Technology and Science

Sat - September 12, 2009

Gotta light?

Here is a video showing the test-firing September 10 by Alliant Techsystems of the first-stage solid rocket motor for NASA's new Ares I launch vehicle.

And what do YOU do today?

Posted at 01:39 PM

Wed - September 2, 2009

Flushed with pride

Here is the web site SewerHistory.org. Can you guess what it is about? Yes, "Tracking down the roots of our sanitary sewers." And they have some really interesting stuff in there.

You know, the Romans ruled the world in their day because they had aqueducts and sewers and nobody else did.

I had a friend at Purdue who was a Civil Engineering major, in the Sanitary Engineering program, who used to always say, "Your [feces] is my bread and butter." Thirty years later and that still makes me laugh.

I found SewerHistory.org because I was reading in VintageSeattle.com about the great Ravenna sinkhole of 1957, the largest sewer collapse in the USA to that time, in which the main north Seattle trunk sewer, a six-feet wide brick-lined tunnel 145 feet below Ravenna Boulevard, washed out and created a hole 200 feet long, 175 feet wide, and 60 feet deep in Seattle's Ravenna neighborhood. SewerHistory.org has some pictures of it.

Posted at 01:18 PM

Mon - August 24, 2009

Ash the man who owns one

Wired.com has a gallery of photos of erupting volcanoes, taken from space.

They are all beautiful from up there.

Posted at 09:43 AM

Tue - July 21, 2009

Foot peculiarity

If your second toe is longer than your first (big) toe, you have what is called "Morton's Toe," and you are a freak and don't take your shoes off around me.

On the other hand, shoes seem to be shaped more for people with this freakish deformity. So maybe the shoemakers are all freaks suffering from Morton's Toe, too. I own a pair of these (alas, no longer made) and they are very comfortable because the toe box is longest where the big toe is, like a shoe should be but usually isn't.

Posted at 03:48 PM

Sun - June 14, 2009

"Everything's good when it sits on a Ritz."

Here is a doctor writing in Slate.com that we would all be better off if we ate more excrement.

He says it would be good for our immune systems, that we would be better able to handle the really nasty infections if our immune systems were regularly given a workout on some nice excrement in our stomach. He's right, you know; studies have shown that kids who are heavily protected from dirt are more prone to develop allergies, asthma, and such.

He's right. You go first, and tell us how it works out for you. (Actually, those of you who are eating "organic" produce have probably already started this regimen.)

Posted at 05:43 PM

Thu - June 4, 2009

For your "Man and Woman" file

There have been a couple of interesting studies in the news recently, about how men and women relate.

First, here is one from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, as reported by the London Telegraph: Men who marry younger women live longer, and the greater the age differential, the greater the increase in life span. They are not sure if it's because having a younger wife actually makes a man live longer, or if it is the healthier older men, i.e., men who were going to live longer anyway, who can get the younger women. Meanwhile, women get no life-span benefit from marrying younger -- in fact, marrying a man significantly younger OR older INCREASES a woman's chance of dying younger. Tough luck, ladies. The study was not a controlled experiment, it was a statistical study of all deaths in Denmark between 1990 and 2005, and the numbers are in the linked article.

And then there is this study performed by psychologists at Radboud University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, who found that talking to a pretty woman makes a man stupid. And the prettier he thinks she is, the stupider the man gets. (In other news, water is wet.) They had men perform tests of cognitive ability, such as math puzzles, and then had them talk to pretty women, and then had them do the tests again, and the scores after talking to the women were lower. There was no effect on the men's cognitive ability after talking to other men between the tests, and women showed no degradation in cognitive ability after talking to either sex. Here, you can read about it in this report on TheLondonPaper.com.

I am reminded of this time at work, and, no, I won't tell you about it.

Posted at 08:20 PM

Sat - May 9, 2009

You are being played

Here the dog-owning Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn discusses the fact that your dog does NOT love you, despite what you may wish.

Your dog just finds itself a beta in a pack with you, and exhibits behaviors necessary to get the alpha (you) to let it have some of the food. Not love. Get over yourself.

Posted at 02:55 PM

Edwin Land, call your answering service

So, you have an old Polaroid SX-70 instant camera, and it is now merely a technological artifact, as the Polaroid Corporation is defunct and no one is making instant film any more. Well, you may be in luck: Here is the web site of The Impossible Project, which is a group of guys who bought the old equipment to make Polaroid film, and are working to restart production in a garage.

Okay, not a garage, but a garage-ish location.

Polaroid cameras are like mechanical watches and steam-powered automobiles: Very interesting and clever devices, the continued use of which must be called an affectation.

Posted at 01:24 PM

Thu - April 30, 2009

Science trumps anecdote, I hope

So it says here that scientists have identified a gene abnormality that is more common in people with autism.

The researchers say that not all people who have this genetic variation have been diagnosed with autism, but almost all of the thousands of autistic people they have studied do have it.

That's right, a genetic variation. NOT immunization shots. So, Jenny McCarthy, doctor of crackpotedness, and all of your like-simple-minded cohorts, I hope you will shut the eff up and stop your campaign for the spread of disease.

Posted at 05:27 PM

Wed - April 15, 2009

His coughs had a clean, fresh scent

I don't know if I believe this: A man in Russia complained of pain in his lung. He went to the doctor, and they did an X-ray which showed a mass, assumed to be a tumor, in the lung. Rushed to the operating room for a biopsy, the doctors cut into his lung, and a 5 centimeter fir tree poked out.

The doctors assume he inhaled a seed and it sprouted.

If you click on the link, and then click on the link at the bottom of the story, you can see a picture of the tissue removed, with the tree still in it.

As I said, I'm not sure I believe it. The picture could be a fake. For one thing, the tree is green, and I think a tree that was spouting without sunlight would be white. Wouldn't it?

But I've had this cough for a few days.

Posted at 02:41 PM

Tue - February 24, 2009

Another victim of the idiots

Iowahawk puts a face on the high cost of misguided and ill-informed environmentalism.

Spraying the walls of homes with DDT would save tens of thousands of lives a year in Africa, at no cost to the environment. But, no, let's let them die, say the greens.

Posted at 12:26 PM

Mon - January 19, 2009

Keep a respectful distance

The car blog Jalopnik shows us one of the weapons supposedly carried in the SUV that always follows the President's limousine.

I never planned to rush the President's car, now I don't want to be in sight of the President's car, in case someone else rushes it.

I'd want to see the video, though. On the receiving end of that there would be a lot of metal confetti and a pinkish cloud where the people had been.

Posted at 06:21 PM

Wed - January 14, 2009

Sleep is your best health buy

Not getting enough sleep causes hardening of the arteries, new research at the University of Chicago shows.

I get eight hours a night and my arteries are quite supple.

Posted at 02:45 PM

Thu - November 6, 2008

New reason for coffee jitters

Catching up on the news, I see there was study done that shows that drinking coffee makes women's breasts smaller.

So, ladies, cut out the double grandé unless you want double short.

Posted at 01:51 PM

Wed - October 15, 2008

Filth at every hand

Speaking of germs, which I was a while back, here is a report of a study done in the United Kingdom that found that women's hands are much filthier than men's hands.

The researchers went to trains stations in five British cities and swabbed the hands of random people walking by.

In London, twenty-one percent of women had fecal bacteria on their hands, while only six percent of men did. Women had more of the bacteria on their hands in Cardiff and Birmingham, while men's hands were more germy in Newcastle and Liverpool.

In Newcastle, forty-four percent of all people swabbed had fecal bacteria on their hands.

Fecal bacteria -- you know where that comes from, don't you? I guess women are less likely to wash after they use the bathroom. Or, there are some cultures that do not use toilet paper to clean up, instead using water and the hand, and Britain is full of immigrants from these cultures -- I wonder if that could be part of it?

Posted at 02:32 PM

The easy way out leads back in

Zoom

Update to "drug of choice" post

My drug of choice is not a choice, it turns out

One last passing of gas

A breach in the dam of trust

Funereal Slurpee

Lesion of merit

Give your brain a fighting chance

Don't look at ME

Your ears are not good enough to tell the difference