Apple grannytosh
11/30/2006
According to a report from industry watchers MetaFacts, nearly half of Mac owners are 55 and older – that’s almost double the share for average home-PC users.
How amazing. I would assume that only grannys can afford the extra that a mac costs, and would be even more willing to pay for the Apple’s reputation for user friendliness.
Over the next few years, some experiments hold out a chance of finally being able to show whether or not time can move backward as well as forward. Theoretically, at least, it might be possible for the future to influence the past, said John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington. He and his colleagues plan to try just such an experiment next year.
1. Take this with a grain of salt. It’s MSNBC after all.
2. The article is peppered with movie references. Really great science reporting there. No w could one of the writers explain to me – were you really dumbing down and confusing things for your readers, or yourself?
3. What’s more, not a single reference to a Delorean.
Time-travel physics: Stranger than fiction – Mysteries of the Universe – MSNBC.com
Vocal communication involves caterwauls for mating, chattering upon spotting prey, hissing to ward off an intruder, or shrieking when hurt or terrified. Meowing is not part of this language. Meow-ese, it would seem, is a language developed exclusively for humans.
How fascinating! The article goes on to discuss research into this inter-species communication, and how cat owners are better at understanding the emotion being conveyed by a particular caterwaul.
Very interesting, even if completely obvious when you think about it.
petcentric: Your Bi-Lingual Kitty
Cosmologists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok have a radical idea… They theorize that the cosmos was never compacted into a single point and did not spring forth in a violent instant. Instead, the universe as we know it is a small cross section of a much grander universe whose true magnitude is hidden in dimensions we cannot perceive. What we think of as the Big Bang, they contend, was the result of a collision between our three-dimensional world and another three-dimensional world less than the width of a proton away from ours—right next to us, and yet displaced in a way that renders it invisible. Moreover, they say the Big Bang is just the latest in a cycle of cosmic collisions stretching infinitely into the past and into the future. Each collision creates the universe anew. The 13.7-billion-year history of our cosmos is just a moment in this endless expanse of time.
String theory. A theory that has no experimental implications. It makes for exciting articles, sure. But I think they would have been better calling it rope theory.
Before the Big Bang
If you’re looking for evidence that today’s mass-produced vegetables don’t quite measure up to those your grandparents ate, you can find it in data published by the US Department of Agriculture.
“Of the 13 nutrients that we were able to study, we found statistically reliable declines in six of the 13,” he says. Levels of other nutrients stayed roughly constant over the years.
There’s advice on how to eat better, though they missed the obvious one: shop somewhere like this place. Better for you, and for the world. Yes, it’s a bit pricier, but only slightly so.
There’s audio of the radio segment too.
NPR : Grandma’s Veggies May Have Been More Nutritious
Do humans have a compass in their nose?
11/20/2006
Some years ago scientists at CALTECH California Institute of Technology in Pasadena discovered that humans possess a tiny, shiny crystal of magnetite in the ethmoid bone, located between your eyes, just behind the nose.
It seems that magnetite helps direction finding in animals and helps migratory species migrate successfully by allowing them to draw upon the earths magnetic fields. But scientists are not sure how they do this.
The funny thing is that I have often get a strange tingling sensation in that area. Usually when I am lying in bed after a night out on the town (or out on the living room, more often these days 😐 ).
Of course, just because this exists, doesn’t mean we actually use it for anything. Or maybe we’ve forgotten how, since we don’t need it. There isn’t much of a reason to assume that this isn’t vestigial, or is it?
The biggest question asked by this finding however, is how can I learn to use it to find where I parked my car?
Ensoniq SQ80 VST
11/20/2006
I’m getting very sick of incredibly complicated synths creating sounds so complex that that fitting one into a composition involved removing almost everything else. This synth isn’t one of those.
And it’s free.
And give him my thanks – anything that can distract me for a moment from all the other tumultuous events going on in my life is welcome.
Then, if you would kindly kick his arse, I’d be most appreciative.