ya.. a slayer christmas

Awsum chirstmas lights display

More vibs

I'm still looking for a good funk vib solo, but till then more good jazz..

Vibs

People have been confused as to what a vibraphone is: here is a good jazz vib.. from Russia..

damn! that is a mud slide.. destroying port in Brazil

via Boing Boing

the Quantitive Easing... this is really f@#ked up!!

no words.. just listen..

Mini airplane models

this is a great video of some mini airplanes being flown in a gymnasium in Japan.. The flying angle was unstable.. but funny none the less...

Coffee grinds as a robotic gripper

A great idea, to use coffee grounds in a latex bag with a vacuum pump to grip objects!

Language

Stephen Fry rants on the use of language.. brilliant, and the video is a great assistance!!



via. One Good Move

Radio Flyer wagon ++

What happens when highly skilled people retire from industry.. some fade into the woodwork.. others play! In Anchorge Alaska a retired couple converted a 1976 Mazada pickup to a 4X scale Radio Flyer wagon. From 2 KTUU.com

 

Shelter: a short film on home building

A well done movie short about Lloyd Kahn and his take on home building.

SHELTER from jason sussberg on Vimeo.

Worm composting

I've been composting (well sorta.. many failed attempts, and several that worked but that I never got to use.. long story) for several years, but the biggest problem is not how to do it, but more importantly the methane gas that is produced. Methane is one of the worse green house gases, and regular composting produces it in large amounts.

Worm composting produces some methane, but less then traditional composting. After a few days of looking for how to for worm composting I found the best reference in the below video.

The general calculations are:

1 square foot of surface are can house 1 lb of worms which can digest 1/2 lb of food waste per day.

in metric

0.205 m^2/kg of worms. So a 30cm x 70 cm bin can support 1kg of worms and digest 500 g of food waste/day. In the video they use two plastic bins to house the worms, the top for the worms and the bottom to hold the water that passes through (which is also a fertilizer and a natural insecticide.)

The Enviromentals (Episode 1) How to Make a Worm Composting Bin from Hal Brindley on Vimeo.

Nature journals too expensive

I get the updates on journal by nature. But when you click the link to read the article you are asked to purchase the article (see this article on Lidar :Mapping the world in 3D ). The article costs $38 USD! So I wrote to Nature telling them this is an order of magnitude off in pricing! What do you think? Should science be easier to access.. is Nature shooting themselves in the foot?

my comment to nature photonics:

Why is the price for an article $30 USD?!! When I can buy magazines for $5, music albums for $10, books for $20, iPhone apps for $1-10, why would anyone pay $30 for a 1-2 page article! I know that the majority of your subscribers are universities, but not all of them. You are missing a huge group of scientists who would probably pay to read these articles, but not the price your asking!
May I suggest an iPhone/iPad / kindle app that lets me download papers and read them. You know that to any given scientist maybe 1/4 of the articles in any journal are of interest to them, so buying every journal is not as valuable as you may think.

What many do is get colleges to get the pdf for them, scan copies, or most of the time we go to an open access journal. I've never read Nature Photonics (aside from copies sent to me by friends) but use Optics Express all the time.
I think your journal is good, but inaccessible.. which mean not relevant. Please change this. Scientists are not payed that well, and personal copies are nice to have. Remember that we are blog readers.. so browsing and picking useful work is what we do, but with these costly journals there is no point.

Cheers

Rodger

Evolution has no forsight

A video of the dissection of a giraffe showing notable the laryngeal nerve:

Laser tracking

This is a really intersting combination of laser light and sound. I'm not sure how it is done, but I assume it is a combination of camera, laser with moveable mirror, and sound generation based on the deflection of the beam.

BP oil spill in the gulf

A reporter went diving in the middle of the oil spill taking images of the effect not of just the oil, but the dispersants that are being applied to it. via RepowerAmerica

like a bull in a cheese festival

like a bull in a cheese festival, originally uploaded by SunnyCanuck.

On sunday during the beginning of the cheese event in Ojos Negros a bull freed itself and went for a brisk trot through the park beside the event. In the photo you can see on the far right the tent backs for the event in the adjoining concrete patio. It ran about 2 m behind our stand and was caught as it rounded to return to the street; I believe after realizing the event entrance was on its right.

It stayed tied to the swing set (as pictured) for a few hours and left without our noticing.

The pythoon; extended python low rider

Below is a video of a stretched python; gives the rider much needed storage or child caring capacity.

The people's reaction to the Pope protecting child abusers

This is great. I've heard that there is a movement in the UK to arrest the pope if he goes there...

Well anyway. A very funny video.. very rude, potentially offensive language..

Something from nothing

This is a fabulous talk by cosmologist Lawrence Krauss. Get some lunch, sit back and enjoy..

no one has the right to live without being shocked

Do we think this is true? Does your mother? We are shocked when something happens that we didn't anticipate, which is a part of our ignorance. Then, to express being shocked is to be proud that your didn't know something. But at the fundamental base of his response is a right to free information exchange.

from Boing Boing

Philip Pullman, addressing an audience at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford, was asked about whether his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, was offensive. Here's his reply:

"It was a shocking thing to say and I knew it was a shocking thing to say. But no one has the right to live without being shocked. No one has the right to spend their life without being offended. Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if you open it and read it, you don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or bought, or sold or read. That's all I have to say on that subject."

via Boing Boing

Vitamin D

Here is a link to a great article about vitamin D. The summary is reduced cancer risk, heart disease, and overall better health with the daily consumption of 1000 iu (international units: what that is in grams I don't know). Too much and you can cause damage to some organs.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/05/16/f-health-vitamin-d.html


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Do people have a right to be not offended?

Do people have a right to be not offended?

I say "of course not!!!"

You take offense, it is not given!

I'm offended by bad driving, uncoordinated clothing, stupid people, people who chew with their mouths open, people who walk with their mouth open, people who take homeopathic medicine etc.. and that is MY PROBLEM!! not theirs.

Offense is your reaction to something, and does not necessarily reflect the intention of the act.

Well this is what is on trial in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders is going on trial for offending Muslims by stating that he believes that Islam is bad. He has no problem with Muslims, but thinks that the ideals of Islam is a danger to our culture. He makes a good point. I would go further by grouping Judaism and Christianity in with it.. but I may offend :-\

There is a new trend to treat groups (religions and businesses) like they are people. But are they? If I get together with friends, to we as a group get extra rights?

A decent rant about this is given by Pat Condell in youTube



Geert's website is wildersontrial.com. A good article by Douglas Murray is found here.

what do you think?

Back from vacation and the word is being taken over

What are you going to do when we are run by the soulless corporation? These ideas are for science fiction, but with the appearance of the leaked ACTA documents, we see how seriously changes are being pushed through far reaching international treaties; a good summary has been posted by Michael Geist in his ACTA Guide. Here is the agenda for round 7 which started yesterday here in Mexico.

Well the best thing is to keep communication open and flowing. That is where Tor comes in. It is a way to open proxy servers for use by anonymous people. A good overview was given and wildbee.org.

Get Tor

To become a volunteer, download this software.

To use Tor to protect your own privacy, download this software

The freedom of information and the public domain wars has taken on a new face with the proclamation of "The Public Domain Manifesto". To read about it you can go to their site and sign to show your support (done by Communia), or

Then with your information stream unhindered, you can fabricate your own tech. As I've mentioned before about the fab labs and home 3D printers, wired had a great article on the next revolution being 3D printers writing with atoms; Wired, Atoms are the new bits (very similar to the Diamond age by Neil Stevenson.)



And finally for today, a great journal, the Journal of Serendipitous andUnexpected Results. I love the idea of a journal of discoveries that happened when we weren't looking for them.

White roofs do help

It seems so obvious that I'm surprised that a law has not been passed forcing all flat roof buildings to be painted white. But aside from that, I con't understand why people don't paint their house's roof white just to take down the heat in the summer. Here is CICESE the roofs were all white, but this last year they repainted all of them red.. which makes no sense and was a very uninformed move.

Well, there is not good data from simulations stating the obvious.. white roofs are a good idea; Computer modeling indicates white roofs may be a good idea.

Pedal powered boat

from a gizmag article on a pedal powered boat set to sail from Vancover to Hawai this summer.

Patients Like Me

This is a fabulous talk by Jamie Heywood about a web site (patientsLikeMe.com) for medical analysis and social networking, where he is shows how people simply by sharing their experiences combined social networking and some data analysis can help predict solutions to medical treatments and problems.

I've been curious about this idea for many years. What if everyone shared how they feel, where they live, and what they do. Then crunch those numbers. How many toxic environments would be found, dangerous jobs singled out, and diseases could be seen. Maps showing the progress of the flu.. but better yet, what the people who didn't get that sick had in common. There is so much data out there, the problem is it is not shared, and no analysis is done!