You should go outside and watch the Leonid meteor shower tonight (Friday Nov. 16, 2012). It will produce many more shooting stars than the normal 6-10 per hour, and if we’re lucky, it’ll be a one-per-second show. It all depends on the density of the stream that the Earth is passing through (see the link). …
Category Archives: Science
Happy Higgs Boson (And Fourth of July)
Happy American Independence Day! In case you don’t follow physics circles, you may not be aware that the Large Hadron Collider detector teams have announced the detection of a particle that falls within the predicted energy range of the Higgs Boson! This is awesome! ((And they didn’t destroy the Earth doing it.)) Why? I’ll send …
Better Titled: “Nationalistic Propaganda Works!”
Jim Galloway of the AJC had a tidbit this morning: Beware: If you go to a Fourth of July celebration on Monday, your kids are statistically more likely to end up Republican. The study, out of Harvard, relates the likelihood of identifying as Republican to the amount of precipitation on the 4th of July. They …
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Attention Roleplaying Travelers: Tetrahedra Pack Best
Just now coming to my attention: Experiments in packing have determined that tetrahedra (4 sided dice) pack together most efficiently (subscription req’d) when randomly shaken in boxes. This news, from last year, is quite cool because how else do you apply the “Role Every Die You Own For Damage” rule unless you can pack your …
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Two Sciencey Things
First off, you may have heard that Benoit Mandelbrot died. Who? Go to the link. At that link was this video which is just way stinkin’ cool. Mandelbrot Fractal Set Trip To e214 HD from teamfresh on Vimeo. And then, this popped up in my feedreader. I have no idea about the science here, but …
Why The LHC Won't Destroy the Earth
There’s been lots of noise this summer about the incipient destruction of the Earth by the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. There’s been scientists quoted as saying, basically, “Yes, there’s a teeny tiny chance that the LHC will produce black holes or quantum strangelets or Evil Elmo, but it’s so small as to be negligible.” …
Pluto is Two Years Dead
Today is the two year anniversary of Pluto’s demotion from planet status. I had invited several people to contribute to this event. Chris Schierer has remarked that Pluto is really really small and is very very hard to see. Kim Bosco tells us how Pluto was found and why Kansas is key! Jim Cronen opines …
I've Been Taken To Task
I posted on Friday about vaccines and my opinion of parents who don’t do use them. Ginger Taylor responded (and snarked at me for not approving her comment fast enough). She makes some points, to which I respond. I want to know what you, my regular readers, think. Am I being a mouthpiece for corporate …
Fay
People don’t pay attention to the weather outside their immediate vicinity unless it’s a catastrophic incident that makes national/international news. Thus we have Tropical Storm Fay, which isn’t bothering me personally at the moment but sure is causing headaches for my neighbors to the south (although I used to live in one of the flooded …
Bigfoot! A.K.A. "Fleecing Gullible People"
Don’t forget that today is the Big Reveal™ of the big foot carcass that was found/shot/planted in the north Georgia mountains. I commented on this yesterday. Today, however, I clicked over to the alleged big foot finders’ scam artists’ website searchingforbigfoot.com. Alas, I was horribly disappointed. I was hoping that if you’re charging $1,000 a …
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