The Donor Game !

Organ donor show to go on despite criticism

Tue May 29, 10:11 AM ET

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch broadcaster will air a show this week in which a terminally ill woman selects a recipient for her kidneys from three contestants, despite government calls for the programme to be scrapped.

Newspaper De Telegraaf said BNN would broadcast The Big Donor show on Friday during which the 37-year-old woman will choose from three people with kidney problems.

She will make her choice based on the contestants' history, profile and conversations with their families and friends. Viewers will be able to send text messages advising her during the 80-minute show.

"The chance for a kidney for the contestants is 33 percent. This is much higher than that for people on a waiting list. You would expect it to be better but it is worse," the daily cited BNN Chairman Laurens Drillich as saying.

Ruling coalition parties Christian Democrat (CD) and the conservative Christian Union have called the show "wretched" and "unethical."

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Imagine Chuck Barris running the show...

"Kidney Transplant Recipient Number Three... we're in a romantic restaurant. We order champagne. The Wine Steward brings us a bucket of ice. Inside is my kidney. What do you do with it?"

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Fortunately, it's been revealed as a HOAX

NZ cows produce own skimmed milk

Experts at a biotechnology company in New Zealand have discovered that some cows have a gene giving them a natural ability to produce skimmed milk.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6700129.stm

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Very nice. Now find the gene that produces chocolate milk.

The internet is an amazing place

I got an email from someone who visited my website:

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A friend from back in PA (we all grew up in Clarion) just sent me the link to your Primates Song page.

The Red Rose Tea commercial! My god, I thought I'd never hear that again.

Are you meshugge? No - a mensch!

Trace Ordiway
eBusiness Sales Manager
Subaru of Dallas ONLINE

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I replied:

Just a shot in the dark... Do you know a guy named Robert Frish? He lives in Texas and he's a Member of the Tribe, too. (Just playing Jewish Geography...)

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And he replied:

Bob Frish? The attorney? Originally from NY/NJ with the rendering plant? He's my neighbor! He and my wife are best buds and on our JCC board together. Unbelievable.

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I LOVE the internet...

Google, the Ken Burns Effect, and Fractal Cognitive Engagement

I haven't seen this (our corporate firewall blocks video feeds) but this is from a friend of mine who finds worthwhile things. It should be interesting and or enjoyable. The title alone wins points.

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From: "Mitchell Collier"

Google, the Ken Burns Effect, and Fractal Cognitive Engagement

From One Big Library, a nice screencast of why Google's interface works, in contrast to the clunky interfaces favoured by libraries (and databases such as TreeBASE).

http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2007/05/google-ken-burns-effect-and-fractal.html

(If you don't see the video on the webpage above, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijLDxgALc2c.)

The arrow cursor explained

The secret is now revealed

You move your mouse, and the arrow cursor moves across the computer screen. Haven't you ever wondered how it works?

Now, through the miracle of high technology, and with the aid of a screen magnifying lens, you can see the actual mechanism. Click on the link below. The image may take a minute or two to download. When it appears, slowly move your mouse over the light gray circle, and you will see the technological secret behind the movement of the mouse arrow.

"http://www.1-click.jp/"

Google's sense of humor

Go to Google Maps

click on Directions

Type in "Dallas, TX" to "London, England"

Look at item #26. . .

Squirrel vs. Bird Feeder Designer

Those of you with bird feeders know that the feeders attract unwanted squirrels, as well as birds.

Here's Hammacher-Schlemmer's entry into the never-ending battle between squirrel and bird feeder designer.

Automatic Squirrel-Ejecting Bird Feeder:
http://www.hammacher.com/publish/73087.asp?promo=xsells#

Here's how it works: Small birds can perch on the feeder, but when a heavy squirrel lands on the perch, the feeder rotates to toss him off.

(My father-in-law says the squirrel ultimately wins. You spend 20 minutes constructing a gizmo to prevent him from getting to the food; he spends 20 hours trying out ways to defeat it.)

New Technology ... the "book"

Here's how people performed
Tech Support in the Middle Ages...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE

Are you a scientist ?

How to tell a scientist from a non-scientist:

Read this word aloud
Unionized

a scientist will pronounce it "un-ionized",
a non-scientist will pronounce it "union-ized".

Beer Launching Fridge

Hey all you Guys...

How many times has this happened to you?

You get home from a hard day of work, flop on the couch, flip on the TV and shout, "Honey, get me a beer."

If you're lucky, there's no response. If you're unlucky, the requested beer is delivered to your head.

Well, duck no longer, guys... THERE'S A BEER LAUNCHING REFRIGERATOR!

http://www.duke.edu/~jwc13/beerlauncher.html

Useful (and cool) hyperlink trick

There's an editorial in the NY times which features a very interesting bit of hyperlinking:

At the bottom of the article [at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/opinion/13tue4.html?_r=1&oref=slogin] it states :

"To find reference information about the words used in this article, hold down the ALT key and click on any word, phrase or name. A new window will open with a dictionary definition or encyclopedia entry. "

Yes, ANY word. And the article text doesn't show the usual blue text or blue-underline of hyperlinking. Nor does the mouse cursor change to a pointing finger when hovering over any word in the article.

Web 2.0 explained in video

from a friend:

This video is getting mention all over the place, so you've probably seen it already. It is an attempt to explain the Web 2.0 concept.

Since it is, itself, a user-contributed video to YouTube, it is probably a fine example of Web 2.0 anyway.

http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?page_id=54

PC World says farewell to floppy

news article:

The time has come to bid farewell to one of the PC's more stalwart friends - the floppy disk.

Computing superstore PC World said it will no longer sell the storage devices, affectionately known as floppies, once existing stock runs out.

New storage systems, coupled with a need to store more than the 1.44 megabytes of data held by a standard floppy, have led to its demise.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6314251.stm

As for me, there will always be room in my life for the floppy disk... right next to my 8-track tapes.

More Moore

from Today's Papers:

Intel's new chip design means that Moore's Law, which posits that chips double their computing power every two years, will continue to be true, refuting skeptics who believed that engineers had recently hit a wall in making them any more powerful.

Silicon Valley's hometown paper, the San Jose Mercury News, quotes the eponymous Moore himself saying that the development "marks the biggest change in transistor technology" since the 1960s.

But what does this mean for the electronics consumer? The best the Times can do is that it will make it easier "for cellphones to play video at length -- a demanding digital task -- with less battery drain."

Moore's Law is the empirical observation made in 1965 that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit for minimum component cost doubles every 24 months. It is attributed to Gordon E. Moore, a co-founder of Intel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

"Cramming more components onto integrated circuits", Electronics Magazine 19 April 1965