finally getting close to being able to communicate

well university of utah bioengineers have developed a microelectrode grid array that if placed onto the surface of the brain can record the waves and translate them.

at last...

all the thoughts i just could not express, being that i'm a man and all. plus the disadvantage that i'm old and my shrontal lobe is frinking makes me, at present, communicate some things that others think i should not communicate.

so with this handy little device i can get the correct story out... unless there isn't really anything else in there that wants out.

oh well, at least i can get the local news, noaa weather, and even pick up seti signals. i might be the first to know when aliens finally contact us. of course no one will listen to me...

get in line for your brain electrode array!

radioactive decay rates are not constant

well....well...well...

So scientists have found that the decay rate of various elemental isotopes is not the unvarying standard we thought...

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/august/sun-082310.html

So the sun itself is likely to be emitting particles that effect the decay rate eh? All our timing devices dependent upon a constant decay rate have errors. Oh, medical diagnostic tracers aren't as accurate? Oh, radioactive dating methods might be erroneous? Hmmmm...... isn't THAT interesting.

maybe we aren't as old as we think. perhaps a great many tightly held beliefs against creation might not be so airtight as we'd like to believe.

let's find the god-particle and perhaps it will assuage our growing, gnawing, unbelief in the constancy of nature.

my ray-gun isn't as powerful as i hoped

well, i'm most seriously displeased! boo-hoo!

scientists have confirmed that there is an upper limit to the power density which a laser beam may possess.

Fedotov et al., (Phys. Rev. Lett), has demonstrated that the upper limit to intensity is ~2.6x10+26 W/cm2, which is dependent upon the residence time of the electrons within the laser beam or the total amount of electromagnetic energy stored in the pulse.

there will be no shooting people and watching them disappear, like in Star Trek.

there will be no shooting rogue asteroids bent upon colliding with the earth, causing a global extinction event.

there will be no salvation from nuclear attack via ICBM's.

no toasting of ants on the sidewalk.

do shooting terrorist-laden planes from the skies.

i am very sad. very sad indeed!

*snif**snif*

well before the superfart gets to us we have this issue

"A large asteroid in space that has a remote chance of slamming into Earth would most likely hit in 2182, if it crashes into our planet at all, a new study suggests.

The asteroid, called 1999 RQ36, has about a 1-in-1,000 chance of actually hitting the Earth, but half of that risk corresponds to potential impacts in the year 2182, said study co-author Mar Eugenia Sansaturio of the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain.

Sansaturio and her colleagues used mathematical models to determine the risk of asteroid 1999 RQ36 impacting Earth through the year 2200. They found two potential opportunities for the asteroid to hit Earth in 2182."

...???

the wording of this article confuses me.

first, the asteroid will hit us in 2182, if at all??? no possible chance later?

second, there are two potential opportunities to hit us... unless it hits us the first time of course...

third, they say "there is a 1 in 1000 chance it hits us, but half the risk corresponds to potential impacts in 2182." what the hell does that mean?

this is the worst example of "sensational journalism" meets poorly interpreted science.

jeez, no wonder people don't want to get into science, it sounds like we're all idiots.

who's da man?

read this...

http://failuremag.com/index.php/site/print/to_the_supercave/

it speaks for it's self.

when will we smell it?

well even a black hole needs to relieve itself every now and again.

a black hole has been farting a gas bubble for the last 200,000 years or so....

now that's what i call a real ripper!

it's over 1,000 light years in diameter and growing at 1,000,000 kilometers per hour.

so how long till we get a whiff?

let's see...

the black hole is 12 million light years away.

a light year is how far light travels in a year, which is 9.46e+12 kilometers.

so,

moving at 1e+6 km/hr, it will take 9.46e+6 hrs to travel one light year,

multiply this by the distance of the bubble from us, namely 12e+6 light years, and it will take approximately 1.14e+14 hrs; a 114 trillion hours. a hundred-and-fourteen trillion hours!

if one lives to age 80 years (hopefully no longer since your pretty much just waiting for the end at that point anyways), that is equal to 700,800 hours.

so it will take 162 million lifetimes before we catch a whiff of the universes biggest fart.

to put that into perspective, in the past 5,000 years of recorded history, that equates to roughly 62 80-year lifetimes.

so breath deep, the cool crisp air of earth, before it's spoiled by the biggest fart imaginable.

nothing's working as it should

what's coming to the universe?

can't we depend on anything anymore?

will we start floating tomorrow?

will the sun not rise tomorrow?

speaking of the sun, did you know it's not spotty like it should be?

yep, the sunspots that normally come predictably every eleven years for over the previous one-hundred years aren't happening. and scientists are baffled. they also don't understand why it's not as turbulent as they think it should be.

maybe we should take things into our own hands and help the sun out a bit. i mean, let's shot some of our trash at it to "fire things up". we've think we have global warming, so we're gonna fix the world, why not do the same with the sun?

the bottom line is we understand a lot less about the universe than we think, and should not be too rash in claiming there is a problem to fix.

hey, buddy, can you spare fifty billion?

well, we have another crisis.

we haven't spent enough money.

we need to spend another fifty billion to save jobs. fifty billion we don't already have.

let's say the average salary (including benefits) is $60,000 per year per employee.

$50,000,000,000 divided by $60,000 = 833,333 jobs.

of course this number would be higher if the fifty billion was used to make up shortfalls rather than support outright. so it's probably double the number who would be "helped" by such a move.

what's a few billion now that our debt is in the tens of trillions, right?

yes, the economy is not as healthy as it might look from the outside.

schools and municipalities have not, or will not, cut spending commensurate with the loss in revenue due to layoffs, job loss, and state economics. so now, since they would not do the tough stuff, they'll send it up the line and cry, "we have an emergency and need money or we'll have to layoff teachers and law enforcement!".

so how about a pay cut, or furloughs? oh no, these folks have powerful unions lobbying for them. they won't take no stinking paycut. not like the 25% pay cut i absorbed last year due to furloughs. my no have any union to fight for me. so tha's out of the question. they just have to be paid.

and the states don't want to do the tough things either. so they pass it up the line.

everyone else is getting bailouts, why shouldn't we?

so now it's the president's problem, and he's gone begging for money from the corrupt den of snakes who care about nothing but themselves. and they are scared they will lose they're comfy little power plays because they have done things without the consent of the people. and the people are angry and voting other long-standing snakes out. so they are not going to give the president his fifty billion. not with elections coming up in november. no, no, no.

so who will flinch first???

nineteen aussie-four

i had this romantic perspective of the australian continent.

you know, the old cliches; rugged, individualistic, wild, untamed...

but they are one of the worst at intruding into the personal lives of their constituency.

they are eyeing further intrusion by considering monitoring and logging all web browsing histories and emails.

what are they going to do with all that crap? sift through it for subversive info? evil patterns of activity? weak-minded fools whom they could extort?

the cost to store, filter, collate, and report would seem to be prohibitive. but hey, it's someone else's money we're using here.

where is the outcry from the media? how about an uprising by the populace?

*sigh*

too hopelessly self-absorbed i guess...

I SPOT YOU

SPOT is an acronym for "screening passengers by observational techniques" developed by the USA. it is inaccurate, based on no science, and now is gaining wider acceptance as the UK is now looking into developing this for their anti-terrorist systems.

SPOT looks for subtle facial cues indicating someone is up to no good. how they can know this from facial expressions is a bit unclear, but hey, it's anti-terrorist so it must be worth pursuing. so, watch what do in airports. don't have a spat with the wife or you'll have a spot with a us marshal. don't get miffed by some goob who just ran over your foot with his roller suitcase or you'll be spot-ted for facial abnormalities and whisked off for interrogation.

so watch your P's and Q's or you'll be s, p, and ot'd...

take quaaludes before every outdoor activity, lest you show any adverse facial expressions. yes, let's all get anesthesized, it's for the best.

when in doubt

an alarming trend is occurring.

every time a boo-boo, (i.e. we killed a bunch of people and it looks kinda iffy that we did it for good reasons), occurs the spectre (i like this word too) of "terrorists" is used. like we can just frost a dead body with the Al Qaeda or Taliban or generic terrorist frosting and everyone will just shrug and go, "oh", turn and walk away. i acknowledge that there are bad people out there who want to blend in until the moment they want to strike. this makes security and investigation extremely challenging. but have we as a society decided that loss of our civil liberties take a secondary position to security? communist russia was "secure" but freedoms were more difficult to find than a loaf of bread at the market.

i don't remember discussing giving my liberties away...

i don't remember debating the value in unwarranted searches and eavesdropping...

did our forefathers fight and die for the mere idea of liberty and the pursuit of happiness only for it to be lost so quickly and without a question or fight by us?

i knew they were bad

punjabi researchers have conducted a very powerful yet simple experiment that confirms the danger of cellphones.

the researchers set cell phones at one hive and none at another. the cell phone hive was activated for two fifteen minute segments per day. measurements suggest hive productivity was off by fitty-percent, the queen laid about half as many eggs, fewer workers returned to the hive, and they ceased producing honey. the other hive performed as a normal hive would, no problems.

so....

perhaps the loss of honeybees has something to do with disruption of the homing and communication processes of honeybees. perhaps we could shift our operating frequencies and give the bees a break.

if not...

have you heard of killer bees???

they'll be baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

saving for a rainy day

WOT and i have an elaborate, well thought out plan to save for our post-work years. we don't want to be a burden to our spawn, we don't want them worrying how they can keep from paying a penny to care for us in our broken-down frunkeness. so we save. we have beautifully crafted auto-updating computer spreadsheets tracking our planned saving to actual levels. monthly shortfalls require detailed explanation, with unacceptable excuses being logged into our permanent records. our little pile o'cash is growing and growing. but what will happen near the end. will a rival club me to death over a mastodon bone? will WOT run off with the pile o'cash and a young up-and-coming tribal leader? will i succumb to a life of harsh weather and malnutrition?

or, will i like so many now reaching the tarnished years, lose all my pile o'cash to a assisted care cave that will treat me poorly, give me nothing, and leave WOT and my spawn with nothing of my hard earned lifetime savings?

is this what i have to look forward to???

i seen how the word, ugh, was invented.

a new dawn

with little or no thought, i've decided to quit my job. i'm going to become an amateur moon scientist, looking at images of the moon on Moon Zoo. they are looking for help due to the overwhelming amount of data streaming in. yes, as is typically the case in science, way too much data is generated with way too little information, understanding, and ultimately knowledge created.

simultaneously i'm going to join the hackathon for humanity, yes there really is such a thing. and commit "random hacks of kindness". hacking for kindness??? isn't that the antithesis of hacking? isn't the point of hacking to cause electronic anarchy. software subterfuge? hard drive explosions?

yes, when bad is good, we truly are in the midst of societal degeneration.

donning my cyber camo's

well the us government has decided that it's time to open the gaily-wrapped package from the pentagon labelled "legal virus". now not only do we get spied on, but if they don't like what we say, they can deem it an "attack", and wage military operations against us. no proof required i suppose. so they'll hack us, super-size virus-size us, and back flush electrons up my ?@#$%^, and smack us around. they'll send some special forces boys carrying sledgehammers to obliterate all things electronic, then shoot them with silenced MP-5's, followed by a hit from their directed laser weapons to frost the cake. then i get two options, immediate termination, or nylon handcuffs followed by "questioning" by "special interrogators". hmmm ......

so i'm donning my cyber camo's for the upcoming battle.

yep, i'm switching off my internet router, never to return to the formerly free and open internet.

good bye

texting while driving

well in the wake of recent information about synthetic life, huge security changes by facebook, google and others, immigration fiasco, and banking reform, it is apparent that our government is too busy saving us from ourselves to recognize the broad changes that are occurring. we, the people, have abdicated our authority over the government and had them severely limit our personal freedoms, all in the name of protecting us. we can be spied on electronically with little recourse, huge electronic companies like google, facebook, and others treat our confidential information like they own it, and sell it to the highest bidder without our permission. the government does nothing. scientists are messing around with the human genomic sequence and the leadership has little to say or do to control it.

it's sorta like the government is texting while driving. we're gonna get in an accident sooner or later, it's just statistics and probability. fortunately they aren't wearing a seatbelt.

synthetic me

well the beginning of synthetic life is dawning. isn't that exciting?

we don't have enough trouble handling natural life, we have to start make synthetic life.

shouldn't we understand natural life and be in control of it before we make something else?

we have no idea what we are doing.

it's sorta like cutting my finger and then thinking i'm a surgeon ready to operate on people.

but we have great ideas about what good we can do for mankind by making little synthetic microbes that will do our every bidding. so compliant, so submissive, so desirous to help. yeah, right...

we will unleash uncontrollable microorganisms into our natural environment and they will run amok. perhaps this is the next evolutionary step. the synthetic microbes will eat up all the natural ones and leave none of us behind.

better do all the things you've wanted to do before the little Langoliers commence to 'a marchin'...