“Surfing in Sagittarius — not for the fainthearted! Hubble observations have revealed huge waves sculpted in the
Red Spider Nebula. This warm and windy planetary nebula harbours one
of the hottest stars in the Universe and its powerful stellar winds generate
waves 100 billion kilometres high…” ESAIC
Dialtones (A Telesymphony) — members of the audience register their mobile phone numbers as they enter the venue. The musicians upload new ringtones to participants’ phones, and the entire symphony is played by ringing these phones. The debut is this Sunday in Linz, Austria, and I wish I were there. Downloadable .mp3 samples at this page. [via boing boing]
McDonald’s-Museum Deal Draws Mixed Reaction. Oh, but it’ll be a “nontraditional MacDonald’s.” Washington Post
Mysterious Maddening Buzzing Probed in Southwest Germany: “Hundreds of people in Germany’s southwest are being driven to distraction by a mysterious nocturnal buzzing noise — seriously enough for the local authorities to decide to investigate the matter scientifically.
Many have been complaining of racing pulse and fatigue along with a sense of excitation and uncontrollable muscle quivering during their resulting insomnia… If one were to believe the authors of the German website http://www.raum-und-zeit.de, the source of the mysterious buzzing sound in the ears of afflicted citizens is a US military project named HAARP based in Alaska.” Common Dreams via WebToday
Black Holes “It is a curious thing about the English language, that although it has a vast
vocabulary and rich idiomatic variations, it lacks words for some common and
useful ideas… The presence in English of an unnaturalized foreign word is a fair indicator of a
black hole in the language. The presence of a convenient foreign word very likely
prevents the emergence of an English equivalent.” The Vocabula Review via Abby
“Physicists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory are on a roll.
Last week, an international team of scientists working with one of the lab’s particle accelerators announced
they had made a batch of “doubly strange” particles. Just weeks earlier, another group said it is very close to recreating the conditions of the
earliest universe.” Wired
“The Greens have got it wrong.” Matt Ridley considers Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist to be ‘probably the most
important book on the environment ever written’:
The Big Green organisations will not like it. They will accuse
Lomborg of defending Big Business, no doubt, as they did Julian
Simon. But the charge cannot stick. He has an impeccably Leftish
background and a transparent independence of mind. And he is not
complacent: “By far the majority of indicators show that mankind’s
lot has vastly improved. This does not, however, mean that
everything is good enough”. Telegraph UK
Desert Dust Kills Florida Fish: ‘New research links huge African dust clouds with the “red
tides” that kill millions of fish along the Florida coast each
year.’
Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their
dealer, who witnesses say watched the
event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony
was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really
happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those
involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]
Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their
dealer, who witnesses say watched the
event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony
was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really
happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those
involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]
Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their
dealer, who witnesses say watched the
event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony
was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really
happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those
involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]
This guy has 50 by 30. I’ve got 47 by 49.
As pointed out at MetaFilter, if you used to have repetitive strain disorder, you won’t for long, in the world according to the shrub. American Prospect
Israel Kills Palestinian Activist
Israeli forces firing a pair of missiles with pinpoint accuracy assassinated a senior Palestinian leader today as he sat at his desk in an apartment building inhabited by several Palestinian American families…
“Pinpoint accuracy” indeed:
The U.S.-made missiles, launched from helicopters, knifed through two windows at midday and obliterated the third-floor corner office where Zibri was at work. Neighboring apartments full of Palestinian American families were splattered with shards that sprayed from windows shattered by the blast, but none of their inhabitants was reported injured. Washington Post
Breaking the language barrier: ” ‘Words you can’t say’ will be heard
more than ever on network shows as
cable lowers the bar.”
F**king with those who sit at the other end of the surveillance cameras.
“Only someone completely distrustful of all government would be opposed to what we are doing with surveillance cameras.”
— NYC Police Commissioner Howard Safir, 27 July 1999.
[via Rebecca]
Wow! As Dan Hartung discusses at Lake Effect (he’s fully back, BTW…), the change in Google’s indexing paradigm gives precedence to weblogs. But I never expected that a Google Search on “follow” would show FmH first!
Delhi children make play of the net: “The results were startling, showing how much
children with little or no English and no
computer training at all could achieve.” BBC via RobotWisdom
A special spring ’01 issue of The Kenyon Review celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize. In addition to the dialogue between Rabindranath Tagore and Albert Einstein discussed in this New York Times article, the issue has contributions from Seamus Heaney, Patrick White, Yeats, Beckett, Naguib Mafouz, Czeslaw Milosz… You can download a .pdf of the entire issue.
Cosmic Laws Like Speed of Light Might Be Changing, a Study Finds: “…the basic laws of nature as understood
today may be changing slightly as the
universe ages, a surprising finding that
could rewrite physics textbooks and challenge fundamental assumptions
about the workings of the cosmos…” New York Times via Abby
Tombs Found in Mongolia Might Hold Genghis Khan — “A team searching for Genghis Khan’s elusive grave site said this week it has
discovered a walled burial ground 200 miles northeast of the Mongolian capital that may contain
the 13th century conqueror’s remains along with priceless artifacts.” Yahoo! via Abby
Episode at Trade Center Assumes Mythic Qualities: “(T)he artists have gone coy. Their
dealer, who witnesses say watched the
event from a hotel suite, now claims it never happened. Either the balcony
was an elaborate hoax meant to look real, or the inverse is true: it really
happened, and the closer it comes to being found out, the more those
involved would prefer for everyone to think it was a hoax.” New York Times via Abby [Thanks, Abby, watching for interesting links for me in my absence…]
