Ebberly's Place

(CBS) When 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley and his crew went to China to record the black market dismantling of electronic waste, or "e-waste," the experience was almost as hazardous for the 60 Minutes team as working with the toxic material is for poor Chinese workers. Jumped by a gang of men overseeing the e-waste operations who tried to take the CBS team's cameras, Pelley's crew managed to escape and bring back footage of the hazardous activities. Pelley's investigation will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. The Chinese attackers were trying to protect a lucrative business of mining the e-waste-junked computers, televisions and other old electronic products-for valuable components, including gold. "They're afraid of being found out. This is smuggling. This is illegal," says Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, a group working to stop the dumping of toxic materials in poor countries that certifies ethical e-waste recyclers in the United States. "A lot of people are turning a blind eye here. And if somebody makes enough noise, they're afraid this is all going to dry up."

ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2008) - A team of theoretical and experimental physicists, with participants from Case Western Reserve University, have designed a new black hole simulator called BlackMax to search for evidence that extra dimensions might exist in the universe. Black holes are theorized to be regions in space where the gravitational field is so strong that nothing can escape its pull after crossing what is called the event horizon. BlackMax simulates these regions.

Travelers beware; your full blown image, private parts and all, could soon be visible to security officers on-screen, at an airport near you! Within the next 60 days, some airports nationwide are scheduled to install and use full body-imaging devices. But not everyone believes they're a good idea.

New research, out today, Tuesday, November 4, published in IOP Publishing's Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, shows how knowledge gained from the pursuit of nuclear fusion research may reduce the threat to acceptable levels, making man's first mission to Mars a much greater possibility. The solar energetic particles, although just part of the 'cosmic rays' spectrum, are of greatest concern because they are the most likely to cause deadly radiation damage to the astronauts. Large numbers of these energetic particles occur intermittently as "storms" with little warning and are already known to pose the greatest threat to man. Nature helps protect the Earth by having a giant "magnetic bubble" around the planet called the magnetosphere.

PhysOrg.com: (PhysOrg.com) -- This image gives the first clear view of the faint boundary of the Crab Nebula's X-ray-emitting pulsar wind nebula. The nebula is powered by a rapidly-rotating, highly-magnetized neutron star, or 'pulsar' (white dot near the center).

Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, what we hoped it would be. The Batman Begins to Vista's Batman and Robin. While superficially both are kinda the same (Batman!), there's a completely different thought process at work. Our walkthrough and videos showed you how the new user experience is something to be excited about; now we want to show you what it is under the hood that enables the wholly hypeworthy experience to be all it can be. And why Windows 7 will totally smash Vista's kidneys.

Like Elvis in '68, Microsoft is itching for a "comeback," and Windows 7 is the perfect excuse. In fact, this week in LA at the Professional Developers Conference, Windows 7 officially shoved Vista aside. Having suffered through the often deserved criticisms of that ill-fated OS installment, Microsoft's people are thrilled to tears to be able to talk about something (anything!) else. On Sunday, they took journalists through a lively 7-hour orientation on Win 7, then handed off a Dell XPS M1330 loaded with pre-beta Build 6801. Thankfully for the overworked, underappreciated developers at Redmond, it's surprisingly stable, and its look and feel already puts Vista to shame.

It was a "dark, evil wave" that almost killed him, but for Australian surfer Kerby Brown, riding this 40-foot monster in his own backyard was one of the highlights of his surfing career.\n\nThe 25-year-old surfed the enormous break at an outdoor reef in the Southern Ocean "somewhere between Margaret River and South Australia" on the southwest coast of Western Australia last August.

Honda Unveils Robot That Helps You Walk, Funny-looking bipedal machine that supports weight, regulates stride actually very useful in rapidly aging Japan. Imagine a bicycle seat connected by mechanical frames to a pair of shoes for an idea of how the new wearable assisted-walking gadget from Honda works. The experimental device, unveiled Friday, is designed to support bodyweight, reduce stress on the knees and help people get up steps and stay in crouching positions.

I found this gallery on FriendFeed tonight. Yeah........I was really bored.

Check out Barbara Bernini's Photography webpage!

Mike Baird's Personal Web Presence web page presents some of Mike Baird's professional photography online. Check it out!!!

Little Eno got off to a rough start when his mother was accidentally killed by a car in the spring of this year. Luckily, staff at the North Carolina Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores found him early enough to save him. Unlucky for the aquarists, raising a baby otter is a lot of work, requiring around the clock bottle-feeding until he was old enough for fish. Additionally, they had to teach him to swim and hunt. Now six months old, he loves to romp (but apparently still enjoys eating and sleeping). Check out the cute pics inside.

Anybody reading the headlines these days knows the world teeters on the biggest worldwide recession in modern history and our leaders are scrambling for solutions. It is very timely that I recently had the opportunity of interviewing Mr Steve Bolles, founder and President of Merchants Barter Exchange, one of America's great innovators of economic change and stability right now. Bolles is far from reclusive, but rarely entertains interviews, however due to the seriousness of the current global crisis he extended this offer.

After arriving at the field jail, we never left the car. Instead, we were diverted to the LAPD's West LA division to be processed. We arrived sometime after 5pm. We were held inside, on benches, before we were each placed in separate 'tanks,' or holding rooms, maybe 6 x8 feet each. We were each alone in our rooms, and it stayed that way for roughly an hour and a half, except for the moment I was allowed out to use the restroom. While I was being led to the restroom, I saw the man who assaulted Maurice Carriere for tearing down part of the Yes on 8 poster he had on his truck. (Full story here.) I told the officer escorting me that I had seen the assault and had photos of the attacker in his truck, as well as the bloodied protester, but I was ignored. I did hear the man who had been driving the truck say something to an officer at the station's front desk about a "hippie faggot" assaulting him. I did not hear anything else.

Probably the most sought-after surfing experience is the tube ride (a.k.a. "getting barreled"). A tube ride occurs when the top of the wave pitches over the surfer so that he or she is completely enclosed in an oval space behind the curtain of falling water. Inside the "green room," you are hurtling through a tunnel of water and the only way out (without wiping out) is straight through the opening in front of you. Hollow waves are foot-for-foot the most powerful variety of breaking wave, and good tube riding is really difficult. It requires timing, experience, and skill. The video shows us some world-class surfers making it look easy!

The Department of Defense has put out a call: design a pack of robots. A so-called Multi-Robot Pursuit System would be used to "search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject." Each robot has to weigh 100 kilograms or less, act autonomously (with a human squad leader), negotiate obstacles, and provide immediate feedback. The robots would report back to a human operator, and defer to that human when the robot AI determines that a "difficult decision" is required. The first phase of development is to create the sensors for detecting humans and to conduct feasibility experiments. Then comes the building of a prototype with fully functional sensors. At that point, a third phase would try to establish whether a pack of such robots -- about three to five in number -- could realistically be used for missions involving, according to the proposal, "search and rescue, fire-fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical, and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

Almost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body. Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies. Rather than being a by-product of religion or an emotional security blanket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness.

Welcome to some of the biggest wikis at Wikia! Check 'em out! We've got information on everything you've ever wanted to know about Star Wars, Star Trek, WoW and much more!! WARNING!! YOU WILL GET ADDICTED, THEN YOU'LL GET LOST IN HERE FOR DAYS!!