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Today we sit down with Assistant Majority Leader Rickey R. Hendon to get his priorities and overview of the coming legislative session.

For most of us, “Googling” is synonymous with Web hunting: dredging up an old friend, say, or locating a late-night pizzeria. But the world’s leading search engine and its related applications are turning out to be powerful research tools, too. Scientists have begun tapping into Google Maps, Google Earth, and Google News to monitor volcanoes, find fossils, and track infectious diseases.

There are bears and giant bunny creatures in Canada, and they ski and play hockey! Not really. It’s just a bit of whimsy from Shaun White, his longtime corporate sponsor, Target, and his design-savvy brother, Jesse, in the form of a Times Square billboard campaign. See a close-up here. The White brothers, who’ve been flexing their creative muscles with the Shaun White 4 Target clothing line, helped design the nine billboards that give Shaun a good-luck sendoff for the Olympic Games. The ads went up a few days ago and will change to reflect the results on the slopes. The Flying Tomato, already an Olympic gold medalist and one of the most decorated snowboarders in the world, is expected to have another good year (and unless someone thinks of a new nickname, he’s stuck with that endearing but slightly played-out one). He may loom as large over the Vancouver halfpipe as he does in cartoon form over midtown Manhattan. At Target, his latest line of boys’ and young men’s clothing just launched with some Olympics-related pieces. The Games air Feb. 12-28 on NBC.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley

Facial Implants are a good way for plastic surgeons to improve and enhance your facial balance. Facial implants are often used to help create a more balanced look to your face and it’s features so you can feel better looking the way you do.

Many different implants are available for this procedure and they are made from many different materials. These implants can help strengthen the chin and cheekbones or even cause the jawline to be more balanced with the rest of the face.

Through the enhancements this procedure can give you, it can greatly increase your self esteem. This procedure is best for those who are looking for improvement, not perfection, and for those who have realistic expectations in what they want to achieve with this surgery.

For anyone looking to learn more about this amazing plastic surgery procedure, here is a site that has more information that should be useful in making the decision to get Facial Implants.

In case you haven’t had enough legacy excitement for one week with the Aceeca Garnet PDA announcement, Palm OS programmer extraordinaire Dmitry Grinberg is now seeking team members to assist with his DGOS project.

DGOS is a rather admirable but gargantuan project by Mr. Grinberg to write a 100% Palm OS compatible, modernized OS from the ground up. I am pleased to see that his admirable efforts continue over a year since beginning the project. Details are still sketchy at this point, but Dmitry appears to be concentrating his development efforts by using the highest-powered, most recent Palm OS hardware for benchmark purposes, namely the LifeDrive and TX, alongside the older Tungsten E2. Additional details and updates are available at the DGOS blog.

Article Tags: Himalayan Glacier Data, You could not make it up

The vice-chairman of the UN’s climate science panel admits that it made a mistake in asserting that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.

Some commentators maintain that taken together with the contents of e-mails stolen last year from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, it undermines the credibility of climate science.

Click source to read a rather reserved report by Richard Black

Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Read in full with comments »   

Después de la presentación del Mini Beachcomber en Detroit parecía probable que Mini al fin desvelara su 4×4, que se denominará Mini Countryman o Crossman, modelo que hasta el momento sólo teníamos fotos espía del. Pero desde World Car Fans se han adelantado y han publicado las primeras imágenes del Mini 4×4.

El Mini Countryman toma como base la misma del Beachcomber, pero más tradicional. Contará con tracción total como opción y como novedad en la gama Mini, contará con cuatro puertas. Desconocemos que motores equipará el nuevo integrante de la familia Mini, pero se supone que los compartirá con el resto de modelos de la gama y su llegada a los concesionarios se espera para finales de año.

Os dejamos con las tres fotos del modelo, que según aventuran desde WCF podrían rondar los 25.000 euros, pero de todas formas todos los detalles sobre precios o gama de motores están por confirmar. En cuanto al diseño lo más llamativo quizas sea la parte trasera más tradicional (yo me esperaba las puertas de Clubman) y ese frontal con cambios en las defensas, faros y los pasos de rueda que le dan ese toque de SUV.

Vía | Worldcarfans.com

Since calorie counting was mandated in New York City in 2008, nutritionists, libertarians and foodies have watched to see if it changed consumers’ appetites and orders. One well-circulated experiment found that the calorie counts had zero impact. Atlantic bloggers Megan McArdle and Corby Kummer debated the implications (Megan’s saw her skepticism validated; Corby noted that some companies had changed ingredients under the harsh light of calorie data.)

But this research from NBER, by Bryan Bollinger, Phillip Leslie, and Alan Sorensen, finds that publishing calorie counts can change our incentives after all:

We study the impact of mandatory calorie posting on
consumers’ purchase decisions, using detailed data from Starbucks. We
find that average calories per transaction falls by 6%. The effect is
almost entirely related to changes in consumers’ food choices–there is
almost no change in purchases of beverage calories. There is no impact
on Starbucks profit on average, and for the subset of stores located
close to their competitor Dunkin Donuts, the effect of calorie posting
is actually to increase Starbucks revenue. Survey evidence and analysis
of commuters suggest the mechanism for the effect is a combination of
learning and salience.

And so long as we’re on the topic of changing buyers’ behavior, here’s
another experiment about how the sound of certain prices can make
consumers think a price sounds like a better or worse discount (via the
New York Times):

In one experiment, researchers told consumers the regular and sale
prices of a product, asked them to repeat the sale price to themselves,
and then, a few minutes later, told them to estimate the size of the
discount in percentage terms. Products with “small-sounding” sale
prices (like $2.33) seemed like better deals than products with
“big-sounding” sales prices (like $2.22).

He isn’t the youngest kid to write an iPhone app, but 11-year old Cameron is wise beyond his years. He is donating a substantial part of the proceeds from his drawing app iSketch to the Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA.

Writing to Crunchgear, Cameron’s father explains the situation:

My son Cameron is 11 years old and, last year, he had a medical problem that prevented him from participating in the physical activities he otherwise enjoys. (He is nearly fully recovered.) During that time, Cameron became interested in computers, and he began to read anything he could get his hands on. He watched Stanford University professors on iTunes, scoured the web for articles on programming and taught himself several different programming languages. (Neither my wife nor I have any idea how to program.) Cameron began to focus on the iPhone and iPod touch devices as the “apps” offered for sale for use on those devices seemed really cool to him. He began to work on a few different apps. After completing some summer camps on programming and continuing to read and learn, Cameron finalized an app, which he calls iSketch, and submit it to Apple. The app, which is a painting/drawing program, was approved by Apple for sale on its App Store in December. (He has since updated it several times..)

Inspired by the care he received at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital, Cameron has dedicated a substantial portion of the proceeds from his sales to purchase entertainment and electronic items for Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA’s Child Life/Child Development programs in Westwood and Santa Monica so that pre-teens and teens will have additional age-appropriate options available to them during their Hospital stays. Cameron’s sales so far have been good, but he hopes to accelerate them so that he can donate even more to the Hospital.

Damn, that is humbling.

Despite Cameron’s age, iSketch looks like one of the better drawing apps in the App Store. Even if you aren’t interested in drawing on your phone, the 99 cent price tag is going to be worth every penny. [iTunes and iSketch via Crunchgear]

Crime Statistics January 016, 2010

VIOLENT CRIMES                  2010**           2009**          % Chg

Homicide                                14*                 14              0.0%

Rape                                       35                  39           -10.3%

Robbery                                 503                606           -17.0%

Agg Assaults **                       399                505          -21.0%

Total Violent Crimes              951              1164          -18.3%

PROPERTY CRIMES

Burglary                                  743               824            -9.8%

BTFV                                     1157             1436           -19.4%

Personal/Other Theft               921            1245           -26.0%

Auto Theft                              709              827           -14.3%

Total Property Crimes          3530           4332          -18.5%

Total Part I Crimes               4481           5496          -18.5%



* Numbers reflects a change in reclassification for Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) guidelines and numbers are adjusted accordingly.

** Prior to 2005, Aggravated Assaults included Child/Spousal Simple Assaults

Over at the Intersection, Chris Mooney is concerned that we haven’t had a science/religion tiff in what, days? So he wants to offer a defense of organizations like the National Center for Science Education, who choose to promote science by downplaying any conflicts between science and religion. For example, the NCSE sponsors a Faith Project, where you can be reassured that scientists aren’t nearly as godless as the newspapers would have you believe.

In the real world, scientists have different stances toward religion. Some of us think that science and religion are (for conventional definitions of science and religion) incompatible. Others find them perfectly consistent with each other. (It’s worth pointing out that “X is true” and “People exist who believe X is true” are not actually the same statement, despite what Chad and Chris and others would have you believe. I’ve tried to emphasize that distinction over and over, to little avail.)

In response to this situation, we uncompromising atheists have a typically strident and trouble-making idea: organizations that bill themselves as “centers for science education” and “associations for science” and “academies of science” should not take stances on matters of religion. Outlandish, I know. But we think that organizations dedicated to science should not wander off into theology, even with the best of intentions. Stick with talking about science, and everyone should be happy.

But they’re not happy; Chris and others (Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas is a thoughtful example) think that the NCSE can be more effective if it proactively tries to convince people that science and religion need not be incompatible. As an argument toward this conclusion, Chris attempts to horrify us by offering the following hypothetical conversation between a religious believer and an NCSE representative:

Religious believer: I know you say that evolution is good science, but I’m afraid of what my pastor says–that accepting it is the road to damnation.

NCSE: As a policy, we only talk about science and to not take any stance on religion. So we couldn’t comment on that.

Religious believer: I do have one friend who accepts evolution, but he stopped going to church too and that worries me.

NCSE: All we can really tell you is that evolution is the bedrock of modern biology, and universally accepted within the scientific community.

Religious believer: And I’m worried about my children. If I let them learn about evolution in school, will they come home one day and tell me that we’re all nothing but matter in motion?

NCSE: ….

To which I can only reply … um, yeah? That doesn’t seem very bad at all to me. Do we seriously want representatives of the NCSE saying “No, the claim that accepting evolution is the road to damnation is based on a misreading of Scripture and is pretty bad theology. If we go back to Saint Augustine, we see that the Church has a long tradition of…” Gag me with a spoon, as I understand the kids say these days.

Of course, we could also imagine something like this:

Religious believer: I know you say that evolution is good science, but I’m afraid of what my pastor says–that accepting it is the road to damnation.

NCSE: Oh, don’t worry. There’s no such thing as “damnation,” your pastor has just been misleading you.

Religious believer: I do have one friend who accepts evolution, but he stopped going to church too and that worries me.

NCSE: Well, that will happen. Prolonged exposure to scientific ways of thinking can lead people to abandon their religious beliefs. But don’t worry, you’ll be happier and have a more accurate view of how the universe works if that’s what happens.

Religious believer: And I’m worried about my children. If I let them learn about evolution in school, will they come home one day and tell me that we’re all nothing but matter in motion?

NCSE: That would be great! Because that’s what we are. But it’s not as depressing as you make it out to be; correctly understanding how the world works is the first step toward making the most out of life.

How awesome would that be? I don’t actually advocate this kind of dialogue in this particular context — as I just said, I think science organizations should simply steer clear. But these answers have a considerable benefit, in that I think they’re “true.”

That’s the major point. Advocacy and educational organizations have the goal of supporting science and education the best way they can, but there are limits. For example, they should stick to the truth. I tried to make this point in my post about politicians and critics — some people have as their primary goal advocating for some sort of cause, whereas others are simply devoted to the truth. But an organization advocating for science needs to take both into consideration.

And there are some scientists — quite a few of us, actually — who straightforwardly believe that science and religion are incompatible. There are absolutely those who disagree, no doubt about that. But establishing the truth is a prior question to performing honest and effective advocacy, not one we can simply brush under the rug when it’s inconvenient or doesn’t make for the best sales pitch. Which is why it’s worth going over these tiresome science/religion debates over and over, even in the face of repeated blatant misrepresentation of one’s views. If science and religion are truly incompatible, then it would be dishonest and irresponsible to pretend otherwise, even if doing so would soothe a few worried souls. And if you want to argue that science and religion are actually compatible (not just that there exist people who think so), by all means make that argument — it’s a worthy discussion to have. But it’s simply wrong to take the stance that it doesn’t matter whether science and religion are compatible, we still need to pretend they are so as not to hurt people’s feelings. That’s not being honest.

I have no problem with the NCSE or any other organization pointing out that there exist scientists who are religious. That’s an uncontroversial statement of fact. But I have a big problem with them making statements about whether religious belief puts you into conflict with science (or vice-versa), or setting up “Faith Projects,” or generally taking politically advantageous sides on issues that aren’t strictly scientific. And explaining to people where their pastors went wrong when talking about damnation? No way.

Right now there is not a strong consensus within the scientific community about what the truth actually is vis-a-vis science and religion; I have my views, but sadly they’re not universally shared. So the strategy for the NCSE and other organizations should be obvious: just stay away. Stick to talking about science. Yes, that’s a strategy that may lose some potential converts (as it were). So be it! The reason why this battle is worth fighting in the first place is that we’re dedicated to promulgating the truth, not just to winning a few political skirmishes for their own sakes. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? (Mt. 16:26.)

The operator notified the CTA’s control center, which notified the fire department, Hosinski said.

The man was taken to Stroger Hospital, Police News Affairs Officer John Mirabelli said.

No one has been arrested in connection with the incident. Wentworth Area detectives were investigating, Mirabelli said. The train was delayed about eight minutes, Hosinski said.

– Serena Maria Daniels

Read the original article from Tribune News Services.