Toshiba 15.6″ Windows 7 laptop (Under $500)

With an Intel Core i3 processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 640 GB hard drive, the Toshiba Satellite L655-S5158 makes for a great bargain at $479.99. When you consider that the included i3-380m processor is almost identical in performance tests to the higher-level i5-430m.

This laptop is by really the best bargain to buy in June 2011. It’s powerful, incredibly priced, made by Toshiba, an excellent manufacturer, and would make an ideal computer for the standard computer user who would use it to browse the internet, skype with friends, research for college, or play some basic games.

It comes with an integrated Intel graphics card, so it is capable of running games like Half-Life and Team Fortress 2, but Battlefield Bad Company 2 and similar complex more modern games would be unplayable, making this a good computer, but not a computer for a serious gamer.

13.3″ Apple MacBook Pro (Under $1200)

Although the price is over twice that of the Toshiba L655-S5158, the technical specifications are very similar.  The 13.3″ Macbook Pro sports an i5-2415M processor that doesn’t do quite as well in benchmarks as the Toshiba’s i3-380M. The Macbook also has a smaller hard drive, the same amount of RAM, though slightly faster, and its screen size is 2.3″ smaller.

With all of this taken into consideration, for under $1200, this is still quite a nice buy. You aren’t buying the components in the case of an Apple, but instead buying OSX and a world of streamlined, user-friendly computing that is unsurpassed. That said, purchasing a Windows 7 laptop in the same price-range will give you something quite amazing in comparison:

Comparably-priced Windows 7 laptop (Under $1200)

If you’re financially-minded, you might look at the 13.3″ Macbook Pro and wonder what you could get if you stuck with Windows in that price range. For $1163.03 you can grab yourself an ASUS N73SV-XC1:

Product Features

• Intel Core i7-2630QM Quad-Core Processor 2.0GHz with turbo boost up to 2.9GHz; Nvidia GT540M graphics with 1GB DDR3 VRAM
• 8GB of DDR3 1333MHz SDRAM (2x4GB), 3 slots, 12GB Max; 1TB Hard Drive (500GB x 2, 7200 RPM); Wi-Fi 802.11 bgn
• Super-Multi DVD Disk Drive; HDMI Port; 1x USB 3.0 port; 3x USB 2.0 Ports; Bluetooth; 2.0MP Webcam; eSATA; 5-in-1 card reader
• 17.3-Inch HD+ (1600×900) LED Display

That i7-2630QM processor blows everything else we’ve yet seen out of the water in terms of performance. It has over 3 times the performance rating of the processor in the Macbook Pro for the same price.

The ASUS also offers 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 1TB HDD, and is a monster for gaming with a Nvidia GT540M dedicated graphics card and a 17.3″ LED screen.

It’s almost unfair to compare this deal to the Macbook Pro, but if you *really* want to get this type of power in a Macbook, you’re going to have to shell out $2278.95, and that still only comes with 4GB of RAM and 3/4 of the hard drive space. Of course, you could just stick with the ASUS N73SV-XC1.

But do you really need a $1000+ laptop, or are you looking for something simpler? Perhaps your life and work run through the internet and you don’t have the need for a system that can process complex programs like those used in Hollywood-quality film production. If that’s the case, then you need…

A NETBOOK

Our next installment on buying a netbook will be linked here when it comes out.

Associated Press

Orlando, Fl, USA — NASA Archivist Harold Morrow is a rational man, and he will probably remind you of that at least 5 times during a normal conversation. Some people would say that that sounds like he is overcompensating, and he says he probably agrees with that. “But it’s not that I’m crazy. That’s not what I’m compensating for. I’m compensating for the fact that I’m saying things I know damned well sound crazy.”

That might be a subtle distinction, but it’s one that is very important to Mr. Morrow.

Harold knows the company he’s going to be keeping from now on, whether he likes it or not. UFO fanatics, Illuminati conspiracists, and Moon Landing deniers. “Oh, God, the Hoaxers. I hate them more than anyone else, because at least the other popular conspiracy theories are built around inventing fantastical ideas. That’s the only one I can think of that focuses specifically on making the world a more boring place — that works actively to deny obvious facts, instead of inventing ridiculous ones”.

But, just to be clear, Harold does neither. He’s not denying the truth of the moon landings, or any other well-established historical fact. Nor is he trying to push an imagined scenario on anyone. He openly admits that he has no explanation, rational or otherwise, for the curious phenomena he has been patiently documenting and (in a few cases) observing himself. He is, in fact, doing exactly what he always does — archiving facts and evidence, without passing judgement.

But those facts and evidence (assuming one accepts that that’s what they are) are more than a little bizarre, which is what makes Harold worry about his reputation and, possibly, his sanity.

“It comes down to a simple question: What is wrong with the Apollo 11 Footage?”, says Harold. “‘Nothing’, is what most people would say. Or, more likely, ‘What?’” He gives self-deprecating laugh at that; he’s gotten that response quite a bit. But it doesn’t change the way he feels. “Something is wrong. I don’t know what, but I’m going to keep collecting evidence until I find out what it is.”

This pursuit (or, as some might say, obsession) began in 1998. Harold was in the middle of a massive archival project in preparation for the 30th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s famous first step, and on one of his rare nights off he was talking to his uncle David about the event. David had been a young man barely out of high school at the time, and (like almost anyone old enough to remember it) he had vivid memories of that moment. But he also remembered something else. Something very strange happened to him that day. “David is not the kind of guy to make up crazy stories, but this was a weird one,” says Harold.

“First of all, you have to understand that David is an avid hunter. Has been since he was old enough to fire a gun; it’s just part of his family’s tradition. So the fact that he had a handgun on his belt while he was watching Neil Armstrong climb down the ladder is not at all unusual. In fact, I think he had just come back from a hunting trip; maybe he was cleaning his rifle while he was watching it.”

But what happened to him was definitely unusual. “I guess you could call it a blackout,” says Harold. “He remembers that opening line, the infamous flub by Neil, ‘That’s one small step for [a] man…’, and the next thing he remembers, his pistol was on the table, smoking, with a round missing from the cylinder. And he had that fluttery, anxious feeling in his stomach that you get after a fight or a good scare. In his words, ‘I felt like I had just been jumped by a Grizzly, and barely escaped with my life’.”

This probably would have lingered as nothing more than an odd family anecdote if it hadn’t been for Harold’s job. As part of his work on the 30th Anniversary Retrospective, he was interviewing people around the country about their memories of the Apollo 11 landing. “If I hadn’t heard David’s story first, I probably wouldn’t have noticed anything. But he set me in just the right state of mind to see these things — subtle behaviors from people I was interviewing. Sometimes they would tense up, almost imperceptibly, while describing their memories. They would often look like they wanted to tell me something else, but were just holding it back. A few people even started to mention something, but were cut off by their spouses or kids, like ‘OK, Dad, don’t make us look stupid by bringing that up again.’”

But Harold wanted to hear it. It wasn’t stupid to him, and he wanted them to know that he wouldn’t judge them or look down on them. “I was there to hear stories. And I wanted the real stories, not the sanitized Normal Rockwell crap. So I kept pursuing it.” And what he found painted an increasingly bizarre and disturbing picture — disturbing, more than anything else, for its consistency.

“That’s the really creepy thing about it. These are not just a handful of random blackout stories that can be explained away by epileptic seizures or too many glasses of wine. They follow a pretty clear pattern.” The template was defined by Harold’s uncle David, and almost all of the subsequent stories seemed to follow it.

The basic elements are pretty straightforward: A person would be watching Neil’s first steps on the moon, hear that famous “One small step” line, and would experience a sudden discontinuity in time. This short blackout would often be followed by objects inexplicably appearing out of place — a baseball bat, a tire iron, a kitchen knife, sometimes a firearm with a round or two missing. And those present often reported physical symptoms following the event; symptoms indicative of severe physical and emotional stress consistent with a massive release of adrenaline. And it wasn’t just the night of the landing itself; these incidents seemed to repeat — sometimes from the same individuals — on subsequent viewings of the video.

“It’s like this footage was scaring the hell out of people, but they had no idea why and not even any memory of being scared.”

After collecting enough evidence, Harold decided to take the chance of bringing it to the attention of his supervisors. “I felt like an idiot, but I just couldn’t ignore it anymore, and I had to let someone know.” What was the response? “Silence,” says Harold. “Total silence. In a way, that was the scariest thing about it. It would be a lot more reassuring if they had laughed in my face and told me to take some time off.”

For now, after an initial flurry of activity, the trail seems to have gone cold. Harold has found it increasingly difficult to find new information on this topic, but he has two more interesting data points to fit into this still poorly-formed narrative. The first one is that the number of incidents seemed to be primarily concentrated in the first 5 years after the Apollo 11 landing. “They tapered off pretty dramatically after that. There have been occasional reports since, some as recent as the mid ’90s. But those are extremely rare.”

The other discovery may constitute the only shred of corroborating physical evidence Harold has discovered to date, although it is pretty weak and — consistent with everything else in this story — very strange. “It’s the length of the video,” says Harold. “It doesn’t match observation times.” Asked to clarify, Harold describes the discrepancy thus: Find video footage of Neil Armstrong’s first step and watch it from beginning to end while counting the time in your head. Compare the time you count with the displayed length of the video. “I can almost guarantee that they won’t match. Not only will they not match, but the difference is surprisingly consistent — about four to four and a half seconds. Not too many people have done this experiment, because it takes some time and it’s so strange that most people don’t see the point. But almost every time someone has done it, the results have been the same.”

So what does this mean? “I have no idea,” laughs Harold. “Truly; I don’t even have a guess. It just makes no sense whatsoever.”

So this takes us back full-circle to the original question: What is wrong with the Apollo 11 footage? Has it been doctored somehow? Is something missing, or has something been added? “I just don’t know,” admits Harold. “I know this seems like I’ve wasted a lot of time for no result, but I just can’t shake the feeling that there’s something there that we need to know about. And I’m just too invested in it at this point to give up.”

Osama Bin Laden, a man who needs no introduction, is dead. The man who was updating his twitter account while Bin Laden was meeting his end, however, does need an introduction.

Sohaib Athar, aka @ReallyVirtual as he is known on Twitter, describes himself as “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops.” He is a Pakistani who moved to Abbottabad, Pakistan, a relatively peaceful mountain town, from Lahore, a busy city known as the cultural center of Pakistan.

Little did he realize he was moving to Osama Bin Laden’s neighborhood.

As an IT guy, Sohaib’s first reaction to the sound of military helicopters in his neighborhood at 1AM (approximately 5PM EST on Sunday May 1, 2011) was to tweet about them.

“Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).”

He continues to describe a “huge window-shaking bang” that a friend “6 kilometers away” heard as well. He then posts a link to a news article explaining that there was a helicopter crash in Abbottabad.

He jokes with friends and mentions local rumors about it not being a Pakistani helicopter and that the downed craft could have been a drone, but also distinctly states that there were 2 helicopters.

Sohaib reports on the location of the crash and also posts another link to another local article that states media have not been given permission to film the site and that there were 2 helicopters, one of which crashed.

Sohaib then retweets messages from @terminalxpk, stating:

A Major of the #Pakistan #Army’s 19 FF, Platoon CO says incident at #Abbottabad where #helicopter crashed is accidental and not an “attack”

and

The Major also says no “missiles” were fired and all such exaggerated reports are nothing but rumours #Pakistan

Mr. Athar, without his knowledge, was sending information out regarding the events that unfolded during the demise of Osama Bin Laden. We may never know exactly what happened in Abbattabad on Sunday, May 1, 2011, but the descriptions given by this observer helps to shed some light on what occurred.

Thank you, Sohaib Athar, for having reported what ended up being an incredibly important event.

We’ve added BP’s official live feed below.

PBS NewsHour Stream

I came across this image on reddit.com posted by redditor freeall.

I decided to write the music up in Sibelius for the world to hear.

Click to listen:

notesex

Needless to say, it’s not the sexiest bit of tune out there.

I can't believe they cut me off from the drinks cart.

As many of you heard, there are new restrictions that have been placed on people traveling by air. Initially, the requirement was that passengers were required to sit in their seats without touching anything for the last hour.

Fortunately, the insanity of making millions of airline passengers sit on their hands for an hour overwhelmed the air travel industry and the TSA has now decided that these restrictions will be applied on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the flight crew. Presumably, this means that any time you are on a flight that has at least one non-white person, the flight crew will invoke their right to make your trip miserable.

In the event that you are so unfortunate as to have been placed on a flight where the crew decides to punish its passengers, we have compiled this list of ways to pass that dreadful last hour. Remember to devote it to memory, as you will not have the benefit of recall using a mobile device when the time comes.

1 – Sleep

Perhaps the greatest option for passing time, as it requires very little effort and you don’t even notice the time going by. Unfortunately, not everyone has the ability to sleep without the comfort of their Sealy Posturepedic Ultra Premium Ultra Plush Euro Pillow Top Mattress Set, but for those of us who can sleep through a train wreck, this is the premier solution to handling these new requirements.

2 – Imagine the life story of the strangest-looking person in your field of vision

Oh, sure. You could spend the hour trying to look at the hottest woman around, but you’re probably more than likely going to annoy the crap out of her. Normally, this isn’t a problem, but nowadays, she can call the stewardess over and report that you’re acting suspiciously. That’s the modern day equivalent of being called a witch in 17th Century Salem, Massachusetts.

3 – Count screws, rivets, or other interesting construction components in varying sections of the plane

Not exactly the most…(puts on sunglasses)… riveting.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

4 – Mentally outline a story in your favorite genre

You’re the smartest person you know, right? And you’re super-imaginative. Hell, you could probably write the next big hit like Harry Potter, right? Well, here’s your chance. You have 60 minutes to come up with an outline for the greatest story ever. GO!

5 – Look back upon your life’s decisions to pinpoint where everything went so wrong

Wish you’d dropped out of college with your buddy, Bill Gates? Beginning to think that maybe you should have asked that girl to marry you? Wish you didn’t ask that other girl to marry you? Well, you won’t be able to fix those old problems, but now you have the time to sit and dwell on the past. God, why did you marry that horrible, horrible woman?

6 – Eavesdrop on surrounding conversations

This isn’t such a bad idea, because it puts you in the safety zone of conversations in enclosed spaces. You don’t have to worry about getting stuck in a conversation that you want to have nothing to do with and you get the benefit of having a free form of entertainment. Sure, eavesdropping is some sort of moral evil, but since when did you really have morals, anyway?

7 – Try to figure out on what day of the week your next 5 birthdays will land

I don’t know any tricks to be able to figure this out and neither should you. The only people who should be able to figure out things like this are people who have some sort of autism. Props to them for getting a really weird superpower mixed in with a few other… less super powers. Just the same, people without autism who can do this without formal knowledge of some sort of equation have ruined the opportunity for them to do some precious time-killing math, and for that, they suck even more.

8 – Rank your exes in order of height, weight, personality, degree to which they were ‘good for you,’ boob/wiener size, etc.

Yes, it’s shallow. Yes, it might evoke some sincerely negative emotions, which may cause you to spend the next hour re-visiting number 5, particularly if you have a very short list of ugly partners, but misery will make the time fly by. Before you know it, you’ll be on land and on the phone with the one that got away, or possibly her husband. Either way, you can blog about your shame for all the world to ignore.

9 – Practice your subtle annoyance skills on a nearby passenger

Pretend to be sleeping and poke your neighbor. Kick your own seat and blame the kid sitting behind you so that they get in trouble with their parents. Breathe funny on purpose. Moan or make soft humming noises. Either way, it’s more fun to be annoying than it is to be annoyed. For that reason, I suggest a first-strike policy.

10 – Try to remember a list of things to do when you’re sitting on an airplane with nothing to do

Oh, what the heck was on that list? Am I supposed to pee in my pants? Maybe I should try to squirt a little out to see if that helps pass the time… Damn it! I can’t stop the stream! Now my neighbor thinks it’s lighter fluid! SHIT!!! I’m getting tackled!

11 – Play a song in your head

Really big fan of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face? Do you think you still will be after playing through the song in your head? Heck, maybe you’ll learn to appreciate its subtle nuances even more when you realize how well you’ve come to know it. Well, if you don’t like that song, pick another. If you play an instrument, try to play the song through your mind. That’s pretty damned bad-ass. Well, unless you play the viola… unless you’re playing both primary melodic voices in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, which would go back to the realm of badass.

12 – Try to think of real-world solutions to real-world problems that apply either to you, your community, or the world at large

It would be so surreal if the cure for cancer came out of people being regularly forced to sit quietly for an hour. Highly unlikely, but it would be some crazy stuff. Either way, you might be able to figure out a better way to organize your sock drawer if you apply your mind.

13 – Look out the window

You’d think that this would have been pretty high on the list, but when you consider that 2/3 people on the plane don’t have a window seat, it loses to activities that apply to larger numbers of passengers. Just the same, it is only interesting for so long and if you’re a regular flier, it ends up losing its appeal. It’s still something to do, however.

14 – Talk to your neighbors

For many people, this may seem obvious. For midwesterners, it’s even considered pleasurable. For elitist coasties, it’s unbearable. The idea that you might be sitting next to some crazy old bat who wants to tell you everything about her grandkids, or worse, a Republican… {{{shudders}}}

No, I don’t think I’m going to ask my neighbor why she was reading Going Rogue before we were put on lockdown. Chances are that it’s going to end with one of us crying and the other one being carted away by the FBI for being a potential terror threat.

Of course, you shouldn’t feel too badly about your new, more terrorized flight experience. Imagine trying to do a little traveling while being of Middle Eastern descent.

Of course, when you consider that the objective of the terrorists is to terrorize our society, you have to admit that they’ve done a hell of a job. As it stands, I’m more worried about whether I’m going to pee in my pants during the last hour of my next flight than I am about someone trying to bring my plane down.

Click any thumbnail for a full-sized image.

Sources

hippo, butterface, escalator, monk, cow, kitten, smoking gun, sweet, lion

It would be even funnier if there wasn't such a risk of death.

A lot of people have been talking about swine flu (H1N1) lately. It’s all over the news and there are even calls that it is being over-reported. I was on the fence about the media frenzy over the issue, because although there seems to be a lot of talk about it, there seems to be more hype over it in the reporting than anything else, at least according to every single person I’ve ever spoken to.

Of course, I do understand why the H1N1 virus is something that the reporters are getting in a frenzy over. The Spanish Flu, which has been granted the politically correct name “The 1918 Flu Pandemic”, killed 50 million people worldwide. That was the H1N1 virus. That’s twice as many deaths in 3 years than AIDS in 28 years. It also happened to be 3% of the global population, and it wasn’t just isolated to poor and developing nations that people seem to find it so easy to neglect. If this run of the swine flu is as prolific as the previous one, we could see more than 200 million global deaths.

Last week alone, 19 children died due to H1N1 in the US alone. According to the CDC, swine flu is widespread in 48 states. The WHO is recording a global mortality rate of slightly less than 0.5%, but that report was actually posted in July of 2009. The virus has spread a great deal more since that time.

Th story has been politicized as President Barack Obama declared this to be a national health crisis, but it has also become a personal one for me, as my mother has recently been diagnosed with the virus and is sicker than she’s been in her 61 years of life. In the interest of increasing public awareness of how this disease effects people on a personal level, I would like to share her tale.

Wednesday -

Started feeling sick, very tired, hard to concentrate, coughing

Thursday -

Woke up feeling worse, went to doctor’s appointment for 4:00 PM, 103.6 temperature which was treated with Tylenol (Ibuprophen allergy), doctor’s opinion is that she has swine flu, sent out to LabCorp for testing on Friday morning, prescribed Tamiflu to fight the illness ASAP and azithromycin

Took prescriptions to Walgreens, our preferred pharmacy. Went back to pick up prescriptions and were told that the azithromycin was ready, but that the insurance company “didn’t approve” the Tamiflu (we were given the option to buy it at $162.00, so they had it in stock).

Her temperature went down to as low as 101, but went back up to 103.5 at 12:37 AM. Gave her two extra strength Tylenol again, and by 2:00, her temperature was under 100. During this period, she suffered what has become known in our family as a case of turbulent diarrhea, severe coughing, went through dozens of tissues, 3 bottles of water, and couldn’t sleep.

Friday -

We went to LabCorp for her blood testing. They were fast and efficient, though the test for swine flu takes 24 hours. Additionally, we were told that we had to go back to our doctor’s office to get a nasal swab done, because the lab does not offer this service.

We returned immediately to the doctor’s office, who took us immediately and administered the nasal swab. The doctor has been calling back and forth with the insurance company trying to get the medication he prescribed approved. My mother’s temperature at this time was 102.

At 4:00 PM, we get a call from the doctor’s office telling us that they finally got approval for the Tamiflu from the insurance company. Walgreens called us at about 5:30, so I went to get my mother her medication.

She took her first dose 24 hours after she took her first dose of the antibiotic because the insurance company was betting that someone in the chain would either give up trying to get the medication approved or that we would have bought the medication without insurance coverage.

After my mother took her first dose, I started reading all of the paperwork for the Tamiflu when I came across this interesting piece of information:

“This medicine is an antiviral used for treating influenza, including H1N1 influenza (swine flu), in patients 1 year of age and older who have had symptoms for no more than 2 days. It may also be used to prevent influenza in patients 1 year of age and older.”

In other words, if the insurance company decided to give the protection that they promised, my mother would have started the Tamiflu 36 hours after showing sings of infection. Because of the insurance company’s delay, she started taking it 60 hours later, which is outside of the 48 hour period that it is supposed to be most effective.

It is currently Friday night at 9:30 and her temperature is at 100.2. We’re still managing the temperature with Tylenol, but we’re just relieved that she finally has all of the medication she needs.