Oh, no, don't ask why. Just go and explore the complexities of a non-computable, nearly undefinable number in support of Gödel's theorem.
Okay, just a hint--it is related to the stink beetle yesterday.
Recently in Nature, Science, & Mathematics Category
Check it out with google--
pulsating white dwarf has a heart of diamond, estimated to be a diamond of blue-green tint. Boy--make that available and South Africa would be in for a hard time of it!
An exoskeleton to help in military operations, but what might it mean for people with debilitating disaeas such as ALS or MG?
As one correspondent noted to me: "The takeover has begun." We are Borg. But in this case borg may mean significant improvements in the lives of those stricken with horrible illnesses. Not today, not tomorrow, but in the near future. What a wonderful, terrible thing the human imagination can be.
I have long contended that there would be ways to get the benefits of stem cell research without the ethical implications of taking them from embryos. I have not yet read the referenced papers, so this could just be media hype. However AP reports that such a breakthrough has been accomplished. If so, it may be the source of great benefit to humanity. Just as possible is that it will return nothing or even negative effects. Let us hope and pray that scientists doing this research proceed with all due caution.
This link, sent by a fried (thanks FPJ) is really fascinating. When flowers bloom or close. Practical--not really--but interesting? Absolutely.
Yep. That's right The Periodic Table as you've almost never seen it before. Take a look--photographs of elemental vanadium! In-depth exposes of the noble gases. Far more than you ever wanted to know about Yttrium and Cesium!
Pay close attention to the Kelvin slider for loads of fun with gaseous silver! ('long about 2440 K)
I found this article interesting, informative, and compelling in an anecdotal sort of way, supporting observations I have made over the course of years and providing a little insight into what I have often seen as paradoxical and anti-scientific.
“It is reasonable to assume that persons with relatively high daily energy expenditures would be less likely to gain weight over time, compared with those who have low energy expenditures. So far, data to support this hypothesis are not particularly compelling.”
The question of weight gain would seem to be a simple physical equation--calories in>calories out--gain weight, calories in<=calories out--maintain/weight loss. But that hasn't been the experience of many in my acquaintance, and I have often wondered why. I become convinced that the implication of HFCS in weight gain has a compelling metabolic element to it. Does the addition of so much high-fructose corn syrup to the American diet actually promote obesity? Again, anecdotally and perhaps coincidentally, the evidence suggests that the answer may be yes. But how does one go about addressing the issue?
An on-target skewering: of another of the great sins of the progressive mind--Carbon offsetting. It doesn't work, it doesn't make sense, and if you're not doing it, you haven't fulfilled the karma involved. In fact, you've just incurred more. (If karma is your thing.)
If you thought that the era of British bigwigs keeping Indians as personal servants came to an end with the fall of the Raj in 1947, then you must have had a rude awakening last week.
In a feature about carbon offsetting in The Times (London), it was revealed that the leader of the UK Conservative Party, David Cameron, offsets his carbon emissions by effectively keeping brown people in a state of bondage. Whenever he takes a flight to some foreign destination, Cameron donates to a carbon-offsetting company that encourages people in the developing world to ditch modern methods of farming in favour of using their more eco-friendly manpower to plough the land. So Cameron can fly around the world with a guilt-free conscience on the basis that, thousands of miles away, Indian villagers, bent over double, are working by hand rather than using machines that emit carbon.
Welcome to the era of eco-enslavement.
I've long thought the so called carbon-footprint offsets were just another way of doing whatever I want and shifting the burden for compensation to others. So, I feel the need to fly around the world in whatever luxury I would like to be accustomed to and to salve my eco-fevered brow, I hire a bunch of people not to use the conveniences which would make their labor easier.
When I first heard about Al Gore and his carbon-offsetting measures, I thought exactly these words--the new indentured servitude. Pay someone to suffer for my luxury. And so it continues, but all thinly veiled by the palliative fib that "I'm fixing up my own ecologically blunders." Hate to tell my good buddies this--but if you don't do it, you haven't fixed it.
Now, what I'd like to see is for every private jet trip or luxury-laden cruise undertaken by our so called eco-defenders between a year or two of using a manual lawnmower, turning the interior temp up to 85 or down to 60 for a few months--walking or bicycling to work for the length of time it would take to "pay for" say six-hundred pounds, or so, of jet fuel.
If you want to be eco-warriors, don't put your battles on the backs of the underprivileged--offset your own carbon footprint.
Hmm--reading this over, perhaps I should be more straightforward about what I think of this. I'll try harder next time.
