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Check out Cuil ... yet another search engine claiming it's better than Google.

The headline: Deadly blasts strike Indian city . Will these fucking people ever stop? I don't mean the bomb makers, or those behind them that finance their operations, plan the logistics and pick the targets. I mean the Indians themselves -- the whole lot of them, including the Pakistanis. When extremists go mainstream, it's only due to some level of acceptance in society -- some level of sympathy, support and tolerance. What will follow this latest attack is a counterattack -- and so it will go on -- an eye for an eye, until there's no one left.

I recently finished my first Charles de Lint novel -- The Blue Girl . I'm glad I had picked it up -- sometime ago, and just stashed it in the pile of books I had every intention to read -- eventually, someday. That someday came along recently, and I finished the book way too fast. It was a pleasure to read. Charles de Lint writes fantasy novels, in an urban, contemporary setting, weaving magic into the everyday world you and I wander through without a second thought. The Blue Girl is set in the fictional North American city of Newford, which I place in Canada, since de Lint lives in Ottawa. The protagonists are two 17-year-old high school girls, Maxine and Imogene, who meet for the first time in their final year of high school. Both are outsiders, not fitting into the cool kids crowd -- because they're too smart, and weird. Maxine is the smart one, cloistered by her mother and endures the bullying any nerd would be familiar with. Imogene is the weird one, new to Redd...

The Dyson sphere , a hypothetical structure theorized by Freeman Dyson, would encompass an entire star in order to capture all of its radiant energy. It would make a cool engineering project.

Check out Radiohead's House of Cards video ... fully interactive, on Google.

I just finished reading Janna Levin 's How the Universe Got It's Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space . As the book's title alludes, Levin is a believer in a finite universe, with all the implications, even as she declares herself agnostic on the plausibility of free will. Levin supports her assertions of a finite universe, with the machinations of mathematics -- specifically, the branch describing topology . Levin is a theoretical astrophysicist. The actual content dealing with topology and supporting the argument for a finite universe would actually fit into just one chapter of the book's 200-pages -- and it presented nothing revolutionary, nothing new -- at least to my popsci understanding of the topic. Levin wrote for popsci audience. [Speaking of the CMB] This archaeological remnant of the big bang had journeyed from the farthest reaches of the cosmos that we can access and carries information about these earliest times, and so encodes all kinds of...

Whether you're into diseases or not, HealthMap , will probably both be cool and damn scary. HealthMap, a product of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program, scours sources on the internet to find out the latest outbreaks laying waste to humanity, and maps it using Google Maps. The results ... well, let's just say you'll know where you need to avoid visiting. Toronto appears to be pretty safe tonight.

Orangutan populations are in rapid decline on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo according to a just published study. This is leading scientists to warn that we may be at the cusp of the first extinction of a great ape species, our closest genetic cousins. Both Indonesia and Malaysia, the world's top palm oil producers, have been aggressively expanding plantations to meet a growing global demand for biofuels -- which continue to destroy orangutan habitat. In addition, orangutans continue to be hunted for food and trade. Unless something is done immediately to turn the tide laying waste to these great apes, some researchers are predicting orangutans could be extinct by 2011.

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) just wrapped up its annual meeting in Chile, and nothing has really changed. There are still two factions: those that support the hunting of whales, and want more; and those that oppose. I'm not entirely sure why the whaling industry is so important -- especially for a country like Japan , which has a special permit allowing it to hunt whales for research. The research permit allowed Japan to kill close to 1,000 whales in 2007, with the research meat ending up in the fat bellies of the Japanese. That doesn't even take into account the other whales that the Japanese consume, that were taken illegally from the oceans. The one surprise from the meeting, for me anyway, came from Denmark. The Danes, who we tend to look to with adoration because of their high scores in standard of living, want to increase the whales Greenland is allowed to slaughter for aboriginal subsistence . There's a load of bullshit. Japan shouldn't be ...

One thing the United States doesn't get about guerrilla warfare: It's not over until the guerrillas win. Gary Brecher presents an alternative view of how the conflict in Iraq will end on AlterNet -- not in the US winning, even as it continues to claim the tide is turning in its favour -- but with the forces at work against the Americans in Iraq, eventually triumphing. I'm not sure I buy into the entire argument -- however, it's definitely a possibility given the zeal behind the resistance to American domination. America hasn't won the hearts and minds of Iraqis -- not even of the American people -- it stands little to no chance of winning a protracted war in a foreign land.

Yes, your gas guzzling SUV is not only contributing to the destruction of the environment, it's also putting the world's poor and starving in more jeopardy. According to the Guardian, a secret World Bank report finds that the production of biofuels has contributed up to 75% to recent rise in food prices. The report, completed in April, was not released in order to not cause an embarrassment to George W. Bush, who's championing biofuels to reduce American dependence on foreign oil. Read more here .

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The SOS signal , the international convention for signalling distress, became effective on July 1, 1908. Prior, it was adopted by the German government in 1905. That makes the signal 100-years old, internationally, today. Umm ... happy birthday, SOS ...?

Happy Canada Day, eh! My wife and daughters just came back from raising Canada at the drivers along Steeles Ave. There was much blowing of the horns, waving of the flags and hooting and hollering at drivers to honk!