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Squid A Day is an Illuminated Site!

Squid A Day is an Illuminated Site!

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

Illuminated Site of the Week WinnerWooo! I won a bloggy award thing from Steve Jackson Games! If you're not familiar with them, you should be. Zombies! Conspiracy! Cthulhu! What more could you ask for? Oh yeah, and hackers too.
Another Betting Offer

Another Betting Offer

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

I see people around very, very interested in what the CDF experiment has recently unearthed. I am talking, of course, of the jet-jet resonance candidate that they observe in their W+jets sample. A recent update of the previous result shows that the significance of the bump is just short of the coveted five-sigma: that is to say, for non-insiders, there is now a chance in two or three millions that the effect is due to a statistical fluke.
Mammal Rediscovered After 113 Years

Mammal Rediscovered After 113 Years

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

Last seen in 1898, the red-crested tree rat (or Santamartamys rufodorsalis) has turned up in an ecolodge at a nature reserve in Colombia. Showing up at the front door and calmly posing for pictures, the red-crested tree rat can get 18 inches long and possesses a mane-like band of reddish fur around its neck and a black and white tail.

  

 

Complexity And Randomness

Complexity And Randomness

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

Complexity and Randomness

This pattern is from System's thinker Gerald Weinberg, and has been extremely helpful to illustrate the difference between complexity and randomness. It is also a nice example of the self-referential methodology of PAC, as the pattern is used to discuss scientific approaches: science discovers patterns, which are then used to elucidate scientific processes!

Methodological Stuff:

If only!

If only!

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

I suspect a lot of people will be posting this (today's SMBC), but hey, I will totally jump on that bandwagon,



If only it was that easy!

People don't subscribe to homeopathy for logical reasons anyway - which, considering how strange the logic is, is maybe not surprising. They subscribe to it because they are subscribing to an anti-big-pharma ideology, and because homeopathic "doctors" themselves are basically nice people - if a little deluded - and make you feel really nice. Which, because of the wonders of the placebo effect, often equates to "better" anyhow.
I Will Vote

I Will Vote

Jun 06 2011 | comment(s)

Democracy should never be given for granted. So if you are given a chance to cast a vote, you should not overlook the fact that voting is both your duty toward your country, and a right you need to exercise if you don't want to lose it.

In Italy on June 12th and 13th citizens are called to vote directly to abolish a couple of laws that the current government insisted on forcing upon us. I will not spend a word on the laws themselves, since that is not the point of this short post. Rather, I want to explain the importance of going to vote, and why I hope that Italian readers of this blog will do it.
Sac-Con With Bloggy June 5th 2011

Sac-Con With Bloggy June 5th 2011

Jun 05 2011 | comment(s)

I am off to Sac-Con armed with "The Manga Guide To Relativity" to see what anime/manga fans think of it. If you are around, you can get a picture taken with Bloggy!


Custom car: www.teamlovehate.com


Do Matter And Antimatter Obey The Same Laws Of Physics?

Do Matter And Antimatter Obey The Same Laws Of Physics?

Jun 05 2011 | comment(s)

The creation, trapping and storage of antihydrogen atoms for up to 1,000 seconds not only represents the longest time period so far that antihydrogen has been captured, but it also brings us closer to answering the question, do matter and antimatter obey the same laws of physics?

Antimatter particles are routinely produced in particle accelerators as well as in space, but holding onto them, particularly the neutral ones, is difficult because antimatter and matter will annihilate on contact and conventional containers are made of matter.
DNA Computer Calculates Square Roots

DNA Computer Calculates Square Roots

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

Figuring out the structure of DNA, and the ongoing research into its workings, have provided scientists with a lot of new knowledge. One of the, perhaps unexpected, new areas of research that have sprouted forth from this knowledge, is the area of DNA computing, where DNA molecules are used to perform computational operations.

An Interview With Simon Baron-Cohen On Zero-Empathy, Autism, And Accountability

An Interview With Simon Baron-Cohen On Zero-Empathy, Autism, And Accountability

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

Simon Baron-Cohen "sat down with me" this week via email and graciously took the time to answer my questions stemming from my review of  his new book, The Science of Evil, that appeared on my blogs last week. What follows is a response that is every bit as thorough as my original review; between the two (and I recommend you read both as a complete piece), there's 15 single spaced pages of material. I thoroughly enjoyed this opportunity and I think readers will, too. There's even dueling databases, which I absolutely loved, below!


My questions are in italics; SBC's in regular font.
Did You Miss Kraken Day?

Did You Miss Kraken Day?

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

Argh it's taking me longer than I thought to write this fisheries post! Quick a distraction--
Did you know that June 1st was Kraken Day over at Deep Sea News? Go read all their posts! There was one every hour! Each was hilarious and/or bizarre and/or fascinating!

Now here is a kraken I drew for a super-secret project that is almost done:




Now go away and come back tomorrow.
Seafood Ethics, Or Why I Don't Eat Squid (Part II)

Seafood Ethics, Or Why I Don't Eat Squid (Part II)

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

Back in April, a well-known fisheries biologist named Ray Hillborn published an op-ed in the New York Times that was titled (by the editors, not Hillborn) "Let Us Eat Fish." The gist of it was: our fisheries are doing great, so chow down on seafood with a clear conscience!
Young’s experiment, new revised

Young’s experiment, new revised

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

If a particle satisfies the minimum mandated by the uncertainty relation and is subject to no force, the fuzziness of its momentum causes the fuzziness of its position to increase, while the fuzziness of its momentum remains the same. So the amount of information available for predicting the outcome of a momentum measurement remains the same, while the amount of information available for predicting the outcome of a position measurement decreases.
Dr. Sascha Vongehr's Science 2.0 Articles by Topic

Dr. Sascha Vongehr's Science 2.0 Articles by Topic

Jun 04 2011 | comment(s)

Recent articles are chronologically at: column. But here, articles are categorized thematically.
Calories Are Up But Sugar Calories Are Down - What's Ailing Cereal

Calories Are Up But Sugar Calories Are Down - What's Ailing Cereal

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

Americans spend what I consider a long time getting breakfast, though nutritionists say it is "the most important meal of the day" - 13 minutes a day, it turns out.   I say a long time because mine takes 30 seconds; during the week I eat Raisin Brain or some wheat things or whatever else my wife purchased that doesn't have hearts, moons or diamonds.(1)
Strawberries, oats, wheat, potatoes, sugarbeets, rape seed are going to give poor crops in central europe because of poor rain fall and dry conditions

Strawberries, oats, wheat, potatoes, sugarbeets, rape seed are going to give poor crops in central europe because of poor rain fall and dry conditions

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

Strawberries are going to be smaller and other crops with low yields due to poor rains and high temperature is it true for most of europe I read this news in a news paper here in europe.
Library Of Congress - Government Gets It Right

Library Of Congress - Government Gets It Right

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

Government work is usually a thankless job - yes, thanks to guaranteed pay raises and a union that can shut down the government, government employees make more money than the private sector and have better benefits and retirement, so it is not exactly thankless, but there are few instances where we can say 'government gets it right'.
Friday Fossil

Friday Fossil

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

This rather sorry creature can be found in a lab in the ROM, hidden away with some old CRT monitors,



This guy is Hallucigenia, another fossil from the exquisite Burgess Shale fauna - a contemporary of Anomalocaris of last week's friday fossil.



Hallucigenia is one of the weirdest - and most infamous - fossils to come out of the Burgess Shale - which is really saying something. So why, if it's so famous, is this reconstruction tucked away at the back of the ROM?

Well, that's because it is upside down.
Follow The Space Money?

Follow The Space Money?

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

NASA historically has received 0.5% to 1% of the federal budget, a penny or less per dollar.  I don't want to make that sound small-- I'd love a penny for every federal dollar-- but in terms of government programs, it's not the largest.

We all know the money goes to 'space stuff',  but since that includes everything from airplane work (the first 'A' in NASA is Aeronautics, after all) through Earth observing and providing satellites for NOAA, up to deep space cosmology stuff.  In the process, NASA invents and tests a heck of a lot of technology.
Ancient Roman Ship Held A Giant Live Fish Tank

Ancient Roman Ship Held A Giant Live Fish Tank

Jun 03 2011 | comment(s)

Like fresh fish?  Apparently so did the Romans, to such an extent a hydraulic system found on an ancient wreck suggests they must have hauled live fish across the Mediterranean for sale and trade.

Consisting of a pumping system designed to suck the sea water into a fish tank, the apparatus has been reconstructed by a team of Italian researchers who analyzed a unique feature of the wreck: a lead pipe inserted in the hull near the keel.

Roman Ship Carried Live Fish Tank - Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News