Flickr account says Tehran, Iran. It's probably just north of here (Tehran is just to the west of here):
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geoc ...
probably http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shemshak
http://www.holidayiran.com/Skitour.htm
westword.com — For the last couple of weeks, Jonathan Shikes has been locked in his office, taste-testing holiday brews and snorting shattered candy-cane pieces. (The two activities are apparently unrelated.) Here, we present 10 of his favorite holiday beers.
by Evelyn Lee
Recently the OLED research team over at General Electric unveiled the world’s first OLED Christmas Tree! Forging ahead of the usual end-of-the-year slowdown, GE’s Global Research Center headquarters in Niskayuna, NY rang in the holidays with a 6-inch-by-15-ft. OLED system all rolled-up into the form of a tree. The radiant source of holiday cheer provides a glimpse of how OLEDs can transform the future of the lighting industry.
“We haven’t quite achieved Rockefeller or National Christmas tree lighting status yet, but we’re well on our way,” said Anil Duggal, who leads GE’s OLED program. “We hope GE’s OLED tree lighting will inspire and capture people’s imagination during the holidays on the limitless possibilities of this next generation lighting concept.”
The tree was a follow-up to the breakthrough GE scientists achieved earlier this year with their roll-to-roll manufacturing process for OLED lighting devices. Similar to a newspaper printing process, the roll-to-roll manufacturing will play a key factor in making OLED lighting commercially available to the general public.
“Customers will recognize that while this demonstration was more for holiday spirit and team camaraderie, it does reinforce how far OLED technology has come and how it is poised to revolutionize lighting and interior design,” says John Strainic, global product general manager with GE Consumer & Industry, which will commercialize OLEDs for businesses and consumers in the coming years.
Relationship CorrespondentEvery Tuesday
Wes Welker makes a snow angel while scoring a touchdown vs the Cardinals. He gets flagged 15 yards for making a snow man They go on to win 47-7.
Europa. One of the most interesting non-Earth locations in the solar system. Never mind ice and occasional puddles, this moon has entire oceans - and where there's water, we can't help but hope there's life. Recent results show that there are heat sources to drive evolution of such as well, but there's still debate over what's actually going on in there.
The key point of contention is the satellites crunchy ice covering. We know that the Jovian moon is coated in kilometers of frozen material, but that sort of handwaving figure can get you in trouble - exactly how many kilometers there are can make all the difference. We believe that the European core is heated by the massive tidal forces applied by Jupiter - but how does that heat radiate into space?
Most scientists believe that the subEuropan seas are locked under tens of kilometers of ice. Heat is then conducted from the warm core by bulk convective motion of ice - huge chunks of frozen material literally carrying the heat away with them as they move up through the icy layer, shuffling and refreezing as they dump heat into space.
Professor Richard Greenberg believes that the crust is thin, only a kilometer or so, and heat is carried out by simple conduction - much slower, but providing a constant flow of energy through a relatively fixed underwater region bordering the immense cliffs of ice.
Greenberg does weaken his case by accusing a "Big Ice" cabal of scientists of suppressing his results, holding back his views to favor their own established model. The thing is, when you start talking about a conspiracy against you it doesn't matter if you're right or wrong: you sound a bit crazy. Especially when that "cabal" isn't a hidden core of ultra-billionaires, but probably about twenty guys with tenure who meet twice a year to talk about space moons.
On the upside, it seems the shadowy Europa lobby can't keep him silent and he's printing a book, "Unmasking Europa", putting forward his views and setting up the mother of all "I told you so"s if it turns out he's right. Again, he slightly weakens his case by fantasising an entire Europan ecosystem based on a few flybys of the Galileo probe, and it's not as if popular opinion will actually sway the scientists investigating the issue.
What is important is that such issues do now percolate to the public, one way or another. Science is no longer the preserve of those either rich enough to afford it or trying to build missiles out of it. Beside the cook books and crime novels you can find imaginings of the stars, controversies of the cosmos, and books about the entire universe. Which are slightly more interesting than "Five things you can do with leftovers" by Dolores Housewife.
Posted by Luke McKinney.
break.com — A talented kid too young to gamble knows his way around a pair of dice. Fourteen pairs, to be exact
Students in Montgomery County, Maryland use fake license plates to send speed camera tickets to enemies.
High school students in Maryland are using speed cameras as a tool to fine innocent drivers in a game, according to the Montgomery County Sentinel newspaper. Because photo enforcement devices will automatically mail out a ticket to any registered vehicle owner based solely on a photograph of a license plate, any driver could receive a ticket if someone else creates a duplicate of his license plate and drives quickly past a speed camera. The private companies that mail out the tickets often do not bother to verify whether vehicle registration information for the accused vehicle matches the photographed vehicle.
In the UK, this is known as number plate cloning, where thieves will find the license information of a vehicle similar in appearance to the one they wish to drive. They will use that information to purchase a real license plate from a private vendor using the other vehicle's numbers. This allows the "cloned" vehicle to avoid all automated punishment systems. According to the Sentinel, two Rockville, Maryland high schools call their version of cloning the "speed camera pimping game."
A speed camera is located out in front of Wootton High School, providing a convenient location for generating the false tickets. Instead of purchasing license plates, students have ready access to laser printers that can create duplicate license plates using glossy paper using readily available fonts. For example, the state name of "Maryland" appears on plates in a font similar to Garamond Number 5 Swash Italic. Once the camera flashes, the driver can quickly pull over and remove the fake paper plate. The victim will receive a $40 ticket in the mail weeks later. According to the Sentinel, students at Richard Montgomery High School have also participated, although Montgomery County officials deny having seen any evidence of faked speed camera tickets.
Source: Local teens claim pranks on countys Speed Cams (Montgomery County Sentinel (MD), 12/11/2008)
FOXBOROUGH - National Football League playoff scenarios create some unusual allies, but no alliance is more awkward and unexpected than the Patriots and their fans having to root for their most reviled rival, the New York Jets.
The Patriots' road to a sixth straight division title goes indirectly through the Meadowlands, where the Jets host the Miami Dolphins Sunday at 4:15 p.m. The Patriots (10-5) close the season at Buffalo (1 p.m.) and need to win and get to 11-5 to have any type of playoff shot. If the 9-6 Jets, who need to win to keep their fading playoff hopes alive, beat the 10-5 Dolphins, and the Patriots shuffle out of Buffalo with a win then the Patriots are division champions.
If the Dolphins beat the Jets, then the only way the Patriots can get in is via the second wild-card spot - Indianapolis already has clinched one of the berths - and that would require Baltimore to lose at home to the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jets are really the Patriots' best postseason hope because Jacksonville, which gave Indianapolis a game last Thursday, has nothing to play for as it finishes a disappointing season on the road.
So, the Patriots will have to take a break from the Border War and do the unimaginable - cheer for Eric Mangini and the Jets. Suddenly the Patriots and Jets are football frenemies. In this season of the unforeseen, even the Patriots couldn't have imagined that the latest plot twist has them having to pull for the Jets.
"No, never," said tight end Benjamin Watson with a hearty laugh inside the Reebok Store in Foxborough, where he was signing autographs. "Of all teams, right? We can control what we can control. If we'd have done better earlier we might not have been in this position, but we are where we are, and the only thing we can do now is try to win our last game. We win our last game and then see where the chips fall. If they're favorable, great. If not, we did the best we could with what we had."
Perhaps looking to avoid any conspiracy theories involving two teams who struggle to contain their contempt for each other and uphold the competitive integrity of the league, yesterday the NFL moved the time of the Jets-Dolphins game to 4:15 p.m. and did the same with the Ravens-Jaguars game, an unusual occurrence in that both games are on CBS, which carries the AFC, and both are being played on the East Coast.
By doing so, the league avoided a possible scenario in which Mangini and the Jets, knowing that the Patriots and Baltimore already have won, eliminating New York from the playoffs, spite the Patriots by not going all out against the Dolphins and thus knocking an 11-5 New England team out of the playoffs. With wins, both Miami and the Ravens would have 11-5 records, but they would have better conference records (8-4) than the Patriots, who can finish no better than 7-5 in the AFC.
Now, when the Jets kick off at 4:15, they know a win won't be just for the Patriots' sake. They're playing for themselves because if the Jets win and the Ravens lose, then New York makes the playoffs.
The NFL would rather air the "Spygate" tapes it confiscated from the Patriots on the NFL Network than admit such a scenario even could take place, never mind having to alter the schedule to avoid it.
"There are many factors that go into scheduling decisions, including this weekend's games," said NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "We make decisions that create the best overall situation for the NFL. We're not going to get into details on each game, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so. The schedule worked out the way it worked out. We made a decision that we think presents the best and most attractive television arrangement for this weekend's games."
When pressed about maintaining competitive integrity in the Jets-Dolphins game, Aiello channeled Patriots coach Bill Belichick.
"The schedule is what it is, and we think it's a very attractive Week 17 schedule with a lot of games with playoff implications," Aiello said.
The Jets have already done the Patriots a big favor by losing, 13-3, to the Seahawks Sunday. That opened the door for the Patriots to even have a shot at the division title.
While the Patriots have picked the perfect time to get hot, winning three straight games in December and four of their last five, New York has folded like a lawn chair, losing three of four to drop from 8-3 to 9-6. The one win required a boneheaded Buffalo fumble in the fourth quarter.
Belichick doesn't like to dabble in playoff scenarios to begin with, so he wasn't about to touch anything regarding help from the Jets, although he did reference the Jets' loss to Seattle, saying he was happy for outgoing Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren.
"Our major focus is just to get ready to play in Buffalo," said Belichick. "Again, based on what Buffalo did [Sunday] on the road in Denver, I think that right there tells you how they're going to play. They are a good football team. We have a lot of respect for them.
"We are always happy to see teams in our division lose. I was really happy for Mike Holmgren. Mike's had a tremendous career. He is one of the real greats in our profession. I have a lot of respect for Mike, so I was happy that it worked out for him in his last home game.
"I think, rather than being a fan here and a cheerleader, the best thing we can do is go out there and play good football on Sunday in Buffalo. Without that, nothing else will matter."
Christopher L. Gasper can be reached at cgasper@globe.com.
Chilean Volcano
Lightning bolts appear above and around the southern Chilean Chaiten volcano as seen from Chana, some 19 miles north of the volcano, in this picture that moved over the photo wires Saturday, May 10. It was the first eruption of this volcano in thousands of years. Cases of electrical storms breaking out directly above erupting volcanoes are well documented, although scientists differ on what causes them. The picture was taken May 2.
Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gaith, head of the feared Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, made the concession after last week's breakthrough public showings in Jeddah of the comedy feature "Manahi".
"A movie could possibly be acceptable if it serves good and is suitable under Islam," Sheikh Gaith said.
Gaith pulled back from comments he made two days earlier branding movies "an absolute evil" in the wake of screenings in the Red Sea port city.
"I did not say that we reject all cinema, but I said that we were not consulted during the organisation of these movie showings," he explained.
For more than a week from Dec 9, the Rotana entertainment group, controlled by Saudi tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, showed "Manahi" to rapturous audiences in Jeddah and nearby Taif.
The screenings, approved by the provincial governor, Prince Khalid al-Faisal, sparked hopes that Saudi Arabia would soon allow public cinemas.
Before the first projection of the film, local religious police inspected the facility, a 1,200 seat conference hall, to make sure that men and women would remain separated, adhering to the country's strict laws on separation of unrelated members of the opposite sexes.
For the three showings daily, women sat in the balcony of the hall while men and boys were on the ground floor.
There are no cinemas in Saudi Arabia, but some coffee shops surreptitiously put on movies for customers and many Saudis enjoy films at home on DVD and satellite television.
To experience a cinema, they have to travel to nearby Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates or other countries.
The new media has a total storage capacity of 33.5GB and is compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray players. The biggest advantage of the new media is backward compatibility - you can play it on your DVD or Blu-ray player.
Based on JVC's 2004 Blu-ray/DVD combo disc technology, Infinity has layered one format on top of the other on the same side of the disc, making it possible for the lasers to penetrate to the desired depth and read the required information.
The Blu-ray makes up the top layer (25GB) with two more layers beneath that make up the DVD layers (8.5GB). Separated by a semi reflective film, the blue laser accesses the top layer and bounces off the DVD layers, while the red laser penetrate the various layers to get to the DVD information underneath.
The company claims that it has achieved compatibility with 99 percent of tests made on 64 Blu-ray and DVD players and conforms to the Blu-ray Disc specifications released by the Blu-ray Disc Association.
As we mentioned earlier, technically, this is not new. In 2004, JVC released a prototype [PDF], but ISM is the first company to take the disc to production, and hopefully to the masses. The only disadvantage? Currently it's only available in Japan, and no release date has been set for the United States.
via: CDRInf
gamespot.com — You asked for it. We went back and looked at several games from past Xbox 360 vs. PlayStation 3 graphics comparison features to see how the graphics compare when we add the PC to the challenge.
Screw that. These days, there are all sorts of cool things you can get done with your remains, if you know where to shop. You can... When the husband of South London's Joanna Booth died, she did what we hope our loved ones do for us: she loaded his ashes into shotgun shells and killed every non-human thing in sight. Her husband, James, was an expert on vintage shotguns before he slipped into a food poison-induced coma for 18 months, subsequently passing away at the age of 50. "It was not his dying wish," said Joanna, "but I remembered that he had read somewhere that someone had had their ashes loaded into cartridges and he thought it was very funny." Taking the joke several thousand steps too far, she went to a shotgun cartridge maker and had a little bit of James crammed into 275 12-gauge shotgun shells. Joanna then had the bullets blessed by Rev. Alistair Donald (a local Church of Scotland minister who, in the process, proved the church is awesome). With the newly minted, newly blessed James-filled bullets, Joanna and 20 close friends took to an estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland where they proceeded to shoot every animal they saw. By day's end, the bullets were spent and Mother Nature had finally learned not to fuck with the gun-totting tag team of James and Joanna Booth: 70 partridges, 23 pheasants, 7 ducks and a fox fell that day. Just Imagine... You die at the hands of a brutal street gang. Your best friend/brother/father takes to the streets in the name of vigilante revenge. Finally he confronts the gang leader on a rooftop and says, "When you get to Hell, tell 'em Bobby sent you." Then he shoots him with a shotgun shell made from your ashes. (Your name is Bobby). We've all had this same conversation at one point or another: If you can choose your death, what would it be? Most people would probably say quick and painless. The next most popular answer would most likely be, "In a blaze of explosive fucking glory!" And while most of us probably won't get to bite the big one action movie-style, we can now ensure that our already dead bodies will. British company Heavens Above Fireworks and the cult sounding, California-basedAngel's Flight give you the option of treating your death like a Chinese New Year by mixing your ashes with combustible powder -- giving you the spectacular send off you may or may not deserve. There are various packages you can choose from, allowing you to tailor your display to best suit your personality. Heavens Above's "Simple Farewell" and "Gentle Farewell" packages offer a classy, solemn and subdued display of mortars launching rockets into the air and exploding gloriously, a fitting way to honor someone that lived their entire life in constant fear of being silently labeled as "Showy" and "A big-fat attention whore." If that isn't befitting of the recently deceased, then customers can do a total 180 and go for an all out, balls to the wall, explosiapalooza with the "Grand Finale" and "Spectacular Goodbye" packages. With these you'll be able to show the world that you over-compensated in every aspect of your life as a cavalcade of star shells, aerial mines, rockets and roman candles blast your dusty ass in a five-minute cacophony that will make God himself hold his ears. Just Imagine... Included in the "Spectacular Goodbye" and "Grand Finale" packages are the options to include the music of your choosing and, as the Heavens Above website states, to spell out "a name or message in fireworks." Got a final "fuck you" you want to deliver? You can spell that out in the sky and have a family member upload that shit to YouTube. All of which is, of course, will be set to a totally awesome Nickelback megamix. For those of you who prefer something less violent but more subtly creepy, Nadine Jarvis has a solution. She is an English product designer who designs things that never should be designed. But when it comes to thinking-up alternative ways to dispose of a dead body she makes mafiosos around the globe envious of her artistry. Jarvis has embarked on a project to dispose of ashes in a way that will "lengthen death ceremony [sic] to give more time to come to terms with loss." And by that, she means things likemaking pencils out of your ashes. Using the cremated remains, or "Cremains," one dead body can produce 240 pencils -- all but guaranteeing that you'll be dead long before you and your grieving family gets the chance to break them all in the most morbidly epic pencil fight ever recorded. The box of pencils comes with a built-in sharpener, so that the pencil shavings fall back into the box, leaving your family with an urn that has more in common with the floors near the trash bin of every elementary school classroom than a human body. Just Imagine... Make plans to have your corpse pencils donated to the local library. Or, even better, an elementary school. You know you'll wind up haunting that shit. You'll be poltergeisting books and desks all around the room, while one priest cowers in the corner and screams "THE PENCILS! WE HAVE TO DESTROY THE PENCILS! ITS HIS BODY! HIS BODYYYYY!!!" The jewelry industry doesn't want you to know this, but diamonds can be made in the lab. It's not even all that hard. You start with carbon and apply heat, pressure and time. Wait a second! Human ashes have carbon in them! You know what that means! Yes, if you died right now your family could cremate and wear your dead body as a rather morbid article of high end bling-bling within 6 to 9 months. This is the promise of Illinois-based, dead-human-to-pretty-diamond converters LifeGem. Once a body has been cremated (or a lock of hair is obtained) LifeGem scientists perform science all over it, first placing the separated ash carbons into an evil looking crucible that may as well have been a terrifying artifact found on the floors of Auschwitz, foreboding serial number and all. This crucible is then heated to around 3,000 degrees Celsius, converting the carbon into pure graphite. This graphite is then placed into a diamond press that replicates the heat and pressure generated by the earth in order to form a diamond. These are molecularly identical to naturally occurring diamonds, and contain all of the same traits. This will help tremendously when your family inevitably pawns the fucker for beer money. But don't just take our word for how valuable these things can get. Apparently, LifeGem borrowed 10 strands of hair off the head of Ludwig van Beethoven from a celebrity hair collector, and pressed it into a diamond that was valued at $1,000,000. Just Imagine... A diamond is the strongest substance on earth and, when sharpened correctly, can also be one of the deadliest. Have them take your diamond to designer Tobias Wong so he can sharpen your freshly forged visage into a wearable implement of carnage and mayhem. A diamond so sharp it can slice right down to bone. Man, get that for your son after you've been (again) brutally slain by a crime boss... he'll be 90% of the way to a superhero. If you've ever seen The Matrix then you may have overheard Morpheus explain to Neo that "the human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120V battery, and more than 25000 BTU's of body heat." As retarded as the science behind their human power plant was, some European crematoriums are making the idea real. Dukinfield Crematorium in England was having a problem when it came to burning their fresh crop of bodies: They couldn't afford to perform their creamationary duties while simultaneously keeping the mourners of the dead warm within the chapel. Their solution was a controversial one as they proposed that the energy given off should be recycled to power the chapel's boiler and lighting system. The system would capture the heat released by both the furnaces and the dead, then pass them through heat exchangers which would then be pumped into radiators. But if you can power one little building, why don't you go all out and power a whole town? Three Swedish cities (Boras, Helsingborg and Racksta) are doing just that. Using the same basic ideas stated above, these crematoria have all cut deals with their local power companies and are contributing up to 10% of their respective towns' energy. Just Imagine... If you lived in an apartment with shoddy wiring you can now rest assured knowing that, in a roundabout way, your body will continue to shock the genitals of anyone using a plug-in vibrator. Old school style mummies are played out. Now, we have a far more elegant way to keep people around way, way longer then they need to be. This new process is called "Plastination" and, just as the name suggests, it involves cramming a dead body so full of plastic that it essentially turns it into the giant action figure Jeffery Dahmer wanted as a child. Plastination was developed in 1978 by Dr. Gunther von Hagens and is used today as a learning tool for medical students of all types. You may have even caught a traveling exhibit showcasing a collection of the bodies posed in positions that suggest that it's totally alright to play a game of football with your dick meat fully exposed. The process of plastination can be broken down into five steps, all of which kind of sound like hunting process of a serial rapist: 1) Fixation: Where decay is halted by the injection of formalin, a bacteria fighting agent, into the arteries of the body. 2) Dehydration: After the doctors slice-and-dice whichever organs they wish to set aside for later, the body is placed in an acetone bath where all of its fats are dissolved away and its water sucked into the body's cells. 3) Forced Impregnation: The body is placed in a vacuum chamber with a polymer such as silicone rubber. As the acetone leaves the cells it swiftly draws in the liquid polymer behind it, leaving the cell filled with plastic. 4) Posing: Once every cell is loaded with plastic the body can be maneuvered around to strike any pose the scientists wish. It is also in this step where the scientists must resist their primal urges to place the bodies in lewd sexual positions while their hands perform obscene gestures. 5) Hardening: The body gets hard and just, kinda, you know, stays that way. There really isn't a whole lot of science involved in this step. The process takes just over a year to complete with the end result being a mannequin-like figure that serves as a diorama for the internal workings of the human body. The Institute for Plastination - located in Heidelberg, Germany - is always accepting bodies, but keep in mind that they will not, under any circumstances, except bodies that were thrown at their front doors from speeding cars. All bodies used are willing participants in the project... sort of. Just Imagine... The Institute of Plastination has this thing for arranging the bodies in action oriented posses to accentuate the dramatic features of a specimen in motion; they also plastinate non-human creatures such as giraffes, camels and gorillas. That's right: They can set you up so that you're wrestling a bear for eternity. Or arrange to have your body scoring a point during what people can only assume is a wicked awesome 1-on-1 tetherball match with a gorilla. Let your imagination run wild!By Luis Prada
Once you're dead - and you will be, before you know it - do you really want to spend the rest of eternity occupying a tiny plot of perfectly good land? Why? So your loved ones can lay flowers on it and dogs can come by and relieve themselves on your headstone later?#6.Get Loaded Into Some Bullets
See? Hilarious.
"James would've wanted me to do this."#5.Be a Fireworks Display
#4.Get Turned Into a Pencil
Like this.
#3.Become the Strongest Material on Earth
#2.Power a City
No effort was made to NOT make it look like a place that burns humans.
#1.Be a Science Exhibit Via Plastination
Or, hey, basketball, too.
"Gee, I hope my friends don't freeze my dead body in this position and put me on display for douchebag med students."
We're gonna be immortalized like this - forever watching internet pornography.
The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.
Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."
Grooms take part in a mass wedding ceremony in Riyadh in June. Governor of Riyadh Prince Salman and a local group organized a mass wedding for about 1600 couples to help people unable to afford expensive ceremonies
"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.
Relatives who did not wish to be named said that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother.
They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.
The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of £5,000, as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.
The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.
Mr Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.
Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the
Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.
In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28.
The Bruins have continued to dominate the East Coast and are still second overall in the NHL. Their last game against the St. Louis Blues was a little sloppy on defense but they were able to tighten up their game by the last period and win 6 - 3. Blake Wheeler had another great game for the Bruins scoring two goals. His second goal was probably the most fun to watch as it was short handed and he skated through four Blues players before taking a shot, which was blocked by Manny Legace, yet he was able to get the rebound and score.
MacDaddy will be taking some time off until the next year, so have a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanuka, Glorious Kwanza, and a Happy New Year!
Enjoy the highlights of the game.
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