Month: January 2009

Big Waves, Tough Beach

As surfing has become increasingly popular, some say fear of violent reprisal ensures order and safety at congested and perilous surf spots like Pipeline.

“It’s a dangerous environment, and without a self-governing control pattern it would just be chaos out there,” Rarick said.

At Pipeline, large, punishing waves break over a shallow-water reef. With a small takeoff zone comes a small window of time to make critical decisions and dozens of surfers vying for the same waves. Pipeline is considered one of the world’s most dangerous surf spots.

via On North Shore of Oahu, Enforcing Respect for Locals and the Waves – NYTimes.com.

‘Chippers’ Challenge Concepts Of Smoking Addiction

The number of cigarettes a person smokes in a day or a week is no indication of how difficult it will be for them to quit smoking. If you want to kick the habit and can’t, that’s a sure sign for Difranza that you are addicted to nicotine.

MRIs of the brains of smokers show that nicotine activates billions of receptors, releasing chemicals such as serotonin, dopamine and dozens of other chemicals that fire up other nerves, creating a cascading effect.

That is why Difranza thinks that true nonaddicted smokers make up a fraction of people who smoke — about 5 percent. The brain is changed by nicotine, he says, and harbors memories of the smoking experience.

via ‘Chippers’ Challenge Concepts Of Smoking Addiction : NPR.

Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

via Obama Staff Arrives to White House Stuck in Dark Ages of Technology – washingtonpost.com.

Freed Megayacht Moving Again

S/Y Legacy, apparently not wanting to leave Key West thanks to a stubborn keel that slipped and was troublesome to raise, was finally persuaded to lift her 40-ton appendage to a workable height. More about  the history of Legacy

via The Triton – News for the megayacht and superyacht industry – Her keel lifted, S/Y Legacy gets ready to make a move.

Why Saying No to Foods May Be Harder for Women

TUESDAY, Jan. 20 (HealthDay News) — New research on the brain suggests that women unconsciously have a tougher time resisting their favorite foods than men do.

“This gives us another piece to put into this puzzle,” said Dr. Gene-Jack Wang, the study’s author, who speculated that women may have more trouble saying no to food because they sometimes have to eat for two.

via Why Saying No to Foods May Be Harder for Women – washingtonpost.com.

The End of White America?

The Election of Barack Obama is just the most startling manifestation of a larger trend: the gradual erosion of “whiteness” as the touchstone of what it means to be American. If the end of white America is a cultural and demographic inevitability, what will the new mainstream look like—and how will white Americans fit into it? What will it mean to be white when whiteness is no longer the norm? And will a post-white America be less racially divided—or more so?

via The End of White America? – The Atlantic (January/February 2009).

Evidence We Are Living In A “Matrix” Hologram

The movie :the Matrix” may be onto something. The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

via Our world may be a giant hologram – space – 15 January 2009 – New Scientist. Continue reading “Evidence We Are Living In A “Matrix” Hologram”

Arabs lost 2.5 trillion dollars from credit crunch: Kuwait

So much for the fear of the growing strength of the Sovereign Wealth Funds. All those petro dollars gone, like so-much car exhaust. Arab investors have lost 2.5 trillion dollars from the credit crunch, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah, whose country hosts an Arab economic summit next week, said on Friday.

The biggest loss was an estimated 40 percent drop in the value of Arab investments abroad, which previously totalled around 2.5 trillion dollars.

Falls on stock markets contributed more than 600 billion dollars to the losses, while Arab investors were further affected by a sharp decline in oil revenues, the declining value of property investments and other repercussions of the global downturn.

via Arabs lost 2.5 trillion dollars from credit crunch: Kuwait.