Monthly Archives: August 2011

I’ve got your missing links right here (06 August 2011) | Not Exactly Rocket Science

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Top picks

Watch the entertaining sexual displays that cause flamboyant male Houbara bustards to age faster. I especially liked Wired’s coverage

Inside Nature’s Giants dissects a sperm whale. This is the best nature programme on modern TV bar none.

John Rennie has a great post about 3D Printing and the era of Downloadable Objects.

Too detailed to be true? Serious concerns have been raised about the accuracy of the New Yorker’s piece on the bin Laden raid. Where was their fabled fact-checking?

WOW! Neuroscience of a ragtime pianist who can follow 4 symphonies simultaneously

What Home Looked Like For Seven Million Years – Carl Zimmer on where humans evolved

What happens when journo students have to make a newspaper with no computers? Brilliance ensues. Don’t miss the rest of the experiment as students struggle to type 2011 on a typewriter

From Catch-22 to Wikipedia. A cool list of 10 great moments in editing

The delightfully beautiful world of lichens, by Jennifer Frazer. White Worms and Pixie Cups in Colorado

“Toxic goo” from Apollo-era rockets will cost NASA about $1 billion to clean up. The dark side to all that hype and optimism.

God’s blog. Oh the comments.

Adam Rutherford ...

Angry cloud makes EPOD! | Bad Astronomy

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Just a quick shout-out to the folks at Earth Science Picture of the Day, which featured my Angry Cloud pic in today’s post.

EPOD is a pretty cool site, with a different shot of some Earth sciencey thing every day (duh). I keep it in my RSS feed reader along with several other such sites; besides providing beautiful pictures, there’s always some science nugget there I didn’t know about before.

If I weren’t an astronomer, I’d be a geologist or meteorologist. I love both those fields! Of course, both are related to astronomy; the former due to planetary physics (and asteroid/comet impacts), and the latter because it’s hard to observe unless it’s clear (or you’re a radio or space astronomer).

Looking up, looking down… it’s all related. It’s science, and it’s cool.


Confirmed! Magazzu buster a "libertarian Republican"

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Weiner on a smaller scale

by Eric Dondero

The news first broke Sunday night; yet another Democrat sex scandal ala Weiner-gate, and even juicier than Wu the teenage girl "Woo-er."

This guy - a big shot and quite powerful Cumberland County Commissioner - took photos of himself naked and sent them off to an on-line female acquaintance. Well, the predictable happened. The acquaintance just happened to have a Republican blogger friend. You can pretty much guess what happened after that.

A funny story no doubt. And all the more merrier cause it happened to a Democrat. But not necessarily of great interest to LibertarianRepublican.net, until now.

From the Trenton DailyJournal.com "Behind Magazzu's downfall, a bitter, longtime adversary":

For nearly three years, [Carl] Johnson waged a relentless and bitter cyberwar against Cumberland County political powerbroker Louis N. Magazzu. Johnson is a semi-reformed wild child, a graphic artist and a political activist -- in a libertarian/Republican kind of way. None of that has led to fame or fortune.

Magazzu is a veteran political operator, a serial victor in tough elections and a savvy Democratic Party insider with connections reaching to Trenton and Washington.
In this fight though, the victory went to the spoiler.

On Tuesday, The Daily Journal reported Johnson was posting on his website -- magazzuwatch.com -- nude photographs of Magazzu and a related cache of cooing emails between him and a woman that is not his wife. The postings disclosed an online relationship of at least a few years.

See the yucky photo of a naked Magazzu at Carl's website (which has been getting bombarded with hits the last few days), where you can also donate to his legal defense fund. No surprise Magazzu and his lawyers are coming after him.

MagazzuWatch.wordpress.com

Photo h/t for Weiner our friends at BigGovernment

Steny Hoyer agrees with John Boehner and Republicans: Jobs Report released Friday, totally Sucks!

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From Eric Dondero:

ABC News reports that House speaker John Boehner reacted to the release of the Jobs Report on Friday, in a grim manner:

“While the American people are asking ‘where are the jobs?’ the Democrats running Washington are determined to punish small businesses with higher taxes and more red tape – including hundreds of new regulations last month alone – and to keep their spending binge going at all costs. Instead of more jobs, they’re creating more fear, more uncertainty, and more debt.”

But the stunner, Democrat Minority Whip Steny Hoyer agreed:

“unsatisfactory for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed and for the millions more waiting to feel the effects of economic recovery.”

“Clearly, we must do more. It is truly disappointing

Bad GFI

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Please don't tell me to call an electrician. I'm not one, but I can handle wiring, and I know how not to get electrocuted.

Half my kitchen went out this morning. It's protected by a GFI breaker on the main panel. Outlets are good. I ran the wires to a known working GFI in the panel and it seems to

When I Grow Up, I Want To Be An Enigma

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UPDATE:  Solved by Alex at 12:10 CDT

Welcome to Saturday.  It is Saturday, right?  I went around all day yesterday thinking it was Thursday, so I’m currently suspended somewhere between Friday and Saturday.  Like a bug stuck in amber.

So!  With that charming visual to work with, let’s get going on that riddle.

The answer to today’s riddle will be found in reality:

Mmmmmmm - looks nummy

You shouldn’t look too far away, all things considered.

On one hand, this has to do with hope and inspiration…

… on the other hand, it’s just flat stealing something which doesn’t belong to you.

Painting by Jacob Jordaens 1593 - 1678

It looks like this has been cranking up for at least 32 years.

While it’s not exactly the tip of an iceberg, it very well may be the tip of an ocean.

This has something significant in common with burning hair.

(yes, it really is a feather)

It owes a lot to being sandwiched between a rock and a hard place (that’s not so hard, really)…

… and to being perturbed.

As distinct as this thing is in itself, it sits on something that really draws comments.

Image by Koomori No Kisaki

There you go.  How’s that for a fine collection of confusion?  You know where to find me.

complex math problem solved

Definite Time Relay

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what is definite time relay...?? i have seen the relay in tat sme time setting is there... for what these time setting is mentioned...??? psl explain in detail....

Next Friday at The Coney Island Museum: Launch Party for the New Video Series "The Midnight Archives: Tales From the Observatory" with Ronni Thomas

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Next Friday, August 12th, please join Morbid Anatomy and The Coney Island Museum for a launch party celebrating The Midnight Archives: Tales From the Observatory, a new video series "centered around the esoteric and always exotic personalities that spring from the Brooklyn Observatory." This project is the creation of many-time Observatory lecturer and film-maker Ronni Thomas, and promises to provide a fascinating and informative look into some of the topics explored by Observatory events past and future.

Come for the party and the screenings, stay to check out the exhibition The Great Coney Island Spectacularium and to experience The Cosmorama of the Great Dreamland Fire, and linger on for the complementary midnight martinis!

Full details follow; Hope very much to see you there.

Date: Friday, August 12
Location: The Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn MAP
Time: 8:00pm
Admission: $20
COMPLIMENTARY "MIDNIGHT MARTINI'S" AND SPECIALTY DRINKS FOR ALL!

Another in a series of exciting events in the Coney Island Museum, the Great Coney Island Spectacularium invites you to the Midnight Archive LAUNCH PARTY with filmmaker and collector Ronni Thomas!

Join us for the launch of the web series The Midnight Archives: Tales From the Observatory. The series is the work of Ronni Thomas (Alias Ronni Raygun) of the IKA Collective and is centered around the esoteric and always exotic personalities that spring from the Brooklyn Observatory. It attempts to briefly document some of the truly unique people, talents and objects from around the world who gather there on a weekly basis. Mummies, Taxidermy, 18th century robotics, early French demonic 3d horror... its all here.

Series creator Ronni Thomas will give a brief lecture followed by the screening of episode 1 "Petrifying Pets: Modern Day Mummies" (6 minutes) and a short montage reel.

You can find out more--and purchase tickets!--by clicking here. For more on The Great Coney Island Spectacularium, click here. More on Observatory here.

Today’s Tabloid News: Royal Party Boy Wants to Be a NASA Astronaut

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Prince Harry's bid for Nasa training, The Sun

"Army pilot Harry, 26, is a closet Star Trek fan and "obsessed with space", according to friends. They say he has already asked Sir Richard Branson's son Sam for a seat on one of the first Virgin Galactic sub-orbital flights. But he hopes to become an honorary member of the elite US space programme after returning from Afghanistan next year."

Are Taller People at Heightened Cancer Risk?

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(HealthDay News) -- Tall folks may be more likely than shorter people to develop cancer, new British research says.

Among women, the risk of breast, ovarian, uterine and bowel cancer, leukemia or melanoma appears to go up about 16 percent for every 4-inch bump in stature, the researchers said.

"Taller women in our study had increased risk of a wide range of cancers," said study co-author Jane Green, from the cancer epidemiology unit at the University of Oxford in England. "And all the evidence from past studies is that this link is seen equally in men and women."

The findings also suggest that gains in height over the 20th century -- Europeans' average height grew nearly half an inch per decade -- might help explain some of the cancer differences seen in recent generations, the researchers said. Read more...

Ayurtox for Body Detoxification

Doctor Who infographic | Bad Astronomy

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I somehow totally missed the fact that the mid-season premier of Doctor Who will be August 27, in just three weeks! Yay!

Still, for us squeeing Whovians, that seems like ages. So why not fill this long, dark tea-time of the soul by looking over Bob Canada’s cheeky Doctor Who infographic? It’s pretty good, and has some solid stuff in it for newbies and Who veterans alike. He also has one for the 1960s and 70s era villains, too.

As for the premier, I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers as much as possible — I haven’t even watched the trailer for the next series. The past two series have opened up a lot of questions that remain unsolved, but I’ve been a Steven Moffat fan for a long time (have you watched the adult sitcom "Coupling"? Brilliant!) so I know patience will pay off.

BTW, Buzzfeed has a great gallery of Doctor Who graffiti too. And of course, there’s also this from your humble host.

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