Earth Hour

Its Earth Hour right now! Earth Hour starts at 8:30 pm pacific times and lasts for one hour. During this hour, people turn off the light in their houses, apartments, condo's, etc. It is a symbol that at least some people in society care about saving electricity and about going green, although to what extent could be another matter. Anyways, be green-smart and join in with millions of people around the world (those on the other side of the world would have already done this yesterday because of different time zones) in a simple effort to show the greener side of everyone!

Yale Student Sues for Lost Xbox

Jesse Maiman, 21, has sued US Airways $1 million for a lost Xbox. It is stated that the Xbox has a "specialized" hard drive of some sort, although to what extent is not known. If the airline does not want to take up the court case, Jesse Maiman demands that they pay $1700 for the system, and the maximum damages allowable. A spokeswoman for the airline said that government limits liability for lost luggage to $3,300 per bag. The Xbox was lost during his flight from Conneticut to Cincinatti, back in December. In my opinion, anything of value should not be put into luggages onto airplanes, especially if one is travelling to or from the US, unless it is small enough to be carried on your person, or put into a carry-on travelling bag. Too often does belongings keep getting messed up or gone missing since security is so tight in the US that almost everything must be checked extremely thoroughly.

Naturally 7

Naturally 7 is an a cappella group of young men, playing in a 'band'. Thing is... they use no instruments. What they use are their own voices, imitating instruments in a way so natural, its kind of freaky (in a good way). They've been a group for over 10 years but only recently became a bit more popular, thanks to a viral video of them singing it off in a Paris subway. The "band," which since its birth way back in 1999 had different singers and artists come and go, currently consists of Roger Thomas (musical director, arranger, 1st baritone, Rap), Warren Thomas (percussion, guitar, clarinet, 3rd tenor), Rod Eldridge (1st tenor, scratching, trumpet), Jamal Reed (4th tenor, electric guitar), Dwight Stewart (2nd baritone), Garfield Buckley (2nd tenor, harmonica) and Armand "Hops" Hutton (bass). So far, they've appeared at several performances, featured on Ellen, appeared on the Jay Leno show, and even toured with Michael Bublé as his opening act. To the right is a picture of the current members.

3rd Generation iPod Shuffle

The new 3rd Generation iPod Shuffle, is really something. It's got absolutely no buttons on it, and is nearly half the size of the old iPod shuffle. So how do you maneuver it? On the earphone wire, completely seperate of the actual iPod, there are two buttons for the volume (up and down) and a clicker button. One click equates to play/pause. Two clicks is skip the song, and three clicks is to skip back to a previous song. Although a very, very neat piece of technology, it appears that most people, in their reviews of this new gadget, prefer the other iPods, which arent so buttonless.

Spring Break!

whooo! its spring break!!

Man Survives Jump into Niagra Falls

Earlier today, a man jumped into the Niagra Falls. He was in freezing waters for at least 40 minutes before being rescued. Initially, a helicopter was sent in for rescue but was unabled so used the wind from the helicopter's blades to push the man closer to shore where a firefighter named Todd Brunning swam about 200 feet, got ahold of the man and brought him back to shore. The man did not try to help his rescue in any way, and whether he did not want to or couldn't is still unsure. When he was rescued he wasn't wearing any clothing, though the Niagra Falls Fire Department said that losing things while things such as clothing is not unexpected while on the way down in the waterfall. To the right is a picture of the man after he is rescued.

AngelaBaby's Interview

AngelaBaby, turning 20 this year, is one of Hong Kong's biggest supermodel, and recently had an interesting interview. She says that she looks up to British model Kate Moss and that "She's my idol. She's very fashionable, very pretty. I hope we have similar styles. I like to see her pictures and see how she dresses." Eventually, she revealed, that she would also like to have her own fashion line, as celebrities often do, including Kate Moss as well. When the interviewer asked her what she likes being about model, she said that there are pros and cons. The best thing she likes about modelling is the places she gets to travel to, and the worst is that she is always away from home, due to busy schedules, as well as having "to shoot summer-wear in winter, and then winter-wear in summer. So it's very hard for me. It's either very hot or very cold!" When asked about her rumoured romantic involvement with Jay Chou, a Taiwanese superstar, she said "The newspapers only tell stories!" while laughing, though including that Jay Chou is a "very very good person." Ever since she was 11, Jay Chou has been her idol, and couldn't believe it when she finally got to work with him. Below are pictures of AngelBaby and her idols Kate Moss and Jay Chou

Big Gains in Stock Market for 2009

Today has the stock markets biggest gain in 2009. All three major indexes logged their best day of this year. Dow Jones went up 379 points, which is its highest since november. S&P 500 gained 43 points, best since December. And Nasdaq went up 90 points, its best since november as well. This climb comes after Citigroup lessened some stresses when regulators said they may reinstate a trading rule. Citigroup made a big climb as well, going up 38%. A lot of other companies' stock went up as well, including Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), General Electric (GE), Cisco Systems (CSCO), eBay (EBAY), Dell (DELL), google (GOOG) and many more.

Facial Expression Controlled iPod

Kazuhiro Taniguchi, a researcher at Osaka University, Japan, has created special earphones. It is called the "Mimi Switch" or Ear Switch in english. These earphones have infrared sensors built in to read facial expressions. And instead of using your fingers to control your iPod, the sensors allow you to use facial expressions instead. Simply make a wink, stick out your tongue, smile, frown, almost anything, and it'll have its own seperate function. Don't expect this to be on sale soon, it wont come out until two or three years. These earphones are great for tech junkies, anyone who has the money to buy it (assuming that it will be quite costly), and for those who dont mind making random faces and risk offending a bystander or pedestrian.To the right are some pictures of a model with the earphones.

Muziic

The new internet phenomenon: Muziic. One only needs to download this program and by doing so, gains access to all the music videos there are on youtube, and compiles them into a music video playlist which is streamed directly to your computer. It is free and 100% legal, although such a wonderful program should be criminal to have. When the program is downloaded, it will appear and behave almost exactly the same as any other media player such as real player, windows media, quicktime, etc. The only difference is that you can see the video too. Anyone interested can visit the website by clicking here or click on http://www.muziic.com/

Saturn's New Moon

A new moon orbitting saturn has been discovered. The moon, quite small, only about a half kilometer across, orbits on saturn's sixth ring. This moon was discovered by the Cassini spacecraft's camera, and the spacecraft is expected to follow up a mission for closer picture taking in early 2010. It was not announced whether the moon has been named. To the right are some pictures of the moon as it is seen at some distance, which appears to be a little speck of light.

Math Holiday: Square Root Day!

Today is Square Root Day because its March 3rd, 2009 or 3/3/09, and three is the square root of nine: 3² = 3 x 3 = 9. This amazing occurcence comes only nine times every century. The last time was February 2, 2004 (2/2/04). A facebook group for this event suggests that people should celebrate by eating roots like potatoes and radishes. But the roots cant be eaten just in any way, of course. They'd have to be cut into squares! (obviously!) the next Square Root day will be on April 4, 2016 (4/4/16). Another mathematical holiday in the VERY SAME MONTH is Pi day on March 14. But not only does it go to the third digit of 3.14 but at exactly 1:59:26 AM, the magical number can be taken back to 7 decimal places! March - what a numerically magical month it is!

Apple's New Mac Pro and Mac Mini

The new Mac Pro will be priced at $2,499 for the quad-core and $3,299 for the eight-core version. It uses the "Nehalem" processor which runs at 2.93 GHz.

Another thing that was unveiled today is the new Mac Mini. What's new in this one is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics card that is in it. It supposedly will improve the graphics from the previous Mac Mini five times. Apple also stated that it is the world's most energy efficient desktop computer.