Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • Honda Racing HSV-010 GT Official Details

    After back in December 2009 Honda’s racing division previewed the HSV-010 GT sportscar, the Japanese manufacturer’s entry in the 2010 Super GT Series GT500 class, the car has been officially presented today, together with its full specifications.

    HSV stands for Honda Sports Velocity and is aimed to take on established competitors like the Nissan GT-R. Especially because Honda plans to take the series with the new vehicle.

    Below are the specifications of the HSV-010 GT:

    Vehicle … (read more)

  • Confirmed for 2010 Geneva: Mitsubishi ASX Compact Crossover

    Just as expected, the 2010 Geneva Motor Show will be the best occasion to roll out the latest contraptions in the European automotive world and Mitsubishi tries to take full advantage of this. The company will launch at the Geneva show the all-new ASX compact crossover, a model that represents the European flavor of the Japanese RVR that will go on sale next month.

    The ASX will provide enough room for 5 occupants and will go on sale in select European markets in late spring 2010.

    The engin… (read more)

  • Pink and blue Wii Remotes ready for Valentine’s Day pre-order

    Nintendo may be a lot of things, but stupid it ain’t. Cashing in on yet another gift-giving holiday, the console sales leader is bringing Americans a pair of freshly paint-licked Wii Remotes that should appeal to the his-and-hers demographic that seems to grow in number at this time of year. As you can see above, grabbing one will set you back $54.99, which is about the same price as the regular MotionPlus bundle. So, even if you weren’t thinking about wooing your loved one with yet another Wii peripheral, at least the US now gets a 200 percent improvement in MotionPlus color choices. How is that not progress?

    [Thanks, Brandon]

    Pink and blue Wii Remotes ready for Valentine’s Day pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Shelby GT350 Revived after 45 Years

    Shelby American recently revealed a supercharged concept version of the Mustang-based 2011 Shelby GT350 to the attendees of the Barrett-Jackson Auction Opening Night Gala, to honor the 45th anniversary of the first GT350 and first Shelby big block Cobra. According to the Shelby team, the idea behind the GT350 was to build a car that is light, nimble and powerful.

    After it was hand built in our new design studio, it began extensive testing at Las Vegas Motor Speedway by veteran test drivers Vi… (read more)

  • US Fans Name Michael Schumacher the Driver of the Decade

    We know that most of you might argue that the racing fans in the United States of American don’t really appreciate the Formula One championship, or at least they don’t consider it just as exciting or tough as the NASCAR championship. However, the latest news coming from the continent across the Atlantic says otherwise.

    In a recent on-line pole conducted by the famous American cable television network ESPN, the 7-time champion of Formula One was voted out the best racer of the decade.

    In r… (read more)

  • Joke Airport Bomb Threat Lands Man in Jail

    All around the world, security measures are being tightened to protect us from the most evil of evils, terrorism. Just a few days ago, the FBI’s mighty computing power and its brightest forensic detectives put together a mock photo of an older Bin Laden using photos they found on the Internet. Not one to be outdone, the British police has now arrested… (read more)

  • Citroen C4 spy shots from cold weather testing

    Citroen C4 spy shots

    The next generation Citroen C4 has been spied winter testing in Scandinavia (Europe has certainly provided for sub-zero tests this winter). The new C4 is still under heavy camouflage, meaning we don’t get much of an idea at all about its new style.

    The Citroen C4 should be presented at the 2010 Paris motor show in autumn this year, while its commercial debut will arrive in 2011. That makes seven years after the C4 first came on the scene. The big news is that the next C4 could see the debut of a diesel-hybrid engine set-up, which will appear on the Peugeot 3008 and Citroen DS5 in the course of 2011 in the form of the Hybrid4.

    The PSA engine places the fuel based engine at the front of the vehicle and the electric motor at the rear. The two work independently so that over a short course the car can be used in just an electric mode if desired. The C4 should also appear with the current 1.6-litre THP engine, although no further technical data is available yet.

    Citroen C4 spy shots Citroen C4 spy shots

    Source | Autoweek.nl


  • GM Offers Four Free Service Checks to Pontiac Owners

    GM shuts down Pontiac and this measure affects millions of people in the United States, who will most likely stay away from GM’s brands in the future. But General Motors tries a different approach on the matter and aims to lure Pontiac owners into the existing Buick-GMC dealerships in the US through a free maintenance programme.

    As a result, the company is offering four free service checks to current Pontiac owners who bought a new car or a certified vehicle in 1999 or sooner. According to Br… (read more)

  • US F1 Car Will Be Called Type 1

    Formula One will witness a bunch of new names in terms of chassis designation for the 2010 season, as the latest was revealed by the motor sport technology journal Racecar Engineering. After the reporters from the aforementioned publication visited the US F1 headquarters in Charlotte, they seem to have found out the name of the team’s 2010 challenger.

    And because we hate to keep you waiting, it appears US F1’s car will be called the Type 1. Although not disclosing that many information about … (read more)

  • Garmin BirdsEye Aerial Imagery Announced

    Navigation addicts now have yet another gadget to play with, after satellite navigation solutions provider Garmin released the BirdsEye and Aerial Imagery subscription yesterday. The new tools use highly-detailed photo-based maps to guide users through Garmin handheld navigators.

    "Without a doubt, BirdsEye Satellite Imagery reinforces Garmin as the leader in outdoor cartography, Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales said. Whatever the occasion, outdoor explorers can fin… (read more)

  • Historical Emergence of Christianity – Part 1

    The historical rise of Christianity as the dominant western religion is well understood after Constantine made it the sole imperial Roman religion beholden to the Roman state.  In fact this single step was possibly the most important innovation in global history.  The idea of a corporate church was originated in a form that was meant to be immortal and in the process survived the Roman Empire and continues to this day as well as its derivative sects.  It subsumed the Roman civilization and carried its embers forward as it reconstituted itself through the barbarian lands.  Its history is that of Western civilization for the past fifteen hundred years beginning with Constantine. Their natural children are the legal entities of the joint stock companies that have produced the modern global economy.
    Constantine did two things that must be fully understood.  He assembled all the Christian scholars and had them prepare a canon from the available texts available as to be the sole unique officially authorized text to be used thereafter.  This was done and it formed the New Testament.  They also added the much larger number of accepted texts of the Judaic faith as an underlying reference work that were integral to the teachings of Christianity. This became the Old Testament and naturally held in less regard than the New Testament by the faithful. The New Testament is in fact a radical departure from the Old Testament.
    He then had all the source works destroyed as well as any other scriptures about in order to eliminate any form of competition.  He was not totally successful, but over the centuries simple negligence did most of the work as non canonical works were merely not copied.  The result is that our primary source for the rise of Christianity in the first four centuries is a carefully edited package that strips the human aspect of the history out in exchange for a divine history that is much more useful as a basis for religious enthusiasm.
    Therefore the human history can only be reassembled in conjecture and snippets of actual data.  In fact the field is crowded with extravagant speculation including the recent popularization of the Da Vinci Code.  At worst, they make great stories that help folks explore their own religious feelings even when they know it is rubbish.
    My own readings have led to a minimalist conjectural history that is worth reciting.  Again we are reading between the lines and the facts to discover an extraordinary human being who took his time and place and redirected religious history.  There is more to it than that of course, but we can recognize the least of it perhaps.
    First we need to understand the local context.  It is reported that Jesus was born in the last years of Herod the Great’s reign.  This is important because Herod originally inherited and ruled an impoverished kingdom no better of than its equally uninviting neighbors and no threat to anyone.  Their revenues were scant.  They did have a religious sect however and a fairly famous temple dating from the Bronze Age.  Someone got the brainstorm of empowering priests to travel to other cities on the Mediterranean littoral to create new converts who would pay a handsome fee. Somehow it all worked and the result was a steady income coming back to Herod and the temple in Jerusalem. Yes this actually happened and it was the foundation of Herod’s wealth and continuing success.
    The result was new Jewish communities in the major cities throughout the Roman Empire rather loosely controlled and managed if at all by the temple in Jerusalem.  We can be sure that they were enthusiastic and evangelical.
    During this era, the Roman Empire extended its protection around the Eastern end of the Mediterranean to everyone’s chagrin.  Herod held them at bay but his successors had less skill. Strong tribal and religious feelings were sustained and eventually blew up in a total revolt after three generations.  We know this history but those living in Judaea did not and got on with their lives in what had become under Herod a prosperous well populated province.
    Into this world Jesus was born. His father was an established tradesman, carpenter or woodworker, but obviously skilled in a world were joinery was important.  He or his wife was perhaps of important family lines connected to the heroic tribal past.  Yet that heroic past was likely a millennium old which meant that all members in the tribe had now similar pedigrees.  More likely it was added in as an argument to support claims of kingship long after the fact.  That was not important.
    What was important was that the child was a natural genius.  Somehow he got an education and with this he accessed the supply of local scriptures and became expert. He likely had an eidetic memory.  When he was presented to the local cadre of scholars, he astounded them and this memory is passed down to us. This recognition naturally led to his been recruited into the ranks as a student and leaving his family.
    Before we go forward I will address the embedded mythology surrounding his birth for which there are several aspects.  The easiest is the three wise men.  We have the present day tradition of the recognition of the Dalai Lama to inform us as well as others who are part of the same culture.  It is completely believable that three Buddhist monks could journey to discover a great soul.  It would certainly have an impact on the recipient and his family.  Whether it happened in the case of Jesus can never be known, but that it happened at all is certainly possible and more surely the story itself got around.  This is a real world explanation for the legend itself.
    The aspect of been born in the midst of a local census is not too exceptional and serves mostly to fix the approximate date of his birth.  The further tale of Herod’s reaction is a simple lift from the tale of Moses and was hardly likely there either.  The appearance of the three monks would have been remarked upon and remembered and certainly explains the direction of his later career.  The rest appears to be simply embedded after the fact.
    That leaves us with the legend of the virgin birth.  Again this is an embedded idea that was possibly expected and acceptable in the time and place and which gives modern sensibilities some difficulties.  There is actually no reason to think that this birth was anything more than it seems.  An established tradesman acquired a bride and began a family.  End of story.
    However, fifty miles to the north we have the city of Tyre and the cult of Baal.  Within this cult there was a ritual whereby young pubescent women presented themselves to the temple to be randomly assaulted by whoever was allowed as a rite of passage.  Naturally children would be produced who would be viewed as children of the god.  It also explains the evidence of child sacrifice associated with Phoenician practice.  Jarring as this practice is to modern sensibilities, it explains the source of the idea of the virgin birth to start with and why it was accepted in the culture at all.
    The star of the monks may or may not have been real.  More likely it was a signal visible only to the monks themselves and was plausibly stronger than usual.  I suspect that this fits well into these traditions.
    Thus we have a young student who has possibly been sponsored by these monks to be properly educated so far as was possible in the time and place.  This is not a negligible proposition.  Greek scholarship was available in Aramaic as was studies in Hebrew Scriptures.  Because he was special and because money was available it seems likely that he got access to an excellent education and been a prodigy, he was able to absorb everything available before he turned twelve.  Thus we have his extraordinary performance before the scholars of the temple when he was tested by his peers.
    He was now in the eyes of his culture, a young man in need of additional training in distant centers of learning.  That provided two options.  The obvious one was Alexandria.  It is plausible that he first went there to perhaps polish what we would describe as his classical education.  This need not have taken a great deal of time as he had already been so schooled and likely needed only to review a few obscure texts and to debate a number of issues.
    Tradition now finds him in India at the age of fourteen studying Buddhism.  This tradition is not minor and it makes perfect sense that such a scholar would travel to the major source of Holy Scriptures and religious doctrines.  We have no good reason to not accept this tradition because he clearly made an impact and mastered the languages and the available written material.  This must have taken the full fifteen years that it appears he was there.  It was no small challenge.
    It is also reasonable that during his stay that he translated core documents into Aramaic in preparation for his return to his homeland. They would be necessary as a basis for the opening of a new center of Buddhist instruction.  He returned as a fully trained Buddhist monk with all the necessary tools for establishing Buddhist monasteries.
    My key point here is that such a career was possible even without the recognition of lama hood by the monks, but rather unlikely.  Money and initial acknowledgement actually made it inevitable.  The ultimate confirmation is his very existence and the content of his teachings which we will address in part 2.

  • Class Victory for Aston Martin at Dubai 24Hr

    UAE based AUH Motorsports managed to achieve a class victory and 16th overall in the Dubai 24 Hours with its Aston Martin Vantage GT4, which was driven to victory by Emirati driver Humaid Al Masaood who teamed with Eric Charles, Alex Kapadia and Michael Prophet.

    The SP3 class for GT4 cars saw Aston Martins filling three of the top four positions. British team Nicholas Mee Racing finished third, while DXB Racing completed the endurance contest just one lap behind in fourth.

    In total 74 cars… (read more)

  • Sea Change for Salmon Husbandry

    This is extremely promising for the aquaculture industry.  Fundamentally, everyone has assumed that salmon need to spend their life in the ocean.  Now it turns out that that is not true at all.  The consequences are huge.

     

    We still have the issue of feed.  I am aware of work on replacing part of the feed with grains and I assume that will continue.  They are suggesting here that they can approach 1.1 to 1, except I heard that tale two decades ago.

     

    I think though that we may have a far better option available.  It is expensive to raise fish in tanks.  So raise them in the lakes of the boreal forest.  These lakes have often been fished out and are forced through a serious die off every winter that decimates populations.  These salmon can in fact live in these lakes.  The lakes themselves are easily closed off to restrain migration if the fish are released only after they are properly sized.

     

    The fish can be initially raised and fed in lakeside pens until they are so sized.

     

    Far more important, small lakes are covered during the summer with mosquito and black fly larvae which should augment the feeding regime and perhaps keep the local environment somewhat more livable.  The reason this food supply is so substantial is that the winter die off has wiped out their predators.  Thus introducing a huge supply of active predators into the lake means that the natural food supply can be used.

     

    The fish population will still need to be fed over the next winter, but that can be planned for and perhaps may be a mostly grain based diet.  After all we are simply carrying them over the winter until spring brings back the insect larvae again.

     

    Winter feeding through the ice should not be difficult since we presently do ice fishing anyway.  In fact I suspect that the fishermen will help since it helps their sport.

     

    I am sure these methods can be applied to other fish species, but we are most experienced with Coho at present since it happens to be ready for harvest inside of two years.

     

    Sea Change: Environmental Group Gives First-Time Nod to Sustainable Salmon-Farming Method

     

    An aquaculture company devises a new, sustainable process that raises Pacific Coho salmon in freshwater

     

    http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/inline/coho-salmon-farming_1.jpg
    SALMON SOLUTION: A new farming technique for Pacific coho salmon has received approval from a consumer education group that advocates for sustainable fisheries
    Farm-raised salmon has long been the poster child of unsustainable aquaculture practices. Issues of escape, pollution and inefficiency have plunged it deeply into the “avoid” territory of environmental groups—until now.

    In a report released January 14, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program is taking the unprecedented step of approving a particular method for farming Pacific coho salmon that is currently employed exclusively by the Rochester, Wash.–based AquaSeed Corp. The sustainability nod from the consumer education group means that these salmon also will be assigned a green “Best Choice” rating on Seafood Watch’s Web site. The approval follows several months of intensive site visits by Seafood Watch scientists and reviews of the company’s production facility, feed ratios, fish contaminant and pollution discharge levels, and more.

    The salmon, to be sold under the SweetSpring label, have also been shown to contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, placing the salmon on Seafood Watch’s newly created Super Green List, which denotes that the fish is good for human health without causing harm to the ocean. To appear on the Super Green List, the salmon must provide the daily minimum of omega-3s (at least 250 milligrams per day) based on 28 grams of fish, and have PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) levels under 11 parts per billion (ppb). AquaSeed came in at 335 milligrams per day of omega-3s and had a PCB level of 10.4 ppb.

    “This is the first farmed salmon we’ve ever talked about as a good source [for food, since the program’s inception in 1999],” said Geoffrey Shester, senior science manager for Seafood Watch. “This is extremely exciting. It’s not an experimental science project. It is mature to the point where there is real potential to scale it up.”

    The farming method

    The AquaSeed Pacific coho salmon are raised in a freshwater, closed containment system, which is not how salmon are conventionally farmed. Salmon in the wild live primarily in saltwater but swim to freshwater every year to spawn. Traditionally raised farm salmon are grown in open-net ocean pens. This has led to problems such as nonnative species escaping into the wild and pollution as well as sea lice infestation and disease, because there is no barrier between captive salmon and the wild version in surrounding waters. Plus, traditionally raised farmed salmon require as much as five pounds (2.3 kilograms) of meal made from smaller fish caught in the wild for every pound (half kilogram) of salmon meat, a level that is considered unsustainable by environmental groups.

    AquaSeed’s salmon are grown in land-based, freshwater tanks ranging in size from 60 centimeters to 15 meters wide depending on the salmon’s developmental stage. Containment tanks prevent escapes and problems with sea lice infestation that have plagued open-net ocean pen operations. Also, a high-end salmon feed and selective breeding has helped minimize fishmeal use, reducing the ratio of pounds of wild feed fish to produce pounds of farmed fish to 1.1 to one—a number AquaSeed owner Per Heggelund says he expects to whittle further.

    “What’s interesting about this is this is they’ve taken salmon back millions of years evolutionarily, to the point where they’re freshwater again,” Shester says.

    Now on their 17th generation of pedigree breeding, the egg-to-plate operation is in the process of providing the salmon with a DNA fingerprint to help thwart any unauthorized breeding. AquaSeed’s core business is selling “eyed” salmon eggs (eggs that have developed to the point that their eyes are visible) under the Domsea label to salmon farms in Japan, China and other countries. They’ve also been working to conserve endangered wild Pacific salmon stocks by maintaining an isolation and breeding facility operation, protecting 40 distinct families of salmon.

    “We didn’t set out to be in a food fish program in a land-based facility,” Heggelund says. “That wasn’t our goal. We were more focused on the genetics—the livestock breeding of salmon for the normal traits of survival at certain stages of the life cycle, productive growth and feed conversion, and egg production.”

    Producing 90,700 kilograms of salmon a year, Heggelund is preparing to rapidly expand production on his 20-hectare farm, and is already working closely with large purchasers such as Compass Group and Whole Foods as well as Mashiko, a Seattle-based sustainable sushi restaurant.

  • China May Re-Open Up .Cn Registrations for Individuals

    China’s web isn’t getting more open any time soon, even with Google’s ultimatum, but the officials are now backing off on a restrictive measure implemented last month, which prevented individuals inside China from registering .cn domains. Regulators are now saying they will open up registrations once again as the alternative, people registe… (read more)

  • Internet Explorer: Should You Stay or Should You Go? [Voices]

    By Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

    French and German government agencies have told people they should ditch Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer browser, at least temporarily, because of a security hole that hackers are thought to have exploited on recent cyberattacks against Google and other companies. What should you do?

    Switching to an alternative Web browser like Firefox or Google (GOOG) Chrome is one possibility. For now, security companies like McAfee have only identified the latest security exploit as an Internet Explorer issue, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t find vulnerabilities in other browsers that were involved in the broad attack on Google and others.

    Generally speaking, a browser switch is going to be a lot easier for an individual than it will be for corporate users, where IT policies often dictate which browser people use on their computers. Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant and security firm Sophos, said in a blog post Monday that companies may cause “more problems than it’s worth by summarily switching browsers” because of the potential for employee confusion and Web site compatibility problems caused by the new software.

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  • Twitter Joke Led to Terror Act Arrest and Airport Life Ban [Voices]

    By Mark Hughes and Jason Walsh, Contributors, Independent UK

    When heavy snowfall threatened to scupper Paul Chambers’s travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

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  • Forget Gum. Walking and Using Phone Is Risky. [Voices]

    By Matt Richtel, Reporter, New York Times

    On the day of the collision last month, visibility was good. The sidewalk was not under repair. As she walked, Tiffany Briggs, 25, was talking to her grandmother on her cellphone, lost in conversation.

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  • What Would Martin Luther King Make of Twitter? [Voices]

    By Baratunde Thurston, Contributor, Vanity Fair

    At this time every year, commentators across the United States engage in an exercise I’ll call Hypothetical King, in which we try to imagine what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would say about the war in Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, or Mo’Nique winning best supporting actress for Precious at the Golden Globes. We extrapolate from his words and deeds and hope we’re right but can never be sure.

    I’d like to engage in an exercise that’s almost the reverse of that.

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  • Is Gawker’s “Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt” Illegal? [Voices]

    By Ben Sheffner, Contributor, Slate.com

    Gawker—whose founder, Nick Denton, recently chided his minions for thinking “way too much before publishing,” and which is fighting off a copyright lawsuit after posting extended excerpts of a celebrity trio’s “naked threesome” video—is once again testing the limits of journalistic ethics and the law.

    The fun started Tuesday, when Gawker’s Silicon Valley gossip site, Valleywag, announced what it called the “Apple Tablet Scavenger Hunt,” offering cash prizes for information about the much-anticipated new Apple (AAPL) device, reportedly set for public unveiling Jan. 27. Valleywag said it had “had enough of trying to follow all the speculation” about the product and set out a “menu” describing what it would pay for info, ranging from $10,000 for “bona fide pictures” to $100,000 for anyone who could physically deliver the tablet to the editors and “let us play with one for an hour.”

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  • Other People’s Privacy [Voices]

    By Nick Carr, Blogger, Rough Type

    In the wake of Google’s (GOOG) revelation last week of a concerted, sophisticated cyber attack on many corporate networks, including its own Gmail service, Eric Schmidt’s recent comments about privacy become even more troubling. As you’ll recall, in a December 3 CNBC interview, Schmidt said, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

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