Stale Thoughts and Broken Links

Old posts from my weblog.

(Click here for posts on geophysics and the energy industry.)


2007.02.24

AP: Sinkhole appears in the middle of Guatemala City.

"A 330-foot-deep sinkhole killed at least two teenagers as it swallowed about a dozen homes early Friday and forced the evacuation of nearly 1,000 people in a crowded Guatemala City neighborhood."


2007.02.23

BBC: NZ fishermen land colossal squid.

"Local news said the Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni was about 10m (33ft) long, and was the first adult colossal squid landed intact."


Running for President? Bad news for atheists.


2007.02.20

CNN: New Orleans marks 2nd Mardi Gras since Katrina.

"The crowds appeared larger than last year, when an estimated 700,000 people were in the city for the final weekend and Mardi Gras. The city's 30,000 hotel rooms were 95 percent occupied, according to Fred Sawyers, president of the Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association."

> I hope everyone is having a good one ...


2007.02.13

A little history lesson --

Maps of War: Imperial History of the Middle East


Wait a minute! I haven't finished collecting the state quarters yet! --

The United States Mint: The Presidential $1 Coin Program.


2007.02.11

Slate: It's time to stop reporting on the wind chill.

"Osczevski and Bluestein made a set of new assumptions to determine wind-chill-equivalent temperatures. Namely, they geared their calculations toward people who are 5 feet tall, somewhat portly, and walk at an even clip directly into the wind.... The wind chill equivalent temperature ... assumes that we're taking a stroll in the dead of night."

> I think it would only be fair if whenever a weatherman reports the "wind chill factor," he/she also reported the "heat index."


The real problem with Linux.


2007.02.08

Washington University in St. Louis: 3-D seismic model of vast water reservoir revealed.

"One of the most dramatic features in the Wysession et. al global mantle shear-wave attenuation model is a very high-attenuation anomaly at the top of the lower mantle beneath eastern Asia. This anomaly is believed due to water that has been pumped into the lower mantle via the long history of the subduction of oceanic lithosphere -- crust and upper mantle -- in this region."


Fogonazos: Sea Giants.

"Semi-submersible ships are the only vessels in the world which provide the capability to load, transport and offload extremely heavy cargo, such as oil drilling rigs, gas refineries or even warships."


2007.02.07

Personal Finance Advice: The best place to hide money -- a conversation with a burglar.

"Your best strategy, then, is to actually leave some money in obvious places for the burglar to quickly find (the same applies if you keep all your money in the bank). This can not only save your other stash of money, but may actually keep the burglar from destroying your place as he looks for where you have hidden your money."


2007.02.06

Houston Chronicle: Astronaut arrested in romantic feud. Police say she had knife, wig as she attacked rival with pepper spray at Florida airport.

"The purpose of the pistol was ‘to entice Shipman to talk with her,’ police were told. When they asked her how squirting Shipman with pepper spray was going to aid the conversation, Nowak replied, ‘That was stupid.’"


Astronomy Picture of the Day: Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning.


2007.02.05

NYT: Science Panel Calls Global Warming 'Unequivocal'.

"In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and that human activity is the main driver, ‘very likely’ causing most of the rise in temperatures since 1950." ...

"The Bush administration, which until recently avoided directly accepting that humans were warming the planet in potentially harmful ways, embraced the findings, which had been approved by representatives from the United States and 112 other countries on Thursday night."


2007.02.03

For those of us who always thought online dating was weird --

Scientific American: The Truth about Online Dating.

"When eHarmony recommends someone as a compatible match, there is a 1 in 500 chance that you'll marry this person.... Given that eHarmony delivers about 1.5 matches a month, if you went on a date with all of them, it would take 346 dates and 19 years to reach [a] 50% chance of getting married."

> ... not that I've ever been in a position to know ...

> ... although, this article also mentions a study that found that 13% of men who participated were married...


2007.02.01

Distance from the Earth's Core -- to the edge of the universe, an a logrithmic scale.


Walter Kessinger

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