Swans on Tea

Tom Mabe: Eavesdropping
You can’t miss me.

Branch falls on some power lines
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Atlas V launch earlier this month. The rocket goes supersonic as it passes through the cloud layer that was prettily refracting light from the sun (a sun dog), with the shock wave visible in the clouds and disrupting the effect. The fun starts at about 1:50, and is replayed a few times after [...]

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Mercury(II) thiocyanate decomposition is initiated by heating.

“A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything”
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TED 2010: Death Star Laser Gun Zaps Mosqitoes Dead
Myhrvold demonstrated a “Death Star” laser gun designed to track and kill mosquitoes in flight. The device was crafted from parts purchased on eBay by scientists at Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures Laboratory.
Video here: High Speed Videography of Mosquitoes
The third video is the best one, showing the critters being [...]

Endeavour night launch
And a video
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I remember seeing the first night launch from Orlando. But these are from a slightly closer vantage point.

Last fall, someone animated the xkcd cartoon that celebrated the boom-de-yada song
Now, in a bit of life imitates art – imitates life-imitates art-imitates life, (does surreal come in layers,or are they orthogonal dimensions?) we have a collection of people of varying degrees of celebrity in the science and tech world (I recognized Bruce Schneier [...]

Physics Buzz: Chicken Head Tracking
The technique – which you could generally call “tracking” but is also pretty much the same thing as “dead reckoning” (or is it ded reckoning?) – is utilized by aircraft and some car navigation systems. (I love it when “high tech” turns up in Nature.) The chicken’s body communicates its [...]

World War II computer Colossus that cracked Nazi code
Retired British spy catcher Tony Sale rebuilt Colossus, the world’s first recognisably programmable computer.
Colossus was instrumental in the work of code cracking operations at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire during World War II.
It deciphered messages sent by German over the Lorenz Cipher.

Birds jousting at the birdfeeder while I was home for the holidays.
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The Kaye Effect
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Present in shear-thinning fluids — when pouring it into a reservoir, a jet of fluid will occasionally emerge.
There’s an especially neat part at the end where the fluid is used as a light guide.