Happy Birthday to my younger brother, 39 year old today!
The French strike back --
BBC: Doctor Who returns to TV.
> In a couple of years. I hope to be watching with my kids.
Houston Chronicle: Rabbi puts faith in free admission.
"Synagogues will be packed as the sun sets this evening and the first tones of the shofar, or ram's horn, call on the Jewish faithful to turn their attention to God and repentance at the start of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year." ...
"Fifty-four percent of American Jewish adults do not belong to a synagogue, according to the recent National Jewish Population Survey."
CRN: A Thousand-Plus Macs Equal One Big Supercomputer.
"That's the scene today at the central computing facility at Virginia Tech after the university linked 1100 G5's in a supercomputer this week. The school claims the $5.2 million installation is one-tenth the cost of any supercomputer architecture offering the same power."
Naval Historical Center: The First 'Computer Bug'.
Newhouse Service: Two incomes still don't add up. Problem not luxury spending, but health care and housing.
"Having a child is the ‘single best predictor’ of whether a household will file for bankruptcy, Warren found -- and the biggest difference in 30 years [in family expenditures] is housing." ...
"‘The failure of the public education system is not felt only by the poor trapped in bad schools, but by middle-income families bankrupting themselves trying to get out of bad schools, chasing a shrinking number of homes...’"
A random dose of culture --
Slate: Lost in Production.
"Thelonious Sphere Monk was a musician and composer every bit as unique and strange as his name. He worked out his own concept of time, his own rules of harmony, and his own method of touch . He could play, simultaneously, honky-tonk stride with his left hand and avant-garde dissonance with his right hand...."
Heard on David Letterman:
"President Bush is asking Congress for $80 billion dollars to re-build Iraq. And when you make out that check, remember there are two L's in Halliburton."
[via Queerday (!)]
Science trivia --
Scientific American: Solar Flare Serves Up Antimatter Surprises.
"The results of the most detailed study yet of a solar flare, which will be published in the October 1 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, indicate that each burst can create up to a pound of antimatter."
Nature: Chronic wasting disease spreads with ease.
"CWD kills elk, white-tailed deer and mule deer. Like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cows and scrapie in sheep, it is caused by a rogue prion, an abnormally folded protein that infects other cells. The protein builds up in the brains of infected animals, which lose coordination."
Nature: Handedness equals hairstyle.
"Right-handed people tend to have hair that swirls clockwise, a US researcher has discovered."
Associated Press: Angry librarians making noise over 'shushing' doll.
"On Web sites and discussion groups, in phone calls and e-mails, librarians from as far as Australia have made it clear how annoyed they are with the doll and Nancy Pearl, the 58-year-old real-life librarian who posed for the action figure."
Houston Business Journal: Houston is 19th-worst for fall allergies.
> Out of 50, no big deal --
"The most severe fall allergen is weed pollen.... In Houston, the predominant pollens are ragweed, sagebrush/sage and grass."
