luapo |
September 27, 2011
The Catalonia region of Spain bade farewell to bullfighting on Sunday with a corrida in Barcelona’s Monumental bullring featuring José Tomás, probably the country’s most popular matador.
After putting to death their respective bulls in front of a sell-out crowd in the 20,000-seat arena, Mr Tomás, along with another bullfighter Serafín Marín, were carried shoulder high from the ring into the streets by ecstatic fans. Others, meanwhile, invaded the ring to gather some of its sand as a souvenir of the final fight, which follows a vote last year by the Catalan regional Parliament to ban bullfighting.
Read more…
luapo |
September 26, 2011
Online gamers have achieved a feat beyond the realm of Second Life or Dungeons and Dragons: they have deciphered the structure of an enzyme of an AIDS-like virus that had thwarted scientists for a decade.
The exploit is published on Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, where — exceptionally in scientific publishing — both gamers and researchers are honoured as co-authors. Their target was a monomeric protease enzyme, a cutting agent in the complex molecular tailoring of retroviruses, a family that includes HIV. Figuring out the structure of proteins is vital for understanding the causes of many diseases and developing drugs to block them.
But a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that “unfolds” the molecule and rotates it in order to reveal potential targets for drugs.
Read more… Thanks John for the link.
luapo |
September 24, 2011
Want to enjoy the ride of your life along with the last ride of your life? That’s what Julijonas Urbonas envisions with his Euthanasia Coaster.
The three-minute ride involves a long, slow, climb — nearly a third of a mile long — that lifts one up to a height of more than 1,600 feet, followed by a massive fall and seven strategically sized and placed loops. The final descent and series of loops take all of one minute. But the gravitational force — 10 Gs — from the spinning loops at 223 miles per hour in that single minute is lethal.
According to Urbonas, the “Euthanasia Coaster is a hypothetic euthanasia machine in the form of a roller coaster, engineered to humanely — with elegance and euphoria — take the life of a human being.”
Read more…
luapo |
September 23, 2011
On Saturday, the 178th Oktoberfest opened in Munich, Germany, with the traditional tapping of the first keg of beer by Munich’s mayor, Christian Ude, shouting “O’zapft is!” (“It’s tapped!”). The Bavarian festival takes place over 17 days, and some 6 million people are expected to attend. Last year, visitors drank more than 7 million one-liter mugs of beer.
Read more…
luapo |
September 22, 2011
A couple of computer ads from 1996… Everyone should get a good laugh at these “back-in-the-day” prices. Just look at all those bargains!
Via
luapo |
September 21, 2011
The Donald has just accepted gold bullion instead of cash. According to my colleague at the Wall Street Journal, Trump accepted $176,000 in bullion as a security deposit on space at 40 Wall Street from Apmex, a precious metals dealer.
Trump used the occasion for some publicity, and a dig at the Obama administration. “It’s a sad day when a large property owner starts accepting gold instead of the dollar,” Trump said in an interview. “The economy is bad, and Obama’s not protecting the dollar at all….If I do this, other people are going to start doing it, and maybe we’ll see some changes.”
Read more…
