jfiore | May 31, 2007Here's an interesting piece from Audio Design Line regarding a new file format just released from Beatnik. The format is said to produce files one-tenth the size of MP3 files and is intended for narrow bandwidth phones in emerging markets.
The format, called Mobile XMF, would work in conjunction with Beatnik's music player, which would have to be preinstalled on the phone. Beatnik believes there's a market for music downloads in Eastern European countries, China, Latin America, and India, where manufacturers sell lots of low-cost phones.
I sometimes hear students listening to music on their…
bushwells | May 30, 2007Nigh on two weeks ago, O my brothers and sisters, your Faithful Narrator went under the microtome and the laser beam so that my starry glazzes might viddy the cruel, cruel world dobby-like. Grazhny contact lenses are no longer in my present day; cally remembrances of the far, far distant past, they are. I was faced with the potential of needing two pairs of otchkies, one for distance and the other for reading and mid-range viddying, "Yarbles!" to that, I skazated. So I got it into my gulliver that having my glazzes shived to perfection was the way to go.
So you, my Science Blog droogs,…
jfiore | May 30, 2007Today is my second official day of summer vacation. Now that the academic year is complete I get to figure out what to read over the summer. Unfortunately, I didn't get much reading in over the past year as I spent a good deal of time developing and teaching a new course, Science of Sound, along with a bunch of new assessment work (the ISO 9000 of academia). Consequently, many of these books are items that I had intended to read some time ago. Perhaps I'm not going too far out on a limb to suggest that there aren't a lot of people who'd be happy to curl up in an Adirondack cabin on a rainy…
bushwells | May 28, 2007
But he don't pay no mind to no intelligent design. He'll tell you how it's absurd.
He's evolution's top banana and he's married to Romana and that kinda makes him king of the nerds!
Check out Mitch Benn's (indie UK musician) "Richard Dawkins" number. It's in the downloads box on the right section of his web page.
Hat tip to the Irish cephalopod.
bushwells | May 27, 2007My Saturday night exercises in TV viewing resemble Mystery Science Theater 3000 as my spawn and I hoot at bad sci-fi offerings. On occasion, I seek these out in the interest of seeing how poorly scientists and science are portrayed in the pop cultural milieu. Last night's trawling of the cable networks landed Pandemic which premiered (oooo, la, la!) on the Hallmark Channel, of all places, and the truly horrid Dark Storm on the SciFi Network.
"Dark Storm" was so bad, in the sense of "bad" that is not campy bad like the wonderful Mansquito but "bad" in the Lewis Blackesque I'd rather ram a…
jfiore | May 23, 2007I caught a portion of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing regarding the California CO2 Waiver on CSPAN last night. You can read Senator Boxer's (majority) opening comments here and Senator Inhofe's (minority) opening comments here.
It's bad enough when Inhofe says things like this:
"When it comes to the issue of whether climate fluctuations are natural or caused by man, you all know my view that the cycles we are now experiencing - and have experienced for thousands and even millions of years - are natural."
but then he compounds it with this:
"...over the last…
jfiore | May 23, 2007"Visualize! Visualize! Visualize!" is a cry often heard by athletes. The idea is to picture a performance in the mind, and by repeatedly doing so, help insure a successful result when the times comes for the real thing. For example, as a runner I might try to visualize striding smoothly and powerfully mid-race so that hopefully, that image will become reality on race day. I have had some luck with this and recommend Running Within by Lynch and Scott if you're interested. But these sorts of things are rather vague and rely on reinforcement of a positive self-image, of a confidence-booster. I'…
jfiore | May 22, 2007The crossroads of Dada and fun: "Found humor". I love weird typos and the accidental use of words to create something inadvertently rib-tickling. Check out this item from the newsletter of a local running club:
I don't know about you, but I'd like to join this club just so that I can cast a vote as Kashchei from Stravinsky's Firebird.
bushwells | May 19, 2007As much as it pains me (1) to honor the request (2) by Dave of The World's Fair, I'll play:
1. Can you show us your coffee cup?
Here's my work-a-day mug at my desk flanked by its friends (see answer to item 3). This photo, taken with the marginal little camera in my PDA, is in violation of DOPI (3) policy since I am revealing the kind of printer we use, proprietary information which I am sure will set back our competition by 20 years.
2. Can you comment on it? Do you think it reflects on your personality?
The text on the mug says "She Who Must Be Obeyed." It was purchased for me from the…
bushwells | May 18, 2007Aching, congested and heavy, but not a bee of relief in sight.
Fortunately, there were no blue laws prohibiting this porn shoot near the Princeton campus.
jfiore | May 18, 2007They say good things (or is it bad?) come in threes. Check out Hitchens' article in Slate. Here's an exerpt:
All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. Trying to interrupt the fiesta of piety on national television on the night of Falwell's death, I found myself waiting while Ralph Reed went all moist about the role of the departed in empowering "people of faith." Here was the hypocritical casino-based Christian who sought and received the kosher stamp from Jack Abramoff. Perfect.
But tell us how you really feel, Chris:
"The evil that he did will live after him. This is not just…
jfiore | May 18, 2007Some more priceless quotes from Chris Hitchens regarding the late Jerry Falwell, including "If you gave Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox".
Thanks to Bill from Dover and mg for the heads-up.
jfiore | May 16, 2007Christopher Hitchens tears into the hypocrisy of the late Jerry Falwell with Anderson Cooper.
jfiore | May 15, 2007So by now you've probably heard that Jerry Falwell has died. What I'm going to be looking for over the next couple of days is what others are going to be saying, and what that says about them. Let's start with Senator McCain:
"Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."
"Distinguished accomplishment"? Sure, if you consider being supremely talented as bigoted demagogue an accomplishment. As far as his service is concerned, I'd estimate that it was mostly of the self-serving variety. It certainly wasn't for anyone who disagreed…
bushwells | May 15, 2007Deep in my heart, I knew you'd leave. They said you'd never stay. But I couldn't come to grips with it. I convinced myself that you'd be with us forever. The mournful winds across the sere landscape of downtown Princeton say otherwise.
Like Writer's Block before it (see Tasha O'Neil's Photography for an excellent set of Writer's Block photos), Quark Park was intended as a temporary installation. The bare lot behind the sign is the future site of a condominium complex in bustling downtown Princeton.
From May 4, 2007:
Contrast this to the September 2006 scene...
My tart little review…
jfiore | May 14, 2007Back around 1987 I picked up a Commodore Amiga 1000. This was an interesting little box for home computers of the day. In the late eighties the typical home/office PC was running MS-DOS and had a whopping 640k bytes of memory. The Amiga didn't look like the average home computer and it certainly didn't behave like one. For starters, it had a graphical user interface (popularized by the Mac a year or two earlier) and a two button mouse. Unlike the average Mac, it was color (4096 color palette). Further, it had a choice of screen resolutions including 640x400 interlaced. While those numbers…
jfiore | May 11, 2007MarkCC over at Good Math, Bad Math offers up some enjoyable elements from time to time. Between the good and the bad, is there space for humorous literal math?
Yes, it's final exam time here at the college and I received the following from a colleague (the exam paper is not from one of his courses):
I almost want to give the guy a bonus point for making me laugh (particularly due to the little "etc." scrawl at the bottom).
bushwells | May 3, 2007Check out Blake Stacey's My First Embedded Video, a hilarious presentation. I will not embed the video here because I want you to go visit Science After Sunclipse for the full effect of the blag.
in lieu of "chicken," I would have used Roo-roo.
jfiore | May 2, 2007PBS/Nova ran a show on Sir Isaac Newton the other night entitled Newton's Dark Secrets. Interesting though it was, for years I have claimed that Sir Isaac's true "dark secret" was that he learned how to travel through time. Yep. Right up to the 1970's. He wanted to be a rock legend...
"Newton, Lake and Palmer" just doesn't cut it though.
bushwells | May 1, 2007When I encounter horrific articles like Hope for sex-boosting slimming pill , I would just as soon take a pencil and shove it in my ear because that would be more gratifying than giving such journalistic shattery any kind of serious consideration. But what the hey, this is the Chimp Refuge, where we toss scat with giddy abandon, so I'll hold off on the pencil in ear and substitute a cathartic round of fisking.
At first glance, I thought I should be pissed off at the misogynistic overtones in this article. I mean, look at the byline:
Scientists are developing a pill which could boost women…