199 replies to this topic

[Sanjay]

New thread as requested.

http://oddnews.org/77-odd-news/1374-cbs-takes-sarcastic-jab-at-abc-s-glass-house.html


LOS ANGELES (AP) -- After failing to stop the debut of ABC's "The Glass House," CBS is trying another tactic against its competitor: sarcasm.

CBS argued in court last week that the ABC show is a copy of CBS' "Big Brother." But a judge refused to bar "Glass House" from airing, saying he wasn't persuaded that CBS would be harmed by it.

So CBS issued a tongue-in-cheek news release Wednesday claiming it's developing a reality series called "Dancing on the Stars" - a jab at ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

CBS says the mock series will air from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles and feature "moderately famous and sort of well-known people" who will compete by dancing on stars' graves.

A spokesman confirmed the release came from CBS but wouldn't elaborate. ABC declined comment.

[Ogul]

CBS argued in court last week that the ABC show is a copy of CBS' "Big Brother." But a judge refused to bar "Glass House" from airing, saying he wasn't persuaded that CBS would be harmed by it.

So CBS issued a tongue-in-cheek news release Wednesday claiming it's developing a reality series called "Dancing on the Stars" - a jab at ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

CBS says the mock series will air from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles and feature "moderately famous and sort of well-known people" who will compete by dancing on stars' graves.

Wicked burn!

Seriously though, CBS didn't have a leg to stand on here. Now NBC definitely could have gone against that new Fox "dating" show, but Glass House is clearly a different product than Big Brother, and both are horrible.

[Todd Gross]

HOLY SHIT!!!

Highest Man-Made Temperature: 4 TRILLION Degrees

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory doesn't have anywhere near the name recognition of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. But for the time being, it can lay claim to its own impressive achievement: it's just been recognized by Guinness World Records for achieving the "Highest Manmade Temperature." Go, RHIC!

The honor comes courtesy of the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) collaboration, designed to study the formation and characteristics of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of matter believed to have existed for ten-millionths of a second after the universe's birth.

In those first fractions of a second, the universe was so hot that no nuclei could exist. Instead, there was the QGP, made of quarks and gluons (the massless particles that "carry" the force between quarks). But making this exotic plasma in a laboratory requires enormous energies.

That's where RHIC comes in. In RHIC's 2.4-mile-long ring, gold ions whip around the ring in both directions at once, further accelerated by strategically placed coils of wire that emit radiofrequency radiation. There are six different sites around the ring where collisions can occur.

When those gold nuclei collide head-on, a hot, dense plasma of quarks and gluons forms -- or, more accurately, something akin to a near-frictionless liquid (a very surprising result, needless to say).

The folks at Guinness are right: It is the hottest temperature yet created by mankind: 4 trillion degrees Celsius, 250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun.

And here's the fascinating bit: physicists have now observed the same "near perfect liquid" state of matter at temperatures near absolute zero.

That's a whopping ten million trillion times colder than RHIC's quark-gluon plasma, according to Brookhaven physicist Steve Vigdor. "This is just one among many unexpected connections we've found between RHIC physics and other scientific forefronts," he told the Bits and Bytes blog. "The unity of physics is a beautiful thing!"

As impressive as this achievement is, RHIC has some pretty stiff competition coming down the pike, by the name of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment). ALICE is one of the other major collaborations at the LHC. Unlike ATLAS and CMS, which are focused on hunting for the Higgs boson, ALICE is focused on studying the QCP and other conditions in the primordial universe.

That means ALICE needs to create ultra-high temperatures, and it's also a newer machine. CERN physicist Despina Hatzifotiadou told Bits and Bytes that ALICE has an energy density three times higher than RHIC, translating into a 30 percent increase in absolutely temperature. "So I would say that ALICE has the record."

Ah, but the good scientists of ALICE have yet to publish an official temperature measurement -- and that's what those sticklers at Guinness require before conferring such an honor on a candidate. SO for now, at least, RHIC still wins on a technicality.

[Will Carper]

Unemployed man (for over a year) misses job interview to save a baby's life. Says all he wants is a job.

http://www.nydailyne...ticle-1.1102781

[Lucian Von Dooom]

Unemployed man (for over a year) misses job interview to save a baby's life. Says all he wants is a job.

http://www.nydailyne...ticle-1.1102781

Commendable for sure. Maybe this will get him some attention and land him a job.

[Steve Sensible]

Former Wall Street trader takes suicide pill after courts find him guilty of burning down his mansion.

[garjones]

Mountain rescuers are urging walkers to be better prepared after a stag party tackled Snowdon in their pyjamas.
Wearing only night wear and trainers, the group walked up Wales' highest mountain in a "horrific" storm.
It is one of a series of incidents which has seen mountain Llanberis Mountain Rescue Team (LMRT) called out to assist often poorly-equipped groups.
LMRT chairman John Grisdale said pressure of people on the mountain was "extremely high".
He said the stag party walked up the mountain last Thursday, "in the middle of what turned out to be quite a horrific storm of thunder, lightning, very very heavy rain and quite strong winds".
He said the group was advised, but "they went off and tackled Snowdon in their pyjamas".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18669936

They need a stupidity clause in these cases where if you do something blatantly idiotic then you have to reimburse mountain rescue for their efforts.

[Steve Sensible]

Yeah, or the LMRT should be able to invoke a "Darwin clause" in their contract, which lets them off the hook if people are too stupid to be considered worth rescuing.

[Miqque Loveland]

Caffeine Helps Prevent Basal Cell Carcinoma?

Yahoo Sez

Could caffeinated drinks like Red Bull help prevent skin cancer? (Holly Ramer/AP)Drinking more than two cups of coffee per day, or any other combination of caffeinated beverages, may lower your chances of developing skin cancer, a new reports says. The results included other caffeinated products such as soda, tea and chocolate.
The report in the journal Cancer Research found that caffeine potentially reduced the risk of developing basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer though generally considered less serious than melanoma.
"Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health.
In their report, researchers analyzed statistical data from more than 112,000 people who had participated in the most recent Nurses' Health Study. More than 238,000 individuals have participated in the organization's studies, which began in 1976. Cancer prevention is a primary focus. The research for this study indicated that the more a person consumed caffeine, the less likely he or she was to develop basal cell carcinoma.
However, that doesn't mean Han and the other researchers are suggesting people start drinking unlimited amounts of their favorite lattes.
"I would not recommend increasing your coffee intake based on these data alone," Han said.
"However, our results add basal cell carcinoma to a list of conditions for which risk is decreased with increasing coffee consumption. This list includes conditions with serious negative health consequences such as type 2 diabetes and Parkinson's disease."

Although caffeine can be addictive, its properties have been directly linked to a number of other health benefits, including improved mental and physical performance. Some studies have also linked caffeine consumption to lowering the risk of liver cirrhosis.
In related news, medical doctors in New Zealand recently linked a woman's death to her excessive consumption of Coca-Cola. And in February, it was reported that the inventor of the 5-Hour Energy drink is a Buddhist monk.

So here sits I, curing cancer, cup by cup!

[garjones]

No evidence of mermaids, says US government
There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.
The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.
It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.
"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found," the service wrote in an online post.
The National Ocean Service posted an article last week on its educational website, Ocean Facts.
Images and tales of mermaids - half-human, half-fish - appear in mythology and art from across the world and through history, from Homer's Odyssey to the oral lore of the Australian aboriginals, the service wrote.
The article was written from publicly available sources because "we don't have a mermaid science programme", National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh told the BBC.
She said that at least two people had written to the agency asking about the creatures.
The inquiries followed May's broadcast of Mermaids: The Body Found, on the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network.
The programme was a work of fiction but its wink-and-nod format apparently led some viewers to believe it was a science education show, the Discovery Channel has acknowledged.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18692830

Nice to get official confirmation.

[Ulf Imwiehe]

Stop ruining my world, National Ocean Service!

[Will Carper]

There was a kid in my sixth grade class who thought centaurs were real.

[stephanie familiar]

No evidence of mermaids, says US government
There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.
The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.
It is thought some viewers may have mistaken the programme for a documentary.
"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found," the service wrote in an online post.
The National Ocean Service posted an article last week on its educational website, Ocean Facts.
Images and tales of mermaids - half-human, half-fish - appear in mythology and art from across the world and through history, from Homer's Odyssey to the oral lore of the Australian aboriginals, the service wrote.
The article was written from publicly available sources because "we don't have a mermaid science programme", National Ocean Service spokeswoman Carol Kavanagh told the BBC.
She said that at least two people had written to the agency asking about the creatures.
The inquiries followed May's broadcast of Mermaids: The Body Found, on the Discovery Channel's Animal Planet network.
The programme was a work of fiction but its wink-and-nod format apparently led some viewers to believe it was a science education show, the Discovery Channel has acknowledged.

nooooooo!! my childhood hopes shattered, shattered!

[njerry]

How much money was spent researching this mermaid issue? 'Cause I guarantee I would have come to the same conclusion for half the price. :0

[Ogul]

Where is your God now, Science?!

Mermaids do exist, and they smoke hookas.

[Miqque Loveland]

Possums ain't awesomes.

[Nicholas Taggart]

Animal Planet shows some weird stuff

[stephanie familiar]

aaah! you could have warned us, jerk face!

[Nicholas Taggart]

The screenshot shows it!

[stephanie familiar]

does not.