I remember reading a while back that maybe Astronaut Armstrong really said: “A small step for a man…” instead of what it sounded like: “A small step for man….” (link) Obviously, that would make a little more sense, and the idea was that maybe the “a” got lost somewhere in the miles between the moon […]
Guy Rules
Are these people gay? THEN: A few years ago, I was out at a restaurant/bar with three guys. It was early in the evening, the bar hadn’t really gotten started, and we just wanted some food. We could have sat in these sort of high stool-chairs, very close to blaring speakers near an empty dance […]
Are We Getting Heavier?
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the earth’s rotation is slowing. So I have some questions. 1. As the earth rotates, don’t we, just a bit, sort of want to fly off the face of the earth in a straight line heading east (or what’s called East on earth)? That is, our inertia would […]
Unkindest Cut: Dementia and Auschwitz
I’m reading, The Day the War Ended, by Martin Gilbert. It’s a bunch of personal accounts of the days leading up to, and after, V-E day. It’s filling in some blanks in my knowledge of those days, though there’s a lot of repetition (and sometimes the details are too narrow to be interesting to me. […]
Eat Your Words
Which shape above is the bouba? BBC News has a medium-length article (with videos!) about some science showing that we all have the ability for some kind of synesthesia. Some words just SEEM to represent a rounded shape rather than an angular one. Others just seem to represent a sour taste more than a sweet […]
Math and Computation
If that subject makes you want to run for the hills, then you and I can hang out. Another way to look at it is that we need people like Stephen Wolfram around. Here’s his latest project. Plug in stuff and get stuff back. [Link found on boingboing]
New Dating Technique
Sucker! You thought I was going to tell you how to go from movie and dinner to breakfast in bed? No. But scientists have found a way to tell the age of ceramics, which are impervious to carbon dating. At the moment, they can only date back a couple of thousand years, but they’re trying […]
Humans May Have Evolved
New fossil is all the rage. It’s kind of annoying how some news reports are considering this a major salvo in the epic battle between evolutionists and creationists. There’s no battle. There really isn’t. (There is a battle between those who want to teach science in science class and those who want to teach bald, […]
Up Late
I’m awake late late late. Reading through XKCD strips that I’ve missed recently, I ran into this one. It’s not really funny, but I bring it to you for edification: My friends, remember (or at least note), the “et” in “et al.” is a full word and doesn’t take a period. The “al.” is an […]
TBS. Very Funny.
I like the show My Boys. But the guy’s name is Bobby. Something about sticky and booby in the same sentence amuses me (oops, I just put them in the same sentence again). No, I didn’t send it to failblog.