General and politics:
- According to a Flemish participant, the most impressive speech during the recent regional meeting of the prestigious Mont Pelerin Society was the speech of the Czech president Václav Klaus who warned against Europeanism, NGOism, and other -isms that are starting to replace socialism; see also Klaus's completely new article in the Financial Times (without fees)...
- The hurricane Katrin will cost the insurers and others something between 10 and 25 billions of dollars; if the higher number is true, it will be the most expensive hurricane on record. Also, the oil price has tried the $70 level because of the weather. Katrin is manifested here in Massachusetts as a rather pleasant and peaceful summer rain...
- Wearing sandals and sunglasses, Allan Adams, a Harvard physicist specializing in "string theory," looks like he would be at home sipping espresso in a Greenwich Village coffeehouse: "Gliding isn't macho-type activity. There's no adrenaline rush" :-)...
- The TIME magazine has escalated the worries that the upgef*cked terrorists are planning something significant against our good old Europe. Al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian head of the "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the land of two rivers", is apparently organizing lectures of European languages so that their task becomes easier to solve; Balkans (especially Albania) may become their "golden gate" to Europe...
General science:
- The particles of cosmic dust are larger from the very beginning than previously thought...
- The probe "Reinhold Spirit Messner" is alive and well, a long time after his scheduled death, despite the initial anti-American sentiments on Mars. He is sending new pictures and videos from his climbing and hikes...
- The U.S. may find it difficult to send people to the moon by 2020 right now, but it may be much easier for Malaysia...
- Nanocoating may eliminate foggy lens and windows...
Semiconductor world:
- FBI has identified the likely creators of the Zotob worm and they were caught by the local police in Turkey and Morocco...
- Microsoft has released a beta version of its next filesystem WinFS, well ahead of schedule...
