This letter to an unnamed “Immortal Beloved” was found in the personal papers of Ludwig van Beethoven after his death in 1827. Though there’s debate over whom the letters were written to, there’s not much debate about whether or not Beethoven had it bad for the woman. A snippet:

My bosom is full, to tell you much — there are moments when I find that speech is nothing at all. Brighten up — remain my true and only treasure, my all, as I to you. The rest the gods must send, what must be for us and shall.

Your faithful

Ludwig

Read the rest on Letters of Note.

Have you ever unwittingly memorized the lyrics to a Black Eyed Peas song? Of course you have—they're too damn catchy not to remember! Which is why this video, of frontman will.i.am resorting to reading the words to his own song from a cellphone during a recent performance of “Don’t Stop the Party” on French TV, is all the more confounding. [THR via Fark] More

A paper by scientists at China Agricultural University published in March 2011 in PLOS One details a study on transgenic cows that have been modified to express some compounds found in human breast-milk in their milk. The researchers claim the milk contains lysozyme (an antimicrobial protein), lactoferrin (a protein involved with the immune system) and alpha-lactalbumin. The researchers claim that this milk would be a suitable substitute for human breast milk, but do not cite any studies or data to directly support this claim.

The reporting on this in the UK press is textbook bad science. Writing in April, the Telegraph‘s science reporter Richard Gray describes the cows as “physically identical” to non-transgenic cows (presumably he thinks that DNA exists solely in the realm of pure maths or possibly in the astral plane). He also credulously repeats the claim that because this milk contains proteins found in human breast milk, it will be a suitable substitute, and implies that there is some benefit known to arise from drinking breast milk into adulthood. Much of his story revolves around the European controversy over GM foods.

A more recent report on Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News is (predictably) much worse than the Telegraph, however. An article by-lined “Holly Williams, Beijing correspondent” describes the cows’ milk as “human breast milk” (the leap from “cow’s milk with some proteins found in human milk” to “human milk” being rather a large one). Williams cites dairy workers on the farm where the cows live as authorities on the nutritional value of the milk (“It’s better for you because it’s genetically modified.”). Like the Telegraph, the Sky report is mostly a critique of EU rules and conventions on GM food, and has the thinly veiled subtext of “Our Eurocrat lords and lefty loonies are holding back nutrition.”

Neither report links to the original study or mentions its title.

Characterization of Bioactive Recombinant Human Lysozyme Expressed in Milk of Cloned Transgenic Cattle (Plos One)

Genetically modified cows produce ‘human’ milk (Telegraph)

Chinese GM Cows Make Human Breast Milk

(via JWZ)

(Image: Cow, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from nuskyn’s photostream)

Link:
GM Chinese cows express milk with some proteins found in human milk, UK press reports “OMG! Cows give breast milk!”

Just last week we posted a video of the new Nook (which we just reviewed) running Angry Birds. Not exactly the best match for an e-paper display, but it does show that the underlying Android install is sound and functional. Further proof comes this weekend, with forum-dwelling hackers installing the ADW Launcher home screen and even the Kindle app on it. Sure, the animation is busted, but it could still be super useful.

Oh, and by the way, it has Bluetooth. That wasn’t in the specs, but is probably part of the chipset they used. Was Barnes & Noble going to announce this? Doesn’t matter much, we know now!

Looks like the “Nook Touch” is going to be about as popular a hacking platform as the Nook Color. I wonder if the similarly-specced Kobo will get a similar treatment?

Visit link:
New Nook Hacked Further, Gets Launcher, Bluetooth, And… Kindle

Corrupt system files, account lockouts, and accidentally deleted data are three scary computer problems that often send people running for their backup drives. While restoring a backup may technically fix things, a full system backup is usually a very time-consuming overkill in these cases, and nobody likes the time-warp effect of restoring one (e.g., if your last full backup ran a week ago). When these problems occur, fixing them can be far simpler than you might think. More

Inside your Dropbox folder is a hidden cache folder that stores deleted files locally on your computer for faster restores. If you use Dropbox a lot, this cache folder can eat up valuable HD space. Here’s how to erase those files. More