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kokogiak writes on MetaFilter:

Speaking of Transit Watching. I found it really interesting to see the collection of AP photos about the transit of Venus today. Apparently the compelling story is not so much the science (planets orbit the sun, got it), but the global spectacle. It’s a bit of an anomaly of late, but Venus watching seems to be something the whole world peacefully agrees is a good thing.

NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT, The New York Times, report:

WASHINGTON, June 7 — A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation’s security.
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Max Glaskin, New Scientist (via MetaFilter) reports:

A robot for “printing” houses is to be trialled by the construction industry. It takes instructions directly from an architect’s computerised drawings and then squirts successive layers of concrete on top of one other to build up vertical walls and domed roofs.
(more…)

The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope imaged the event just as the Sun is rising from the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa.

Space.com reports:
One of the rarest observable astronomy events took place today as Venus crossed the face of the Sun for the first time in 122 years.

The spectacle was visible from all of Europe and much of Asia and Africa. Some eastern residents of North America had a chance to see the final moments of the transit, which ended around 7:25 a.m. ET. Images and video of the transit, from telescopes small and large, were posted live on the Internet at several sites around the world.

Venus transits the face of the Sun on a strange schedule. The last one was in 1882 but the next one comes fairly soon, on June 6, 2012.

Most people here would agree that ATI’s latest technology demo, ‘The Doublecross’ starring their new mascot Ruby (Download the video here) is superbly done. Real-time graphics continues to approach visuals once the realm of pre-rendered CG and in time our games will reach that same level of graphics quality. Most end-users, including myself, also agree that ATI’s Radeon X800 demo does more to showcase their hardware than NVIDIA has done with their GeForce6 demos. This isn’t reflective of anything wrong with NVIDIA’s demo teams, but just a reflection of a different style and perspective and from another perspective, it’s NVIDIA’s demos that offer more substance.

(from Firing Squad)

Expatica via David at cronaca:

German soldiers fathered many more children with Dutch women during the occupation in the Second World War than previously thought, new evidence by the German military indicates.

The archives of the German Wehrmacht — the official name of the German armed forces from 1935-45 — indicate that 50,000 children were born to Dutch mothers and German soldiers during the war years.

The Dutch Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) and the Contact Group for German Soldiers’ Children had previously estimated the number at 10,000, Dutch public news service NOS reported. . .

During the Second World War, German soldiers were encouraged to father children in countries such as the Netherlands and Norway. “These children were of Aryan descent and were therefore warmly welcome in the Third Reich,” Gerhardt said.

The accounting stopped in 1944, so the actual count will undoubtedly be higher.

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ICP 585 Omaha Beach. June 6th, 1944. The first wave of American troops lands at dawn.
(Robert Capa/Magnum Photos)

In June 1944 the Allied forces opened a second front in Normandy (after the one in North Africa and Italy) to liberate France. On June 6th, in what was later called D-Day, 90,000 soldiers landed on Omaha Beach (the coded name for Coleville-sur-Mer). Many of them were killed by German troops, but the Allies managed nonetheless to defeat the Germans.

Marie Horrigan, UPI Deputy Americas Editor, (via Google News) reports:

WASHINGTON, June 5 (UPI) — Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States, died of pneumonia Saturday at his home California. He was 93.
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Celeste Biever, NewScientist.com news service, reports

The first computer network in which communication is secured with quantum cryptography is up and running in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Chip Elliott, leader of the quantum engineering team at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, sent the first packets of data across the Quantum Net (Qnet) on Thursday. The project is funded by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Currently the network only consists of six servers, but they can be integrated with regular servers and clients on the internet. Qnet’s creators say the implementation of more nodes in banks and credit card companies could make exchanging sensitive data over the internet more secure than it is with current cryptography systems.
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KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press (via UK Guardian Unlimited via Google News/Chicago Tribune), writes:

WASHINGTON (AP) - With CIA Director George Tenet on the way out, the Bush administration faces crucial questions over how to improve America’s intelligence gathering during a time of high terror threats and continued finger-pointing over past failures.

Surprising many in Washington, Tenet announced his resignation Thursday in an emotional address to CIA staff, ending seven years as the agency’s head during two presidencies. President Bush named Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, to temporarily lead America’s spy agency when Tenet steps down in mid-July.

Tenet’s decision comes just before the expected release of several long-awaited and highly critical reports on intelligence failures by the CIA and other agencies.
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LocustWorld:

Mesh networking provides an innovative method to build complex data networks very easily. Using the intelligence of each component, meshing helps them to join into a self-organising structure. This approach differs from the traditional “top-down” design of data networks, and provides many benefits, including flexibility, speed and ease of management, making it very easy to deploy widespread networks with low overheads.

Mesh Networking is particularly suited to wireless networks, where the connections can’t be predicted in the same way as a wired network, catering for mobile nodes, instant growth and unpredictable variations in reception and coverage.
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A hooded protester throws a flare into the Defense Ministry during anti-war demonstrations in Rome June 4, 2004. Thousands of armed police lined the streets of the Italian capital as activists gathered to protest against the visiting President George W. Bush and the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
(Giampiero Sposito/Reuters via )

Paulo Amorim, The Associated Press (via MSNBC) reports:

Former Beatle says he used cocaine during ‘Pepper’ sessions

Paul McCartney said the Beatles’ song “Got to Get You Into My Life” was directly about marijuana.

LONDON - Paul McCartney says he got no thrill from heroin, but found cocaine more to his liking for a time.
(more…)

A tornado is too close for comfort as Jo Anne Grady of North Platte takes its picture May 29 near Gothenburg.

The North Platte (Nebraska) Telegraph reports:

On a bright, shiny afternoon May 29, Jo Anne and Wes Grady came upon one of nature’s most deadly phenomena: a tornado.
(more…)

BBC’s h2g2 says:

One or two Americans have asked me why it is that the English like tea so much, which never seems to them to be a very good drink. To understand, you have to know how to make it properly.

There is a very simple principle to the making of tea and it’s this - to get the proper flavour of tea, the water has to be boiling (not boiled) when it hits the tea leaves. If it’s merely hot then the tea will be insipid. That’s why we English have these odd rituals, such as warming the teapot first (so as not to cause the boiling water to cool down too fast as it hits the pot). And that’s why the American habit of bringing a teacup, a tea bag and a pot of hot water to the table is merely the perfect way of making a thin, pale, watery cup of tea that nobody in their right mind would want to drink. The Americans are all mystified about why the English make such a big thing out of tea because most Americans have never had a good cup of tea. That’s why they don’t understand. In fact the truth of the matter is that most English people don’t know how to make tea any more either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
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On Slashdot, kaluta writes:

“The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Microsoft was granted a patent for double-clicking on April 27. The patent in question is 6,727,830 and says, amongst other stuff: ‘A default function for an application is launched if the button is pressed for a short, i.e., normal, period of time. An alternative function of the application is launched if the button is pressed for a long, (e.g., at least one second), period of time. Still another function can be launched if the application button is pressed multiple times within a short period of time, e.g., double click’. So this is what we have to look foward to in the E.U. now?”

BBC reports:

National Air Traffic Services said flights were grounded so that controllers could prioritise on planes in the air, but safety was unaffected.

The air traffic control centre at West Drayton is now fully operational again and flights are resuming.

Many airports are advising people to check in as normal.

Nats’ Flight Data Processing System failed at around 0600BST for an hour.

Speaking to BBC News 24 Chief Executive Richard Everitt said the failure followed overnight testing of an upgrade to its Flight Data Processing System in West Drayton.
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superultra on slashdot has a very nice summary of why I’ll be switching to WordPress:

I’m not a cheapskate. I believe in paying for good software.

But I won’t pay for Movable Type. Here’s why.
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Hello World!

Newly-crowned Miss Universe 2004, Jennifer Hawkins, 20, of Sydney, Australia, poses in Quito, Ecuador Wednesday, June 2, 2004, on the first day of her year-long reign making appearances on behalf of the Miss Universe Organization, its sponsors and her official cause of HIV/AIDS awareness and education.
(AP Photo via /Miss Universe, Darren Decker)

The big name for us in the world of chess is Gibaud, a French chess
master.

In Paris during 1924 he was beaten after only four moves by a
Monsieur Lazard. Happily for posterity, the moves are recorded and so
chess enthusiasts may reconstruct this magnificent collapse in the comfort
of their own homes.

Lazard was black and Gibaud white:


1: P-Q4, Kt-KB3
2: Kt-Q2, P-K4
3: PxP, Kt-Kt5
4: P-K6, Kt-K6


White then resigns on realizing that a fifth move would involve
either a Q-KR5 check or the loss of his queen.

– Stephen Pile, “The Book of Heroic Failures”

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE via Planet Ark via Fark.com reports:

OSLO - One of the Nordic region’s biggest power stations shut Friday to let an expert tune a grand piano for a concert undisturbed by the hum of huge hydroelectric generators.
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Local10 reports:

MIAMI — Police say a man was shot to death while driving on Interstate 395, shortly after flirting with a car full of girls.

Police said Malcolm Marshall was in the back seat of a car, and was flirting with several girls in another car driving on I-395 toward the beach around 1 a.m. Monday.

Miami police spokesman Delrish Moss said another vehicle, a rented Chevrolet Tahoe pulled along side Marshall’s car, and Willie James Lumsdon, 37, who was in the back seat of the Tahoe, began mocking Marshall.

When the cars exited the interstate, police said Lumsdon pulled out a gun and fired at the car Marshall was riding in. Investigators said a shot went through the back window of Marshall’s car, striking him in the head.

The driver said he tried to get Marshall to a hospital, but got lost, and called 911, but Marshall was already dead, police said.
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KOMO TV reports:

Witnesses said a large grinding sound was followed by an explosion and flames on the blue train; dozens of passengers were evacuated and eight were taken to the hospital.
(more…)

The Associated Press (via MSNBC/Google News) reports:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Police entering a prison after a three-day rebellion found the bodies of at least 34 inmates, some of them mutilated, police said Tuesday.
(more…)