Here is the live CNN video feed if you’d like to watch the Vice Presidential debates tonight.
Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden share the same stage in a vice-presidential debate on Thursday, but the spotlight will be on the untested Palin as she tries to ease doubts about whether she is up to the job.
The lone match-up of the vice-presidential contenders before the Nov. 4 election promises more than the usual drama, most of it supplied by Palin’s debut in an unscripted format. - can
Here are real-time comments on twitter as the debates are going on. Conclusion: Biden won but Palin didn’t totally blow it.
Hollywood legend Paul Newman has died of cancer at the age of 83, his spokeswoman has confirmed.
The blue-eyed star of films like Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid had died at home on Friday surrounded by family and close friends, said Jeff Sanderson. Newman was nominated for an Oscar 10 times, winning the best actor trophy in 1987 for The Color Of Money. His Butch Cassidy co-star Robert Redford led tributes, saying: “I have lost a real friend.” - BBC
In a finding that could help control harmful fungus, researchers have discovered a high-speed mechanism the germs use to project their spores into the air. Scientists from Miami University (M.U.) in Oxford, Ohio, and the College of Mount St. Joseph in Cincinnati report in the journal PLoS ONE that fungi may be one of the fastest land species, clocking speeds of up to 55 miles (88 kilometers) per hour and producing accelerations 180,000 times greater than gravity.
Fungi are the most common crop pathogens in the world. Most are fairly harmless to people, although like other allergens they sometimes exacerbate allergies and asthma. But certain varieties such as Stachybotrys chartarum, commonly referred to as black mold, that thrive in damp places like basements may also infect the lungs of people who have compromised immune systems or chronic bronchitis. Biologists once believed that mild air currents were enough to release fungi’s spores, but are increasingly finding that molds employ elaborate methods to spew their seeds away from the nest. Using ultrahigh-speed video, the researchers calculated that some fungi use their own natural water pressure like squirt guns to eject their spores.
“The beauty of the mechanism was a great surprise,” says lead study author Nicholas Money, a fungus biologist at M.U. “We were totally gobsmacked by these images.” … - sciam
The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be out of action for at least two months, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) says.
Part of the giant physics experiment was turned off for the weekend while engineers probed a magnet failure.
But a Cern spokesman said damage to the 3.6bn ($6.6bn) particle accelerator was worse than anticipated. The LHC is built to smash protons together at huge speeds, recreating conditions moments after the Big Bang. Scientists hope it will shed light on fundamental questions in physics.
Section damaged
On Friday, a failure, known as a quench, caused around 100 of the LHC’s super-cooled magnets to heat up by as much as 100C. The fire brigade were called out after a tonne of liquid helium leaked into the tunnel at Cern, near Geneva. - bbc
Click to enlarge. (fixed link.) Very interesting. Okay what this is a frame by frame correction of the original Patterson film to remove the camera movement. After the correction, you can see the actual subject of the video more like it would have appeared to the viewer without a camera. I think you might be able to make a suit like this by saving your own hair for a few years and gluing it to a costume … then again, the muscles on the thing look real as it walks.
The Patterson-Gimlin film (also referred to as simply the Patterson film) is a short motion picture of an unidentified subject filmed on October 20, 1967 by Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin who claimed the film was a genuine recording of a Bigfoot. The film has been subjected to many attempts both to debunk and authenticate it. Some qualified scientists have judged the film a hoax with a man in an ape suit, but other scientists contend the film depicts a cryptid, or animal unknown to science.
Both men have always dismissed allegations that they had hoaxed the footage by filming a man wearing an ape suit; in fact Patterson, who died of cancer in 1972, swore on his death bed that the footage was authentic and he had encountered and filmed a large bipedal animal unknown to science. Allegedly Patterson had confessed to the owner of Yakima camera store that he hoaxed the film to generate money for his wife, since he was dying of cancer. His friend and business associate, Gimlin, has always denied being involved in any part of a possible hoax with Patterson and claims that that he and his partner had encountered a real Bigfoot. However, he avoided publicly discussing the subject for many years until about the year 2000 when he began giving interviews and making appearances at Bigfoot conferences. - wiki
Here is more from wiki about the camera and film speed in response to the comment this animated gif generated:
One fact which complicates discussion of the Patterson film is that Patterson says he normally filmed at 24 frames per second, but in his haste to capture the Bigfoot on film, he did not note the camera’s setting. His Cine-Kodak K-100 camera had markings on its continuously variable dial of 16, 24, 32, 48, and 64 frames per second and was capable of filming at any frame speed within this range. The speed of the film is important because, as Napier writes, “if the movie was filmed at 24 frame/s then the creature’s walk cannot be distinguished from a normal human walk. If it was filmed at 16 or 18 frame/s, there are a number of important respects in which it is quite unlike man’s gait” (Napier, 94 [2nd printing]). Unfortunately, the film is so shaky that it is difficult to be certain which speed is correct.
Krantz argues, based on an analysis by Igor Bourtsev, that since Patterson’s height is known, a reasonable calculation can be made of his pace. This running pace can be synchronized with the regular bounces in the initial jumpy portions of the film that were caused by each fast step Patterson took to approach the creature. Based on this analysis, Krantz argues that a speed of 24 frames per second can be quickly dismissed and that “[w]e may safely rule out 16 frames per second and accept the speed of 18.”
Dahinden stated that “the footage of the horses prior to the Bigfoot film looks jerky and unnatural when projected at 24 frame/s” (Perez, 21). And Dahinden experimented at the film site by having people walk rapidly over the creature’s path and reported: “None of us … could walk that distance in 40 seconds [952 frames / 24 frame/s = 39.6], … so I eliminated 24 frame/s” (Perez, 21). … - wiki
The Patterson footage has never been debunked as a hoax. No one has ever demonstrated how it was done. Neither the original “costume,” nor a matching costume, has ever been presented by honest skeptics, nor by various imposters who claim to have worn the costume.
Large amounts of money have been spent trying to make a matching costume. The best Hollywood costume design talents have been brought to the task, but have never succeeded. The British Broadcasting Corporation spent the most money so far. They failed miserably. The side-by-side results are shown below.
I’d have to agree with BRFO on this one. Not even close. Besides the obvious hair length and color differences, look at the muscles in the Patterson creature, and the chest. Also notice that the face looks like a ski mask with a cut out window for the eyes. In the stabalized video the creature does not seem to move in an unnatural way.
This video is from September 17, 2007. Andrew Meyer, 21, after asking some questions and refusing to give up the microphone, was tackled and tasered and given a night in jail before being released on his own recognizance. His comment during the event, “Don’t Tase Me, Bro,” is now immortalized in our popular culture. I’d heard about it, but I hadn’t seen it until today. For the other three of you who haven’t see this yet:
Hollywood legend Paul Newman has died of cancer at the age of 83, his spokeswoman has confirmed. 
