>Galaga Tournament World Record Score

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IN A back room of his Braidwood cottage in the NSW Southern Tablelands Phil Day has just broken the world record on the 28-year-old classic arcade game and successor to Space Invaders, Galaga.

Passing the previous mark of 2.7 million set by an American, Andrew Laidlaw, in 2007, Mr Day’s score of 3.44 million is the culmination of six months’ training and practice.

There were few signs of celebration at 12.30am on Saturday when, after playing for two hours and five minutes, Mr Day finally passed the score.

“There was no one else around. I wanted to signify that I had reached the 2.7 million mark for the video recording of the attempt, but I couldn’t get too excited and I was pretty exhausted,” he said.

Galaga Tournament was released in 1981 by the Japanese game creator Namco as an update to 1979’s Space Invaders. It quickly became one of the most popular games of the decade and appeared in arcades around the world.

Mr Day started playing Galaga when he was seven and has had an affinity with the machine ever since. …

To qualify for a world record, the game must be played on an unaltered 1981 machine, complete with original circuit boards. The technology predates the mobile phone, email and the internet.

Players must video their record attempts. Mr Day’s score has yet to be verified by Twin Galaxies, the world authority for computer game records.

via Galaga Tournament World Record Score.

>Iraq shoe thrower freed from jail

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The Iraqi man who threw his shoes at former US President George W Bush, has been released from jail in Baghdad, his brother has told he BBC.

Muntadar al-Zaidi’s act of protest made him a hero in large parts of the Arab world and beyond.

Zaidi, who called Mr Bush “a dog” during the December 2008 incident, was convicted of assault.

The TV reporter’s three-year prison sentence was reduced to one because he had a clean record.

He was released three months early for good behaviour.

via BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraq shoe thrower freed from jail.

“People called the Romans, they go the outs?”

“It says, ‘Romans go home!”

“No it doesn’t.” ….

“… follow the shoe!”

>Mystery Explained: Glow in Night Sky Was Astronaut Urine

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The beautiful trail in the sky looked like a mysterious celestial event. In reality, it was urine. Some skygazers were treated to the unexpected view of a bright sparkling glow Wednesday night, created when astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery dumped the waste out into space. The water dump was a scheduled task for STS-128 pilot Kevin Ford, who poured out urine and waste water stored aboard the shuttle in preparation for a landing attempt Thursday.

Weather thwarted that try, but astronauts plan another landing attempt Friday at 5:48 p.m. EDT 2148 GMT in Florida, though rain and high winds are expected again.

The light show Wednesday was aided by an unusually large amount of water being dumped all at once – about 150 pounds 68 kg, said NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem. Discovery had just undocked from the International Space Station the day before, and had not been able to unload waste water during the 10-day visit.

“It would have been a large quantity because we don’t do water dumps while docked to the station now,” Clem told SPACE.com in an e-mail.

“That is a fairly new restriction over the last couple of flights in order to prevent potential contamination of the Kibo module.

“The Kibo module is a new Japanese-built research lab on the space station that includes an external platform to expose science experiments to the space environment. Water dumps from a docked shuttle could potentially pollute the experiments.

In general, though, spotting space water dumps from Earth is common, Clem said.Waste water usually freezes upon jettison into a cloud of tiny ice droplets. Then when the sun hits, the ice sublimates directly into water vapor and disperses in space.

A number of people in North America apparently spotted Wednesday’s dump, and some sent pictures to the Web site SpaceWeather.com.

– via space.com

>Mystery Explained: Glow in Night Sky Was Astronaut Urine

>

The beautiful trail in the sky looked like a mysterious celestial event. In reality, it was urine. Some skygazers were treated to the unexpected view of a bright sparkling glow Wednesday night, created when astronauts aboard the space shuttle Discovery dumped the waste out into space. The water dump was a scheduled task for STS-128 pilot Kevin Ford, who poured out urine and waste water stored aboard the shuttle in preparation for a landing attempt Thursday.

Weather thwarted that try, but astronauts plan another landing attempt Friday at 5:48 p.m. EDT 2148 GMT in Florida, though rain and high winds are expected again.

The light show Wednesday was aided by an unusually large amount of water being dumped all at once – about 150 pounds 68 kg, said NASA spokeswoman Kylie Clem. Discovery had just undocked from the International Space Station the day before, and had not been able to unload waste water during the 10-day visit.

“It would have been a large quantity because we don’t do water dumps while docked to the station now,” Clem told SPACE.com in an e-mail.

“That is a fairly new restriction over the last couple of flights in order to prevent potential contamination of the Kibo module.

“The Kibo module is a new Japanese-built research lab on the space station that includes an external platform to expose science experiments to the space environment. Water dumps from a docked shuttle could potentially pollute the experiments.

In general, though, spotting space water dumps from Earth is common, Clem said.Waste water usually freezes upon jettison into a cloud of tiny ice droplets. Then when the sun hits, the ice sublimates directly into water vapor and disperses in space.

A number of people in North America apparently spotted Wednesday’s dump, and some sent pictures to the Web site SpaceWeather.com.

– via space.com

>Doctor says FLU VACCINE will cause 60,000 deaths in France alone

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Dr Marc Girard, a specialist in the side effects of drugs and a medical expert commissioned by French courts, has said said on French TV that the “swine flu” vaccine could cause 60,000 deaths in France, especially among young people, children and pregnant women.
He also said that the people promoting the “swine flu” vaccine are doing so because they have links with the pharmaceutical company.

The problem with the “swine flu” vaccine is that it is not just “badly developped” but “not developped”, he said, adding that it is being prepared in conditions that endanger the public health.

>SpiderBot

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SpiderBot- An underconstrained cable suspended robot capable of maneuvering from one stance space to another by clinging to new contact points

>Learning a musical instrument helps to boost children’s memory – Times Online

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Learning a musical instrument is beneficial for children’s behaviour, memory and intelligence, a government-commissioned study suggests.

Research found that learning to play an instrument enlarges the left side of the brain, enhancing pupils’ power of memory by almost 20 per cent.

Susan Hallam, of the University of London’s Institute of Education, carried out the research as part of a drive to encourage more children to take up a musical instrument.

The study revealed that over time music lessons increased pupils’ IQ by seven points, compared with 4.3 points for drama lessons.

Several US studies have also found that playing an instrument improves children’s behaviour. According to Professor Hallam this is because working in small musical groups requires trust, respect and compromise.

The Government aims to double the number of opportunities for children, aged from seven to eleven, to learn an instrument for free by 2011.

Over half of primary-aged children currently learn an instrument.

via Learning a musical instrument helps to boost children’s memory – Times Online.

>Lottery Prediction Trick Solution?

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Possible solution:

The video shows how it is possible to use split screen technology to give the impression that the Lottery balls are in the live shot. In fact, they are a static image.

The most popular theory about Brown’s Channel 4 show is that the left hand side of the screen, which showed the numbered balls lined up in a row, was a frozen image. In reality, an assistant was putting the balls in place during the 30-second delay between them being drawn on the BBC and Brown revealing his numbers. The entire screen only became live at the moment Brown walked towards the balls, according to this theory. – telegraph

>Snake with foot found in China

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A snake with a single clawed foot has been discovered in China, according to reports.

Dean Qiongxiu, 66, said she discovered the reptile clinging to the wall of her bedroom with its talons in the middle of the night.

“I woke up and heard a strange scratching sound. I turned on the light and saw this monster working its way along the wall using his claw,” said Mrs Duan of Suining, southwest China.

Mrs Duan said she was so scared she grabbed a shoe and beat the snake to death before preserving its body in a bottle of alcohol.

The snake – 16 inches long and the thickness of a little finger – is now being studied at the Life Sciences Department at China’s West Normal University in Nanchang.

Snake expert Long Shuai said: “It is truly shocking but we won’t know the cause until we’ve conducted an autopsy.”

A more common mutation among snakes is the growth of a second head, which occurs in a similar way to the formation of Siamese twins in humans.

Such animals are often caught and preserved as lucky tokens but have very little chance of surviving in the wild anyway, especially as the heads have a tendency to attack each other.

via Snake with foot found in China – Telegraph.

Looks like it ate  a lizard that then stayed alive inside of it and became part of it… although I don’t think that is really possible. So, barring some genetic mutation that gives snakes legs, it would be a hoax.

Just in case it was real I want to say this:  DON’T KILL RARE ANIMALS!

Mrs. Duan, alive, this snake could have brought you a lot of money and luck.  You could have sold it to the new International Cryptozoology Museum for, who knows, MILLIONS. But No. You had to kill it. They probably won’t be interested now. Well, perhaps.  Looking forward to hearing how this one turns out.

>Trustworthy vs lustworthy: the psychology of attraction

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Would you buy a used car from this man? The answer depends on whether he looks like you, researchers believe.

We are more likely to trust people who look like us, psychologists told the British Science Festival yesterday — even though we find them less attractive.

Researchers tested how willing players of a game were to entrust money to strangers whose faces they could see on a computer screen. They found that players were more trusting when those faces had been digitally manipulated to resemble their own.

“Normally they trusted people about 50 per cent of the time. But when the faces were changed to look like them, they trusted 73 per cent of the time,” said Lisa DeBruine of the University of Aberdeen, who conducted the research.

She said she believed that the response had an evolutionary basis, as we subconsciously assume those who look like us must be relatives. But because we are programmed to avoid finding close relatives sexually attractive, this means those we trust are not necessarily the ones we find attractive. Dr DeBruine’s team found that even when looking at members of the opposite sex, subjects found those who looked like them trustworthy — but they did not want to sleep with them.

“When the players were judging the faces for physical attractiveness they thought similar faces less attractive,” she said. “So we believe resemblance is trustworthy — but not lustworthy.”

via Trustworthy vs lustworthy: the psychology of attraction – Times Online.

So, next time you have to sell something to someone who looks like you, be sure to smile and raise your eyebrows (but only in the center).