Fail to Reject

A team of U.S. scientists has discovered two new subatomic particles that are rare but important relatives of the proton and neutron. Team leader Petar Maksimovic, an assistant professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University, said the two exotic particles are members of what is called the "baryonic" family -- so-called for the Greek word "barys". read more  |  digg story

A science experiment that lets us find out how much sugar there is in a typical can of soda. I knew this couldn't be good. Video read more  |  digg story

I have been seeing a lot of bugs lately. Just crawling around, minding their own business, or acting like they own the place. I see bugs like crawly worm critters, and fake lady bugs, and boxelder bugs and centipede things. A fake lady bug has landed on my tab key on my keyboard and is camping out a bit there. Some people are afraid of bugs, and they say they gross them out, like my wife. But they don't really gross me out, unless they are floating in my water glass or something. I have a hard time squishing the bugs. Mostly because I feel bad for the little guys and I also don't like have bug guts lying around.

Here is a video about a group of people who decided to keep the speed limit, by going 55 down the highway. They got interesting results. Well, as you could guess, they saw many angry drivers. One driver in the experiment commented, "I was glad nobody got hurt... it was potentially dangerous" And that was exactly the point of the experiment. Driving the speed limit got angry drivers and it was dangerous. Obeying the law was dangerous. Kinda weird.

So, I was watching the Lawrence Welk Show a few weeks ago, and this song came on. I thought it was so cool, that I went and looked up the lyrics. Unfortunately, just reading the words isn't as fun as listening to them being sung. I will have to find a recording of it somewhere... In Acapulco Chorus: If you're romantic, chum, Pack up your duds and come To Acapulco. You put your cares in hock And throw away your clock In Acapulco. Where you can be as lazy as a daisy drifting in a blue lagoon, You're wide awake at night, because you do your dreaming in the afternoon. You'll get a Latin glow Way down in Mehico, Below the border. And in a spot like this, If you refuse a kiss You're out of order. And when the moon is new, It's like a honeydew, Come on and get yourself a slice; And if you can't say Acapulco, Then you can call it Paradise. Patter: When you meet someone you like, You like to have a conversation, When you do not understand, It's such a touchy s

Why Engineers Don't Write Recipes Chocolate Chip Cookies Ingredients: 1. 532.35 cm3 gluten 2. 4.9 cm3 NaHCO3 3. 4.9 cm3 refined halite 4. 236.6 cm3 partially hydrogenated tallow triglyceride 5. 177.45 cm3 crystalline C12H22O11 6. 177.45 cm3 unrefined C12H22O11 7. 4.9 cm3 methyl ether of protocatechuic aldehyde 8. Two calcium carbonate-encapsulated avian albumen-coated protein 9. 473.2 cm3 theobroma cacao 10. 236.6 cm3 de-encapsulated legume meats (sieve size #10) To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation. In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven until the mixture is homogenous. To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1. Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, w

I had this song in my head this morning so, let me share a part of it. It is a parody by Weird Al Yankovic of the song "I think we're alone now" sung by Tiffany. I think I'm a clone now There's always two of me just a-hangin' around I think I'm a clone now 'Cause every chromosome is a hand-me-down Look at the way We go out walking close together I guess you could say I'm really beside myself I still remember how it began (gan-gan-gan) They produced a carbon copy man (man-man-man) Born in a science lab late one night Without a mother or a father, just a test tube and a womb with a view

This is a painting I did with the computer program called Art Rage . This painting is called Injury. Not sure why it is called that, I usually name my paintings by the first word that comes to mind that I like. I hope you enjoy it.

A friend of mine turned me on to this group of young talented musicians, called the Marimba Ponies . An internationally renowned music group comprised of 10 young percussionnists ranging from 4 to 12 years in age. The primary objective of the group is to foster goodwill and friendship through the universal language of music. No conductors or music sheets are used by the Marimba Ponies. The music is memorized completely and flows out of their own individual rhythms and emotions. I love how they jump around and play so well together. It looks almost uncanny at how good they are at playing at such a young age. View a bunch of Marimba Ponies' videos

I know this will be exciting for all you laser loving people. This appeared in the a 1964 issue of Popular Science. IT MAY sound like science fiction— but it’s really science fact: You can build a working ruby laser. It could be the most challenging—and rewarding— home-workshop project that you have ever tackled. A ruby laser is a source of coherent light. All of the light waves in the pencil-thin, bright-red ruby laser beam are in phase—or in step—with each other. This extraordinary property of the laser beam—shared by no other light source—has spurred a world-wide search for practical uses. http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/05/01/build-your-own-laser/

I am re-recording some of my "hit" songs in the process of making a new album, tentatively called "Mercury". Here is the first song I have worked on so far, called Snot Very Nice. This recording still has some work to do, but you will get the general idea. Listen here (it is an mp3): might be a slow download: Snot Very Nice

I love Wikipedia. It is an free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I love the format and the style of the site, and the fact that it can be edited by anyone. Another good thing about having an encyclopedia online is that you can copy and paste text easily. Another good thing is it is so easy to link to other articles. In the olden days, if you got to a part of the article that said "see 'Photon'", you had to go find the book and page that had that entry, but online you can just click right to it. A few days ago I was reading in one of my old astronomy text books about neutrinos, and that made me want to read more sciency stuff. You can find some cool articles about all kinds of science stuff at the Wikipedia Science Portal . Astronomy Portal

My sister in law sent me pictures of this event that occured at her parents' cabin.

Well, Foobar2000 has officially become my newest favorite music player. Mostly because it is so customizable and neat. And because it is not a memory hog. It follows the idea of Keepin' it simple. The base application is pretty simple: it basically just plays sound files, nothing else. YOU decide what additional functionality it is you want (via downloadable plugins). Currently I like the setup as shown in the picture. Shown with the following plugins (at least the visible ones): Columns UI - This is what allows the song list to be displayed in columns, and it adds things like the sidebar. The songlist columns can be anything you want and shown in any way you want. Album List Panel - This shows a list of your songs on the left side there. This list is used to easily populate the playlist (main window). In the image, it is displaying the songs organized by directory structure. I think this plugin requires the Database plugin. Album Art Panel - This plugin shows a pictur

This interesting article appeared at LiveScience.com The Science of Hit Songs By Bjorn Carey LiveScience Staff Writer posted: 09 February 2006 02:01 pm ET When Ashlee Simpson tops the charts while a critically acclaimed ex-Beatle's album fails to crack the top 200, eyebrows go up in the marketing world. So what makes a hit? A new study reveals that we make our music purchases based partly on our perceived preferences of others. Popularity contest Researchers created an artificial "music market" of 14,341 participants drawn from a teen-interest Web site. Upon entering the study's Internet market, the participants were randomly, and unknowingly, assigned to either an "independent" group or a "social influence" group. Participants could then browse through a collection of unknown songs by unknown bands. In the independent condition, participants chose which songs to listen to based solely on the names of the bands and their songs. While listening to

Science Tuesday. Here is an incredibly interesting story about a parasite that has an interesting procedure for procreating. It seems like straight out of a science fiction story. Found at Corante The Wisdom of Parasites Posted by Carl Zimmer I collect tales of parasites the way some people collect Star Trek plates. And having filled an entire book with them, I thought I had pretty much collected the whole set. But until now I had somehow missed the gruesome glory that is a wasp named Ampulex compressa. As an adult, Ampulex compressa seems like your normal wasp, buzzing about and mating. But things get weird when it's time for a female to lay an egg. She finds a cockroach to make her egg's host, and proceeds to deliver two precise stings. The first she delivers to the roach's mid-section, causing its front legs buckle. The brief paralysis caused by the first sting gives the wasp the luxury of time to deliver a more precise sting to the head. The wasp slips her stinger thro