gregladen | October 18, 2011Below the fold, of course ...
Wow. The first one sounds like a Tardis. The second one looks like an old Alka-Seltzer commercial in combination with an episode of The Time Tunnel. Then its just a bunch of dizzy 70s stuff. With bad hair. Glossed over the 8th transition. I had to stop watching then because I think I've not seen that one ... it must be in one of the movies or something.
gregladen | October 18, 2011Tonight, Tuesday, October 18th, the Final 16 will be revealed.
7 central time.
Here's LeRoy's performance, on which he'll be judged:
You can go HERE and "like" it!
gregladen | October 16, 2011Below the fold (it starts automatically)
LeRoy's Audition and video diary:
gregladen | October 16, 2011From Rob Pike
Dear Rob--
As Dennis's siblings, Lynn, John, and Bill Ritchie--on behalf of the entire Ritchie family--we wanted to convey to all of you how deeply moved, astonished, and appreciative we are of the loving tributes to Dennis that we have been reading. We can confirm what we keep hearing again and again: Dennis was an unfailingly kind, sweet, unassuming, and generous brother--and of course a complete geek. He had a hilariously dry sense of humor, and a keen appreciation for life's absurdities--though his world view was entirely devoid of cynicism or mean-spiritedness.
We are…
gregladen | October 14, 2011In the past, we've covered how to live trap a mouse. And, how to live trap a squirrel. For those, I've got considerable experience and was able to give you good advice. But for live trapping a Godzilla, it is best to seek professional advice.
gregladen | October 13, 2011But then, they came up with this, which simply CAN NOT BE TRUE:
No way is there a Cyclops Shark!
gregladen | October 13, 2011...I'd like to talk about an observation I made while writing for a now defunct monthly rag about global warming back in the early 1990s, and have always wanted to pursue formally, as a research project. Since I've not gotten to it yet, I thought it might be fun to outline the idea more informally, to give you, literally, a sketch or two that makes the point....
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gregladen | October 13, 2011The latest update on the crisis in Fukushima. The hot spots are everywhere. Be careful where you step!
But first, we'd like to introduce the handy-dandy Fukushima Post and Ana's Feed search engine. This search engine will return results from this series of posts we've done. This is a good place to start if you are researching anything about fukushima:
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Later, we may produce a search engine that includes everything we've pointed to as well. That, of course, is roughly the same as searching the entire internet. We've not yet decided if we should pursue that strategy or something…
gregladen | October 13, 2011It is said that this happened:
"When engineers working on the very first iPod completed the prototype, they presented their work to Steve Jobs for his approval. Jobs played with the device, scrutinized it, weighed it in his hands, and promptly rejected it. It was too big. The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top. "Those are air bubbles,"…
gregladen | October 13, 2011You may not know Dennis Ritichie but you are using his work right now. He was instrumental in developing Unix (which is ultimately related to developing Linux, which you are using right now because this web site is delivered via a Linux server) but he's more well known, probably, for his work developing the C language.
Every time an old computer language is mentioned for some historical reason, we learn that even thought we thought the language was dead, or obscure, or irrelevant, it turns out to be used in some wide range of functions and life itself would be impossible as we know it…
gregladen | October 12, 2011Rapid climate change can cause species extinction. But if a species is highly mobile or wide-ranging, then that effect may be attenuated. And, more rapid climate change would be more serious a problem than less rapid climate change. Therefore, there should be a relationship between species mobility (migration) and the rate, or velocity, of climate change vis-a-vis extinction. This is a nice set of hypotheses which have been tested in a recent paper. The abstract:
The effects of climate change on biodiversity should depend in part on climate displacement rate (climate-change velocity) and…
gregladen | October 12, 2011A spammer using a domain provided free by GoDaddy, which sends people to a domain hosting service (which in turn advertises GoDaddy) has been putting spam on this site at a very high rate over the last few hours (many have gotten through).
Does this mean that GoDaddy, the internet service provider, is spamming mysite, or merely that GoDaddy is funding the spamming of my site? Do you use GoDaddy? If you do, then YOU are spamming my site, then, aren't you?
All of you stop it.
gregladen | October 12, 2011I've shown you this before but I thought you might like to see it again.
Click Here to Buy your Sea Level Rise due to Global Warming Mug!
gregladen | October 11, 2011Skeptics and atheists and freethinking folk are supposed to be smart, and they are supposed to be inquiring and, well, skeptical and freethinking and stuff. But they very very often are not. Between skeptics being politically conservative (mainly with respect to social issues) and often not as inquiring and smart as they are fond of telling the rest of us they are, I am sufficiently annoyed by the movement(s) as a whole to reserve calling myself, for instance, a skeptic. If anything, I'm a skeptical skeptic. A godless freethinking skeptical meta-skeptic. That's me.
The latest example of…
gregladen | October 11, 2011By signing this petition:
A new report from Green For All found that we could create nearly 1.9 million jobs and inject over a quarter of a trillion dollars into the economy by fully upgrading America's aging water and stormwater infrastructure.
Every year, 860 billion gallons of raw sewage spill into our waterways - enough to cover the entire state of Pennsylvania one inch deep. Fixing that problem creates jobs.
Green For All's report, available here (http://bit.ly/WaterWorksReport), shows that making the EPA's recommended $188 billion investment - enough to manage stormwater and preserve…
gregladen | October 11, 2011L'enfant sauvage, the 1970 movie by Truffaut, depicted a plausible case of a "wild child" ... a person left at very young age in the wild, who then grew up in the absence of human culture. Such wild children are rare, and most of them are not real, or at least, not as wild as originally claimed.
A team of psychologists who were interested in the phenomenon and related questions (like, how is language learned?) attended the opening of that movie during the same week that they were informed of the existence of another wild child of sorts, Genie. Genie, later depicted (very indirectly) in the…
gregladen | October 10, 2011This is why you should always back up to cliffs that you want to stand on top of, so you can run away faster!
gregladen | October 10, 2011Pronounced Quake.
(click for source)
No, NOT your granddady's model rocket club. The following video documents one of the more amazing model rocket launches ever. BE WARNED: There are VERY LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS SOUNDS on this video. apparently, you can hear the screams in space!
Enjoy: