hmmm, what next?

did you read where pandora's box ... oh, excuse me, i mean the large hadron collider ... appears to have created (not just 'found') a new type of matter?

oh yes. will wonders never cease? or, um, should we ask them to cease? or, er, demand, maybe ... i mean, who knows what kind of changes will be made with their messing around. oh, look, my left hand is green ....

hard to predict, but we'll try ....

i just read where cambridge university is setting up a new program, "to study the four greatest threats to the human species -- artificial intelligence, climate change, nuclear war and rogue biotechnology."

i like it that they are doing this. there may be similar programs elsewhere, i don't know, but someone needs to be seriously considering the immense possibilities of future consequences of our present actions.

thumbs up to cambridge.

eat and eat and eat until you're dizzy ....

well, i like bagels and i think mobius strips are curious, but i wouldn't necessarily want to put them together.  like here.

high up in the sky

okay, so this guy is going to go up  to 120,000 feet and then dive toward earth and part-way down he's going to be going 690 mph. at what point does he start to burn up? this is so bizarre. if he doesn't burn up, how can his body withstand that speed? i'll take an enclosure myself, thanks.

blindfolds and heads in the sand

i've been curious about physic things for as long as i can remember. someone is always wanting to call it bunk, someone else claims it's all true.

i've experienced the kind of thing in this article as have an awful lot of people. i enjoyed the article and would love to see the scientific world accept this stuff, even if they don't understand it. americans will probably be the worst about accepting it though.

i still remember one time when my girlfriend and i were staying in canada and were driving from somewhere back to our camp. all of a sudden i realized we were going the wrong way. there were no signs and i had no idea where we were or where we were headed since she was driving and i wasn't paying any attention, but i KNEW we were going the wrong way. so i told her we needed to go back and get on the right road. we turned around and went a few miles back and sure enough, she had missed the turn.

i actually attribute this more to a strong sense of magnetism in my body than a physic thing because i knew we should be going north and i felt that we weren't. but still .... it's all strange.

back and forth and backandforth andback andforth

oh this is way too much fun!!

look at this video from harvard natural sciences and watch how a series of pendulums, each a little longer than the others, are in sync then get out of sync as time whizzes by. it's interesting and fascinating, as well as oftentimes funny.

thanks to my ex-boss max for the link!!

down, down, and away....

did you ever want a wingsuit? it's pretty clever. about the only way i'd use one, though, would be if i were in mountainous terrain and needed to escape from really evil people. but they'd have to be REALLY evil.

but, but, they have a right to know. (sheesh)

hmmm, okay. so now some scientists have created a flu virus which is deadlier than anthrax, and could wipe humans completely off the earth. and they're arguing as to whether or not to tell everyone how they did it.

honestly. whether it's the 'bad guys' or the 'good guys', there's just no saving us from ourselves.

validation

and, i have to say... oh. no shit.

finally there's an article which says that chemo may damage the brain of a woman undergoing therapy for breast cancer. oh. no shit.

like the article says, "cancer patients have long complained of neurological side effects such as short-term memory loss and, in extreme cases, vision loss, and even dementia following chemotherapy." true.

and it goes on to say, "doctors have traditionally dismissed these complaints attributing them to stress caused by cancer diagnosis and treatment." also true. typical doctors.
the study was done using the drug 5-FU which, of course, was one of the three i had (cytoxan and methotrexate were the other two). you can read about it, but mainly it shows that doctors often ignore what women say. oh. no shit.

and yes, it did affect my brain. i never again was quite as quick, quite as accurate, or quite as confident of my work. goddammit all anyway.

deliver this where?

Spaceport America, New Mexico. ever been there? ever heard of it? it's a place they're building from the ground up as the facility to launch ordinary (paying) people into space. richard branson is committed to the project, but everyone's wondering if the state's new republican governor will support it like the previous democrat did. the project has run into problems, of course, and i hope that's not how things will always work with this operation. someone needs to continue forward with a space effort and my hat's off to these intrepid visionaries.

i'm off!

FINALLY.

there's a company in new zealand who has developed a jetpack which can carry a person aloft. i'm excited about this since it was something all us young kids thought was really cool when we'd read/see/hear about it in sci-fi stories. more power to creative minds!

be underground where the aliens can't get you

do you have an extra $900,000 that you want to spend on a condo which is underground for when the aliens get here? if so, then you need to read this article.

houston ... we've got a problem

did you see the cool logo that google has today because of the 50th anniversary of the first human spaceflight? it's pretty cool! pretty disgusting that we haven't done much else in the last 50 years though. i mean, come on, we go up in space, we walk on the moon, and we build a space station. that's it? something got derailed somewhere.

short-sighted, greed- and ego-driven stupidity

honestly, you just have to shake your head when you read about nuclear power. obama is pushing for more nuclear plants in this country, calling them a necessity (2 new ones are soon going to be built in georgia) and yet acknowledging there are problems (e.g., storage and disposal of nuclear waste).

in light of the problems in japan the last x-days, there can't be any doubt that there are many problems with this technology. "we don't have a lot of experience with this," says one guy. well, duh. and yet, let's insist on going ahead with plans even though they have problems and are missing solutions. after all, we'll figure it out at some point, right? let's not count on it.

there's even an article which calculates the earthquake risk of u.s. plants. the one with the biggest potential for trouble isn't in california -- it's in new york.

but really, after looking back at all the times that man has tried to improve on nature and totally messed it up (like, bringing in kudzu to the u.s. to control soil erosion and having it run out of control, or bringing in a toad in australia to control the sugar cane beetle and the toad becoming a bigger, poisonous problem), how can anyone with half a brain assume that nuclear power is a good answer? only after solutions to the obvious huge problems had been found, would i consider the technology might not be suspect. but we're not there yet, guys. not by a long shot.

spring forward, fall all over the place

personally i think daylight savings time is stupid. the whole thing just suddenly appeared one day and i've never reconciled myself to it. (you go, arizona!) it's a lot like the metric system, only we were able to head them off on that one.

regardless, this article is interesting. and be sure to read the part about yawning. i was wide-awake until i got done with it.  :)

look out, look out, look.... *splat!* and items suddenly quadruplicate....

the picture at the beginning of this article is pretty amazing -- so much junk we have left in space to fly around our world! good grief -- will we NEVER learn??!!!

little green men? no.

it's amazing to me that these scientists are awed by their project of forcing microbes to assimilate arsenic rather than phosphorus. they have concluded, "If the claim holds up, it would lend weight to the idea that life as we know it isn't the only way life could develop."

well, duh. ego-and ethno-centrism at its finest.

i've always wondered when i've heard 'life couldn't exist there. it's (too cold, there's no oxygen, there's no water, there's no .....).' i mean, with the variety we have right here on earth, how could intelligent people NOT think life could appear in a variety of ways. *sheesh*

dust to dust ....

something from MYS's most recent post sure caught my eye. i don't know who put it together so i'm not sure of the validity, but check this out:

rod serling and me ...

i've always thought things were really out there when the subject of dimensions came up. i mean, three dimensions I understand, and the fourth, well sure, that makes sense, too. but then they go on about  6, 7, 8, and even 12 dimensions and i just back away. it's too much for me and scary, too. no matter how i try to understand what they're saying, i just can't wrap my mind around it.

oh, ho! but then i was playing chuzzle last night (not to be confused with guzzle, which i don't). if you've ever played that game, it is kinda fun and while it seems innocuous, it's tricky. and while the comparison is in no way close to the real thing, i realized that what i was doing was playing in a whole bunch of dimensions at once.

since we're lifting reality anyhow, you need to imagine the three dimensions as being played out on the screen. yes, it's two dimensions, but just pretend it's three. then we add time, which makes it four. then we add color (each little chuzzle is a different color with about five or so colors being the set), which influences how we play, which makes it five dimensions. then we add right-angled configurations, which makes it six. and i suppose if we're going to be technical about it we should add in the scoring since if you use a 'hint' it subtracts from your score which might influence how you play the game -- that's seven.

whew! and it can get hard to play in seven dimensions! your mind has to shift gears constantly and after awhile, it's tiring. still ... i thought it was curious that all the manipulating i was doing in my mind made me feel like i was dealing with multiple dimensions. very curious.