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I saw Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in the theatres sometime ago with the group from work. Actually, a bunch of the guys went, as we couldn't convince the women to accompany us. Maybe there was one too many "guy" flicks that we had dragged them to that just didn't inspire them go with us for the Corpse Bride. This was the movie that they should have come out for though. You wouldn't think that from a title like the "Corpse Bride" that the movie would have been a romantic movie -- but it was -- in a quirky, Burtonesque kinda way. The damn thing was an actual love story. I'll spare you the trauma, and instead, will say a few words about the execution. The film was superbly made. The animation and stylized characters worked very well. If you've seen other Tim Burton animated films, you know what to expect from this one. The atmosphere was fanciful and weirdly wonderous. The characters were cartoons, while still believable, and could be e...

New Scientist is reporting that InPhase Technologies , along with Hitachi Maxell, are set to release holographic storage discs in late 2006. The discs will initially have the capacity to read and write up to 300GB of data, and will be 10 times faster than today's DVDs. InPhase also claims that they could theoretically store up to 1.6 terabytes of data with read/write at 960 megabits per second. Just in time for me to put my entire movie collection on a disc!

I saw Baby Blood recently -- it's a bloody movie. A really, really, bloody movie! Blood is a plot device of this movie -- I would venture so far as to say that blood may even be a character in the movie. The movie is set somewhere in Europe -- France I think, as this is a French film -- that seemed to have had better times. The mood is depressing and grey. It's as if entropy has had its way with the place. Everything is running out of energy, including the main character, Yanka, played by Emmanuelle Escourrou, who slowly loses the battle with "the evil within." So what's the movie about? Yanka is a circus performer in an abusive relationship with the circus head honcho. She wants out in a bad way, but either hasn't worked up the courage or hasn't had the chance. Her opportunity arrives with the addition of a new leopard to the circus. The leopard carries within it, an ancient creature that has existed since the birth of the planet. For some un...

I just found out about Afra Karim Randhawa via Wired magazine . At age 5, she saw her first computer. At 7, she could easily use PowerPoint. At 9, she enrolled in the local technology institute in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and in four months, became one of the youngest Microsoft Certified Professionals in the world. This past July, Gates invited her to Redmond to meet. She asked him why there weren't many women working in his company. She's now 10 years old, and is working towards a lead developer certification. How cool is that?

PETA knows how to get attention. They've launched a campaign in Liverpool, featuring Pamela Anderson wearing strategically placed lettuce. The whole idea is combat obesity, and PETA thinks that people should "Turn over a new leaf [and] try vegetarian." To quote PETA spokesman from BBC News : "We hope she will appeal to the demographic of young men, who can be more resistant to vegetarianism. This is a tantalising image and we hope even the most die-hard carnivores may be tempted to go to the website and learn about what eating meat is doing to their bodies and to the animals who suffer." Totally ignoring PETA's sexist campaigns for a moment -- just which guy looking at Pamela Anderson wearing lettuce will suddenly develop the urge to go vegetarian?

Social psychologists -- and to some degree, most people in general -- seem to have a fascination with people who behave anything but nicely. Take all the reality television shows for instance. Is there one where people do nice things? Not really. It appears that the television industry tries to find the biggest jackasses to put on the boob-tube, and the public can't seem to get enough of them. From the proliferation of reality TV shows, it doesn't appear that there is any end to the jackasses. But why do we have such a fascination with people gone wrong? Discover magazine has an article that throws a different spin on social psychology. According to psychologist Joachim Krueger, there may be just as much to learn about human behaviour from studying people that do good things. Why do some people stop to help? Why do some people thing of others before themselves? If you listen to what social psychologists have had to say about people, based on their studies so far, yo...

MacLeans takes a chainsaw at the Canadian Tire Guy . They even published excerpts from his diary . Well, I've seen the new ad for this weekend's Christmas sale. The dog ain't bad at all. I'd ask the ad agency for a refund however ... they've turned Canadian Tire into a joke. BTW ... want to know what bloggers think ?

The Origin of Mass and the Feebleness of Gravity Frank Wilczek Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics, MIT Wilczek starts out with saying he's going to explain the origin of mass -- but not all of it. He's going to stay away from dark matter and dark energy. He's going to stick to the 3% of ordinary matter. What is mass? For the longest time, mass was simply there. It couldn't be reduced down to anything. Wilczek jokingly refers to Einstein's second law: m=E/c^2 -- as the time when the concept of mass started to make sense. Most of ordinary matter is locked up in the nucleus of atoms -- which is made up of protons and neutrons -- which in term is made up of gluons and quarks. And we have a consistent theory -- one that combines quantum mechanics and general relativity: quantum chromodynamics . Wilczek goes on to explain the experiments at LEP, and how they led to clarity of QCD. There is more detail to the lecture -- but I only got to half of it before ot...

I'm not sure what to think of this. Bumvertising is an effort by Front Door Enterprises in Seattle. Basically, they give homeless people advertising signs to hold, for which they get some compensation.

The following comes courtesy of my friend, Naj. " MIT World is a free and open site that provides on-demand video of significant public events at MIT." Naj likes, The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, and The Origin of Mass and the Feebleness of Gravity by Frank Wilczek. There are many more interesting lectures online at MIT World. I haven't watched any of them yet, but already, I know there isn't enough spare time for all I will want to see. Check it out!

Why is common courtesy so uncommon? My wife and I had this little discussion during the car ride home today. What has become of Toronto? I haven't been in Toronto long enough to cry about the good ole days -- and I don't think I would have noticed courtesy in the past. I notice it today however, and in noticing it, I notice the lack of it in general. This past week, like the weeks before, I encounter the uncourteous in my daily travels back and forth to work, on the TTC. Whether it's the people having loud conversations in total disregard for those around them -- or those in a mad rush to get onto the bus or subway, to get a seat. Either way, they're rude, pushy, and have a total lack of common courtesy. They are no different than those who don't make the extra effort to hold the door open for someone; or those that don't say thank you when the extra effort is made -- the world is not your doorstop folks. There are those that stare, smoke their cigaret...

Baseline Magazine is carrying an eye opening article on NASA , and its struggle to get a handle on securing its systems. It is eye opening because it is all about people, and not necessarily about security or the agency itself. It makes me wonder just how they manage to eventually coordinate to get spacecrafts launched and do all the wonderful things they've done. The article describes a decentralized agency, with fragmented goals and managers who, when it really comes down to it, are just trying to protect their turf -- even while recognizing the bigger problems.

Jack Schofield of the Guardian Unlimited (UK) has published the top 20 geek novels written in English since 1932. The list is fairly unscientific. Schofield put the list up and then solicited votes. Nevertheless, the list is interesting to say the least. Below is the list, and what of the list I've actually read. I guess I'm not the geek I once thought of myself as. Read Not Read (1) Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2) George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four (4) Philip Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (3) Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (5) William Gibson's Neuromancer (6) Frank Herbert's Dune (7) Isaac Asimov's I, Robot (10) Douglas Coupland's Microserfs (8) Isaac Asimov's Foundation (11) Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (9) Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic (13) Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon (12) Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (14) Iain M Banks' Consider Phlebas (17) Neil...

Mother Goose rocks with Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes -- featuring U2, George W., the late Pope JP, and a bunch of other people I didn't recognize. Why? Why not, I suppose.

Here's a blog that questions Google's mantra of "do no evil." The premise, even though the author professes to allow you to decide, is that Google is evil. Why else have a blog with the question? Or maybe that's the cynic speaking. Regardless, what I find amusing, is that while the blog questions whether Google is evil or not -- the author makes no bones of potentially profiting from Google. Check out the AdSense ads on the site. It's enough to say that the Is Google Evil? site is evil.

The world is not a nice place to live in. Power corrupts -- not absolutely -- but with such a high degree, that it doesn't really make a difference if it's absolute or not. Transparency International recently published their 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index , and the findings are depressing. "Corruption [is] still rampant in 70 countries." And surprise, surprise, those living in the world's developing nations are hit by a double-whammy: poverty and corruption. If you're living in Chad, Bangladesh, Turkmenistan, Myanmar or Hati, life most likely suck. The least corrupt countries of the world: Iceland (1), Finland (2), New Zealand (3), Denmark (4) and Singapore (5). The usual suspects for general good behaviour. On the index, Canada ranks at 14 and the United States at 17. For related information, check out: 2005 Global Corruption Report United Nations Convention against Corruption Explaining the Factors of the Index of Economic Freedom [PDF] The ...

UNAIDS announced today at the AIDS Epidemic Update 2005 , that the number of new HIV/AIDS infections has risen by 4.9 million to reach 40.3 million, globally. Africa, especially the southern part of the continent remains the area being hit the worst -- this year however, Eastern Europe saw a spike in infections. Sub-Saharan Africa has 64% of the world's infections. South Africa leads the world with HIV/AIDS infection, topping 5.1 million people -- and India comes in a close second at 5 million infections. The problem is most severe in the developing nations where 90% of the population don't know their HIV status. To make it worse, those that may know, don't necessarily report their infections or seek treatment -- if any is available. Pregnant women in Africa have infection rates above 30% in some countries. Infections are rising in women in monogamous relationships due to husbands being infected by having unprotected sex with sex workers. Thus far, 3.1 million peopl...

I would never have thought moondust to be interesting -- after all, dust is dust, isn't it? Why does it matter where it came from? I would have thought wrong had I thought about moondust. NASA thinks it is interesting enough to have staffed the Dusty Plasma Laboratory to study the samples brought back by the Apollo 17 and Luna 24 missions. During the day, the Moon is bombarded with UV radiation which knocks electrons off the dust particles, giving them a positive charge. The astronauts who walked on the Moon complained about the dust. It cling to and got into, everything. That, the theory goes, is because moondust suffers from an extreme case of static cling. It is even theorized that moondust becomes so positively charged that the launch themselves off the surface of the Moon, until gravity drags them back down -- creating a virtual atmosphere of dust on the Moon. Theory anyways. And so the theory goes, that at night, when solar wind curves around the Moon, bombarding...

I found this amusing. Apparently, to prevent piracy of their music CDs -- ie. copying their CDs on Windows computers, Sony BMG has included a piece of software called XCP , that buries itself clandestinely in the OS, unbeknownst to the user. Microsoft's malware team has found the software and will be including tools in their next anti-spyware release to remove it. Microsoft contends that the software fits their definition of being malicious. I have to agree. Since when is anyone allowed to install software on my computer without first asking my permission? This was found at the Short and Simple blog .

This is a discussion of young African social activists, that occurred after the Pop!Tech conference . The talk was about PopTech, Technology, and Technology in Africa -- and what does Africa need in terms of development. I was surprised by the number of panelists that were highly educated, technologically savvy -- a number of them were bloggers -- and a number of them women. The panelists were: Clement M. Bwalya, Khaddiatou Diedhiou Diop, Elleni Muluneh Gebremariam, David Gyewu, Brian Longwe, Ndesanjo Macha , Neema Mgana, Lydia Muchodo, Emeka Okafor , Ory Okollah , Rotimi Olawale & Eric Osiakwan . For those who've forgotten the continent of Africa, take a listen to this podcast hosted by IT Conversations . You'll be surprised by the bright individuals coming out of Africa that wants to make a difference. These are smart people -- people reaching out to the world from Africa, for Africa. These are not people just looking for opportunities to leave Africa -- they are ...

We've all heard of the computing power that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon -- but do you know that today's CPUs that make it out to space are about 10 times slower on average to equivalent CPUs available to the consumer market? Not only that, but they're more expensive and more power hungry. This might drive you to ask why the various space agencies -- NASA especially -- wastes so much money. There is a good reason for this "waste." Just as radiation from space can be damaging to humans -- from our cells to DNA -- they can also mess with CPUs, causing them to produce errors. NASA has solved this problem by employing radiation hardened CPUs -- at the cost of price, energy and speed of course. On a trip to Mars however, NASA would like to employ more powerful CPUs and do it cheaply. One biggest benefit of sending more horsepower on a Martian mission would be the allowance for on-site data analysis. This would allow astronauts to make decisions about what...

What a hack! Benjamin J. Heckendorn has converted an Atari XE GS game system from 1987 to a laptop. Complete with an 8-inch display, a flash media hard disk running MyDOS 4.53, built in NiMH battery pack, full sized Atari 800 keyboard and a whole lot more. Check out the full story on his site. Am I the only one who thinks this is cool?

The Oracles of Forrester recently peered into their crystal balls, and predicted what will be the focus for IT Management in 2006 . Before the predictions however, they recapped the state of IT in 2005 -- as they expect the 2005 focus to continue, in addition to the new imperatives of 2006. 2005 was apparently all about "growing efficiency and business know-how." I'd say that has been the focus for a number of years. Specifically however, Forrester says that the following items were top in the minds of IT Management: At the very minimum, every IT shop should be run as a utility -- ie. IT should be run as an efficient business, with service catalogues and chargebacks. Managing costs with transparency to "enable business participation in governance and tradeoffs." Regulatory and security compliance should be a commodity for IT shops. Management of vendors in order to extract the greatest value for price in a consolidating industry. Growing business knowle...

Wired Online is running an article on the use of an aftermarket bolt-on, called Hydrogen Fuel Injection, that allows trucks to improve fuel efficiency, increase power, and lower emissions, all the while, saving on fuel bills. The technology comes from Canadian Hydrogen Energy Co. Ltd. , and has been applied to diesel burning trucks. Basically, hydrogen is obtained from water via electrolysis, with the hydrogen pumped directly into the trucks combustion engine. Remarkably, the addition of a little hydrogen has big rewards. Related reading: On Board Hydrogen Generation for Fuel Cell Powered Electric Cars [PDF] -- A review of various available techniques. Hydrogen Injection -- A synopsis of research in this area. Hydrogen Fuel Injection [PDF] -- a presentation of the Canadian Hydrogen Energy Company Ltd. of their system. Fast Start-Up On-Board Gasoline Reformer for Near Zero Emissions in Spark-Ignition Engines -- A Delphi Automotive paper that looks at reducing emissions usin...

Michael Geist warns of the ominous Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act [PDF] that was recently unveiled by the government in the form of Bill C-74. What the government seeks is to force ISPs to collect information about their internet subscribers activities, and to have ISPs divulge information of internet subscribers to law enforcement without the need of a warrant. Basically, the government will decide what warrants requesting that information, and when it is appropriate for them to request it. This move by the government is frankly frightening, proclaiming the coming of an Orwellian future, unless we stop it now. When is the public -- Canadians -- guilty before they are proven guilty? What is to stop the government from using such powers "proactively" to determine potential criminals before a crime is committed? We've already seen terrible mistakes made in the US with the use of such powers to in the wake of 9/11. My country is not the US. My countr...

Astronomers continue to discover objects in the Kuiper Belt. The latest, dubbed EL61 , is currently one of the brightest Kuiper Belt object, that can be seen with high-end amateur telescopes. EL61 is about a third the size of Pluto and has a small moon orbiting it. What is interesting about EL61, is its shape. It is described as a squashed football, spinning through space. Cassini flew by Saturn's moon, Hyperion , back in September, and took some stunning images. The image below represents a combined image using different filters. In natural colour, Hyperion is slightly reddish. Hyperion is covered with impact craters, but its surface has been modified by an unknown process to give it a sponge-like appearance. Hyperion is believed to be mostly hollow. Cassini also took the image below of Pandora , a shepherd moon of Saturn's F ring.

In around 1500 BC, Egypt 's warrior-pharaoh, Thutmose I , embarked on a campaign to conquer the lands south of Egypt, along the Nile. He entered Nubia -- what is now Sudan -- kicked butt, and enslaved the peoples there. It was mainly about gold and slaves. The reasons for going places to kick butt hasn't changed since. Thutmose's priests however, found god in that campaign. In Napata , located 200 miles north of where Khartoum is today, the priests saw Jebel Barkal -- a table-top mountain fronted by a pinnacle, rising some 320 feet above ground near the Nile. Quite phallic it is -- or was. Imagine if you were a bunch of guys that had just marched 700 miles of nowhere. Anything sticking out of the ground didn't need a lot of imagination I would think. In Jebel Barkal, they believed they had found the birthplace and primeval home of Egypt's supreme deity, Amun -- he of the Sun -- he who created the other gods by sheer will and apparently, a whole lot of ...

NASA isn't looking so hot these days, which really sucks, as they have been the agency with the most thus far. They've delivered because they've had the funding and have attracted the brightest to their ranks. That success has built some arrogance -- justified -- and there are quite a few who wouldn't mind showing up the agency one bit. Discovery continues to stay on the ground, and may see flight early next year to replenish supplies aboard the ISS. NASA has announced the end of the shuttle program, and the replacement goes back to capsules on rockets -- even the planned mission to the Moon will rely on craft that harks back to the Apollo days. As NASA looks to an uncertain future , the rest of the world isn't waiting for bold moves from the agency. The private sector is sending out more buzz than substance, but money is also pouring into projects. The Chinese, the Indians and the Russians are also posturing with low budgets and not-so-advanced technologies....

The 2005 Canadian Space Summit: it was a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lot of nothing. I came away from the summit -- if you can call it that -- disappointed, although not necessarily uneducated, or unopinionated. The Space Summit is an event of the Canadian Space Society (CSS), an organization that I had never heard of before, that I thought of joining when I signed up for the summit, but glad I didn't with the clear vision of hindsight. The organization that describes itself as being: ... a grass-roots space advocacy group, a unique combination of amateur and professional interests pursuing the human exploration and development of the Solar System. With some of Canada's top aerospace experts and engineers on board, the CSS is made up of people of all backgrounds and interests, including teachers, environmentalists, writers, and marketers. If what I experienced in the last two days is evidence for what Canadians can expect to excite them and insp...

Stephen Lewis' fourth lecture of the Massey Series focused on the plight of women and the total negligence paid to women's issues on the world stage. He attacked governments of the world and the UN organization for their unconcern. Women make up half the population of the world -- and they are the underserved half. Women's rights are human rights, yet, women need particular focus -- as their concerns are diluted, forgotten and ignored when included in the mix of everything else. Yet women's impact and potential is so great -- especially in the developing world. Over 180 UN member countries have recognized women's rights via the UN Women's Treaty -- yet when it comes to upholding those rights in their respective countries -- a task of which ratification requires -- they mostly fail. Why? Because they don't have the political will -- they don't have the funding -- they don't care -- or simply, they can get away with it. The UN does absolutely...

I'm currently listening to Stephen Lewis' Massey Lecture series , online . It airs at 9PM EST, however, listening online means you can tune in to Whitehorse at 11PM EST and still hear the 9PM broadcast. As I've mentioned before, Lewis is quite passionate about his topic of fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa. Tonight's lecture focused on poverty reduction and the free access to education for all children. The world has again and again made promises to provide free education to children of the world -- especially those children of Africa. Access to free education means access to schools -- which isn't just about education, but also about a meal a day, stability and care. Statistics from the World Bank has shown that any education leads a reduction of HIV/AIDS infection. It's ironic then that it's the World Bank that had attached the requirement of school fees in order for third world countries to receive loans. School fees that are intended to be a deterrent ...

Fred Hembeck -- I remember reading Fred Hembeck's comics in select Marvel comics when I collected comics. Hembeck parodies most well known comic characters, and sometimes even with the sponsorship of Marvel and DC. Church Sign Generator -- Here's a site that will allow you to generate an image of a church sign, with your own words. Be silly. Amuse and bewilder your friends. Atomic Pulp -- Check out the site of Christopher Mills, writer (including of comics) and graphic designer. He's done some really cool stuff. Scary Squirrel World -- This is a site obsessed with the bushy-tailed rodent. Squirrels can be scary!

I just got in from work -- ran late tonight, as I worked late, then had left the lights on in the car, so I had to wait for a boost. A mixed blessing I suppose, as I managed to listen to most of Stephen Lewis' second lecture in the 2005 Massey Lecture series, entitled, Race Against Time . Lewis is a talented lecturer, a humanitarian and has had extensive experience in Africa in his role as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. He spoke passionately of the need to confront the pandemic -- a crisis that the world seems totally disinterested in. He spoke of personal tragedies -- of seeing grandmothers losing their children, and raising their grand-kids -- of the grand-kids who have HIV. He told of visiting a family, of seeing the mother lying in her hut, unable to move from weakness -- of him uttering useless words of comfort -- then turning to see the children in the darkness of the hut -- orphans while watching their mother slowly die. He spoke of h...

Today's computing is rapidly approaching a solid, impenetrable wall -- and I don't mean just the death of Moore's Law -- although that is a big place to start. The limitations of today's computing can be seen in every component of the computing stack. Heat and electron tunneling is becoming a problem for processor manufacturers as they go smaller and smaller in packing transistors on chips. In memory, DRAM is prone to electromagnetic interference; SRAM requires a lot of power; and flash memory decay after too many uses. In storage, media isn't lasting long or getting much smaller, but demand is rapidly growing. Software is becoming too complex to maintain even as more complexity is required to do solve unique problems. Computers are power hungry, with estimates putting the US consumption at 53 billion kilowatt hours annually. The human-machine interface is a huge bottleneck between the human brain and the computer, where some interfaces were designed, in some...

Galaxy of Terror is a b-grade SciFi classic that is produced by Roger Corman and has James Cameron doing unit directing. Considering the b-grade status, the sets weren't entirely bad. They were pretty good, although a lot was done to keep the scenes dark. The effects are another story -- they're straight out of the 1970s. But what do you expect? The movie was filmed in 1981. The story was somewhat confusing -- although that could be because I wasn't paying too close attention. It concerns a rescue mission to planet that goes all wrong. On the planet, the crew of the rescue ship gets picked off one-by-one by strange aliens that appear and disappear at will. The aliens also appear to be of the creepy-crawly persuasion. As the movie progresses, the realization starts to dawn on the audience, and the rescue crew that the aliens aren't real -- they are in fact being created from their fears. That takes a standard SciFi fare into something a bit more psychological...

The Wayans brothers hit a high in the 1990s, and Don't Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood was one of the silliness that they were responsible for before they fizzled. If you don't have context, this movie will not be funny. It's a parody of all the gangsta movies that came out during the 1990s. The movies that took themselves too serious, embracing violence, blaming everything on the man and having some two-bit thug pontificating from the hood. If you've seen some of their other movies, you know what to expect -- nothing serious, nothing sacred, and a scarcity of anything redeemable. You just got to be in a silly mood to watch it. If you do, you'll probably enjoy it. In the movie, Ashtray (Shawn Wayans) moves back home to learn to be a man from his dad -- a dad that is younger than Ashtray -- but that's silliness for you. In his old neighbourhood, Ashtray hangs out with his cousin, Loc Dog (Marlon Wayans), falls in love w...

The Dead Pit is a zombie movie -- with a twist. The zombies are a result of the experiments of a doctor at an insane asylum. Twenty years ago, he experimented on a whole lot of his patients, cutting into their skull and playing with their brains. His experiments resulted in the death of his patients, who he dumped into a pit in the basement of the asylum. He's discovered in the middle of his gruesome endeavour and is shot dead by a fellow doctor, and the Dead Pit is walled up in the basement -- with all the bodies left in there. Fast forward twenty years later, and the gunslinger doctor is now head of the insane asylum, where an amnesic patient, Jane Doe, is being admitted. Miss Doe doesn't think she has amnesia, but believes her memories were surgically removed. Upon her arrival at the asylum, things start to go bump in the night. There is an earthquake that opens the sealed basement walls, and the evil dead doctor, with glowing red eyes, now roams the asylum looking ...

Last night I went nuts in the kitchen. Read and see more about it by clicking here.

(Actually, not today -- but Thursday. I just never got around to publishing this post until now.)    And now, for something completely stupid.    This one is worthy of the Ignoble. Guys, what are the unwritten rules of the urinals? You know what they are, even if you haven't thought about them consciously. If you're totally unaware, then read on -- and be aware.    What are the rules of urinal occupancy? There is an order for which the urinals should be successfully occupied: The numbers represent the order the urinals should be occupied. As the number of urinals increase -- complexity increase -- a mathematical pattern emerges. Of course, those are the optimal positions to take. Some guys of course are just plain confused, and then shit like this happen: What happens next is known as the urinal conundrum. A guy will call on his basic instincts to choose a position. The "fight or flight" instinct is relied on to make a choic...

Pluto, the 9th planet of our solar system, lying in the heart of the Kuiper Belt, has, since 1978, been known to have a single satellite -- Charon -- being roughly half the size of Pluto itself. New images from Hubble however, indicate the Pluto may not be so lonely. Indications are that they may be two additional satellites orbit Pluto, with sizes roughly 7 to 22 times smaller than Pluto. If they discoveries hold up to further scrutiny, it will make Pluto the first Kuiper Belt object to have more than one satellite.

The statistics: Every day, there are nearly 1,800 new HIV infections in children under 15 -- mostly from mother-to-child transmission -- amounting to 25 new infections every 20 minutes; and that's 1 in 7 for all new HIV infections. Of those children, 35% of the infected will contract the virus. Every day, 1,400 children under 15 die from AIDS-related illness -- almost 1 child every minute; and that's 1 in 6 for all AIDS-related deaths. Every day, more than 6,000 young people aged 15-24 are newly infected with HIV -- a new infection just about every 15 seconds. Less than 10% of pregnant women have services available to prevent transmission of HIV to their infants. Less than 10% of children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by AIDS receive public support or services. They are staggering, if not incomprehensible. But that's the world of those who struggle against the pandemic sweeping the world. Imagine what it is like in nations where the infection rate is gr...