NASA’s vision lost on Web generation
NASA’s vision lost on Web generation
Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA’s new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.
Concerned about this lack of interest, NASA’s image-makers are taking a hard look at how to win over the young generation — media-saturated teens and 20-somethings growing up on YouTube and Google and largely indifferent to manned space flight.
“If you’re going to do a space exploration program that lasts 40 years, if you just do the math, those are the guys that are going to carry the tax burden,” said Mary Lynne Dittmar, president of a Houston company that surveyed young people about the space program.
Scientists Stitch up Cloaking Device
Scientists Stitch up Cloaking Device
A transatlantic team of researchers has taken a big step towards their cloak of invisibility by successfully hiding a cylinder from microwaves, according to the journal Science and tabloid, The Sun.
Professor Sir John Pendry, winner of the Institute of Physics’s Dirac medal in 1996, and chair in Theoretical Solid State Physics at Imperial College, London, led a team of researchers at Duke’s University in North Carolina to develop a prototype device that can make objects undetectable by radar.
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Professor David R Smith, Augustine Scholar and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University, explained that the key lies in the metamaterials the cloak would be made of.
Metamaterials can be designed with very specific properties that allow scientists to control the path of electromagnetic radiation very precisely.
Ho? Ho? Ho? Maine Says No to Santa Label
Ho? Ho? Ho? Maine Says No to Santa Label
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – A beer distributor says Maine is being a Scrooge by barring it from selling a beer with a label depicting Santa Claus enjoying a pint of brew.
In a complaint filed in federal court, Shelton Brothers accuses the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship for denying applications for labels for Santa’s Butt Winter Porter and two other beers it wants to sell in Maine.
The dispute recalls a similar squabble last year when Connecticut told Shelton Brothers it had problems with its Seriously Bad Elf ale.
“Last year it was elves. This year it’s Santa. Maybe next year it’ll be reindeer,” said Daniel Shelton, owner of the company in Belchertown, Mass.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contends the state’s action violates the First Amendment by censoring artistic expression.
But the state says it’s within its rights. The label with Santa might appeal to children, said Maine State Police Lt. Patrick Fleming. The other two labels are considered inappropriate because they show bare-breasted women.
“We stand by our decision and at some point it’ll go through the court system and somebody will make the decision on whether we are right or wrong,” he said.
The lawsuit was brought by the Maine Civil Liberties Union, which says the beer labels are entitled to First Amendment protection.
“There is no good reason for the state to censor art, even art found on a beer label,” said Zachary Heiden, staff attorney for the MCLU.
The label for the English-made Santa’s Butt Winter Porter features a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa Claus sitting atop a barrel. The beer’s name refers not only to Santa’s ample backside, but also to the barrel. In England, brewers once used a large barrel called a “butt” to store beer.
Maine also denied label applications for Les Sans Culottes, a French ale, and Rose de Gambrinus, a Belgian fruit beer.
Les Sans Culottes’ label is illustrated with detail from Eugene Delacroix’s 1830 painting “Liberty Leading the People,” which hangs in the Louvre and once appeared on the 100-franc bill. Rose de Gambrinus shows a bare-breasted woman in a watercolor painting commissioned by the brewery.
In a letter to Shelton Brothers, the state denied the applications for the labels because they contained “undignified or improper illustration.”
The state reviews between 10,000 and 12,000 applications a year for beer and wine labels. It typically denies about a dozen a year because they contain inappropriate language or nudity, or might appeal to children, Fleming said.
“Basically, the standard we use is what are people going to see walking up and down a store aisle,” he said.
Shelton said his company filed a lawsuit against the New York State Liquor Authority last month after it denied his applications for six holiday-themed beer labels, including Santa’s Butt Winter Porter. The state changed its mind but the lawsuit is going forward, he said.
In years past, the company has had labels challenged in a few states, including Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri, he said.
States have the power to regulate alcohol through the 21st Amendment, which repealed Prohibition in 1933. “But I don’t know where they get the idea they can ignore the rest of the Constitution,” Shelton said.
Shelton Brothers: http://www.sheltonbrothers.com
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From My Way
NY Cracks Down on Illegal Mystery Meats
NY Cracks Down on Illegal Mystery Meats
NEW YORK (AP) – When a food safety inspector walked into a market in Queens, he noticed the store had an interesting special posted on its front window: 12 beefy armadillos. In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another market. At a West African grocery in Manhattan, the store was selling smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case. An inspector quickly seized a couple pounds of it.
All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal.
Authorities say the discoveries are part of a larger trend in which markets across New York are buying meat and other foods from unregulated sources and selling them to an immigrant population accustomed to more exotic fare.
State regulators have responded by stepping up enforcement, confiscating 65 percent more food through September than they did in all of 2005.
“At one time or another, we’ve probably seen about everything,” said Joseph Corby, director of the state’s Division of Food Safety and Inspection.
In an attempt to stamp out the activity, Corby’s agency has ramped up efforts, working with the Food and Drug Administration, to prevent this illicit food from reaching store shelves.
Instead of just hitting the retailers, Corby said, his inspectors are also targeting warehouses that receive imported products – Russian, Asian and African – from where the food is distributed.
So far, it appears his campaign has been effective. In the first nine months of the year, inspectors across the state seized 1.6 million pounds of food, destroying about 81 percent of it. Last year, the state seized only 976,076 pounds of food.
Food taken by the Corby’s inspectors lacked proper labeling or didn’t come from a government-licensed or inspected source. Other food was destroyed because of the way it was processed or prepared, like chicken smoked in the home and placed on sale.
Such food can spread nasty bacteria like salmonella or botulism.
The rules vary from animal to animal.
Bush meat, or anything killed in the wild, is typically illegal, Corby said. Eating endangered or threatened species like as gorilla and chimpanzee – whose meat is occasionally found in New York – is against the law.
But turtles, frogs, iguana and armadillos can be eaten under one condition: The meat must come from a licensed and inspected facility. “We have yet to find too many of these places,” Corby said.
In a city filled with clusters of people hailing from all over the world, these rules can get lost in translation.
The problem is particularly acute in the ethnic neighborhoods of New York City, where newly arrived and enterprising immigrants open up food shops, stocking their shelves with savory favorites relished in their native lands.
State sanitary inspection reports dating back to 2001 reveal a widespread appetite for this potentially dangerous food.
On a bustling stretch of Manhattan’s Chinatown, Bor Kee Food Market has been caught selling unidentified red meat and mysterious fish paste, which is used in Asian recipes.
Down the street at Dahing Seafood Market, inspectors have found frogs being sold from an unapproved source. And next door, authorities spotted crates of turtles and a large tub of bullfrogs being sold without proper invoices.
Inside Kam Lun Food Products in Queens, inspectors discovered questionable turtles and frogs and a clue: “Label on animal boxes states China Air Cargo,” the inspector wrote in his report.
“That’s a no-no because there is absolutely no monitoring of the standards in these places,” said Dr. Philip Tierno, author of “The Secret Life of Germs: Observations and Lessons from a Microbe Hunter,” and director of clinical microbiology at New York University Medical Center. “It’s subject to the vagaries of whoever is processing the food. Who’s watching?”
Singed chicken was also common in these ethnic enclaves. This is chicken that has been singed with fire to remove any excess feathers or stems from a bird. Singed chicken is prohibited because it appears cooked.
At the West African Grocery – where “smoked rodent” was found – the owner failed to explain why he was selling the mysterious meat, saying he couldn’t speak English.
But he could apparently read the sanitary inspection report and the word “rodent.”"I don’t know what that is,” the owner said. “I don’t sell that here.”
A similar exchange played out at another market in Brooklyn called Chang Xiang Trading.
When confronted with reports showing the store has sold illegal pork, chicken and ducks, the manager, shrugged her shoulders. Her English was not good, she said.
Sung Soo Kim, president of Korean American Small Business Service Center of New York, says it’s hard to change eating habits that are centuries-old.
Kim runs a state-approved food safety education program and has delivered seminars to the Korean community about food laws.
Corby says education is key – along with fines – in getting owners to pass inspections and stop buying and selling illegal food.
One way to get businesses to comply is ordering them to take a state-approved food inspection course that also teaches about cleanliness and cross-contamination.
“Immigrants coming from the Third World would not be schooled in the issues of cross contamination and would not intuitively know hygiene standards,” said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, a former city health commissioner who spent six years in Africa with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “They don’t know how simple contamination can result in a widespread epidemic.”
But if all else fails, Corby will get a court injunction and shutter stores, something the state did 66 times in 2005 and 72 times through September of this year.
“We either clean them up or close them down,” he said. “There is a high standard that is applied. We’d rather have it too high than too low.”
Ruiad Nasher, who immigrated from Bangladesh in 1995, manages the Master Mini Market in Brooklyn. The market has been in business about two years.
State inspectors busted the market selling more than 50 pounds of chicken from an unapproved source this year. Nasher bought the chickens from a poultry market in Brooklyn, and said he didn’t know he was violating state law.
“In Bangladesh, you didn’t have all these rules,” he said.
Nasher said he now only buys USDA-approved chicken, even shrugging off discounted offers from the Brooklyn chicken purveyor.
“Just for chicken, I don’t want to lose my business,” he said.
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From My Way
‘Designer’ babies with made-to-order defects?
‘Designer’ babies with made-to-order defects?
The power to create “perfect” designer babies looms over the world of prenatal testing.
But what if doctors started doing the opposite?
Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities — say, deafness or dwarfism — it just means making babies like them.
And a recent survey of U.S. clinics that offer embryo screening suggests it’s already happening.
Three percent, or four clinics surveyed, said they have provided the costly, complicated procedure to help families create children with a disability.
Bing and Bowie: An Odd Story of Holiday Harmony
Bing and Bowie: An Odd Story of Holiday Harmony
One of the most successful duets in Christmas music history — and surely the weirdest — might never have happened if it weren’t for some last-minute musical surgery. David Bowie thought “The Little Drummer Boy” was all wrong for him. So when the producers of Bing Crosby’s Christmas TV special asked Bowie to sing it in 1977, he refused.
Just hours before he was supposed to go before the cameras, though, a team of composers and writers frantically retooled the song. They added another melody and new lyrics as a counterpoint to all those pah-rumpa-pum-pums and called it “Peace on Earth.” Bowie liked it. More important, Bowie sang it.
The result was an epic, and epically bizarre, recording in which David Bowie, the androgynous Ziggy Stardust, joined in song with none other than Mr. “White Christmas” himself, Bing Crosby.
Gaming Generation: Once a gamer, always a gamer
Gaming Generation: Once a gamer, always a gamer
Gamers that stared down the challenges of reaching “just one more level” or beating an old high score are now facing a more significant challenge: blending marriages, mortgages, and parenting together with their gamer lifestyle. How are some members of the “videogame generation” coping? What do the children of gamer parents think? And where do sociologists see the “videogame generation” taking family relationships and gaming itself in the future?
With gaming stepping out of the shadows of geekdom and into the spotlight of the mainstream, gamer parents aren’t alone — in fact, they have some pretty noteworthy company.
Mike Krahulik, better known to his legions of fans as Gabe, one-half of the team behind the gaming webcomic Penny Arcade, says that time is biggest challenge in blending gaming and parenthood. “You just don’t have as much time for gaming,” he says, “when you’re getting up every 30 minutes to change diapers and get thrown up on.”