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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:108

posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @11:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the five-easy-pieces dept.

This weekend comes word that two of the masterminds behind the United Kingdom’s ongoing divorce from the European Union, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks. The duo just returned from the United States, where they reportedly helped raise a million bucks for one of the Calexit campaigns floating around — a scheme that would split the state into two eastern and western regions.

Farage and Banks are known as the Bad Boys of Brexit, and for good reason. As the controversial leader of the UK Independence Party, or Ukip for short, the one-time broadcaster Farage stirred up the anti-immigration pot in England among the white British working class. Banks, who co-founded the Leave.EU group, angered many when he claimed that Britain’s UK membership is “like having a first class ticket on the Titanic.’’ He also got into hot water with his controversial move to commission a poll after the murder of British politician Jo Cox, asking respondents whether the crime would have an impact on public opinion.

Now the Bad Boys have brought their shtick to California, according to a report in the Daily Mail which says the pair are helping exit backers trying to pit the eastern, more rural side of California against the western ‘coastal elite’ liberals in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The plan would be to create a Republican stronghold in the new state cleaved off California’s eastern flank, thus giving the GOP two more senators and electoral college votes for a 2020 presidential election.

Mercury News continues:

Meanwhile, a second Calexit campaign is underway. It’s called Yes California and it would see the state seceding from America entirely. If that initiative successfully finds a place on the ballot, a Yes vote would repeal clauses in the California Constitution stating “California is an inseparable part of the United States and that the United States Constitution is the supreme law of the land, ‘’ according to a statement from California’s Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s office said.

[Ed note: corrected typo in this story's last paragraph and expanded same to include the entire paragraph from which it was extracted. --martyb]


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the losing-tenure-is-like-being-voted-off-the-island dept.

"What if the Kardashians were physicists?" asks César Hidalgo, an associate professor at MIT and director of the Collective Learning group at the MIT Media Lab.

Fortunately they're not, but that odd-sounding blend might be the best way to imagine Hidalgo's new project: a video series called "In My Shoes" that documents his professional life as a researcher and his personal life as a husband and father of a young daughter.

The final product—eight episodes ranging in length from 10 to 20 minutes—can be viewed at https://www.inmyshoes.info.

"The goal of the series is to help show younger people considering an academic career what the day-to-day of the life of a scholar is like," he said. "Personally, I think that this would have been very useful to me 20 years ago, when I was considering an academic career but had no role models in Chile."

Hidalgo self-recorded his life over the course of three months in 2016. During that time, he traveled extensively—from Boston to Washington, D.C.; Saudi Arabia; Switzerland; Portland; Monterrey; and Paris.


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posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the landed-gentry-vs-5th-estate dept.

In a follow-up to the recent story here about the Tennessee Bill to Require Free Speech on Campus an NPR reporter has been fired in response to an unflattering story due to pressure by legislators on the University of Tennessee.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga fired a reporter this week at WUTC, the National Public Radio affiliate, after local lawmakers complained about how she reported on a state transgender bathroom bill.

Jacqui Helbert, 32, reported and produced the story for WUTC, which followed a group of Cleveland High School students as they traveled to the state capital March 7 to meet with Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, and Rep. Kevin Brooks, R-Cleveland, about the legislation.

The story aired on WUTC March 9 and 13, and was posted on the station's website. After it was posted, the lawmakers said Helbert failed to properly identify herself as a reporter during the meetings.

Helbert maintains she acted within journalistic ethics as she reported the story, and she never concealed her intentions or bulky radio equipment. She did not verbally identify herself as a journalist.

"It was glaringly obvious who I was," Helbert said, adding that her NPR press pass hung around her neck while at the capitol.

Helbert said she was wearing headphones and pointing a 22-inch large fuzzy microphone at the lawmakers as they spoke during the meeting.

Archive of the censored story is here.


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:21PM   Printer-friendly
from the hope-it's-on-morning-joe-that-week dept.

Time is running short to reform the U.S. work visa programs.

President Donald Trump and Congress have said they want to overhaul policies that allow companies to bring employees from overseas to the U.S. But the application deadline for the most controversial visa program is the first week of April, which means new rules have to be in place for that batch of applicants or another year's worth of visas will be handed out under the existing guidelines. The current H-1B visa program has been criticized for hurting American workers and undercutting salaries.

H-1B visas were created about three decades ago to help companies bring in skilled workers from other countries when they couldn't find Americans to fill those jobs. But the program has morphed greatly from its original intent.

Americans are losing their jobs to foreign visa holders, who tend to be paid substantially less. Most of the visas don't even go to American companies, but rather overseas firms that use the program to build up operations in the U.S. India would have the most at stake in any reform.

"I think everyone agrees the system is broken," says Neil Ruiz, an immigration expert at the Pew Research Center and former executive director of George Washington University's Center for Law, Economics and Finance.

One reason is the rise of the outsourcing industry, a nascent business 30 years ago. Outsourcers, like India's Wipro Ltd. and Cognizant Technology Solutions of the U.S., take over and manage the technology systems for corporations in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

In the U.S., outsourcers bring staffers into the country on work visas, train them in the tech departments of leading corporations and then rotate them back to India where pay and living costs are lower. Outsourcing companies now get far more visas than traditional technology companies, according to data collected by Howard University's Ron Hira through Freedom of Information Act requests. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. received 5,650 H-1Bs in 2014 while Amazon, the largest recipient in the latter group, got 877.

[...] Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, who has tried for a decade to reform the visa program, wrote a letter to Trump this month raising the president's campaign promises to "end forever" the use of H-1Bs for cheap labor. Now Durbin is concerned that Trump won't follow through on the pledge.

"You must act immediately to prevent further harm to American workers," Durbin wrote.

Source: Bloomberg


Original Submission

posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-royal-road-to-understanding-students dept.

Oxford researchers are taking part in an international study to film the teaching of quadratic equations for secondary school pupils. The hope is that lessons will be learned on how to bring out the best in pupils learning about mathematics.

Over the next few months, video cameras will appear in secondary schools across England that have chosen to take part in an international study to observe maths lessons focused on quadratic equations. Researchers from the University of Oxford have joined forces with the Education Development Trust to undertake the study in England, which will involve up to 85 schools from different parts of the country. The research team has to enlist 85 teachers and around 1,200 pupils, so they can analyse video footage of different teaching practices and pupils' responses to assess what works best. Schools in Oxfordshire will be among those approached about taking part in the pilot.

The research project is led by Education Development Trust, working with Dr Jenni Ingram and Professor Pam Sammons from the Department of Education at the University of Oxford. They will analyse how pupils' attitudes toward quadratic equations are linked with their progress and results, and observe how teachers' attitudes and methods affect outcomes.

Dr Ingram said: "We believe this study will improve our understanding of the relationships between a range of teaching practices and various student outcomes, including their enjoyment of mathematics, mathematical knowledge and engagement with learning."

Or you could watch Khan Academy.


Original Submission

posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the good-cop,-bad-cop dept.

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

In January 2013, police raided the home of a Cleveland drug dealer, saying in a search warrant that an informant had recently bought crack cocaine there.

But the drug dealer had surveillance cameras that proved the officers were lying. He gave the tapes to his lawyer, who showed the FBI. The feds then worked to uncover a massive scandal of a rogue street-crimes unit that robbed and framed drug suspects who felt they had no choice but plead guilty to fraudulent charges.

Four years later, authorities are still unwinding the damage.

Three cops who worked for the city of East Cleveland are in prison. Cases against 22 alleged drug dealers have been dismissed. Authorities are searching for another 21 people who are eligible to have their convictions tossed. On top of those injustices, there is a slim chance that any of them will be fully reimbursed, because the disgraced officers and their former employer don't have the money.

Source: NBC News


Original Submission

posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the xkcd-523 dept.

The most common reasons given for the breakdown of marriages or live-in partnerships in Britain are communication problems and growing apart, according to analysis by UCL researchers of the latest National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3).

[...] Natsal is the largest scientific study of sexual health lifestyles in Britain. It is carried out by UCL, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and NatCen Social Research [sic]

Natsal is run every 10 years, and includes a representative sample of men and women resident in Britain aged between 16 and 74. Natsal-3 was carried out between 2010 and 2012.

The study focused on the responses of 706 men and 1254 women to questions about their reasons for breakdown of a marriage or cohabiting relationship in the past 5 years.

[UCL is, of course, University College London. It has as part of one of its faculties the above-mentioned school.]

I would have guessed footie.


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @12:01PM   Printer-friendly
from the Takes-One-to-Know-One dept.

The former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party is charged with forgery and voter fraud for allegedly forging his wife’s[*] mail-in ballot from last year’s election, according to court records and sources.

Steven Curtis was the chairman of the state party from 1997 to 1999. He was charged Feb. 1 with one count of forgery of a public record, a fifth-degree felony, and an elections mail-in ballot offense, a misdemeanor.

Curtis spoke about voter fraud ahead of last year’s election.

"It seems to be, and correct me if I’m wrong here, but virtually every case of voter fraud I can remember in my lifetime was committed by Democrats,"

[* Note that she is described as his "former spouse" elsewhere, such as ...]

Also covered in more depth, and perhaps more accurately, at Salon.

1 down, 2,999,999 illegal votes to go!


Original Submission

posted by n1 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @11:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the next-big-thing dept.

The Hadoop dream of unifying data and compute in a distributed manner has all but failed in a smoking heap of cost and complexity, according to technology experts and executives who spoke to Datanami.

"I can't find a happy Hadoop customer. It's sort of as simple as that," says Bob Muglia, CEO of Snowflake Computing, which develops and runs a cloud-based relational data warehouse offering. "It's very clear to me, technologically, that it's not the technology base the world will be built on going forward."

Thousands of organizations store huge amounts of data in Hadoop, and so Hadoop won't disappear overnight. After all, many companies still run mainframe applications that were originally developed half a century ago. But thanks to better mousetraps like S3 (for storage) and Spark (for processing), Hadoop will be relegated to niche and legacy statuses going forward, Muglia says.

"The number of customers who have actually successfully tamed Hadoop is probably less than 20 and it might be less than 10," Muglia says. "That's just nuts given how long that product, that technology has been in the market and how much general industry energy has gone into it."

Are any Soylentils using Hadoop, or deliberately using alternatives, for their Big Data needs?


Original Submission

posted by CoolHand on Tuesday March 28 2017, @09:14AM   Printer-friendly
from the anti-bed-wetter dept.

The need to pee at night (nocturia) -- which affects most people over the age of 60 -- is related to the amount of salt in your diet, according to new research presented at the European Society of Urology congress in London.

Most people over the age of 60 (and a substantial minority under 60) wake up one or more times during the night to go to the bathroom. This is nightime peeing, or nocturia. Although it seems a simple problem, the lack of sleep can lead to other problems such as stress, irritability or tiredness, and so can have a significant negative impact on quality of life. There are several possible causes of nocturia. Now a group of Japanese scientists have discovered that reducing the amount of salt in one's diet can significantly reduce excessive peeing -- both during the day and when asleep.
...
223 members of the group were able to reduce their salt intake from 10.7 gm per day to 8.0 gm/day. In this group, the average night-time frequency of urination dropped from 2.3 times/night to 1.4 times. In contrast, 98 subjects increased their average salt intake from 9.6 gm/night to 11.0 gm/night, and they found that the need to urinate increased from 2.3 times/night to 2.7 times/night. The researchers also found that daytime urination was reduced when salt in the diet was reduced.

There's a slightly longer summary here: Cutting salt could cut night-time loo visits; and some mainsteam media have also covered the story in a more readable form: Could eating less salt reduce nighttime bathroom trips?. And for balance, some people on the internet think the opposite is true.

[Update: Replaced ScienceDaily link with a link to original source article. --martyb]


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @07:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the surf's-up dept.

A team of researchers with members from France, Italy and the U.S. has found what they believe is evidence of a giant tsunami occurring on Mars approximately 3 billion years ago due to an asteroid plunging into an ocean. In their paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, the group outlines the evidence and why they believe a tsunami is the most likely factor that led to the creation of some unique planetary formations.

Scientists have been investigating the possibility of oceans on Mars for several years, but have so far been unable to prove they existed. Also, other researchers have found evidence for tsunamis on Mars but have not been able to find an associated oceanic impact crater to go along with it. In this new effort, the researchers believe they have found both.

Prior research uncovered what has been described as thumbprint-looking terrain on the surface of Mars, which some researchers have ascribed to mud moving downhill from volcanoes or being pushed by glaciers. But they might have been created by a very large tsunami, the researchers suggest, and they have found a crater that they believe might have been the cause of it. Lomonosov crater, they suggest, situated in the northern plains, could very well be the scar that was left as a reminder of an asteroid striking in a northern ocean, generating waves hundreds of feet high, eventually spilling onto land and leaving enormous deposits behind. If such an asteroid did strike the ocean, the team continues, after diving through the water, it would have created a crater on the ocean floor. That crater would have been a void that would be suddenly filled with water from all sides, smashing together, creating a secondary tsunami following behind the first. As the first tsunami was receding over land, the second tsunami would have struck, and it was those two acting together that the researchers believe caused the characteristic thumbprint ridges to come about. They have used numerical modeling of wave propagation to back up their claims.

Today's Marscape is the result of the tsunami hitting Fukushima's sister plant.

More information: Francois Costard et al. Modeling tsunami propagation and the emplacement of thumbprint terrain in an early Mars ocean, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2016JE005230


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @06:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the a-new-life-awaits-you-in-the-off-world-colonies dept.

Passers-by on a London street were recently amazed to see a fleeting image of a pink tongue protruding from fruitily plump lips, seemingly suspended in mid-air. It was the famous logo for the Rolling Stones and was part of an experiment by tech start-up Lightvert. Its technology can produce images that appear to be 200m (656ft) high, but which only exist in the eye of the viewer for a fraction of a second. So could we be on the verge of seeing giant digital ads in our cities, similar to those featured in the seminal 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner?

Lightvert certainly hopes so. Its tech, called Echo, works by employing a narrow - no more than 200mm - strip of reflective material fixed to the side of a building. A high-power projector mounted below or above the strip beams light off the reflector directly into the viewer's eye.


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @04:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the satellite-version-of-packing-peanuts dept.

NASA has selected 10 studies that propose using small satellites to study Venus, the Moon, asteroids (including 99942 Apophis), Mars, Phobos and Deimos, Uranus, and Jupiter:

NASA has selected 10 studies under the Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies (PSDS3) program to develop mission concepts using small satellites to investigate Venus, Earth's moon, asteroids, Mars and the outer planets.

For these studies, small satellites are defined as less than 180 kilograms in mass (about 400 pounds). CubeSats are built to standard specifications of 1 unit (U), which is equal to about 4x4x4 inches (10x10x10 centimeters). They often are launched into orbit as auxiliary payloads, significantly reducing costs.

One standout would use an atmospheric probe to measure "vertical cloud structure, stratification, and winds to help understand the chemical and physical processes that shape the atmosphere of Uranus". If launched, it would be the first mission to Uranus since Voyager 2.

Also at The Space Reporter.

Previously: NASA to Focus on Small Satellites


Original Submission

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 28 2017, @02:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the at-least-the-ice-cream-won't-melt dept.

As you probably know, NASA recently announced plans to send a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. If all goes well, the Europa Clipper will blast off for the world in the 2020s, and orbit the icy moon to discover all its secrets.

And that's great and all, I like Europa just fine. But you know where I'd really like us to go next? Titan.

Titan, as you probably know, is the largest moon orbiting Saturn. In fact, it's the second largest moon in the solar system after Jupiter's Ganymede. It measures 5,190 kilometers across, almost half the diameter of the Earth. This place is big.

It orbits Saturn every 15 hours and 22 days, and like many large moons in the solar system, it's tidally locked to its planet, always showing Saturn one side.

Before NASA's Voyager spacecraft arrived in 1980, astronomers actually thought that Titan was the biggest moon in the solar system. But Voyager showed that it actually has a thick atmosphere, that extends well into space, making the true size of the moon hard to judge.

This atmosphere is one of the most interesting features of Titan. In fact, it's the only moon in the entire solar system with a significant atmosphere. If you could stand on the surface, you would experience about 1.45 times the atmospheric pressure on Earth. In other words, you wouldn't need a pressure suit to wander around the surface of Titan.

That's great news. No pressure suit needed to walk on the surface of Titan, only a rebreather and a wool sweater.


Original Submission

posted by on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the marketing-gimmick dept.

Bee populations are in decline, and Cheerios wants to help. So far, so good. But they are sending free packets of wildflower seeds to people all over the country—and some of the flowers included are invasive species that, in some areas, you should probably not plant.

Forget-me-not (listed above but, the seed packager told me on 3/21/2017, not included in the seed mix) is banned as a noxious weed in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example. The California poppy is nice in California, but listed as an "invasive exotic pest plant" in southeastern states. And many of the flowers on this list are not native to anywhere in the US, so they are not necessarily good matches for our local bees.

http://lifehacker.com/don-t-plant-those-bee-friendly-wildflowers-cheerios-i-1793370883

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission