The feller behind the OKCupid dating site collated some data and produced charts showing what age is most attractive for people for the opposite sex at various ages. Two fights immediately spring to mind: the serious disparity between male and female response, and whether than means that men are shallow scumbags or just products of evolution; and whether the data collection and analysis methodology is valid. In any event… interesting.
Now… FIGHT!
Here, have a Chemistry Cat:
Hmmmm…
The researchers are not shining light through crystal – they are transforming light into crystal. As part of an effort to develop exotic materials such as room-temperature superconductors, the researchers have locked together photons, the basic element of light, so that they become fixed in place.
…
To build their machine, the researchers created a structure made of superconducting materials that contains 100 billion atoms engineered to act as a single “artificial atom.” They placed the artificial atom close to a superconducting wire containing photons.
By the rules of quantum mechanics, the photons on the wire inherit some of the properties of the artificial atom – in a sense linking them. Normally photons do not interact with each other, but in this system the researchers are able to create new behavior in which the photons begin to interact in some ways like particles.
…
“In one mode of operation, light sloshes back and forth like a liquid; in the other, it freezes.”
HMMMM.
Well, here’s a new one. I’ve been put in touch with a guy who has an entire aerospace archive he’s selling off. He wants $4000 for the complete set of stuff, a catalog of which is included here as a PDF (the items actually available in the collection are bounded in red). There’s some undeniably interesting stuff in there that I really want, but $4K is well beyond what I can pony up. But I think this stuff might be of interest to a whole lot of other folks. So what I’m thinking… crowdsource this purchase.
There are two groups of documents that I think would be of most interest, so I will provide high-rez scans of the docs for $150 for group A, $100 for group B, or $225 for both).
Group A: shown on page 3, “Space Shuttle Systems Handbook” and “Hubble Space Telescope Systems Description Handbook.” These are fairly enormous collections of diagrams; the original sales price of these two items back in 1993 was $558. I’ve seen a much more recent version of the Shuttle Handbook,” and it was fairly spectacular.
Group B: shown on page 6, a number of “Shuttle Systems Data Reports” which would seem to illustrate just about everything on the Shuttle program. These I have *not* seen personally, so I’m kinda guessing here. The total sales price in 1993 was $258.
As for all the other stuff: I think the best approach would be to auction them off – after scanning, of course – to those who have bought in for either Group A or B. Right now I’m not asking for cash. There are some details I need to confirm first (such as getting photos of the collection… not that I don’t trust the guy, but I don’t trust anybody). But I *do* want to gauge interest, to see if I will actually be able to afford the full $4K. So if you’d like to get in on this, please send an email to scottlowther@ix.netcom.com letting me know if you wants Group A, Group B or both. If I go ahead with this, I’ll need the funds up front.
It will be launched, unmanned, atop a Delta IV Heavy.
A whole lot of laws are in place for no good reason other than to be annoying and to provide for more bureaucracy. This is rarely more true than laws regarding drugs. Such as Indiana’s laws regarding establishments that sell alcohol. The law states that any place that sells booze by the drink must also have food service available at all times to its patrons… this service to include hot soups, hot sandwiches, coffee, milk and soda. So if you are a brewery, where your sole purpose in life is to sell alcoholic beverages and not sammiches and Pepsi, this might be a tad annoying. But someone done figgered it out:
Hah. “Every new law is an opportunity for graft.”
On September 18, Scottish voters get to decide on independence for Scotland. According to at least one source, the main driver of the independence movement is that Scotland is too left-leaning for the UK. Which is a fairly startling thought giving how leftist the UK is on the whole. Whatever… I have no dog in that fight one way or the other. But assuming it passes and Scotland splits from the UK, it does raise a few interesting ponderables:
1) What will the rest of the UK be called, since it is no longer the “United Kingdom?” I hope they go with “Former United Kingdom.” Mainly the ninth-grader in me hopes that. Cuz then we can talk about the latest news out of the FUK, about what wacky hijinks all those crazy FUKers are getting into.
2) What will Scotland be called? Given that the current UK system is apparently far too conservative, I can only assume it’ll be something like the Democratic Socialist Peoples Republic Of If it Ain’t Scottish It’s Crap, or something.
3) I assume that there are ethnic Russians in the territory of Scotland. If Scotland bails from the UK, it will presumably also be out of NATO. So will the Russian military show up and take over the joint? Seems to be their MO these days.
4) What will Scotland do for cash when the North Sea oil starts to peter out? They can look to Venezuela for tips on being an oil-based economy…
As I said, it’s no skin off my nose either way it goes. About the only way it is likely to affect me is if the “Yes” vote wins, Scotland separates and the English invade, or if the “No” vote wins and Scotland erupts into civil war. In either case… yay for me! CNN will become entertaining again!
Something you don’t see every day: a volcano in Papua New Guinea suddenly exploded in late August, and someone just happened to catch in on video. Interesting to watch the shock wave from the supersonic blast propagate through the cloud level above the island.
[youtube 2XlDa3WxVJ0]
A 1970’s (and boy does it show) film by NASA that *briefly* depicts O’Neill cylinder colonies, but mostly deals with the Stanford Torus:
[youtube EgrdAUFFMrA]
While I’d be dubious of attributing an explosion in a place like Nicaragua to a meteorite rather than, say, rebels, drug runners, military actions, etc., it seems that a meteorite did actually hit the woods near an airport. Crater is 39 feet wide, 16 feet deep.
From the socialist-leaning Slate.com:
In short, apparently a few days ago there were strikes by McDonalds workers demanding to be paid a rather remarkable $15/hour for work that can be done by wholly unskilled junior high students based on a few minutes training. Slate thinks that these strikes have really helped the Union movement.
You want to know who these strikes probably really help? Hmmmm…
Right now, a robo-burger-flipper is a more expensive prospect than a pimply teenager. But consider: the unskilled labor is apparently getting more expensive, but it is *not* getting more skilled. I’m old enough to remember when the checkout clerk had to stab *numbers* on the cash register to ring up the price; now they hit buttons with the pictures of the items. I’m pretty sure I can do that myself. And the question then becomes… why *shouldn’t* I do that myself? Turn the machine around 180 degrees. I order up what I want, swipe my card, and the order goes to the back for processing. Easy.
And while the human labor is becoming more expensive and no more skilled, the robots are getting better and cheaper. At some point the trend lines will cross, and the humans will no longer be needed to punch a picture of a burger or put mayo on a bun.
Robots have other advantages:
1) They work 24/7
2) They don’t call in sick
3) They don’t get surly and insult the customers
4) They don’t steal from the company
Sure, the robots will require that new staff be hired… someone will need to do maintenance and fix inevitable breakdowns and screwups; someone will be needed to simply keep the machine supplied. But at least in the first case, the maintenance tech will have to actually be skilled labor. Someone actually worth hiring. Maybe even a job worth unionizing. But the surly burger flippers and register drones? Bye-bye.
So, now we’ll have armies of useless high schoolers with no job experience whatsoever, and no starter jobs waiting for them if they try to go to college. So… whole new crops of the permanent underclass.
Way to go, unions!