gregladen | December 6, 2011You probably know by now that I named my blog, "The X Blog" after "The X Club." Want to know more about The X Club? Click here!
gregladen | December 6, 2011Chrome Passes Firefox, Google May Pull Out Support: I stopped using Firefox around the 20th time it made me do something I shouldn't have had to do because it sucked as a browser. Firefox used to be my hero, now I regard it as somewhat dangerous, and I only use Google Chrome. My productivity has gone way up.
(Update: Check out the Linux Journal Readers Choice awards vis-a-vis browsers.)
Apparently other people have had similar experiences, because according to at least some measures, Firefox has been overtaken by Chrome in the browser wars. Chrome is now the "new number 2" second only…
gregladen | December 5, 2011... and probably has been there for months, but new research is confirming the nature of this very interesting phenomenon. It is the outer edge of our solar system, where fast moving stuff heading away from the sun has slowed down because it's movement is stifled by gravity, but some extra-energetic particles are still leaking out into the greater galactic region, from which they are unlikely to return. Also, the solar system's magnetic fluxy stuff is bunched up in this region.
The cool thing about this is that we don't really know exactly what is happening. Enough is known about the solar…
gregladen | December 5, 2011Maybe. Well, not really. But it could be ....
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.
The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone…
gregladen | December 5, 2011Just go to a google search bar and type in a function.
For instance, cos(pi*x/5)
You'll get a graph that has some interactive features.
Separate multiple functions with commas.
Details here.
gregladen | December 4, 2011This video has been going around. If you are not emotionally reasonably well shored up at the moment, don't even think about watching it.
Most societies that practice extensive warfare, have a fair amount of violence, etc. often owing to the concentration of resources and vulnerability of those resources and a fair dose of patriarchy also have strong age grading of some kind. Sometimes transitions from one grade to another involve significant and serious dangers, and not everyone survives those dangers. Americans and many others have "grades" in school that serve as age grades, but they…
gregladen | December 4, 2011The pardon process relies on the recommendations of a special office of the White House, which takes a number of factors (not skin color) into account overtly, including things like level of remorse or financial or family factors. The process was, wisely one would have thought, depoliticized by George Bush at the beginning of his first term, so that the professional pardon lawyers' recommendations are routinely followed, plus or minus only small variations....
Read the rest here.
gregladen | December 3, 2011The idea is that if you hear or see the same phrase or symbol again and again you grow habituated to it. For instance, right now, think about where you work or go to school (or some other non-residential interior where you spend considerable time) and tell me where the Exit signs and fire extinguishers are. You might well know, or you might have grown so used to them that they are in the background.
The City of New York has placed a number of signs warning pedestrians, bikers, and drivers, of the usual hazards, but using an unusual technique: New symbols linked to haiku.
Traffic warning…
gregladen | December 3, 2011Everyone knows that the number of pages per book in the famous series by J.K. Rowlings increased over time, but was this increase steady? Was it consistent? The answer seems to be no.
Looking at this graph, is is probably more accurate to say that the early books were a certain length, around 400 pages or less, and the later books (4 through 7) were longer, around 700 pages. This may seem like a trivial observation, and it probably is. But it is important to understand the basic pattern of page length over time in this series before we explore the more important and deeper meanings of…
gregladen | December 3, 2011
The The Manga Guide to Relativity might come in especially handy these days, what with faster than light neutrinos, Republican candidates and other science-defying entities zooming around. And, it is one of those Japanese anime things, which makes it cool. This is a story set in Tagai Academy summer's school session, where the "plucky" Miss Uraga teaches the kids relativity.
When you have finished reading this book you will be able to calculate the effects of time dilation, explain the Twin Paradox, understand Einsteinium famous E=mc2 and get a job at CERN.
Hideo Nitta, is in the…
gregladen | December 2, 2011It is illegal to shoot a cougar in Minnesota unless it is about to eat you. This did not stop Bruce Ihnen and Daniel Hamman from killing one of these beautiful beasts. Ihnen and Hamman need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
Which, unfortunately, is not much. A hand slap, really.
The DNR is investigating the case for possible charges. Mountain lions are protected in Minnesota and killing one is a misdemeanor unless it poses an immediate threat to human life.
The incident occurred in the southwestern part of the state (down 'round these parts) where almost everything is corn…
gregladen | December 1, 2011Four students in one of our local junior high schools were involved in an uncontrolled fire and/or explosion a few hours ago. It was in a physical science class. One of the students was burned severely and is in the Hennepin County Hospital burn unit. His injuries are not life threatening by my understanding is that his face is covered with second degree degree burns or worse. The other students are not at present hospitalized.
The mishap occurred during the demonstration of an experiment that was intended to be a "reward" for the students performance in class. There are various stories…
gregladen | December 1, 2011These are books that I've reviewed here, and would like to recommend that you seriously consider picking up if you are looking for a cool present for someone and you think they should read more science.
I'm including a couple of bird books in this list, but I also recently wrote up a summary of just bird books that you may want to check out.
These are in no particular order, and I'm not paying a lot of attention to publication dates. What matters is that I've I've put the book in this stack of books I've got here that I clean out every year about this time; Some are clearly older than…
gregladen | December 1, 2011NCSE's Josh Rosenau and Steve Newton sit down with the West Virginia University freethinking, inquiring, secular humanists, and chat about the rise of science denial, the ongoing battles with creationists, NCSE's new climate change initiative, and more. Where: Morgantown, West Virginia. When: 4/5/2011
gregladen | December 1, 2011Get out your 3D glasses and have a look at Vesta.
Coolest pictures of dinosaur nest ever.
Best science books of 2011 according to a Science Librarian
gregladen | December 1, 2011Nature's beauty can be easily missed -- but not through Louie Schwartzberg's lens. His stunning time-lapse photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast, serves as a meditation on being grateful for every day.
gregladen | November 30, 2011
Hat Tip Scott Brophy, who also wrote this great blog post: OMFG. WSJ Gets Loopy. Me, Too.
gregladen | November 30, 2011Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles -- researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.