Eideard

The TTC bus driver was texting on a BlackBerry-like device while driving around 50 km/h when passenger Mike Schmitz took an iPhone photo of him.

The shot, taken on a 165 Weston Rd. North bus that was “full of people”, shows the driver focused on the device, and the orange needle of the bus speedometer pointing upwards…

The driver would alternate between holding the device with both hands and steering with his forearms, and driving with one hand while holding the device with the other and texting with his thumb, he said.

“This is incredibly serious,” said TTC spokesman Brad Ross, who got a glimpse of the photo on Thursday. “It would appear … that he’s doing at least 50 km/h while texting, and his eyes are not on the road.”

The TTC has “a clear policy” when it comes to prohibiting its drivers from using personal electronic devices — such as cellphones, BlackBerrys and iPhones — while on the job, Ross said. “This is a serious breach of public safety,” he said, adding that drivers are not allowed to talk on cellphones or text even while the vehicle is stopped…

As of Oct. 26, 2009, Ontario drivers have been banned from talking on cellphones, texting or using hand-held electronic devices of any kind while behind the wheel.

A bit more than an oops! No one needs to see bus drivers volunteering for a Darwin Award.

General Motors said on Thursday that it was withdrawing its application to borrow $14.4 billion from a pool of federal money intended to help automakers build more fuel-efficient vehicles.

G.M., whose request had been pending with the Energy Department for 15 months, said the decision was based on improved cash reserves and a desire to avoid more debt. The company was profitable in 2010 and had $33.5 billion in cash and marketable securities as of Sept. 30 — much of it the result of federal loans related to its 2009 bankruptcy filing — up from $22.8 billion a year ago.

“This decision is based on our confidence in G.M.’s overall progress and strong, global business performance,” Christopher P. Liddell, G.M.’s chief financial officer, said in a statement. “Withdrawing our D.O.E. loan application is consistent with our goal to carry minimal debt on our balance sheet…”

Congress created the $25 billion fund in 2008, and the Energy Department has lent about $8.5 billion of it so far. The Ford Motor Company received $5.9 billion — about half the amount it requested — with smaller amounts going to Nissan, Tesla and Fisker…

G.M. said that, even without the retooling loans, it had invested $3.4 billion in its American plants since emerging from bankruptcy, creating or retaining 11,000 jobs. Much of the upgrade was related to the manufacture of new high-mileage cars like the Chevrolet Cruze and Volt as well as batteries…

Separately Thursday, G.M. said it was accelerating the introduction of the Volt, a plug-in hybrid, in response to customer demand. Dealers in all 50 states will be able to take orders in the second quarter and start receiving the cars in the second half of the year. Previously, G.M. had said the Volt would not be available nationwide until mid-2012.

They’re also talking about doubling production of the Volt. Reception from retail customers has been better than anything they might have hoped for – at least what automotive journalists stuck into the carbon cycle thought they would get.

A Canadian woman has become the first person in the world to graduate with a Masters degree in Beatles studies.

Former Miss Canada finalist, Mary-Lu Zahalan-Kennedy was one of the first 12 students to sign up for the Liverpool Hope University course on the Fab Four when it began in 2009 and was the first to graduate, the university said.

“I am so proud of my achievement,” Zahalan-Kennedy said. “The course was challenging, enjoyable and it provided a great insight into the impact the Beatles had and still have to this day across all aspects of life…”

The course looks at the studio sound and composition of the Beatles and how Liverpool helped to shape their music. The MA examines the significance of their music and how it helped to define identities, culture and society.

Mike Brocken, founder and leader of the Beatles MA at Liverpool Hope University, said the postgraduate degree makes Zahalan-Kennedy a member of a select group of popular music experts.

“Mary-Lu now joins an internationally recognized group of scholars of Popular Music Studies who are able to offer fresh and thought-provoking insights into the discipline of musicology.”

Actually makes sense in terms of history and musicology. Guaranteed to freak out the nutballs who still think John Lennon was the anti-Christ.

What’s next?

Florida police are trying to figure out how a 5-year-old boy came into possession of a loaded handgun that he dropped inside a pre-kindergarten class.

A female pre-kindergarten teacher at Moseley Elementary School in Palatka was giving a music lesson Tuesday morning when she noticed the small, .22-caliber handgun fall out of the boy’s pocket, Assistant Police Chief James Griffith said.

The firearm did not go off, and no one was hurt.

But the boy, along with the gun, were promptly brought to school administrators. They alerted school security and police at 9:25 a.m., having determined that there was no immediate danger to the school, which is in Palatka in northeastern Florida.

“The boy is both initially a suspect in this thing, but also a victim,” said Griffith. “This is very rare.”

The boy told authorities that he found the firearm inside the vehicle that he had come to school in — one which Griffith said belonged to the youngster’s stepfather. Neither the boy nor stepfather have been named, the assistant chief said, in order to protect the identity of the child, who is a minor…

“There was nothing that transpired, as far as threats, showing the weapon off, anything like that,” Griffith said. “At this point, we are trying to determine where the child got the gun from, and if any adult was negligent in allowing him to gain access (to it).”

Phew! Folks are lucky he didn’t accidentally fire the gun, showing it off or something like that.

Depending on whether or not it was a well-made piece, they’re all lucky that a handgun like this – with rimfire cartridges – didn’t fire when it hit the floor.

A North Atlantic current flowing into the Arctic Ocean is warmer than for at least 2,000 years in a sign that global warming is likely to bring ice-free seas around the North Pole in summers.

Scientists said that waters at the northern end of the Gulf Stream, between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, averaged 6 degrees Celsius (42.80F) in recent summers, warmer than at natural peaks during Roman or Medieval times.

“The temperature is unprecedented in the past 2,000 years,” lead author Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany…

The summer water temperatures, reconstructed from the makeup of tiny organisms buried in sediments in the Fram strait, have risen from an average 5.2 degrees Celsius from 1890-2007 and about 3.4C in the previous 1,900 years.

The findings were a new sign that human activities were stoking modern warming since temperatures are above past warm periods linked to swings in the sun’s output that enabled, for instance, the Vikings to farm in Greenland in Medieval times.

“We found that modern Fram Strait water temperatures are well outside the natural bounds,” Thomas Marchitto, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, one of the authors…

The Fram strait is the main carrier of ocean heat to the Arctic.

The authors wrote that the warming temperatures “are presumably linked to the Arctic amplification of global warming” and that the warming “is most likely another key element in the transition to a future ice-free Arctic Ocean…”

Even the stodgy Brits prepare for the future like good little Ants. Meanwhile, Congress and other fools – not quite up to the cheery fiddling of Grasshopper – rely on dour haters of science and other mystical props guaranteed to continue America’s steady slide into the economic ditch of irrelevance.

Only the educationally-challenged think 2,000 years is a long time in earth studies. Meanwhile, the world will be able to build alternative energy systems with products from Germany, Norway and China.

Steampunk Flash Drive

One of the best things about the Internet, besides the sharing of ideas and bringing together like-minded people and all that stuff, is the opportunity it affords us to buy weird things. While said weird things can come in all shapes and sizes, often the most prized and intriguing are the one-of-a-kind handmade items. If that’s what you’re seeking, then one of the best places to look is on Etsy – for the uninitiated, it’s kind of like an eBay devoted solely to things that people have made themselves. We took a snoop through the website, searching specifically for quirky science and/or technology-related thing-a-ma-jigs.

In case you haven’t noticed, flash drives are fast becoming an avenue of self-expression. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, for instance, we received press kits on flash drives with bodies made from stainless steel, bamboo and rubber, and that were shaped like stealth fighters, guitars, cameras and Swiss Army knives.

None of those, however, looked as snazzy as the Basement Foundry steampunk flash drives made by Jumpei Funaki. His polished copper-and-brass drives are built around name brand electronics, and look like they would be right at home sticking out of an anachronistic laptop in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. While no two are exactly alike, they all feature ornate windows that glow from within when they’re active…

The inspiration for the flash drives came from a ray gun that his son made from plastic piping and fittings, combined with his having copper piping left over from a sprinkler system. They come in a variety of memory capacities, and cost between $75 and $108.

Delightful.

Wander through the whole article. Visit the site that inspired this post.

CFO of Goldman Sachs on TV monitor on the floor of NY Stock Exchange during testimony

A divided U.S. investigative panel released on Thursday a wide-ranging assessment of what caused the financial crisis that rocked global markets from 2007-2009.

The 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission was created by Congress to deliver a bipartisan report on the origins of the crisis, but it failed to deliver a consensus view.

The main report was endorsed only by the commission’s six Democratic members, undermining its impact as the post-crisis Dodd-Frank banking reforms of 2010 are being implemented.

I hope no one out there in citizen-land actually expected Republicans to participate in naming their primary sources of income as bearing responsibility for the financial crisis and the Great Recession.

Below are the main points of the…majority report:

* We conclude this financial crisis was avoidable.

* We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation’s financial markets.

* We conclude dramatic failures of corporate governance and risk management at many systemically important financial institutions were a key cause of this crisis.

* We conclude a combination of excessive borrowing, risky investments, and lack of transparency put the financial system on a collision course with crisis.

* We conclude the government was ill prepared for the crisis, and its inconsistent response added to the uncertainty and panic in the financial markets.

* We conclude there was a systemic breakdown in accountability and ethics.

* We conclude collapsing mortgage-lending standards and the mortgage securitization pipeline lit and spread the flame of contagion and crisis.

* We conclude over-the-counter derivatives contributed significantly to this crisis.

* We conclude the failures of credit rating agencies were essential cogs in the wheel of financial destruction.

If you’d like to peek at the beginnings of analysis, try this article over at Bloomberg.com.

As a 64-year-old woman with a grandchild, state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, says she’s not the type of person you would normally associate with marijuana. And yet Dickerson has again introduced legislation that would legalize, regulate and tax marijuana in Washington state.

“I believe that it’s a smart way to raise badly needed revenue,” said Dickerson, who chairs the House Health and Human Services Appropriations and Oversight Committee. “It also would at the same time mean that we can focus our law-enforcement efforts on more important things.”

House Bill 1550, filed Tuesday, would regulate marijuana much like alcohol. It proposes that pot be sold through state liquor stores to adults age 21 and older, that the sales be taxed and that the state Liquor Control Board issue licenses to commercial growers. Most of the revenue would go to health care, and substance-abuse treatment and prevention.

The bill would also classify as felonies interstate transportation of marijuana and unauthorized transportation of marijuana within Washington above a certain amount.

Dickerson proposed a similar bill last year, but it failed in a House committee. New provisions in this year’s bill include authorizing the production of industrial hemp and allowing limited growing of marijuana at home for personal use.

Amazing. Someone in Washington state with a brain has been elected to state office.

Good thing we needn’t worry about that happening in New Mexico. Or Congress.

A spectacular haul of stone tools discovered beneath a collapsed rock shelter in southern Arabia has forced a major rethink of the story of human migration out of Africa. The collection of hand axes and other tools shaped to cut, pierce and scrape bear the hallmarks of early human workmanship, but date from 125,000 years ago, around 55,000 years before our ancestors were thought to have left the continent.

The artefacts, uncovered in the United Arab Emirates, point to a much earlier dispersal of ancient humans, who probably cut across from the Horn of Africa to the Arabian peninsula via a shallow channel in the Red Sea that became passable at the end of an ice age. Once established, these early pioneers may have pushed on across the Persian Gulf, perhaps reaching as far as India, Indonesia and eventually Australia.

Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at Oxford University who was not involved in the work, told the Science journal: “This is really quite spectacular. It breaks the back of the current consensus view.”

1. Pretty consistent with human spirit to have early adopters.

2. Perfectly consistent for scientists to be open to further examination of existing theories. It’s part of what peer review is about.

Anatomically modern humans – those that resemble people alive today – evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago. Until now, most archaeological evidence has supported an exodus from Africa, or several waves of migration, along the Mediterranean coast or the Arabian shoreline between 80,000 and 60,000 years ago…

The stones, a form of silica-rich rock called chert, were dated by Simon Armitage, a researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London, using a technique that measured how long sand grains around the artefacts had been buried…

The discovery has sparked debate among archaeologists, some of whom say much stronger evidence is needed to back up the researchers’ claims. “I’m totally unpersuaded,” Paul Mellars, an archaeologist at Cambridge University, told Science. “There’s not a scrap of evidence here that these were made by modern humans, nor that they came from Africa.”

Chris Stringer, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said: “The region of Arabia has been terra incognita in trying to map the dispersal of modern humans from Africa during the last 120,000 years, leading to much theorising in the face of few data.

“Despite the confounding lack of diagnostic fossil evidence, this archaeological work provides important clues that early modern humans might have dispersed from Africa across Arabia, as far as the Straits of Hormuz, by 120,000 years ago.”

The debate will continue. More will be learned. It is the nature of good science.

RTFA and reflect upon the first bits of information coming from the research.

The Mubarak government calls this peaceful resolution of conflict

Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN nuclear watchdog turned democracy advocate, has arrived in Egypt amid escalating political unrest in the country.

ElBaradei, 68, returned to the country on Thursday from the Austrian city of Vienna, where he lives, to join a growing wave of protests against Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president of 30 years, inspired by Tunisia’s overthrow of their long-time president, Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali.

Violence erupted in Cairo and in the flashpoint city of Suez, east of the Egyptian capital, while in the northern Sinai area of Sheikh Zuweid, several hundred bedouins and police exchanged live gunfire, killing a 17-year-old man…

Millions gather at mosques across the city for Friday prayers, providing organisers with a huge number of people already out on the streets to tap into.

“It is a critical time in the life of Egypt. I have come to participate with the Egyptian people,” ElBaradei said as he left Cairo airport, where he was greeted by a small group of supporters.

“The desire for change must be respected. The regime must not use violence in the demonstrations…”

Associated Press reporters saw scores of protesters outside the Cairo offices of Egypt’s lawyers’ union, which has been one of the flashpoints of this week’s unrest.

There were two other small, peaceful protests by lawyers in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta town of Toukh, north of Cairo.

In the day’s other major incident, protesters in the northern Sinai – an area of land largely populated by armed Bedouin tribes – blocked the main roads in the area.

You can only hope for a gateway to democracy and civil participation to open. ElBaradei is a brave man to return and confront a government that I’m afraid wants nothing more than his sudden death.

Then, there is the freedom-loving United States government. Rote wrist-slapping has already demonstrated our usual role. If confrontation escalates – no doubt – a quick phone call to Netanyahu will provide guidance for the State Department.