2003.02.19
Thomas
L. Friedman has been writing an excellent series of editorials on Iraq --
Thomas L. Friedman:
Iraq threatens
50-year security system.
"We don't need a broad coalition to break Iraq. We can do that ourselves.
But we do need a broad coalition to rebuild Iraq.... President Bush, if he
alienates the allies from going to war -- the part we can do alone -- is
depriving himself of allies for the peace -- the part where we'll need all
the friends we can get."
You can find links here to more columns by this rational hawk.
"The Bush folks are big on attitude, weak on strategy and terrible at
diplomacy. I covered the first gulf war, in 1990-91. What I remember most
are the seven trips I took with Secretary of State James A. Baker III around
the world to watch him build -- face-to-face -- the coalition and public
support for that war, before a shot was fired. Going to someone else's country
is a sign you respect his opinion. This Bush team has done no such hands-on
spade work."
2003.02.16
More from last week's WMAP press release --
Science News:
Cosmic Revelations:
Satellite homes in on the infant universe.
"Rather than using more approximate numbers, astronomers can now say the
universe is 13.7 billion years old, the researchers report. The new data
also confirm that the universe began with a brief but humongous growth
spurt, dubbed inflation." ...
"The images of the Big Bang's afterglow, known as the cosmic microwave
background, also delineate the cosmos' composition: 4 percent is
ordinary matter; 23 percent is invisible stuff called cold dark matter,
which prompted the galaxies to coalesce; and 73 percent is so-called dark
energy, which has accelerated the rate at which the universe expands."
Nature:
Mars gets new icing.
Red planet's poles are mostly frozen water, not carbon dioxide.
Nature:
Doing the dishes wastes water.
"Some people who wash their dishes by hand are sending the environment
down the drain. They can consume more than ten times the water and twice
the energy of a dishwasher."
The Flash Mind Reader.
> Give it a try. If you can't figure out how it works, here's the explanation --
Flash
Mind Reader Solution.
2003.02.12
Scientific American:
The
Infant Universe, in Detail.
"New data from a NASA probe located a million miles from Earth has provided
scientists with the information necessary to paint the most precise picture
yet of the early universe. The long-awaited images, unveiled yesterday,
support theories that posit that the universe underwent a tremendous growth
spurt shortly after the big bang. Moreover, they pinpoint the age of the
universe at 13.7 billion years old -- give or take 200 million years -- a
mere one percent margin of error."
Cnet:
Office for Macs to get
Exchange update.
> Glad to hear it. What really caught my eye was this piece of
truth-in-advertising --
"In its recent regulatory filings, Apple noted that it competes with
Microsoft in several areas:
"`Accordingly, Microsoft's interest in producing application software
for the Mac OS ... may be influenced by Microsoft's perception of its
interests as the vendor of the Windows operating system,' Apple said in
a filing Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. `Discontinuance
of Microsoft Office and other Microsoft products for the Macintosh platform
would have an adverse effect on the company's net sales and results of
operations.'"
2003.02.08
Nature:
Sandwich could cut
solar-panel costs. Silicon replacement raises hopes of affordable
solar power.
"`If [the price of] oil increased by a factor of two we're pretty close
to being there,' says one of the new technology's developers, Eric
McFarland of the University of California, Santa Barbara."
Scientific American:
Sleep
Lets Brain File Memories.
"A second study, also published online this week by the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, links age-associated memory decline to high
glucose levels. Previous research had shown that individuals with diabetes
suffer from increased memory problems."
2003.02.07
Unlikely to amount to anything, but --
San Francisco Chronicle:
West
Coast footage may hold clues to tragedy.
"Of particular interest is a startling image taken by an amateur astronomer
in San Francisco, which appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning
striking Columbia at it streaked across the predawn skies." ...
"Should the photograph prove significant, it would open the inquiry into
a strange world of high-altitude electro-physics. The field studies a place
in the skies once described by physicists as the `ignorasphere,' because so
little is know about it. It is populated by ghostly electromagnetic effects
that the same wags named `blue jets, elves and sprites.'"
> Over the past five or six years I've noticed a lot of research on this
topic in publications of the American Geophysical Union.
> That reminds me -- I'm late paying my AGU membership dues!
CNN:
World's
tallest towers proposed for WTC site. Two finalists chosen; winner
named late in month.
> Ugg, the THINK proposal is really maudlin.
2003.02.05
WSJ (subscription):
Skirts
Head Back to Stores, But Will Women Buy Them?
"From Paris to New York, fashion designers and editors have declared
super-short miniskirts and figure-hugging pencil skirts the big fashion
news for women this spring."
SMU Daily Campus:
Professors
study Columbia's final moments. SMU experts offer theories on space
shuttle's loss.
"Howell Watson retired from teaching mechanical engineering at SMU
after 32 years and has become a specialist in recreating events based
on wreckage.
"`People over the age of 40 will have memories of sonic booms. They
used to be quite common in the earlier days,' Watson said. `What was
heard was a series of sonic booms and not the explosion.'
"Watson said that as a piece of the shuttle entered the atmosphere in
excess of the speed of sound, a sonic boom occurred. He explained that
the size of the boom depends on the size of the piece of debris."
Physics mistake by CNN.
