A look at Benford’s Law.
In certain numerical data sets, the leading digit is most likely to be a “1,” with each succeeding number being less likely. It can be used to see if someone unaware of this has manufactured data.
That's a FIB
As in Focused Ion Beam
Cold Atoms Could Replace Hot Gallium In Focused Ion Beams
Because of the versatility of their approach—it can be used with a wide range of ions tailored to the task at hand—it is expected to have broad application in nanotechnology both for carving smaller features on semiconductors than now are possible and for nondestructive imaging of nanoscale structures with finer resolution than currently possible with electron microscopes.
I ran something on this a few months ago. MOTIS Operandi
Don Ho in Space
Tiny bubbles. Then bigger bubbles.
Here’s what happens when you add an antacid tablet to a big water drop in microgravity.
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.
New Unit: the Cuil
The Cuil is proposed as a new unit.
One Cuil = One level of abstraction away from the reality of a situation.
Example: You ask me for a Hamburger.
…
3 Cuils: You awake as a hamburger. You start screaming only to have special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia.
Trekkin'
Star Trek light-switch, slider and power-outlet escutcheon plates at that Nerdonium money-sink, Think Geek
[F]or just a few strips of latinum, you can decorate your own 21st century domicile with lighting and power wall-plates, complete with LCARS interface designs! Of course, the panels are non-working – probably because our primitive electrical power-systems are incompatible with 24th century technology. Perhaps you need a new phase-inducer, or maybe you can run an EPS purge of the primary relays?
H-1B or not H-1B? That is the Question.
I think the solution to the problem is really simple. The US should grant permanent residency to anyone who graduates from a qualified four year university with a computer science degree. If you are concerned about people gaming the system, you can start out by limiting it to people that receive a post-graduate degree. Of course, you can easily extend this beyond computer science (e.g. physics, chemistry, etc.)
When I was an undergraduate at MIT, a meaningful percentage of the student body was from other countries. It never even occurred to me that these folks were “different” and didn’t “belong in our country.” Some of my best friends in college weren’t US citizens and I was baffled by the hoops they had to jump through even back then to work in the US. In the past eight years, this has gotten dramatically worse and it’s time we got in front of this.
As I implied in my previous bit on H-1B visas, I think this attacks a symptom — the shortage of tech workers — but does nothing to solve the underlying problem. What happens when foreign students can get good jobs back in their own countries, and don’t want to stick around? This does nothing to foster education of our own citizens, and by having a large supply of workers, it drives salaries down. Businesses love it, of course, because the talent pool is deeper and cheaper. I don’t think we should swing all the way to full-blown protectionism, but I also don’t think unrestricted handing-out of visas to all graduates is the answer.
This brings to mind another issue. The US does educate a lot of foreign students. As with the author, I was friends with a number of them when I was in school. I was also frustrated that some of the finite supply of student support money, coming from taxes, was doled out to foreign students and to the exclusion of US citizens — I knew a few people who went without support for a year in the hope of landing a TA or RA, while the foreign students were supported. There’s something about that that strikes me an inequitable.
Just When You Think You've Gotten Over It
The era that defined Wall Street is finally, officially over. Michael Lewis, who chronicled its excess in Liar’s Poker, returns to his old haunt to figure out what went wrong.
I know it’s been covered to death, but I found this scary and sickening, and yet couldn’t stop reading. Banks making loans they knew would fail, but apparently under the assumption that the value of the assets would continue to rise, so they’d come out ahead. Nobody really knew what they were doing.
This Will End the Controversy
Yeah, right.
Tech puts JFK conspiracy theories to rest
“The question we were trying to answer is, given the spatter evidence in a vehicle, and knowing an individual was sitting at a particular location, is there something we could use to determine where the shot originated?” said Steve Schliebe, a blood spatter and trace evidence specialist with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, who was part of the special investigation.
I imagine this will work just as well as a categorical denial of a coverup by a government official.