Desert varnish – into which people have scraped petroglyphs for 1000s of years – appears layer by layer, growing only the width of a human hair each millennium. The varnish is replete with arsenic, iron and manganese, although the rocks it coats are not. No known geochemical or biological process can account for its ingredients. And yet there it is.
Category: Uncategorized
Collaborative bullet time photography
Bullet time has always been the preserve of high-budget movies, but now anyone can create films like this using collaborative photography techniques on their smartphones.
that should be really fun if it takes off.
The Awl
Founded in 2009 by Choire Sicha and Alex Balk, The Awl stands counter to the prevailing trends in the media industry, commenting skeptically on the conventions of the wider web while running a mix of stories that are both wide-ranging and unabashedly specific: writerly reviews of the previous day’s weather, deconstructions of minion memes, tirades against negronis and the Moon, personal essays, deadpan lists, poetry. The site’s tone, knowingly smart and aloof from the news cycle, is especially popular among people who work in media, and it has become a farm team for larger publications. Lately, under the editorship of Herrman and Matt Buchanan, it also publishes some of the most incisive criticism about the ongoing collision of media and technology.
A prion love story
i think this would make for a great movie with a science-literate plot:
Results showed she had the defective gene. Sonia and Eric hesitated briefly, and then decided to make it their life’s work to find a cure for Sonia before she got sick. They have 25 years to crack an amazingly difficult scientific puzzle, maybe 10 years more
DARPA robotics challenge
this is very exciting in light of all the 0 day nonsense. the reason amateurs like “hacking team” have any business is because most people don’t patch their systems. imagine a future where systems patch themselves constantly.
“We held the world’s biggest Capture the Flag and all the contestants were robots.” — Mike Walker, Program Manager of DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge
Scanning quantum dot microscopy
Using a single molecule attached to an atomic force microscope as a more sensitive sensor, scientists have used a new “scanning quantum dot microscopy” method to image electric potential fields of electron shells of single molecules and even atoms with high precision for the first time, providing contact-free information on the distribution of charges. The breakthrough technique is relevant for diverse scientific fields including investigations into biomolecules and semiconductor materials.
Apple Watch a dud so far
other than 2 anxious people in brooklyn, i’ve seen no one in the streets with the device. one of them mansplained to someone that the iphone 6 has a new connector with a weird name.
Balzac After 50 Coffees
No. 1: Ah! What a great way to start my day, by drinking a cup of delicious hot coffee.
No. 47: Finally, there’s the mind—the greatest prisoner of all! This is because the skull that surrounds the mind is very hard.
No. 48: It now occurs to me that this isn’t a very good idea. I should maybe wait until I have consumed 50 cups before I start having ideas.
No. 49: One day I will figure out who makes all this coffee for me
Woman in Uniform
Miss? Miss?” He doesn’t sound particularly confrontational and I give him my best blank smile, hoping he has some kind of mundane procedural question.
“I don’t mean to like bother you or anything, but if you’re not busy, and a beautiful lady such as yourself is probably busy, but if you’re not busy I’d love to buy you a cup of coffee.”
Now I have to grin. This is my new favorite person in the world. What chutzpah! I’m so delighted by this guy that I almost chuck him on the shoulder. Then it hits me. He doesn’t recognize me, at all. He has no idea that I’m the person who arrested him 2 nights before.
US Justice System is a joke
having spent time as a juror, the US justice system is indeed a joke. no one is laughing:
there are disturbing indications that a non-trivial number of prosecutors—and sometimes entire prosecutorial offices— engage in misconduct that seriously undermines the fairness of criminal trials. The misconduct ranges from misleading the jury, to outright lying in court and tacitly acquiescing or actively participating in the presentation of false evidence by police.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 