Blog Heap of Links for the day 1 June 2009

It was the one campaign pledge President Obama didn't dare break — a promise to take his wife out for dinner and a show once the election was over.

No news is good news. That's the feeling at two local Bartlesville dealerships that sell General Motors products. GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, giving the federal government a majority ownership in the automaker. Fourteen plant reductions are expected as GM hones its downsized brands to Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick, according to a news release issued on its Web site today. The reinvented company is expected to launch within 60 to 90 days.

Harlem congressman Charles Rangel apologized Monday for a cringe-worthy crack that President Obama ought to watch his back on the streets of New York.

A search was under way off the Brazilian coast after Air France lost contact with a plane carrying 228 people from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.

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The quake caused 80 million tons of dirt and trees to slide from the southeast side of the canyon into the Madison River at an estimated 100 miles per hour. The force of the slide displaced both the air in the canyon and the water in the Madison River below and buried the Rock Creek public campground. The slide created a barrier across the Madison River that formed a new lake that still exists today, Quake Lake. All told, twenty-eight people lost their lives in the quake and its aftermath.

Researchers have made a virtual reconstruction of a female Neanderthal pelvis found in Israel. Although the size of the reconstructed birth canal shows that Neanderthal childbirth was about as difficult as in present-day humans, the shape indicates that Neanderthals retained a more primitive birth mechanism than modern humans.

A NASA Boeing 747 carrying the shuttle took off from Edwards Air Force Base at 8:07 a.m. PDT Monday. NASA spokeswoman Leslie Williams said the first stop will be at Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas. Weather will determine how long it takes to reach Florida.

Microsoft will eliminate an artificial limitation that prevents three concurrent applications from running under Windows 7 Starter Edition for netbooks, the company said late Friday

A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago has been uncovered.

Mice carrying a "humanized version" of a gene believed to influence speech and language may not actually talk, but they nonetheless do have a lot to say about our evolutionary past, according to a new report.

Beginning with the opening bell on Monday, June 8, the Dow Jones Industrial Average will have two new components: The Travelers Companies Inc. (TRV) instead of Citigroup Inc. (C), and Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) instead of General Motors Corp.

Our brain is wired to identify gender based on facial cues and coloring, according to a new study. Psychologists found the luminescence of the eyebrow and mouth region is vital in rapid gender discrimination.

Stretches of DNA previously believed to be useless 'junk' DNA play a vital role in the evolution of our genome, researchers have now shown. They found that unstable pieces of junk DNA help tuning gene activity and enable organisms to quickly adapt to changes in their environments.

A semicontinuous current flow has been measured above electrified clouds. Called the Wilson current, this phenomenon has long been considered a critical component of the global electric circuit; however, only a few studies have directly investigated this current, yielding only a few dozen measurements.

The Blair Holt Act would prohibit unlicensed gun ownership, meaning customers couldn't purchase firearms at gun shows without a state license.