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Posts Tagged ‘Life Span’

10 Interesting Links From November 20th

November 21st, 2009 Greg Smith No comments
  • 9NEWS.com | Colorado’s Online News Leader | Huge ball of ice crashes through woman’s roof – Then she heard a huge explosion after something fell out of the sky right into her kitchen. Thankfully Hagan was not sitting in the room. The two of them had just left the kitchen and no one in the home was injured. "It was just bizarre," Hagan said, "I heard a huge explosion, couldn't figure out if something had crashed in or exploded out and [it was] just complete chaos after that." It turns out a piece of ice, a bowling-ball-size piece, fell from the sky.
  • Quit smoking today—and start looking better tomorrow: Consumer Reports Health Blog – Fewer wrinkles. Better-smelling breath, hair, and clothing. Healthier teeth and gums. More money in your pocket. An improved sense of taste and smell. A reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and cancer of the lungs, cervix, pancreas, throat, intestine, kidneys, and bladder. Most important, up to 10 years added to your life span. Despite these convincing reasons to quit smoking, Americans are not getting the message that smoking can not only shorten your life, but also increase the risk of death in those who come into contact with your secondhand smoke—including your children.
  • Ten Awesome Feats Of Automotive Infrastructure – Infrastructure – Jalopnik – This is apparently how Japanese engineers settle civil arguments: Don't want to move your building? Eat me. I've got a road to build.
  • J.C. Penney discontinuing "big book" – Dallas Business Journal: – As more consumers flock to the Web to make online retail purchases, North Texas-based J.C. Penney Co. is changing the face of its brand by discontinuing the publishing of its two “big book” catalogs in exchange for more online initiatives and smaller, more specialized catalogs.
  • Daily Express | World News :: Million hit by ‘plague worse than swine flu’ – A cocktail of three flu viruses are reported to have mutated into a single pneumonic plague, which it is believed may be far more dangerous than swine flu. The death toll has reached 189 and more than 1 million people have been infected, most of them in the nine regions of Western Ukraine.
  • Washington Redskins can keep team name; Supreme Court refuses native Americans’ suit | csmonitor.com – A group of native Americans have lost their bid to force the Washington Redskins pro football team to change its name because they consider it to be a racial slur. On Monday, the US Supreme Court, in a one-line ruling, refused to take up the case. The action lets stand a decision by a federal appeals court in Washington that the native Americans had waited too long to bring their challenge to the Redskins trademark, and thus forfeited any right to sue.
  • Web site’s cash handout stunt horrifies French minister| Technology| Reuters – Marketing Web site Mailorama.fr was forced to call off its plan to throw envelopes of cash to passers-by from the top of a bus on Saturday after thousands of people turned up and began spilling over security barriers. The decision to call off the stunt, which had been heavily promoted beforehand, sparked violent scenes in which shop windows were smashed, at least one car was overturned by hooded youths and photographers and cameramen were attacked.
  • Americans see country headed in wrong direction, poll says, but closer look shows strong partisan divide on nation’s direction | Postcards – Daron Shaw, a University of Texas government professor who helped helm the poll, reacted: “The Republicans are (basically) more pessimistic than the Democrats are optimistic.”
  • Al Jazeera English – Europe – Sicilian Mafia fugitive arrested – He had been convicted of five murders, including the kidnapping and killing of a rival's son, whose body was thrown into a vat of acid. Raccuglia faces several life sentences.
  • Foodborne illness: An acute and long-term health challenge for the 21st century | Science Blog – CFI's report, The Long-Term Health Outcomes of Selected Foodborne Pathogens, calls for a new approach to foodborne illness research and surveillance and provides expert reviews about some of the long-term health outcomes for five foodborne pathogens. The outcomes range from hypertension and diabetes to kidney failure and mental retardation.
  • links for 2009-01-29

    January 29th, 2009 Greg Smith No comments
    • Obama said Thursday that he would root for Pittsburgh against the "long-suffering" and "great Cinderella story" Cardinals. His spokesman also said the president would watch the game with members of Congress.
    • The Mars rover Spirit started acting erratically early this week, according to NASA late on Wednesday afternoon. Spirit and its Mars rover companion, Opportunity, have been working on the red planet for five years despite initially being given an on-planet life span of three m
    • "It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.
    • Drivers of Hummer SUVs were 4.63 times more likely to get a traffic ticket than the average driver, concludes a yearlong study by a company that helps insurers identify risks.
    • Federal investigators have concluded the probable cause of the crash of two news helicopters in Phoenix 18 months ago was that the pilots involved, who were also broadcasting live coverage of a police chase, lost track of each other.

      Before the helicopters collided and crashed, the pilots were trying to do too much at once – fly, report and monitor multiple radio channels – officials said.

    • About 8,000 plaintiffs are lined up to sue Big Tobacco in the Florida court system, a conveyor belt of cases that is likely to clog the calendars of state and federal judges for months, if not years, to come.

      This wave of lawsuits from smokers, or their estates, stems from a 2006 ruling in the Florida Supreme Court that broke up a class action suit of more than 700,000 plaintiffs and quashed a $145 billion award against the tobacco industry, the biggest penalty in US civil court history.

    • everyone from the New York Times to Caterpillar to the average American household has decided the way to survive the current downturn is to immediately stop trying to do more of whatever it is they do, and instead to do either the same amount or less at a much lower cost.
    • Last November, Intel filed an appeal with the European Union's Court of First Instance arguing that the Directorate General for Competition (DG-COMP) had improperly and prejudicially pursued its ongoing investigation into allegations that the company had abused its dominant market position to the detriment of its competitor, AMD. That court has now returned a lengthy decision rejecting all of Intel's arguments, annulment requests, and pleas for financial relief.