More good news for the first week of President Obama.
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order ending the ban on federal funds for international groups that promote or perform abortions, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
More details at: Obama to reverse foreign abortion rule – White House- msnbc.com
More change we can believe in 🙂
US regulators have cleared the way for the world’s first study on human embryonic stem cell therapy.
The move comes three days after the inauguration of President Barack Obama who has been a strong supporter of embryonic stem cell research.
Full story at: BBC NEWS | Health | Green light for US stem cell work
Another test of Twitme after changing the text that is included in the Twitter notifications.
If everything works okay this post should generate a tweet on Twitter notifying people following me about a new post to the Soapbox.
EDIT: to see if edits generate Twitter notifications.
David Cameron gave a speech today on Progressive Conservatism. Still have to read it. I’ll comment on it if required after I read through it. You can read the whole thing at the URL below.
David Cameron: Making progressive conservatism a reality
From: The Conservative Party | News | Speeches | David Cameron: Making progressive conservatism a reality
This is brilliant news. Obama promised it on the campaign trail but it’s good to see it happen. This does not mean that all the people in the prison will just be turfed out the gates. Nor should it. It means that those that have charges to answer will be tried in proper courts with proper evidence. Guantanamo Bay, or what has gone on there, rather than the physical place, is a stain on the ideals that the USA used to stand for. Proper due process of the inmates will go a long way to restoring the reputation of the USA.
US President Barack Obama has ordered the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to be closed within one year.
More details at: BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Obama orders Guantanamo closure
This entry will be a place to find the new hardware and software that gets released this week to coincide with Macworld 2009 and CES 09. Check back over the next week or so as this page gets updated with stuff that catches my eye.
Productivity Applications
Apple iLife ’09 – Latest version of the best available consumer media suite.
Apple iWork ’09 – Update to Apple’s productivity suite. Nice additions to Keynote and Pages. Endnote and MathType integration with Pages is a nice addition. I’ll be using Endnote and Mathtype a lot for courses I’m doing. This might mean I don’t have to use Microsoft Word.
Microsoft announce that they will make it easier for Office for Macintosh 2008 to connect to and use SharePoint services.
Music Creation
Toontrack Drumtracker – Convert audio drum recordings into drum midi data.
Development Tools
Widget Press ModelBaker – Web development app to quickly build web apps, iPhone & iPod touch web apps and Android web apps.
FileMaker Pro 10 – latest iteration of the easy to use database application.
Odds and Sods
Xsilva Lightspeed – Mac based Point-of-sale system. Run your retail business on Mac!
Plastic Logic eReader – Upcoming ebook device. Loots very nice.
Just want to wish everyone who stumbles upon this blog a Happy 2009. If you want to be where the action is online in 2009 joint Twitter.
I think 2009 is going to be very historic for several reasons. Number 1 being the inauguration of Barack Obama. The fact that he is African American is an incidental in my opinion. The best thing about Barack Obama is that he is an intellectual. He gets that it is okay to listen to experts in various fields and that empirical evidence isn’t a taboo.
Other highlights in 2009 will be the 200 year anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150 year anniversary of the publication of his seminal work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
The world has been on a path to a a better place after the work of Darwin, and Wallace it should be said.