Stories below the fold

The Pirate Bay is now the Pirate Cloud.



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The BBC laments that the "new" affluent China gives people more room, i.e. no more communal kitchens or sleeping three families to a room, so it is leading to more loneliness.

A lot of this is the side effect of urbanization, but the article is strangely nostalgic about the good old days of poverty with five families per room being forced to sing Mao's hymns before going to work.

It blames everything on modern affluence, barely mentioning Mao's war against the extended family, Mao's decimation of rural populations during the Great Leap Forward, Mao's forcing the "red guards" into isolated rural villages, and modern China's forceable confiscation of land to build their cities.

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Mars' rocks similar to those found in the NWTerritory of Canada or Scotland.

Now read what Prof Stolper told me: "The 'type locality' for mugearite [i.e. the place the rock was first discovered, or at least defined as a distinctive rock type] is Mugeary, which turns out to be on Skye only 25 miles west of Glenelg.

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Yes, TB is still a major killer, but I always wonder when I read how the UN says the answer is to send them "more money".

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Malware and viruses are common in Medical computers/devices. what is more interesting is the reason why:

Kevin Fu, a leading expert in medical technology, explained that the machines were not updated because of fears that doing so would mean they were in breach of regulations put in place by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The FDA approve the use of technology by testing safety rather than security - meaning any potential exposure to cyberthreats is not considered.

so beware when your robodoc gets a virus...

update: Gizmodo headline:

• Someone Check on Grandpa: Mass Murder Via Pacemaker Hack Is Now Possible

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The BBC articles on US politics are pro Obama, of course, but nowadays it's not just their obvious liberal bias in politics that is getting into the news.

There was a major scandal in the UK against the Murdoch press about wiretaps but now the UK Mail is playing pay-back.

First there is the pedophile scandal at the BBC
(wonder when the press will notice the casting couches of Hollywood did the same thing).
The UKMail writes:

BBC 'could be sued for millions of pounds by Jimmy Savile's victims' as scandal grows

• Any institution linked to 'predatory sex offender' could be sued
• BBC offers grovelling apology as it launches three inquiries

David Nicolson, 67, who had been a director on Jim’ll Fix It, said he made several attempts to expose Savile to the BBC, but was told: ‘That’s Jimmy’ and ‘that’s the way it goes’.

And now the UK Mail blasts them at their nostalgic celebration of the life of one of Stalin's useful idiots. and probably a spy.

He hated Britain and excused Stalin's genocide. But was hero of the BBC and the Guardian, Eric Hobsbawm a TRAITOR too?

• Historian defended the Soviet killing of millions in the name of Communism
• When he was at Cambridge in the 1930s he knew Anthony Blunt, Guy Burgess and other Soviet agents, who were recruited by Marxists
• Four years before his death said he wanted to see MI5 files on him to find out who had 'snitched on him'

Eric Hobsbawm took part in one of the most extraordinary conversations ever on British television. Speaking in 1994 to the author Michael Ignatieff about the fall of the Berlin Wall five years earlier, the historian was asked how he felt about his earlier support for the Soviet Union.
If Communism had achieved its aims, but at the cost of, say, 15 to 20 million people - as opposed to the 100million it actually killed in Russia and China - would Hobsbawm have supported it? His answer was a single word: ‘Yes’.

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GetReligion had new "news" about the Jesus wife: Part one is about the physical evidence that suggests it might be a forgery, but part two is about how these stories are always promoted by the press.

They refer to Philip Jenkins column: Jenkins has a book about the history of these "new" findings, which by the way, are not exactly new:

But here's the problem. Virtually nothing in that model would have surprised a reasonably well-informed reader in 1930, or even in 1900, never mind in later years. In order to make their finds more appealing, more marketable, scholars and journalists have to work systematically to obscure that earlier knowledge, to pretend that it never existed. In order to create the maximum impact, the media depend on a constructed amnesia, a wholly fictitious picture of the supposed ignorance of earlier decades.

ya think?
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The killing of migrant children is being protested by their mothers: 

Central American teens who were trying to migrate to the US but disappeared, many died or were killed, in Mexico.

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the future of universities might indeed be online courses

Can't find a decent math teacher at your local high school? why not use Khan academy?

the future of education might be like homeschool: using books and the computer with a teacher there to help you with the small details.  I am delighted at all the university lectures I can find nowadays on line.

the only problem is that part of the learning is not lectures but discussion groups, but as Mythgard institute shows, you can skype these too...nor is it only the Simarillion seminary type discussions: I have downloaded a long complicated discussion about Homer and ancient Greek Literature that recorded the seminar type discussions. (sorry no link: They were videos and I ripped them all to mp3 for easier listening).

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 Should your kid be using helmet padding similar to that used by the US Army when he plays football?

My question is why they haven't done this yet.