2001.06.30
In my fourteen years on the Internet, a lot has happened, good and bad. But
through it all, I never thought this day would come --
My parents are now online.
Hi folks. Don't start any flame wars, acting like a couple of newbies.
/usr/bin/girl has posted a warning
about an unusual flood hazard.
2001.06.26
Associated Press:
FDA
Plans To Make Allergen Inspections.
"The Food and Drug Administration plans to
inspect thousands of candy makers, bakeries and other processors
over the next two years to make sure ingredients that cause common
allergic reactions aren't getting into food and candy accidentally."
> My five-year-old has serious food allergies, so I know what a problem
this is. Even though we're very careful about always reading the ingredient
labels for *everything* we eat, we still have to worry constantly about
cross-contamination. Cookie and candy makers are particularly notorious for
not cleaning their equipment between mixing up batches of, say, cookies with
peanut butter chips followed by sugar cookies.
Reuters:
Man on
Way to Brothel Finds Wife Working.
2001.06.24
Science:
Planet
Probabilities.
"The smaller, rocky planets (Earth-like) would form closer to their central star
where the more refractory metals (elements heavier than helium) can accrete, and
the larger, icy planets (Jupiter-like) would form farther from their central star
where volatile-rich ices can accumulate. The Jupiter-like planets could then
migrate inward, causing any Earth-like planets to be pushed into the star,
increasing the star's concentration of metals (metallicity)."
> This is really cool. Astronomers have found (by inference) about 50 extra-solar
planets in the last few years. All of them have been large Jupiter-class planets,
and have either had highly elliptical orbits or orbits that were *extremely*
close to their host star. This doesn't necessarily say anything about how common
it is for planetary systems to have giants with highly elliptical orbits. It's
just that these planets were detected because they caused their star to wobble,
and present day measurements aren't sensitive enough to detect anything less
subtle than a giant planet sling-shotting around like a comet.
> A Jupiter-class planet with a highly elliptical orbit will quickly remove any
terrestrial-class planets from a planetary system, with a high probability that
at least some of them will be thrown into the system's host star. That's just a
guess, but obviously this is what the professional astronomers are thinking.
> Here's the cool part. Some
astronomers are claiming that they can detect which stars are former
"planet-eaters" by the "metallicity" of a star's spectrum. A good number of
the known extra-solar planets just happen to orbit high-metallicity stars, which
would seem to confirm this hypothesis. So maybe they can use metallicity to tell the
difference between stars that never had terrestrial planets (too little), stars
that ate all their terrestrials (too much), and stars that snacked a little
but still have a "complete" planetary system with terrestrials (just right).
2001.06.22
Scientific American:
Image of M81 Shows
Star Formation in the Galaxy.
"M81 is located approximately 12 million light-years from Earth. Because the
galaxy is so luminous, even an amateur telescope can readily pick it out in
the northern hemisphere in the Ursa Major constellation. Its current shape and
intense star formation are probably due to a run-in with a celestial neighbor,
Breeveld says. `We believe that a collision with the nearby galaxy M82 could
have led to the formation of the spiral arm structure. The high densities and
pressures involved would have triggered the star formation.'"
NASA, 1999:
Galaxies in Collision.
2001.06.20
Science News:
Nearby star may have its own
asteroid belt.
"And where there are asteroids, there could be planets."
New York Times:
Sun's Missing
Neutrinos: Hidden in Plain Sight.
"During the neutrinos' 93-million- mile journey from the Sun to the Earth, the
researchers said, about two-thirds change into other varieties that are more
difficult to detect... According to the equations of particle physics, for this
transformation of flavors to occur, at least one of the neutrino types must
possess a smidgeon of mass. Coupled with earlier experimental results, the
researchers conclude that each of the three neutrino flavors weigh, at most,
one- 60,000th as much as an electron."
2001.06.15
Houston Chronicle:
Incredible machine
celebrates 50th year. A UNIVAC universe.
"Fifty years later, in the age of silicon chips and the Internet, a personal
computer with a one-gigahertz processing chip can add numbers 26,000 times
faster, said historian George Gray, who writes the online Unisys History
Newsletter."
2001.06.12
This link is for my brother, who probably can't read it --
Associated Press:
Cable net providers
taking the lead. Their advantages, DSL problems create a trend.
"Operators of cable systems are watching with relish as rivals in the high-speed
Internet market struggle through rough times. `Who unplugged the Internet?'
asks an ad run by the business unit of cable giant Cox Communications." ...
"Comcast Corporation President Brian Roberts: `People are addicted to speed
and having it always on.'"
2001.06.09
University of Massachusetts Press Release:
New Map of
the `Nearby' Universe Reveals Large-Scale Structure of Galaxies.
> Includes an all-sky map of galaxies in our surrounding 500 million light-year
"neighborhood." Considering each dot on the map represents hundreds of
billions of stars, it's pretty awesome.
[link via bottomquark.]
Galaxy Facts.
Scientific American:
Humans Drove Mammoths
and Other Megafauna to Extinction.
"The overkill model thus serves as a parable of resource exploitation, providing
a clear mechanism for a geologically instantaneous ecological catastrophe that
was too gradual to be perceived by the people who unleashed it."
Well, the flooding has been terrible, but our house is high & dry - except for
a minor roof leak. Lightning struck a pine tree in the back yard, so I'm doing
an inventory of electrical damage. So far we've lost two VCRs, a cordless phone,
a 33 Kbit modem, and our digital TV is going to need some repair work. And the
TV cable line to our den is dead. And, of course, we'll have to get someone to
take down the tree. My next-door neighbor says the same lightning strike killed
a TV and a Nintendo set at her house.
Could have been worse. (For a lot of people, it was.)
Here's a snapshot of the front page of the Houston Chronicle web site.
2001.06.07
NASA News Release:
Chandra
sees wealth of black holes in star-forming galaxies.
"Kimberly Weaver, ... lead scientist of the team that studied the starburst
galaxy NGC 253, discussed the importance of the unusual concentration of these
very luminous X-ray sources near the center of that galaxy. Four sources, which
are tens to thousands of times more massive than the Sun, are located within
3,000 light years of the galaxy core.
"`This may imply that these black holes are gravitating toward the center of
the galaxy where they could coalesce to form a single supermassive black hole,'
Weaver suggested. `It could be that this starburst galaxy is transforming
itself into a quasar-like galaxy as we watch.'"
[link via bottomquark.]
Patti Ann McEwin is a regular person, but a gifted writer. Her prose amazes me,
the way it lays bare the passion and heartache of ordinary everyday domestic life.
Just thought I'd share that with you.
2001.06.06
It's a couple of years old, but still very important work --
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
Unskilled and Unaware of
It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated
Self-Assessments.
"Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom
quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test
performance and ability.... Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants,
and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the
limitations of their abilities."
Scientific American:
Stars Forged in
Galactic Battle.
Another great link from /usr/bin/girl:
Virtual Bubble Wrap.
2001.06.03
Nothing good in the papers, so here's a couple of science pieces --
ABC News:
New
Dino Had Heft. Record-Sized Plant-Eater Found in Egypt.
"Gauging from the scattering of bones, including the humerus, tail vertebrae,
parts of a pelvis and a shoulder blade, the scientists estimate this beast of a
plant-eater measured up to 90 feet long and weighed nearly 70 tons. Those
measurements are second only to Argentinosaurus, a distantly related dinosaur
found in Argentina in 1990 that weighed 90 tons and spanned up to 100 feet."
Scientific American:
Why do
dogs get blue, not red, eyes in flash photos?.
