July 2009
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Electrons split || Science Daily →
A team of physicists from the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham have shown that electrons in narrow wires can divide into two new particles called spinons and a holons.
The electron is a fundamental building block of nature and is indivisible in isolation, yet a new experiment has shown that electrons, if crowded into narrow wires, are seen to split apart.
They split electrons. I am...
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How to reassemble a shredded document || Slate →
How do you reconstruct documents after they’ve been passed through a shredder?
With a computer. In a typical reconstruction process, technicians feed all the available shreds into a scanner. An automated software program then assigns a unique ID to each piece and analyzes a number of characteristics, including size, color, indentation, and font. Using a matching algorithm, the software...
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Shade and Honey — Sparklehorse
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The Cocktail Renaissance || The Weekly Standard →
In the cocktail world, the phrase “roll your own” is indelibly associated with David Embury, whose Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948, revised 1952 and 1958) remains the single best book on the subject. Embury (1886-1960) was a successful New York tax attorney, who, according to his daughter Ruth, excelled “at everything he did. Besides being a lawyer and cocktail aficionado, he was...
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In Battle, Hunches Prove to Be Valuable || New... →
The United States military has spent billions on hardware, like signal jamming technology, to detect and destroy what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, the roadside bombs that have proved to be the greatest threat in Iraq and now in Afghanistan, where Sergeant Tierney is training soldiers to foil bomb attacks.
Still, high-tech gear, while helping to reduce casualties,...
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UFO IN OUR BAFFLES, COMRADE CAPTAIN! Defense Tech →
[T]he Russian Navy has released records of its warships and subs that — officially speaking — had close encounters with UFOs. It seems that alien visitors from advanced civilizations really like the water!
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More than one retired U.S. Navy submariner has told me in private of a possible additional reason why Germany, and then the USSR, became so interested in exotic phenomena...
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Symphony No. 9 in D Major,Presto-Allegro assai...
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An Elusive Musical Gift Could Be at Children's... →
If you could give your child the gift of perfect pitch — the ability to identify a note simply by hearing it — would you? The few who are born with perfect pitch say notes have a concrete identity and presence, almost like colors, and being able to intuitively recognize them gives music an almost three-dimensional quality.
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It is widely accepted that you cannot learn perfect...
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Good Girls Go Bad — Cobra Starship with...
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¿Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl) — Green Day
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The psychology of overconfidence || The New... →
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanations for why so many banks made such disastrous decisions. The first is structural. Regulators did not regulate. Institutions failed to function as they should. Rules and guidelines were either inadequate or ignored. The second explanation is that Wall Street was incompetent, that the traders and investors didn’t...
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Mysterious Smash on Jupiter Leaves an Earth-Sized... →
Jupiter is sporting a new, Earth-sized scar near its south pole, and NASA has confirmed that the gas giant was thumped by a massive impact over the past few days. The discovery was made Sunday night by a Australian computer programmer who uses his spare time to stargaze with his backyard telescope, and today NASA declared that the dark spot is definitely not a weather system, and is indeed...
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The Neuroscience of McGriddles || The Frontal... →
Let’s imagine, for instance, that some genius invented a reduced calorie bacon product that tasted exactly like bacon, except it had 50 percent fewer calories. It would obviously be a great day for civilization. But this research suggests that such a pseudo-bacon product, even though it tasted identical to real bacon, would actually give us much less pleasure. Why? Because it made us less...
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WatchRiley sings “Don’t Stop Believing” and is too adorable for words.
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July 17, 1902: An Invention to Beat the Heat,... →
Willis Haviland Carrier, recently graduated from Cornell University and pulling down 10 bucks a week (about $260 in cold cash today) working for the Buffalo Forge heating company in upstate New York. He was tasked with finding a solution for a printing company in Brooklyn that was having problems: Its paper was expanding or contracting in the variable East Coast humidity. That played havoc with...
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So What — Pink
I have tickets to see her...
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Welcome "Copernicium," Our Newest Element ||... →
Element 112 is the heaviest element in the periodic table, 277 times heavier than hydrogen.
[S]cientists said they wanted to honor the scientist who paved the way for our view of the modern world by discovering that the Earth orbits the Sun. Our solar system is a model for other physical systems, such as the structure of an atom, where electrons orbit the atomic nucleus.
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Cathedrals — Jump, Little Children
This is...
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Roger Federer Unbuttoned || New York Times →
The case that Federer, 27, is not the greatest player of all time has become untenable.
It’s not merely Federer’s five U.S. Opens, three Australians, one French and six Wimbledons — a record of 15 Grand Slam singles titles, one better now, as the world knows, than Pete Sampras. It’s not just his 21 consecutive Grand Slam semifinals. It’s not only his relentless consistency, uncanny timing,...
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Peeps Are Hopping to Their Own Store at National... →
Peeps have accomplished the improbable since they were introduced half a century ago. Those pastel marshmallow chicks and bunnies have participated in university science experiments, survived battles with high-powered microwaves and inspired avant-garde art.
So why wouldn’t they dare to open their own store, taking on the tough world of retail right in the heart of a recession?
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London Bridges — This Is Ivy League
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"That Was Way Too Close!" || Slate →
Wonderfully absurd escapes from mortal danger in the original G.I. Joe cartoon.
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Bobek, once a skating star, allegedly key player... →
Chicagoan Nicole Bobek was one of the most gifted — and troubled — U.S. figure skaters of the past 20 years.
Now, at age 31, she may have hit bottom.
Monday, a New Jersey prosecutor said Bobek had played a “significant role” in a drug ring that was allegedly involved in the distribution of methamphetamine. According to nj.com, the website of the Jersey Journal...
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Robert S. McNamara, 1916-2009 →
Before taking office as secretary of defense in 1961, McNamara was president of Ford Motor Co. For 13 years after he left the Pentagon in 1968, he was president of the World Bank. He was a brilliant student, a compulsive worker and a skillful planner and organizer whose manifest talents carried him from modest circumstances in California to the highest levels of the Washington power structure....
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WatchClaude Lelouch’s Rendezvous…
“On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris. No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.”
