CLICK HERE FOR BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND MYSPACE LAYOUTS »

Sunday, November 8, 2009

McLaren T.27

Unexpected move for a F1 team, but they have developed a short range electric vehicle for cummting and short runs, says the BBC. The design is such that its is as light as possible (600kg), can travel up to 60mph and does 100 miles on single charge. Three prototypes are planned for the coming year and a half.

Bald Bears And Bird Stories

Some nature related articles this week. The first is about bears in a Leipzig Zoo that are going bald. Vets are not entirely sure of the cause but suspect that it may have to do with the climate. The bears in question are from South America and not used to a temperate climate. The zoo admits that they are not very good at reproducing original habitat and that hte same problem has been seen at other zoos.
Then we have a video of the spatuletail hummingbird's mating ritual. The little fellow has a fork tail with a blue flap at each end and uses these while flitting from branch to branch to impress the female. Slow motion video from the BBC is here.
Finally a sad story about a spoonbill that was being tracked by a nature conservation trust. The birds are rare and protected in the Netherlands. Nu.nl reports on the bird, named Harrie being shot by a French hunter on its trek to Africa for the winter.

Intel Charged With Bribery

Following hot on the heels of the European anti-trust case against Intel, they are now being done by a court in a New York for bribery, according to the BBC. Now I'm not an AMD fan-boy, though I tend to find AMDs product are better value in low-mid range of processors. But when Intel have been paying off computer makers to favour their gear, it kind of makes you want to favour the competition doesn't it?

New Anti-Terrorist Weapon: Bears

The BBC has a story on a a camp of Kashmir militants that was attacked by a bear. Two militants were killed. Turned out that the cave they were sheltering in was the bear's den. Although armed with assault rifles, they so taken by surprise that they fled.

Illegal Music Downloaders Buy More

In yet more evidence against the practices of the RIAA and such, The Independent has news of a study carried out on internet users between the ages of 16 and 50 and their downloading habits. The evidence showed the users who downloaded MP3s illegally spent more on music than those that didn't, indicating that file sharers are music lovers. Yet another call to the record industry to change business models.