Stray Hawkeye

Here’s how we do it.  We need to convince the oil companies that there is oil on Mars.  Stay with me here. The oil companies will then fund manned space flight to Mars so they can drill for the oil. If they eventually find it, it will prove there was once life there, which will cause the religious fundamentalists’ heads to all explode in unison (side benefit there).  Then, because using the oil on Mars would be way cheaper than shipping it to Earth (not to mention supply and demand), we could then send all of the SUVs and sports cars (and their drivers, another side benefit) to Mars.  This would also have the side benefit of decreasing congestion here. Then, all the green house gases from the SUVs and sports cars will cause global warming on Mars (Marsal warming?), which will then teraform Mars to be habitable. We can then grow food on Mars and solve world hunger, on two planets no less. The end.

Granted, the religious fundies would just deny that we had ever been to Mars, or claim the oil was put there by god 5,000 years ago to test their faith. And there would have to be oil on Mars in the first place. And we’d have to figure out how to make SUVs run at several hundred degrees below zero with double the gravity. And I have no clue how fertile Martian soil is. But I can dream, right?

Or maybe we could just reproduce less.

Sort of like an internet party, but with chemicals.  Dorky and a bit nsfw:

Real Genius gets another step closer.

The end result of Pavlov’s diabolical plan to make everyone drool while Christmas shopping.

• The Bloomberg Way – A short quote, but I’m pretty sure it proves I will never write for, or most likely, enjoy reading anything from Bloomberg News, however, I admittedly don’t know all that much about them.
• I like Wendy’s logo / brand, in no small part because of their total lack of modern update.  And as ultra cheap fast food goes, it’s not bad.
• What do you call someone who compulsively stores jars full of baby poop in a freezer for over 30 years, adding to the collection on a regular basis?  Um, a scientist.  They apparently also go for fruit bat blow jobs.  And hell, while we’re at it, growing rabbit penises in a lab.  Because really, that’s what the world needs, more rabbit penises.
• Brawndo begins it’s assent to world power.  Here’s the commercial they reference in that article:
  
  And, of course, where to buy it.

Two different environmental / tech items I kind of like.

Aptera is a company working on make an super, super efficient car.  It sort of boarders between glorified motorcycle and tiny coupe, but interesting as a thought experiment if nothing else, though I think they have a few working prototypes floating around.

FloDesign Wind has a very different take on wind turbines as well.  The video is particularly interesting, though it’s a bit of a commercial for them as well.  Interesting for thinking about the different pros and cons of traditional wind power, and making a little more sense of how they’re set up when you see a field of them.  Personally, I still think solar concentrators with steam engines are the way to go.

Something randomly occurred to me, which may well be beyond common sense for most people, but I had never thought about it before.

I was always told you shouldn’t drink really hot things (like hot cocoa or tea) through a straw, because they’d burn your mouth that way. It was one of those things that got ingrained as motherly wisdom, but on first blush, it makes absolutely no sense. How would something passing through a plastic tube make it hotter?

However, while drinking my toasty warm coffee, I noticing myself blowing on it, and two and two came together. Even if you don’t blow on it, the liquid at the bottom of the mug is much better insulated than the liquid at the top of the mug. The stuff at the bottom (assuming it’s not being stirred a bunch), has all of the liquid above it to insulate it from the colder air above it, as well as the mug insulating it on the sides and below. So, it would make sense then that the liquid at the top is cooler, as it’s not as well insulated and it’s transferring heat to the surrounding air. So, when you take a sip off the top, you’re getting coffee that has had some of the heat removed by the air around it, and you are basically taking a slice off the top of the coolest liquid. However, when you use a straw, you’re piping the most well insulated liquid (and therefore hottest part) directly into your mouth.  Thus, burnt tongue.

Amazing how counter-intuitive folk-ish wisdom can make so much sense. Or maybe everyone else figured this out when they were five, and I’m just slow.

Now if someone could explain to me why eating apples, or apple derived products, gives me bloody noses the next day.  Seriously.  Anyone?  Because it’s really annoying and I kind of like apples.

• How much of the universe can’t we see because things are in the way (ignoring gravitational lensing)? For instance, what is the volume of space that’s on the far side of Andromeda, that we can’t see because Andromeda is in the way? Or Dwingeloo 1 for that matter?
• What percentage of single word search terms return a Wikipedia page as their first hit in a Google search?
• Are there any single family homes (not towers, duplexes, or commercial buildings) on the island of Manhattan?

Kind of cool for how simple it is:

Via Make

A few days ago I was thinking about age differences in relationships.  Specifically, what is the culturally acceptable age difference between two people in a relationship.  I think everyone has a general idea of what’s okay, and it tends to fall along the lines of a couple years of age difference as teenagers, a few more as twenty-somethings, and the older you get, the more of an age range is okay.  But there’s also that fuzzy range.  The “not all out creepy” range, but where it still raises a few eyebrows and makes your close friends a little guarded and hesitant to offer any encouragement.

So, in thinking about this, it occurred to me that a better way to measure this would be the percentage of the age difference.  I’m calling this the Relationship Creepiness Index, or RCI for short.  To calculate it, take the age of the younger partner, and divide it by the age of the older partner.  If this value is between 100% and 85%, it’s pretty socially acceptable.  If it’s between 85% and 75%, you get into the makes your best friend uneasy range.  If you descend below 75%, you might as well get an unmarked white panel van and start hanging out down by the playground.  Okay, don’t actually do that, but that’s how people are probably going to see it.

In playing with the ranges a bit, percentages seem to work relatively well because they account for the fairly narrow dating range of teens and twenty-somethings, while still broadening out for the 40+ crowd, and even more so for senior citizens (though let’s not dwell on that).  The below graphic gives a thumbnail overview of the range, showing ages 14 to 95 on both axises:

The very, very large version of the above image is here. If you want to tweak the formulas or play with the numbers, here is a copy of the spreadsheet in ODS format.

The formula and bounds are still pretty rough, but it seems like a reasonable and simple equation.  To give a few examples:

• 20 and 23 year old dating = 39 and 45 year old dating = 52 and 60 year old dating = 87% = outer edge of the green zone, but fine.
• 18 and 23 year old dating = 35 and 45 year old dating = 47 and 60 year old dating = 78% = well into the yellow, pretty creepy
• 17 and 23 year old dating = 33.5 and 45 year old dating = 44 and 60 year old dating = 74% = go straight to creepytown.

It could probably use some tweaks, but it’s at least a starting point for measuring and comparing creepiness of age differences in relationships.

A really fascinating story about itching.  Really interesting for a lot of reasons, especially for the physical / psychological overlap, the unknown parts of it, how perception works, how we interact with the world, and the interplay of strict scientific doctrine with inquisitive scientific experimentation.

Warning: The articles contains graphic descriptions of some really disturbing medical conditions and situations.

It will also make you feel itchy for about 2-3 days.  And it’s fairly long.  I’d say it’s worth it, but judge for yourselves and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The article.

I really like the last couple sections.

This film on protein synthesis, created in 1971, is proof that the first few years of the 70’s got a contact high from the 60’s.  Wait untill about three and a half minutes in for the drugs to take effect.

Bet you never thought of the basic building block of life as tripping, dancing hippies with balloons taped to their heads before, did you?

1. NASA is apparently in the practice of dropping rubber duckies with Inuit tattoos into bottomless holes in the Artic.  It makes me laugh a lot that our national space agency, which sends people into outer space, uses rubber duckies to research glaciers.  (via Herd)
2. There is apparently also a bottomless hole at the end of half of a waterfall called the Devil’s Kettle, right here in Minnesota.  As much as I love scientific discovery, I also like the wonder from the fact that there are some really simple things like this that we don’t know.

Two videos I bookmarked at different times, both because I’m sort of fascinated with resonance.  Strikes me that they fit pretty well together.

Metronomes on a board:

People on a bridge:

Such interesting parallels.  The way each metronome / person reacts to the result of the collective force generated by the individual movements of each of the others.  The mix of the purely physics-based and the physics / behavioral interaction.  The way, despite all starting fairly randomly, they all find their way to synchronization without trying to, just based on their interactions with their surroundings.  The way, in effect, each individual in the group exerts a tiny force on the group, and the group exerts its collective force on the individual until all individuals in the group are the same.  So many ways one could extend this metaphor / phenomena out to apply to other things.

Globular Cluster is an official scientific term.