Water Pollution

Water pollution is getting in the air,
but water polluters don’t even care.
Water pollution happens night and day
and water pollution is not going away.
Water pollution makes fish in the sea
die very unfortunately.
Factories dump in sewage, chemicals and trash
our leaders are not helping – they want to keep the cash.
Dog whelks can’t have babies because of TBT,
the beautiful Beluga whale is toxic in the sea.
People also suffer because they have to drink
polluted water from the lakes – and sometimes even sinks!
You can’t always see pollution in the water,
so if you are a parent, PLEASE warn your son or daughter.

Hannah Javidi - 8 years old
Charlotte – Nov 1, 2005

Your future car!

I was looking for some buzzwords one night, couldn’t sleep, spent couple of hours and made a buzzword generator page for myself. I showed it to couple of friends. They loved it.

Enjoy it and use it in your lectures, papers, thesis’s, dissertations, etc.

Watch this very funny video.
[Link was sent by Nini]

See The Difference With Skype 2.0
The successful Internet telephony company, Skype, brings video chat to the next level with a beta release of Skype 2.0. With Web cams on both ends of an Internet call, you and your buddies can now see each other, even in full screen. A small corner window superimposes
your own cam view, so you can make sure you don’t have gunk stuck in your teeth. In this release Skype also enhances call quality, adds personalization via avatars and custom ringtones, and improves contact grouping. A handy toolbar for Outlook also lets you make a call directly from your email contact list.

Sony Announce First Blu-Ray Movies
Sony has announced that the first set of Blu-Ray movies will arrive this Spring. Almost twenty movies have been finalised, on the eve of the International Consumer Electronics Show.
The genre of the titles vary from action films, such as xXx, to comedies like Hitch. Later in the year, movies such as Black Hawk Down will arrive on 50GB dual-layer Blu-Ray discs. See the entire list below.
It is currently Sony's aim to release four movies on Blu-Ray each month, and by 2007 this will increase to ten per month and will also include TV shows.

The Kuiper cliff
IF YOU travel out to the far edge of the solar system, into the frigid wastes beyond Pluto, you'll see something strange. Suddenly, after passing through the Kuiper belt, a region of space teeming with icy rocks, there's nothing.
Astronomers call this boundary the Kuiper cliff, because the density of space rocks drops off so steeply. What caused it? The only answer seems to be a 10th planet. We're not talking about Quaoar or Sedna: this is a massive object, as big as Earth or Mars, that has swept the area clean of debris.
The evidence for the existence of "Planet X" is compelling, says Alan Stern, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. But although calculations show that such a body could account for the Kuiper cliff (Icarus, vol 160, p 32), no one has ever seen this fabled 10th planet.
There's a good reason for that. The Kuiper belt is just too far away for us to get a decent view. We need to get out there and have a look before we can say anything about the region. And that won't be possible for another decade, at least. NASA's New Horizons probe, which will head out to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, is scheduled for launch in January 2006. It won't reach Pluto until 2015, so if you are looking for an explanation of the vast, empty gulf of the Kuiper cliff, watch this space.

Cold fusion
AFTER 16 years, it's back. In fact, cold fusion never really went away. Over a 10-year period from 1989, US navy labs ran more than 200 experiments to investigate whether nuclear reactions generating more energy than they consume - supposedly only possible inside stars - can occur at room temperature. Numerous researchers have since pronounced themselves believers.
With controllable cold fusion, many of the world's energy problems would melt away: no wonder the US Department of Energy is interested. In December, after a lengthy review of the evidence, it said it was open to receiving proposals for new cold fusion experiments.
That's quite a turnaround. The DoE's first report on the subject, published 15 years ago, concluded that the original cold fusion results, produced by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah and unveiled at a press conference in 1989, were impossible to reproduce, and thus probably false.
The basic claim of cold fusion is that dunking palladium electrodes into heavy water - in which oxygen is combined with the hydrogen isotope deuterium - can release a large amount of energy. Placing a voltage across the electrodes supposedly allows deuterium nuclei to move into palladium's molecular lattice, enabling them to overcome their natural repulsion and fuse together, releasing a blast of energy. The snag is that fusion at room temperature is deemed impossible by every accepted scientific theory.
That doesn't matter, according to David Nagel, an engineer at George Washington University in Washington DC. Superconductors took 40 years to explain, he points out, so there's no reason to dismiss cold fusion. "The experimental case is bulletproof," he says. "You can't make it go away."
From issue 2491 of New Scientist magazine, 19 March 2005, page 30

If you are a serious blogger, need to increase your audience and perhaps get paid for your work, check the following blogs:

Pro Blogger - Darren Rowse is one of the best. He claims to make a 6 figure income from blogging from affilliate programs, adsense, Chitika and “blog consulting.” He has a lot of general tips, but I think the power of his blog is looking at how he runs it rather than what he says. (What he says is also very good). He is meticulous about updating his blog and always give golden tips about the subject. I also admire him because he bases his advice only on his personal experience and not what the unwashed masses are saying about a topic. He has been criticized for that, but it is the very reason I keep reading his blog and recommend it to others.
Performancing - This blog on blogging is run by a bunch of guys who really know their stuff. It’s only a few months old and already they have almost 500 backlinks pointing at them which speaks volumes about the quality of their content. They are also offering plugins for bloggers who use Firefox and look liek they are trying to outdo everyone on useful freebies for their readers. They have reviews on the different blogging software as well as monetization methods. This is already in the top 10 blogs on professional blogging and it will take a very good blog to keep it out of the number one spot too much longer. The rollout of this blog was incredibly well planned and executed and they tell you a lot about their plan. If you can emulate the strategy of how this blog was planned and executed, you would almost be assured success.
Great Nexus - I have to admit to a weakness for this blog. I really like the fact that it is so straight-talking. There is some great information on blog promotion including strategies on getting links (very important for any site). It isn’t updated quite as often as I would like, but I am greedy for good information. Luckily I get decent information about blogging, SEO and general blogging news here.
Matt Cutts - This blog isn’t exactly about blogging per se, but rather SEO. The fact is that if you want your own blog to be a success then you are going to need to know a little about SEO. You are also going to need to know a little about Google. This is the guy who will tell it to you - he works for Google. This is required reading for the SEO crowd, but you do need to remember that this guy works for Google and will always be bound by that fact. He does however, have a lot of good info for blog SEO and should be on your list if you are serious about blogging.
The Blog Herald - Updates on pretty much everything to do with blogging. This guy has recently joined the esteemed ranks of full time pro bloggers so I give him a bit of respect. His information about blogging includes everything from resources for serious bloggers to updates on other blogging blogs. Once again, this is one of the places you should make a daily stop to check up on the latest.
Subnixus - This is a blog by a guy who lays it all on the line. He tells his readers exactly how much he is earning and how exactly he makes it. His earnings a few months ago were around the $20 per day mark but he has climbed that up to about $50. That’s a pretty good increse for only a few months. He has a lot of excellent tips on how he promotes his blogs - I really loved his series on a press release that got him several TV appearances and radio interviews.

Your own personal DJ
Pandora - Predicts Music You Like

The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe
The Field tells the story of a group of frontier scientists who discovered that the Zero Point Field - an ocean of subatomic vibrations in the space between things - connects everything in the universe, much like the Force in Star Wars.

Women Narrow the Internet Gender Gap, Survey Finds
Traditionally, women have lagged behind men in adoption of Internet technologies, but a study released yesterday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that women under age 65 now outpace men in Internet usage, though only by a few percentage points. But the survey also noted that the disparity between women and men on the Web is even greater among the 18-to-29 age group and African Americans.

The Next Google has Arrived
We all remember how Google took all competitors by storm when they introduced their spider-run index. With Google introducing vertically-related features almost weekly to retain their falling market share, we can’t help but wonder what will be the next “big thing” in the search engine world.
The search engine in question, which is currently in beta stages, is PreviewSeek. This company boasts artificial intelligences algorithms organize results in a more logical way. Instead of placing the site with the higher PageRank as the number one result, PreviewSeek categorizes them.
For instance, if you search for “tax”, the search engine will give you the following categories: forms, income, department of taxation, relief, etc…
Another major feature this search engine boasts is an MP3 search. This feature most likely designed to find the 30 second trial clips on music sales sites, but if you look - you’ll find plenty of full songs.

Reasons you should have a will
Although no one wants to think about their own death, having a will is imperative to those with children under the age of 18, or any assets whatsoever.
1. Name who gets your property
If you don’t have a will, your state will have full jurisdiction over where your belongings go. Suppose you have a wife, a one year old child, and $100,000.00. If you die without a will, the wife will get $50,000 + 50% of the remainder. This leaves your one year old child with $25,000. This money does not belong to your wife.
2. You can determine how much each person gets.
3. Name executor of your will
4. Ability to name who will take care of your children
5. Ability to give to charity
6. Tax savings
In North Carolina, and possibly in the United States, a person can pass up to 1.5 million dollars without taxes. If you die without a will, your wife will have to pay tax on the money that is automatically passed to her.