SALON

Michelle Fitzsimmons

Wednesday, Feb 23, 2011 10:33 PM UTC

“Sex.com” sets Guinness world record for most expensive domain name

Officially the "Most expensive Internet address domain name" with $13 million price tag

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The Guinness Book of World Records has made it official: Sex.com is the most expensive domain name in the history of URLs.

The storied site, originally owned by Match.com founder Gary Kremen, got picked up by Clover Holdings in November 2010 for $13 million. Escom LLC, the address’s previous owner, went bankrupt early last year and was forced to ditch the domain.

Since the sale, not much has changed at Sex.com. It’s still a parking page for links to other salacious sites, like live webcams, sex personals and swinger cruises.



Read more about the Sex.com domain acquisition at Global Post

Thursday, Feb 17, 2011 12:30 AM UTC

Chargers, chargers everywhere, but not all can plug in

As more electric cars fill the roads, cities struggle to provide fast-charging stations with no industry standards

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Chargers, chargers everywhere, but not all can plug in

As electric cars zip down America’s roads in record numbers, cities must pick up the task of supplying the fast growing fleet with easy-access charging stations. 

In the effort to get 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015, the a lack of industry standards for fast-charging stations — which allow motorists to pull in and power up in about 30 minutes — could be a major glitch. The fast-charge stations in Chicago, for instance, are designed for Japanese model plugs, not for American cars like the Ford Focus or Chevy Volt. 

The Chicago Tribune reports industry standards are changing so rapidly that by the time the city’s fast-charging stations are installed, they may be obsolete. At $65,000 a plug, constantly retrofitting the stations to meet new standards will put a strain on the Windy City’s infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Japan, Germany and Italy are all competing to have their country’s fast-charging plug-in become the industry’s international standard.

 

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Saturday, Feb 5, 2011 1:05 AM UTC

“Skin cell gun” regenerates cells in days

By spraying healthy stem cells onto damaged areas, the skin cell gun cuts burn victims' recovery time drastically

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Our skin is fragile, penetrable and flammable. Simply surviving immolation is a statistical feat, and the recovery process is slow and precarious. Every year, thousands survive the immediate effects of skin burns but die from infections while waiting for their skin to heal over the exposed flesh.

Researchers at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine devised a tool to cut recovery time drastically and save lives. Their sci-fi-sounding “skin cell gun” trounces the traditional technique of grafting healthy skin onto a burn victim’s damaged body — a process that can take weeks and months — by spraying healthy stem cell tissue through an airbrush-type nozzle.

Doctors harvest the stem cells from the victim’s body, add them to a water solution and spray them onto burned areas. Rather than weeks or months, the healing process takes hours and days. One man with second-degree burns came in for treatment on a Friday and left completely healed by Monday.

“If we can find a way to get normal healthy skin, as much as we want, within a week, that’s the Holy Grail,” one researcher said. But if the dozen patients successfully treated with the gun are any indication, we may have already found it. 

Warning: The video below contains graphic images of burned skin.

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Friday, Feb 4, 2011 7:05 PM UTC

Sarah Palin is a soap opera, says Ron Reagan

Son of the former president speaks out about Palin's scheduled speech at a birthday tribute to his father

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Sarah Palin is a soap opera, says Ron ReaganPolitical Commentator Ron Reagan, Jr. speaks during CNN's Media Conference For The Election of the President 2008 at the Time Warner Center on October 14, 2008 in New York City. 16950_6376.JPG(Credit: Joe Kohen)

Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at a tribute to former President Ronald Reagan today, whose 100th birthday would have been this Sunday.

Not all are fans of the governor turned vice-presidential candidate, most notably Reagan’s son, Ron Reagan. He told the Associated Press that he sees nothing in common between his father and Palin.

Sarah Palin is a soap opera, basically. She’s doing mostly what she does to make money and keep her name in the news. She is not a serious candidate for president and never has been.

Reagan’s former speechwriter, Kenneth Khachigian, praised the choice of Palin to honor the 40th president, saying Palin’s philosophy and political fortunes were shaped by the Reagan presidency. “She can reflect on that as well as anyone could,” he said.

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Wednesday, Jan 26, 2011 11:35 AM UTC

Newt Gingrich wants to get rid of the EPA

The former House Speaker says we should replace agency with a more streamlined entity. Could he be right?

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Newt Gingrich wants to get rid of the EPANewt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich is tired of the EPA’s iron-fisted approach to environmental regulation, and he wants it gone. The former House Speaker says the agency is one big bureaucratic tangle and thinks it should be replaced by a body that works closely with businesses to create jobs, according to the AP. Additionally, Newt’s vision would more aggressively use science and technology to tackle environmental issues.

Gingrich — who is (yet again) mulling over a 2012 run for the Republican party nomination, something we — calls his proposed entity the “Environmental Solution Agency.” The organization would specifically pursue the development of clean coal and rewrite regulations governming the development of small nuclear plants, but its primary objective would be to streamline regulation and integrate the causes of the environment and business, he says.

He lays out a pretty detailed explanation on his website. Could Newt be on to something?

 

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Tuesday, Jan 25, 2011 7:26 PM UTC

The troops are not all right: how leaders are overlooking our soliders

Obama won't tell just how American soldiers are doing in his State of the Union tonight, and it's a shame

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The troops are not all right: how leaders are overlooking our solidersU.S. Army Pfc. Ryan Walsh, attached to Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, works security on the roof of the police station in the Hatamyia region of Balad, Iraq, Oct. 31, 2009. Soldiers from Delta Company visit the station regularly to build and continue relationships with local leaders. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Steven King/Released)(Credit: Mc1 Steven King)

Obama will touch on Tucson and the economy in his SOTU tonight, and he’ll reassure us that we are beating terrorism. He will talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly the latter, affirming our success in driving back the Taliban and that we are on track to begin troop withdrawal in July, as planned.

He’ll likely have a line or two about the welfare of the troops, how we must support them when they come home and rebuild the morale shattered by broken withdrawal deadline after broken withdrawal deadline (he probably won’t use those words, exactly).

However, he won’t tell the whole story about how the troops are faring.

Congress.org reports that for the second year in a row, the military has lost more U.S. troops to suicide than it has to combat in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The services counted 434 suicides by active duty personnel in 2010, up from 381 in 2009. These figures bely the truth. None of the services report suicides uniformly. For instance, the Army includes stats on certain reservists who kill themselves when they are not on active duty, but the National Guard only includes the number of service members on active duty. The Defense Department does not count suicides by veterans who have left the services completely. And the Department of Veterans Affairs keeps track of veteran suicides only if the individual was enrolled in the VA health care system. Three-quarters of veterans are not enrolled in the program.

We’ve known for some time that military personnel who’ve served in both quagmires are particularly prone to PTSD and other psychological disorders associated with multiple deployments, high stress, heavy carnage and a seemingly impossible mission.

A report by Chris Kirkham for the Huffington Post today also reveals that American troops suffer hardships not even associated with combat.

Kirkham focuses on Fort Sill in Lawton Oklahoma, a typical Army base, from the barracks to the mess hall to the “military loan” brokers and other predatory lenders encircling Fort Sill’s gates. Many of the troops stationed there and at other bases across the country, Kirkham writes, are suckered into high-interest, easy credit loans by brokers “catering” to military personnel but who essentially screw them out of their paychecks and intimidate them into making payments they can’t afford.

The Department of Defense first reported this problem in 2006 when it launched an investigation into predatory lenders and their tendency to “gouge our service people.” It has become such an epidemic that Holly Petraeus, the general’s wife, will head a newly created division of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency focused entirely on eliminating such practices directed towards the military.

This should have been fixed four years ago, but Kirkham’s piece, in which one PFC says, “I was actually debt-free my entire life, until I joined the Army,” clearly points out that it is not.

The president will avoid these hard truths in his speech tonight. No one has a clear solution, but as we plan our withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq moves towards greater sustainability, and we hopefully, finally end these endless wars, we must keep in mind that the troops might not be safe even after they come home.

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