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Monthly Archives: December 2010
iPad and Kindle
AppleInsider: Apple slows iPad production, Kindle matches shipments.
Both devices are doing very, very well.
From iReaderReview.
Bad Movie Physics: A Report Card
Illustration by Stephanie Fox. Research by Nivair Gabriel.
At io9, with an explanation of why Star Trek was not included.
Via Universe Today.
At Convergence this past July they showed Mission to Mars with a live running commentary by a Physics professor and a JPL Systems Engineer. It was hilarious.
Remarking
The Unplugged Woodshop on an eReader
At Made by Kindle.
Made by Hand: Furniture Projects from the Unplugged Woodshop (an excellent book, BTW) is now available in a Kindle Edition. You can read about non-electric woodworking on an electronic device!
BTW, I already have a copy of the hardcover edition, so I am not going to buy it for my Kindle.
A note on Celtic Christianity
Fire from the heavens in early medieval Ireland
[….] lightning has always had a special role in the Christian tradition. Seen as one of the instruments of God’s wrath, it was known to the Church Fathers (via the classical tradition) as ‘fire from the heaven’.
St Michael, the Archangel of war, was said to use it. And, across the medieval world, though especially among Celtic-speaking peoples, special shrines were built to Michael with lightning in mind.
Churches or hermitages were dedicated to the Archangel high on cliff-sites or coastal islands with a simple logic. It was there that lightning was most likely to strike and it was there that the hermit could come closest to God’s divine anger.
Christmas Tree
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| Normal room lighting, using flash | No flash, room lights out, lit only by Christmas tree lights. |
We got the tree from Hansen Tree Farm, driving up there and cutting it down ourselves on Sunday, December 19. We had to trudge through 17″ of snow, deep and crisp and even, but it was a fun outing.
<LiturgyGeekMode>Christmas does not begin until the evening of December 24. December 19 is during Advent.</LiturgyGeekMode>
That evening we saw this episode of Mythbusters. We laughed through all the “remedies” for keeping your Christmas tree from losing needles. From past experience with fresh cut trees we knew we would not have that problem. In fact the tree is doing very well and we do not expect any problems before we take it down on January 8 or 9 (the weekend after 12th Night/Epiphany).
Security incident
At xkcd. Check the mouseover!
Amazon’s Kindle: Made in Israel
At Israel21c
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 