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Georgia withdraws from South Ossetia

The government of Georgia has announced that it has withdrawn all its troops from South Ossetia, in what it described as "a necessary step to protect civilians". According to the head of Georgia's security council, Alexander Lomaia, while Georgia met the demands of international community and withdrawn its troops, Russia had not, and on the contrary had increased its military presence in the region. The Georgian military has made clear that they are not admitting military defeat by withdrawing. This comes just one day after Mikheil Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, declared that his country was in a state of war. "I have signed a decree on a state of war. Georgia is under a state of total military aggression by the Russian navy, air force, large-scale ground operations," he said in a televised meeting that was broadcast on national television yesterday. The decree stated that "The state of war will be valid for 15 days [from yesterday]." It is not known if the state of war will continue after this withdrawal. The crisis broke out after days of heavy fighting in the region. On August 7 Georgian troops launched an offensive against the Ossetian town of Tskhinvali, the separatists capital. The next day Russian forces, without declaring a war, entered the territory of Georgia and bombed several targets in the country. On August 10th, Russian Black Sea Fleet began a naval blockade of Georgian port of Poti and landed several thousand Russian troops in Abkhazia in western Georgia. Ukraine threatened to bar Russian warships dispatched to the Abkhazian coast from returning to their Ukrainian base of Sevastopol if they engage in any military action. At the same time Poland dispatched a government airplane to evacuate its citizens, as well as citizens of Czech Republic, Lithuania and Estonia from Georgia. The Polish evacuation was followed by the government of Italy. The conflict is continuing and reports state that the death toll for civilians could range in the thousands.

Falcon 1 rocket fails during third launch attempt

A SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket has failed during its third attempt to reach orbit. Over four years behind schedule, the rocket lifted off from Omelek Island, part of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at 03:34 GMT this morning, carrying three technology development satellites, and the ashes of 208 people, including astronaut Gordon Cooper, and Star Trek actor James Doohan. According to a statement issued by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, the first and second stages of the rocket failed to separate, making this the third consecutive unsuccessful launch for the Falcon 1, which is yet to conduct a successful mission. Musk described the failure as a "big disappointment". The primary payload for this flight was the Trailblazer satellite, which was to have been operated by the United States Air Force, and MDA. Two CubeSats, Pharmasat Risk Evaluation Satellite (PREsat) and Nanosail-D, were also to have been deployed. The CubeSats would have been operated by NASA and Santa Clara University. The space burial capsules, named Explorers and operated by Celestis, were to have intentionally remained bolted to the second stage of the rocket. The remains of several famous individuals were flown, most notably Project Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan, best known for his role as Montgomery Scott in the science fiction television series Star Trek. Director John Meredyth Lucas, who also worked on Star Trek, had some of his ashes on the flight as well, as did Mareta West an astrogeologist who was responsible for choosing the landing sites for the Apollo missions to the Moon. This is the second consecutive failure of a major orbital space burial mission, following a failed Taurus launch in September 2001. The last successful major orbital space burial was conducted in December 1999, although a single burial capsule was launched aboard the New Horizons spacecraft in 2006. This launch was originally planned to occur in early 2004, with the TacSat-1 satellite and the Explorers payload. It would have been the maiden flight of the Falcon 1. A number of procurement delays pushed it to 2005, and subsequent issues with the availability of Space Launch Complex 3 at Vandenberg AFB, from where it was originally scheduled to launch, led to the first attempts to launch being made in late 2005. During the second attempted countdown, a faulty valve caused the first stage fuel tank to be deformed, leading to a delay. In March 2006, a flight which was originally scheduled to be conducted after this one, with the FalconSat-2 spacecraft, was launched as the maiden flight, and ended in failure less than a minute after lift-off due to a fuel leak. This caused delays for all other Falcon launches, and a test flight without a functional payload was added to the schedule in order to ensure that the problems with the rocket had been resolved. This was launched in March 2007, and also failed - this time due to a sequence of events started by human error in setting the fuel ratio for the first stage. Despite the failure to reach orbit, most critical systems were tested, so the third flight was cleared to launch an operational payload. In the meantime, the satellite that was to replace TacSat-1, TacSat-2, was launched, and TacSat-1 was subsequently cancelled as obsolete. During early 2008, the US Air Force announced that they would replace it with a satellite for a programme called Jumpstart, which would be selected a few weeks before launch. Trailblazer was chosen in late May, over two other options, PnPSat, or a pair of CubeSats. The launch was at that time scheduled for late June, but it was subsequently delayed due to small cracks in one of the rocket's engines. Today's launch followed an eventful countdown, lasting almost to the end of the five hour launch window, with the loading of helium onto the rocket taking longer than expected, and requiring several long holds. Following this, an attempt to launch was made at 03:00 GMT, which resulted in a last-second abort at T-0, just after ignition of the main engine, due to a marginal performance issue with the turbopump. The launch was recycled, and the rocket lifted off 34 minutes later. This was the first flight of an uprated version of the Merlin engine, which powers the first stage. The new version, named Merlin-1C, features regenerative cooling as opposed to ablative cooling used on the earlier launches. It is believed that the failure of the launch was unrelated to the presence of the new engine, the performance of which was described as "picture-perfect" by Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX. The next Falcon 1 launch was scheduled to have been launched in September with the Razaksat spacecraft for ATSB of Malaysia, and up to three CubeSats. This will almost certainly be delayed whilst the failure is investigated. It is unclear whether this failure will affect the maiden flight of the larger Falcon 9, currently scheduled for 2009, on a demonstration mission for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services programme. Today's launch is the 38th orbital launch of 2008, and following the resale and recovery of the AMC-14 satellite, the first outright failure of the year.

Pakistan

Pakistan's government has said it needs to purge Taleban sympathisers from within the ranks of the country's intelligence service - the ISI. The statement comes amid claims from the US and India of links between the ISI and Islamic extremists. Analysts say it is the first time that the Pakistan government has made such an admission. US officials have claimed that spies in the ISI helped plan the recent suicide attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Pakistani government spokeswoman Sherry Rehman said "individuals" in the ISI were probably acting on their own and going against official policy. She said Pakistan needed to "identify these people and weed them out". The BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan, in Islamabad, says it is the first time a member of the Pakistan government has talked about the ISI in this manner. However, Ms Rehman said there was no proof of ISI involvement in last month's bombing of India's embassy in Kabul. There was no immediate response from the Pakistani military.

--from the bbc

oh, today!

Ice hockey Buddy (2003 film) Puerto Rico Alfonso II of Naples 1996 Summer Olympics Pope Alexander VI July 26 Honus Wagner Exmoor Battle of Maiwand Lucrezia Borgia Bank of England Pipe bomb John Liston International Olympic Committee 2003 in film Welsh settlement in Argentina List of historical anniversaries List of Wardens of New College, Oxford 2008 Summer Olympics Jefferson Burdick 2008 Royal Charter Kasungu Argentina American Tobacco Company 1694 Wikimedia Foundation Ahmedabad 1953 Ayub Khan (Afghan commander) Butter Malawi Dead-ball era Coalition of Gulf War Puck (sports) 2008 Ahmedabad serial blasts United States dollar Film director Osama bin Laden History of Solidarity Coordinated Universal Time World Trade Organization Motion of Confidence 2008 Bangalore serial blasts Chubut River Korean Peninsula Commonwealth of England William Goodenough Hayter Screenplay Guantanamo Bay detention camp Baseball card India Iraqi Army United Progressive Alliance Den brysomme mannen 1865 The American Card Catalog Cinema of Norway Film criticism Hughie Lehman Iraq at the 2008 Summer Olympics Government of India Paul Pry (play) William Gibson Patagonia Indo-US nuclear deal Iraq Wikipedia 1996 Pyrrhic victory British Army California English language Nevada Theatre 1880 Manmohan Singh July 28 Tobacco smoking Division of Korea List of British ambassadors to Russia Korean War July 27 Potsdam Conference Atlanta, Georgia Gulf War Juan de Borja Lanzol de Romaní, el mayor Cape Verde T206 Honus Wagner Jens Lien Cardinal-nephew Deaths in 2008 Dystopia Theater Maiwand Cigarette pack United States Salim Hamdan Infantry Second Anglo-Afghan War Centennial Olympic Park bombing José Celso Barbosa Kuwait Joint Security Area Korean Demilitarized Zone Encyclopedia Left Front Afghanistan Nevada City, California Terrorism Federal government of Iraq Bangalore

just discover

Friends and family--

I am sending you a brief email to let you know about a website developed by Michael Kuhn and I that offers a unique way to browse and view amazon products.
If you are interested in purchasing the products, the payment, processing, and shipping go directly through amazon (helping your local grad students with some referral $ in the process).
Any which way, it doesn't cost you any more, and it helps us out, so it shouldn't have any drawbacks.

First, a brief tour...

The main page is located here:
http://discover.chainofthoughts.com

On the main page, the top-rated products are shown on the left (click on an image anytime to go to amazon for more details, or to purchase).
Related tags to these products are located in the center.
On the right top products by category are located in the directory structure (click the pluses to expand).

To perform a search type anything in the box at the top and hit enter.
After that the top products related to that search appear on the left, related tags in the center, and categories of top products on the right.

If you click a tag, it is exactly like performing a search.
So often it will help you identify other related products (based on two actors in the same movie, musicians who have collaborated, or book author's etc).

Finally, the box at the bottom shows you in which category you are searching (starts off at "All").
For example, if you want to search for DVD's only, click the "DVD" link at the bottom.
This will make the word "DVD" larger at the bottom indicating all the results on the left and the tags are in the category (note that the categories on the right will still search in their respective categories).


Take care,

brandon + mike

PS if you have any feedback on making the site more intuitive or navigable. Please feel free to drop me a line.

ads on chainOfThoughts.com

Different.

We believe that internet advertising needs a change. Like a traditional billboard, there should be ownership involved.
You as the advertiser know exactly the kind of people you want to reach. You must ask yourself: do you really want an algorithm deciding
who gets to see your ad at whatever rate CPM? Since you know your target audience better than anyone on the planet, you decide where your ad goes,
and you decide how long it will be there. Long gone are the days when ad spending might be gone in a matter of hours or days depending on the number of pageviews.

Everyday.

Everyday I pass the same billboards on my way home from work. Yeah, the ads are the same. Mercedes ad. Gun Show coming soon. Girl Scout cookies. I can remember each one, and
where they are along my travels. Ask anyone, and they can probably tell you what billboards were up on Times Square last time they were there. Why? Because the human
brain is associative; it remembers things in relation to other things. On my way home I slowly build a relationship with each ad.

Forgettable.

Why is internet advertising so forgettable? Because it is so random. I can visit the same page 10 times a day and see 10 different ads. Sometimes I will remember an ad that
I want to visit. I go back to the place I saw it and its gone. Damn. Refresh, refresh, refresh. So much for targeted advertising.

Philosophy.

Our thought process is different. We believe that advertising will work a lot better if ads stay in place, and advertisers have some certainty that their ads will be shown for
some duration. Also, advertisers and publishers should be on speaking terms. On so many other networks you have to ban advertisers that you don't agree with. Why? Because it's so random.
An advertiser should be a friend, nay, even a benefactor to the publisher. So whether you want to advertise slippers in Sandusky,
fireworks for the Chinese New Year, or brand-new lead suits on Radiactive decay there
is a page for every advertiser.




To use the search function go to the main page, select the language of your choice at the bottom, and type your search in the box at the top.
After you find the page of your dreams, click the placeholder ad and register your ad.



Remember this is the like the Oklahoma Land Run, the first advertisers to snag the page gets the lowest price.




~ brandon




PS: I can be reached directly: myfirstname@chainofthoughts.com (where discriminating humans will graciously perform the obvious substitution)

Amazon Kindle

Check this thing out, pretty amazing!

Introducing, Amazon Kindle

new languages...woot!

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