Apparently a garbage truck struck and knocked down a large overhead guidesign on Interstate 805 in San Diego. Here’s a forbes article, but it’s not very detailed. I’m trying to find a picture, but no luck so far. At least one person was injured when the sign struck a car. Two-minute-later update! See SignOnSanDiego for …
Monthly Archives: January 2006
"You gave me an evil hand."
[Spoilers] My wife and I have been watching Angel from the beginning over the last couple months. We’re about two thirds of the way through season two at the moment and we just watched an episode that replaced a previous one as my favorite. Previously (and you can stop reading this now if you’re not …
Email Tripwires
In a bit of conversation a few weeks ago, a person related their plan to deploy tripwires in all of their outgoing email to cause the NSA headaches if they happen to be monitoring for certain phrases or words. She would include words such as bomb, missile, nuclear, radioactive, radioisotope, dirty bomb, terrorist, etc., in …
"I claim this dust mote in the name of…"
An unprecedented opportunity to contribute to the state of astro-geology is being presented by the University of California at Berkely. You can participate in their stardust@home project to analyze aerogel images for interstellar dust grains that were returned to Earth a few days ago aboard the NASA mission Stardust. If you pass the training course …
Galactic Fireworks
The Cartwheel Galaxy is a spectacular galaxy. It was recently (in astronomic terms–something like 100 million years ago) run over and penetrated by a smaller galaxy which set off a round of star formation. For all the details from CalTech about the galaxy and how the put the image together, click on the thumbnail.
Lion Country: Don't Roll your Windows Down
Today’s NY Times has an article entitled Florida Wildlife Park’s Lions Lose Some Freedom to Roam, by Abby Goodnough. It concerns a safari park that is near and dear to my childhood memories, despite only one visit. I remember driving through the park with my parents and sisters listening to this lioness asthsmatically hack like …
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Del Monte Note
A United States Currency $20 bill was printed in 1996 with a Del Monte fruit stick on it. The bill in genuine and somehow slipped by U.S. Treasury’s inspection process. I was clued into this by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, but much more information is available on the web. It came up on the paper …
Professional Ungineers
Today I received a solicitation from the National Society of Professional Engineers concerning my membership—I’m not a member—and exhorting me to contemplate the benefits of association with their august group. Here is a quote from the beginning of the cover letter: Dear William: Nothing says “professional engineer” like the PE license. Ummm, duh? I’m at …
Comment Spam
For those of you who comment on my blog, be aware that I’ve recently lowered the allowable number of hyperlinks in comments before they require moderation. To date, none of the not-spam comments would have been moderated, but if your comment doesn’t show immediately, strip out a url or two and repost. I can’t guarantee …
2005 List of Websites and Blogs
As a public service, here is a list of websites and blogs that I frequented during 2005. Hopefully this list will grow with worthy inhabitants during 2006! Astronomy Picture of the Day. I can’t say enough good things about this website! NOAA Geostationary Satellite Server. What’s the weather like? Go take a look. This site …