PlasticBoy

Supreme Court hears far-reaching case on the environment.

For the last five years, the Supreme Court has issued a series of rulings chipping away at federal power over states, using the general principle that the commerce clause does not apply to noneconomic activity inside a state’s borders. The Illinois case concerns a group of local governments that want to build a landfill on about 17 acres of wetlands near Chicago. The Army Corps of Engineers said no, because the land is sometimes used as a stopover for protected migratory birds.

Computers And Other Electrical Appliances May Threaten Fertility.

A team of Italian scientists, whose work is published in today’s (Tuesday) Human Reproduction journal, found that mouse ovarian follicles exposed to extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic fields failed to develop into good quality eggs.

Productopia shuts down. Ugh, this was a great site. None of the other product review sites offer as wide a range of product categories. I also liked Productopia’s organization into quality, style, and budget picks. Productopia.com now redirects to MySimon so maybe they will be incorporating the Productopia database. Update: Apparently so.

FDA plans to ban poultry antibiotics.

These people eat animals that are carrying resistant campylobacter bacteria because the animals were treated with fluoroquinolones. If the bacteria make people sick and they seek treatment, fluoroquinolones will be far less effective than normal. This could be life-threatening to the elderly, to children and to people with depressed immune systems.

The Next Economy Of Ideas. John Perry Barlow’s article in Wired on the future of copyright. Kind of ironic that for a month it was under copyright protection and couldn’t be distributed online.

Oh my.

In an interesting content deal, ESPN.com announced yesterday that it has enlisted [Hunter S.] Thompson to post contributions on its new Page 2 section that is scheduled for launch Nov. 6.

Cannabis Less Harmful Than Aspirin, Says Scientist.

“By any standards, THC must be considered a very safe drug both acutely and on long-term exposure,” he writes. “The available animal data are more than adequate to justify its approval as a human medicine, and indeed it has been approved by the FDA for certain limited therapeutic indications.”

Mountain Biking Could Impair Men’s Fertility. I knew there was a reason I didn’t like mountain biking.

“I closed my eyes, opened them again and said, ‘Omigod, there’s a moose in my pool.”‘

Nader files suit over Boston debate exclusion.

Nader claimed he was “treated differently from all others” because of his political positions, his Green Party affiliation, and his criticism of the commission, the Democratic and Republican parties and their candidates.

And Man said, “Supersize them.” And Man gained 5 pounds.

Cannabis ‘as addictive as cocaine’. Or not. All this really seems to prove is that monkeys like being high.

Why Microsoft invested in Corel: According to Corel’s Oct. 2 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company has the rights to port Microsoft’s new .NET Internet software architecture to the Linux operating system.

Ok, so fiber good, laxatives bad.

Phish temporarily breaking up. I don’t have much to say about this. They’ll probably be back.