Some Old Dude

In Moscow there are many stray dogs, some of which have developed a unique system for acquiring food:

From English Russia:
Regular Moscow busy street with some small food kiosks. A middle-aged man buys himself a piece of hot fast food and walks aside chewing it without a rush. Then just in a second he jumps up frightened – some doggy has sneaked up on him and barked out loudly. His tasty snack falls out from his hands down to the ground and the dog gets it. Just ten minutes later, on the same place, the teen youngster loses his dinner in exactly the same manner. The modern Russian dogs are on their urban hunt.

There are also many strays in the subway system, a few of which have even learned to ride the train.

One look at this picture is enough to show that some of these “dumb animals” are smarter than the humans who ride the trains. Or maybe just more sober.

Are you not as young or spry as you used to be? Do you have a few pounds you need to lose. Does your doctor bug you about the ol’ spare tire, that seems to have come out of nowhere? –Well maybe you shouldn’t worry so much.

According to a study done by the University of Western Australia and published in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, being a little overweight may actually extend your life.

The university team tracked the number of deaths over 10 years among volunteers who were aged 70 – 75 at the start of the study.

It found that those with a BMI which classed them as overweight, but not obese, not only had the lowest overall risk of dying, they also had the lowest risk of dying from specific diseases: cardiovascular disease, cancer and chronic respiratory disease.

The study also showed that being seriously under weight had the same effect as being obese.

The long and the short of the study is: As long as you aren’t too overweight, and you get enough exercise, your can outlive that annoying person with the perfect figure who keeps telling you that they can eat anything they want and never gain an ounce.

MOSCOW – A Russian journalist died Wednesday after being severely beaten by a police officer in the Siberian city of Tomsk, investigators and his editor said.

Konstantin Popov, who worked for Tomskaya Nedelya weekly, died in a hospital after almost two weeks in a coma, the publication’s editor-in-chief, Yulia Ivanova, said.

The police had this to say:
“The cause of death is not yet revealed,” Natalia Ustymenko, Chief of Information and Public Relations Department of Internal Affairs of the Tomsk region, told Interfax news agency.

In her opinion, the victim – Konstantin Popov – could have died from alcohol intoxication due to consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The officer has since been arrested.
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From the The Other Russia:
A deputy of the Omsk City Council, Oleg Ivanov, has been detained for his support of Aleksei Dymovsky. A Russian police officer who posted a video on YouTube alleging the police force in his home town was corrupt who has been arrested and charged with fraud and corruption. (His YouTube video has received over a million hits)

Oleg Ivanov is known in Omsk for his efforts to combat mafia influences in the regional housing authorities. After achieving a twice over reduction in tariffs for local residents, Ivanov was severely beaten by men later identified as police officers from a neighboring area.
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The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists named Russia the world’s third deadliest country for the news media last year. Several Russian police officers have recently been charged with murder, beatings and other abuses.

Public concern over police abuse has grown after a drunken Moscow precinct chief gunned down two people and wounded seven at a supermarket in April.
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On April 27, Police Major Denis Yevsyukov, chief of the Tsaritsino district precinct in Southern Moscow, opened fire in a supermarket, killing two and injuring six -with four critically injured (www.publicverdict.org, April 27). The major also shot dead the taxi driver who had driven him to the store. What the authorities hastened to present as an act of random brutality on the part of a deranged individual, in reality represents a much deeper institutional problem within the police. Whereas most citizens in a Western country feel either indifferent or protected when they meet police on their streets, in Russia the same meeting evokes fear.
—For Russian click here.

(Wide Bay Bar, 30 knots + on gusts and 5 metre waves and going in the long way)

The captain and crew of this 12 meter cat. made the world news when they decided to risk the surf at Wide Bay Bar rather than sail two more days to an easier entrance.

This is from the captain: “Two years ago I flew from my home town in Launceston,Tasmania to Lakes Entrance in Victoria, the location of what is probably Australia’s most dangerous bar, to undertake a two day course in bar crossing. This course gave not just theory, but involved practical instruction in a vessel which the students piloted over the breaking waves on the Lakes bar. The lessons learned here were put to use on the day I took Saltonay over the Southport Bar, adding worthwhile experience to my current Coxswains ticket.”

This was a text to the captain from a friend “Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you’re a dickhead.”

Read more here.

The British Government thinks they can pay for bringing fast internet to rural GB by putting a yearly tax on fixed phone lines.

BBC online:
The government’s controversial broadband tax has been given the green light by chancellor Alistair Darling in his pre-Budget report.

The £6-a-year levy will be imposed on all households with a fixed line phone.

The money made will be put into a fund to ensure rural areas of the UK do not miss out on super-fast broadband services.

The money is earmarked for the 30% of homes that experts think will be by-passed by commercial fast broadband plans.

It is estimated that the broadband tax would raise about £170m a year, which is a wee bit short of the estimate of £5bn needed to provide super-fast fibre services to every UK home.

Currently BT is committed to rolling out next-generation broadband to about 40% of the UK with Virgin Media offering speeds of up to 50Mbps to about half of UK homes.

The tax wont pay the bills, but they can always raise it after the elections, and the advertised speed of the fibre is mostly advertising hype.

Anyone who’s ever dealt with internet service providers knows that the rates will always go up, and the maximum advertised speed has very little to do with what real people get, or for that matter, can afford.

Here in Las Vegas, Cox offers a maximum speed of 50Mbps down/5Mbps up, with up to 55Mbps “burst” using PowerBoost®, but the cost is currently $119.00 per month. You need to be a hardcore gamer or a downloader of very large files to justify the cost.

Fortunately, the actual speed of high-speed internet doesn’t really matter to someone like me who doesn’t play games or download large files.

Even 3 Mbps beats the hell out of dialup with it’s 56k advertised speed and it’s less than 50k real life speed.

I found this on Covertress:

It’s even better with Browned Butter Icing:

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt butter. Cook 6 to 8 minutes, or until butter is lightly browned. Whisk in confectioners’ sugar until smooth.
(This works great on carrot cake)

The owner of Sheri’s Cabaret, 2580 S. Highland Drive, filed for Chapter 11 reorganization last month and has proposed to reorganize by temporarily lowering its mortgage payments to two banks.

Sheri’s generates $20,000 to $26,000 per week in gross income and that it has 17 employees.

The dancers are independent contractors, who pay the club to work there, so are not counted among the employees, or as part of the club’s operating expenses, but do contribute to the company’s gross income.

A long time ago when Downtown Las Vegas started dying in a major way, and the city was making all that noise about how Neonopolis was going to make everything better, a man that ran the topless joint put the problem in simple terms. He said that “if tits and beer won’t bring them in, nothing will.”

Now we have an abundance of take-em-off joints, a shortage of tourists and the unemployment rate is officially almost 13%. (If I recall correctly this number only counts people receiving unemployment)

The tourists who are left go primarily to the big joints and the strip club’s bread and butter, the blue collar worker with his freshly cashed paycheck, is gone for the time being.

Las Vegas lives off discretionary funds. People have to have extra money or credit to come here. Now more and more the money is spent on frivolous things like food or rent, and their credit cards are maxed with no more automatic increases in their credit line.

I followed a link from Bing about a homeless man who tried to steal a plane, and crashed it, apparently while trying to take off -there were no injuries- that led to FrederickNewsPost.com.

A single-engine Piper PA-18-150 was found on a runway leaned forward on its nose. Police later learned the plane was removed from a hangar at the airport without the owner’s authorization.

The plane nosed down into the runway at a low rate of speed and the alleged thief -a homeless man- was caught when authorities followed his tracks in the snow.

Frederick police used pepper spray and Tasers to subdue the crowd at the fight, which broke out in front of several hundred revelers about 1:40 a.m. New Year’s Day near North Market and West Third streets, according to a police news release.

Police arrested nine people.

In contrast Metro had 3,241 officers on the street plus the Highway Patrol. 82 people were arrested for dui and another 57 were arrested on miscellaneous charges and two were arrested on felonies. –Of course we had over 300,000 people visiting from out of town.

Modern developments in medicine no doubt helped in the birth of five sets of twins in Frederick in a 36-hour period. And the latest technology helped get the word out to the community.

Amanda Changuris, communications and marketing specialist at Frederick Memorial Healthcare Systems, said Thursday she used the online microblogging service Twitter to announce the news.

Fives sets of twins in a 36 hour period and the article is actually about Twitter.

–Five sets of twins in 36 hours in a population of 60k, they sure are a fertile bunch.

Frederick, Maryland is a city with a total population of 59,213, making it the third-largest incorporated area in Maryland, behind Baltimore and Rockville.

Frederick, Maryland City Hall

I have no idea why the homeless guy trying to steal a plane made the national news, but it’s fun to read about other places. Especially small towns where the news is may be pretty much the same as it is here, but seems to be reported on a less frantic note.

Here’s a little something for you paranoid types: Did you know that your smart phone can tell the world your approximate location even without a gps?

I was reading an email from Code Project when I came across this article.

The title is: Learn How to Find GPS Location on Any SmartPhone, and Then Make it Relevant.

From a coder’s point of view this has the potential to be extremely useful, but from the point of view of some guy on the street who would like a little privacy the implications are a frightening.

This is from the coder:

The fact that GPS isn’t (yet) ubiquitous is the real difficulty in location-aware development. The goal here is to get the location from any phone, not just GPS-capable phones. Therein lies the difficulty.

A quick peek under the Mobile Map hood reveals a couple things. First, Google is posting requests to http://www.google.com/glm/mmap for location data. I’ve scoured their APIs, and this isn’t something that appears to be documented. That means, we’re on our own for figuring out how to package and send data. Secondly, it’s clear that they’re sending four key pieces of data:

* Cell Tower ID
* Location Area Code (LAC)
* Mobile Network Code (MNC)
* Mobile Country Code (MCC)

That’s great news! As it turns out, almost all cell phones have this data readily available. Windows Mobile (5 and 6) has a native API to get those four pieces of data called the Radio Interface Layer

As you can see, “They” really can watch your every move.

Fortunately there are so many of us that, aside from keywords sniffed by whatever replaced Carnivore or good old fashioned guilt by association, there’s no simple way to decide who to follow. And if your life is anything like mine you’ll just bore the bloody buggers to tears.