Best Full Moon

Tonight is the first full moon of 2010 and it will be the biggest full moon this year. The full moon will coincide with the moon's perigee – it's closest point to Earth. The first moon of the year is also known as the Old Moon. Other names are Wolf Moon, Moon After Yule, and Ice Moon. In Hindi it is known as Paush Poornima. Its Sinhala (Buddhist) name is Duruthu Poya. Don't miss it out. Enjoy!

J.D. Salinger dies

J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose "The Catcher in the Rye" shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91. Salinger died of natural causes at his home on Wednesday, the author's son said in a statement from Salinger's longtime literary representative, Harold Ober Agency. He had lived for decades in self-imposed isolation in the small, remote house in Cornish, N.H.

The Best Firewall in the World

1. One human cell contains 75MB genetic information.
2. One sperm contains a half of that; that is 37.5MB.
3. One ml of semen contains 100 million sperms.
4. In average, ejaculation lasts for 5 sec and contains 2.25 ml semen.
5. This means that the throughput of a man's member is equal to (37.5MB x 100,000,000 x 2.25)/5 = 1 687 500 000 000 000 byte/second = 1,6875 Тerabyte/sec

This means that the female eggcell withstands this DDoS attack at 1,5 terabyte per second, and only lets through one(!) data package, thereby being the best freaking hardware firewall in the world!

The downside of it is that this only small data package that it lets through, hangs the system for the whole of 9 months!

Tim Burton to head Cannes film jury

Tim Burton will head the nine-member jury at this year's Cannes Film Festival. The festival will start on May 12th.

Picassoops

A woman who was taking an art class at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art has accidentally fallen into a Picasso painting and damaged it.
The unusually large canvas, called The Actor, measuring 6ft by 4ft (1.8m by 1.2m) depicts an acrobat posed against an abstracted backdrop. The painting sustained a vertical tear of about six inches (15cm) in the lower right-hand corner and will be repaired.

[source:bbc.co.uk]

Scorpions - The End of the Road

The German rock band Scorpions announced today they are going to retire after more than 40 years! on stage. The band was founded by guitarist Rudolf Schenker, 61, in 1965 in Hanover. The current line-up is Klaus Meine, Matthias Jabs, Rudolf Schenker, Pawel Maciwoda and James Kottak.
Scorpions was my favorite rock band when I was younger. I will always remember their hits - Holiday, Still Loving You, Believe in Love, No One Like You, Wind of Change.
Thank you, Scorpions!
[source:bbc.co.uk]

Avatar - Making movie history

James Cameron's mega-budget blockbuster surpassed the overseas "Titanic's" (another James Cameron) 13-year international boxoffice record ($1.242 billion).
Still to be broken are "Titanic's" domestic boxoffice record ($600.8 million) and its worldwide total ($1.843 billion). "Avatar" has grossed $552.8 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $1.8408 billion globally. Given "Avatar's" current boxoffice pace, it should beat "Titanic's" worldwide record early this week.
Avatar is a great and unique movie. If you haven't seen it yet, do so immediately and do it in the cinema. The computer effects are amazing and must be seen on the big screen.

Flying personal vehicles - not so far away

NASA is working on a personal flying suit. Conceptual designs for the experimental vehicle, called Puffin, were introduced by Mark D. Moore, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center, at a meeting of the American Helicopter Society on Jan. 20 in San Francisco. The Puffin is designed to be 12 feet in length, with a total wingspan of 14 and a half feet; it would weigh in at 300 pounds (without a pilot).
Are you ready to fly?
[source:nytimes.com]