Sunday, September 21, 2008, 12:26 AM CST [General]
by Ian Punnett
The world's largest atom-smasher has been shut down for two months following a helium leak, just ten days after it was switched on amid great fanfare to probe the secrets of the universe.
"There has been an incident in a test. One section of the machine will have to be repaired," James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), told AFP.
A CERN spokesman said in a funny, high squeaky voice that a fault resulted in a "large helium leak into the tunnel.”
Is it just me or did all the wild weather, volcanoes and earthquakes just suddenly stop when they turned off the atom smasher? It’s so quiet tonight, weather-wise. You know, almost a little too quiet when you hear this next story.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Abrupt climate change has occurred on earth many times over the past millions of years. Climate scientists hypothesize that these sharp transitions may be caused when the earth system reaches a tipping point, or a critical value, resulting in a change of several degrees. These abrupt transitions have caused, for example, the formation and melting of glaciers throughout the earth, North Africa’s change from savannah to desert 5,000 years ago, and various other changes.
Now, a recent study has shown that there might be an early warning signal that heralds climatic tipping points. By analyzing the geological records of eight ancient abrupt climate shifts, scientists have found that each shift is each preceded by a period of relative calm.
Like the calm we’re experiencing right now. Anybody else want to join me in cheering for just a little earthquake right now just to shake things up? Or maybe we should turn that atom-smasher back on!
(PhysOrg.com) -- Why does it seem many people begin with political preferences and then try to find reasons justifying their inclinations? Why is it so difficult to sway people who care deeply about politics no matter how compelling the facts or persuasive the prose? University of Nebraska-Lincoln research may help to answer these questions.
By monitoring people's physical sensitivities to things like sudden noises and threatening visual images, political scientists were able to conclude that physiological reactions help predict variations in political beliefs.
For the first time, political scientists show that people who are physiologically highly responsive to threat are likely to advocate policies that protect against threats to the social unit: favoring defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism and the Iraq War. In contrast, people who are less startled by sudden noises and threatening visual images are more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism and gun control.
I’m so curious to find out if that’s true--conservatives are that way because they’re more easily startled. So maybe the first question at the first presidential debate should just be, “Boo!” And then we’ll know whether McCain really is the conservative he says he is!
And there is other new research into the differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Half of all Americans believe they are protected by guardian angels, one-fifth say they've heard God speak to them, one-quarter say they have witnessed miraculous healings, 16 percent say they've received one and 8 percent say they pray in tongues, according to a survey released Thursday by Baylor University.
The wide-ranging survey of 1,648 adults, who were asked 350 questions on their religious practices last fall, reveals a significant majority who are comfortable with the supernatural.
“Mystical experiences are widespread,” said Rodney Stark, co-director of Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion.
The survey, which has a margin of error of four percentage points, also revealed that theological liberals are more apt to believe in the paranormal and the occult - haunted houses, UFOs, communicating with the dead and astrology - than do conservatives.
Baylor researchers also criticized a much-ballyhooed “new atheism” as a barely discernable trend, saying the number of Americans who are atheists has stayed at 4 percent since 1944.
Why? Atheism is a “godless revolution that never happened,” the survey said, adding that irreligion often is not effectively transmitted to children who, when they reach adulthood, often join conservative religious denominations.
Peter Fenwick has been doing some amazing research on stuff just like for his book, “The Art of Dying.” What percentage of Americans have been visited by the dead?
It’s all in the book. Plus a whole chapter on how to die a good death.
Maybe Microsoft’s marketing department ought to read that.
You remember when two weeks ago I brought you the first link to that weird two-minute commercial with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld all about shoes and edible computers? It lasted two days before the whole campaign was yanked.
Now, in their latest battle against the surging Apple products, the Microsoft marketing geniuses decided to hire a look-a-like actor for the Mac “I’m a PC” commercials. Except there’s a hitch.
September 18, 2008 (Computerworld) Several digital images that Microsoft Corp. has posted on its Web site to trumpet its new "I'm a PC" advertising campaign were actually created on Macs, according to the files' originating-software stamp.
Four of the images that Microsoft made available to the press display the designation "Adobe Photoshop C3 Macintosh" when their file properties are examined. The images appear to be frames from the television ads which just started running.
So, just I like had to do ten times a day before I switched to Mac, once more the Microsoft marketing department just might be hitting Ctrl + Alt + Del and having to reboot all over again.
Monday, September 15, 2008, 12:38 AM CST [General]
by Ian Punnett
The Sun UK is reporting:
AN RAF expert yesterday revealed how he tracked a whole fleet of “spaceships” on military radar — but the Ministry of Defense told him to keep quiet.
Wing Commander Alan Turner, 64, said colleagues sat stunned when 35 super-fast vessels appeared on their screens.
Wing Cmdr Turner, who was a chief operator of the RAF’s radar system for 29 years, said the craft were equally spaced and shot from 3,000ft to 60,000ft at almost 300mph.
Incredibly, every few seconds one of the UFOs would suddenly vanish from radar and be replaced by an identical vessel moments later.
Wing Cmdr Turner said six military radars, plus operators at Heathrow, spotted the UFOs east of Salisbury Plain and filed reports on the unexplained phenomenon in 1971.
The RAF chief even drew a map charting their flight in between key sites like RAF Lyneham, Wilts, and the aircraft navigation transmitter at Brookmans Park, Herts.
Three days later, the Ministry of Defence visited the RAF and instructed staff to “never speak about the incident again”.
Wing Cmdr Turner, who retired from the RAF in 1995, said: “UFOs are a fact — I tracked them on military radar units.
“What I saw defied all logic and was, quite frankly, extraordinary.”
Perhaps we’ll see Commander Turner in the upcoming ABC special on UFOs? The ABC News press release reads:
For decades, millions of people around the world have reported seeing UFOs hovering in their skies. It is a mystery that science has been unable to solve, and the phenomenon remains largely unexamined. Much of the reporting on this subject holds those who claim to have seen UFOs up to ridicule.
"UFOs: Seeing is Believing" takes a serious look at the phenomenon in today's world. Building on the original Peter Jennings report in 2005, David Muir reports on new sightings, as well as NASA's current search for life on Mars.
"UFOs: Seeing is Believing” airs on a special edition of "Primetime" Tuesday, September 16 from 9:30 - 11:00 p.m. ET.
David Muir interviews some of the most credible witnesses of the sighting and a radar expert who evaluated their claims and found something surprising in the data. Sophisticated animations approved by the eyewitnesses allow viewers to get a feel for the experience first hand.
Looks like the investigation into the JFK assassination isn’t over yet either:
MICHAEL E. YOUNG / The Dallas Morning News reports:
Forty-five years after President John F. Kennedy was killed in a Dallas motorcade, the details surrounding his death remain topics of endless debate for those who see conspiracies and those who disagree.
Cliff Spiegelman will testify to that.
The professor of statistics at Texas A&M University organized a six-member team that compared the composition of bullet fragments from the JFK shooting with other bullets from the same manufacturer.
The group found that those fragments weren't nearly as rare as the government's expert witness concluded in 1976, when Dr. Vincent P. Guinn determined that all five fragments came from two bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald. A third shot missed.
"The claim was made that those five fragments could only have come from two bullets," Dr. Spiegelman said. "Our research showed it could have been two or more.
"And if it is more than two, there is an increased likelihood that someone else provided one of them."
The debate continues, perhaps never to be settled ever. Kind of like how the fans of Beta tape will never give up arguing how it should never have lost to VHS tape or how HD DVD should never have lost to Blu-Ray.
Although Blu-Ray itself might be doomed . . .
Blu-ray will be dead by 2012, TechRadar reports.
Planning to buy a Blu-Ray player? Hold on. It's already battling public indifference, technical problems, laughable features and downloadable movies. Is it any wonder Blu-Ray is doomed to fail? Here are five reasons why it's heading for the grave...
Perhaps when the Mayans ended their calender on 2012, they were really just thinking about Blu-Ray. Looks like I’ll be skipping a big investment in that technology and waiting for the next one.
The way the economy is going--worse before it’ gets better--I think my money is better spent elsewhere. Even as I write this, Reuters is reporting that Sunday has been . . .
. . . one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street's history. Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer, people briefed on the deals said.
Wall Street observers are saying that even though the Monday morning commute to Manhattan hasn’t even started yet, Monday is going to be a bumpy ride.
Oh, well. Money can’t buy you happiness. Just look at the Happiness Index:
Canada and Mexico are among the top 15 happiest countries in the world -- ahead of the U.S., despite being less wealthy than the States.
The ranking is compiled by the World Database of Happiness, which is maintained by Ruut Veenhoven, one of the world's leading happiness researchers based at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
Denmark, Switzerland and Austria are the world's happiest countries, according to the database and Canada.com.
What they don’t mention is that Denmark, Switzerland and Austria still have Beta tapes. No wonder they’re so happy.
Reminds me of book I just got but haven’t have a chance to read yet called, “Against Happiness”--a clever little book that argues that happiness is over-rated and that we would all feel better if we felt like hell. Next time I’m in a bad mood, and that doesn’t happen often, I’ll read a little bit and get back to you.
Sunday, September 14, 2008, 12:59 AM CST [General]
by Ian Punnett
Women experience significantly more nightmares than men and have more emotional dreams, research suggests.
In a study of 170 volunteers asked to record their most recent dream, 19% of men reported a nightmare compared with 30% of women.
Researcher Dr Jennifer Parker of the University of the West of England said there was no difference in the overall number of dreams reported.
Other research has shown women tend to have more disturbed sleep than men.
Informally, I asked a bunch of women today whether or not they believed this research to be true and almost everyone of them said that the reason they have more nightmares is that they are married to them.
I had a tough night’s sleep last night which might make me be a little sluggish tonight. For the second time in the week, I woke up early in the morning with a major cramp in my right leg, the kind of spasm that contracts and expands the calf muscle at an extraordinary rate. Worse than that, at one point the cramp just locked down hard for several hours and didn’t go back to normal until I had been to a walk-in clinic, the hospital radiology unit looking for blood clots and they finally gave me a muscle relaxant. And yes, I had tried soaking it in hot water, ibuprofen and bananas.
Man, was that painful. Somewhere along the line of this muscle going crazy I thought to myself, “No wonder the Incredible Hulk screamed so much.”
Because there is no blood clot, the doctors cannot figure what’s causing this. I’m sticking to my theory of gamma ray exposure last spring. Do you remember that?
(PhysOrg.com) -- The brightest explosion ever seen was observed in March this year and now a team of astronomers from around the world, have combined their data from satellites and observatories to explain what happened.
They show that the jet from a powerful stellar explosion in a galaxy halfway across the Universe was aimed almost directly at Earth. The event, called a Gamma-Ray Burst (GRB), was bright enough for human eyes to see--and was aimed almost directly at Earth.
I’ll report back to you next week on my fight against these unexplained muscle spasms, and whether I’ve started to turn green.
Some scientists are turning red this weekend:
Hackers claim they have broken into the computer system of the Large Hadron Collider, the mega-machine designed to expose secrets of the cosmos, British newspapers reported on Saturday.
A group calling itself the Greek Security Team left a rogue webpage mocking the technicians responsible for computer security at the giant atom smasher as "schoolkids", the Times and Daily Telegraph reported.
The hackers vowed they had no intention of disrupting the experiment at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Swiss-French border, they just wanted to highlight the flaws in the computer system's security.
"We're pulling your pants down because we don't want to see you running around naked looking to hide yourselves when the panic comes," they wrote, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Maybe they are just being altruistic but am I the only one that gets the feeling that these hackers are--quote--”pulling down the pants”--of these--quote--”school kids”--because when they were in third grade that’s just what had happened to them and they never got over it? They aren’t just hackers, they’re cyber-bullies pulling the cyber-pants of the cool kids in the news?
Time magazine has an interesting question they’re posing which speaks to this:
“If college students can beat the best antivirus programs, why do people spend nearly $5 billion a year on them?”
On newsstands now. So is New Scientist which writes:
Darwin never warned against crossing black cats, walking under ladders or stepping on cracks in the pavement, but his theory of natural selection explains why people believe in such nonsense.
For instance, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but "if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around," Foster says.
So, if New Scientist is correct, then every jaded, I don’t-believe-in-any-of-that-crap scientist out there owes his or her very existence to a superstitious ancestor.
Is this next story another example of superstition run amok? Will the superstition of the Amish somehow save us? Wired magazine reports:
A group of community farmers, some of them Amish, are challenging rules requiring the tagging of livestock with RFID chips, saying the devices are a "mark of the beast."
Michigan and federal authorities say the radio frequency identification devices (RFID) will help monitor the travels of bovine and other livestock diseases.
"Use of a numbering system for their premises and/or electronic numbering system for their animals constitutes some form of a 'mark of the beast' and/or represents an infringement of their 'dominion over cattle and all living things' in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs," according to the farmers' lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
If the Amish fail at this, I sure hope Congress reconsiders their support for the RFID chip and gives us all the chance to “opt out” for our livestock, our pets and in the future, ourselves.
Just because science can do it, it doesn’t mean we should. I believe in a free society where people could RFID their cows if they feel like but not at the barrel of a gun.
Because not all technological advances are really that helpful . . .
From Register Hardware:
A new “Scan Toaster” device connects to a PC over USB and downloads everything from local weather conditions and the current time to the morning’s news headlines and burns it right on your toast!
Inside the toaster is a network of toasting “modules”, each heated by a hot wire. Each module can move by 30° and, once the user selects what they want on their toast - excluding a topping, of course - the modules align themselves and burn the appropriate content onto the bread.
The appliance is a finalist in design competition run by manufacturer Electrolux and designer Sung Bae Chang said he got the idea whilst - you guessed it - making some toast.
No plans to manufacture the toaster on a mass scale have popped up yet.
Now if I can just my e-mail on my eggs and turn my e-spam into actual spam and finally get my own personal jetpack and I’ve be living like George Jetson just like I’ve always dreamed.
Friday, September 12, 2008, 05:29 AM CST [General]
There are two things I want you to notice about this photo from the Hair Restoration Institute. First, that despite my best efforts to create a "worry lines" in my forehead (otherwise known as "Margie wrinkles"), my brow is completely free of wrinkles. Amazing. I love this. Great job, HR!
Second, you can really see here how my hairline is receding on my right side. This is the area where Hair Restoration Institute will be (a) using the laser light to thicken the hairs that exist (b) prescribing Propecia to enrich the area from the inside and (c) seeding in transplanted hairs from the back of my head.
And check out those freshly waxed eyebrows! It's all part of my "Nifty by Fifty" program.
Look at that! Not one darn wrinkle--and I'm trying!
But let's keep an eye on that horseshoe shaped receding part.
Doesn't look like anything is happening there, does it?
Wait until you see the microscopic photos! There are lots of hairs there that Hair Restoration Institute can help with the laser lights and Propecia.
OK, now you remember that part of my scalp where my hairline is receding?
Well, this is my "bald spot" under Hair Restoration Institute's microscope! Look at those little white hairs! There are already tons of these little "baby" hairs that are trying to come in. Three problems: My testosterone is too strong (yeah, I know), I have been using the wrong shampoos and they need reinforcements. But they aren't alone.
A little further into my receding hairline, you come across this interesting mix. This is a microscopic photo of the part of my hair that is thinning but still plush with hair. The light is brighter and my scalp is less tan so it appears much whiter in the background.
In the foreground, you can still see white baby hairs mixing with grey hairs, brown hairs and a few dark blue ones. Don't ask me where they came from. Vern of the Hair Restoration Institute says that overall my hair and scalp are very healthy and I'm a perfect candidate for the therapeutic effects of proper shampoos, laser light, Propecia and hair transplant. The surgery is scheduled for October but I've already begun the other therapies.
Finally, this is the hair from the back of my head from which the transplantable hair will be harvested.
I'm told it's so densely populated with healthy hairs with strong follicles that the camera couldn't get in close enough to get a decent shot of the scalp.
Hang in there, little baby white hairs! The calvary is coming.
Greetings from St. Paul, MN, the site of the most watched, most discussed, most celebrated Republican National Convention ever. I’m proud of my half of the Twin Cities and our unofficial slogan, “St. Paul--The Other One is the Evil Twin.” I was glad to see we had great weather and no real problems to speak of.
At the same time, St. Paul was the temporary home for thousands of peaceful local and out of state anti-RNC protesters and a sticky handful of anarchists who clearly came here just to throw feces, bags of urine, bricks and generally make their mothers proud.
Personally, I walked in the Poverty March on Tuesday night and witnessed firsthand that most protesters were not happy about the anarchists that were in our midst. They were rude and obscene to the cops and made every effort to seem exotic and out of control. Wednesday night I went to an exclusive, hot ticket Republican after hours party and rubbed elbows with the very rich and the slightly famous so I got to see both sides of the week up close. No big stories to report from that private party, however. The Republicans were never rude or obscene to the cops although the appetizers were exotic and out of control.
The Daily Show was out of control, too! I got tickets for the taping in St. Paul on Thursday with guest Newt Gingrich. It was so cool to have Jon Stewart here.
It just seemed like the whole week flew by so fast, as if time were happening double time. According to Physorg.com, the best science site ever, it might have!
As humans, we have a very intuitive concept of time, and of the differences between the past, present, and future. But, as scientists Edward Feng of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gavin Crooks of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory point out, science does not provide a clear definition of time.
“In our everyday lives we have the sense that time flows inexorably from the past into the future; water flows downhill; mountains erode; we are born, grow old, and die; we anticipate the future but remember the past,” the scientists write in a recent study in Physical Review Letters. “Yet almost all of the fundamental theories of physics – classical mechanics, electrodynamics, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and so on – are symmetric with respect to time reversal.
In their study, Feng and Crooks have developed a method to accurately measure “time asymmetry.” They began by investigating the increase in energy dissipation, in various arrangements. which leads at least to the appearance of the fluidity of the flow of time.
So it is possible for time to flow in reverse? Consider this amazing story:
At the beginning of 2008:
John McCain was booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the big annual gathering of the right-wing groups, while trying to establish that he was a conservative.
A few months later, David Limbaugh wrote this:
“McCain is not only not conservative enough; he has also has built a reputation as a maverick by stabbing his party in the back — not in furtherance of conservative principles but by betraying them.”
But then just this week, a typical newspaper headline after the Republican National Convention in St. Paul read:
‘Maverick’ McCain sounds good to GOP conservatives
You see? Weird! It’s like time flowed backwards!
And it’s not just in the US. This same weird phenomenon is happening in England too where the Sun UK reports:
Some 41% of people questioned in an online survey said the 80s was their favourite decade, followed by the 60s and the 90s.
The Live Aid pop concert was the thing people liked best about the 80s, ahead of the Rubik's Cube and the Pac Man computer game.
The yuppie's favourite accessory, the Filofax, came fourth in the poll followed by the films Dirty Dancing and The Goonies in joint fifth place.
The very fact that “Dirty Dancing” and “The Goonies” ranked so high might tell you something about the median age of this poll’s respondents. Frankly, I’m not sure I’ve been able to sit through either of those movies from beginning to end!
And if that doesn’t make me feel old, I couldn’t even remember what a Filofax was! I had to look it up. How about you?
Anyway, the future is coming faster, it would seem, at least when it comes to technology:
The world must speed up the deployment of solar power as it has the potential to meet all the world's energy needs, the chairman of an industry gathering which wrapped up Friday in Spain said.
"The solar energy resource is enormous, and distributed all over the world, in all countries and also oceans," said Daniel Lincot, the chairman of the five-day European Photovoltaic Solar Energy conference held in Valencia.
"There is thus an enormous resource available from photovoltaics, which can be used everywhere, and can in principle cover all the world energy demand from a renewable, safe and clean source," he added.
The Conquistadors came from Spain, didn’t they? Did you know that the Conquistador is also a shoe? If you didn’t, you might not have seen the new ad for Microsoft Windows Vista featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates.
Let’s hope the revamped software works better than the ad . . .
By the way, apparently Bill Gates wears a size 10. I guess that clears him as a suspect in this story:
COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- A retired Cookeville builder has discovered a mysterious set of large footprints on his property.
For months he stepped on a rock near his house that caught his eye. Finally, he brought the unusual rock home and cleaned it up. After all of the mud was removed, a remarkable discovery was revealed.
“I don't know anything about archaeology or anything, but if you look at it, it's a footprint. No animal footprint looks like that. Now, if it's a Native American, an Indian, then he was a big Indian," said Jackson. "(The print) is about 11 inches wide and about 15 inches long."
Jackson said the fossilized print clearly shows the heel and all five toes.
"It's got to be thousand of years old," said Jackson.
About half-a-dozen scientists said they want to look at the print, including Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a famous Bigfoot professor at Idaho State University and the world’s best guest on the subject of Bigfoot on the radio.
Speaking of past guests, it looks like the FDA is investigating many new popular drugs for various problems, a couple of which are well-known or heavily advertised on TV.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government on Friday began posting a list of prescription drugs under investigation for potential safety problems, in an effort to better inform doctors and patients.
The first list is a bare-bones compilation naming 20 medications and the potential issue for each. It provides no indication of how widespread or serious the problems might be, leading some consumer advocates to question its usefulness, and prompting industry worries that skittish patients might stop taking a useful medication if they see it listed.
Food and Drug Administration officials said they are trying to walk a fine line in being more open to the public while avoiding needless scares. Congress, in a drug safety bill passed last year, ordered the agency to post quarterly listings of medications under investigation.
"My message to patients is this: Don't stop taking your medicine," said Dr. Janet Wood****, who heads the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "If your doctor has prescribed a drug that appears on this list, you should continue taking it unless your doctor advises you differently."
By the way, if Dr. Janet Wood**** sounds familiar, it might be because of a report that Dr. Wood**** authored about this time last year. It too was about the unintended side effects of certain drugs but this time last year the drugs Dr. Wood**** was investigating were . . .
