The ring in her mouth of joyous guard, stars astir
Many a beer drinker will have puzzled over the following: why, when a can of beer is opened, do carbon dioxide bubbles form so slowly. Why not all at once?
The study of bubble formation in carbonated drinks is a relatively new science. In fact, it is only ten years since scientists settled this matter. One group calculated from first principles the rate at which carbon dioxide leaks from solution into a bubble. The answer is slowly. What’s more, it cannot start without some sort of nucleation site.
Then, another group discovered that the primary sources of nucleation are pockets of gas trapped in cellulose fibres in the drink. The news was greeted by the sound of clinking glasses the world over. Problem solved?
Not quite. While most beers and lagers are pressurised with carbon dioxide, some stouts, dark beers such as Guinness, are pressurised by a mixture of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.
They do this because nitrogen forms smaller bubbles giving the drink a smoother, creamier mouth feel. But it also changes the bubble dynamics significantly. The question is why.
gelatin silver print { Alison Rossiter }
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement
In this article we provide a number of reasons for thinking that it is both wrong and unwise to procreate.
Humans are the most destructive creatures on the planet. We cause vast numbers of animal deaths (both directly and indirectly). We destroy habitats. We damage the environment. We are currently heating up the world’s climate in a way that is likely to be detrimental to countless numbers of animals (ourselves included). And we have the means, nuclear weapons, to destroy everything at the push of a button. (…)
The best way to stop the destruction is to remove the destructive force; to remove humans by refraining from procreation. In short, the colossal amount of harm caused by humans gives us a moral reason to boycott the human species. (…)
To procreate is to take an unjustifiable gamble that future generations will behave responsibly (more responsibly than us).
{ Gerald Harrison and Julia Tanner/Cambridge Journal | Continue reading }
related { Having children helped my depression }
You are tremblotting, you retchad, like a verry jerry! Niet?
{ We’re in Siberia, shivering. It’s November, November 11, 2003, and two boys, Kolya and Maksim Muravyev, are ice fishing along the Lena River, where it’s 13 below zero. All of a sudden, up in the sky, they see what looks like a flamingo. | NPR | Continue reading }
4 for the blithehaired daughter of Angoisse
It should be so easy: Buy toothpaste. But few shopping trips are more bewildering.
An explosion of specialized pastes and gels brag about their powers to whiten teeth, reduce plaque, curb sensitivity and fight gingivitis, sometimes all at the same time. Add in all the flavors and sizes, plus ever-rising prices, and the simple errand turns into sensory overload.
Manufacturers acknowledge the problem and are putting the brakes on new-product introductions. Last year, 69 new toothpastes hit store shelves, down from 102 in 2007. (…)
Stores are trying to simplify, too. Last month, 352 distinct types or sizes of toothpaste were sold at retail, down from 412 in March 2008. (…)
With some 93% of U.S. adults using toothpaste, according to Mintel, there’s little room to recruit new users.
Even through the recession, when unit sales of toothpaste actually dipped, prices kept rising. The average price of toothpaste last year reached $2.83, up 8% over the past four years.
‘History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon.’ –Napoleon Bonaparte
We modify our own opinions in line with what other people think, especially our friends and peers.
A problem for psychologists investigating the effect of peer influence is that it can be tricky to tell whether people are simply acquiescing in public, for show, or if their attitudes really have changed.
A new study by a team of psychologists at Harvard University has used an innovative mix of behavioural and brain-scan methods to show that peer influence really can change how people value something, in this case the attractiveness of a face.
photos { William Klein, Man Foreground, Woman Behind, 1955 | Right: Man Ray, Self-Portrait with Meret Oppenheim, 1933 }
The only way to have a friend is to be one
{ Our results show that dog and cat owners use these sites quite differently. While dog owners focus on their relationship with their pets and looking for advice, cat owners tend to use the site more to build community. Both results show that these pet social networks are already being used to help support the human–animal bond online. | First Monday | full story }
‘Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.’ –Oscar Wilde
Among the findings of a sweeping federal government survey of American sexual behavior is one that may surprise those bewailing a permissive and eros-soaked popular culture: More than one-quarter of people interviewed in their late teens and early 20s had never had sex. (…)
The uptick in abstinence is one of many revealing facts arising from structured interviews with a random sample of 13,495 Americans, ages 15 to 44, that were done from 2006 to 2008. The findings provide evidence for almost every theory and supposition about the nation’s secret sex life.
The survey results, released Thursday, suggest that oral sex may be a gateway to vaginal sex but that for some teens it is a stopping point. Most adults are monogamous. About 4 in 10 adults have had anal sex. Women are more likely than men to have same-sex liaisons. Or at least are more comfortable talking about them.
photo { Saul Leiter, Lanesville, 1958 }
And let all the tondo gang bola
{ Dan Deacon on NBC morning | Thanks Brad! }
Like a Finn at a fair. Now for la belle.
{ via Alex via Tim }
‘If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough.’ –Mario Andretti
“The dinner went well. The guest of honor didn’t sneeze. We were lucky.”
This comment was heard after a dinner at the U.S. State Department, where senior administration officials hosted a dinner for a delegation beginning a week of high-level meetings. The guest that didn’t sneeze was the senior person, allergic to flowers. Even though there were flowers on the tables, there were no sneezes.
It wasn’t luck that the guest was comfortable. Research by the protocol staff had discovered the allergy and found flowers that wouldn’t cause a problem. Thanks to the staff’s work, no headlines appeared announcing that dinner at the Department of State made a visiting dignitary sick.
At first, reading this story seems to confirm the stereotype that protocol and the work of protocol officers is simply about flowers, menus and seating plans. But to focus on those tasks is to miss the purpose that drives these activities. Robert W. Frye, former Chief of Protocol (…) explained it clearly: “protocol is the art of creating a distraction-free environment that facilitates the complete and open exchange of information to resolve issues and build relationships in global business and international diplomacy.”
‘Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.’ –Joseph Wood Krutch
David Lane takes great pains to point out that randomness is only one aspect of Darwinism; natural selection, what Jacques Monod (1972) called “necessity”, seems to ensure that evolution has, if no purpose, at least some kind of direction. But if it has a direction, where is it going?
If survival of the fittest is not a tautology, as some critics have claimed (Wilkins 1997), shouldn’t evolution to some extent be predictable? Using evolutionary theory, we can look back into the past and understand how and why certain forms of life evolved. But what can we say about the future?
We need to address this question not simply to reassure people that life is more than just a matter of chance. Predictability goes to the heart of what science is and does. Science can be succinctly defined as the attempt to identify the causes of phenomena. But the process does not stop there. When we think we know what causes a phenomenon, we attempt to use this knowledge to predict other phenomena, and ultimately, by causing them by our own actions.
photo { SW▲MPY }
‘In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.’ –Oscar Wilde
Blue whales can weigh over a thousand times more than a human being. That’s a lot of extra cells, and as those cells grow and divide, there’s a small chance that each one will mutate. A mutation can be harmless, or it can be the first step towards cancer. As the descendants of a precancerous cell continue to divide, they run a risk of taking a further step towards a full-blown tumor. To some extent, cancer is a lottery, and a 100-foot blue whale has a lot more tickets than we do.
Aleah Caulin of the University of Pennsylvania and Carlo Maley of the University of California, San Francisco, have done some calculations of the risk of cancer for blue whales thanks to their huge size. We don’t know a lot about cancer in blue whales, because blue whale oncology wards would be a wee bit awkward for everyone involved. So Caulin and Maley extrapolated up from humans.
About thirty percent of all people will get cancer by the end of their life. (…)
Blue whales do get cancer, but it’s hard to believe that they get it at the rates that come out of Caulin and Maley’s calculations. Blue whales are known to live well over a century. Bowhead whales have reached at least 211 years. If blue whales really did get cancer as fast as the models would suggest, they ought to be extinct.
The failure of the model means that blue whales must have some secrets for fighting cancer. (…)
The mere existence of whales is the most glaring example of what biologists call Peto’s Paradox. There seems to be no correlation between body size and cancer rates among animal species. We run a thirty percent risk of getting cancer over our life time. So do mice, despite the fact that they’re 1000 times smaller than we are.
She has been married so many times, she has rice marks on her face
People with full bladders make better decisions.
Researchers discovered the brain’s self-control mechanism provides restraint in all areas at once. They found people with a full bladder were able to better control and “hold off” making important, or expensive, decisions, leading to better judgement. (…)
Dr Mirjam Tuk, who led the study, said that the brain’s “control signals” were not task specific but result in an “unintentional increase” in control over other tasks.
“People are more able to control their impulses for short term pleasures and choose more often an option which is more beneficial in the long run,” she said. (…)
They concluded that people with full bladders were better at holding out for the larger rewards later.
{ Telegraph | Continue reading | Thanks Tim! }
And the firmness of the formous of the famous of the fumous of the first fog in Maidanvale
A Gömböc (pronounced [ˈɡømbøts], simplified to Gomboc) is a convex three-dimensional homogeneous body which, when resting on a flat surface, has just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium. Its existence was conjectured by Russian mathematician Vladimir Arnold in 1995 and proven in 2006 by Hungarian scientists Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi. (…)
The balancing properties of the Gömböc are associated with the “righting response”, their ability to turn back when placed upside down, of shelled animals such as turtles and beetles.
{ Wikipedia | Continue reading | Thanks to James T. }
‘I don’t sleep. I wait.’ –Charlie Sheen
Last summer, the world’s top software-security experts were panicked by the discovery of a drone-like computer virus, radically different from and far more sophisticated than any they’d seen. The race was on to figure out its payload, its purpose, and who was behind it. As the world now knows, the Stuxnet worm appears to have attacked Iran’s nuclear program. And, as Michael Joseph Gross reports, while its source remains something of a mystery, Stuxnet is the new face of 21st-century warfare: invisible, anonymous, and devastating.
Now we’re gettin it. Tune in! Hello?!
New findings provide further evidence that abstract concepts are grounded in sensory metaphors. Just as holding a heavy object makes us perceive an issue as being more important, and physical warmth makes us perceive an interpersonal relationship as also being warm, so does touching something tough or tender influence our mental representation of social categories such as sex.
photo { Jill Freedman }
