RADO,Thomas Afghan, WiMAX, Stratellite

Occasionally at night I hear the ineffably faint ticking as the RADO measures the 2 billion seconds of my life.
For 18 years I wore a black steel pulsar digital. Now the lightweight greengold enamel RADO band gleams. When aliens arrive how could they not be wearing something similar?


__________________________________________
Doubting Thomas
____________________________________________
An Aus SEAsia blog
____________________
A woman was stoned to death in Afghanistan - so much for USAnian liberation
Cherif Bassiouni, a top human rights investigator in Afghanistan who was recently forced out of the United Nations under pressure from the U.S. just days after he released a report criticizing the US for committing human rights abuses. He says, "The U.S. has done an enormous disservice to the cause of human rights in Afghanistan
___________________

riverbend on Media in Baghdad
With state media, state censorship, state selection of candidates
state casual killing, state flattening of entire towns,
quisling guards harassing all, there cannot be democracy no matter how many elections are held
And with Chalabi as acting Oil minister?
_____________________

Aussie douglas wood begs Howard
At what point does co-operating with an illegal murderous uranium drenched invasion
become assisting a nation to recover?
MAybe never, while locals are frozen out of contracts.
In Timor, a UN agent is reportedly paid in a month what 20 of his Timorese co-workers receive in a year.
__________________________________

Can WiMAX Become A Disruptive Technology?

WiMAX.. 802.16 for..the Internet what cell phones did for..telephone calls. .. Internet access..for miles with ..towers ..
Intel.. PRO/Wireless 5116 hardware.. WiMAX trials about to start
....In large cities..prop a tower on a building, WiMAX ..in direct competition with .. distributed WiFi systems.
..a big portion of WiMAX's early income to come from carrying cellular backhaul
..WiMAX may actually begin to replace cell phone service..NextWeb .. announced ..a WiMAX phone service in a couple of months.

The problem for phone companies: voice over IP is essentially free anywhere in the world.
When wireless IP is common, phone companies will tumble.


Stratellite
at 65,000 feet ..above the jet stream, each Stratellite will.. providing the ideal wireless transmission platform. The Stratellites are unmanned airships..
# Length: 245 feet
# Volume: 2.7 million cubic feet
# Solar Powered electric motors
# Outer envelope covered in film photovoltaic (solar) units
# Payload capacity: 1-3,000 pounds depending on configuration
# Maximum altitude: 70,000 feet
# Desired altitude: 65,000 feet
# Wireless capability (currently) to an area with a radius of 200 miles
Sanswire Networks will be launching a giant, solar-powered airship next month that will be able to provide wireless data and voice access to areas of earth as large as Texas.
The total round trip would be only 70 MICROseconds, quite insignificant in internet lag terms.

_________________________________________


LITTLE ROCK, Ark., April 28 - The ivory-billed woodpecker, a magnificent bird that ornithologists had long given up for extinct, has been sighted in the watery tupelo swampland of a wildlife refuge in Arkansas, scientists announced today.
..a creature that has been called the Lord God bird, apparently because when people saw it they would be so impressed they would utter an involuntary "Lord God!"
"This great chieftain of the woodpecker tribe," as John James Audubon described the ivory bill - with its 30-inch wingspan..last documented sighting was in Louisiana in 1944.




____________________________________________________________
Cheap Trips:
A380 - around 13 per cent lower fuel burn than its .. competitor .. 95 miles per imperial gallon..comparable with the best of small modern turbo-diesel cars.
(I believe this is based on 550 passengers)
.............
2.9 liters (0.76 gallon) per passenger per 100 kilometers (60 miles).
..half of the noise of a 747-400 .
cf
prius 4.4 l/100pkm
suv 13
cruise liner QE2 20.2 L/100 pkm- worse than almost any other vehicle.
... this was a surprise, I had assumed that ships were efficient.
the solution is to put those 1700 passengers on a much smaller ship
When oil is $380 how many offshore trips will tourists take?

________________________________
Exploding Toads
27 April 2005..
More than 1000 toads have puffed up and exploded in a Hamburg pond in recent weeks, baffling scientists
_________________
by by Hubble
.
.
.