Aspergillus Niger In Corn And Peanuts

Aspergillus fumigatus is common in compost heaps, hay, and all kinds of decaying vegetation.
Some aspergilli fungi cause Aspergillosis - an infection that gets in via the lungs and compromises various organs, particularly in people with suppressed immune systems, such as those who have had transplants.
Some aspergilli fungi are useful - aspergillus terreus is a source of statins that are used to reduce blood pressure and the risk of heart attack.

If you find that mushrooms and grapes affect you and leave you feeling a bit breathless and a bit 'odd' - blame the fungi.

From www.eurekalert.org

Black aspergilli species responsible for infecting corn identified

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Athens, Georgia, have reported for the first time that several species of Aspergillus niger, or black aspergilli, are capable of infecting corn and peanuts as endophytes. The researchers also showed that, under laboratory conditions, these species produced mycotoxins. Read more at www.eurekalert.org

Wordpress.Com was never moving to Microsoft's Azure Cloud.

Microsoft:
"...WordPress is also a tremendous ISV who's been working extensively with Windows Azure during the CTP...."
Wordpress:
"A: No. WordPress.com, which is Automattic's hosted blogging service, is going to stay on its existing infrastructure."

from www.guardian.co.uk

"One company I'd like to highlight is Automattic, developer of WordPress. WordPress is one of the most successful and pervasive blogging systems in existence today, used by tens of millions of bloggers worldwide. WordPress is also a tremendous ISV who's been working extensively with Windows Azure during the CTP...."

Internal Microsoft emails show that most 'Live Spaces' blogs were dead

Wordpress.com isn't getting 30m Live Spaces users - think of a much smaller number. No, smaller than that. And Microsoft isn't getting Wordpress to shift to Azure either. (Updated)

Is Wordpress.com getting all those Windows Live Space users really that much of a coup? There was plenty of excitement on the Windows Live Space blog and the Wordpress.com blog about how "30 million" (say it in a Dr Evil voice) blog would get moved over from Windows Live Spaces to Wordpress because, um, well, nice weather we're having... Nobody seemed able to explain quite why. Or, in other words, Microsoft had signally failed to monetise those blogs. (Couldn't it have done what Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook and just let it grow? Anyway.)

Now Joe Wilcox at Betanews says he has obtained copies of internal Microsoft emails which suggest that 99% of those 30m blogs are "dead".

The email exchange dates from 28 September, Wilcox says, the day after the announcement. Wilcox says he's not naming the participants because that might mean trouble for those involved. (Er, yes.)

"It's not unusual for companies like Microsoft to overstate statistics that aren't otherwise easily confirmed. There's often huge PR advantage in larger numbers, and reporters tend to assume the figures are correct, particularly when they can't otherwise easily be confirmed. Often lowly public relations employees make these kinds of decisions. In this case, the number means much to WordPress.com, which could conceivably double in size over six months if just half of Windows Live Spaces bloggers migrated to the Automattic service. As of September, WordPress.com hosted 13.9 million blogs."

"However, according to a senior Microsoft manger e-mailing colleagues: "The net is: 300k sites are expected to migrate of the 30M 'blogs' -- most are dead. Wordpress is adding somewhere in the order of zero servers to handle this capacity. This was a 'who has the best online service for blogging for our customers' and had nothing to do with technology."

But it turns out there's a little more to this than meets the eye. Microsoft would dearly love Automattic - the company behind Wordpress.com - to shift to using its Azure cloud system (it's like Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute system, better known as EC2). Last November at its Professional Developer Conference Microsoft suggested (or let it be thought) that Wordpress/Automattic is hosted on Azure, or would soon be moving over. From the transcript: "One company I'd like to highlight is Automattic, developer of WordPress. WordPress is one of the most successful and pervasive blogging systems in existence today, used by tens of millions of bloggers worldwide. WordPress is also a tremendous ISV who's been working extensively with Windows Azure during the CTP...."

But that isn't the case at all.

As the Automattic blog pointed out soon afterwards in an FAQ: "Q: Are you moving WordPress.com to Azure? A: No. WordPress.com, which is Automattic's hosted blogging service, is going to stay on its existing infrastructure. Martin Cron from the Cheezburger Network launched a new blog Oddly Specific on Azure, which some people confused with Automattic." Read more at www.guardian.co.uk

About Tax Freedom Day In The UK

Definition: 'Tax Freedom Day' is the day in the year when the average income earner has earned enough to pay his taxes. assuming he doesn't spend a penny - the rest of the year is all gravy (sure...)
This article about Tax Freedom Day in the UK mentions Gordon Smith's stealth taxes (e.g. increasing National Insurance contributions, air passenger duty,...)
A recent program on Radio 4 that I heard, describes three periods since the end of the Second World War.
1945-1965 - income tax to pay for health service and other Welfare State benefits.
1965-1985 - no tax increase and letting services coast along.
1985-2010 - services grinding to a halt because equipment, building, etc breaking down but no-one can win an election by proposing an increase in income tax, (that is how Labour failed in 1990) - so when Labour won in 1997, they used stealth taxes to pay for social programmes.

from www.adamsmith.org

A history of tax freedom day

Tax Freedom Day came later and later in the 1960s, though there was some respite in the early years of the 1970s: while the tax burden in most industrialised states was tending to increase, the then British government actually decreased it.  There was another short and less pronounced reduction in the burden in the three years following the 1975 peak.  The general trend, however, was for Tax Freedom Day to fall later and later during the years from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. More recently we saw a 10-year period during which Tax Freedom Day broadly moved earlier and earlier in the calendar, from a high of 15 June in 1982, to 22 May in 1993 and 1994.  Since 1994, Tax Freedom Day has again generally – if erratically – moved later in the calendar. In 2008 and 2009, it suddenly jumped back in the calendar. As explained above, this was a direct result of the financial crisis. Once the economy recovers, Tax freedom Day is likely to move later in the calendar again.

See more at www.adamsmith.org

French court orders Google Inc to pay 5,000 euros ($6,750) in libel damages

I cannot see how Google would fail to win on appeal. As it said "It is important to point out that Google Suggest is an aggregate of the most popular searches based on past requests from users. Google does not suggest these terms,"

from uk.news.yahoo.com

A French court has ordered Google Inc to pay 5,000 euros (4,263 pounds) in libel damages to a man who claimed that searches for his name automatically yielded a list of harmful suggestions. Skip related content

The man, whose name was not given, said the suggested terms that came up when typing his name on Google.fr -- including the words "rape," "rapist" and "prison" -- were damaging for his reputation, court documents showed.

The man had previously been condemned to a prison sentence on charges of corrupting a minor, the documents showed.

The decision, reported on Saturday in the online edition of Le Monde newspaper, was published in court documents dated September 8 on the French legal web site Legalis. Google confirmed the decision in an email on Saturday.

The court decision came as Google faces demands from Germany's government to come up with privacy guidelines amid controversy about its Street View service, a virtual tour of cities based on photographs taken in the street.

In its decision, the Superior Court of Paris ordered Google Inc to remove the "harmful" suggestions from the search and pay the man 5,000 euros in damages, while saying the search term suggestion function was not illegal in itself.

A Google spokesperson said the firm would appeal the decision.

"It is important to point out that Google Suggest is an aggregate of the most popular searches based on past requests from users. Google does not suggest these terms," the company said in an email. Read more at uk.news.yahoo.com

Protest the proposed badger cull in Britain

Here is the link to the DEFRA page that describes the Coalition Government's proposal for consultation on a limited badger cull. This is despite the fact that the scientific advisor to the Government (and to the previous Government) said the weight of evidence is that a limited cull would not work and would worsen the situation.
A wholesale, nationwide cull is not going to happen. Who would stand for the idea of killing all Britain's badgers?
According to some, it is still not established what the route of infection, if any, is between badgers and cattle.
So why does Government want to have yet another consultation on the proposal to conduct a limited cull against the weight of scientific evidence that says that if TB is spread from badgers to cows, then killing some badgers will make the situation worse?
Is it because the people in Government at the moment (remind me who they are) would rather use the cull as a scientific experiment to test what the outcome of killing some badgers is, rather than act in accordance with the weight of the scientific evidence?

from www.giveanimalsavoice.org.uk

We urgently need your help to convince the government that badger culling is wrong.

Despite strong opposition from the RSPCA, the Coalition Government has announced a consultation on the proposed badger cull in England as part of a package of measures to control Bovine TB. This consultation will take place in mid-September.

In 2006 when a cull was last under discussion, more than 47,000 members of the public objected.  The badger cull was subsequently halted and alternative control measures were considered instead. A TB vaccine for badgers was licensed for use in March and the RSPCA believes that the Coalition Government should proceed with the project that had been planned using this vaccine. We also want to see a continuation of improved cattle measures, including pre- and post-movement testing, husbandry and biosecurity, rather than the widespread killing of badgers across England. Read more at www.giveanimalsavoice.org.uk

from www.nomorepencils.com

A Serious Man – Being A Fool When Everyone Is Smart

I was thinking about the film A Serious Man, made by the Coen brothers. The film is unusual because it ‘begins’ with a short film shot in sepia about a poor Jewish couple in nineteenth century Russia who are visited by a dybbuk (a malicious spirit) that has inhabited the body of a recently deceased rabbi.

The wife is fearful and practical. The husband is ambivalent and hesitant. There is not much of a story but the thread that runs through it is that the wife is certain that she and her husband will be visited by more bad luck.

Then we segue into the main film – A Serious Man – about a man who watches his life fall apart around him. Set in the present day, the main protagonist is a lecturer at a college somewhere on the East Coast of the U.S. – an intelligent man with a responsible job.

His wife is leaving with another man and doing it right under his nose. His daughter ignores and derides him. His son, who is soon to be bar-mitzvah’d, seems to be in a world of his own. His boss at work is enigmatic and disconcerting. His wife’s new boyfriend patronises him. Read more at www.nomorepencils.com

Honey At Google

There's a video on the official Google site.

from googleblog.blogspot.com

We’re also relieved that none of the hives have succumbed to Colony Collapse Disorder, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on them over the winter months to ensure that they stay happy, healthy and ready to start work again in the spring. We're already looking forward to next year!Read more at googleblog.blogspot.com