Saturday, March 28, 2009
Charmin dingleberries
I like sci-fi, but hate....
Case in point. In one of my books, the hero has a "Grav-rifle." It shoots out one gram pellets of depleted uranium at substantial fractions of the speed of light. Didn't he contemplate recoil? One of his space fighters has an after burner that uses a stream of anti-matter to aid thrust. A "problem" he claimed was that when a fighter swapped ends, the antimatter had a propensity to travel the wrong way in the injection nozzle due to inertia. Please use a physicist as a proof reader.
Anyhow, I too want to be a sci-fi writer. I'm thinking that "anti-matter" needs a new level though. When writers talk anti-matter they seem stuck in the dawn of time. Earth, wind, and fire. Just as matter has different forms, wouldn't anti-matter have them too? anti-water, anti-lead, etc. I'm even thinking that anti-matter may have some properties that mimic liquid gases. When they come into contact with your skin, they don't freeze you (not right away). They form a boundary layer and insulate. You can take a beaker of liquid oxygen and pour it over your hand without freezing it. Cup your hand though, and you will have problems eventually.
Sci-fi should be written so it teaches science, not promotes falsehoods.
Coming Soon to an Intersection Near You
"Dealing with roundabouts is easy when basic rules are followed," such as the lane discipline rules at 1:10 into this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaqcCnduf3g.
Turn Out the Lights: It's Earth Hour
Tonight, March 28th, people in cities around the world will turn off their lights in honor of Earth Hour. And it really is an hour: from 8:30pm to 9:30pm local time. Cities across the USA and the world are participating, turning off as many outdoor lights as they can (lights critical for safety are not turned off, of course!) Major US landmarks are going dark including Broadway and the Vegas Strip (that I want to see!)You are encouraged to take photos or videos of the event and upload them. Blogging and Twittering are also encouraged.
As for me, I will be manning a telescope at a star party at the University of Arziona in Tucson. We have some people around town with light meters who will try to measure potential changes as well as photographers at strategic points around town taking pictures before, during and after Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a major event in Tucson, which is one of the best cities in the country for its outdoor lighting policies.
Now if I can't appeal to your sense of environmental awareness and responsibility guys, chicks dig candleliht dinners for a cause. It might help you tomorrow night in another department if you know what I mean!
So turn out the lights, just for an hour.Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Trivial Pursuit
1. Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning.
2. Alfred Hitchcock didn't have a belly button.
3. A pack-a-day smoker will lose approximately 2 teeth every 10 years.
4. People do not get sick from cold weather; it's from being indoors a lot more.
5. When you sneeze, all bodily functions stop, even your heart!
6. Only 7 percent of the population are lefties.
7. Forty people are sent to the hospital for dog bites every minute.
8. Babies are born without kneecaps. They don't appear until they are 2-6 years old.
9. The average person over 50 will have spent 5 years waiting in lines.
10. The toothbrush was invented in 1498.
11. The average housefly lives for one month.
12. 40,000 Americans are injured by toilets each year.
13. A coat hanger is 44 inches long when straightened.
14. The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute.
15. Your feet are bigger in the afternoon than any other time of day.
16. Most of us have eaten a spider in our sleep.
17. The REAL reason ostriches stick their head in the sand is to search for water.
18. The only two animals that can see behind themselves without turning their heads are the rabbit and the parrot.
19. John Travolta turned down the starring roles in 'An Officer and a Gentleman' and 'Tootsie.'
20. Michael Jackson owns the rights to the South Carolina State Anthem.
21. In most television commercials advertising milk, a mixture of white paint and a little thinner is used in place of the milk.
22. Prince Charles and Prince William NEVER travel on the same airplane, just in case there is a crash.
23. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle built in 1903 used a tomato can for a carburetor.
24. Most hospitals make money by selling the umbilical cords cut from women who give birth. They are used in vein transplant surgery.
25. Humphrey Bogart was related to Princess Diana. They were 7th cousins.
26. If coloring weren't added to Coca-Cola, it would be green.
I Always Leave the Weights in the Back of my Pickup until April
Of course, it will melt soon. I hope my chipmunk brought his snowshoes.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
A Stimulus Package???
There are about 40 million people over 50 in the work force; pay them $1 million a piece severance with stipulations:
1) They leave their jobs. Forty million job openings - Unemployment fixed.
2) They buy NEW American cars. Forty million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed.
3) They either buy a house or pay off their mortgage- Housing Crisis fixed.
All this and it's still cheaper than the "bailout".
Rock and Roll Revival
"A&W plans big expansion in Milwaukee"
They're heading our way. Yum! Was the one near Park High once an A&W? I know there once was one on Hwy 32 south of KR. I think the nearest one now is on the Frontage Road off of County Hwy K.
A cure for the hang over.
I have never heard this one before and I thought I'd heard them all
Bitters and club soda?.......This also helps out with a sour stomach?........
WHO KNEW???????? NOT ME!
Anyone ever try this? Does it work? Does anyone have any other home cures?
I mean that REALLY work?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Space Bat Memorial
A lot of people know that a bat was clinging to Discovery's external tank when it lifted off. There is now a Space Bat Memorial Page filled with tributes, including the following Youtube video.
There is a store where you can buy Space Bat merchandise.
This little guy reminds me of the whale in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A creature that really doesn't play a part in the plot but kind of captures your heart in a weird way. RIP Space Bat.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
Cookies for you Kiddies
Find Pulsars and Black Holes With Einstein@Home
Many people are familair with the SETI@Home Project where your spare CPU cycles help search for extraterrestrial radio signals. Universe Today had a nice story on the next step of the Einstien@Home Project.Einstein@Home will let your computer join in the serach exotic objects such as binary pulars or a pulsar orbiting a black hole. First, a quick tutorial on what these things are.
A pulsar is a leftover from a supernova explosion. At the end of their lives, massive stars blow up. The core of the star collapses leaving behind a small ball (about 6 miles across or so) of neturons. This little ball has more mass than our Sun crushed down to a very small sphere. The density is incredible, it's like a city size atomic nucleus. When the core collapses, it stars spinning faster (just like a figure skater pulling in her arms spins faster). The spin, combined with the neutron stars magnetic field, gives off pulses of radio waves on a regular basis, frequently a few dozen times per second.
Sometimes we get two of these stars orbiting each other. These are hard to detect, especially if they have orbital periods shorter than an hour. The shorter the orbital period, the closer together they are. As two pulsars orbit each other, they give off enery (in the form of gravity waves) and slowly spiral into each other and will eventually collide giving off gamma rays, gravity waves, and forming a black hole. It would be fun if we could find these things in advance to watch them do this! We have some experiments such as LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Observatory) that could potentially see these gravity waves.
The program will also search for pulsars orbiting black holes. A black hole is even more extreme than a neutron star, a region of space with so much mass packed into such a small space that not even light can escape.
To join the search, simply download the Bionic software and enter the url http://einstein.phys.uwm.edu/ when promted so you search for pulsars and black holes.
Gravity waves were predicted by Einstien almost 100 years ago. They are very difficult to detect and we are just getting to the point where we might be able to find them. This project will help us figure out how often we should see them as we learn how often these types of mergers occur. And I really want to find gravity waves!And this program has a local angle for the JTI as well. As you can see, the University of Wisconsin-Milwuakee hosts the Einstein@home website. UWM is heavily involved in the LIGO experiment. I visited there several years ago and got to tour their computing facility dedicated to LIGO...very impressive operation. I am sure all those computers are gone and replaced with more powerful machines by now.
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophyscist web site.
Dear Madame Zoltar
Hello, my luscious lollipops! How are you? Did any of you go to that mayoral debate thing the other night? I couldn’t because I was busy with a sick relative.And because of that, and some pressing business with some lovely people from the IRS, I’m cutting this week’s blog short, my friends. I’ve been so busy that I’m dizzy.
On the bright side, there were no pressing problems in this week’s emails. I hope to be back at full power next week, ready to guide you and the city of Racine to your destinies.
You can email me at: madamezoltar@jtirregulars.com.
I'll talk to you soon, sweethearts.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Scientific Studies
While Hale-Bopp was posting silly stuff on a kid farting on a bus, I Google "Fart" and found this infared scientific study of the emission of flatus. You will have to provide the auditory and olfactory simulated effects yourself.
Infrared Fart - The best home videos are here
Me, Hospitals and dead people
I had a full schedule for tomorrow of exams and meetings with docs, shrinks, and blood suckers, but with all the crap going on in my body, they asked if I could stay a week (it was supposed to be just a few days home by Friday.). Why sure! Just like a resort! My meals are made, great folks to yak with (except my dead roomy), free internet and provided computers, and relaxing times. Now if they'll just take care of my roomy before 4:00am (another reason they must call it the graveyard shift), I'll be fine. So far this year nothing and nobody has died on me. I sure hope this isn't a continuation of last year's woes.
He Who Smelt It Can't Ride the Bus...
An eighth grader in Polk County, Johathan Locke, has been banned from riding the bus for three days for passing gas. He claims innocence, insisting it was the kid in front of him.
A very talented artist
http://beautifulstumpstudios.weebly.com/index.html
Monday, March 23, 2009
Racine Live
Racine Live
New events/entertainment site in Racine. Check it out!
www.RacineLive.com
Best Regards,
Nancy at www.RacineLive.com
I checked it out, and it looks like a nice online resource for the community. So, check it out!
Name That Rover
Fresh off the closing of the contest to name the new ISS module (in which the name Colbert got the most votes) voting is now open in the contest to Name the Rover. The rover in question is the next Mars rover known by the somewhat uninpiring name of the Mars Science Laboratory. Now schedule to launch in 2011, it will be much larger than the current rovers. The MSL will be powered by a radioisotope power supply which will allow it to travel farther, faster, and use more instruments that the solar powerd rovers (and won't be subject to dusty solar panels which produce less power). It suite of instruments will be able to perform much more advanced analysis of soil chemistry and determine whether Mars was or is capable of supporting life.
There are some nice videos on the site to check out as well...vote soon..voting only runs from March 23rd to the 29th!
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
The Morning and Evening Star
D'oh! This snuck up on me and I almost forgot to blog it. Today and the next couple of days give sharp eyed observers a rare chance to see Venus as the evening star and the morning star on the same day! Venus is just about to pass between the Earth and the Sun. However, it does not pass directly between the Earth and the Sun, but rather north of the Sun by almost 8 degrees. This separation is about as big as it gets when Venus passe between the Earth and the (also called inferiof cojnunction) which makes this tricky observation possible. HINT: Venus will be slighlty to the North of the Sun (right at sunset, left at sunrise if you are in the northern hemisphere).
Simply look west RIGHT after sunset for Venus. Do the same thing RIGHT befor sunsrise. When I say right before or right after, I am talking about five minutes, 10 tops. You need a good clear horizon to see this. If you spot Venus, train binoculars on it. You will see a VERY thin cresent...it is really cool!
I want to warn you: DO NOT USE BINOCULARS IF THE SUN IS ABOVE THE HORIZON. Venus is very close to the Sun and you don't want to risk looking at the Sun with binoculars.
This is one of those tricky visual observations. It takes no special equipment...just patience and a sharp eye...the kind I really love to try.
You can only do this once every 8 years, so do it now or wait until 2017!
You can hear more about this on today's episode of the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
Saturn's Dancing Moons
I was away at the NSTA meeting in New Orleans and hadn't managed to post for a few days. I get back today and find that the Cassini Team has relased some spectacular images and movies of Saturn's Moon's casting shadows on the rings! Saturn is nearing its equinox later this year. Near the equinox is the only time you can see moon shadows cast on Saturn's rings and we have NEVER had a spacecraft at Saturn to capture these images before! This image shows Saturn's moonEpimetheus as its shadow moved across the rings over the course of about an hour.
Since the rings are almost edge on to the Sun, the shadows cast by the Moons are very long. If you could stand on a particle in the rings, the Sun would be very low in the sky right now. Shadows grow long. You can do this yourself here on Earth. Take a large ball outside a few minutes before sunset. Hold it up and look at its shadow. You will see the shadow of the ball is not round, but long and thin. We are seeing an extreme case of this phenomena here.
We knew this should happen based on the geometry for many years. Now we finally get to see it!
Reprinted with permission from the Half-Astrophysicst Blog.
Monday Morning Chuckle
No one believes seniors . . . everyone thinks they are senile.An Elderly couple was celebrating their sixtieth anniversary. The couple had married as childhood sweethearts and had moved back to their old neighborhood after they retired.
Holding hands they walked back to their old school. It was not locked, so they entered, and found the old desk they'd shared, where Andy had carved "I love you, Sally."
On their way back home, a bag of money fell out of an armored car, practically landing at their feet Sally quickly picked it up, but not sure what to do with it, they took it home. There, she counted the money--fifty-thousand dollars.
Andy said, "We've got to give it back."
Sally said, "Finders keepers." She put the money back in the bag and hid it in their attic..
The next day, two FBI men were canvassing the neighborhood looking for the money, and knocked on the door.
"Pardon me, but did either of you find a bag that fell out of an armored car yesterday?"
Sally said, "No."
Andy said, "She's lying. She hid it up in the attic."
Sally said, "Don't believe him, he's getting senile.."
The agents turn to Andy and began to question him. One says: "Tell us the story from the beginning"
Andy said, "Well, when Sally and I were walking home from school yesterday . . "
The first FBI guy turns to his partner and says, "We're outta here."
Fractions
I feel so badly for this young woman, she tries so hard. I know the pie slice thing, and using boxes inside of boxes. Any other games we can play to help her through this?
Her multiplication is not solid. Seems like when we start a session, she improves as we go along. I know she has some sort of learning disability, but am not sure what I can do to make things easier for her. I have her going over the multiplication and division stuff again.
Any help from you educators and bloody geniuses out there would be appreciated.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
An Atheist Delimma
One of the times religion tends to play a larger than normal role in people's lives is death. I just found out that one of my former students committed suicide a few days ago. My friend J. called me with the news. He knows me well and told me to keep the family in my thoughts. Well, this young man is obviously much on my mind. I noticed that J. did not tell me to keep the family in my prayers. He knows me well and, although I am not offended by offhand comments like that, he respects me enough not to intentionally tell me to keep someone in my prayers.
So the dilemma is always what do I say to the family (I will see them next month) when everyone else is saying "You are in our prayers" that stays true to myself without being an ass (although i know some insist that being an atheist makes you a de facto ass, I disagree with that assessment). I tell them they have my sympathy and they are in my thoughts, omitting the word prayer. In our society, the word prayer almost seems mandatory at that time as I hear others greet the family.
At my mon's funeral, everyone would say that you are in our thoughts and prayers line (a lot of her friends didn't know me well enough to know that I did not share my mom's beliefs). It didn't bother me...they were simply wishing me the best from their personal frame of reference. I took the good wishes and saw no harm in the rest.
I hope others accept the same from me and my fellow atheists.