5:23 PM
http://www.asd-network.com/press_detail_B.asp?ID=22832&NID=284998
Boeing successfully tested their airborne tactical laser--soon the US military may have the capability to cause a cell tower to stop working, a vehicle's fuel tank to explode, or a single person to be incinerated...all completely silently and tracelessly without anyone knowing what happened and leaving no evidence behind!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/02/atl_first_flight_test_against_target/
iRobot got a $35.3 million order from the Army, its single largest order from the military:
http://www.asd-network.com/press_detail_B.asp?ID=22858&NID=284998
Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries have received a contract from the government of Israel to develop a next-generation unmanned ground vehicle:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3a959b455b-ce44-4ee4-a276-82babe06bb48
Scientists said yesterday that Sci-Fi-like proposals to cool the Earth (geo-engineering) are extremely risky, but they may be the only hope for the Earth if politicians fail to stop global warming:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=nw20090901222447450C752793
US Border Patrol found that last year 71.1% of the illegal aliens and drugs made it across the US border at official ports of entry (where people and vehicles can be stopped an screened). Their goal for this year is to "only" allow 71% of the attempts to smuggle drugs or illegal aliens succeed:
http://townhall.com/columnists/TerryJeffrey/2009/09/02/homeland_securitys_goal?page=full&comments=true
Even Texas Republicans are against the US-Mexico border fence (both Texas senators voted for the border fence last time), especially now that the projected cost is $60 billion over the next 25 years:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0909/Hutchison_also_does_not_love_a_wall.html
Mexico's Ciudad Juarez (across the border from El Paso) may be the world's most violent city--130 murders for each 100,000 residents last year, and this year they are averaging 250 murders per month!
http://blogs.reuters.com/global/2009/08/28/violent-ciudad-juarez/
A suicide bomber from the Taliban killed Afghanistan's deputy head of intelligence and at least 22 other people today:
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSISL12983720090902?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
New technique for "recycling" hydrogen-containing fuel materials could make hydrogen-based vehicles economically feasible:
http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=12425.php
Author says that the vast majority of sister relationships are like marriages, except that they are forever and cannot end in divorce:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-09-01-sisters-moms-favorite_N.htm?csp=34
Study found that people who regularly golf have a 40% lower mortality rate than those who don't, with golf estimated to add about 5 years to someone's life. Golfers who walk 36 holes per week burn 2900 calories:
http://www.parade.com/health/2009/08/30-golf-for-life.html
BP announced the discovery of a "giant" oil field 35,000 feet under the Gulf of Mexico, about 250 miles southeast of Houston. About 25% of the oil production from the US is from the Gulf of Mexico and recent discoveries could significantly increase that percentage of the US:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/global/03oil.html?_r=1
Worldwide outage of Gmail yesterday was caused by overloaded servers after some servers were taken offline to perform routine upgrades. In the future they will avoid this problem by having routers slow down when overloaded instead of refusing to accept traffic:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/gmail-outage-caused-overloaded-servers-145?source=IFWNLE_nlt_daily_2009-09-02
DirecTV pulled the Versus channel right before the college football season begins (among other things, VS has the first choice of games from the Mountain West Conference). What I found interesting with this is that the day DirecTV customers lost the Versus channel, Dish Network started a *3 month* free trial giving Versus for free to all of their customers (including the channel in HD):
http://www.cedmagazine.com/News-DirecTV-Versus-carriage-dispute-090209.aspx
16-year-old in the UK won a $3 million lottery prize...she is now 22-years-old and all the money is gone and she is back to living at her Mom's house! She blew the money on cocaine ($400,000!), clothes, and fast cars and tried to commit suicide 3 times. She had two kids with her drug-dealer boyfriend, the first when she was 18 years old:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210011/How-teen-Lotto-winner-Callie-blew-2m-fortune--including-250-000-cocaine.html
Woman was arrested 3 times in 1 day!
http://www.wcbs880.com/Woman-Arrested-3-Times-in-1-Day/5123302
Pennsylvania man said that he robbed a bank to go to jail and get away from his wife! He actually asked the bank tellers to call police and asked for updates on their efforts to reach the police, and he pled guilty and went to jail:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32653327/ns/us_news-weird_news/