News Briefs 11-12-2009
Posted by G.C at 10:44, 11 Dec 2009Does anybody forget laughter?
- The spiraling Norway light wasn't from another dimension… it was a failed Russian rocket. More here about Russia’s latest missile test.
- 2000-2010, a decade of great change.
- Cloud-seeding to fight the growing drought.
- A new star in the Big Dipper?
- The nighttime sky, in infrared courtesy of the WISE mission.
- Take a deep breath and tell me what you taste… Yup. That’s space gas. More here about how the Earth’s atmosphere came from space.
- The mystery of Saturn’s moon, Iapetus, has gone the way of the dodo.
- All hail the paper battery!
- Newly discovered dinosaur solves evolutionary gap.
- Turning carbon dioxide into liquid fuel.
- U.S. to build it’s first offshore wind farm.
- The scientifically perfect slice of pizza. Hooray for science!
- Felled forest leads to discovery of ancient Amazon civilization.
- Where does memory reside?
- Ceremonies, sex, healing and seven other ‘best uses for a stone circle’.
- The music of Muse… Aliens, global conspiracies and visions of armaggeddon. These are a few of my favorite things...
- Wahoo! I caught me a satellite! Now what do I do with it?
- Saturn's bizarre hexagon is wider than two Earths and ridiculously cool.
- Rewriting memories to make them less traumatic. Paging Clementine Kruczynski...
- Mother Russia is trying to control Mother Nature.
- A 5 million year-old mystery surrounding an Ancient Mediterranean flood has been solved.
- Lab-coats claim that we (we being hairless bi-peds) have a 6-hour window to erase fear. At hour seven, everything goes straight into Binkley’s anxiety closet.
- Ladies and gentlemen… bionic fingers.
- And last but not least-- 3 singing, frightening android heads.
Many thanks to Kat and Greg for this week and ENORMOUS thanks to Perceval for the last two weeks of truly thought-provoking news stories.
Quote of the Day:
“Here there be tygers.”
Ray Bradbury


Comments
10 August 2004
20 hours 47 min
...that scientists need some light entertainment at times, but it seems to me that they could find a more profitable way to spend their energy that working out the most ideal way to slice up pizza.
Take one item (such as a slab of cake) and two children. One child cuts the cake into two pieces, but the other child gets to choose first which bit he'll have - totally fair, and no mathematical skill required for the solution!
Regards, Kathrinn
6 February 2008
12 weeks 5 days
in the same waste basket as the study of the math behind entanglement of extension cords... ;)
22 November 2004
1 week 5 days
Just last week I experienced something really scary.
I retrieved my laptop power adapter from my backpack. It is the usual little box, with a power cord to the wall socket, and another thinner cord going to the laptop. This had been in the backpack for a week or so.
It Was Completely Tangle Free !!.
Can you explain that one?
----
We are the cat.
6 February 2008
12 weeks 5 days
That was one of the variables in the extention cord equation. Lenght of exhibit A... ;)
22 November 2004
1 week 5 days
Thanks for clearing that up.
I'm still a little concerned that the world may be coming to an end because of this though. These things just don't happen normally.
----
We are the cat.
10 August 2004
20 hours 47 min
You just came up with a new "end of the world" scenario!!
Although maybe some enterprising person has finally invented a tangle-free power cord. Wish he'd visit my house and untangle some of the wiry mess down the back of my computer desk - I don't look at it often as it's too scary!
Regards, Kathrinn
1 May 2004
12 hours 25 min
A paper battery makes me wonder about ancient magical texts. Could some of those magicians have been casting spells using some kind of tome or parchment that actually served as a capacitor?
10 August 2004
20 hours 47 min
I once read somewhere that the Ancients moved large stones by placing them on a sheet of papyrus and striking them with a rod, whereupon they then flew through the air.
Ref the paper batteries - are there any technical folk out there who know how this might work if the 'papyrus' was actually a paper battery??
Regards, Kathrinn