BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Water scarcity is slowly becoming a fact of life in increasingly large areas. The summer of 2006 was the second warmest in the continental United States since records began in 1895, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Moderate to extreme drought conditions were evident in about 40 percent of the country. When Constance Brown moved from Arizona to Indiana two years ago, she was struck by a major difference: people in Indiana don’t think about water every day the way people in Arizona do. The difference shows up in many ways. In Arizona, Brown said, if you drop a piece of ice on the kitchen floor and ignore it, in a few minutes it will be gone — melted and then evaporated. In Indiana, if you drop a piece of ice on the floor and ignore it, the water will just stay there until it’s wiped up. In Arizona, she said, if you need a particular garment on short notice and it’s in the laundry, you can wash it by hand and hang it outside. It will be dry in 15 minutes. Not in Indiana. In semi-arid environments such as the […]
LONDON — That dash of milk in the morning cuppa nullifies all the goodness of the tea. Studies have shown that drinking green or black tea can be good for you because both types contain an abundance of antioxidants called flavonoids. These improve bloodflow and help to prevent heart disease, and are also thought to protect against some cancers. But German researchers discovered that adding milk to a cup of black tea counteracts the beneficial effects. The study, published in the European Heart Journal, found that when black tea is drunk on its own, cardiovascular function improves. But it suggests that certain proteins in milk appear to negate the effect of catechins, the particular flavonoids in tea. The findings are bad news for manufacturers who have promoted the health properties of the beverage to Australians who add milk as a matter of routine. The study involved 16 healthy post-menopausal women who were given either 500ml of black tea, black tea with 10 per cent skimmed milk or with extra boiled water as a control. They drank it on three occasions but refrained from drinking tea for four weeks before and after the study. The drink […]
In their persistent quest to breach the Internet’s defenses, the bad guys are honing their weapons and increasing their firepower. With growing sophistication, they are taking advantage of programs that secretly install themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, band these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and use the collective power of the dragooned network to commit Internet crimes. These systems, called botnets, are being blamed for the huge spike in spam that bedeviled the Internet in recent months, as well as fraud and data theft. Security researchers have been concerned about botnets for some time because they automate and amplify the effects of viruses and other malicious programs. What is new is the vastly escalating scale of the problem - and the precision with which some of the programs can scan computers for specific information, like corporate and personal data, to drain money from online bank accounts and stock brokerages. ‘It’s the perfect crime, both low-risk and high-profit,’ said Gadi Evron, a computer security researcher for an Israeli-based firm, Beyond Security, who coordinates an international volunteer effort to fight botnets. ‘The war to make the Internet safe was lost […]
I. Surging Toward the Ultimate Prize The reason that George W. Bush insists that ‘victory’ is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it’s that his definition of ‘victory’ is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned ‘surge’ of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand. At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new ‘hydrocarbon law’ essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will ‘radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world,’ says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law. ‘It would allow the first large-scale operation of […]
SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a sweeping $12 billion health care plan today that would require all Californians to have health insurance. In remarks that he delivered by video conference from Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger insisted covering all Californians was the key to lowering the exploding costs of health care. ‘We pay higher deductibles, higher cost for treatment, higher premiums and higher co-pays,” he said. ‘Prices for health care and insurance are rising twice as fast as inflation, twice as fast as wages. That is a terrible drain on everyone and it is a drain on our economy. My solution is that everyone in California must have insurance. If you can’t afford it, the state will help you buy it, but you must be insured.” Among the highlights: The governor would require employers to provide insurance or pay into a state fund that would help people buy their own insurance; he would require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of medical condition; he would require 85 percent of insurance premiums be spent on patient care; he would substantially increase the MediCal reimbursement for doctors. He acknowledged how controversial his proposal to cover illegal immigrants is, but said […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
