[President Nasheed] said Sri Lanka and India were targets because they had similar cultures, cuisines and climates. Australia was also being considered because of the amount of unoccupied land available.
“We do not want to leave the Maldives, but we also do not want to be climate refugees living in tents for decades,” he said.
[snip]
Nasheed said he intended to create a “sovereign wealth fund” from the dollars generated by “importing tourists”, in the way that Arab states have done by “exporting oil”. “Kuwait might invest in companies; we will invest in land.”
Yet another straw on the camel’s back of geographically-defined nation states? You can bitch about the causes all you want, but when people’s homes start to disappear beneath the sea they’re not going to pay a damned bit of notice to you fiddling while Rome burns.
You’d have to have been under a pretty large metaphorical internet rock to have missed all the reports about Google Flu Trends that are floating around the web today like sneezed particles of snot, but just in case:
By tracking searches for terms such as ‘cough’, ‘fever’ and ‘aches and pains’ it claims to be able to accurately estimate where flu is circulating.
Google tested the idea in nine regions of the US and found it could accurately predict flu outbreaks between seven and 14 days earlier than the federal centres for disease control and prevention.
Over here in the UK the current big front-page story is Hannah Jones, a thirteen-year-old girl who has a hole in her heart as a result of childhood leukaemia medication. The actual news is the about-face made by her local healthcare authority, which was planning to force her to have a heart transplant against her own wishes; intervention by a child protection officer encouraged them to drop their court case and let Hannah stay with her family as she wished.
The “right to die” is still a very contentious issue (and will doubtless remain one for some time to come) but Hannah’s case is complicated by her age; I think it’s a safe assumption that had her parents not agreed with her decision, things might have gone very differently. Which brings us to the perennial question – at what age should the law permit you to make life-changing decisions like this for yourself? And to what degree should the religious beliefs of your family be taken into account, if at all?
… up until now, U.S. law required LLCs to have physical headquarters, in-person board meetings and other regulations that have little relevance in the digital age.
No longer. Under the new law, for example, a board meeting may be conducted “in person or through the use of [an] electronic or telecommunications medium.” A ‘virtual company’ will be, as a legal matter, a Vermont limited liability company,” said Johnson. And other states are required to recognize the corporation as a legitimate LLC.
Interesting news. Hell knows that with the economic downturn, it’ll be a much more sensible idea to operate from coffee shops and build your swanky futuristic-looking headquarters in Second Life… even though the rent there isn’t as stable as its residents would like. [image by Zesmerelda]
…declassified documents obtained by the BBC under the US Freedom of Information Act, parts of which remain classified, reveal a much darker story, which has been confirmed by individuals involved in the clear-up and those who have had access to details since.
The documents make clear that within weeks of the incident, investigators piecing together the fragments realised that only three of the weapons could be accounted for.
…
As well as the fact they contained uranium and plutonium, the abandoned weapons parts were highly sensitive because of the way in which the design, shape and amount of uranium revealed classified elements of nuclear warhead design.
All the arguments about what actually causes global warming look pretty pointless when you read a story like this one: the Maldive Islands – the highest point of which is a mere 2.4 meters above sea level – are planning to divert tourism income into a fund with which to buy a new homeland elsewhere. [image by notsogoodphotography]
You’d have to have been under a pretty large metaphorical internet rock to have missed all the 
Via Charlie Stross, 