The common electric socket will serve as your home\’s connection to broadband with a new chip developed by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. - doing away with all the Ethernet cables or the hassle of hooking up to a wireless network device.
Products are still being developed, but gadgets embedded with the chip from the Japanese manufacturer of Panasonic products can hook up to a broadband network by plugging into the common electrical outlet, company officials said Thursday.

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A study by researchers in Scotland shows criminals are getting better at covering their tracks, thanks to the information from shows like “CSI.”

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Have you ever have one of those days? You wake up on the wrong side of the bed and snap, at the wrong person, for the wrong reason, and in the wrong way. It happens, and this is the result.

Some time ago, I posted a diatribe regarding people who lie to their boss about being sick in order to get a day off from work. I did so after I stumbled across a post on Leslie Russell’s blog that linked to several ‘tips’ about how to lie to your boss. Whenever I reference another blog, I always trackback (blog nerd-speak) to it as a courtesy to the other author. After 5 weeks she he finally noticed and then proceeded to bombard my blog with thoughtful, reasoned comments such as…

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Researchers analysing the data have found the comet is mostly made up of loose powder-like particles.

The findings suggest “dirty dustball” is a better name for Tempel I than “snowy dirtball” - a past nickname.

The material is unbelievably fragile Michael A’Hearn, University of Maryland “The comet is mostly empty, mostly porous,” said Michael A’Hearn, a comet specialist from the University of Maryland. “Probably all the way in, there is no bulk of ice. The ice is all in the form of tiny grains.

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Lord Winston, who pioneered fertility research in the UK, is to tell the British Association for the Advancement of Science, meeting in Dublin, that during the political campaign to push through legislation in 2001, some parliamentarians were led to believe that clinical treatments were “just around the corner”. Some of the lobbying came from patients’ groups, but it was stimulated by scientific observations.

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“We’re the tribe of 12,” 76-year-old Carolyn Krack said as she sat on the sidewalk with a cup of coffee, a packet of cigarettes and a box of pralines.

The tribe, whose members included a doctor, a merchant and a store clerk, improvised survival tactics. Krack, for example, brushed her dentures with antibacterial dish soap.

It had been a tribe of 13, but a member died Wednesday of a drug overdose. After some negotiating, the police carried the body out on the trunk of a car.

The neighbors knew the man only as Jersey.

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The lead agency responsible for coordinating recovery operations following a natural or man made disaster is the Office of Emergency Preparedness. The Director of the Office of Emergency Preparedness shall serve as the initial contact with the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness for the coordination of recovery efforts. In the event of a major or catastrophic event, the activated ESFs within the EOC shall provide liaison services to their corresponding State and Federal ESFs and related agencies. Following the establishment of a local Disaster Field Office (DFO), the Director of Emergency Preparedness shall designate the person(s) to serve as local liaison with the DFO. For certain hazard or incident specific incidents, the lead response agency may continue to be the City’s principle coordinating representative.

Once into the recovery phase of a major disaster, ESF?5, Planning and Information, shall assume the liaison function with the State recovery staff, as will appropriate representatives of the various activated City agencies involved in recovery operations. Coordination for the establishment of Disaster Relief Centers, additional staging areas, and other sites that may be needed for coordinated assistance will primarily be the responsibility of ESF?7, Resource Support, and its support agency.

via [City of New Orleans Web Site]

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It is true that federal response was not as fast as it could have been. The president himself has acknowledged that fact.

But the press has focused on the first 48 hours of federal response, not uttering a word about the fact that New Orleans had 48 hours of warning that a major Category 4 or 5 would make landfall near the city, yet local officials apparently did little to prepare.

via [Newsmax]
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An aerial view of flooded school buses in a lot, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005, in New Orleans, LA. The flood is a result of Hurricane Katrina that passed through the area last Monday.(AP Photo/Phil Coale)
via[Yahoo! News]

The largest known oil shale deposits in the world are in the Green River Formation, which covers portions of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Estimates of the oil resource in place within the Green River Formation range from 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels. Not all resources in place are recoverable. For potentially recoverable oil shale resources, we roughly derive an upper bound of 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and a lower bound of about 500 billion barrels. For policy planning purposes, it is enough to know that any amount in this range is very high. For example, the midpoint in our estimate range, 800 billion barrels, is more than triple the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. Present U.S. demand for petroleum products is about 20 million barrels per day. If oil shale could be used to meet a quarter of that demand, 800 billion barrels of recoverable resources would last for more than 400 years.

via [Rand]
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