Category: Random

First, Sharks & Deep Sea Squid! How cool is that? Second, why was the academic response to pull it off the internet? The attitude behind that seems like an unintended, and unfortunate, consequence of the publish or perish academic system currently in place. Yannis Papastamatiou, a shark ecologist at Florida International University, in Miami, saw…

So much is still unknown about this pandemic. Both the website (https://fivethirtyeight.com/) and the artist (https://www.smbc-comics.com/) are worth following. This comic talks about why it is very hard to have an accurate model. And why all models should be distrusted to some degree. Click image or here to see the full comic.

I visited the Cadbury factory in Birmingham, England a number of years ago. The tour didn’t take us onto the actual factory floor so we didn’t get to see how they made the creme eggs like the video. But they did have a very nice demonstration setup where they show all the different processes. And,…

The true harbinger of spring is not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of the bat on the ball. Bill Veeck

Tsundoku: acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them

https://neal.fun/deep-sea/ The above picture is one of the many things to learn at Neal Agarwal’s “The Deep Sea’ website. Scroll down from the surface and you will see creatures down to the very deepest part of the ocean. More people have been to the Moon than the Hadal Zone (6000m). https://neal.fun/deap-sea/ Click on the ‘Neal.fun’…

SpaceX launched a car into space on February 6, 2018. Some dismissed as a stupid rich guy thing. I enjoyed it immensely. SpaceX is doing remarkable work, with NASA’s help, in getting the space effort going again. Putting the Tesla Roadster, and a space dummy, on a trajectory towards Mars caught the public’s attention. If…

If you are not a fan of Stout beer, or staring at beer watching bubbles, this post is not for you. Feel free to move along, I won’t mind.

Came across ‘Scorigami’ the other day. It is a ‘Scorigami!’ when a US Football game ends in a score that has never happened before. The web site https://nflscorigami.com/ gives the current state of them. It is fun to wander around a bit. There is also a baseball one at https://scorigami.danaben.net/t. There have been at least…

This is a list of many things that have been true since the birth of those entering in college this year (thus the ‘Class of 2023’). This list used to be at the Beloit College website, but they moved it to a different place. The complete list is here: https://www.marist.edu/mindset-list Here are a few highlights…

My folks owned a Ford Pinto wagon that eventually came to me. The story about how I got it and what happened to it are lost to my late teen/early 20s memory gaps. The picture in this post is the closest I could find. I don’t even remember what year the car was or what…

About 5 minutes long. From a big block of aluminum to 12.7 kilometers of aluminum foil by basically continually squeezing it until it is thin enough. And don’t tear it! Video by the “How It’s Made” show.