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katlalog
061223 20:21 Snow
Oh, it's just heart-breaking. I just heard on Minnesota Public Radio that the Annual Snow Angel Record Event will probably not take place because there still isn't any snow yet.
No snow here yet either although that's not unusual. At least it's frosty. Frosty and sunny, best winter weather. Though no snow :(
061214 18:09 SciFi
The show was cancelled years ago after only 14 episodes but the Firefly community is still going strong.
061213 14:30 Environment
New Scientist article from October: Imagine earth without people
If tomorrow dawns without humans, even from orbit the change will be evident almost immediately, as the blaze of artificial light that brightens the night begins to wink out. [...] By some estimates, 85 per cent of the night sky above the European Union is light-polluted; in the US it is 62 per cent and in Japan 98.5 per cent. In some countries, including Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, there is no longer any night sky untainted by light pollution. [...]
Other causes of species becoming endangered may be harder to reverse than habitat loss. For example, about half of all endangered species are in trouble at least partly because of predation or competition from invasive introduced species. Some of these introduced species - house sparrows, for example, which are native to Eurasia but now dominate many cities in North America - will dwindle away once the gardens and bird feeders of suburban civilisation vanish. Others though, such as rabbits in Australia and cheat grass in the American west, do not need human help and will likely be around for the long haul and continue to edge out imperilled native species. [...]
"There will be CO2 left in the atmosphere, continuing to influence the climate, more than 1000 years after humans stop emitting it..." [...]
Finally a brief, century-long pulse of radio waves will forever radiate out across the galaxy and beyond, proof - for anything that cares and is able to listen - that we once had something to say and a way to say it.
061213 12:59 Multimedia
Latest version of the free and open-source VLC media player is available.
061213 12:50 Language
Merriam-Webster's website visitors have chosen their Word of the Year 2006 and it is truthiness, a word invented by Stephen Colbert.
1. truthiness (noun)
1 : "truth that comes from the gut, not books" (Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," October 2005)
2 : "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true" (American Dialect Society, January 2006)
061213 12:47 Culture
Excellent episode of Culture Shock on BBC World Service (episode of Monday 11/12/06) about Google Earth being used to look behind the walls of the rich, the new modesty in fashion in America and about a Hobbiton community being set up.
061208 23:32 Browsers
A third of Germans use Firefox.
061208 13:28 Psychology
Virtual reality creates false memories.
It seems that virtual experiences can trick the brain into making things up. [...]
Could this be a significant problem in future? Perhaps Schlosser should do some experiments in Second Life, to see if users come away with false memories concerning the people they've met and what they've done? What might that mean for the ever-growing Second Life economy? And what could the false memory effect mean for soldiers and other people increasingly trained in VR environments?
I might be going a step too far here, but does that mean that one day, when you're old, telling stories about your adventures to your grandchildren, you won't be able to distinguish real life experiences from the memories of those made in games and cyberspace? I like that thought.
061204 14:39 Anthropology
Startling Discovery: The First Human Ritual
A startling discovery of 70,000-year-old artifacts and a python's head carved of stone appears to represent the first known human rituals.
Scientists had thought human intelligence had not evolved the capacity to perform group rituals until perhaps 40,000 years ago.
But inside a cave in remote hills in Kalahari Desert of Botswana, archeologists found the stone snake [image] that was carved long ago. It is as tall as a man and 20 feet long.
"You could see the mouth and eyes of the snake. It looked like a real python," said Sheila Coulson of the University of Oslo. "The play of sunlight over the indentations gave them the appearance of snake skin. At night, the firelight gave one the feeling that the snake was actually moving."
061204 14:16 Internet
Damn. I shouldn't have left that town. Manchester plans free city wi-fi.
061201 16:58 Comics
quote of the month
To be clever enough to get a great deal of money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G.K. Chesterton (nicked here)