MSNBC has a very cute rss reader… I use Newsfire which seems to work ok, though now seems a bit short on bells and whistles.
Tag Archive for 'news'
So I thought it was pretty bad when I got junk email about global warming being caused by sunspots. However, that pales in comparison when I hear that someone managed to get an article in the Melbourne Age. The sun is at the end of one of it’s 11 year sunspot cycles, true, but the effect of changes in the insolation due to changes in this cycle are miniscule, about 0.07% according to these guys. At least this guy has a sense of humour… and sums things up pretty well.
Anyway, if the sunspot cycle is 11 years, why haven’t I had an ice age in my lifetime?
Some absolutely brutal photos from Kenya. What is wrong with the world?
I haven’t made the jump to Leopard yet (waiting for some of the bugs to be ironed out…), but there’s a clever ad on the New York Times home page…
Normally hot air rises, but light air does also, in the way that it escapes from the atmosphere more easily than things like nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. If we’re not more careful to conserve helium when we get it out of the ground in the future, our kids might miss out on the fun it brings when the party’s over and it’s time to talk funny. As a side effect, science will also suffer…
With nothing planned today, I thought I’d go for a look at the MIT Museum. The museum has been in the news here lately, when they opened the Mark Epstein Innovation Gallery.
The “innovation gallery” is a room with some stuff related to current MIT research, like their City Car (which is really clever), and some submarine stuff. My favourite was a sensor thing that looked at a tray of beads, and then projected contours onto them from above. Nifty.
The museum proper has a bunch of different exhibits, on things as diverse as proteins and robotics. Being a techy geeky kind of guy, the robotics was very interesting. I had no idea they had build robots that could run, and even do flips! Another highlight was the art of Arthur Ganson, very cool clockwork like sculptures.
Well worth a visit if you’re in Cambridge.
…for I am with thee (Isaiah 43:5, and other translations).
However, it looks like there’s still hope for the godless among us, thanks to some clever scientists who have found a “pathway for extinction of contextual fear” in (presumably godless) mice.
Being able to do the most fearful things, like asking a girl out for example, may be simpler in the future when the cure for fear comes out. If it comes as a tasty liquid medicine, and avoids side effects such as loss of the ability to operate heavy machinery, then it just might replace the current favourite for fearful situations. Only time will tell whether it’ll retail for $7.95 and be as good as a Long Trail Hefeweizen…
Having been back in Boston for a whole two days I felt like getting out and doing something. A few people mentioned that there was something at the end of the Orange Line, if you could avoid getting shot on the way. While there aren’t any decent maps on the Middlesex Fells pages, I found a good pdf one on a biking site.
Getting there is simple, go to the north end of the Orange line and walk up Washington St until you hit one of the many ‘gates’ along that road, I went up Goodyear Rd and started there along the Rock Circuit Trail. This trail appears to hit every outcrop on the eastern side of the Fells, and goes through many and varied kinds of forest. The circuit took about 2.5 hours for the round trip, not including the 15 minutes or so from the T stop.
The walk is similar to the Blue Hills Reservation skyline trail, which has a number of views of the city. It’s a much smaller park, but is perhaps easier to get to. From the little time I spent there it appeared the density of people was rather less too.
The rest of the photos are here.
Along with lots of people who are real bona fide Americans, I celebrated July 4th yesterday. Every year Bostonians gather along the banks of the Charles River, to soak up the atmosphere, listen to some music, and watch a good ol’ fashioned fireworks show. This year they also got wet.
I took my camera for a walk along the esplanade around lunchtime, to see hundreds of people enjoying a lovely afternoon by the river. I didn’t go into the sound shell area, which was pretty packed having been open since 9am. A number of new citizens were sworn in, a little history was read out (the declaration also appears as the editorial in the Globe every year, thus saving the editor a days work).
After a ‘few’ celebratory cocktails with the Aussie/CfA crew, I returned to the river to watch the fireworks, in the rain unfortunately, but didn’t dampen our spirits…
Photos here.
Spring has come on quickly here. Just over a month ago there was a snowstorm, and now the trees are leafing up and there is grass. This is the view out my bedroom window. I’ll take one every few days and make a year round montage like the one I did for the construction of the AITC at Mt Stromlo.
The grass has been encouraged heavily, the harvard gardeners are evidently under strict instruction to re-sow the lawns as soon as possible to keep the tourists who come to touch John Harvard’s foot happy. If only they knew what the students did to it…
