Fatwa Against Body Scans
Fiqh Council of North America issues fatwa against airport body scans:
“It is a violation of clear Islamic teachings that men or women be seen naked by other men and women. Islam highly emphasizes haya (modesty) and considers it part of faith. The Quran has commanded the believers, both men and women, to cover their private parts.”
via Portland Humanist Examiner, via USA Today, via Free Press
Floating Data Centers
This feels at first, in a speculative fiction sort-of-way, like one more step toward turning the planet into a large neural network… Building floating synapses for the network mind, out in the sea.
“In general, computing centers are located on a ship or ships, which are then anchored in a water body from which energy from natural motion of the water may be captured, and turned into electricity and/or pumping power for cooling pumps to carry heat away from computers in the data center,” Google writes in the patent application.
