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POPSSo much for cutting PORK - $2.3 million for the U.S. Forest Service to rear large numbers of arthropods, including the Asian longhorned beetle, the nun moth and the woolly adelgid. - $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla. - $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla. - $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades. - $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. - $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. - $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. - $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota. - $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan. - $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money. - $1.5 million f
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POPSGalileo European Galileo with US GPS and Russian Glonass systems : si ça marche pas mieux que le LHC ou l'Airbus ... on passera pour des charlots
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POPSAfter flurry of stimulus spending, questionable projects pile up
- $3.4 million for a 13-foot tunnel for turtles and other wildlife attempting to cross U.S. 27 in Lake Jackson, Fla. - $1.15 million to install a guardrail for a persistently dry lake bed in Guymon, Okla. - $9.38 million to renovate a century-old train depot in Lancaster County, Pa., that has not been used for three decades. - $2.5 million in stimulus checks sent to the deceased. - $6 million for a snow-making facility in Duluth, Minn. - $173,834 to weatherize eight pickup trucks in Madison County, Ill. - $20,000 for a fish sperm freezer at the Gavins Point National Fish Hatchery in South Dakota. - $380,000 to spay and neuter pets in Wichita, Kan. - $300 apiece for thousands of signs at road construction sites across the country announcing that the projects are funded by stimulus money. - $1.5 million for a fence to block would-be jumpers from leaping off the All-American Bridge in Akron, Ohio. - $1 million to study the health effects of environmentally fr
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POPSJohn Scalzi on the latest "girls are ruining science fiction!" idiocy
More: Well, actually , the thing to do is trap such creatures in a dork snare (cunningly baited with Cool Ranch Doritos, Diet Ultra Violet Mountain Dew and a dual monitor rig open to Drunken Stepfather on one screen and Duke Nukem 3D on the other), and then cart them to a special preserve somewhere in Idaho for such as their kind. We’ll tell them it’s a “freehold” — they’ll like that — and that they will be with others of a like mind, and there they will live as men , free from the horrible feminizing effects of women and their gonad shriveling girl rays . And then we’ll tag them with GPS and if they ever try to leave the freehold, we’ll have them hunted down by roller derby teams with spears . That’s really the optimal solution. But since we can’t do that , then pointing and laughing will suffice. So, yes: let’s all point and laugh at these funny little terrified stupid men, and then ignore them. Because that’s what they rate.
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POPSBYE BYE FISH FRY! Like everything else human's do........we screwed up the fishing industry. Industrialization, say many, is why it happened... .Unfortunately, it is not just the future of the fishing industry that is at stake, but also the continued health of the world’s largest ecosystem
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POPSIs social media making us safer? I suppose this may seem obvious, but i hadn't really thought about it. I've heard talk about how people shouldn't post things like "on vacation" on twitter because criminals can use that info to go rob your house. But the idea that people have instantaneous ways to get information and reach out definitely suggests that we could become more efficient in crime avoidance. Thinking that a great idea for a new service would be some kind of social network 911 call. Press a certain button and automatically post an alert to the following people via twitter, facebook, sms, etc. Then, using GPS, the people could get your message and your location.
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POPS The Sell-Phone Revolution Already, mobile services use area codes, Zip Codes, and even Global Positioning System (GPS) data to return results for nearby businesses in response to a search for, say, coffee shops. The next step is to serve an ad for a steaming cup of java on a mobile Web page just as the cell-phone Web surfer is passing a Starbucks (SBUX ). Within five years, online ad networks such as TACODA and Specific Media Inc. plan to apply behavioral techniques"using surfing data"to target ads to broadband-enabled digital television. It's not hard to imagine the day when multiple TVs tuned to the same channel in the same household will serve up different ads. "There is no question behavioral targeting will be a major component of television," says Dave Morgan, TACODA's founder and chairman. Read full article >>> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_17/b4031097.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
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POPSMobile phone tracker site! Track your gfriend/bfriend I used this to track my girlfriends number, gives accurate readings to the meter, well worth a try, i could'nt believe it! Did'nt think it was possible. I put my own number in and it found me on a map within seconds. Fast free and very interesting! Works worldwide http://www.planetcreation.co.uk/sat-gps
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POPSThe $150 Edge-of-Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer-Money Budget
via Jules Crittenden Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148. Launch Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to compensate for the prevailing winds, which could have otherwise taken the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wyoming’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site. Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
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POPSWhy Humans Can't Navigate Out of a Paper Bag That these skills are so easily lost could explain why the average westerner struggles to navigate without help. Most people now live in a world that has been made navigable by maps, street signs, transport networks and GPS. There is no need to understand the environment to get around. Losing our relationship with physical space, coupled with the unique human ability to imagine ourselves in another location, may have given us the freedom to create a reality of our own. What other species could comprehend the World Wide Web or contemplate exploring new worlds? And while we may struggle to find our way back to the car after a shopping trip, we can take heart in the knowledge that, as a species, we have managed to find our way to the moon and back, and have sent satellites to just the right orbit so that we no longer need to think about where we are going. Show me a hamster that can do that.