While I'm trying to jump start my brain, here's some cool stuff I found around the internets:
- A video that, once seen, cannot be unseen. You have been warned.
- Science can be really cool when you think about it.
- John M. Browning, economist.
In New Hampshire, Republicans will vote on the date of Thomas Paine's publication of "Common Sense." They will choose Mitt Romney, proving that Paine's literary effort ultimately came to nought.
I blame all the Massholes and Vermont Hippies for the Contamination, myself.
ReplyDelete"In New Hampshire, Republicans will vote on the date of Thomas Paine's publication of "Common Sense." They will choose Mitt Romney, ..."
ReplyDeleteI read that as they were going to choose the official date of publication, kind of like assigning by law a value of 3 to pi, but this time the date would be Mitt, which doesn't make any sense, but neither did the first part, so, situation normal.
Today is Dennis Ritchie Day, according to Tim O'Reilly. Dennis Ritchie who basically invented modern computing with the "C" language and Unix, passed away last week.
ReplyDeleteThe science thing is really neat but sometimes it's astonishing just what our ancestors were able to do with what they had.
ReplyDeleteJohn C. Fremont's second expedition into California found him and his party snowbound, frostbitten, starving and lost, with one working chronometer that had been allowed to stop.
This was a critical error. Navigation of the day required accurate time for astronomical observations. It's relatively easy to know where one is north/south without knowing time using the stars, but next to impossible to know one's position east/west without a way of knowing exactly when a star or planet was supposed to be where it was.
One cold but clear night Fremont observed the occultation of a certain moon of Jupiter - a phenomenon whose exact time was calculated. From this, he was able to make a correction to his own timepiece, now wound and running, and from this begin to calculate where he was using the usual methods and allowing for the correction on his chronometer. One of his party had to have a foot amputated when they finally made it back to civilization but all survived the ordeal.
Still, figuring out the size and nature of a planet from an occultation is pretty cool.
gvi
I hope you enjoyed that video as much as I did. (and still do).
ReplyDelete