About a year ago, a video was posted on the Internet of some poor Canadian kid who had taped himself pretending to wield a light saber. Now's he's been incorporated into a major motion picture --
The Star Wars Kid in ‘Kill Bill’.
BBC: Passwords revealed by sweet deal.
"More than 70% of people would reveal their computer password in exchange for a bar of chocolate, a survey has found. It also showed that 34% of respondents volunteered their password when asked without even needing to be bribed."
"Protect your banana!"
I stumbled across this. I'm not sure how old it is, but it's a nice little refresher on Israel and the Palestinians --
Associated Press: Struggle for Peace in the Middle East.
Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Huge pots of magma not brewing under most volcanoes.
"About 75,000 years ago, some scientists say, the last truly colossal volcanic eruption on Earth came close to wiping out all the primates, including humans. That eruption occurred when the Toba volcano in Indonesia exploded in an almost unbelievably shattering display."
A debunking of some of the myths surrounding the Columbine shootings of five years ago --
Slate: The Depressive and the Psychopath.
Houston Chronicle: Brazil military's help sought in Rio drug war. At least 10 killed in slum violence.
"The O Globo newspaper said guests at the beachfront Intercontinental Hotel were shocked to see red and blue tracer bullets streaking across the night sky."
> Whoa -- I was staying there three weeks ago.
Oil Online: The History Channel's 'Deep Sea Detectives' highlights C & C Technologies.
"The special focuses upon the wreckage of the World War II German U-boat, U-166, and will illuminate the technological advances, such as C & C's AUV, that made it possible to detect and recognize the wreckage."
> Tonight.
The Lafayette Advertiser: Colleges' deadline extended to defend programs.
"Bradd Clark, dean of the college of sciences, defended master's programs in geology and physics which made the list.... ‘We're about to have an $18 million facility that will improve our ability to read seismic data and provide economic development to this area. I can't conceive of this area not having a geology (program),’ Clark said."
> My dad was head of the geology department at USL, now UL-Lafayette, for about a dozen years.
I linked to this story a couple of weeks ago, but I think this is a better write-up --
Physics Web: Geophysicists turn up the pressure.
"Geophysicists in Japan have now studied the properties of magnesium silicate -- a so-called perovskite mineral that is believed to be a major constituent of the lower mantle -- and found that it undergoes a novel phase transition at high temperatures and pressures. The results could shed new light on the nature of the so-called D" discontinuity that exists about 200 km above the core-mantle boundary."
Dow Jones: Apple Probes Reports of First PC Attack Written for OS X.
"Only 24 of the 88,000 malicious programs blocked by Network Associates Inc. McAfee antivirus software were written for Mac operating systems. Most are more than 10 years old and none ever got very far. With the risk of attack so low, few Mac users run antivirus software."
Some really silly American Express advertisements --
The Adventures of Seinfeld and Superman.
I just watched the LSU lose a hard-fought game to Tennessee in the NCAA Women's Final Four. The end of a great season for the Lady Tigers; interim coach Pokey Chatman deserves a lot of credit.
Physics News Update: The Core-Mantle Boundary.
"The core-mantle boundary, halfway down to the center of the Earth, has become a bit more understandable because of new laboratory studies of the behavior of rock under pressure and because of new computer simulations predicting the existence of another polymorph of the mineral MgSiO3 that is more stable than the other phase previously known." ...
"Minnesota scientists ... said that the new form of MgSiO3 ... should be stable at the D" layer. Its anisotropic structure, apparently unknown so far, could account for some of the seismic irregularities (changes in the speed of seismic waves) at those depths."
"My name is Elena.... I travel a lot and one of my favorite destinations is through the so called Chernobyl ‘dead zone’, which is 130kms from my home."
