Friday, April 30, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
An iPod Touch is not just an iPod
I did not understand until I had had an iPod Touch for a while that it is not just an iPod. It is actually a completely independent computer.
The two major advantages for me:
It can play podcasts and audiobooks at double speed.
Apps!
I wish I had gotten one years ago. I had no idea it was like this... actually, maybe it should be called an iPadlet. That might better convey what it can do.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Maybe we can find extant lifeforms similar to the first life on Earth!
The world’s deepest drill is about to get taller—tall enough to dig into Earth's mantle. Already, the Chikyu research vessel is capable of fetching samples at depths of 23,000 feet below the seabed, two to four times that of any other drill. In 2007, off the coast of Japan, it became the first mission to study subduction zones, the area between tectonic plates that is the birthplace of many earthquakes. Over the next three years, scientists will tack on at least an extra mile of drill and attempt the most ambitious mission ever: piercing the Earth’s mantle. There, scientists expect to find the same conditions as those in the early Earth—and perhaps the same life-forms that thrived then.
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/deepest-drill
The Swine Flu Really is worse
While seasonal flu deaths are in people aged 76 on average, the average age of people killed by swine flu was 37. So Simonsen also decided to calculate years of life lost to swine flu, a common measure for the impact of disease. She used the ages of people who died in 2009 and their life expectancy to calculate that the US lost nearly 2 million years of life to the pandemic - more than in the 1968 pandemic. By contrast, she calculates that 600,000 years of life are lost on average to seasonal flu.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Spitzer Space Telescope
The Spitzer Space Telescope site is jaw-dropping terrific!
Videos are available in good quality and also in high definition through iTunes.
For example, using the Spitzer Space Telescope, it was possible for astronomers to determine that, around a young Sunlike star 500 light-years away, dust in the circumstellar disc was undergoing melting and crystallization to form olivine crystals!
Although these are "podcasts", they are "video podcasts".
To subscribe in iTunes, click on the iTunes button below the video.
Earthquake in Chile
The damage to buildings in the recent earthquake in Chile was far worse than expected given the extremely strict building codes.
This does not bode well for the Pacific Northwest and for Japan.
Hayabusa might make it back to Earth!
This is unbelievable! The Hayabusa spacecraft, which was thought to be lost, is on its way to an Earth rendezvous this summer!
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Oh, oh... Export land model
As an energy exporter gains foreign exchange, its economy booms, and it consumes progressively more of the energy it produces. There is therefore less for sale on the world market, even if there is no change in production level.
Saudi Arabia’s booming economy and soaring demand for electricity is increasing the kingdom’s reliance on oil to produce power. By 2012, it may be using 1.2 million barrels a day – more than twice current levels -- to meet its electricity needs. This increasing use of oil is occurring because the Saudis’ natural gas production cannot keep up with power demand.
Compression of Morbidity
People are afraid of living a long time because they are afraid that that means they will be disabled for a long time, but it seems that what is happening is that the period of disability is remaining the same (or even shortening), while the functional lifespan is increasing.
And the average lifespan is increasing by 6 hours per day.
"We're living longer because people are reaching old age in better health," said demographer James Vaupel, author of a review article appearing in the March 25 edition of Nature. But once it starts, the process of aging itself -- including dementia and heart disease -- is still happening at pretty much the same rate. "Deterioration, instead of being stretched out, is being postponed."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Red dwarfs
On one hand, they have very long lifespans.
On the other hand, they tend to flare a lot, which would not be good for the atmosphere of a planet in the habitable zone or the life on that planet.
Another complication is that cool red stars seem not to form certain chemicals which would favor life.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
LED lights are almost ready for a major transition
Within a few years, the prices of LED lights for general illumination will go way down, and the performance will go way up. There will then be a huge transition, and if there is minimum Jevon's paradox, we might actually get energy savings!
A kind of Jevon's paradox
If you make something more efficient, sometimes people just use more of it.
The US no longer controls the price of oil
...the twin peaks of oil production in 2005 and 2008 reveal that while the world was able to respond to a moderate price advance coming out of 2002, nearly all of the price action above 40.00 dollars a barrel starting in late 2004 did not produce more supply.
http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-us-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil-in-a-peak-oil-world.html
http://www.oilprice.com/article-the-us-no-longer-controls-the-price-of-oil-in-a-peak-oil-world.html
Hilarious
Critics have remained unconvinced, despite the fact that many still can't differentiate between Emily Howell's work and that of a human. For instance, one music-lover who listened to Emily Howell's work praised it without knowing that it had come from a computer program. Half a year later, the same person attended one of Cope's lectures at the University of California-Santa Cruz on Emily Howell. After listening to a recording of the very same concert he had attended earlier, he told Cope that it was pretty music but lacked "heart or soul or depth."
Thursday, March 18, 2010
More evidence of life on Mars as soon as 2012
Biological reactions often favor one isotope of an element over others. Such reactions can therefore leave signatures in the isotope ratios.
The Mars Science Laboratory rover is scheduled to land in 2012. It has a mass spectrometer that will be able to measure sulfur isotope abundances.
If sulfur 34 is depleted in sulfides compared to in sulfates, this would, on Earth, be an indication that microbes had converted the sulfates into sulfides.
If an asteroid is a threat to Earth
Instead of blowing it up, which might result in it reaggregating in a matter of hours,
If a sizeable asteroid is found heading towards Earth, one option is to nuke it. But too small a bomb would cause the fragments to fly apart only slowly, allowing them to clump together under their mutual gravity.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527514.700-terminator-asteroids-could-reform-after-nuke.html
mine it out of existence instead!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
We overeat because food is now designed to make us overeat
"Higher sugar, fat and salt make you want to eat more."
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Maybe the banksters think the easy growth is over because the cheap oil is gone
I wonder if one reason the banksters are so intent on looting the system, in what at first glance seems to be unenlightened self-interest, is that they know really serious energy supply problems are coming, and there wont be any recovery in the future anyway, so they might as well get what they can get now and get in the lifeboats...
http://energyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/01/matthew-simmons-latest-presentation.html
http://energyassociation.blogspot.com/2010/01/matthew-simmons-latest-presentation.html
Tokyo Sky Tree broadcast tower
The first 1,000 feet is built... just 1,000 feet to go!
Hmm, usually, when a "tallest in the world" structure is built, it is a sign that an economic crash is coming right behind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree
http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Sky_Tree
http://www.tokyo-skytree.jp/
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Intraterrestrial life
The biomass below the surface of the Earth easily that at the surface of the Earth.
While Mars, Ceres, the ice moons of the gas giant planets, and the ice dwarfs in the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud may look barren at the surface, their subsurface environments are similar to subsurface environments on Earth, which we know teems with archaea at least.
The search for extraterrestrial life in the meantime focuses on intraterrestrial life.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Happy Birthday, Karen!
She would have made 60. What we missed over these many years we will never know.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Court stenographers alone make no sense
As another example of how inertia makes people do things that make no sense, the way notes are taken in court and other venues makes no sense. Of course we want typed transcripts, but since audio and video recording have dropped in cost to nearly nothing, why audio and video recording are not also made makes no sense whatsoever. But then why do judges still wear powdered wigs and black robes?
There is a difference between tradition and rigid lack of common sense.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Atmospheric blocking
Atmospheric blocking occurs 20-40 times each year and usually lasts 8-11 days ... blocking can trigger dangerous conditions, such as a 2003 European heat wave that caused 40,000 deaths. Blocking usually results when a powerful, high-pressure area gets stuck in one place and ... fronts behind them are blocked. Lupo believes that heat sources, such as radiation, condensation, and surface heating and cooling, have a significant role in a blocking's onset and duration. Therefore, planetary warming could increase the frequency and impact of atmospheric blocking.
http://www.physorg.com/news185719909.html
Friday, February 19, 2010
Bravo, Roger!
Every time I read a review by Roger Ebert at the Internet Movie Database (imdb.com) I am amazed. He treats every movie as if it were fine literature... and what comes out of his pen can only be produced by love.
"The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them."
One of my favorites is his review of the recent remake of Solaris:
"The deep irony here is that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel, but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them."
Have fun, Roger!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Some randomness in gene expression
Some of this variation may be due to environmental factors and the influence of other genes, but not all: It has been shown that genetically identical organisms living in the same environment can show variability in some incompletely penetrant traits.
...
"It's not just nature or nurture," says Alexander van Oudenaarden, leader of the research team and a professor of physics and biology at MIT. "There is a random component to this. Molecules bounce around and find each other probabilistically. It doesn't work like clockwork."
Monday, February 15, 2010
K D Lang
Hallelujah
Back in 1994, when lang was a surprise guest on Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged, Bennettintroduced her by saying she was in a league of singers who are "blessed with a destiny."
"The three that come to mind: Billie Holiday,Edith Piaf, Hank Williams," Bennett said. "It goes beyond success. It becomes immortal.
...
The singer says her mom was determined to give music lessons to her four children.
"Every week on Thursday — and this is in the middle of Alberta in the winter — she would work all day and then drive four kids 60 miles one way through blizzards, and then sit there for two hours while we each had our half-hour lesson," lang says. "And then drive all the way back. We wouldn't get back 'til 7 o'clock. And she did that for maybe 20 years."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123416193
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Morality and religion
"For some, there is no morality without religion, while others see religion as merely one way of expressing one's moral intuitions."
Citing several studies in moral psychology, the authors highlight the finding that despite differences in, or even an absence of, religious backgrounds, individuals show no difference in moral judgments for unfamiliar moral dilemmas. The research suggests that intuitive judgments of right and wrong seem to operate independently of explicit religious commitments.
http://www.physorg.com/news184857515.html
Religious people are more likely than the non-religious to engage in prosocial behaviour – acts that benefit others at a personal cost – when it enhances the individual's reputation or when religious thoughts are freshly activated in the person's mind...
- Empirical data ... suggests there is more cooperation among religious societies than the non-religious, especially when group survival is under threat
-- Economic experiments indicate that religiosity increases levels of trust among participants
-- Psychology experiments show that thoughts of an omniscient, morally concerned God reduce levels of cheating and selfish behaviour
...
"One reason we now have large, cooperative societies may be that some aspects of religion – such as outsourcing costly social policing duties to all-powerful Gods – made societies work more cooperatively in the past."
...
The study also points out that in today's world religion has no monopoly on kind and generous behaviour. In many findings, non-believers acted as prosocially as believers. The last several hundred years has seen the rise of non-religious institutional mechanisms that include effective policing, courts and social surveillance.
"Some of the most cooperative modern societies are also the most secular," says Norenzayan. "People have found other ways to be cooperative – without God."
http://www.physorg.com/news142174482.html
Vancouver Olympics
And so, for a few moments, the world is joyous and bright, and we glimpse what we could be all the time and forever...
They may be three hours of prerecorded music and national schmaltz, a made-for-television spectacle that verges on becoming a religious rite instead of a mere celebration of sports. But unless you've actually seen one in person or marched in one, you can't really grasp the enormity of what is happening during the opening ceremonies when the world gathers for the Games.
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