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Rodent ‘missing’ for 11 million years is discovered in Laos
A bizarre rodent that was discovered last year in a remote region of south-east Asia has turned out to belong to a family of mammals that was thought to have gone extinct more than 11 million years ago, a study has found. A new analysis of the rodent’s remains indicates that it is a striking…
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The return of Mrs Bridges?
[news.independent.co.uk] Why every woman needs a wife Like most busy professionals, Sharon Walker spends her ‘free time’ running errands and doing chores around the house. And frankly, she’d rather be living her life. Could the solution be to hire her very own ‘better half’? […] It’s a terrible hassle, my life. First off, this article:…
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Palestinians urge Roger Waters to boycott Israel
Roger Waters, a founder member of the rock group Pink Floyd, is under pressure to cancel a planned concert in Tel Aviv in June as a protest against Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. [news.independent.co.uk]
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Of Principal Engineers, and Alternative Commuting…
I am a Principal Engineer (PE) at Sun Microsystems; that statement probably doesn’t mean much to most people reading this, so to put it into context: the PEs at Sun are a diverse community comprised mostly of senior technical field staff – mostly long-termers – who by virtue of being “customer-facing” are not exactly engineers…
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Travels with my Beard
[news.bbc.co.uk] “Would I look less dodgy without my rucksack?” I asked. “Dodgy,” he replied. “What about if I wore a suit?” “You’d look like a dodgy bloke in a suit,” he said. “How about if I shaved my beard?” “Dodgy. Just face it – you look dodgy,” came the disconcerting reply. Over the seven weeks…
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A Bright and Shiny ID Card Future!
[worldwearydetective.blogspot.com] The scene: An anonymous provincial town in middle England somewhere. Four plotters gather together in a darkened room. The year is 2008. Plotter 1: Right everyone. Today is the day. Is everyone ready? All: YES! Plotter 1: Is everyone a ‘clean skin’ that has avoided the attention of the greatest security agencies in the…
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Evil Advertising from ErrorSafe.COM
So I loaded my normal list of cartoons and news for this morning – “Open in Tabs” is such a marvellous feature – and about halfway through my Safari browser flashed-up an error alert – which stops everything – to say: www.errorsafe.com NOTICE: If your computer has errors in the registry database of file system…
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Cars of the Rich and Famous
Bill Gates drives a Porsche 959 and had to help change the law so that he could. Ingvar Kamprad drives a 1993 Volvo 240 GL. My oh my. [www.forbesautos.com]
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Upmarket Ecomentalism
[news.independent.co.uk] In gently rolling countryside, not far from a tranquil lake, Chew Magna is the quintessential Somerset village. It has a well-kept cricket pitch, tidy gardens, three churches, two pubs and a row of quaint shops. A picturesque stream meanders by ancient houses – some of them mentioned in The Domesday Book – and a…
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Britain’s Powerhouse of Rationality: The Advertising Standards Authority
[news.independent.co.uk] Organisations opposed to animal experiments take the opposite view. They say that not only do alternatives to animals exist, but they are better. They also claim that relying on the results of animal research is dangerous. “Reliance on animal experimentation amounts to gambling with our children’s’ health,” says the antivivisection group Europeans for Medical…
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BBC’s wildlife archives released
[news.bbc.co.uk] Content from the BBC’s Natural History Unit has been made available free of charge over the internet. The Open Earth Archive will include previously unseen clips from new wildlife series Planet Earth. Footage can be viewed, downloaded and edited into personal projects as part of the Creative Archive Licence. The scheme, which released the…