Eideard

Ray Ozzie, Microsoft Corp’s departing software chief, has asked the company to move on from its roots as a computer-oriented company to imagine a ‘post-PC world’ that relies on wireless devices and the Internet to function.

The call from Ozzie, who announced his retirement from Microsoft last week, is meant to galvanize the company, which has fallen behind Apple and Google in the rapidly growing phone and tablet computer sector that many now see as key to the future.

“Close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like, if it were to ever truly occur,” wrote Ozzie in a memo posted on his personal blog on Monday. “Those who can envision a plausible future that’s brighter than today will earn the opportunity to lead.”

The message comes almost exactly five years after Ozzie made his initial mark on Microsoft with his ‘Internet Services Disruption’ memo, which is regarded as Microsoft’s manifesto for moving toward “cloud computing,” where data and software are supplied over the Internet rather than installed on machines…

He goes on to praise competitors for “seamless fusion of hardware and software and services,” which appears to be a nod to Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phone system, which are proving more popular with consumers than Microsoft’s own offerings…

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said there are no plans to appoint a new chief software architect when Ozzie retires.

Is that supposed to be a surprise? Ozzie must have driven him round the bend every day.

BTW, wander through some of the development notes and suggestions from Windows 1.0 in 1985 – at Ozzie’s blog.

A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue is getting attention around the world. The groundbreaking study, “The Neuroimaging of Love,” reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second…

Results from Ortigue’s team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.

The findings beg the question, “Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?”

“That’s a tricky question always,” says Ortigue. “I would say the brain, but the heart is also related because the complex concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa. For instance, activation in some parts of the brain can generate stimulations to the heart, butterflies in the stomach. Some symptoms we sometimes feel as a manifestation of the heart may sometimes be coming from the brain.”

Other researchers also found blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF, also increased. Those levels were significantly higher in couples who had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans, or the phenomenon ‘love at first sight.’ “These results confirm love has a scientific basis,” says Ortigue…

RTFA. Fascinating research. Why try to keep romanticism divorced from science?

In fact, the sense of adventure, quest for knowledge, newer and greater understanding of life and living seems to me to be one of the romantic undertakings there could be. Dullards are the ones afraid of real science.

Hundreds of prehistoric insects and other creatures have been discovered in a large haul of amber excavated from a coalmine in western India. An international team of fossil hunters recovered 150kg of the dirty brown resin from Cambay Shale in Gujarat province, making it one of the largest amber collections on record. The tiny animals became entombed in the fossilised tree resin some 52m years ago, before the Indian subcontinent crunched into Asia to produce the Himalayan mountain range.

Jes Rust, a paleontologist at Bonn University, said the creatures, including ancient bees, spiders, termites, gnats, ants and flies, were in remarkably good condition considering their age. In total, the team has identified more than 700 arthropods, a group of animals that includes insects, crustaceans and arachnids.

“They are so well preserved. It’s like having the complete dinosaur, not just the bones. You can see all the surface details on their bodies and wings. It’s fantastic,” Rust told the Guardian. The remains of two praying mantises were also found…

The amber is the oldest evidence scientists have of tropical forests in Asia. Tests linked the amber to a family of hardwood trees called dipterocarpaceae, that make up 80% of the forest canopy in south-east Asia. Fossilised wood from these trees was found alongside the amber deposits. Rust said that much of India may have been covered in forests at the time the amber formed…

“We think that, before the final collision between India and Asia, some sort of island arc was established. Our findings suggest that the mixing of fauna was already so strong, that it was already happening for several million years,” said Rust. Once species from India had crossed into Asia, they could have spread further, eventually reaching Australia.

What interesting work. I honestly have to wonder if any of this knowledge – and potential knowledge – sinks into the consciousness of Creationist True Believers?

There is a vast world to discover relating to our past and present. All of it fascinating to someone who cares to investigate the processes governing the evolution of our planet and life. All of it becoming easier to understand every day.

Republicans may be abandoning Christine O’Donnell’s U.S. Senate campaign. But she still has friends in high places — really high places.

In fact, the Delaware Tea Party favorite is crediting divine intervention for the successes that her campaign has had.

“The day that we saw a spike in the polls was a day that some people had a prayer meeting for me, that morning for this campaign,” she tells the Christian Broadcasting Network…

“I believe that prayer plays a direct role in this campaign,” she said. “I always ask people: ‘Please pray for the campaign. Please pray for our staff. Please pray, specifically, that the eyes of the voters be opened.’”

Prayer may be O’Donnell’s best hope. Since her upset primary win over Republican moderate Mike Castle, she has been dogged by questions about her qualifications for office, ridiculed for acknowledging a teenage fascination with witchcraft and excoriated over her understanding of U.S. religious freedoms…

“God is the reason that I’m running. If I didn’t believe that there were a cause greater than myself worth fighting for, if I didn’t believe that it takes a complete dying of self to make things right in this eleciton cycle, I would not be running,” she says…

Barring any more acts of God, her Senate candidacy will face its final judgment before the Delaware electorate on Nov. 2.

Har!

Where’s the Looney Party when you really need them?

Public officials are to use satnav devices to log the coordinates of dog mess on the streets of Toulouse, southern France.

Police and council staff will use hand-held computers to position and photograph the offending pile – then email the location to street cleaners.

The experiment, which Toulouse council says is a world first, comes after a flood of complaints about the increasingly dog-fouled streets.

A town hall spokesman said the project would be tested for six months next year. He added: “While reports of the dirty state of our roads are often exaggerated, no one can now say we are not on top of the problem.”

The scheme comes after a council chief in Paris claimed this summer that dog mess on the capital’s streets was to blame for not winning the 2012 Olympics…

Staff working at the city hall claim the situation has now improved, with motorised ‘pooper scoopers’ and higher fines combating the problem.

Har!

The mother of a murdered teenage girl had called police 102 times to claim she was being abused by her father – but officers thought she was “over-reacting”, an inquiry has found.

Gary Fisher, 48, stabbed his 17-year-old daughter, Chanelle “Sasha” Jones 22 times in a car and then drove her lifeless body around for 10 hours before he was caught by police near her home town of Cardigan, West Wales.

A report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) found that the victim’s mother, Jayne Jones, had reported concerns for her daughter’s welfare to Dyfed-Powys police on more than 100 occasions before she died. But despite Fisher’s history of violence going back to his teens – and him being wanted for a serious assault by another police force – officers failed to take the reports seriously.

Four officers are now facing disciplinary action within the force…

And that is expected to prevent a recurrence of ignorance and thoughtless practices?

One Pc who did take the allegations seriously failed to notice that Fisher had a police record and was wanted for a serious assault by another police force.

Despite the numerous failings, the IPCC concluded that no individual errors “had any impact on Fisher’s later actions when he murdered Sasha”…

Ms Jackie Roberts, Deputy Chief Constable of Dyfed Powys Police, said: “Firstly I would like to express my condolences to Sasha’s family for their sad loss.

This is followed by more predictable blather, blah-blah-blah and political rationale. Sounds as if all can be assured that little or nothing will be done to improve a flock of coppers obviously incapable of being useful to the community they police.

The majority of Americans have limited understanding of the planet’s climate system and the causes and threats of climate change, according to a new study by Yale University. Only 1 in 10 of those surveyed by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication said they are “very well informed” about climate change issues. And while 63 percent believe that global warming is occurring, many do not understand why.

According to the survey, 57 percent of respondents know that the greenhouse effect refers to heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere; 45 percent understand that carbon dioxide traps heat from the planet’s surface; and only 25 percent are aware of coral bleaching or ocean acidification. And the majority of respondents had significant misconceptions about climate science, including the incorrect belief that the hole in the ozone layer, toxic waste, aerosol spray, and acid rain cause global warming.

Based on these results, the authors say only 8 percent of respondents would have knowledge equivalent to a grade of an A or B, and more than 52 percent would receive an F grade.

Anyone surprised?

Ignorance ain’t bliss, folks.

Take the rocks outta his pockets, boys – make it slow!

A federal judge Saturday night ordered that the state of Arizona “immediately and publicly disclose” where it obtained a drug it intends to use to execute condemned murderer Jeffrey Landrigan on Tuesday.

The drama has played out for weeks as defense attorneys have tried to discern where the state found sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that is in short supply. Executions nationwide have been postponed because of the shortage…

On Sept. 30, the Arizona Department of Corrections announced that it had obtained thiopental, though court hearings revealed it had not come from its only apparent source approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA representatives have repeatedly said they are not aware of any other approved source of the drug in the U.S. or abroad.

The state has nonetheless declined to say where it got the drug, with Assistant Arizona Attorney General Kent Cattani citing a state law concealing the identity of executioners.

The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to delay the execution because of the debate, and so attorneys at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, which represents Landrigan, took the case to federal court. They maintain the drug may have been illegally imported.

1st – did anyone expect the state of Arizona to comply with federal law? They are a nation unto themselves – just like Texas. Remember, the Constitution is only a convenience for rightwing nutballs when they use it as a defensive weapon.

For state officials and federal officers having at each other – politeness rules. After all, they’re probably playing golf at the country club together, next week.

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes following the discovery of a series of bombs from the Second World War in the French city centre of Rennes.

Sixty five years after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, the city in Brittany was closed as engineers worked to defuse a 550lb RAF device…

Some 10,000 people living in Rennes were involved in the evacuation as the centre of the city resembled a ghost town…

Further east, 4,500 people were moved out of Woippy, in the suburbs of Metz, as bomb disposal experts worked on devices around a former Wehrmacht supply centre.

It is now being converted into a bus station, but was bombed so many times during the war that its basement and foundations are littered with ordnance, including RAF and US air force devices.

All of the work was being coordinated by France’s Département du Déminage (Department of Mine Clearance), which recovers around 1,000 tons of unexploded munitions every year…

Their work is concentrated on the so-called ‘Iron Harvest’ of unexploded ordnance which is littered around the battlefields and bombing targets of northern France…

Some 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied strategic bombing during the Second World War.

Just in case you think “collateral damage” is a brand new excuse.

New Hampshire’s largest newspaper is under fire for refusing to publish marriage notices for same-sex couples — even though the state is one of five in the U.S. that recognizes gay marriage.

The famously conservative Union Leader of Manchester rejected a wedding announcement called in by Greg Gould and Aurelio Tine earlier this month ahead of their nuptials Saturday in Portsmouth.

Publisher Joe McQuaid told The Associated Press that the privately owned paper isn’t anti-gay but staunchly believes marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman.

Interesting – and cowardly – way to package homophobia.

“This newspaper has never published wedding or engagement announcements from homosexual couples,” McQuaid said in a statement to New Hampshire’s WMUR. “It would be hypocritical of us to do so, given our belief that marriage is and needs to remain a social and civil structure between men and women and our opposition to the recent state law legalizing gay marriage…”

The snub has become an election issue. Democratic Senate candidate Paul Hodes sent a letter to McQuaid demanding the newspaper respect the state law. “The Union Leader’s disgraceful policy of exclusion harkens to a different time in this country when people were denied opportunity because of their race, religion and ethnic origin,” Hodes wrote.

His Republican opponent defended the newspaper, of course.

I grew up in a time when conservative newspapers also refused to print engagement and marriage announcements for anyone who wasn’t white. No surprise here.