Tag: science

That’s no moon…

During last month’s Stone Concert, the CT scan showed two unexpected somethings. I went into my primary care physician ask what, if anything, I should do about them.  Because I’m generally feeling fine, the gallstone can be ignored. (Update: Until next year.) I will probably have to cut back on the butter fried bacon twinkies smothered in bacon, wrapped between a […]

Continue reading

Bad Feng Shui, Good solar system

Each exhibitor was set up with a rectangle table covered with the ANSI-standard White Top and Black Shroud (whose purpose is to prevent the table from looking as fugly as it really is).  It didn’t work well with the man-sized pop-up poster I came with, especially in the spot I had right up front.  I couldn’t move to the left […]

Continue reading

Pasta puzzle

I’ve been having a lot of fun reading “How to Fossilize Your Hamster“[1], an entertaining and enlightening collection of quirky science questions and experiments one can do to observe the the principles. It’s very conversationally written with abundant humor. For example, in answering the best way to get ketchup out of the bottle, where they detail seven methods to “exploit […]

Continue reading

Let’s get geophysical

As soon as I exited BART at the Powell Street stop, I remembered what else San Francisco is famous for: aggressive panhandling. In the two blocks to my hotel, I was hit up eight times. The hotel’s close, but my room is five floors above the edge of the street. All night I can hear horns beep, wheels squeal, drunken […]

Continue reading

Week of worms

The juxtaposition of blog entries about recipes and worms is purely coincidence. (Really.) But since you’re not going to eat breakfast anyway, behold the latest squirmy thing found while making a wet mount from a leaf plucked from Lake Sammamish. (Thumbnail photos below the fold. Click-through for the larger image.)

Continue reading

The new microscope

This little critter was found on a pea pod today: First reaction: Coooooool Second reaction: ewwwww (a reason to wash your veggies) Third and final reaction: Cooooool! What else can I look at! The new microscope could be even more interesting than my previous foray into macro photography.

Continue reading

Inattentional blindness

Today’s keynote speaker, Daniel Simons, talked about inattentional blindness, the inability to perceive features in a visual scene you’re not paying attention to. It’s used in movies. For example, in The Matrix, the scene in which Neo and Morpheus first spar Kung-Fu style, there’s a stunt double for Keanu. Unless you’re looking for a tall Asian guy doing flips, you’ll […]

Continue reading

Massed particles

In my particular line of work, I get to see a lot of scientific data representing fluid flows or structural mechanics. They’re all interesting, though I have to admit seeing Yet Another Mach Yatta Whoozit lacks the pure excitement it did a year ago. Luckily, the analyses my product offers are applicable in many other disciplines. For example, earlier this […]

Continue reading