March of the Pengoowins

VERY COOL! The film didn't come to Alamogordo, and we normally don't see films when we're in Phoenix or otherwise out of town. So...

We bought some DVDs whilst in Phoenix (March of the Penguins, Waking Ned Devine, and Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire) and watched March. Very good. I watched the Critter Cam special, quite interesting. I loved the technology of the camera and what they were able to learn with it. It has built-in depth and temperature gauges and showed exactly how penguins feed.

Russet and I had a lot of questions, any penguin experts out there? :-)

If you're ever in Japan on March 15....

This looks like it would be a very fun time! Possibly more so if you're single. Free sake by the barrel, free mochi rice cakes! Of course, you might get trampled by elderly Japanese men. And the most wonderful souvineers to bring back to your friends and parents!

I'd definitely have to rate this one as NSFW unless you have a very liberal work environment.

http://farstrider.net/Japan/Festivals/HounenMatsuri/index.htm

Ten unexpected/accidental discoveries/inventions

I was surprised that Post-it Notes weren't mentioned as they, too, were an accidental discovery.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/start.html?pg=3

1. Viagra
Men being treated for erectile dysfunction should salute the working stiffs of Merthyr Tydfil, the Welsh hamlet where, in 1992 trials, the gravity-defying side effects of a new angina drug first popped up. Previously, the blue-collar town was known for producing a different kind of iron.

2. LSD
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann took the world's first acid hit in 1943, when he touched a smidge of lysergic acid diethylamide, a chemical he had researched for inducing childbirth. He later tried a bigger dose and made another discovery: the bad trip.

3. X-rays
Several 19th-century scientists toyed with the penetrating rays emitted when electrons strike a metal target. But the x-ray wasn't discovered until 1895, when German egghead Wilhelm Röntgen tried sticking various objects in front of the radiation - and saw the bones of his hand projected on a wall.

4. Penicillin
Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming was researching the flu in 1928 when he noticed that a blue-green mold had infected one of his petri dishes - and killed the staphylococcus bacteria growing in it. All hail sloppy lab work!

5. Artificial sweeteners
Speaking of botched lab jobs, three leading pseudo-sugars reached human lips only because scientists forgot to wash their hands. Cyclamate (1937) and aspartame (1965) are byproducts of medical research, and saccharin (1879) appeared during a project on coal tar derivatives. Yummy.

6. Microwave ovens
Microwave emitters (or magnetrons) powered Allied radar in WWII. The leap from detecting Nazis to nuking nachos came in 1946, after a magnetron melted a candy bar in Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer's pocket.

7. Brandy
Medieval wine merchants used to boil the H20 out of wine so their delicate cargo would keep better and take up less space at sea. Before long, some intrepid soul - our money's on a sailor - decided to bypass the reconstitution stage, and brandy was born. Pass the Courvoisier!

8. Vulcanized rubber
Rubber rots badly and smells worse, unless it's vulcanized. Ancient Mesoamericans had their own version of the process, but Charles Goodyear rediscovered it in 1839 when he unintentionally (well, at least according to most accounts) dropped a rubber-sulfur compound onto a hot stove.

9. Silly Putty
In the early 1940s, General Electric scientist James Wright was working on artificial rubber for the war effort when he mixed boric acid and silicon oil. V-J Day didn't come any sooner, but comic strip image-stretching practically became a national pastime.

10. Potato chips
Chef George Crum concocted the perfect sandwich complement in 1853 when - to spite a customer who complained that his fries were cut too thick - he sliced a potato paper-thin and fried it to a crisp. Needless to say, the diner couldn't eat just one.

- Compiled by Lucas Graves

I'm so glad that our gov't takes security so seriously

Once again, Department of Homeland Security gets another F in computer security. Incidently, that's the same grade for the third straight year. The government overall is maintaining a D+, sort of like the GPA of a certain Commander in Chief. :-)

I love the irony in the fact that they are passing all these laws on cybercrime, some were proposed that make the entity upon whom the crime was perpetrated liable for not adequately defending themselves, and they get such horrible scores.

The Fine Article.

The Fine Slashdot Thread.

England ready to cancel a £12bn order for American fighter jets

Sort of like the code on Federation ships that let them turn off the shields on Khan. I can't blame the Brits in the least.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2152035/joint-strike-fighter

Britain warns US over jet software codes

£12bn Joint Strike Fighter order could be scrapped
Matt Chapman, vnunet.com 15 Mar 2006

The UK has warned America that it will cancel its £12bn order for the Joint Strike Fighter if the US does not hand over full access to the computer software code that controls the jets.

Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told the The Daily Telegraph that the planes were useless without control of the software as they could effectively be "switched off" by the Americans without warning.

"We do expect this technology transfer to take place. But if it does not take place we will not be able to purchase these aircraft," said Lord Drayson.

The problem stems from strict US guidelines on the transfer of technology to other countries. Under current rules any British requests for the use of US technology can take 20 days to go through, obviously limiting the usefulness of a jet strike force.

Lord Drayson is currently in Washington to speak to members of Congress. His tough talking on the project includes the fact that Britain has a 'Plan B' if the Joint Strike Fighter deal falls through.


And once again, The Slashdot Thread.