Say, here’s an interesting basis for a plot in upcoming sci-fi adventures; “NASA Announces Results of Epic Space-Time Experiment” which begins as like this:
Researchers confirmed these points at a press conference today at NASA headquarters where they announced the long-awaited results of Gravity Probe B (GP-B).
“The space-time around Earth appears to be distorted just as general relativity predicts,” says Stanford University physicist Francis Everitt, principal investigator of the Gravity Probe B mission. “
It’s mostly a yawner, until the story draws the analogy to a fat person sitting on a trampoline which makes gravity then become the natural ‘falling’ of smaller masses toward the direction where the local space-time anomaly is most warped. Look at the floor, it’s somewhere down that way.
The number of brain cells used on the GP-B project is pretty impressive with 86 PhD theses coming out Stanford and 14- others in different schools were related to project work.
The effect of gravity is fairly subtle; if it was more intense (which is to say if the space-time curvature were more acute) you would be able to get yourself out of bed in the morning. You’d weigh too much.
Still, that’s the problem I found myself addressing this morning. I could just swear we encountered a particularly dense part of space-time this morning at about 4:45 AM, although curiously, it didn’t seem to effect the cats.
Urban Surviving
Say, here’s a new way to turn your patio at your apartment or condo into a garden on the sly: Something called pallet gardening complete with several how-to pictures over at Life on the Balcony...
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Over at Backdoor Survival, Survivorwoman’s latest is about water storage, but the hot tip for IT types is what? Read down to the part about free cloud storage from Amazon. Gets me thinking off-site backups…
… - .- - .. -.-. (Static) From My Son
If you’re an electrical engineer, might enjoy the problem-solving issues related to my son’s ham radio setup in Kirkland, Wa. I had him take the whole house off AC power and run his ham rig on a battery and still there, and since he doesn’t have a standard AM portable radio, which is still the best radio interference tool ever made, he’s stumped enough that he’s started a discussion over at the www.eHam.net website.
You can read up on his adventures here.
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I’ve tried to explain to him that radio bands are a bit like luck in a casino. The good band openings – and an occasional run at the blackjack table will happen, but it’s not an every day kind of thing. Sort of like fishing is the same kind of statistical issue, but kids – even at 30 – still have to learn for themselves.
I’m trying to get him to understand that if you have three statistically dependent hobbies, you can usually find one of them working on any particular day. My recommendation is ham radio, options trading, and fishing, but the Old Man…why, what would he know?
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This is the same son who declines the Old Man’s advice on marriage: I figure it over half of marriages end in divorce, they should be tried several times when young before there are appreciable assets to be divvied up. Again, there’s statistical truth involved, but he ignores my emails of histograms and supporting statistical calculations. Maybe divorce rates will decline among today’s young….jury’s out on that one. Their risk appetites are sure different, though.
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Crackpot Theories & Observations
You know, some of the best brains on the planet have been trying to figure out two or three things: “When in the next major earthquake going to be?” Thursday is one highly tentative answer. And, “If the government is saying inflation is running around 3½ percent, how come I don’t see it – all I see is inflation?” Because you don’t run your personal balance sheet is the tentative answer here. Simple stuff for a clear-eyed Sunday morning, indeed. As long as we’re at it, let’s solve the healthcare crisis, too. Seriously: This week we explore how new “truths” arise and then apply that thinking to personal and national economic problems.
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Cookie Monster
If your computer runs slowly, you may have a problem with cookies. These little code snippets are how some websites (and spyware) recognize you, track your movement on the web and so forth. Here lately, as new class of super cookies has been evolved by the admen (and worse) that are resistant to normal cookie deletions through your browser’s interface. Flash cookies, persistent cookies, and super cookies…all easily managed with the Maxa Research Cookie Manager.
Take it for a test drive by clicking here – and it you like it, activation is easily done. If you’re a heavy web user (who ain’t?) you may find like I do that you’ve accumulating a hundred or more cookies per day. Only a handful need to be white-listed, like your brokerage account or your bank. The rest? Software designed to spy on you that robs you of computer performance. Been using it for several years and pleased as the Dickens with it.
The “Do Drop Inn”
Amazing gardens in about 2 square feet of floor space: www.mygroponics.com
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“Live on $10,000″ A Year
Having a hard time making ends meet? (Like who isn’t, right?) A good starting point to better match up income with outgo is our $10 e-book “How to Live on $10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left. A bonus section called “How to Build Anything” should instill confidence if you’ve never taken on a home improvement/home creation project before, too….. Click here for the index and details.
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