A new search engine will personalise search results based on information that it collects from your own hard drive.
This could be dangerous especially if you let someone like your boss borrow your PC to do a search.
I can’t believe it’s almost Labor Day. 2005 is rapidly drawing to a close.
It’s 6:00AM and still very dark outside. The days have been getting noticably shorter.
This time of year we start to lose about three minutes of light every day, 30 minutes every 10 days and 90 minutes each month.
Last night it rained. We needed the rain because we haven’t had much lately, but the combination of rain and less light reminded me of what lies ahead.
I don’t know where the summer went. It got off to such a late start and then suddenly here we are at the end of it. Fortunately, some of the Seattle area’s best weather comes in September and October. But this year the weather has been so out-of-whack I’m not sure what to expect. Maybe an early blizzard?
People complain about the rain but Seattle gets much less rainfall per year than most cities on the humid east coast. But it’s the darkness that I dislike more than anything.
By the time we reach the winter solstice, there will be barely eight hours of light per day and it won’t really be daylight so much as graylight. Most days will be cloudy and overcast, maybe drizzling. People will go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.
All the time they spend in their own homes will be under artificial light.
It feels like a cave existence to me. Something like a hibernation.
It’s coming and it’s coming fast.
From the Bainbridge Island Review:
The path toward resolving the conflict over Kallgren Road is a few miles longer.
Residents and a developer last week appealed a city decision that would require a connection of Kallgren to Day Road, if plans go forward to build homes at Kallgren’s dead end.
“Unfortunately, we had to go this far,” said Rebecca Robins, a member of the newly formed Kallgren Road Preservation Society. “We had hoped there was an amicable way, but there was no other choice. We exhausted all our other options – petitions, talks with the mayor, public works, the City Council, the planning department.
“We didn’t get anywhere, so it’s inevitable that we had to appeal.”
The city’s Department of Planning and Community Development issued a decision earlier this month to make approval of a short plat amendment at the road’s end contingent upon a connection to Day Road.
[…]
But the residents’ appeal contends that no detailed traffic study calls for a new connection at Kallgren Road.
They also cite portions of the city’s Comprehensive Plan that support the preservation of the island’s rural character and quiet residential neighborhoods, while focusing new growth and road development in the Winslow core.
In addition, Kallgren residents say a connection to Day Road, an island thoroughfare, would increase safety risks as more vehicles traverse their neighborhood.
Christensen’s appeal goes further, insisting that the city’s approval requirements do not match the size and scope of the proposed developments.
The city’s requirement for a fire access line, and the addition of a new fire hydrant, are “unnecessary, duplicative, excessive, and disproportionate, and therefore, illegal,” according to Christensen’s attorney.
Christensen’s appeal also states that the city should pay the estimated $30,000 needed for the connection and road improvements the city would require.
From New Scientist:
It seems that placebos have a real physical, not imagined, effect – activating the production of chemicals in the brain that relieve pain.
Placebos are treatments that use substances which have no active ingredient. But if people are told that what they are being given contains an active painkiller, for example, they often feel less pain – an effect that has normally been considered psychological.
Recent studies, though, suggest otherwise. For example, when a placebo was secretly mixed with a drug that blocks endorphins – the body’s natural painkillers – there was no placebo effect, showing that endorphins are involved in the placebo painkiller process (New Scientist print edition, 26 May 2001, p 34).
Now Jon-Kar Zubieta’s team at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, US, has confirmed that placebos relieve pain by boosting the release of endorphins.
This is consistent with Ayn Rand’s belief that there is no dualism between the mind and the body.
Ironically, it may also help to explain why faith has such a powerful pull on the human consciousness.
Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses. This research suggests that he may have been literally correct.
If a person has a strong belief that God or some other force will ease the pain of their life, the brains may be releasing opioids in response to that belief. That would give faith the power to alleviate pain and also to become potentially addictive.
It might also help to explain how jogging (which also releases endorphins) and religious faith can replace drugs and alcohol, as they have in the life of the current POTUS.