Lost internet access there for a frikkin’ day and a half. What’s more, my ISP only has web links in its emails to point you to customer service. Much like the phone people giving you a number to call for service problems. Sheesh.
No matter. The weather has been gorgeous. I love fall weather like this.
ESPN Sport Science on Collisions: Video Break Down
Batman has The Joker, Harry Potter has Voldemort, and I have Sport Science.
Brainteaser posters aim to get people thinking about physics
One for example asks: “Two filled cola cans, one frozen, one liquid, roll down a short smooth slope – which one gets to the bottom first?”
Ooh, ooh, ooh! I know this one!
The questions are engaging but you have to think before answering. “Most of the questions do surprise,” she said, for example: “A clock on the equator runs slower, faster or identical to one on the North Pole?”
All the Q&A are here; there is a link to a document file for the answers down at the bottom.
What a Hundred Million Calls to 311 Reveal About New York
The 311 system has proved useful not just at detecting reliable patterns but also at providing insights when the normal patterns are disrupted. Clusters of calls about food-borne illness or sanitary problems from the same restaurant now trigger a rapid response from the city’s health department. And during emergencies, callers help provide real-time insight into what’s really happening. “When [New York Yankees pitcher] Cory Lidle crashed his plane into a building on the Upper East Side, we had a bulletin on all of our screens in less than an hour explaining that it was not an act of terrorism,” Morrisroe says. After US Airways flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson in 2009, a few callers dialed 311 asking what they should do with hand luggage they’d retrieved from the river. “We have lots of protocols and systems in place for emergencies like plane crashes,” Morrisroe explains, “but we’d never thought about floating luggage.” This is the beauty of 311. It thrives on the quotidian and predictable—the school-closing queries and pothole complaints—but it also plays well with black swans.
1940: Director Tex Avery becomes the real father of Bugs Bunny with “A Wild Hare”. Bugs is changed from a Daffyesque lunatic to a streetsmart wiseass. “We decided he was going to be a smart alec rabbit, but casual about it,” Avery recalled. “His opening linewas ‘What’s up, Doc? …It floored ‘em! …Here’s a guy with a gun in his face! …They expected the rabbit to scream, or anything but make a casual remark… It got such a laugh that we said, ‘Let’s use that every chance we get.’ It became a series of ‘What’s up, Docs?’ That set his entire character, He was always in command, in the face of all types of dangers.”
Today in History: November 9. Benjamin Banneker
Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks. In 1752, Banneker garnered public acclaim by building a clock entirely out of wood. The clock, believed to be the first built in America, kept precise time for decades. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.
I’ve gone geocaching in Benjamin Banneker Park, which is how I first learned of him — like many parks named after people, there was a short history on a sign.
Pump-Powered Antennas Could Replace Metal Communications Arrays with Fountains of Saltwater
What they came up with is little more than an electromagnetic ring and a water pump. The ring, called a current probe, creates a magnetic field through which the pump shoots a steam of seawater (the salt is a key ingredient, as the tech relies on the magnetic induction properties of sodium chloride)
I think they meant “stream.”
It’s all about the energy balance
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.
For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.
His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.
2/3 of his calories from junk food. He improved his cholesterol, too.
Stanford’s once elegant, $500,000 sculpted clock/fountain sits glumly in storage
I guess I’m not the only one running into trouble with a fountain clock (and I have more on that, later).
The clock sculpture is made of a black granite turntable on an asymmetrical base that revolved once a year and was in constant motion 24 hours a day. To support it, and create a perfectly level surface for the heavy slab, Stanford sank five concrete columns deep into the earth.
Powered by electricity, it ran on a mechanical system with custom gears that were submerged in running water, according to Susan Roberts-Manganelli, manager of collections for Stanford’s Cantor Center for Visual Arts.