Grapefruit and grapefruit juice seem to be causing problems

It seems that consumption of just a quarter of a grapefruit per day increases a woman's risk of breast cancer by 30%.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6900482.stm

Grapefruit also seems to interfere with many drugs.

https://secure.pharmacytimes.com/lessons/200303-02.asp

Oranges and orange juice and other citrus fruits do not seem to cause these problems.

Maybe a surprise meteor storm?

A meteor storm produces more than 1,000 meteors per hour. They are very rare, happening only a few times per century, but when they happen, they can change history. People think the world is ending. In the early 1800s, meteor storms on the east coast of the US produced more than 100,000 meteors per hour, many brighter than the full moon! This was described as silent lightning.

On September 1, 2007, the Earth will pass through a dense ribbon of material from Comet Kiess, producing the Aurigid meteor shower.

The peak will only last about 2 hours, with the true peak being much shorter, and the time can be off somewhat from the estimate since the location of the ribbon is not known precisely.

The west coast of the US, Alaska, and Hawaii are best placed to see the peak.

On the west coast, the peak should be visible at approximately 4:30 in the morning of Saturday, September 1.

Hawaii is even better positioned. The peak will be at 1:30 in the morning of Saturday, September 1.

See Figure 5.

http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/aurigids.html

Real celestial fireworks

Probably the best meteor shower of the year. The Perseids have been recorded for nearly 2,000 years. This year will be particularly favorable because there will be no moonlight to interfere.

On the evening of August 12, look for them overhead. The number of meteors you see will increase until dawn, so the later you look, the more you will see. After midnight, look toward the northeast.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/11jul_greatperseids.htm

The Sumidagawa fireworks began in 1732

One of the best fireworks displays in Tokyo. Like a two-hour finale! But is so crowded, it is scary. You cannot move on the street... if you are planning on going, ask someone who has been there. You will not believe the one million people packed along the Sumida River...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumidagawa_Fireworks_Festival

Why do fruits and vegetables taste crummy these days?

This is not just about peaches... it explains how agriculture has changed over the last century... and why suburbs are even more detrimental than you thought...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12125929

The World Now Eats (and Dies) Like Americans

This clip is only three minutes long. Worth seeing.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/10

A solar tower is completely different from what I thought

I though a solar tower for generating electricity was some incredibly hot awful thing in a desert that would produce really hot air and would suck you up the tower if you were not careful... Ha, ha. It is nothing like that at all. At least this one isn't. You will be surprised.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=C-EvV90MeDY

Hans Rosling explains the state of the world

Two of the best talks at TED. Probably the best place to start.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92


http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140

Greatest collection of liberal videos ever

If edge.org is the greatest salon the world has ever seen, here are the videos. Liberal, visionary, and optimistic. Exhilarating. A perfect antidote to all the nonsense, all the hate, all the destructive and unhelpful people.

www.ted.com

TED

Technology Entertainment Design (TED) annually brings together some of the world's greatest thinkers. Their lectures are available online for free. Sorta like a video edge.org.

http://www.ted.com

How to play a broken record

Suppose you have a very old recording that is so fragile it cannot be played without damaging it, and suppose it was actually broken. How could you play it?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11851842

The Big Question: Why are We Here?

Richard Dawkins explains in 23 minutes why we came to be, what our purpose is, and where we are going.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=13NPZ5Nv_fc

The quake was not so bad in Tokyo

There was a pretty big quake in Niigata, about 150 miles north of Tokyo. It was a strong 6 on the Japanese scale, which suggests there may be structural damage in Niigata.

The Japanese scale is a measure of actual shaking at the surface, so it is a better indicator of damage than magnitude. While magnitude does tell you how big a quake is, it does not tell you how deep it is. There are many quakes with magnitudes of 8 or even 9, but if they happen deep under the ground, the shaking at the surface may not be very bad.

Initial reports by the BBC made it sound as if a 6.6 quake happened in Tokyo. The shaking here was moderate, and some people in Tokyo said "What quake?"

Depending on how your software is set up, you can see a short video clip of some of the damage at

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy

The Rattleback

This is a really surprising toy. It seems to behave in a totally unexpected way when you spin it.

Go to www.newscientist.com

and search for rattleback.

There is a good video of it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcQMoZr_x7Q&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enewscientist%2Ecom%2Fblog%2Fshortsharpscience%2F

The creation of artificial life

We just learned how to read DNA easily a decade ago. Now, it is routine and cheap and becoming cheaper by the day.

But just reading DNA still does not yield the ultimate prize: artificial organisms, constructed from inanimate pieces, designed for specific purposes.

That era has begun.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/28/nlife228.xml

Why people behave the way they do?

Have you ever noticed that people who don't know what they are doing are going gangbusters to do it? On the other hand, people who are well versed in the complexities of an issue have a hard time making a final decision and are not very confident that the decision is the best possible.

It is all summed up in this Darwin quote.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge...

Just three glasses of fruit or vegetable juice per week reduces risk of Alzheimer's by 76%!

Our food has become really distorted. We are now missing huge numbers of chemicals that had always been part of our diet. The distortion is so great that some people now eat nearly no fruits and vegetables, and fruits and vegetables used to make up the majority of our diet because there was nothing else to eat.

Here is a good example. Some people almost never drink fruit/vegetable juice. Other people drink three or more glasses per week. Hundreds of people were followed for 10 years, and those who drank three or more glasses per week were found to have had a 76% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease!

We can expect to live to our 90s or more. By the age of 95, the risk of developing Alzheimer's is 50%.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=50938

Video clips show you how to do anything

Reading directions and trying to figure out how to do something can be really annoying. Suppose someone would just show you instead?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19638199/site/newsweek


videojug.com
Watch "Brushing Your Dog's Teeth", for example.

expertvillage.com
Watch "The Spoon Bending Trick Explained". Uri Geller. Ha!

Planny Aloha Make Mo Planny Aloha

Translation: Lots of generosity makes more generosity.

Ever wonder why some groups are cooperative and some groups are full of backstabbing dirty rats?

It turns out that even rats (real ones) can be taught to be cooperative, and they will continue to be cooperative as long as everyone else is.

However, if too many start cheating, the cooperation will stop.

This can lead to groups in which there is a lot of cooperation and groups of backstabbing dirty rats.

Since we can see this kind of behavior even in rats, we know that the roots of altruistic behavior go back many millions of years.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526115.100-rats-influenced-by-the-kindness-of-strangers.html

The First Emperor of China

Reenactment of the reign of the first Emperor of China.

Let us say he was not a nice man from a family that was not very nice... complete with substance abuse.

Wait until you see the computer graphics of what is under the mound!

Using the radar technique described in the documentary below, an enormous room 100 feet high has just been discovered above the Emperor's tomb.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/02/AR2007070200577.html


The documentary is in 9 parts of about 10 minutes each. You can go to Google, Video, and search for "The First Emperor The Man Who Made China" and choose "(Part 1)". If you click on the small rectangle below the picture at the right, the video should go full screen.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6143591406633956594&q=The+first+emperor+the+man+who+made+china&total=21&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=4

We eat insects every day

Bread, pasta, and many other foods contain substantial amounts of insects such as mites.

Figs are pollinated by small wasps.

In the 1980s, Nature had an entire episode on tropical figs, showing that many wasps died inside. The producers of Nature were no doubt "encouraged" at the end to have a disclaimer that said "The figs shown in this program are tropical figs and are not the figs grown for human consumption."

Of course this implied that the figs we eat do not have wasps in them.

Ha.

I bought some Fig Newtons, put a little of the filling under the microscope, and lo and behold: wasp parts everywhere.

You can probably see them with a hand lens.

A lie of omission.

The World Clock

The World Clock is fascinating. It gives running estimates of world population, the temperature of the Earth, species extinction, deaths, etc.

The numbers are, of course, estimates and depend on whose estimates are used, but the rates at which they tick by give a feeling of how fast things happen.

http://www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf