Mars – we found the water
by Vinay Gupta • March 18, 2007 • Science • 0 Comments
Oceans worth of water ice found on mars. So that pretty much settles it then. We’re going. Bonus item: caves. Giant caves!
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The Bucky-Gandhi Design Institution
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Bleach bombs?
by Vinay Gupta • March 18, 2007 • Everything Else • 0 Comments
Chlorine gas weapons used in Iraq. Story seems to indicate that these are very low tech although still very nasty. If there were no chemical weapons there when we arrived, they are there now.
Read more →UFOS?
by Vinay Gupta • March 15, 2007 • Trivia and Media • 0 Comments
New Delhi – with Air Traffic Control video footage etc. That’s rather a lot of documentation for a fake. Doesn’t mean little green men… surveillance drones?
Read more →Funny
by Vinay Gupta • March 14, 2007 • Trivia and Media • 0 Comments
Air Traffic Controller Humor Tower: “Eastern 702, cleared for takeoff, contact Departure on frequency 124.7″ Eastern 702: “Tower, Eastern 702 switching to Departure. By the way, after we lifted off we saw some kind of dead animal on the far end of the runway.” Tower: “Continental 635, cleared for takeoff behind Eastern 702, contact Departure [...]
Read more →Ethanol / Direct Injection = 25% more efficient combustion and more power in a smaller engine
by Vinay Gupta • March 14, 2007 • Science • 0 Comments
MIT team has new engine technology. Thoughts: nice. Commercializeable? Well, 25% more efficient combustion and more power in a smaller engine is pretty good. However, where do you get the ethanol? Can you run this process on E85 for the ethanol pre-charge and gasoline for the main charge?
Read more →The Great Global Warming Swindle
by Vinay Gupta • March 13, 2007 • Science, The Global Picture, Trivia and Media • 0 Comments
I just watched the extremely controversial Channel 4 British TV program on Global Warming. It’s interesting to me for two reasons. Firstly, my own hunch has always been that our understanding of climate is way, way to primitive to be making the kind of political decisions that are being made. Yes, it might be wise [...]
Read more →Memory erasing in rats
by Vinay Gupta • March 12, 2007 • Everything Else • 0 Comments
When they tested the rats with both tones a day later, untreated animals were still fearful of both sounds, as if they expected a shock. But those treated with the drug were no longer afraid of the tone they had been reminded of under treatment. The process of re-arousing the rats’ memory of being shocked [...]
Read more →200 year warm period in Europe around the 11th century
by Vinay Gupta • March 12, 2007 • The Global Picture • 0 Comments
Chairman Bruce quoting Kevin Kelly at a Long Term Thinking event This warming up of agriculture initiated the first vast clear-cutting of European forests. In the short 200 years between 1100 and 1300, from one-third to one-half of European wooded wilderness was deforested to make way for fields and pastures — shaping the lovely farm [...]
Read more →The Sims… they have their own “language”?
by Vinay Gupta • March 11, 2007 • Trivia and Media • 0 Comments
All about Simlish Turns out that The Sims game characters speak in a nonlanguage so that the company didn’t have to do 200 internationalizations of the game. Turns out there is music in these languages, including covers by original artists. At that link you’ll find a link to the Pussycat Dolls singing “Doncha” in Simlish. [...]
Read more →Wanted: a tool to identify music.
by Vinay Gupta • March 10, 2007 • Everything Else • 2 Comments
SXSW.zip That’s a legal torrent file to download 726 tracks, one per artist, from South By Southwest. Unfortunately it turns out to be really really hard to get through even a fraction of what’s there because there’s no genre information or other way to filter for taste. What I’d like is a tool that does [...]
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