The Science of Superheroes - X-Men

BBC Science has an interesting article on The Science of Superheroes. I've included some of the article below, but there's much more on other superheroes like Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, and Daredevil.

Levitation
We're all used to the idea of magnetism. Iron and steel are magnetic, and are attracted to either the north or south poles of a magnet. You can also use electromagnets to make levitating trains (called 'Maglev') that float over the rails. These are much easier to move forward than a conventional train that loses a lot of energy as friction between the rails and wheels.
The Maglev trains and rails are fitted with electromagnets that generate two opposing magnetic fields. Just as two north poles cannot be pushed together, the opposing magnetic fields keep the trains a few centimeters above the track.

Floating frogs
Most materials are 'diamagnetic', meaning that they are always repelled by either of the magnetic poles. Water is slightly diamagnetic so it's also repelled by strong magnetic fields.

Since animals are mostly water, scientists have found that if they use a strong enough magnetic field, they could levitate a live frog – and it doesn't hurt the frog at all.

The Museum of Hoaxes - From the TGIF Newsletter

A guy at work has a TGIF mailer he sends out every week. I'm not sure where he finds all this info, but I'm afraid to ask. One of his links lead to The Museum of Hoaxes. Go take their quiz and see how you do at telling real photos from fake ones.

The Museum of Hoaxes - Since Nov, 2002 the Museum of Hoaxes has existed both in virtual form (this website) and in ink-and-paper form (as a book). What's the difference between the two? For the book I took all the best stuff from the website, polished it up, and added many more hoaxes that I'd purposefully been keeping up my sleeve. I designed the book to be a definitive guide to the most amusing, outrageous, and bizarre hoaxes ever perpetrated. The website, by contrast, now serves as the repository for all the overflow that didn't fit in the book. So if you like the site, definitely try out the book. It's easier on the eyes than a computer screen, you can keep it forever, and you can read it anywhere (on the bus, at the beach, or even in the bathroom).

NASA - Aurora From Space

If you haven't seen NASA.gov yet and enjoy space and space travel I suggest a visit. One of my many dreams is to be the first Geographer in space. No seriously. In any event the I-Max film out now on the International Space Center is amazing. At one point you get to fly right over the Earth looking out a window. Let me tell you it's a real mind blower to see the Earth moving under you as you look down on it.

What do auroras look like from space? From the ground, auroras dance high above clouds, frequently causing spectacular displays. The International Space Station (ISS) orbits just at the same height as many auroras, though. Therefore, sometimes it flies over them, but also sometimes it flies right through. The auroral electron and proton streams are too thin to be a danger to the ISS, just as clouds pose little danger to airplanes. ISS Science Officer Don Pettit captured a green aurora, pictured above in a digitally sharpened image. From orbit, Dr. Pettit reports, changing auroras can appear to crawl around like giant green amoebas. Far below, on planet Earth, the Manicouagan Impact Crater can be seen in northern Canada. Credit: Don Pettit, ISS Expedition 6, NASA.

You can find the above picture and text here.

Which X-Men character are you

So I all of a sudden found all these who or what would you be check box quizzes. I don't normally look for these things, but I guess its just my web karma. BTW Beast is kinda kewl too bad he wasn't in X2, but maybe the next one as Dr. Henry McCoy was on the TV being interviewed.

You are Beast!

You are brilliant and extremely clever. You can handle almost any problem swiftly and efficiently. You are devoted to philosophy and are always up for a good discussion. Sometimes, though, your anger gets the best of you and you upset those whom you care about.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

Matrix Essays

If your into The Matrix, then you have to read the latest article on the Matrix Essays. It answers a lot of thing I knew where there. Like what book did Neo use for storing his disk, and how was that book tied to the story behind the story.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/ has some videos of Mercury passing in front of the Sun. Go check it out, it truly is wondrous.

About the SOHO Mission
The SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) project is being carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a cooperative effort between the two agencies in the framework of the Solar Terrestrial Science Program (STSP) comprising SOHO and CLUSTER, and the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP), with Geotail (ISAS-Japan), Wind, and Polar.

SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995. The SOHO spacecraft was built in Europe by an industry team led by Matra, and instruments were provided by European and American scientists. There are nine European Principal Investigators (PI's) and three American ones. Large engineering teams and more than 200 co-investigators from many institutions supported the PI's in the development of the instruments and in the preparation of their operations and data analysis. NASA was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world which form NASA's Deep Space Network are used to track the spacecraft beyond the Earth's orbit. Mission control is based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Techdirt.com

If you want a lot of tech news take a look at Techdirt.com Here's a snippet from the most recent article:
Despite consumer backlash, software companies are pushing ahead with plans to use product activation to ensure that (gasp!) no one dares try to install their software on a second computer. This is pretty shortsighted. Sure, large-scale software piracy may present a problem, but those folks are going to figure out a way around product activation before these products even hit the shelves. The only people it's really going to impact are innocent users who aren't doing anything wrong. Making life more difficult for your customers doesn't help anyone.

Gates: Secure Technology to Benefit Users

Humm we'll have to see what happens with this new technology Microsoft is now pushing. My only thoughts are we the consumers will end up getting it in the end. I can see it now, YOU NEED TO HAVE SECURE SPACE ENABLED TO ACCESS THIS PRODUCT. Turns out when you do enable it you can no long post, copy, share or even archive whatever it is you thought was worth YOUR time viewing/listening to.

The technology, formerly code-named Palladium, will create what amounts to a secure computer within a computer. Certain areas of memory, the processor and even the channels to the display, keyboard and networks are locked down and accessible only by trusted software.
You can find the rest of the story here.

Customize the Places Bar in MS Office 2000

SUPER fast COMPUTER had this tip. If you are running Office 2000 you might want to give it a look and customize your own Places Bar.

What kind of mage are you

I find a ton of stuff like this. Not sure why, but I kinda like seeing what a bunch of check boxes say about me.




find your element at mutedfaith.com. <º>

I took the test and am proud to say I got to level 8. Maaaaahahahahahaha ..

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Eigth Level of Hell - the Malebolge!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Moderate
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

What About Good Viruses?

I was reading a bit and came upon and interesting topic. Is there such a thing as a good virus. Could these good virus's say live on our harddrives and protect the web for us. I did quick Google search and found a few great links and this little tid-bit.

What about a good virus? - The general consensus is that there are none.

By definition, viruses do not have to do something bad. An early (and current) virus researcher, Fred Cohen, has argued that good computer viruses are a serious possibility. In fact, he has offered a reward of $1,000 for the first clearly useful virus; but, he hasn't paid yet.
Most researchers, however, take the other side and argue that the use of self-replicating programs are never necessary; the task that needs to be performed can just as easily be done without the replication function.
Vesselin Bontchev has written a paper originally delivered at the 1994 EICAR conference, titled Are "Good" Computer Viruses Still a Bad Idea?. The paper covers all aspects of the topic. As of this writing, the paper is available at:
ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/pub/virus/texts/viruses/goodvir.zip

More links:
Virus Tutorial on cknow.com
College of the Atlantic:Computer Services

Dilbert just kills me

I read Dilbert almost every day and man does this guy have his finger on the pluse of office workers.

Xiao Xiao Movies

This site is just to kewl. He really knows flash and I really dig the Matrix like fighting. I just wish there was more movies to look at.

I just can't figure it out

The code below was taken from a site I was visiting. I'm not going to say what site, because I don't want to start a web war or something like that, but why disable highlighting the text on a page. It's not like this code works in older browsers, in Opera, or prevent you from just viewing the source. Humm sometimes I think people just put stuff in their web pages to look pimp. Only thing is it makes them look stupid.

<script language="JavaScript1.2">
<
!--
//Disable select-text script (IE4+, NS6+)- By Andy Scott
//Exclusive permission granted to Dynamic Drive to feature script
//Visit http://www.dynamicdrive.com for this script
function disableselect(e){
return false
}
function reEnable(){
return true
}
//if IE4+
document.onselectstart=new Function ("return false")
//if NS6
if (window.sidebar){
document.onmousedown=disableselect
document.onclick=reEnable
}
// -->
</script>

Down-and-Out in Download Land from On the Media

If your ever up at 6 am on Sunday in Southern California you have the change to listen to On the Media. This morning they had a lot of great stories, but the one I know most ppl will be interested in is on file sharing. Below is a snippet, but you can listen to the whole story yourself if you like.

On the Media Would-be down-loaders of music files are now being greeted with messages that they are violating copyright laws. It's the latest tactic in the record industry's campaign against file-sharing. And it comes amidst a changing legal landscape. New York Times reporter Amy Harmon talks with Bob about a recent case in which college students were sued by the Recording Industry Association of America for running on-campus file swapping services.

Arctic Wildlife Photo Exhibit

I'm an avid listener to NPR and I wake up listening to it every morning. This morning on Weekend Edition Sunday morning I was shocked to hear a story about how one Senator used his elected power to much imho. After a vote on the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge didn't go the way of one Alaskan Senator, an exhibit that was set to go on display in the Smithsonian was moved from the main floor to what is called "the basement". Along with this a lot of the captions were removed or replaced below this photographer's pictures, because they were too pro environmental. I going to mail my elected official and I would ask anyone else who thinks our environmental is worth saving do the same.

Here's a copy of the story run on NPR. When they update the full version I'll edit it in here as a better reference.
Weekend Edition - Sunday for Sunday, May 4, 2003 A major photographic exhibit of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on display at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., has become a center of controversy. Some question whether political pressure forced the Smithsonian to alter the exhibit and move it to a less prominent area of the museum. Host Liane Hansen talks to New York Times reporter Timothy Egan.