Rethinking Death
Must read Newsweek article.
Basically cells don’t die upon heart failure, but rather when we try to force the body to take in oxygen – that causes a cancer-like reflex to kick in and destroys the cells. But the cells can be kept alive through the appropriate processes. Fascinating.
Cheap Biotech
A pocket-sized device that runs on two AA batteries and copies DNA as accurately as expensive lab equipment has been developed by researchers in the US.
The device has no moving parts and costs just $10 to make. It runs polymerase chain reactions (PCRs), to generate billions of identical copies of a DNA strand, in as little as 20 minutes. This is much faster than the machines currently in use, which take several hours.
Tax Freedom Day
Tax Foundation – Fantastic data, this year you started working for yourself on April 30. Every day until now was to pay taxes. –
“Americans will work longer to pay for government (120 days) than they will for food, clothing and housing combined (105 days),” said Hodge. “Since 1986 taxes have cost more than these basic necessities. In fact, Americans will work longer to afford federal taxes alone (79 days) than they will to afford housing (62 days).”
In 2007 Americans will work another 41 days to afford their state and local taxes. That makes taxation a bigger financial burden than housing and household operation (62 days), health and medical care (52 days), food (30 days), transportation (30 days), recreation (22 days), or clothing and accessories (13 days).
Cryptome = Dead?
Infoworld has details –
Cryptome.org, a Web site that sometimes posts documents about government policy and intelligence, received a short letter from its ISP, Verio, indicating that the site would be terminated on Friday. Verio, owned by NTT Communications, said the termination is due to violation of its acceptable use policy.
Cryptome.org has run afoul of Verio’s policy before, but historically, the ISP has allowed the site to rectify the violation either by removing a document or proving that posting the document doesn’t breach any laws. This time, Verio hasn’t offered Cryptome.org that opportunity and also hasn’t specified how exactly the site violates the rules, said John Young, Cryptome.org’s founder, in a note on the site.
Site is currently down. Bad move. Cryptome did good work.
Video Bubble
FT –
Video has become the hottest corner of a broader financing boom tied to so-called “Web 2.0” Internet companies. The amount of US venture capital flowing into video-related start-ups of all types jumped by 95 per cent last year to $682m, according to figures compiled by Dow Jones/Venture One.