National Arboretum

This past May, Ligia and I visited the National Arboretum here in DC. We try to go there at least once a year. The grounds are huge, and they have both outdoors and indoors facilities. Admission is free, and the grounds are open from 8 AM to 5 PM daily, every day of the year [...]

Condensed knowledge for 2008-03-12

Stocks Rocket on Fed Rescue Plan http://tinyurl.com/yvhcfb #
The IPv6 experience: Are you experienced yet? http://tinyurl.com/38nddr #
JPEG v. RAW - TWIP http://tinyurl.com/yvv4qq #
Green light for Northrop Grumman Airborne Laser Mine Detection System http://tinyurl.com/2k6kdq #
Researchers develop smell based fire alarm to aid the deaf http://tinyurl.com/2jpnzx #
Funny Animals, Part 10 http://tinyurl.com/32rfrd #
EXIF and Beyond: Mastering Digital Panoramic Photography [...]

How things have changed for the worse…

Remember when “school shooters” used to refer to games of cowboys and indians? You probably won’t, not unless you’re over a certain age. Here, this will remind you:

This is a photo taken by a photographer named Arthur Rothstein, at the FSA camp elementary school in Weslaco, TX, back in 1942. Shorpy, everyone’s favorite 100-year-old photo [...]

Cool science videos

The Japanese have come up with a swimming snake robot:

Ronald Mallett is a university professor and a physicist. He believes time travel is possible, has a theory about how it can be done, and is working on a time machine:

The first dynamically-balanced robot, Dexter, learns to walk:

Here’s another robot, called Murata Boy, that can ride [...]

Cool science videos

I like to see scientific principles at work in everyday activities. Here are a few videos that illustrate this. Enjoy the weekend!
Galileo postulated that objects fall at the same speed in a vacuum, regardless of their weight. When we got to the moon, they did this experiment on live TV:

Here’s a bar trick that involves [...]

Cool science videos

Here’s what happens when Alka-Seltzer gets added to a water drop in space:

Want to see an aluminum foil ship float on “nothing”? (It’s not quite nothing, but it’s still pretty cool.)

Asimo, the robot made by Honda, ran at the 2007 CES:

The blind learn to see with their tongue:

Boeing conducted a 777 ultimate wing load test:

Here’s [...]

How many of my photos were stolen?

For the moment, this is a rhetorical question. I’ve been re-thinking the way I publish my photos online in view of the recent and very prominent theft of Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir’s photos from Flickr. Call me naive, but I really believed, and still would like to believe, that people will wish to stay legal and pay [...]

Michael J. Fox campaigns for stem cell research

Michael J. Fox appeared in some TV ads recently, to support stem cell research for Parkinson’s disease. The ads showed him moving uncontrollably, due to Parkinson’s. They were candid, and truthful. I’ve always liked Michael as an actor, and I thought he’s been a real gentleman throughout his ordeal with Parkinson’s. I agree with him, [...]

Google knocks the wind out of clickfraud reports

After the much-publicized reports from various companies regarding Google’s high rate of clickfraud, Googlers set down to work and started digging into the report data. What they found was surprising, and the results are published on the Google the Inside AdWords Blogs. A detailed PDF Report was also made available.
What it boils down to is [...]

To buy or not to buy an Apple

Updated 3/7/08: My opinion has changed quite a bit since I wrote this post. I am now going to get a 15″ MacBook Pro after working on a Windows laptop for the past two years. Feel free to read this further though, because it shows how far things have come since then.
I’ve been [...]

X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (XSCID) may soon be curable

In a lucky twist of fate, experiments on basset hounds with “bubble boy” disease, or XSCID, have been successful in giving them healthy immune systems, even a year after the treatment. This new method consists of injecting a corrected gene via an engineered virus into the bloodstream of the patient - in this case, basset [...]

What color car should you buy?

Researchers at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, have conducted a study and determined that silver is the most visible color, making it the safest choice. Earth tones such as green, brown and black are less noticeable on the roadways. Source: Summer 2006 edition of the USAA Magazine.