I listen to Australian Radio a lot. There are plenty of reasons for this, of course, but the most reasonable reason is that that occasionally showcase tunes like Hello (2.6Mb mp3) by Cat Empire (Flash required). The band's website also offers this fun (if poor quality) quicktime video.
Fred Bruenjes took this incredible picture of the total solar eclipse in Antarctica when a fellow photographer just happened to blunder into frame. Now that's timing!
[Found through the Astronomy Picture of the Day site.]
Dems want inquiry into reports of Medicare bribe
Continuing my sporadic series of musical recommendations, I offer the bizarre marriage of rap and Hindi pop that is Panjabi MC, an artist who has suddenly captured the fancy of the young, hip groovesters at TripleJ, the Australian radio station I like to listen to over the net. I am particularly enamored of the catchy JOGI (mp3).
Okay, I'll admit it: despite my understanding of the astounding odds against winning the jackpot, I buy California Super Lotto Plus Tickets when the pot jumps over $50 million; I call it I Shoulda Insurance, as in insurance against having to say, "I shoulda bought a lottery ticket." And in one of those brilliant moments of fortune favoring the stupid, I got four out of the five numbers in last night's draw (but not the Mega number), so I've won $82.
Sure, it isn't $92 million, but it covers my lotto ticket purchases for the year. I can handle those odds.
The father of the PRC's Space Program, which recently put a man in space, was driven out of this country during the anti-communist hysteria. Talk about throwing out the baby with the bath water.
According to the BBC, Shanghai's skyscrapers are sinking at the rate of 1.5 cm per year under due to their sheer weight.
The Wave runs the Voight-Kampff test on some of the SF Mayoral candidates. Bravo.
Girl Blog from Baghdad. True or false? Real or hoax? Don't know. Like Dear Raed, it's fascinating reading.
Yes, it does take me a while to do things. I went to Japan in May, and I'm just now putting up a couple of pages talking about some of the cool temples I visited. The thumbnails lead to pages with more info. Enjoy!
What changed [journalist Shun Akiba's] life was finding an old map in a secondhand bookstore. Comparing it to a contemporary map, he found significant variations. "Close to the Diet in Nagata-cho, current maps show two subways crossing. In the old map, they are parallel."
The journalist in him taking over, he sought out construction records. When responses proved defensive and noncooperative -- "lips zipped tight" -- he set out to prove that the two subway tunnels could not cross: "Engineering cannot lie."
[Erik says: I am not making this up.]
(Originally posted Monday, June 2nd, at 12:28 p.m. Tokyo Time)
So there you are, sitting in a karaoke bar, minding your own business, when the maniac behind the bar breaks out the big guns.
"What," you say, "the hell is that?"
"Tora no chin chin no shochu," says the maniac behind the bar.
"Tiger's penis in rice-liquor," your brain translates, helpfully. Stupid brain.
The other jars contain a pack of sea-horses and a snake, respectively.
The funny thing is, you know that at some point you're going to end up drinking this.
Welcome back to Japan.
According to the article, this should be out in October. Anyone care to bet when we're finally going to get really colorful money?
Let's hear it for the Internet. Thanks to broadband, I can listen to Triple J, my favorite Aussie radio station, online, all the time. And thanks to Triple J, I got to hear this nifty track by The Guild League, called Siamese Couplets (in RealAudio format).
A less sophisticated DoCoMo model, the Wristomo (on the right), ships next week.
[Update:] DoCoMo sold out all 1,000 units it was initially offering in 20 minutes. You don't see that every day. Story here.
Archaeologists in Iraq believe they may have found the lost tomb of King Gilgamesh - the subject of the oldest "book" in history.
The Epic Of Gilgamesh - written by a Middle Eastern scholar 2,500 years before the birth of Christ - commemorated the life of the ruler of the city of Uruk, from which Iraq gets its name. Now, a German-led expedition has discovered what is thought to be the entire city of Uruk - including, where the Euphrates once flowed, the last resting place of its famous King.
Takashi Saito, of the Toyota Central R&D Lab, and crew have created titanium-based alloys that have ultrahigh strength and super elasticity. First uses will probably be in space, but surely something like this would make a great alloy for a car (think preventing assassinations) or possibly as support for buildings (especially in 'quake-prone areas where a little sway would go a long way).
What has been billed as the "First Private Manned Space Program" and a new, never-seen spaceship, was unveiled today by noted design wizard Burt Rutan and his company, Scaled Composites, Inc. Aggressive work on a passenger-carrying sub-orbital craft has been active and hidden from public view for two years. Labeled as the SpaceShipOne Project, the unveiling took place here about 80 miles north of Los Angeles before a large crowd of journalists and invited guests.
The company plans to use the craft to compete for the X Prize, a $10 million cash prize that will be awarded to the first team
that successfully launches three people to an altitude of 62.5 miles (100 kilometers) returns them safely to Earth and then repeat that feat with the same vehicle within two weeks. In a lengthy briefing for the media, Rutan declined to answer a number of questions about technical specifications of the spacecraft, including its weight. SpaceShipOne will be air launched from a twin turbojet research aircraft with an 82-foot wingspan that was developed by Scaled Composites. The first flight of that aircraft, called the White Knight, took place on Aug. 1, 2002. Rutan said he could not estimate when he could make the first launch attempt. He did say that before going for the X Prize qualifying altitude there will several flight tests that begin with gradual expansion of the flight envelope, captive carry and drop tests.
Having nearly been burned last year, we filed our tax return on March 31, by mail.
Today, the IRS deposited our refund.
Damn, that's not bad!
* Of course, the Ides of April actually falls on April 13, not April 15, as Victor Estevez will gladly tell you.
Using NASA's TRACE spacecraft last year, scientists observed dark features resembling Earth-sized tadpoles swimming in the atmosphere of the sun following an enormous explosion. The explosion produced the powerful "X-class" solar flare, which releases about as much energy as a billion one-megaton nuclear bombs. While matter around the solar flare usually moves away from the sun, the tadpoles -- which scientists now believe are superheated magnetic voids in the plasma -- unexpectedly swim back to the solar surface.
And a word of warning: do not sit idle and expect the Bush Administration to help you; build your own government, arm your own militias, and manage your own resources, or expect the Batthists to come back. After all, the Taliban are back on the rise in Afghanistan.
Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni is reputed to be even bigger than the giant squid. This juvenile specimen has a mantle length of 2.5 meters-- i.e., a foot and 3 inches taller than yours truly. For perspective, here's a shot of me (and two friends, and don't ask) on scale with this juvenile specimen:
A member of Ohio's 5694th National Guard Unit in Mansfield legally changed his name to a Transformers toy.
'Sometimes, when you're flipping through the BBC cable, waiting to see what's on, Python's on, and I'm, "Oh, look at that!" It's totally fresh to me now. I have no idea what's coming next, who's in it, who's doing what. I watched a whole episode the other day, and it was completely fresh to me. It was kind of fun. I thought, "Oh, this is what people go on about. This is very silly."'
Warren Ellis recently posted a picture of a "filthy monkey" and asked for Photoshoppery. Who am I to say no?
Smile when you think that, Geezer.
The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing.
Hippocampus replacement
The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers developing the brain prosthesis see it as a test case. "If you can't do it with the hippocampus you can't do it with anything," says team leader Theodore Berger of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The hippocampus is the most ordered and structured part of the brain, and one of the most studied. Importantly, it is also relatively easy to test its function. The job of the hippocampus appears to be to "encode" experiences so they can be stored as long-term memories elsewhere in the brain. "If you lose your hippocampus you only lose the ability to store new memories," says Berger. That offers a relatively simple and safe way to test the device: if someone with the prosthesis regains the ability to store new memories, then it's safe to assume it works.
[Erik says: And thus is the premise of Memento made a fiction of the past. Cool.]
Three primitive humans who scrambled down a volcano's slopes more than 325,000 years ago left their footprints fossilised in volcanic ash. If the ages of the trails are confirmed, they could be the earliest known footprints of our Homo ancestors. Paolo Mietto of Padua University and his colleagues examined three tracks of footprints on the Roccamonfina volcano in southern Italy, known to locals as "devils' trails". "Because they occur in volcanic rock, they have always been considered supernatural," says Mietto.
The scientists say the footprints are fossilised in ash deposited by an eruption that has already been dated as 385,000 to 325,000 years old by radiometric techniques. One person left a track of 27 footprints in a zig-zag pattern, which probably made descent of the steep slope easier. Another track of 19 prints shows a gentle curve, but there are occasional palm-prints where the walker put a hand on the ground probably to avoid slipping. A third track of 10 evenly spaced prints forms a straight line. There are also two animal tracks, possibly made by big dogs or wolves.
The human footprints are about 20 centimetres long and 10 cm wide. Using the average foot length to height ratio of 15 per cent, this suggests the people who made the tracks were only about 135 cm tall (4' 5").
[Erik says: Hm. A little tall for the wee folk. A foot shorter, and this would have been perfect for St. Patrick's Day.]
An Ionian eclipse (talk about being in the right place at the right time).
A non-War Iraq newsitem!
According to this long and fascinating article, the residents of the region may have built the first batteries nearly 2,000 years ago.
Nauru is a tiny (8 sq. mile) island country with a population of 12,000. Shortly after Bernard Dowiyogo unseated then-President Rene Harris, its telecommunications network collapsed, and the nation degnerated into conflict between the two contenders' forces. Communication has been reduced to contact with ships with Satellite phones, and the last batch of communication indicated that the government is completely bankrupt. No one seems to know who's actually in charge of the country now.
Nauru used to be one of the richest nations in the region, thanks to extensive phosphate mining. Unfortunately, the phosphate has almost all run out, and the mining has reduced the once-beautiful island to a moon-like, inhospitable terrain.
Astronomers have discovered one of the closest stars to our Sun, and they say that more undetected close neighbours may be lurking in our vicinity. The new star was found because its relatively swift motion across the sky was picked up by automated sky surveys. It ranks as the third closest star system and the fifth closest star to our Sun. It is a faint red star, a so-called red dwarf, and is only 7.5 light years away.
Erik says: Fans of Atari are already claiming vindication over the smoother, less realistic graphics from their rivals on the Amiga.
I do not think we should go to war with Iraq at this time.
The jury's still out in my mind whether we ever need to go to war with Iraq, but I am most decidedly against military action now. Why?
Because:
--the inspections seem to be working,
--we do not have the support of the international community,
--there are more important foes that we should be looking at, and
--we still haven't won the "War on Terrorism," and this is just not contributing to that.
North Korea has nuclear weapons (not nookyoolar weapons, as the ignorant would say), but honest-to-god NUCLEAR weapons, and missiles capable of depositing them on our shores. We cannot continue to ignore this threat or pretend that it is only a regional dispute. To do so in this case and yet still go ahead with an invasion of a less-capable foe is not only gutless and honorless, but lacks logic and reason.
There is one possible scenario where the current administration's bravado makes sense: bluff. In The Arab Mind, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the current regimes in the Middle East, Raphael Patai stresses the verbal nature of modern Arabs; the word, as spoken, as declared, becomes more important than the enactment of the deed. The very threat itself (when Bush says, "We will topple Saddam Hussein's regime"), becomes more important than the deed itself-- to the Iraqis, Bush is not only threatening, he is making it a reality (regardless of the fact that the invasion has not yet begun). In this context, the build-up of forces, the belligerent words, and the absolute refusal to compromise put much more pressure on the Iraqis than we here in the West truly understand. Whereas we hear a threat, the Iraqis hear inevitability. Their only recourse would be to fully cooperate.
If this is actually what Bush is doing, then I will be absolutely stunned-- and grudgingly pleased.
As others have pointed out, however, there is a much more likely meaning for what Bush is saying: he really does mean it.
This is my nightmare scenario, because, as a pragmatist, it is also the only scenario that I think will actually bring about real reform in the Middle East. It captures the best aspects of the use of power: reshape the world and make it an arguably better place without letting other people's special interests get in your way. And it galls me because I cannot stand this man being responsible for bringing about some of the changes I want in this world.
And now, I'm speechless.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a comic book written by comics god Alan Moore, features a rag-tag group of Victorian pulp heroes (Mina Murray (formerly Harker), Allan Quartermain, Henry Jeklyll, Hawley Griffin, and Captain Nemo) who investigate plots against the Empire. One of the most allusive and casually violent comics around these days, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has been a huge success for its tiny production company (America's Best Comics). Soon to be a magnificent and overblown Summer Blockbuster.
Fast net services in the UK could soon be available via electricity lines as an alternative way of reaching out to those communities cut off from broadband. Scottish Hydro-Electric is planning to extend broadband trials to a town in Scotland and one in southern England reports Computing magazine. Eventually the service could be available to all 3.5 million of its customers. The company has already run technical trials of the technology in the small Scottish towns of Campbeltown and Crief.
The trials were a big success, offering up to 2MB per second - much faster than most broadband services on offer in the UK - for the price of £25. Speed and price of any commercial service has yet to be decided but the firm says it will be competitive. And there is no reason why other power companies could not follow suit, said a spokesman for the power company. It could be a welcome alternative for people living outside of the reach of current broadband services. "Technically we can reach to a lot more remote spots than BT can offer but some very remote areas will still be difficult," said the spokesman.
Japan has given a warning it would launch a pre-emptive military action against North Korea if it had firm evidence Pyongyang was planning a missile attack.
Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba said it would be "a self-defence measure" if North Korea was going to "resort to arms against Japan".
Mr Ishiba said it would be too late if a North Korean missile was already on its way.
U.S.: Washington Says Alleged Bin Laden Tape Proves Iraq, Al-Qaeda Connection
Washington is pointing to a new audiotape in which Osama bin Laden purportedly urges Muslims to defend Iraq against any U.S. attack as proof that Baghdad and Al-Qaeda are connected. But the tape, broadcast on an Arabic television news channel yesterday, also criticizes Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, making the American case to tie Al-Qaeda and Iraq more problematic.
Erik says: Colin Powell, to whom this declaration is attributed, is usually better about getting all of the facts together-- not just the ones that serve the agenda. Minus two points.
"The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information."
Read all about it at the link above.
Using radiation somewhere between radio and the visible spectrum, scientists at StarTiger, a European Space Agency, have essentially developed a way of seeing through matter.
A rather telling quote from the article:
"As well as images of a hand taken through 15mm of paper, the project has also released pictures of the human body imaged through clothing."
Those naughty scientists.
What do you get when you take a microphone out to the boondocks of Australia and coax kids into writing lyrics about life? Damn good music, is what.
Unfortunately, it takes a little effort to track the track down. Click here to go to the Morganics site, launch the Flash page, click on the record labeled Tracks, and click on #2 to listen. It's worth the trouble. Requires the Flash 5 plug-in.
