Thursday, June 4, 2009

The fourth annual Maker Faire took place this past weekend at the San Mateo Fairground in San Mateo, California located in the United States. The first Maker Faire, which took place in 2006, had approximately 20,000 people in attendance. This year, more than 80,000 people were expected to attend; quadruple the attendance of just four years prior. On Saturday night, it was reported that attendance was up considerably over last year’s event.

Maker Faire, the self-declared “World’s Largest DIY Festival”, offers a forum where hundreds of makers and crafters alike man booths where they display their work. In the main halls alone, there were hundreds of booths. Outside the expo halls, the surrounding area was also filled with many interesting projects, some of which were mobile. In addition to all of the projects on display, there were a number of on-stage presentations. The biggest presentation of the weekend was given by Adam Savage who spoke on the topic of his “Colossal Failures”. During his talk, the Fiesta Hall was filled to capacity.

The theme for this year’s fair was “Remake: America” after President Obama‘s call to “begin again the work of remaking America”. In addition, “going green”, alternative fuel vehicles, crafting, steampunk and sciences for the young, were common themes found throughout the fair.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Around 8:50 p.m. Korean Standard Time (11:50 UTC) on Sunday, a fire broke out at Sungnyemun Gate (more commonly referred to as Namdaemun Gate), one of the most iconic South Korean landmarks, located in the center of Seoul.

Approximately 30 firetrucks and 90 firefighters were sent to the site and were able to bring the initial blaze under control by around 10:30 p.m.

However, around 10:40 p.m., the fire rekindled at the second floor of the gate, as firefighters were in the process of extinguishing embers. By 11:00 p.m. the fire had spread over to the roof of the gate. The Korean Fire Department reports that the second blaze had started as the Department was seeking permission from the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration to dismantle parts of the gate in order to stop any possible further fires from spreading.

At about 12:40 a.m. of the 11th, the second floor had collapsed, and the fire was spreading to the first floor; at 1:50 a.m. the first floor collapsed.

Officials have yet to reach a conclusion on the origin of fire, and have presented three possibilities; arson, electric faults or accidental origins.

As the interior of the second floor of the Gate is off-limits to civilians, the Korean Fire Department initially eliminated the possibility of arson, and stated that an electric short or spark from the electric lighting could have been the cause. This possibility was later discarded as a firefighter reported, after examination, that there was no electric wiring on the second floor, as Korean Cultural Heritage Administration regulations prohibit it.

Three eye-witnesses have submitted testimonies. A taxi driver has reported seeing a man in his fifties climb up the staircase carrying a shopping bag, shortly after seeing sparks. Police have stated that the driver’s testimony differs in several crucial factors from the other two witnesses.

Firefighters have reported finding two cigarette lighters on the second floor, inceasing the possibility of arson as the cause.

Police have been unable to obtain evidence from the four closed circuit televisions(CCTVs) installed around the gate.

Officials of the Korean Cultural Heritage Administration have stated that restoration will take two to three years and will cost 20 billion won, equivalent of 21 million USD.

Officials report that no sprinklers or fire alarms were installed inside the gate, and only eight fire extinguishers were placed on both the first and second floor.

Namdaemun, built during the Joseon Dynasty, is the oldest wooden structure in Seoul and was entitled ‘National Treasure No. 1’ in 1962 after restoration.

In recent years, arsons started by evangelical Christians have damaged many Buddhist temples and Korean momuments.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Oral Roberts, founder and former faith healer, called an “emergency meeting” to reinstate Richard Roberts as president of Oral Roberts University. Richard stepped down last month when he was accused of illegal political contributions, financial wrong-doing, and wrongful firings in a lawsuit.

On Wednesday Oral called an ’emergency meeting’ for the faculty following the previous “no confidence” vote. At the recent meeting Oral asked for the faculty who were willing to forgive and start fresh to “stand up.” Donald Vance, a professor of Bible studies, said that when no one person at the meeting stood, Oral Roberts asked one of them, “‘Are you not ready to start over?'”

Vance reported, “The faculty member said, “I don’t know what that means, to start over.”

“‘I would think that would be obvious,'” Oral Roberts responded.

After that, Vance stated “No, Chancellor Roberts, it’s not clear, are you asking us to rescind our three motions?” Then Oral Roberts said that the faculty should drop it.

Following the meeting Provost Mark Lewandoswki wrote a letter to ORU Board of Regents promising to step down if Richard Roberts returns as president. Tulsa World reported that the atompshere at ORU is “divise” noting that when Regent chairman George Pearsons, took his position in May he said in an address to the board: “I am standing here today because the Lord clearly spoke to me and said, ‘Do whatever Richard Roberts asks you to do.'”

The school declined to comment on the meetings.

Friday, June 19, 2009

The University of Toronto SciNet Consortium went online yesterday with the IBM System x iDataPlex Supercomputer.

U of T’s IBM System x is now the fastest computer outside of the United States, the largest Intel processor based IBM installation internationally and the twelfth most powerful globally. It will be used for a wide variety of operations, such as analysing climate change models, aerospace, astrophysics, genetics, bioinformatics, chemical physics, medical imaging research and other highly calculation-intensive tasks.

The C$50 million dollar supercomputer can perform 300 trillion calculations per second and uses the equivalent amount of energy which would power 4,000 homes. The supercomputer will be cooled by outdoor winter air assisted by a water based cooling system during warmer summer months.

The computer will provide computations for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that started preliminary experiments on September 10, 2008 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC will produce cataclysmic collisions that will mimic the conditions that existed shortly after the beginning of time. The IBM System x’s 30,240 Intel 5500 series 2.53 GHz processor cores — arranged in 45 file-like stacks — will examine the results of the particle collisions.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Controversial and explicit Canadian workplace safety ads have been pulled from television, and paper ads from some bus shelters for the Christmas season. However, the ads will return to air in January.

“It’s totally erroneous to suggest we’re pulling anything,” chairman of the Workplace Safety and Information Board of Ontario, Steve Mahoney said. “Our plan from Day 1 was to stop the ads around the middle of December when most of the advertising that’s in the media is focused on Christmas and purchasing gifts. We just didn’t want to be competing with all that stuff.”

In one of the TV ads a woman accidentally slips on grease on the floor and a large steaming pot falls onto her face, and she starts screaming to death. The ads end with the message “There really are no accidents”.

A paper ads shows a construction worker who is in a pool of blood with a forklift operation manual stuck in his chest. Another with a man who is slit by a “Danger” sign with his leg stuck in a machine. They show the messages: “Lack of training can kill” and the other “Ignoring safety procedures can kill”.

“The critics amount to about 25 per cent rating, and I’m delighted they’re upset about the ads because I wouldn’t want anyone to enjoy watching them.”

The videos have been viewed more than 70,000 times on the Board’s website and are gaining large amounts of views on YouTube.

The transit authorities of Hamilton and Mississauga will show modified advertisements. The transit authority of Guelph will show the ads in bus shelters, but the transit authority of Windsor will not because of the graphic nature.

“We’re not against workplace safety, but this is too graphic,” said Caroline Postma, chair of the Transit Windsor board.

Mississauga city councillour Carolyn Parrish said: “My son-in-law was telling me that they shouldn’t be on in prime time because when [my grandson] watches them he just about bursts into tear. Now he follows his mom around the kitchen to make sure she doesn’t spill grease. And he’s only four. There’s too much of a chance that … people are really badly affected by it, and can’t really do anything about it anyway.” She suggested the ads only be aired to workers with the jobs shown in the commercials.

Mahoney changed the earlier promise to air the ads only after 8:00pm to after 9:00pm at last nights meeting with Mississauga city council.

Mahoney said the commercials and paper ads are not “too graphic at all”. And they are “absolutely appropriate and they’re doing what they’re intended to do, they’re creating what I call a water cooler topic of conversation.”

Ninety-eight Canadian workers so far have been killed on the job this year.

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

U.S. Republican Party presidential candidate Mark Everson, former commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), filed a complaint on Monday with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to challenge his exclusion from Thursday’s first Fox News Republican Party presidential debate. Everson argues his exclusion violates Title 11 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations in that debate hosts must not “structure the debates to promote or advance one candidate over another”, and must “use pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in a debate.”

Everson served as Commissioner of the IRS from 2003 to 2007, during the George W. Bush administration. After his departure, he briefly served as CEO of the American Red Cross, worked in the cabinet of Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, and worked for the tax consulting firm alliantgroup. He announced his candidacy this past March with a sixteen-page open letter in which he outlined the six pillars of his campaign: amnesty for illegal immigrants, reinstatement of the military draft, a promise to serve only a single presidential term, and calls for tax reform, deficit reduction, and corporate responsibility.

Fox News claims Everson fails to meet the criteria it established for Thursday’s two debates. Only seventeen candidates meet the criteria, which require a candidate “consistently” be included in “recognized” opinion polls. The prime-time event features the top ten candidates by average polling percentage. The other seven participate in a separate debate just before the prime time event.

In his complaint, Everson urges the FEC to compel Fox News to include him in the second tier debate as the eighth participant.

Everson argues Fox News, in violation of Title 11, “structure[d] the debates to promote or advance one candidate over another” through a July 27 change to its criteria that replaced a pre-existing one percent polling threshold with a threshold admitting those “consistently” included in “recognized” polls. He alleges this was done to ensure the inclusion of the low-polling candidates former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, former New York governor George Pataki, Senator Lindsey Graham, and former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, because Fox News recognizes these candidates as “major players.”

Furthermore, Everson argues the Fox News criteria are not “objective,” as Title 11 requires, because they fail to define the terms “consistently” and “recognized” when referring to polls. He asserts he was included in the Republican Party’s online straw poll in May and is the only candidate still listed on that poll who has been excluded from Thursday’s debate.

Election law expert Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News, says Everson is “completely correct” in his challenge. However, he believes Everson only has a chance of success if he actually files a lawsuit rather than simply complaining to the FEC.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the 2007 rate of employment in Brazil was 2.2% higher then figures for 2006. According to the IBGE the employment figures are at their highest since 2001.

The IBGE reported growth in employment levels for all the 14 regions surveyed, with the highest rates of increase being recorded in the states of São Paulo (with an increase of 3.5%) and the state of Paraná (with an increase of 3.1%). Região Nordeste and Minas Gerais had increases of 1.4% and 1.5% respectively.

According to the IBGE, the industries with the biggest increase in employment figures were food and drink, transport, metal and machinery. The biggest falls in employment figures were in footwear, woodwork and clothing.