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Well there you have it. Landis lost his appeal, in more ways than one. This is not good for the sport. Makes me sad.

Read the SI.com Article

A steal for only  the price of another Macbook.

For some MacBooks, only gold will do | Crave : The gadget blog

We just need to develop it quickly so we can point one at the meteor crater in Peru. Because I’m sure whatever alien is in that hole has incubated enough by now and ready to conquer the world.

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An exotic molecule built from electrons and antimatter is being touted as a route to powerful gamma-ray lasers.

An electron can hook up with its antiparticle, the positron, to form a hydrogen-like atom called positronium (Ps). It survives for less than 150 nanoseconds before it is annihilated in a puff of gamma radiation. It was known that two positronium atoms should be able to bind together to form a molecule, called Ps₂, and now David Cassidy and Allen Mills from the University of California, Riverside, have made that happen. First, they trapped positrons in a thin film of porous silica. Those positrons captured electrons to form positronium atoms, and the pattern of decay rates signalled that some of these atoms had teamed up to form Ps₂ (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature06094).

If positronium atoms could be forced to merge into a kind of “super-atom” condensate, it would decay in bursts of identical gamma rays, which could lead to gamma-ray lasers a million times more powerful than standard lasers. “It’s like comparing a chemical explosion with a nuclear explosion,” Cassidy says.

From issue 2621 of New Scientist magazine, 18 September 2007, page 23

Antimatter molecule could lead to ultra-powerful laser - tech - 18 September 2007 - New Scientist Tech

Just a reminder, that today is September 19, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. So in the spirit of TLAP here is the official TLAP Song. if you would like to make a political statement here is a great Mad Magazine poster for “Pirates of the Constitution” - Just click the image about for a LARGE jpg image.

Does anyone see the danger in this? Get a frick’n army down there, surround the crater with black helicopters and automated machine gun nest, men in white bio hazard suits and wait for the dead to come to life.

If you start to hear stories about people not “being them selfs” or see lots of pods on trucks — RUN!!! What ever you do, do not fall asleep!!

Suspected meteorite causes sickness - CNN.com

The WD-2 robot is a pretty amazing piece of technology. It can’t walk, talk, compute awesomely complex equations, or carry heavy objects. What it can do, however, is morph to look like anyone’s face. Created by researchers at Tokyo University, the WD-2 has “17 facial points, for a total of 56 degrees of freedom,” whatever that means.

Read more at SCIFI.com

I was wondering today what ever happened to the John Landis case, so I Googled and found this story out of Paris from yesterday. Looks like we will knwo the answer next week. I’m just guessing here, but since this has not made front page and no one is beating the press circuit, that we might be looking at a guilty verdict.

Landis to learn fate within a week, says lawyer | Breaking news | Guardian Unlimited Sport

Bill Maher calling me and every other iPhone owner a nerd!

I just got an email from my online broker Ameritrade. Stating that, er, well, let me quote:

“While more sensitive information like account numbers, date of birth and Social Security Numbers is stored in this database, there is no evidence that it was taken.”

I am not happy at this moment.

Read the TD AMERITRADE - Press Releases