Albania!
Albania!
You border on the Adriatic.
Your land is mostly mountainous,
And your chief export is chrome.
Coach, Cheers
2008 San Francisco Chronicle Geography Quiz
I only got 18, ugly American that I am.
Category Archives: Other science
I'm Shocked. Shocked! That TV isn't Real.
CSI lies and suspicious science over at Cocktail Party Physics
Forensic science has come a long way since Sherlock Holmes bragged that he could identify 140 types of tobacco from their ash. And far be it from me to diss one of my favorite shows on the TV I don’t own, the original CSI, which is loaded with fantastic sciency goodness, even if it is a little unrealistic. CSI? Unrealistic? Hate to break it to you kids, but, yeah. At the very least, the speed with which our intrepid heroes get their results would make any cop, ADA, or defense attorney double over in laughter, when they’re not crying.
Time-compression is the sin here, and it’s not new nor confined to CSI. I can go back to some of the favorite shows of my youth, like Adam-12, where all of the boring inaction of real-life policework has been culled. And newer shows, like NUMB3RS, display time compression as well. And the shows know this
A related sleight of hand is time compression: Charlie solves huge problems in short order. On CSI, tests come back in hours; in real life, they would take weeks. “We get bagged on a lot for that,” says CSI executive producer Naren Shankar, possibly the only writer in television with a Ph.D. in applied physics. (Shankar´s first Hollywood job was as a science researcher for Star Trek: The Next Generation.)
Time compression, to me, is a forgivable sin. I am willing to concede the trimming of the dead-time so that the show can be wrapped up in an hour. The streamlining of the false-positives fall into that category, too, for me, though I wonder if they couldn’t be worked into the story lines. (It’s quite possible they have and I’m just not remembering)
The act that bothers me more is the magic TV shows often do with image enhancement. Some low-resolution, blurry image is analyzed, and that tiny section off in the corner is blown up and magically transformed into a high-resolution crystal-clear image, revealing crucial detail (often the face of the killer, or the license plate of their car). Sorry, but if all you have is 640 x 480 from some crappy security camera, it’s not going to get better than that. Once you get down to one pixel, you can’t subdivide it.
If Only Ensign Pulver Had Known
(OK, that was making fake “Red Label” Scotch)
We already know you can check your wine and find out if it’s bad
Now there’s How to make cheap wine taste like a fine vintage
The secret this time is an electric field. Pass an undrinkable, raw red wine between a set of high-voltage electrodes and it becomes pleasantly quaffable. “Using an electric field to accelerate ageing is a feasible way to shorten maturation times and improve the quality of young wine,” says Hervé Alexandre, professor of oenology at the University of Burgundy, close to some of France’s finest vineyards.
University of Burgundy. Figures. They don’t do this kind of work at Boone’s Farm State University, or Ripple Tech.
Doctor Obvious Publishes Again
A study published in the current issue of the journal Sexual Health found that science students were more likely to be virgins than their artsy classmates.
[…]
Nature podcast editor Adam Rutherford has a few ideas. “I just hate it when stereotypes are right,” he posted on the UK’s Guardian website. “The research does not go into the potential causes of this lack of bedroom activity by my boffin brethren, nor does it detail the worthy sacrifice of cheap carnal thrills for rational agility and mental development, which I have convinced myself lies at the root of this problem. That, and the personal hygiene issues.”
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
You see a lot of interesting things working the night shift in a sketchy neighborhood. I constantly saw people making bad decisions: drunk drivers, gang members, unhappy cops, and con men. In fact, I was the victim of a classic con called “The Pigeon Drop.” If we humans have such big brains, how can we get conned?
It seems that reciprocating trust is an element in being conned.
My laboratory studies of college students have shown that two percent of them are “unconditional nonreciprocators.” That’s a mouthful! This means that when they are trusted they don’t return money to person who trusted them (these experiments are described in my post on neuroeconomics). What do we really call these people in my lab? Bastards. Yup, not folks that you would want to have a cup of coffee with. These people are deceptive, don’t stay in relationships long, and enjoy taking advantage of others. Psychologically, they resemble sociopaths. Bastards are dangerous because they have learned how to simulate trustworthiness. My research has demonstrated that they have highly dysregulated THOMASes.
(THOMAS = The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System)
Here’s how a con works, which they also call the Pigeon Drop. Alternately, you can watch the beginning of The Sting, where they call it “The Switch”
Here’s the Three-card-Monte and Matchbox game. I know people who have fallen for this kind of con, and I recall someone trying to hustle me (and some friends) after a pickup basketball game.
You can’t win these games.
Passing Gas
Making Gases More Transportable: Methane Gas Converted To Powder Form
Scientists have developed a material made out of a mixture of silica and water which can soak up large quantities of methane molecules. The material looks and acts like a fine white powder which, if developed for industrial use, might be easily transported or used as a vehicle fuel.
Methane is the principal component of natural gas and can be burnt in oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. The abundance of the gas and its relatively clean burning process makes it a good source of fuel, but due to its gaseous state at room temperature, methane is difficult to transport from its source.
Ice, Ice Baby
“Instant ice” from a supersaturated solution.
Follow the Bouncing … Droplet
How to make water bounce.
Using a high-speed camera setup in the lab, GE scientists captured details of water droplets dancing on amazing superhydrophobic surfaces developed in GE Global Research’s Nanotechnology lab.
It's (Anti) Creptastic!
Anticrepuscular Rays Over Colorado, the APOD for Nov 16
Peek-a-Boo
Mimes are annoying, but mimics are cool. Can You See Me? Animal Camouflage: Leaf Mimics
Dead leaf butterflies are extraordinary creatures to observe up close. The specimen below illustrates the intricate details chiseled out by adaptation through natural selection, which is a driving force of evolution. The remarkable details help the butterfly evade predation by mimicking a dead leaf.