] "We believe that pufferfish acquire poison by eating
] poisonous food, such as starfish and shellfish, rather
] than producing it themselves. So we fed them nonpoisonous
] food," Arakawa said.
]
] He and his colleagues kept about 5,000 fugu on a strict
] regime of mackerel and other nonpoisonous food at seven
] locations along Japan's west coast from 2001 to 2003.

But where is the fun in that?

Salon.com Technology | Scientists develop blowfish minus poison

] The result has been $100M animation budgets. Even "Sky
] Captain", which was supposed to be a low-budget effects
] movie, is headed towards that figure. (The production
] team screwed up, and now ILM is bailing them out. ILM
] makes a sizable fraction of their money bailing out the
] botched productions of others.)

Shrek 2 How-To

] Buckminster Fuller pointed out nearly 50 years ago that
] the cost (in both $ and "lost energy" terms) of sharing
] power across great distances was rapidly dropping because
] it's a function of the voltage you can push the power up
] to. If you can transform it up to a million volts, you
] can share power across, say, 10,000km (all North America)
] with only a percent or so lost in transmission. This much
] is now becoming common today. BC and Alberta made out
] like bandits selling power to California during it's
] artificial "crisis" the other year.

Slashdot | Creator of the Gaia Hypothesis Urges Nuclear Power

] So when Clark found the new generation of road sensor,
] Arnu drove out to help investigate further. The pair
] found that, at close range, they could use a handheld
] frequency counter to pick up the wireless signals given
] off by the devices as a car passes. Over the following
] month and half, Clark and Arnu engaged in a kind of
] geocaching game with the Men in Black, systematically
] sniffing out the road sensors with the frequency counter,
] exhuming them, and opening them up. They discovered that
] each device was coded with three-digit identifier that
] could be read off an internal dial, allowing Arnu to make
] a list that correlated each unit's I.D. number with its
] GPS coordinates, creating a virtual map of a portion of
] the surveillance network surrounding the Groom Lake
] facility. Some of the sensors were miles away from the
] base.

Interesting sensor network...

SecurityFocus HOME News: Area 51 hackers dig up trouble

] CRS-1, which previously had been code-named HFR for Huge
] Fast Router, also is the first core router to offer 40
] gigabit-per-second optical interfaces. Rumors and
] speculation about the product have circulated for almost
] a year.
]
] Four carriers, including Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, MCI
] and NTT Communications, were at a Cisco event here
] Tuesday to kick off the router. The carriers said they
] have been working with Cisco for the past few years to
] develop the product, which can be clustered through a
] switch fabric chassis to reach a routing capacity of 92
] terabits per second.

Interesting bits on the probable lag in selling, as well.

Cisco's $500 million router - News - ZDNet

] But we have found a number of instances of coverage that
] was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some
] cases, information that was controversial then, and seems
] questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed
] to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been
] more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new
] evidence emerged -- or failed to emerge.
...
] It is still possible that chemical or biological weapons will
] be unearthed in Iraq, but in this case it looks as if we, along
] with the administration, were taken in. And until now we have not
] reported that to our readers.

The Times -- the NY TIMES -- finally realizes that maybe they were not quite right about the whole Iraq thing. Maybe they have some influence, and perhaps should have questioned their sources, and/or cover the dissenting opinions better

From the Editors: The Times and Iraq

] Hunter S. Thompson's ESPN column was scrubbed of
] controversy late Monday afternoon when online editors
] worried the famed gonzo journalist had gone too far.

HST has a way with words. Specifically, "Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these [Abu Ghraib] photographs did."

ESPN SCRUBS HUNTER S. THOMPSON BUSH BASH

] per capita income in the period prior to
] the late 1950s was right around number three in the
] world, behind the United States and Canada. But by 1984,
] its per capita income had sunk to 27th in the world,
] alongside Portugal and Turkey. Not only that, but our
] unemployment rate was 11.6 percent, we’d had 23
] successive years of deficits (sometimes ranging as high
] as 40 percent of GDP), our debt had grown to 65 percent
] of GDP, and our credit ratings were continually being
] downgraded. Government spending was a full 44 percent of
] GDP, investment capital was exiting in huge quantities,
] and government controls and micromanagement were
] pervasive at every level of the economy. We had foreign
] exchange controls that meant I couldn’t buy a
] subscription to The Economist magazine without the
] permission of the Minister of Finance. I couldn’t buy
] shares in a foreign company without surrendering my
] citizenship. There were price controls on all goods and
] services, on all shops and on all service industries.
] There were wage controls and wage freezes. I couldn’t pay
] my employees more – or pay them bonuses – if I wanted to.
] There were import controls on the goods that I could
] bring into the country. There were massive levels of
] subsidies on industries in order to keep them viable.
] Young people were leaving in droves.

Rolling Back Government

] John Kerry may not accept the Democratic presidential
] nomination at the party's Boston convention

Ah, fundraising.

Here's why Kerry may delay accepting a nomination

] Presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry is sitting down
] for a much-anticipated meeting with independent Ralph
] Nader, but there's little sign they'll alter this year's
] political dynamic when they get together.
]
] Nader is making it clear he won't leave the race, and
] Kerry isn't likely to overtly ask him to do so.

If Politics were just a bit more like the Mob, this would be a far more interesting conversation. Or hit.

Salon.com News | Kerry-Nader meeting unlikely to alter race