Einstein “R” Us

May 26, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

The Einstein Archives Online Website provides the first online access to Albert Einstein's scientific and non-scientific manuscripts held by the Albert Einstein Archives at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, constituting the material record of one of the most influential intellects in the modern era.
It contains an itemized database of approximately 43,000 Einstein and Einstein-related archival items: writings, professional and personal correspondence. You can also get photostatic images of many of his writings.
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Dial “P” for Spam

May 23, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

A bug, which appeared in an antispam rule update, began blocking and quarantining all incoming and outgoing messages containing the letter "P," depending on how customers had configured the software. The flaw affected several Trend Micro products designed to filter content, block unsolicited commercial e-mail, and report and monitor the type of information that enters or leaves a company's network.

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Anything into Oil

May 13, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year
Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water. While no one plans to put people into a thermal depolymerization machine, an intimate human creation could become a prime feedstock. "There is no reason why we can't turn sewage, including human excrement, into a glorious oil," says engineer Terry Adams, a project consultant. So the city of Philadelphia is in discussion with Changing World Technologies to begin doing exactly that.

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Starships Dimensions

April 30, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

Ever wanted to compare the sizes of Star Trek ships to Babylon 5 ones? Ever wanted to figure out how big that Millenium Falcon really was?
No?
Probably don't want to check out this site then. Besides, it's only mostly accurate, and has some glaring discrepancies, such as showing the Death Star 2 as five times as wide as the original Death Star (or 125 times the volume at 268082573.1063km3)
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UNIX Haters

April 28, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

The funny thing is Micro$oft's hosting it.
"I liken starting one's computing career with Unix, say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa. It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition and they live within it. By the time they find out differently, it is too late. They already think that the writing of shell scripts is a natural act."
"Modern Unix is a catastrophe. It's the "Un-Operating System": unreliable, unintuitive, unforgiving, unhelpful, and underpowered. Little is more frustrating than trying to force Unix to do something useful and nontrivial. Modern Unix impedes progress in computer science, wastes billions of dollars, and destroys the common sense of many who seriously use it. An exaggeration? You won't think so after reading this book. "
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Anyone got an old NES?

April 4, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

Everything you need to know for turning an old Nintendo system into a working PC.
"Well, of course before you can fit anything inside the system, you need to take out the old Nintendo. There's a series of about 1,000,000 screws, all phillips, holding the top of the case on, and holding the guts inside the NES. Be sure to save about 6 or 7 of these screws, because you'll need them later on. If your Nintendo worked before dismantling it, save the guts and build a new case for it."
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http://www.junkmachine.com/nintendo/members/5.shtml

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God=Strange Brain Disorder?

April 2, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

Why do people experience religious visions? BBC Two's Horizon suggests that in some cases the cause may be a strange brain disorder.
Controversial new research suggests that whether we believe in a God may not just be a matter of free will. Scientists now believe there may be physical differences in the brains of ardent believers.

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The Core: Hollywood Fiction or Science?

April 2, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

Deadly asteroid impacts, reincarnated killer dinosaurs, alien invasions. Just when you thought Hollywood had thrown it all at us, a fresh, new, end-of-the-world scenario opens in theaters tomorrow.this time the action is 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) below our feet in The Core.
It seems the core of the Earth has stopped spinning and is no longer generating the planet's protective magnetic field. This triggers a cascade of diabolical events for man and beast. Birds can't navigate and fly erratically into buildings. People with pacemakers unexpectedly drop dead. Massive electrical storms destroy all electronic communication, and unfettered blasts of solar radiation fry the planet.
And unless an intrepid team of "terranauts" journey to the center and start it spinning again, everyone on the planet will be dead within a year.
In The Core, radioactive particles and beams of microwave radiation literally cook the planet. In one scene a microwave beam from the sun slices the Golden Gate Bridge in half. Electrical super storms, triggered by the loss of the Earth's magnetic field, destroy Rome's Coliseum.
It has all the makings of a blockbuster.and it may not necessarily all be fantasy.

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Clones that Go Thump in the Night

April 1, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

As we await the first cloned baby to appear on our TV screens with varying degrees of horror and fascination, we might do well to put this latest science fiction story into perspective. First, human suffering is an issue. If a clone is born, it will face the agonizing prospect of lifelong scrutiny. Unwanted media attention made the lives of the first Dionne Quintuplets, born in Canada decades ago, a living horror. Second, the clone will hardly have a life of her own. She will be as much a medical curiosity as Wang and Chang, the original Siamese twins who were probed, prodded and ultimately exhibited as medical curiosities. Third, the clone.s prospect for a normal existence is jeopardized by its very novelty. Every shiver and runny nose will be taken as evidence of its medical demise, brought on by hysterical, as yet unwarranted assertions, that cloned animals that make it to birth face a life fraught with medical catastrophe.
The reality is somewhat less chilling: cloned kids are likely to be no more or less freakish than were the first in vitro fertilization babies. They may experience more medical problems than do average children, as did some in vitro fertilization babies. But then, clones are not average and objecting to cloning on the basis of risk is temporizing, as it was for in vitro fertilization. Over time, the "risks" will be made acceptable, and more fundamental concerns will be lost in the heady success of the first generation of "clone kids" just as they were with the first generation of in vitro babies.

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Can a Metaverse Have Inflation?

February 27, 2003 D. H. McKee
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Sci-Tech

If you want to set up a real economy, you call in a real economist. Tom Melcher knew from the...

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