The far come close took by the littl come big

• For the first time, a significant evolution has been caught in the act in a lab setting: an E. Coli bacteria acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, something it normall can’t do.
• The New Journal of Physics reports a new “meta-material made up of array of small cylinders” can create a substance that is essentially impervious to sound, with lots of potential applications. Noiseless courdoroy!
• Great news from the upcoming iPhone/iTouch app store: a new version of iTunes and free software will allow remote control of iTunes from anywhere in the house (presumably anywhere on the network). This is a feature I’m definitely going to use a lot.
• Hall & Oates reunited for a show in L.A.
• The last period on earth with so few sunspots resulted in a little ice age in the late 17th century, and some geophysicists think that within 500 years the Earth’s magnetic field may be gone entirely– or at least enough to severely screw things up– but don’t panic! It may be that our universe was just a “bubble pinched off from a previously existing universe.”

2 comments June 27th, 2008

Basically Driving Me Mad

Usually prefacing an involved explanation of something very technical, I would conservatively estimate that I hear the word “basically” used in a sentence a couple of hundred times a week. I also hear it used in the middle of any particular sentence, presumably to describe a simplification of what’s being said. In reality, I think it’s become just a bridging word, but its use has become overwhelming.

It wasn’t driving me quite so insane, of course, until Amy noticed, and we started pointing it out to one another. Now that the secret is out, I can’t help but suppress a slight cringe.  At first, I would smile to myself, but now I can’t even use it — or even replace it with its cousin, “essentially”– and I find my spoken sentence structure has a more tightened, perhaps even erudite, quality to it, due to the lack of vague transition phrases.

A quick Googling of the word shows that it’s a popular word in all sorts of business names, particularly ones that begin with the letter “B”: Basically Babysitting, Basically Beds, Basically Bushwalking Club, Basically Brazil…

Add comment June 26th, 2008

Dishonest Abe

Just a picture I threw together while I was on the endless train ride home. I guess I’ve always liked the idea of a cyborg Lincoln, perhaps it’s the iconicity of the guy.

Add comment June 19th, 2008