Sugar on a Stick

That's the name for new, free, open source software. It runs from a USB stick plugged into any PC and features forty software programs, including Read, Write, Paint, Games, and Etoys. Children can even create their own books with backgrounds and characters.

Sugar is the core component of a worldwide effort to provide every child with equal opportunity for a quality education. It is available in twenty five languages and used every school day by almost one-million children in more than forty countries.

Children, as young as four, can engage in exploring knowledge, expressing themselves through writing, drawing, video, even programming the computer. It allows them to work collaboratively and use it to create a portfolio of their accomplishments and a diary of daily school activities. With the Sugar Learning Platform, the age-old question “What did you do in school today?” takes on new meaning.

Hoax Debunked

An image of an enormous cat being held in the arms of a bearded man began circulating around the internet in early 2000. The picture attracted attention, because it didn't seem possible for a cat to be that large, but the chance that the cat was real couldn't be ruled out either.

At some point an unknown prankster added a caption to the image, claiming it showed "Snowball," a monster cat owned by Rodger Degagne of Ottawa, Canada.

The photo attracted so much attention that it was eventually featured on television shows such as NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and ABC's Good Morning America, but both Snowball's story and picture were fake.

In May 2001 Cordell Hauglie, a resident of Edmonds, Washington, came forward to admit that he created the fake image by using photo manipulation software and had then e-mailed the image to a few friends as a joke, never intending that it would pass beyond those friends.

A few months later the picture had spread worldwide. Hauglie only realized what had happened when the picture started appearing on TV shows, in newspapers, and in magazines. To his amazement, he had unintentionally become an internet celebrity simply by sharing a joke with a few friends.

Lincoln Revisited

The standing portrait of Lincoln was created soon after the American Civil War. Although it hung in many classrooms, Lincoln never posed for it. Instead, an unknown entrepreneur created it by cutting-and-pasting a head shot of Lincoln onto a portrait of the Southern leader John Calhoun. This was done because there were hardly any heroic-style portraits of Lincoln made during his life.

In the Calhoun image, the papers on the table say “strict constitution,” “free trade,” and “the sovereignty of the states.” In the Lincoln image, these words have been changed to read, “constitution,” “union,” and “proclamation of freedom.”

Quotable

You have to be careful about being too careful.

Breast Cancer

Not a pleasant topic, but this info might help. Having malodorous armpits and wet sticky earwax is bad enough, but Japanese scientists found a more serious problem for women facing these cosmetic calamities.

They found a gene responsible for breast cancer also causes these physical symptoms. The report is from the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology June 2009 edition.

"We do strongly hope that our study will provide a new tool for better predication of breast cancer risk by genotyping," said Toshihisa Ishikawa, Ph.D., from the Department of Biomolecular Engineering at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the senior researcher involved in the work.

Their discovery could lead to practical tools for clinicians to rapidly identify who might have a higher risk for breast cancer and become lifesaving clues to the early detection and treatment of breast cancer.

Do You Testify

To 'testify' was based on men in the Roman court swearing to a statement made by swearing on their testicles.

Touch Table Technology

You might remember last year when I wrote about the Microsoft table technology or seen it used during the elections. Here is a video of some practical uses.

If you watch the video, be alert during the middle, when he shows what the Iranians are doing in the desert, very interesting. The price is down to fifty-nine thousand dollars, so it might be cheap enough for my next birthday present. hint, hint.

Chew the Fat

During the middle ages in England, folks could seldom afford pork. When they did, it made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could 'bring home the bacon.' They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and 'chew the fat.'

Virgin Galactic

Sir Richard Branson completed a successful test on May 28, 2009 of its hybrid nitrous oxide motor. The motor is the largest of its kind in the world and offers safety features including a kill switch allowing the spaceship to glide back to Earth and perform a conventional runway touch down.

The Virgin Galactic model dubbed SpaceShipTwo is an extraordinary design for a space tourism spacecraft. It will launch after reaching the upper atmosphere and detaching from the mother ship called Eve. The hybrid motor does not contain harmful toxins as solid rockets used by the space shuttle and the upper atmosphere launch provides cost savings for fuel.

It has a capacity to carry six space tourists and two pilots into suborbital space at speeds up to 2500 mph and soar about 65-miles above the Earth. The expected ticket price is $200,000 per passenger and currently there are 300 space tourists on the waiting list. Testing of the shuttle will begin later this year.

Smoking Simpsons

A crusty Australian public health specialist Guy Eslick examined instances of smoking in the cartoon show The Simpsons.

He watched 400 episodes and found that smoking was depicted 795 times over the 18-season period, featuring in a negative context 35 percent of the time, neutral 63 percent and positive 2 percent. He determined that the show may promote smoking with its frequent depictions of references to cigarettes.

He concluded that while smoking may be responsible for Krusty the Clown's heart condition and sisters Patty and Selma's raspy voices, the show may actually promote tobacco use by showing it so often. I would like to know who the heck pays these people to watch hundreds of hours of cartoons and come up with these crusty conclusions.

Quotable

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable. - Mark Twain

Smithsonian Institute

There are approximately 143,500,000 objects, works of art, and specimens in the Smithsonian. One of them, the Hope Diamond, is 45.52 carats. It glows in the dark after exposure to UV rays and is semiconductive, too.

Quotable

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.

Father's Day or Mother's Day

This is actually for sale, $29.95. Here is a gift for the person in your family that might have a, uh, problem. Under-Ease are underwear for protection against bad human gas (malodorous flatus) and are made from a soft air-tight polyurethane-coated nylon. To maintain the air-tightness, elastic is sewn into the material around the waist and both legs.

A triangular "exit hole" for the flatus to be expelled is cut from the back of the air-tight underwear, near the bottom. This "exit hole" is covered with a pocket made of ordinary porous fabric sewn over the "exit hole". This unique design forces all expelled gas (flatus) out through the "pocket". Inside the pocket is a high-functioning, replaceable filter. The ad says nothing about sound deadening.Caveat Emptor.