Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004 McDonald's Taiwan Dresses Cashiers In Maid Outfits A McDonald's restaurant in Taiwan has been dressing its female cashiers in schoolgirl uniforms and pink maid outfits and having them address customers as "master," according to a Japanese news website. The skimpy outfits began appearing on workers at the McDonald's near Taipei Railway Station last week, reports Scott Dixon for Rocket News 24. The schoolgirl uniforms consist of miniskirts, knee-high socks, neck ties and "cat ears." Videos posted online show the women donning the uniforms and saluting customers as if they are at a military academy. Other female workers have been spotted dressed as maids, wearing short pink dresses with white ruffled aprons and black knee-high socks. Videos show them posing seductively with McDonald's french fries and hamburgers. "Workers wearing the maid uniforms greeted customers by calling them 'master' and using other maid-like phrases," Dixon writes. We reached out to McDonald's for comment on the costumes and will update when we hear back.
File:Fullneed.jpg Beijing Citizens, Shrouded In Pollution, Flock To Giant Screens To View Artificial Sunrise You know it's bad when...The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city's natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises. Following this week's practical shutdown of the city of "beyond index" levels of pollution, as The Mail Online reports, residents donned air masks and left their homes to watch the only place where the sun would hail over the horizon that morning... It's grim... The futuristic screens installed in the Chinese capital usually advertize tourist destinations, but as the season's first wave of extremely dangerous smog hit, ths happened... Via The Mail Online, ... On Wednesday, China's commercial capital, Shanghai, introduced emergency measures, allowing it to shut schools and order cars off the road in case of severe smog.
Powerful Photos Go Deep Inside America's Fracking Boom | Raw File Jodie Simons and Jason Lamphere demonstrate how their tap water ignites. They have lived since 2010 without well water to drink or bathe in, attributing it to Chesapeake’s nearby gas-drilling activities. Monroeton, Bradford County 2011. Nina Berman Marcellus Shale well in the Tiadaghton State Forest in Lycoming County. Martha Rial After workers hauled away two water tanks that supplied three homes from his backyard, John “Denny” Fair went inside his small home and became teary-eyed. Scott Goldsmith A Chevron gas rig, Franklin Township, PA. Noah Addis IPhone images for the project were gathered from all corners of Pennsylvania — from the Northeast Susquehanna watershed to north of Pittsburgh to serve as "impressions." Lynn Johnson Natural gas bubbling up from a natural spring is lit on fire for this photo. A gas-drilling site in Springville, Susquehanna County, PA. Well flaring in Jefferson Township, Greene County. Brian Cohen A frack water pipe traverses a field belonging to Tim Grossik.
A Bird Flies South, and It’s News Photo DUXBURY, Mass. — The snowy owl seemed almost complacent, showing the confidence of a top predator whose bright yellow eyes suggested she might be sizing you up as a weaker combatant — or perhaps a large snack. She had been where no bird should safely be — Logan International Airport in Boston — and now, regal and imposing in brief captivity, she represented the latest of her kind to arrive in a remarkable and growing winter’s wandering to the Lower 48. Not only is the Boston area seeing the largest number of snowy owls ever recorded, they are popping up in territory far from their usual habitat near the Arctic Circle. “This year’s been bizarre,” said Dan Haas, a birder in Maryland. No one is sure why so many snowies are showing up in so many places — whether it can be attributed to more food in their Arctic habitats than usual, or climate change at the top of the world. The big birds known as Bubo scandiacus reach a height of 20 to 27 inches and have a wingspan of 54 to 66 inches.
Can a $70 Light Bulb Change Your Life?: Video Is the Universe a Simulation? Photo Gray Matter By EDWARD FRENKEL IN Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita,” the protagonist, a writer, burns a manuscript in a moment of despair, only to find out later from the Devil that “manuscripts don’t burn.” But there is one area of human endeavor that comes close to exemplifying the maxim “manuscripts don’t burn.” What kinds of things are mathematical entities and theorems, that they are knowable in this way? This question has divided thinkers for centuries. Many mathematicians, when pressed, admit to being Platonists. We don’t know. This may strike you as very unlikely. Very clever. Indeed, there may be. But these computer simulations, Professor Beane and his colleagues observe, generate slight but distinctive anomalies — certain kinds of asymmetries. Are we prepared to take the “red pill,” as Neo did in “The Matrix,” to see the truth behind the illusion — to see “how deep the rabbit hole goes”?
Official Center of the World, Felicity, California Felicity, California Time to recalibrate yourself. Drive just west of the border between Arizona and southern California, and stop in the Sonoran Desert -- one of the hottest and driest places in the U.S. The Center of the World disk. Jacques-Andre Istel has officially established the Center of the World here, and he has built a town around it to bolster his claim (The Center of the World is also said to be elsewhere, making it easier for those who wish to be centered). Mayor Istel is a gracious, well-mannered man with a vision. Jacques-Andre saw this barren wasteland while serving as a Marine in the Korean War. Mayor greets visitors. First, Jacques-Andre wrote a children's book which helped convince Imperial County, California, to legally recognize a spot on his property as the official Center of the World (it is also recognized as such by the Institut Geographique National of France). The Mayor needed a way to mark his Center. More information is available at felicityusa.com.
Free Energy Systems "Q: Then electricity is, in essence, a flow of electrons?A: Yes. Q: You say they are tapped. Q: The electrons of the conductor itself are being passed along, and this is the manifestation of the flow of electricity? Q: In what sense am I not correct? Q: Electrical energy will be present in everything. Q: Okay. Q: What qualities does the superconductor have that contributes to this accelerating of flow? Q: What creates a cycling magnetic pulse? Q: How do you create a gravity vacuum? Q: You said that a superconductor separates the electrons, thus exciting the flow. Q: How is that different from a normal electric flow? Q: Is this separation of electrons a key to this process? Q: What additional conditions or qualities contribute to the separating of electrons? Q: (L) What defines a superconductor? Q: Do you mean that it is an artificial idea, or that the only thing that would have zero resistance would be something that is artificially constructed.A: Both. Q: Well it is VERY cold... Q: (A) Where?
Brain During An Out Of Body Experience How to Make Anything Disappear Back in 2006 Harry Potter was all the rage in the engineering world. That year a team at Duke University built the first rudimentary device for hiding objects, akin to the boy wizard’s invisibility cloak. But in technology as in the movies, Harry Potter is now old news. Over the past six years, scientists have moved beyond mere invisibility: If they could build cloaks for light waves, then why not design materials to conceal sound and even ocean waves? A whole suite of invisibility cloaks are now under development, all building on the same basic principle as the first prototype. The Tech: A group of physicists led by Tolga Ergin and Joachim Fischer at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany built a light-bending fabric last year that—for the first time—rendered a cloaked object invisible to the human eye from any viewing angle. How it Works: As a test, researchers laid the cloak over a flat surface with a small bump in the middle.
This graduation speech teaches you everything you need to know about economics in 297 words In 2011, Thomas Sargent won the Nobel prize in economics. But in 2007, he gave a graduation speech to Berkeley undergraduates that still stands as one of the greatest, shortest introductions to economics — and to life. He began with a simple promise. "I will economize on words," he said. And he did. Economics is organized common sense. If you spend enough time around economists you'll recognize these lessons immediately. Which isn't to say that Sargent's speech is anywhere near comprehensive. @ezraklein That's pretty good. Still, you can take a lot of hard economics classes and read a lot of lengthy economics tomes that don't do nearly as good a job conveying the discipline's lessons as those 297 words. (Hat tip to Tyler Cowen and Jim Rose.)
Team of scientists discovers a way to induce lucid dreams in people Nighttime dreams in which you show up at work naked, encounter an ax-wielding psychopath or experience other tribulations may become a thing of the past thanks to a discovery reported on Sunday. Applying electrical current to the brain, according to a study published online in Nature Neuroscience, induces “lucid dreaming.” Lucid dreaming is a process during which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming and can often gain control of the ongoing plot of the dream. The findings are the first to show that inducing brain waves of a specific frequency produces lucid dreaming. For the study, scientists led by psychologist Ursula Voss of J.W. Electroencephalograms showed that those dreams were accompanied by telltale electrical activity called gamma waves. Those brain waves are related to executive functions such as higher-order thinking, as well as awareness of one’s mental state. Dr. They also felt as if their dream self was a third party whom they were merely observing. Dr. Dr.