News
From Sciencedaily: Chickens have better-evolved color vision than humans - if there is an Intelligent Designer out there, boy will he ever be pissed at us...
All kidding aside, whenever I've given any thought to vision and evolution, I've been curious how closely the mechanisms for wavelength recognition were related between different evolutionary paths. This was good information for me. The limitation of vision to only one of the several bands of atmospheric transparency always seems arbitrary to me; exactly what you would expect from a randomly evolved creature, rather than one designed to mesh perfectly with its environment.
The International Space Station has a new window. While most people who will care probably already knew, this was the best gallery of pics that I've seen yet.
Not news, just fun: How to measure the speed of light using only chocolate and a microwave. High school (or possibly college) physics being revisited in an entertaining way.
On a completely different note: An interesting glimpse into Roger Ebert's failing health. I hope I can handle major health issues and eventual death with half the grace he is showing. This also explains to me why, starting mid-last year, I began to find articles by him discussing atheism, and more generally "A-bullshit-ism." I had not found his actual blog before this article, but I'll be following it now.
All kidding aside, whenever I've given any thought to vision and evolution, I've been curious how closely the mechanisms for wavelength recognition were related between different evolutionary paths. This was good information for me. The limitation of vision to only one of the several bands of atmospheric transparency always seems arbitrary to me; exactly what you would expect from a randomly evolved creature, rather than one designed to mesh perfectly with its environment.
The International Space Station has a new window. While most people who will care probably already knew, this was the best gallery of pics that I've seen yet.
Not news, just fun: How to measure the speed of light using only chocolate and a microwave. High school (or possibly college) physics being revisited in an entertaining way.
On a completely different note: An interesting glimpse into Roger Ebert's failing health. I hope I can handle major health issues and eventual death with half the grace he is showing. This also explains to me why, starting mid-last year, I began to find articles by him discussing atheism, and more generally "A-bullshit-ism." I had not found his actual blog before this article, but I'll be following it now.