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China To Build 220-Story Tower in just 90 days
The building will be 10m taller than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, currently the tallest manmade structure on earth. SkyCity One, with a rather imposing design, will contain 1,610,000m2 across 220 storeys, containing a mix of residential, commercial and retail space and capacity for between 70,000 to 120,000 people. BSB estimates the cost of the project to be roughly £400 million, a surprisingly low figure considering it cost £967 million for the Burj Khalifa, and other megatall buildings around the world tend to have budgets around the £1 billion mark. The company claims that their unique construction method, with 95 percent of the building completed before they've even broken ground on the foundations, will keep costs down. BSB has experience throwing up tall buildings in a short period of time, as this video of a 30 storey skyscraper built by the company in just 15 days near a lake in Hunan province attests.
http://www.joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/06/china-to-build-220-story-tower.html
What could possibly go wrong?
Mexico's President Thanks Obama
"I would like to thank personally, and on behalf of the Mexican nation, President Barack Obama for his valuable decision by executive order to give an opportunity for young people who were not born in the United States but who arrived in that great nation before they were 16 years of age, or who are studying in university, or who have served in the United States armed forces, for them not to be deported for at least a period of two years, so this is a clear and certain situation for them.
"We believe that this is very just. It's a humanitarian action. And it's an unprecedented action in our opinion. And in this sense, Mr. President, we would like to thank you for the valor and courage that you had in implementing this action. I am sure that many, many families in the United States of America are thankful to you as well." - Mexico President Felipe Calderón, in a statement released today.
http://www.joemygod.blogspot.com/2012/06/mexicos-president-thanks-obama.html
Congress officially declared 'dumber' than years prior
By MEGHAN KENEALLY
PUBLISHED: 23:17 EST, 17 June 2012 | UPDATED: 23:17 EST, 17 June 2012
A new study has quantified a problem that many political pundits have been complaining about by reporting that Congress has gotten collectively dumber over the past seven years.
By analyzing trends in speech patterns and public statements, educational group The Sunlight Foundation determined that members of Congress are speaking, on average, on the same level as a sophomore in high school.
The results show that the group has been downgraded since 2005 when they reached the levels of high school juniors.
Of the 530 politicians evaluated, members with the ten lowest scores were all Republicans.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2160881/Congress-officially-declared-dumber-years-prior-politicians-speaking-constituents.html
This is what America gets for electing T-baggers....
'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) — A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits by Oxford University researchers.
How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.
But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.
The new approach can automatically identify periods of intense social activity within a large number of observations -- in this example around one million observations of wild great tits (Parus major). This makes it possible to examine these periods in greater detail and calculate which individuals are real 'friends', rather than random passers-by, and even which are looking to pair up and mate.
A report of the research is published in this week's Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120618150519.htm
The Rolling Stones set to bow out in 2013 from touring
The Rolling Stones are set to bow out in sensational style... with a farewell gig at Glastonbury next year.
The band, whose four members have a combined age of 272, will play the coveted Sunday night headline slot on the Pyramid stage after talks with festival organisers Michael and Emily Eavis.
It will be their first and only performance at the famous Somerset festival which attracts 175,000 fans.
Sources close to the band indicate that the appearance is expected to be the final date in a “handful” of shows in Britain and America in 2013 – which they see as their true 50th anniversary – before they finally retire from the live arena.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/one-glast-time-the-rolling-stones-887386
Sunday Squee: Baby Meerkats
Baby Meerkats at West Midland Safari Park. Born on 12th June 2011.
Meet Your Cousin, the First Lady
Joan Tribble at the grave of her great-great-grandfather, Henry W. Shields, a Georgia slave owner who is also an ancestor of Michelle Obama.
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
Published: June 16, 2012
REX, Ga. — Joan Tribble held tightly to her cane as she ventured into the overgrown cemetery where her people were buried. There lay the pioneers who once populated north Georgia’s rugged frontier, where striving white men planted corn and cotton, fought for the Confederacy and owned slaves.
The settlers interred here were mostly forgotten over the decades as their progeny scattered across the South, embracing unassuming lives. But one line of her family took another path, heading north on a tumultuous, winding journey that ultimately led to the White House.
The white men and women buried here are the forebears of Mrs. Tribble, a retired bookkeeper who delights in her two grandchildren and her Sunday church mornings. They are also ancestors of Michelle Obama, the first lady.
The discovery of this unexpected family tie between the nation’s most prominent black woman and a white, silver-haired grandmother from the Atlanta suburbs underscores the entangled histories and racial intermingling that continue to bind countless American families more than 140 years after the Civil War.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/us/dna-gives-new-insights-into-michelle-obamas-roots.html
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