Friday News Bucket

Posted by CabinGirl | Mar 30, 2007 | 18 |

To sit in solitude, to think in solitude with only the music of the stream and the cedar to break the flow of silence, here lies the value of wilderness.
~ John Muir

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CabinGirl

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CabinGirl on March 30, 2007 at 7:45 am

is using pre-Katrina images of New Orleans as current ones Guardian UK

Google’s popular map portal has replaced post-Hurricane Katrina satellite imagery with pictures taken before the storm, leaving locals feeling like they’re in a time loop and even fueling suspicions of a conspiracy.

Scroll across the city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and everything is back to normal: Marinas are filled with boats, bridges are intact and parks are filled with healthy, full-bodied trees.

“Come on,” said an incredulous Ruston Henry, president of the economic development association in New Orleans’ devastated Lower 9th Ward. “Just put in big bold this: ‘Google, don’t pull the wool over the world’s eyes. Let the truth shine.”’

Chikai Ohazama, a Google Inc. product manager for satellite imagery, said the maps now available are the best the company can offer. Numerous factors decide what goes into the databases, “everything from resolution, to quality, to when the actual imagery was acquired.”

So, outdated, inaccurate maps are the best they can offer?
- on March 30, 2007 at 8:15 am
  
  Hackers are working on downloading live feeds as we speak.
ask on March 30, 2007 at 7:47 am

Check out AlltheWeb’s upgraded search engine. See how the results change as you add/change search words.
ask on March 30, 2007 at 7:49 am

Buyers beware:
Hackers target TK Maxx customers

Hackers have stolen information from at least 45.7 million payment cards used by customers of US retailer TJX, which owns TJ Maxx, and UK outlet TKMaxx.

In a statement to US watchdogs the firm said it did not know the full extent of the theft and its effect on customers.
- Second Nature on March 30, 2007 at 9:38 am
  
  Eek! That must be why they deactivated my debit card and sent me a new one. They didn’t specify the retailer but I shop at TJMaxx a LOT!
ask on March 30, 2007 at 7:53 am

No more visits to Circuit City

Circuit City fires 3,500 ‘overpaid’ staf

Circuit City is firing 3,400 store workers because it thinks it’s paying them too much. To rub salt into the wound, it is offering the retail fat cats some severance and the chance to apply for their old jobs – at lower wages. But only 10 weeks after they have been fired. This company is all heart.

According to Circuit City, America’s second biggest electronics retailer, the pink slipees – about eight per cent of the company’s staff – are earning “well above the market-based salary range for their role”. Remember, these are store workers we are talking about. And it will replace them with people at the going market rate.

Keith Olbermann had a segment on this last night.
- CabinGirl on March 30, 2007 at 8:06 am
  
  And they get away with it. Where are our labor laws?
- chocolate ink on March 30, 2007 at 5:25 pm
  
  Their highest paid workers…who make 10/11 dollars an hour..that’s pretty criminal in itself as that really isn’t exactly a livable wage. That barely covers basic necessities including having to have a car/insurance to get to any job you have and forget health insurance unless they are providing it.
  
  Wages keep going down and poor people won’t even be able to shop at crappy Wal-Mart.
  
  Big business is truly waging vicious war on American and immigrant workers.
  
  And I have no doubt that the CEO of Circuit City will probably get a big bonus for his cost cutting ideas.
CabinGirl on March 30, 2007 at 8:15 am

anti-birth control wingnut in charge of family planning for the Bush administration, has resigned.

From Planned Parenthood’s news release:

Anti-birth control advocate Eric Keroack will no longer oversee Title X, the nation’s family planning program! The day he took office, Planned Parenthood launched a massive grassroots campaign against Keroack, rallying a nationwide groundswell of opposition to his appointment.

PPFA President Cecile Richards issued the following statement on the resignation:

“It’s a good day for women’s health. Keroack was unqualified to run the nation’s family planning program. The Bush administration must replace Keroack with a legitimate, mainstream public health expert who supports family planning and access to birth control. More than 17 million women in our country need access to affordable birth control. The nation’s family planning program should be run by a champion for women’s health and safety.”

Good riddance. Now, what kind of nut will Bush choose next?
- Second Nature on March 30, 2007 at 9:43 am
  
  a member of the Quiverfull movement.
dada on March 30, 2007 at 2:50 pm

I’m sure this strategy is sure to attract some really qualified recruits…whatever happened to serve and protect?

apparently another quaint concept.

clik to enlarge

the ludicrous lack of class displayed in this country never ceases to amaze me.

Albuquerque Journal

[…]

“Running away from your current job? Call APD recruiting,” the ad reads, above a photo of Officer Trish Hoffman grabbing the veil of a bride, adorned in gown and running shoes.

Hoffman got national attention two years ago after Wilbanks landed in Albuquerque claiming she had been abducted before she was set to marry. Photos of Hoffman leading Wilbanks through the airport with a blanket over the runaway bride’s head appeared on televisions and in newspapers across the country.

[…]

link via yahoo
dada on March 30, 2007 at 3:27 pm

certainly a new and novel analysis on one of the on going questions regarding one of the seven wonders of the world.

PARIS (Reuters)

A French architect said on Friday he had cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt’s Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.

Previous theories have suggested Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb, the last surviving example of the seven great wonders of antiquity, was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.

But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 meters beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.

“This is better than the other theories, because it is the only theory that works,” Houdin told Reuters after unveiling his hypothesis in a lavish ceremony using 3D computer simulation.

[…]

“This goes against both main existing theories. I’ve been teaching them myself for 20 years but deep down I know they’re wrong,” Egyptologist Bob Brier told Reuters at the unveiling.

“Houdin’s vision is credible, but right now this is just a theory. Everybody thinks it has got to be taken seriously,” said Brier, a senior research fellow at Long Island University.

[…]

“What characterized the Egyptians was their sense of perfection and economy. We talk of durable development now, but it was the Egyptians who invented it. They didn’t waste a single stone. They relied purely on intelligence,” Houdin said.

Houdin also claimed to have shed light on a second enigma surrounding the purpose of a Grand Gallery inside the pyramid.

The Frenchman believes its tall, narrow shape suggests it accommodated a giant counter-weight to help haul five 60-ton granite beams to their position above the King’s Chamber.

He thinks that no more than 4,000 people could have built the pyramid using these techniques rather than the 100,000 or so assigned by past historians to the task of burying the pharaoh.

Houdin, 56, brushed aside concerns about the popular curse which is supposed to punish those who penetrate the secrets of the pyramids, dating back to the opening of Tutankhamun tomb.

“Why should I be worried? I’m just explaining that the people of the time were architects of genius and that Khufu was a genius to order the pyramid’s construction. What could happen to me, except that Khufu would thank me?,” he told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Lucien Libert of Reuters Television)

article

damned interesting!

for another interesting look at the recent finds see the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine: Raising Alexandria

with a bonus for CG and other fans of Dale Chiluhy’s works: Fairchild Botanic Gardens, and more of his work HERE
- olivia on March 30, 2007 at 3:34 pm
  
  That is very interesting d! Thanks for that link.
  
  (Hiya btw!)
  - dada on March 30, 2007 at 4:07 pm
    
    hi backatcha
    
    ot…but news, of a sort:
    
    how’re your sens and the jr’s doing in the playoff chace up there in the gwn?…alas, the av’s have tanked.
    - olivia on March 30, 2007 at 4:11 pm
      
      The sens have 5 games left in the reg season … I’m not sure what to make of their p-off chances – depends which team decides to show up. We shall see …
      
      Going to (possibly) the last jr game of the season tonight … and it’s such a great time of year when you can go to a hockey game in t-shirt and jeans … p-off time! 😀
      
      What’re you and the Bu-girl up to?
      - dada on March 30, 2007 at 4:27 pm
        
        the av’s have to win the last five, and/or the flames loose them….not likely, imo.
        
        i’m going to see Bugs at a friend on mine’s new place….Bu can’t go, she’s underage…
      - olivia on March 30, 2007 at 4:34 pm
        
        ah well … she’ll prob invite her friends over while you’re out and raid the baa baa q cabinet … ;P
        
        Well, I’m about to head out — leaving cubeville: population 1 … catch up w/ ya soon.
        
        I hope you have a great time tonight!
      - KNUCKLEHEAD on March 30, 2007 at 9:59 pm
        
        Listening to “Bugs’ right now . From your link.
        Good one

Friday News Bucket

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CabinGirl

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