoming more frequent destinations for seekers of news.

This clearly could have a profound impact on the blogging world.

NPR

Iceland, the country where Bobby Fischer won the world chess championship a generation ago, grants citizenship to the 62-year-old recluse. This was a boost to Fischer’s efforts to fight deportation from Japan to the United States.

VS2005 Pricing and Licensing

First off, only Microsoft would use the word “simplifies” in the headline of the press release that ultimately requires reading through a zillion Web pages and following flow charts to figure out. Having taken the time today to do just that, I hope I can save Larkware readers at least a bit of trouble. My guess is that a lot of your are already MSDN subscribers and Visual Studio users, and so you might well be interested in what’s coming our way whenever the next versions release.

Google Code

New open source tools from Google.

Funny and provocative, this 1992 documentary explores the political life and ideas of Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist. Chomsky illustrates how the media tacitly manipulates public opinion to further the agendas of the powerful. A compelling examination of the suppression of news about the U.S.-supported Indonesian invasion and subjugation of East Timor brings home the point.

The above is the Netflix quote. I don’t know how someone could consider this film ‘funny.’ In fact, it made me awfully angry and generally disgusted due to our society’s apathetic ignorance. This flick is a must see and is even more viable today than it was twelve years ago. Might I submit that our current congressional hearings on steroid use in professional sports is a perfect example of what Noam Chomsky is building a case against in this film (and the book. ). A federally subsidized jingoistic dumbing agent being used as a national distraction! Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! I assert that the majority of the material addressed in this movie has become exponentially more relevant over the last five years.