Revenge of the Cat People
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A Test of Tolerance
The way the future was
Totally Awesome Space Colonies
I remember when these pictures first came out. Even earlier, back in 1973 or 1974, I heard Gerard K. O’Neill give a talk at Stanford on “The Colonization of Space.” It was one of the transforming moments of my life: A new vision for the human future in space. In 1974 O’Neill wrote an article on this for Physics Today (I still have a photocopy) and soon afterwards the first edition of a book.
I still think such structures are possible, and indeed necessary for the long term future of the human race. But my guess is that most of the inhabitants will have darker skins, and will speak Mandarin or Hindi.
Lightweight Linux Distributions
LW Linux
Notes from a presentation at Penguins Unbound on Saturday, August 21,
2010. Continue reading
Not helpful
Iran cash might fund Ground Zero mosque
The developers of the Ground Zero mosque are refusing to flat out reject cash for the project from Holocaust-denying Iranian nuke nut Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Leaving Facebook: Exploring Digital Monasticism
The last section is focused on the author’s monastic life, but the need to maintain focus and set aside distractions applies to all of us. When I left Facebook I described it as a “time sink.”
Global warming and the Northwest Passage
Medieval Spain: Myth and Reality
A new meaning to “one for the road”
Scottish scientists develop whisky biofuel
Using samples from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian, researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a method of producing biofuel from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills, and “draff”, the spent grains.
The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gives 30% more power output than the traditional biofuel ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention.
Via Slashdot.
Dying Coral Reefs
From Azimuth:
Global warming has been causing the "bleaching" of coral reefs. A bleached coral reef has lost its photosynthesizing symbiotic organisms, called zooxanthellae. It may look white as a ghost — as in the picture above — but it is not yet dead. If the zooxanthellae come back, the reef can recover.
With this year’s record high temperatures, many coral reefs are actually dying:
• Dan Charles, Massive coral die-off reported in Indonesia, Morning Edition, August 17, 2010.
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 