Gentle readers,

After noticing that my blog has become little more than a repository of recycled links, I have decided to go in a new direction. Rather then just re-post the same news everyone else is, I am going to take fewer stories, and go further in depth with them. I will be reading arXiv papers, and newsgroups, and reporting on what I find, as well as my analysis thereof.

This means that my posting frequency will drop, and posting will be sporadic. On the other hand, the posts will be of higher quality, and original material. I am also going to try and cut down on the number of ads served, and instead try and concentrate on the quality of my writing.

Until next time,

Gordon

A LiveScience article recently posted talks about the way fruit flies hook up.

In their case, “hooking up” really means hooking up. The male fruit fly has spikes that cover their genitals that help them hook on to unwilling female fruit fly partners during the copulatory act.

To see what the spikes are used for, researchers ablated them on virgin fruit flies, then introduced the hobbled males into nests of females. When the males tried to hook up with unwilling females, they essentially slid off the (bucking) women, unable to maintain a hold. However, when they hooked up with willing partners, they were able to engage in sex, and keep on their partners; in addition, their insemination rates were comparable to their non-hobbled counterparts.

Further studies are planned.

From The Beeb comes a story about the discovery that Neanderthals were capable of symbolic thinking. Although I think that it was known beforehand that they were capable of such higher order thinking, as well as having a language, culture, complex tools, and great manly strength.

The discovery in southern Spain was of Neanderthal makeup kits, with foundation, metallic makeups, and dark pigments inside of shells that doubled as jewelery. This makeup was dated to ten millennium before Homo Sapiens had first contact with Homo Neanderthalis, thus dispelling the notion that Neanderthals were stupid, brutish peoples. With makeup, they were able to make themselves look different, as well as use it for decoration, much as modern humans do today.

This absolutely stunning photo of the U.K. taken by NASA demonstrates the effects of global warming.

One of the most impressive effects from global warming is that weather becomes more extreme, with colder winters and hotter, drier summers. With so much of the world in a cold snap, this is an excellent example of extreme weather manifesting itself. As a complex nonlinear system, small nudges in initial conditions can cause huge changes in outputs, in this case, temperatures.

For a simple, non-mathematical introduction, feel free to check out the Wikipedia articles on Chaos theory, and the Butterfly effect. One should note that Chaos theory (the article) mainly describes deterministic chaos theory, and although there are deterministic parts to the Earth’s environment, there are also non-deterministic components that throw a monkey wrench into calculations into the Earth’s future.

Despite the non-deterministic components, enough is understood about the mathematics of chaos and the climate to make qualitative predictions about the future and evolution of earth, and its climate.

Happy New Year, and a Happy Binary Day to ye!

For those of you weird people whom write the year as the truncated last two digits of the year, today 01 January 10 makes the first binary day of the year.

In American (mm/dd/yy) usage, the date is 01/01/10, whereas in the modern European (dd/mm/yy) usage, it is a more logical 01/01/10. However, if you want database inter-compatibility, you have to use the yy/mm/dd format, leading to 10/01/01. (Full year format, is of course, the non-binary 2010/01/01.)

There are nine binary days this year, with them being (in American style):

• 01 01 10
• 01 10 10
• 01 11 10
• 10 01 10
• 10 10 10
• 10 11 10
• 11 01 10
• 11 10 10
• 11 11 10

and next year yields nine more

• 01 01 11
• 01 10 11
• 01 11 11
• 10 01 11
• 10 10 11
• 10 11 11
• 11 01 11
• 11 10 11
• 11 11 11

Tomorrow is, of course 2010 01 02, a palindrome. Hopefully, more on that tomorrow.

Since the end of the year is upon us, I wish to follow the trend, and present a top ten list. So, I prepared two lists, a primary list, and a backup list.

Here is my list of 2009’s top ten months:

1. January
2. Febuary
3. March
4. May
5. June
6. July
7. September
8. October
9. November
10. December

For fun, I also have a list of my top ten favorite particles

11. electron
12. proton
13. neutron
14. positron
15. strange quark
16. muon
17. charm quark

And of course, an emergency backup list. Every engineer plans for the worst, and has an emergency plan in place.

My top ten favorite virii of 2009

1. .
2. .
3. .
4. .
5. .
6. .
7. .
8. .
9. .
10. .

Boo on virii. Get a computer antivirus scan posthaste!

This is just a reminder that you should end your year right, and give your computer an update and cleaning.

Use your OS’s update function to update all your drivers, as well as patch any security holes that have popped up.

If you have a wireless network at your home, be sure to upgrade the router’s firmware, plus give both the router, and your network strong security keys.

Firefox is your friend. Firefox, plus AdBlock and NoScript should protect you from 99% of the threats out there.

Ad-Aware in a great program to find malware on your machine. For example, if you get pop-ups from this site (aitj-co), then you have malware.

And be sure to run several online anti-virus scans to detect virii, trojans, and backdoors on your computer.

Have a safe, and fun holiday season.

I found this study, done in Germany, that shows that women really are worse in spacial coordination than men. It found that they were not only worse at parallel parking, but reversing, as well as parking in a space where turning into the space was required.

Interestingly, insurance companies have found that women also cause more accidents while driving, but that men do more damage per accident.

A while ago I wrote about some German hobbyists whom constructed a DIY train. While I have not heard any more on that case, it appears DIY trains is something of a common event.

Wikipedia has an article on Cambodian bamboo trains called Norries. These lightweight trains are escentially bamboo platforms on top of a steel frame, propelled by a small engine, and carrying anything that can fit. The trains are compact, and cheap to produce and repair. Being light, they can easily move over poor sections of track, and can even be dismantled to be transported over destroyed sections of track.

With speeds up to 40 to 50 km/h, they can transport goods rapidly, although their lack of brakes, or safety features means that the rides can be quite an experience. I would love to try one out one day, just to see what it is like.

One has to wonder, which is better, Bacon or Google?

Bacon is the perfect food. It can nourish all, and it is tasty any time.

Google is world’s best search engine. A massive amount of the world’s information can be found by a few clicks on the computer, through a simple to use interface.

So, which is better? You tell me.