Eastern promise: No satellite for crims (maybe): Airbag with a “car” inside it: Choccywoccy choo-choo: Facing the cameras: and The International Banana Club Museum.

More than a drizzle of skywater, less than 60 watts of solar stuff, much less than a Sandy of atmospheric movement and a definite lack of lack of cold at the Castle this morn, the saga of the study has finally ended, all I have to do now is sort out the three bin bags of “useful stuff” I have put to one side.

 

From the land of copies to the land of Cons and Dems

 

Allegedly the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have taken more than £18,000 in donations from Huawei, a controversial Chinese company accused of posing a threat to US national security.

Apparently Huawei's UK arm paid more than £8,600 to send executives to a networking event at the Conservative Party conference, in the same week US politicians said its technology should be blacklisted from American government systems.

The company also paid £10,000 to the Liberal Democrats to sponsor a reception at its conference in Brighton.

Fuckwit U-Turn Cam has it seems secured more than £850,000 from donors who attended private lunches, dinners and parties at Number 10 and Chequers between April and June 2012. The Prime Minister has also hosted a dinner at Highclere Castle, the setting of television drama Downton Abbey.

Huawei, which denies any link to the Chinese state or posing any security threat, says it attended all three party conferences, including the Conservative business dinner in Birmingham.

A Conservative spokesman said the donation had been “fully and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission”.

“Huawei attended a dinner for which, under Electoral Commission rules, a proportion of the price paid was required to be declared,” he added.

A spokesman for the Liberal Democrats said: "The Company has donated to all three political parties, in our case sponsoring a reception at party conference. The donation was declared and approved by the Electoral Commission meaning it met all the criteria set down for political donations."

 

Oh well, that’s alright then...

 

From “pay up” Auntie

All prisoners in England and Wales ‘could’ be banned from watching channels such as Sky Sports in their cells, a government minister has indicated.

Offenders in private prisons are able to access pay-TV channels for a small weekly fee, but inmates in publicly run jails can only watch free-to-air ones.

The latest figures available, for December 2009, show that 4,070 prisoners in contracted-out jails had access to such channels in their cells - about 40% of inmates who were then held in private jails.

Since then the number of private prisons in England and Wales has risen to 14, while the prison population has also increased.

The security firm G4S - which runs six prisons - said prisoners did not enjoy an automatic right to TV in their cells.

"The provision of in-cell TVs... is a privilege which has to be earned," a spokesman said. "Poor behaviour will result in its removal."

 

Oh well, that’s alright as well then-I can’t afford Sky stuff....

 

East a lot to the radiation free land

 

Hiroshima University-affiliated startup business Humanix has recently revealed a three-wheel electric vehicle, called iSAVE YOU, which is covered with an airbag-like cushion material that springs back to its original form after absorbing impacts.

And you could own one for a mere 790,000 yen ($9,740 USD).

Professor Tsutomu, president of Humanix, told Japanese magazine Sponichi Annex that “the car will be perfect for our rapidly aging society and that there are already many requests for it from the elderly and disabled.” The cushions covering the vehicle are made of a tent fabric and sponge, and will absorb shock waves in case of an impact, protecting both the passengers and pedestrians. The iSAVE YOU can run up to 30 km on a single charge and can be recharged from any regular household electrical outlet.

The iSAVE YOU vehicle can be registered as a Trike (a bicycle with a light side-car) and it only requires a single, simple (almost free) inspection and registration procedures at the Light Motor Vehicle Inspection Centre rather that the regular, instead of the regular “Shaken” registration which costs over 100,000 yen ($,1000+).

Spiffing, can’t wait, sooo excited….

 

Back over to the left and visiting the land of……..something

Created by master chocolatier Andrew Farrugia, from Malta, this edible train model has set a new Guinness World Record the longest chocolate structure in the world. It measures a whopping 34 meters in length and features every detail of a classic steam-powered chuff-chuff.

Unveiled at the “Brussels Chocolate Week”, in Belgium’s capital city, this tasty masterpiece had everyone drooling. Made of 2,755 pounds (1250 kilos) of the finest Belgian chocolate, donated by chocolate brand Belcolade, this 34-meter-long steam train replica took Maltese chocolate artist Andrew Farrugia a painstaking 784 hours to complete.

 

Wonder how long it would take to eat it?

 

Left even more to the home of security and the land of insecurity

At least one law enforcement agency in San Diego is currently using software developed by FaceFirst, a division of nearby Camarillo, California’s Airborne Biometrics Group. It can positively identify anyone, as long as physical data about a person’s facial features is stored somewhere the police can access. Though that pool of potential matches could include millions, the company says that by using the “best available facial recognition algorithms” they can scour that data set in a fraction of a second in order to send authorities all known intelligence about anyone who enters a camera’s field of vision.

“Up to 4 million comparisons per second, per clustered server” — that’s how many matches a single computer wired to the FaceFirst system can consider in a single breath as images captured by cameras, cell phones and surveillance devices from as far as 100 feet away are fed into algorithms designed to pick out terrorists and persons of interest. In a single setting, an unlimited amount of cameras can record the movements of a crowd at 30-frames-per-second, pick out each and every face and then feed it into an equation.

Speaking to reporters with Find Biometrics in August, Rosenkrantz president and CEO of FaceFirst said that the system is already in place in Panama, where computers there process nearly 20 million comparisons per second “using a FaceFirst matching cluster with a large number of live surveillance cameras on a scale beyond any other system ever implemented.”

“Within just a couple of seconds whoever needs to know receives an email containing all the evidence and stats about the person identified along with the video clip of them passing the camera so they may be approached then and there,” he says. …

 

That’s us fucked in a couple of years then….

 

And finally:

 

Still in the place where fruit comes in yellow packages

It all started at a photography convention in 1972, when Ken Bannister, VP of a manufacturing company, passed out Chiquita banana stickers to people he encountered. The goal, he said, was simply to get people's attention and to make them smile. After all, what better way to garner a grin than by using the fruit that's "shaped like a smile."

Soon after, Bannister started receiving banana-related paraphernalia -- or "banana-phernalia" -- in the mail. Inspired by his banana publicity, and eager to keep people smiling, Bannister then began referring to himself as "Bananaster" and "T.B.," short for "Top Banana." The nicknames stuck and "Bananaster" eventually became the founder of the first ever International Banana Club.

Bannister received so much banana-phernalia that he decided to open the club's first and only museum, the International Banana Club Museum, in 1976. Today, the museum is home to 17,000 banana collectibles, all of which have been donated by members of the club. Objects range from a gold-sequined Michael Jackson banana to the world's only petrified banana. With so many objects, the museum holds the Guinness Book of World Record's title of "World's Largest Collection" devoted to one fruit.

Membership to the club is a flat rate of $15 and, just like Bananaster; members can come up with their own nickname. Additionally, members can climb up in social ranks; the more banana-phernalia one donates, the higher the "B.M." (Banana merit) they are rewarded, such as PHB, Doctorate of Bananistry Degree. Banana Club members are said to get extra discounts when presenting their Banana Card Clubs in public, though a simple smile is what the club strives for. And if the smile isn't enough, members can also brag about their fellow famous Banana Club-ers: Jay Leno and former US President, Ronald Reagan.

 

And their theme song:

 

 

 

That’s it: I’m orf to find some rainbows on the Nanoscale

 

And today’s thought:

Now that’s what I call airbags

 

 

 

 

Angus