cushsf’s posterous

BRYANT, Ark. – Police said a woman has been arrested for allegedly slipping some tranquilizers into her boss's coffee because she felt "he needed to chill out." Police said the 24-year-old woman admitted to detectives that she slipped the drugs into veteranarian John Duckett's drink. Officers said Duckett knew something was wrong shortly after drinking some of the coffee Tuesday morning.

Officers said the woman cleaned the cages at the the Reynolds Road Animal Clinic.

A judge set bond at $25,000 Friday and a jailer said the woman was still being held Friday. Her next court appearance is scheduled for April 21.

We're used to getting coffee, soda, candy, and chips from a vending machine. Now, according to the New York Times, if Claudio Torghele has his way, Italians and eventually Americans will be able to get a made-while-you-watch, freshly baked pizza from a vending machine.
The machine does not just slip a frozen pizza into a microwave. It actually whips up flour, water, tomato sauce, and fresh ingredients to produce a piping hot pizza in about three minutes.
The customer presses a button to choose one of four varieties—Margherita (plain cheese and tomato sauce), bacon, ham or fresh greens. A plastic container dumps flour into a drum resembling a tiny washing machine; a squirt of water follows, and the drum goes into a spin cycle, forming a blob of dough that is then pressed flat to form a 12-inch disk.
Tomato paste is squirted onto the dough and cheese is added before it is lifted into a small infrared oven. The baked pizza then slips onto a cardboard tray and out into the customer’s waiting hands. Mr. Torghele says the pizza will cost as little $4.50, depending on the variety.

http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=4694496&itemid=1509

EDITORIAL On January 21st, his second day in office, President Barack Obama announced that he was dramatically changing the rules on federal government secrecy. His statement directly reversed, and repudiated, the paranoia and backroom dealings of the Bush administration.

"The Freedom of Information Act," the new president declared, "should be administered with a clear presumption: in the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public."

LOS ANGELES —  Authorities are investigating the death of a toddler who wandered onto an East Los Angeles street and was run over by a sports utility vehicle.

The California Highway Patrol says the 2-year-old from Bakersfield was playing on the sidewalk Saturday when he ran into the street and into the path of a Chevy Tahoe.

The driver of the SUV, 43-year-old Carlos Sanchez of Long Beach, was traveling between 10 and 15 mph.

It was not immediately known who was supposed to be watching after the boy.

MEXICO CITY — Mexico is decrying Forbes Magazine's decision to include the reputed leader of one of the country's most violent drug cartels on its list of billionaires.

Forbes ranks Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, with an estimated $1 billion fortune, at No. 701 — between a Swiss oil-trading tycoon and an American chemical heir.

Guzman, Mexico's most-wanted fugitive, is believed to head the Sinaloa cartel.

President Felipe Calderon said Thursday that "magazines are not only attacking and lying about the situation in Mexico but are also praising criminals."

Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora said Forbes is defending crime by "comparing the deplorable activity of a criminal wanted in Mexico and abroad with that of honest businessmen."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,509120,00.html

Here is our pregnancy-addict TV-mom giving birth

Contxts is a Text Message Replacement for Business Cards [Contacts]

By Kevin Purdy on Text Messaging

If carrying around regular old business cards seems really old-fashioned (or you've just run out), Contxts is your SMS alternative. Hand out a username, and anyone can text for your contact details. The concept is pretty simple, and requires only a cell phone capable of sending text messages. Sign up at Contxts with a username and phone number, then customize the information you want to be given out over SMS. You can write whatever you want within 140 basic characters, and add social network contacts for visitors to Contxt's web site who want more info. Give out your username and ask people to text it to 50500, or text your friend's number to Contxt from your registered cellphone, like so: send 5551224567. The recipient gets all the data you want them to have, you don't have to hand out anything or kill any trees, and it's a small enough message to put on a presentation screen, send in an email signature, or otherwise share. Contxts is free, describes itself as "alpha" and asks you to be "gentle" with your linking and recommending. Contxts - mobile sms business cards [via eHub]

This is a great service and is about time for it. Should come in very handy. I set myself up however the 140 words limit is not enough for proper marketing and just covers very basic information.

If you want to taste the oldest Champagne in the world you'd better hurry - there are only two bottles left.

Enraged or inspired by what you've read? Have your say on the Letters page of Decanter magazine by emailing editorial@decanter.com.

--> But the chances of getting your hands on a bottle of Perrier Jouët's Sillery 1825 are virtually nil unless you are a top wine journalist or royalty.

One of the last three remaining bottles of the oldest wine in the world, verified by the Guinness Book of Records, has just been polished off by a group of international journalists including Serena Sutcliffe and Michel Bettane.

Related stories: Champagne producers welcome sales downturn Sutcliffe wins top French honour

The lucky tasters are reported to have burst into applause as chef de cave, Herve Deschamps, pulled the cork. Much to their disappointment, he didn't give them an encore.

French critic Michel Bettane said the wine was 'unbelievable'.

Tasters reported that the wine was heavily oxidized and had lost its sparkle. Sotheby's Serena Sutcliffe MW had never tasted Champagne this old. 'It must have been incredibly powerful and extremely sweet when young,' she said.

The tasting included magnums of Belle Epoque from 1985, 1982 and 1971 and its debut 1964 vintage.

Bettane hailed 1928 as the greatest Champagne vintage of the twentieth century while the 1911 was 'still young', according to Sutcliffe.

At the tasting Perrier Jouët opened a series of nineteenth century vintages with the highlights being 1825, 1846 and 1858.

The last King of France, Charles X was crowned in 1825 in Reims Cathedral.

This bacon-and-cheese-stuffed pizza burger is comprised of two sausage-and-pepperoni pizzas (as buns), a five-pound hamburger patty, two pounds of bacon, two pounds of cheese, an onion, and two garlic bulbs. Assembly instructions at Geekologie.
http://www.bloglines.com/preview?siteid=487122&itemid=14404

7 International Spacecraft that Could Replace NASA's Shuttle
NASA's Orion won't be ready until at least 2015, but the current space shuttle is due to retire next year. Meet the seven international spacecraft from the world's space fleet that could inherit the job of ferrying supplies into space.
By Michael Belfiore
Illustration by Maximus Chatsky
Published in the April 2009 issue.

A Chinese rocket carrying the Shenzhou-7 spaceship blasts off from the launch pad at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. (Photo by Xu Haihan/ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
The space shuttle is due for retirement in 2010, and NASA’s next spaceship, Orion, won’t be available until at least 2015. That will leave a five-year gap during which NASA astronauts and space-station cargo will be grounded unless they find other ways to get to orbit. In the past, NASA has cadged rides off its former arch-rival, the Russian Federal Space Agency, and its Soyuz (for astronauts) and Progress (for cargo) spacecraft. But relations between the U.S. and Russia are cooling, raising the very real prospect that Congress will forbid NASA to buy spaceflights from Russia. NASA has stepped up its support of two U.S. companies, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and Orbital Sciences Corporation, that hope to have unmanned cargo spaceships ready for launch by 2010. (See details below.) Even if these companies succeed, NASA will still have to rely on Soyuz for manned flights. But maybe not for long. Here’s a roundup of seven rides to low Earth orbit besides the space shuttle and Soyuz that could be available for space-station flights.

2003 | SHENZOU
China National Space Administration
China became Earth’s third space-faring nation with this vehicle’s first launch in 2003. Since then, these single-use craft, loosely based on Soyuz and boosted by China’s Long March 2F rockets, have been flying taikonauts to orbit once every two or three years, making the Shenzhou the only vehicle besides Soyuz and the shuttle that could currently fly astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA and its Chinese counterpart have so far shown no signs of cooperating, but that could change.

2009 | H-II TRANSFER VEHICLE
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency
This unmanned ship was designed for transporting cargo to the International Space Station. The first of these expendable vehicles will launch this year aboard a new Japanese H-IIB rocket; no manned versions are planned.

2010 | DRAGON
Space Exploration Technologies (USA)
Dot-com millionaire Elon Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, to deliver affordable access to space, and he’s been developing the Dragon and its Falcon family of rockets with the help of seed money from NASA. In December 2008, NASA went a step further and awarded SpaceX a $1.6 billion contract to service the International Space Station with 12 cargo flights starting in 2010. SpaceX is also working on a crew version of Dragon.

2010 | CYGNUS
Orbital Sciences Corporation (USA)
Orbital Sciences Corporation has also been receiving federal funding to develop alternate rides to orbit, and it too got a NASA contract in December to send cargo to the International Space Station. Orbital’s contract is worth $1.9 billion for eight launches aboard the Cygnus capsule, boosted by the company’s Taurus II launcher, now in development. Current plans call for cargo flights only, but the company says manned flights wouldn’t be out of the question if NASA requested them.

2014 | SUNDANCER
Bigelow Aerospace (USA)
Lockheed Martin and Bigelow Aerospace are studying the conversion of existing hardware to launch Bigelow’s Sundancer capsules to the firm’s planned space stations. While not part of NASA’s plans, the Atlas V 401 launcher and the proposed cargo and crew capsules could easily service the International Space Station.

2015 | ORBITAL VEHICLE
Indian Space Research Organization
The prosaically named (for now) Orbital Vehicle has been on Indian drawing boards since at least 2006, and the Indian space agency conducted unmanned re-entry tests in 2007 to gather hard data for a manned re-entry capsule. Actual construction is awaiting government approval for funding, making this the most speculative project of the bunch. The spacecraft would launch on India’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III, now in development.

2020 | AUTOMATED TRANSFER VEHICLE
European Space Agency
An unmanned cargo version of Europe’s answer to the Russian Progress cargo ship, with three times the payload, arrived at the International Space Station for the first time last year, boosted by Europe’s Ariane 5 launch vehicle. The European Space Agency is studying a four-person manned version dubbed the Crew Transport Vehicle, or CTV, for use in 2020.

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