Man I LOVE that song! I could just sing it all day long! On the train, on a plane, right beside you, in your ear-hole.
Supposin’ you don’t like the power-pop that my girl Katy likes to sing? Well then you’ve got two choices: 1) Challenge me to a sing-off. 2) Put on some noise-canceling headphones.
Trust me, you don’t want to challenge me to a sing-off.
A fine specimen of the rare corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum (titan arum), is now in bloom at the Houston Natural History museum! Her name is Lois. This is cause for great celebration and merriment among the nerdy denizens of this muggy metropolis. So what’s with all the hubbub bub?
Well, Ryan’s at TAM 8, rubbing elbows with the best-of-the-best in the scientific/skeptical universe. So its your buddy Jacob here again, filling you in on the latest bits of news we all found interesting this week.
Patrick: Slate contributor, Sam Kean has a book out about the periodic table, riviting stuff, I know. Anyway, he is blogging about several of the elements for Slate and you can read about them for free. http://www.slate.com/id/2258112/entry/2258111/?from=rss
Ben: hey. how come, back in the day, everyone had saber teeth? it seems like it was common? was it because animals didn’t know how wide their throats were, and so needed a gauge? maybe the primary prey for everythings were giant, meaty pneumatic tires? I don’t know, i’m just a simple country physicist. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/08/2947710.htm
Jacob: Pic related! Dutch scientists have created a way to make cement with a mixture of Titanium Dioxide, which acts a catalyst to convert the pollutant NO2 from the air and convert it to harmless nitrates. Their preliminary tests show as 25-45% decrease in the amount of pollutants present in the paved areas! http://greenopolis.com/goblog/jerryjamesstone/scientists-make-air-purifying-cement-cuts-emissions-45
Lets hope they do some full life-cycle studies to make sure it’s safe, and get this out ASAP!
Hey guys it’s so hot right now. So last time we learned something interesting. If you see a bus going past you on the street… and you watch the people in the bus, you’ll notice that they are AGEING slower than you are! Time is moving slower on the bus, than on the sidewalk… it seems.
Wow. So what’s the problem?
There is no problem with that conclusion. Except that… remember how in part 1, we noted that a person INSIDE the bus will think that everything OUTSIDE the bus is moving?
If I repeat the thought experiment from part 2, i’ll see that someone INSIDE the bus will see time passing slower OUTSIDE the bus.
I like books with a hidden complexity. There’s a phrase used in entertainment circles called the “elevator pitch” which refers to a very short summary of a proposed project when you’ve only got the length of an elevator ride to get your story sold. Most of the time this reduces a pitch to something along the lines of “World War I but with zombies” or “Casablanca meets Caddyshack.” Well I’ve tried breaking down BB World and the 3 LPs into an elevator pitch myself, cause I like promoting the books I like to others maybe unfamiliar with comics. Even as friends these folks give me about as much time as a producer in the elevator would so I have to really hit the right buttons. I’m happy to say this book is beyond the elevator pitch. Allow me to show you my best attempt: “It’s the 3 little pigs, but set in the 1920’s South and the Big Bad Wolf isn’t the bad guy, sort of, but it’s really about something else, and there are blues.” Not the best selling strategy. So I’m opting for the long con (er, I mean “sell”) and using this platform to write a full on review of the sucker. It deserves it.
Following in Ryan’s footsteps, I thought I would let my ego come out to play today. ;-) I’ll start by assuming that you’re all wildly interested in my day-to-day life.
As you probably know from listening to the show, I work in the defense industry (though I shouldn’t say which company) which means that I work in a cubicle farm, staring at computer screen with Excel spreadsheets, manuals, and drawings, while scrawling calculations on scratch paper, all day long.
Exactly like this, except in a 1980’s color scheme, and slower computers
I know what you’re thinking… “How do you survive working in a cubicle farm for 9, 10, 11 hours per day?”
Well, thankfully, I have access to a myriad of wonderful podcasts like Science… Sort Of, and today I thought I’d give you a quick list of my favorite podcasts that keep me just distracted enough to forget that I spend more time at work than I do at home.
a quick note.
the podcast talked about an “atlatl” spear that some dude found in a glacier. there was a little mumbling about what it is, and then ryan told me to say something. Incidentally, i was trying to tell my cousin’s kid about them, she’s like 7, and she said she learned about it in school.
so for all of us who aren’t under 10. what’s an atlatl?
In short, it’s a stick that you use to throw a spear. You know how when you were a kid, your dad could throw a ball farther than you could? in part it was because his arm was longer. So the idea is that if you throw a spear at the end of a STICK rather than just from your hand, it’ll go farther/faster.
like this
Actually. you know those ball throwers that people use to help exercise their giant golden retrievers whose primary joy in life is to chase after a ball and then make them slimey? atl-atls work just like that but for spears.
Apparently Microsoft Word has the ability to publish things directly to your blog. I thought I’d try it out and see if it worked. If you’re reading it, it did work! I gotta say, so far I’m impressed in that it actually seems to be working pretty well. It’s always fun when you find a new bit of technology that you already had access to and didn’t even know it. For some people this seems the bane of their existence; just one more complication on top of their already complicated lives.
Does this blog always have to be about science?
I, Ryan, of the podcast Science… sort of hereby declare my intention to go to TAM 8 in Las Vegas this weekend. I’ll be with my dad, Dr. Bruce Haupt, whom you may remember from Episode 17: Lengthening Our Listeners. The meeting will also be attended by several previous guests of the show like Dr. Steve Novella, Brian Dunning and others.