Gravity Collapse » science

Deflated fantasies

gravitycollapse — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 12:10:28 +0000

Sometimes you read something that just utterly depresses you. I have been sick lately, and I didn’t especially need more depression, but today I read this story at Wired, and it made me sink even lower. To summarize, researchers have studied some supposed dinosaur flesh that was recovered with some fossils and concluded that it is in fact bacterial slime that formed on the bones in the ground.

The reason I am so distraught is that I have been harboring a fantasy, for nearly all my life, that one day I would see a dinosaur in real life. The aforementioned dino-flesh held the best possibility of DNA extraction, and then we’d be on our way to a real-life Jurassic Park.

This also means that the rest of my fantasy won’t come true. You know, the part where scientists vastly underestimate the intelligence and breeding frequency of said reconstituted dinosaurs, and then the dinosaurs overbreed and eventually break out of their containment facility.

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Post tags: dinosaurs, genetics, science

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Too Many People

gravitycollapse — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 10:20:43 +0000

This BBC article gives some sense of reassurance to someone like me who is constantly frustrated by people’s desire to see what they want instead of what is right in front of them.

Paraphrasing Aldous Huxley: “facts do not cease to exist because we ignore them”.

The environment is obviously a tremendously important topic for human beings, mostly because we are self-centered and wish to remain alive. So, we have decided that we all need to be keenly aware of maintaining the earth in whatever state is perfect for our life systems to function — oops, sorry, the proper PR line is — “we all need to save the planet”.

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Post tags: environment, science

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“Oldest” noodles found in China

gravitycollapse — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:15:50 +0000

This BBC story relates that archaeologists excvating China’s Lajia site have found the oldest noodles ever found, and they are touting this as proof that the Chinese invented noodles.

Now, listen, I’m not going to argue whether the Chinese invented noodles; they probably did. But there’s something about archaeology that I find utterly idiotic. And the funny part is that archaeologists are the ones always explaining this point to us. Here it is:

Most stuff from the past has disappeared!

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Temporary natural storage

gravitycollapse — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:05:22 +0000

In a nutshell, according to optics.org: Japanese researchers have figured out a way to etch data onto fingernails.

Thiis conjures all sorts of interesting ideas, which for me are revolving about Hollywood “action thriller” screenplays. You wake up in a dark room…you have no idea where you are….but all of a sudden, strange things start to happen…people are following you, trying to catch you. Your only choice is to run. But why? Who are these people? Sooner or later, you meet up with the sexy scientist girl, and she spots something on your fingernail…”That’s odd,” she says, “I wonder what it is.” Eventually you find out it’s the super secret code that everyone needs to execute their nefarious plans, be they governments, companies, or cartels. And that’s when the story turns, and you can lure them all…try to sell to the highest bidder? Threaten to make public the information etched into your fingernail? Or hold it for ransom, declaring that you will burn it off unless they give you exactly what you want. Then, of course, you can either burn it off anyway (but of yourse your geeky vixen love interest was smart enough to duplicate the data without them knowing), or you can give away faulty information,and still get your reward.

Either way, there’s room for a sequel.

Well, as long as you do all this before six months elapses, and you find that your fingernail has grown…

Imagination aside, you have to admit this is a cool hack.

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Post tags: science, technology

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This would suck

gravitycollapse — Tue, 28 Aug 2001 09:43:11 +0000

So I just read this story at BBC Online:

I live in Manhattan, and I can tell you that 50m high waves hitting this city would be a very bad thing. NYC would be…hmmm…what’s the word…oh yeah…NYC would be fucked.

Oh, and 9 hours of warning? Ha – that might be enough to get people out of Washington or Boston, but Manhattanites like me would have little choice but to go up to the rooves of our buildings and hope we were high enough.

You can’t even get out of this town on a Friday evening in the summer in a reasonable amount of time; I can’t imagine what it would be like if a major disaster actually happened.

Man, it would make for some awesome film footage, though.

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