NYT: Budgets Falling in Race to Fight Global Warming.
> Check out this handy graphic comparing spending on energy research with spending on medical and military research.
Fermilab: Experimenters at Fermilab discover exotic relatives of protons and neutrons.
"There are six different types of quarks: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top (u, d, s, c, b and t). The two types of baryons discovered by the CDF experiment are made of two up quarks and one bottom quark (u-u-b), and two down quarks and a bottom quark (d-d-b). For comparison, protons are u-u-d combinations, while neutrons are d-d-u."
Newsweek: Remember Global Cooling?
"All in all, it's probably just as well that society elected not to follow one of the possible solutions mentioned in the [1975] Newsweek article: to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap, to help it melt."
John H. Lienhard, UH: What people said about books in 1498.
"In the year 1456, Johann Gutenberg and Peter Schoeffer printed their great Bible.... [B]y 1498, 42 years later, and just 500 years ago ... the new presses had spread like brushfire through Europe. The people had suddenly come into possession of some fifteen million new books."
Microsoft Support: Error Message -- Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters ...
Nora Ephron: My Weekend in Vegas.
"The Ganz collection went up for auction in 1997, Wynn was saying -- he was standing in front of the painting at this point, facing us. He raised his hand to show us something about the painting -- and at that moment, his elbow crashed backwards right through the canvas."
Time to start looking for Halloween costumes for the kids. I don't think they'd appreciate this one.
LA Times: Damaging Quake Shakes Up Hawaii.
"The magnitude-6.6 quake -- nearly as strong as the 1994 Northridge temblor -- struck at 7:07 a.m. about 11 miles offshore from Kailua-Kona, a resort town on Hawaii's popular and sunny Kona Coast. No fatalities were reported, and most of the injuries were believed to be minor."
NASA: Cassini takes a picture of Saturn eclipsing the Sun.
Reuters: Canada troops battle 10-ft Afghan marijuana plants.
"Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of 10-foot-high marijuana plants."
Reason: 45,000 in Prison for Pot.
"They represent about 12 percent of drug offenders in state prisons and 13 percent of drug offenders in federal prisons."
Immense World: Google -- Best company in the world.
"People's workspaces are full of individuality, and the atmosphere is relaxed. There are couches everywhere. People can have a lie down when they need to and take a break."
> My prediction -- In a couple of years we'll start seeing newspaper articles with former and current Google employees whining that the company atmosphere has "changed," and Google has become "just like other companies."
Postscript on the SEG meeting: Everyone asks about New Orleans. According to this article, between 50% to 75% of businesses were re-opened by May, but if I had to guess, I'd say that no more than 50% to 75% of the tourist-oriented businesses are open now. And the open businesses are all significantly under-staffed.
Ernie the Attorney: My Katrina song.
Science News (subscription): A discordant name for a dwarf planet.
"The International Astronomical Union (IAU) announced on Sept. 14 that the body, which had provisionally been called UB 313 and nicknamed Xena, would now be officially called Eris, after the Greek goddess of discord and strife. Furthermore, Eris' moon has been designated Dysnomia, the goddess of lawlessness."
> Darn, I was hoping that they would stick with Xena and Gabrielle.
