Blog Heap of Links for the day 2 February 2009

What interested me on the Penny Postcard web site was this old photo of the Bartlesville Masonic Lodge before it was located in the old building that became the home of Cities Service Company and then of Rogers State University Bartlesville campus.

Microsoft Corp. is warning customers that tools for blocking automatic upgrades to the newest service packs of Windows Vista and Windows XP will expire in the coming months. In a note on a company blog aimed at enterprise IT professionals, Microsoft said the Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) blocking tool expires on April 28, while the one for XP SP3 expires May 19.

questioning the assumption that Windows 7 will recover market share lost by Vista and asking a broad range of, I think, important questions about home computer usage costs and motivations.

The Pyrenean ibex, a form of wild mountain goat, was officially declared extinct in 2000 when the last-known animal of its kind was found dead in northern Spain. Shortly before its death, scientists preserved skin samples of the goat, a subspecies of the Spanish ibex that live in mountain ranges across the country, in liquid nitrogen. Using DNA taken from these skin samples, the scientists were able to replace the genetic material in eggs from domestic goats, to clone a female Pyrenean ibex, or bucardo as they are known. It is the first time an extinct animal has been cloned.

The brown-eyed youngster is now 14-months-old and should weigh at least 20lb. Yet she is still the size of a newborn baby, tipping the scales at just over 7lb and a mere 19in. Suraya has been examined by a whole team of specialists including paediatricians, nutritionists, geneticists and hormone experts. But doctors say they still have no idea why she won't grow — describing her condition as a "real conundrum".

1 The placebo effect Don't try this at home. Several times a day, for several days, you induce pain in someone. You control the pain with morphine until the final day of the experiment, when you replace the morphine with saline solution. Guess what? The saline takes the pain away.

Even with all of our science and research capabilities there are things we simply cannot explain. Here are 13 mind benders that have been puzzling the science world. 1 The placebo effect 2 The horizon problem 3 Ultra-energetic cosmic rays 4 Belfast homeopathy results 5 Dark matter 6 Viking's methane 7 Tetraneutrons 8 The Pioneer anomaly 9 Dark energy 10 The Kuiper cliff 11 The Wow signal 12 Not-so-constant constants 13 Cold fusion

It is all thanks to a striking coincidence.

"I use marijuana to open the endorphins of the mind so I can spiritually receive God," Hutchinson told the Portland Press Herald. He meets with fellow worshipers every Saturday for their "last supper." The Religion of Jesus Church, hokey as is sounds, is a bona fide religion and has been recognized as such by the State of Hawaii. The church was founded in 1969 by Rev. James Kimmel and incorporates elements of a number of religious traditions including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Their main religious text is The Urantia Book, whic