Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

New York Times, March 11, 2003

Universe as Doughnut: New Data, New Debate

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Long ago in the dawn of the computer age, college students often whiled away the nights playing a computer game called Spacewar. It consisted of two rocket ships attempting to blast each other out of the sky with torpedoes while trying to avoid falling into a star at the center of the screen.

Although cartoonish in appearance, the game was amazingly faithful to the laws of physics, complete with a gravitational field that affected both the torpedoes and the rockets. Only one feature seemed outlandish: a ship that drifted off the edge of the screen would reappear on the opposite side.

Real space couldn’t work that way. Or could it?

Imagine that the Spacewar screen is wrapped around to form a cylinder or a section of a doughnut so that the two edges meet.

That is the picture of space, some cosmologists say, that has been suggested by a new detailed map of the early universe. Their analysis of this map has now provided a series of hints — though only hints — that the universe may have a more complicated shape than astronomers presumed. Rather than being infinite in all directions, as the most fashionable theory suggests, the universe could be radically smaller in one direction than the others. As a result it may be even be shaped like a doughnut.

CBC News:Flying sheep head fractures fan’s skull at rock concert

OSLO, Norway – A man attending a heavy metal concert suffered a fractured skull when he was hit with a flying sheep head.

…

“My relationship to sheep is a bit ambivalent now. I like them, but not when they come flying through the air,” concertgoer Per Kristian Hagen, 25, told the Associated Press from his hospital room.

“Goodbye” in many languages

Abenaki (Maine USA, Montreal Canada) Adio, wli nanawalmezi

Abenaki (Maine USA, Montreal Canada) Adio

Abenaki (Maine USA, Montreal Canada) Wlibamkanni

Acateco (San Miguel Acatán Guatemala] Xawil hab’aa

Acateco (San Miguel Acatán Guatemala) Qil xin

Aceh (Sumatra) Trok lom

Achí (Guatemala) [said by person leaving] Quin ‘ec

Achí (Guatemala) [said by person leaving] Quin ‘e na

Achí (Baja Verapaz Guatemala) Chawila awib

Achí (Baja Verapaz Guatemala) [answer] Mantiox, lawib chi

[Achinese, see Aceh]

Acholi (Uganda, Sudan) [go well] Wot maber

Acholi (Uganda, Sudan) [stay well] Dong maber

Acholi (Uganda, Sudan) [to person leaving] Dong iwoti

Acholi (Uganda, Sudan) [to person staying] Dong ibedi

Achuar (Ecuador) Wea jai

Acjachemem (San Juan Capistrano Calif. USA) Yatahay

[Adare, see Harari]

Adyghe (Middle East) Wog maho

Adyghe (Middle East) Hyarcha

Over 450 in all

Ukranian policemen install the first wooden police car imitation by the road near the town of Borispol, February 26, 2003. Police have decided to use the imitation car as a method of preventing speeding and reducing car accidents. REUTERS/Mykhailo Markiv

USATODAY.com – Officials to probe use of aviation contractors

By Gary Stoller, USA TODAY

The General Accounting Office is launching an investigation into the federal government’s use of thousands of private companies to inspect and certify airlines’ planes and aircraft alterations.

GAO officials say the new probe was triggered by a Feb. 17 USA TODAY article and a letter Friday from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. He said that the Federal Aviation Administration’s use of private companies has been criticized and that the newspaper story suggested “the aviation industry was supervising itself without adequate controls and oversight by FAA.” (Related story: Doomed plane’s gaming system exposes holes in FAA oversight)

developerWorks: Web architecture | Java technology : An introduction to object prevalence

Weblogs for Professional Web Sites

For web sites to look current and vital, they need a steady diet of fresh content. You—the designer/builder—certainly don’t want to spend all day adding articles to the news page or updating the client’s “You can see me at” travel page, do you? On the other hand, do you really want someone else to do it? A majority of our clients, be they freelance or in-house, are not well-versed in HTML or even WYSIWYG software. And even if they were, you’re responsible for the site. Are you sure you want other people stomping through your meticulously coded site with a clod-footed WYSIWYG?

What you do need is some basic content management—a way to separate the new content from your wonderful design. You need to let subject experts add content when they want, not when you have time. But content management software can be expensive, cumbersome, and a hassle for most sites. Is there a better way? Yes. You can take the power of weblogs and add them to your professional site.

Weblogs, or blogs, are a popular way of posting content to the web via a simple interface. Think of them as web-based diaries you can update from almost anywhere. Imagine adding content to your web site without writing any HTML, firing up Dreamweaver, or FTPing a single thing. Just go to a web site, log in, type your content, and publish. Within seconds, it’s inserted into a template and on your site. (See Biz Stone’s story on weblogs for more information.)

So many weblogs look like personal diaries, not meeting our high design standards for professional sites. But there are ways that you can use the simple, HTML-less interface of weblogging to add fresh content to your conservative, business-oriented web site.

WebReview.com: February 4, 2002: Weblogs for Professional Web Sites

USATODAY.com – FAA failings in Swissair crash follow a too-familiar pattern

In December, the National Transportation Safety Board faulted the Federal Aviation Administration for contributing to the January 2000 crash of an Alaska Airlines jet that killed 88. The indictment of the FAA was not the first. In 1997, the safety board held the agency partly responsible for a 1996 crash in which 110 died when a ValuJet plane plummeted into the Florida Everglades.

Now a two-year USA TODAY investigation concludes that the FAA might have played a role in yet another airline disaster — a 1998 crash that claimed 229 lives when a Swissair jumbo jet plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.

In all three tragedies, the FAA botched its paramount mission: to make sure that those inspecting, maintaining and modifying commercial airliners do their jobs properly.

USATODAY Feature Article, 2/17/03