4.5 Degrees

4.5 Degrees from xkcd.com

-- From http://xkcd.com

cvining
Commentary
Asteroid's hit earth regularly

From the B612 Foundation:

Between 2000 and 2013, a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons – all caused not by nuclear explosions, but rather by asteroid impacts. These findings were recently released from the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which operates the network.

To put this data in perspective, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945 exploded with an energy impact of 15 kilotons. While most of these asteroids exploded too high in the atmosphere to do serious damage on the ground, the evidence is important in estimating the frequency of a potential “city-killer-size” asteroid.

A list of the impacts shown in the video can be found here.

Very likely, the video will have more impact:

cvining
Commentary
Hank's Way

This morning there came a knock at my door.  Upon answering, I found a well-groomed, nicely dressed couple.  The man spoke first:

cvining
Commentary
I think I can, I think I can

Here's an idea. Use electric trains to pull very heavy loads uphill during periods of low electricity use. Then, when you need it, let gravity pull the mass back downhill generating electricity. Will it scale to the power levels actually needed? I dunno, but it's an interesting (and apparently old) idea.

Read about it in the March 25, 2014 issue of Scientific American.

cvining
Commentary

The Morals of Chess by Ben Franklin

Submitted by cvining on

The Morals of Chess
by Benjamin Franklin
originally appeared in The Columbian Magazine in December 1786​

 

See the Wikipedia article for image credits

 

The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess, then, we may learn:

1st: Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action, for it is continually occurring to the player, “If I move this Piece, what will be the advantage or disadvantage of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks?”

2nd: Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action, the relation of the several Pieces, their situations, and the dangers they are repeatedly exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or that Piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.

Commentary
The Original Website

The very first website ever was created at CERN in 1989. Here is their official recreation of that original site:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

and, for the record, a CNN article about the website

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/tech/web/first-website-cern

cvining
Commentary
The Bigfoot Prize

Everyone talks about Bigfoot, but nobody ever does anything about them. Until now.

The Olympia Beer, the brewing company is offering a very generous $1,000,000 for "irrefutable evidence" for the existence of Bigfoot. They've set the bar pretty high. You need DNA and visual proof of a live physical body. Basically hair and a photo.

I'll post again if I hear about an award being made. Here's the full story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/olympia-beer-bigfoot-idUSnPnS…

cvining
Commentary