There's too much news in the world

I don't want to be here, and I've got to be here until around 2 (maybe 4) today. So you'll excuse me for doing a little websurfing.

(Or maybe you won't; I really don't care.)

GlobeandMail.com: British plant missing 30 kilograms of plutonium (via Slashdot)

Well, that's great news. However:

The amount of material listed as missing at the Sellafield plant in northwestern England was "within international standards of expected measurement accuracies for closing a nuclear material balance at the type of facility concerned," the authority said.

"There is no evidence to suggest that any of the apparent losses reported were real losses of nuclear material," the authority added.

When in doubt, apply statistics.

Guardian Unlimited Online: Second sight (Via Slashdot)

Slashdot was mostly interested in how Britain is ahead of Australia is ahead of the US in TV piracy, but there are other interesting points in this article.

TV moguls are not as worried about this sort of piracy as music and film companies because they have already been pre-paid by advertising and, if they want to stop it, all they need do is take a leaf out of Hollywood's book and do simultaneous releasing, cutting the problem off at source.

The interesting thing is whether the likes of BitTorrent will fast-forward the forces making television a database rather than serial experience. Even the fixture of television - the news bulletins - could be replaced by, say, Google TV gathering TV news clips from around the world just as it does printed news today.

I like that notion of television as a database experience.

Snopes.com Urban Legends Reference Pages: Dry Cleaning

So yeah, Snopes has all kinds of interesting facts about the household dryer for us today.

In a standard (gas) dryer, a fan pulls fresh air into the dryer and sends it flowing over a gas burner. The burner heats the air, which is then channeled into a tumbling drum where the wet clothes are held. The heat, air flow, and tumbling motion all contribute to evaporating the moisture held in the fabrics, and that moisture is absorbed by the gas-warmed air. (Warm air is capable of holding more moisture than cold air.) The warm air - and the moisture it now holds - passes through a filter to trap lint and other particulate matter stirred up by its movement and is vented to the outside so that it can be replaced with new, less-moist air. This process repeats until enough moisture has been evaporated and carried away for the clothes to be considered sufficiently "dry."

In the same vein as the title of my previous post, "Your jacket is now dry."

(I think I'd better clean that lint filter...)

And finally...SUVs are dangerous! From Yahoo! News - Oddly Enough:

A man barely escaped serious injury Thursday after a lit cigarette he tried to toss out the window while driving across the Bay Bridge blew back in and ignited the vehicle, according to the California Highway Patrol.

The unidentified man was driving westbound at about 10:40 a.m. when he tossed the cigarette out the window of his Ford Expedition, said CHP Officer Shawn Chase.

Carried by the wind, the cigarette landed in his back seat and almost immediately burst into flames. The man quickly pulled to the side of the road, and leapt from the flame-filled SUV, which continued rolling into a guard rail, Chase said.

That's what you get for driving a vehicle with flammable seats!

;P

He said the man will likely face a misdemeanor charge for littering.

"We see people throwing cigarettes out the window all the time but never a situation like this where it comes back in," Chase said. "This guy was lucky."

Um...how exactly was he lucky? His SUV has been incinerated, plus he's going to be charged with littering...