When the leading scientist on space and time comes out and tells you to do or not do something, its usually a good idea to do more than take it under advisement.  He isn’t smarter than you, he is smarter than you and all your friends…put together.  Ok, maybe thats a stretch, but I still take the words of advise from Stephen Hawking a lot more seriously than all the people on TMZ.  So when he says do not talk to strangers, I say, OKEY DOKEY!

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Also this week, why journalism shield laws don’t protect criminal activity at Gizmodo

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This week in history

and

The news of the weird, including a banned ebay category that its just SICK it has its own name.

Mike Thinks News is coming, right at ya!

This week broke a few very interesting stories.  First we have Apple taking the fight against all things titillating and taking the now familiar step of banishing apps from the iTunes store aka super Jobs nirvana land.  Seems that someone had the nerve to make apps that had cleavage and bare chested men and such…who would have thought.  Good news is that Apple has got the mothership servers on full alert and are wiping out vast swaths of applications.  The bad news is, as usual, no one is exactly sure whats ok and what isn’t.  But come on, when your app can be rejected because its icon doesn’t meet the “aesthetic standards” of Apple, what do you expect?

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But our main stories this week have nothing to do with Apple, no this week I take a peep at just what those school administrators in Pennsylvania call loss mitigation.  More specifically, why someone or more likely (if not unbelievably) several someones though it was ok to turn on the web cameras of laptops given to children without then knowing about it, while it was in child’s home, or more specifically bedroom.  Now so far its not as bad as that sounds, but its not much better.  The level of DUH this one required is hard to comprehend

Also a story this week about all the new 3d Televisions.  Apparently its not all a good thing, as some researchers believe that watching too much 3d may make a documented issue with watching 3d images on a screen called Binocular Dysphoria, permanent or at least last long enough to be a real issue.  I don’t know what you consider a real issue, but since a few million of these people are going to be driving within minutes of watching 3d stuff, I’d say its just a little more important.

Call the voicemail hotline (347)Bug-Mike    (347)284-6453

–Mike James

This week we have another fun show, and talk about this week in history where we learn that not all NFL games are destroyed by bad calls, and that sometimes a charter signed long ago can have endurring impacts on us even today.  I also give you a little known fact about trees and what happens when you carve your name (or that of your special somone) into its trunk.

The news this week is about how some schools seem to think that the Amazon Kindle is a bad tech device because its not able to be setup to read aloud to you if you are blind because that initial setup requires navigating through onscreen menues that do not initially read themselved to you.  As oppossed to all those other tech devices they think are just fine, like all the computers (which do not come pre-set to be accessable to the blind) and of course the standard paper books, which have absolutely no provision to read themselves to you.

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I also cover a science story on why you can remember great jokes and stories…but not who you told them to.  Could it be that your too concerned about how your coming off to others to be bothered remembering who they are?

All that and more on this weeks Mike Thinks News Podcast

There are a few things I think of when I want think about a new cell phone.  The 1st is, when the heck is the iPhone coming to a real cell phone carrier in the US?  Many other countries have the darn thing on multiple carriers and we here in the US are still hosed over with the choice of cool phone or reliable service.  Not for much longer though…Google and Verizon are teaming up the bring Andriod powered headsets the the Verizon network, .let the world rejoice because by years end, i may actually get a cool phone!

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Also this week

Give it away, Give it away now…unless its Eagles Tickets

Making people pay doersn’t always work like you hope

Saturns rings…no no no…I mean Saturns R I N G S ! ! !

photo courtesy of Nadbasher via flickr

If your country becomes known throughout the world as the hub for scams, schemes, and all matter of money stealing, laundering, thievery….is it any wonder that you get portrayed in a bad light in the movies or that a commercial pokes fun at these activities?  No…its not

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Also this week

Weird and true

Breaking in and Facebooking

Ticket scalp Mastering

and more

There is a definite disconect  between the music industry and many of its fans, and this is not big news.  What is news is the amazingly inept ways in which old bands and old media try to become hip and cool, come up with a pretty good idea…yet still manage to find the songle most boneheaded way to screw it up.  Just ask Gene Simoms and KISS, or better yet, don’t.  Since the obviously just don’t get it.

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also this week

NFL has good blocks and bad blocks

Itsey Bitsey Picsey

QUACK!

Bail fit for a kidnapper

Half the game

So you can’t teach an old dog new tricks…at least not very easily, but according to a new report, you can teach new robots some darn scary tricks.  Now a few months ago, the news came out of a robot powered by organic waste.  You know, was like old vegetation…incapacitated people, those kinds of things.  Combine that with the new discovery that given some basic programing to keep themselves alive and powered up, robots learn, in a startlenginly short period of time, how to Lie, cheat and steal to live.  And here you all though it was a human trait to be a total butthead.

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Also this week

AT&T, your network, UNSECURED

Rodent eating plants

LED…now with carbon

Plug it in, plug it in

Paintball enforcement

Everyone has a run in with the law at some point.  Maybe its you being naughty, maybe its your neighbor being loud, or just possibly you need some help, and the person that comes to your aid, is a public servant who far too often gets associates with being the harbinger of doom…ok maybe not doom, but traffic tickets anyway.  This week in addition to a few tech stories we find ourselves neck deep in stories about the law, and those who enforce it.  As with all things, your opinions may vary…

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Paid by the donut, not the hour

What can brown do for you…err…no thanks

Mini Van Mom

Burning Man BS

Blogging till you need bail

The color of gang war

photo courtesy of davidsonscott15

It happens…not very often when you consider there are hundreds of millions of them out there, but it is a real fact that lithium batteries can go bad.  I don’t mean they start pushing over cows, robbing liquor stores and writing bad checks, but they can go bad, and especially if damages (lets say by a small fall), have a cascading reation and fail in dramatic fashon.  How dramatic you ask?  Lets just say that the picture above while it is an artistic rendering of potential…its not so far from the truth.

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Also this week

iPhone exclusive

Arachnophobia circa 300million bc

Keep on making those mistakes

Solar pay to play

Glasses that look stupid and cost too much

AP shake down

XKCD book

Advertising…we are surounded by it every day, and lets be very clear that there is nothing inhearently bad with advertising.  What happens when your promotional department gets a little over zealous?  When you go from being a great choice and a great product to the NEST choice and the ONLY way to go if your not a blithering idiot.  This is the question that comes up when you listen to some modern ads.  After all, there can be only one that is the best…at least you would think so.  Thats part of the reason AT&T and Verizon are so often at each others leagal throats.

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Also on the show;

Parents as financial advisors…hmmm

Da Blob and other stuff that floats, stinks and eats birds

Horizon realty, bully? Jerks? or just a company trying to set the record straight?

Read any good books…so just how good were they?

Its good to be blue

Man accused of stabbing that leads to a death…75 million years ago

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