Google Goes Psychic

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OK, well not quite, but this is fun.. Google has launched a beta version of Google Suggest which analyses what you type and gives suggestions for what you want as you type.

It only gives you a list of 10 suggestions for each word combination you’ve typed, but if it does offer something you are after then you can just select it, and then it’ll give you 10 more (if it thinks there are any).

Tintin goes to the Neurologist

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Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma, or Tintin goes to the neurologist.

Antoine Cyr, Louis-Olivier Cyr and Claude Cyr (PDF reprint here)

For each incident, we identified the cause of the trauma, the length of loss of consciousness (calculated by the number of frames before Tintin returns to normal activity) and the apparent severity of the trauma (indicated by the number of objects [e.g., stars, candles] revolving above Tintin’s head). A Spearman correlation test was performed between the last 2 items.

Courtesy of this weeks New Scientist – a stunning expose of the risks of being a cartoon character.
The Canadian Medical Association Journal published it.

Cadbury’s Fail to Hijack Australian Word ‘Yowie’

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Australia has it’s very own “abominable snowman” legends of a creature called the Yowie, predating European colonisation. One guy, Timothy Bull, the National Museum of Australia’s resident cryptonaturalist,has taken it upon himself to investigate and has even written a book on the matter.

However, Cadbury Schweppes objected to him trying to trademark “Tim the Yowie Man” as Yowie is a brand of chocolate, and so opposed it forcing him to fight it through the legal system. Apparently they were concerned that children could confuse him with a chocolate!

In a good show of common sense the tribunal stated that:


“children are more sophisticated consumers than the opponent [Cadbury Schweppes] gives them credit for.”

Shame that Cadbury-Schweppes & their lawyers couldn’t find some too.. 🙂

Dutch city of Haarlem migrates to OpenOffice.org

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The website of OpenOffice.org, the free, integrated, office suite for Windows, Linux and MacOSX users is reporting that the Dutch city of Haarlem has migrated to OpenOffice.org instead of buying the new version of MS Office. They did look at StarOffice (the Sun version that has paid-for support) but couldn’t use it because it wasn’t available in Dutch! 🙁

They even had one of their MS Office training people do an evaluation beforehand which found that OpenOffice.org beat MS Office in a number of areas..

45 Million Children Likely to Die Because of G8’s Broken Promises on Aid

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Oxfam is reportedly saying that 45 million children will die because of G8 Nations reneging on promises from 1970 to devote 0.7% of their GDP on overseas aid. Currently only two G8 countries, the UK and France, have firm plans to reach that committment – alabeit 34 years after making that promise, it’s more likely to be 40 years by the time they reach it, if ever.

UNICEF say that half of the shortfall of $120 billion is owed by the US.

US allows use of evidence gained by torture

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The ABC (the Australian one of course) is reporting that the US will permit the use of evidence gained by torture against individuals at Guantanamo Bay.

Deputy associate Attorney-General, Brian Boyle, has told the District Court in Washington DC, that the Guantanamo review panels are allowing such evidence.

This appears to be an implicit acknowledgement of the practice of rendering prisoners to countries that do practice torture in return for their confessions, even though obtaining evidence under torture is illegal in the US itself (though the US refuses to sign up to a system allowing inspections of prisons). The allegations about this behaviour are not new, but this new admission is still quite a horrible relevation.

More references via Google News here