The other thing your dog does when you let it outside.
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Don't Be in Japan When the Robot Rebellion Starts
There are now 1 million industrial robots toiling around the world, and Japan is where they’re the thickest on the ground. It has 295 of these electromechanical marvels for every 10 000 manufacturing workers—a robot density almost 10 times the world average
via kottke
Channeling Jeane Dixon
“LHC destroys earth” being one of them.
(In case you didn’t know, Jeane Dixon was a “psychic”)
The Mob Uses SI Units
Tony Soprano, Archimedes. Archimedes, Tony Soprano.
So Tony Soprano pitches ties a concrete block to Salvatore Bonpensiero and pitches him into the ocean, where he will inform the police no more. Being a big guy, Bonpensiero has a fairly low density compared to your average human being – say, 0.96 grams per cubic centimeter. That’s less than water and so he’d have floated were it not for the weight. Assuming Bonpensiero has a mass of 140 kilograms, how much concrete would Tony need to sink him?
Hmm. A big guy, so a lower density? You callin’ me fat?
All Squared Away
How would 10 top physicists—two Nobel Prize winners among them—describe Einstein’s equation to curious non-physicists?
FYI – 'Blog' is not short for Blagojevich
Top Ten Messages Left On Rod Blagojevich’s Answering Machine
“I’m calling about your Senate seat on Craigslist. Want to trade for a futon?”
My Hovercraft is Full of Eels
Hungarian phrasebook sketch comes to life
The journal of the Max Planck Research Institute was hit by this little problem: they used some lovely Chinese calligraphy on their cover without looking up the meaning.
Johnny on the Spot
Memorize these phrases to learn the first eighteen elements – when you are done, make up your own phrases for some of the others.
Happy Henry Likes Beer But Could Not Obtain Four Nuts
That gives us the first 10: Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon.
Naughty Magpies Always Sing Perfect Songs Clawing Ants
That gives us the next 8: Sodium (NA), Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Phosphorous, Sulfur, Chlorine, Argon
Personally, I prefer Lehrer, but that’s not the elements in order
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.”
Great News for Science
I just heard about Steve Chu being nominated for Energy Secretary, and see that I’m late to the party (Uncertain Principles, Cosmic Variance, and elsewhere in the blogohedron, I’m sure)
(As with Chad and Sean, I’ve met him; we sat next to each other at dinner one evening at the Frequency Standards and Metrology Symposium at St. Andrews in 2001.)
Having someone who, along with being a Nobel laureate, has the pedigree of running a national lab and someone with actual experience doing lab experiments is a fantastic thing. This is not someone who is being appointed under the sort of “he ran the FAA, so he can certainly run Energy” career-bureaucrat mentality. This is someone who isn’t going to be confused into thinking that hydrogen is an energy source, or that generators using hydrino reactions will solve our foreign oil dependence.