Tuesday, May 31, 2005
- Reports on some interesting psychological tests. Notably one in which students were found to be more easily persuaded by a computer-generated face which mimicked their head movements while talking to them.
- Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are developing an ad hoc networking system for cars that would allow any driver to broadcast music to any other vehicle within a 30-mile radius.
- People who think the Tasmanian Tiger might not be extinct. Would be nice...
- More on marsupials: two new studies refute the theory that humans moving into Australia more than 45 000 years ago took out its megafauna in a 1000-year 'blitzkrieg'.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
- Census transcriptions, parish records, etc. for Co. Durham (not free, but charges are reasonable)
Monday, May 23, 2005
- Two researchers from the University of Oregon claim to have demonstrated that time travel by wormhole will never be feasible.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
- A lake in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia has vanished overnight.
Friday, May 20, 2005
Rudery
This evening, while perusing Mr Wyld's electronical journal, I chanced across a rather diverting aide de folie. It led me to the happy discovery that I live less than thirty miles from this charmingly-named habitation.
Post scriptum. The which I do notice to be situate at the juncture of Nether Street & Bourne Lane.
Post scriptum. The which I do notice to be situate at the juncture of Nether Street & Bourne Lane.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
- Good-looking demo of how how to combine wiki/javascript/css to do stuff with the DOM (in this case to make a personal productivity app).
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
- 'Returns' is a bit misleading here -- the last wild herd was probably about 4000 years ago. Anyway, they're introducing a herd of Konik ponies (from Poland) to Wicken Fen.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
- A Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML to any web page to change its behaviour.
Monday, May 16, 2005
- Whoar, dinosaurs -- coooool! Look at the 'Liaoning Diorama' section for stuff on feathered dinosaurs. They reckon baby Tyrannosauri Reges had 'proto-feathers' to keep them warm.
- A man who has not uttered a word since being found wandering and confused has stunned care workers by giving a virtuoso piano performance.
- Young canaries happily learn songs that sound nothing like their species, but they revert to a strict canary-like melody as they mature, Science reports.
- A California company has figured out how to use two simple materials -- water and salt -- to create a solution that wipes out single-celled organisms, and which appears to speed healing of burns, wounds and diabetic ulcers.
Friday, May 13, 2005
- Two years after it selected open-source rendering engine KHTML as the basis of its Safari Web browser, Apple has proposed resolving compatibility conflicts by scrapping that code base in favour of its own.
- While no corner of Earth remains uncharted, there are still millions of species that have yet to be discovered and documented. The quest to complete a comprehensive directory of all life on Earth goes on.
- Many fish species in the North Sea are steadily moving northwards (or deeper under the sea) to escape warming waters.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
- A very basic robot has been created that can make copies of itself from spare parts.
- Three teams of scientists have created the first facial reconstructions of King Tutankhamun based on CT scans of his mummy.
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
- Recent work on colour perception by the Surrey Baby Lab [sounds scary] and the Nottingham Toddler Lab [scarier].
Friday, May 06, 2005
Well, on balance a pretty satisfying night, I think. Stayed up till 3 (by which time about half the results were in), so feeling a bit bleary this morning! We're still under the thumb of Generalissimo Blair, but I'd expected a Labour majority of 100, so 67ish makes me sort of happy. Lib Dems currently on 59 (and hopefully will make it to 60), which, I gather from the pundits, is their largest number of MPs since Lloyd George's day, so that ain't too bad. I'm amazed and delighted that the Lib Dems took Cambridge! Cambridge is now a lovely golden colour at all tiers of government. 
Two points on our crappy electoral system: How come Labour gets what still amounts to a significant majority when nearly 64% of the electorate didn't vote for them? How come the Lib Dems get 23% of the vote, but 10% of the seats?!
Two points on our crappy electoral system: How come Labour gets what still amounts to a significant majority when nearly 64% of the electorate didn't vote for them? How come the Lib Dems get 23% of the vote, but 10% of the seats?!
Thursday, May 05, 2005
To the polls!
Those of you with a vote, vote! (Unless you weren't going to vote Lib Dem, in which case, give in to apathy. 
)
)Wednesday, May 04, 2005
- A philosophy lecturer, James Flynn, has been studying IQ scores. Many people don't believe in them as a measure of general intelligence, but clearly they measure something. So why have we got so much better at them in the last 50 years?
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
- Students are being offered the chance to pay off their debts by cashing in on their wit, brains and conversation—by working as escorts. Maybe I should give it a go! ;)
- A survivor of Adolf Hitler's wartime bunker in Berlin has been tracked down, a German newspaper claims.
- Article exploring the pre-Nazi history of the swastika (a Hindu symbol of good luck, amongst other uses).
- Americans chuckling about British national stereotypes. Oh, and some bloke's written some php to keep track of office tea-making duties.
- A radar on the Mars Express spacecraft which will look for water and ice under the Red Planet is due to be deployed after a delay of over a year.
- I love this idea! Future spacecraft could be powered by giant sails, reflecting photons from the sun. Such craft would drift slowly to begin with, but accelerate constantly to very high speeds. Control would be very similar to that of sailing ships.
