Hottest stuff on Earth

March 9th, 2006 etdot 1 Comment »

LiveScience reports, "Scientists" have set a new record for "Hottest temperature on Earth." No, I’m not referring to a chili cook-off. Scientists "superheated" some "gas" to 2 billion degrees Kelvin, or 3.6 billion degrees Fahrenheit! That is hotter than the center of the sun. Pretty hard to believe, I know. They didn’t believe it either:

They don’t know how they did it.

The feat was accomplished in the Z machine at Sandia National Laboratories.

"At first, we were disbelieving," said project leader Chris Deeney. "We repeated the experiment many times to make sure we had a true result."

The story continues in detail. By the time you finish, I promise, you will not believe it.

Furry Lobster

March 8th, 2006 etdot 1 Comment »

KiwaidaCNN reports that this ugly beast, named Kiwa hirsuta, was discovered over a mile deep in the ocean. Apparently it is so neat that they created a new family AND genus for it. But it prefers to go by Furry Lobster. While 66% of adult males are sure to be jealous of this creature’s sinuous, hair-like strands, they can take comfort in knowing that it is blind.

More spying for NSA

February 28th, 2006 etdot No Comments »

Wiretapping, emails, search results… not good enough. The National Security Agency wants data mining software. Be sure to visit BugMeNot if you don’t have a username/password to read the article.

Singles Awareness Day (SAD)

February 15th, 2006 etdot No Comments »

Happy Singles Awareness Day? Yea, I guess it’s a day set aside for single people to cry and complain together about being single. It is SAD indeed.

Patriot Act e-mail spying approved

February 9th, 2006 etdot No Comments »

Illegal wiretapping… bad, bad. How could they. "Everyone look, illegal wiretapping – that’s right, eat it up, it was wrong, you were being spied on illegally."

"Quick, while no one is looking, legalize e-mail spying! We already do it, we don’t want another situation when the public finds out."

From news.com:

What: The Justice Department asks a judge to approve Patriot Act e-mail monitoring without any evidence of criminal behavior.
When: Decided Feb. 2, 2006 by U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan in Washington, D.C.
Outcome: E-mail surveillance approved.
What happened: As part of a grand jury investigation that’s still secret, the Justice Department asked a federal magistrate judge to approve monitoring of an unnamed person’s e-mail correspondents.