Want to know how much phone companies and internet service providers charge to funnel your private communications or records to U.S. law enforcement and spy agencies?

That’s the question muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed a few months ago. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that, among other things, they would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public. Read the full story

The mechanics of slowing light down, as well as speeding it up, is governed by methods and equations that are pretty well understood. Now scientists just have to figure out what to do with it.

Most people learn in physics class that light goes one speed: faster than anything else. Because of its long, rich history, this 300 million meters per second is generally treated as an established fact. In the last few decades, though, scientists have been playing around with light’s speed. But, as that history noted, researchers have started playing around with exceptions, based on the premise that “nothing in normal space can go faster than light, but if you can do funny things to space, you can go faster than light.” Read the full story

1. Don’t

2. Drive slower

3. Don’t tail gate. And don’t drive beside people.

4. Beware of bridges (over and under), declines, and inclines.

5. If you lose traction and there is snow nearby, try to veer toward the snow gently. Read the full story

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street. Read the full story

Ever seen a giant Santa on fire? Now you have. This electrical safety warning comes to us all the way from Santa Catarina, Brazil. Remember: despite what your father may have taught you, drinking and Christmas decorating don’t mix. “Russ, we checked every bulb, didn’t we?” Poor Santa, I can see him now, “HO, HO, HO, MEEERRY CHRISTMAS! HO, HO, HOLY SHIT I’M ON FIRE! ELVES, CODE RED!” Read the full story

ScienceDaily (Oct. 19, 2009) — The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

It also gives scientists an ingenious new way to take images of the Moon and any other airless body in the Solar System. Read the full story

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new “war president”? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do — destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they’ve always heard is true — that all politicians are alike. I simply can’t believe you’re about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn’t so. Read the full story

For years, engineers have been working on making smaller and smaller UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). DARPA (Defense Research Advanced Projects Agency) has been taking the lead for years, and is now pushing the envelope by providing a second round of funding for the development of nano-UAVs, unmanned flyers with a mass of just 10 grams, approximately equivalent to two nickels. The company designing the flyer, AeroVironment, recently announced reaching a never-before-achieved technical milestone: a 10-gram nano-UAV that can engage in controlled hovering flight by flapping its two wings, using only an on-board power source and its wings for propulsion and control. Read the full story

Undoubtedly by now you’ve heard about Tiger Woods’ car crash. Early reports had him in serious condition (which remember, is better than critical condition) after he apparently hit a fire hydrant and a tree while leaving his home in his SUV. The latest reports say he has been released from the hospital and is “fine.” But I’m not going to speak to any of that because that’s not what we do (you can find out more here). Read the full story

Published Sunday in Nature Geoscience, the same study shows that the smaller but less stable West Antarctic icesheet is also shedding significant mass.

Scientists worry that rising global temperatures could trigger a rapid disintegration of West Antarctica, which holds enough frozen water to push up the global ocean watermark by about five metres (16 feet).

In 2007 the UN Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) predicted sea levels would rise 18 to 59 centimetres (7.2 to 23.2 inches) by 2100, but this estimate did not factor in the potential impact of crumbling icesheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Read the full story

What thoughts, comments or suggestions do our local readers have on this topic?

Texans Trying To Legalize Pot Read the full story

Patient trapped in a 23-year ‘coma’ was conscious all along

A man thought by doctors to be in a vegetative state for 23 years was actually conscious the whole time, it was revealed last night.

Student Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car crash left him totally paralysed.

He had no way of letting experts, family or friends know he could hear every word they said. Read the full story

The operators of the Large Hadron Collider have successfully sent a beam of protons around the ring of the world’s largest particle collider.

It is the first time the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, has been operational since September 2008, when an electrical connection in the collider’s magnets melted, causing a tonne of super-cooled liquid helium to leak into the tunnel.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced the success on Twitter on Friday afternoon ET.

“We have completed the ring!” read the post on the social networking and microblogging site. Read the full story

They have infested every city in america, their numbers are rapidly increasing, they have a seemingly endless amount of money that will most definitely go towards weapons to be used on innocent people, their code of silence keeps their members quiet so they are free to beat you steal from you or even kill you, unlike most gangs whose race is required for membership they are a mixed gang with all races and religions working together to terrorize the innocent, they do not have to answer to the law because they are the ones we trusted to enforce the law.

However increasingly throughout the years we have seen how corrupt they are. They are no longer there to protect and serve but to honestly enslave and exterminate. Police corruption is out of hand I will not argue that police may be a necessary part of society but something has to be done to bring them under control. Read the full story

It took just six months for a warm and sunny Europe to be engulfed in ice, according to new research.

Previous studies have suggested the arrival of the last Ice Age nearly 13,000 years ago took about a decade – but now scientists believe the process was up to 20 times as fast.

In scenes reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The day After Tomorrow, the Northern Hemisphere was frozen by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, which allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic. Read the full story

Suicides among soldiers this year have topped last year’s record-breaking numbers, but Army officials maintain a recent trend downward could mean the service is making headway on its programs designed to reduce the problem, Army officials said Tuesday.

Since January, 140 active-duty soldiers have killed themselves while another 71 Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers killed themselves in the same time period, totaling 211 as of Tuesday, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, U.S. Army vice chief of staff, told reporters at a briefing Tuesday. But he said the monthly numbers are starting to slow down as the year nears its end. Read the full story