photons

For the first time in my dozens of years of subscribing to the weekly science newsmagazine Science News I actually know someone whose work was referenced in one of the articles. My friends and former colleagues from ADL Peter Stark,  Allison Halleck (previously mentioned here) and Dale Larson have done some ground-breaking work in optical imaging on a very small scale – smaller than the diffraction limit. Pretty impressive work. Peter and I have our names together on a patent on some work we did on treating a biological fluid with light a number of years ago. He has been working with photons for quite some time and it is great to see Peter and Allison getting their years of hard work published in a serious technical journal like the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I’m very proud to have worked with them.

scorpion king

practically every news feed i listen to or read carried this story today…why is that?

boing-boing

slashdot 

boston.com 

npr 

wired 

reuters south africa 

 

ok…I dont reall read reuters south africa, but there it is! 

professor may

I’ve been a fan of Brian May for a long time. Queen’s first two albums set the tone for some great progressive guitar-oriented rock from many guitar players who only wished they could get the sounds that Brian did. He is one of those artists that I thought couldn’t do any more to go up on my idol scale. …unitl now… he has after many years, finished his Ph.D. in Astrophysiscs. You can read the details here but suffice to say he has proven himself to me to be a true renaissance man.

MythBusters

We’ve been gorging on episodes of MythBusters lately. I simply love this show. It is a great combination of DIY, geek tech, forensics, educational television, performance art, science, and engineering. The hosts of the show have just the right acting skills, look and credentials to keep the episodes entertaining. I really like when a myth is presented that I am sure will be busted and it turns out to be very probable – the Ancient Chinese Attacking Army Sensor and Shredded Plane are recent good examples that we watched. Of course the fact that the blow up lots of stuff greatly adds to the overall appeal! During the Mentos & Diet Coke episode (a great chemical constituent analysis example btw) they tried to come up with other examples of explosive fun with household items. The Home-Made Smoke Bombs brought back some fond memories from my childhood – crazy chemistry experiments fueled by my brother Bill’s copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book.

Technorati Tags: MythBusters

18,446,744,073,709,551,616

This looks like an absolutely fascinating exhibit on three dimensional puzzles. Slashdot sent me there originally…it looks like in true /. fashion there are a number of people arguing about the number of moves above…of course they are discussing the wrong puzzle type as they didn’t read the article correctly! …having said that one person posted a great idea: write to the Museum of Science in Boston requesting they get this exhibit!