Science and Medicine:
- I love this scale model of the solar system in Maine. I really want to get one of these together in the Austin area.
- Researchers in Australia have found that sarcasm is useful for detecting dementia. I dunno, I'm not sure I believe there are demented people in Australia.
- Researchers at the University of Toledo have reported the first case of sleep-emailing. If you haven't already done so, I highly recommend turning on Mail Gogggles in Gmail Labs.
- Ferrofluid is awesome. Must... own... lots! I'm thinking some sort of system hooked to a speaker magnet would be very cool.
Software and the Internets:
- Apparently there's a Firefox-like open-source alternative to iTunes/Windows Media Player. The duplicate-finder add-on alone makes it enough for me to check out, at least for my home library.
Politics:
- It looks like I was also wrong about the pick for HUD. This guy sounds qualified, though, so I'm fine with being wrong again.
- The origin of the so-called War on Christmas, waged by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, has been traced to white supremacists. Not much of a surprise there, really.
- Obama's transparency has already infected the Congressional Oversight Panel, tasked with keeping track of where our $700 billion goes. Woot.
- Work on spreading this meme: Harry Reid is an ineffective Senate Majority Leader. Any failures aren't because we didn't get 60; they're because the modern filibuster is a joke. The filibuster is supposed to be there so you can block legislation you findunconscionable, not legislation that you want to vote no on.
- The first batch of answers from "Open for Questions" are up at Change.gov. Neat.
- The Illinois House has begun the impeachment process for Blago.
2 comments:
I want you to create a scale solar system model in Austin too! :-) Oh, and dig out that telescope to do some stargazing with your nephew... well, ok, when it's warmer out...!
re: ferrofluid
Not quite on the same scale but I recently needed to glue a magnet to something I was making. I had run out of my regular 2-part epoxy so I grabbed some JB Weld, which is also 2 part and works really well. I put a blob of it on the base part and pressed the magnet down on it. When I came back to check on it the epoxy had oozed up the sides of the magnet and on to the top. I knew that JB Weld is meant for metal working but I hadn't realized that there are actually iron filings in it. The way it oozed around the magnet was really interesting.
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