Archive for July 15th, 2009

Obama Throws His First Pitch

Staying with tradition, Barack Obama threw out the first pitch at the All-Star Game on Tuesday night.

He received a surprising amount of boos from the sellout crowd as he jogged onto the field wearing his Chicago White Sox jacket, which he said was influenced by his wife’s opinion that it makes him “look cute.”

His left handed toss was low, but Albert Pujols managed to scoop it up before it reached the dirt.

“This is as much fun as I’ve had in quite some time,” Obama said.

Here’s the video, just in case you didn’t see it.

Well done sir!

Has Al Qaeda Been Hit By The Recession?

Ayman al-Zawahri, the deputy leader of Al Qaeda has made a plea to his ‘Muslim brothers and sisters in Pakistan’ to give donations to support the fight against the U.S.

The Al Qaeda deputy’s appeal to Pakistanis comes as public opinion in the South Asian nation has swung away from militants and in favor of army offensives against them.

A recent survey showed that 81 per cent of Pakistanis believe the activities of the Taliban and other Muslim extremists were a ‘critical threat’ to the country, up from the 34 per cent polled on the same question in September 2007.

Eighty-two per cent said bin Laden’s Al Qaeda was also a critical threat, exactly twice as many who thought so two years ago.

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Men From Mars

Three months ago, six European volunteered entered a space capsule in Moscow that simulated a journey to Mars.

The “isolation experiment” was meant to test how the human body and mind would cope with the limited communication from Earth. The volunteers, four Russians, a German and a Frenchman emerged yesterday with smiles on their faces and looked in good health after the 105 day exercise finished.

The capsule never left the ground, however with no windows and cramped conditions, it was designed to make the team feel as isolated as they would be on a real trip to Mars.

Next year anther group of volunteers will enter the same capsule, but this time it will be for 520 days! Rather them than me!

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Scientists Aim To Create Robot-Insects

It may sound like science-fiction, but scientists aim to create robot-insects capable of carrying out very important tasks assigned by police or authorities.

Imagine if a robot-moth could sniff out a distant drug stash or robot-bees could dodge through earthquake rubble to find survivors – well this is the vision of Japanese scientists.

Scientists will research the brains of insects and then rebuild and program them to carry out different tasks. Ryohei Kanzaki is a professor at Tokyo Univeristy’s Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology. Having become a pioneer in the field of insect-machine hybrids he believes that in the future we will see programmed insects.

“It will be possible to recreate an insect brain with electronic circuits in the future. This would lead to controlling a real brain by modifying its circuits,” he said.

Kanzaki’s team has already made some progress on this front.

It sounds scary to me…it’s like Frankenstein but with insects. Couldn’t this lead to bad guys using insects to carry out criminal acts and dare I say it, even terrorism? If insects can be used to find survivors in earthquakes then surely, if the technology gets into the wrong hands, there is potential for catastrophe.

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