Arthur C. Clarke, a writer whose seamless blend of scientific expertise and poetic imagination helped usher in the space age, died early Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he had lived since 1956. He was 90.

Arthur C. Clarke, 90, Science Fiction Writer, Dies - New York Times

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — An aide said science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has died.

Rohan De Silva says Clarke died early Wednesday [March 18th 2008] after suffering from breathing problems. He was 90.

Clarke is the author of more than 100 books, including 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke dies at 90

I always hoped he would be one of those folks that would make it over a hundred.

Arthur C. Clarke is dead

British science fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

a legend

BBC NEWS | UK | Writer Arthur C Clarke dies at 90

It is in the hopes of keeping the attention of the public, and that of our elected officials, on this subject that the writers of this collection of essays have put pen to paper. They include a former president, the speaker of the House, two former White House chiefs of staff, current and former senators, generals, admirals, intelligence officials, interrogators, and religious leaders. Some are Republicans, others are Democrats, and still others are neither. What they all agree on, however, is this: It was a profound moral and strategic mistake for the United States to abandon long-standing policies of humane treatment of enemy captives. We should return to the rule of law and cease all forms of torture, with no exceptions for any agency. And we should expect our presidential nominees to commit to this idea.

No Torture. No Exceptions.

Have you ever left your terminal logged in, only to find when you came back to it that a (supposed) friend had typed "rm -rf ~/*" and was hovering over the keyboard with threats along the lines of "lend me a fiver 'til Thursday, or I hit return"? Undoubtedly the person in question would not have had the nerve to inflict such a trauma upon you, and was doing it in jest. So you've probably never experienced the worst of such disasters....

*THE* classic Unix horror story | WSU Linux Users Group

“It was a total waste of time,” Jerrold Nadler , D-N.Y., said of the secret session. “Frankly, we think the whole thing was a bluff. But we called it. They thought, ‘We’ll call a secret session and the Democrats will reject it, then we can say they didn’t want to hear all the information.’ ”

...

A dispute broke out when an unnamed Republican started to talk about a topic that Democrats considered off limits under the ground rules for the session, since it was at a higher security clearance level than the discussion up to that point. But one Republican lawmaker said the discussion was in bounds. “We tried to give them the information, but they didn’t want to hear it,” the lawmaker said.

Ding!

Tom Price , R-Ga., said he was disappointed by the partisanship on the floor during the closed session. “There were two different camps in the approach. One camp was interested in talking about issues. The other camp was talking about . . . politics,” Price said.

Will someone please tell me where Republicans have discussed the issues? Have they explained why President Bush thinks the Electronic Frontier Foundation sees "a financial gravy train" in these lawsuits? Is there a place where they describe just exactly how the system they have established prevents their domestic surveillance apparatus from being abused for domestic political purposes? Have they explained why amnesty will not create perverse incentives for telecoms to comply with unwarranted surveillance in the future?

CQ Politics | Secret Session Brings House Members No Closer Together on Surveillance

Yet the evidence is overwhelming that, in the United States, prostitution is only very rarely just another career choice. Studies suggest that up to two-thirds of prostitutes have been sexually abused as girls, a majority have drug dependencies or mental illnesses, one-third have been threatened with death by pimps, and almost half have attempted suicide.

Melissa Farley, a psychologist who has written extensively about the subject, says that girls typically become prostitutes at age 13 or 14. She conducted a study finding that 89 percent of prostitutes urgently wanted to escape the work, and that two-thirds have post-traumatic stress disorder — not a problem for even the most frustrated burger-flipper.

The mortality data for prostitutes is staggering. The American Journal of Epidemiology published a meticulous study finding that the “workplace homicide rate for prostitutes” is 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women, working in a liquor store. The average age of death of the prostitutes in the study was 34.

Do as He Said - New York Times

ast week the National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate announced the creation of a strategic relationship with Google Inc. and IBM.

The Cluster Exploratory (CluE) relationship will enable the academic research community to conduct experiments and test new theories and ideas using a large-scale, massively distributed computing cluster.

“Access to the Google-IBM academic cluster via the CluE program will provide the academic community with the opportunity to do research in data-intensive computing and to explore powerful new applications,” said Jeannette Wing, assistant director at NSF for CISE. “It can also serve as a tool for educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.”

“Google is proud to partner with the National Science Foundation to provide computing resources to the academic research community,” said Stuart Feldman, vice president of engineering at Google Inc. “It is our hope that research conducted using this cluster will allow researchers across many fields to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by large-scale, distributed computing.”

“Extending the Google/IBM academic program with the National Science Foundation should accelerate research on Internet-scale computing and drive innovation to fuel the applications of the future,” said Willy Chiu, vice president of IBM Software Strategy and High Performance On Demand Solutions. “IBM is pleased to be collaborating with the NSF on this project.”

Google and IBM created the cluster of approximately 1600 processors in October of last year to give the academic community access to otherwise prohibitively expensive resources.

While the timeline for releasing the formal request for proposals to the academic community is still being developed, NSF anticipates being able to support 10 to 15 research projects in the first year of the program, and will likely expand the number of projects in the future.

NSF partners with Google and IBM

Friday’s employment report — which was so weak that it had many economists declaring that we’re already in a recession — was bad news. But it was actually less disturbing than what’s going on in the financial markets.
...
Some observers worry that the Fed is taking over the banks’ financial risk. But what worries me more is that the move seems trivial compared with the size of the problem: $200 billion may sound like a lot of money, but when you compare it with the size of the markets that are melting down — there are $11 trillion in U.S. mortgages outstanding — it’s a drop in the bucket.

The Face-Slap Theory - New York Times