A warning to the nerd who dares mix his ballpoints with this pen! It’s a dangerous life for a nerdlinger, now the University of Illinois has introduced a pen that writes electrical circuits in real silver. More
Great, sage advice from John Scalzi about why a writer might want to pay to register a domain in the era of Facebook:
So, let’s go back to 1998. You’re a new writer and you want to establish a permanent residency online. Which would be wiser: Having your own site at your own domain, or putting up a site at GeoCities?
It’s 2001, same drill: Which is wiser: Having your own domain, or creating a site on AOL servers?
2003: Your own domain, or a Friendster page?
2007: Your own domain, or a MySpace page?
(Hindsight is a useful thing.)
And now it’s 2011 and the choice is one’s own domain or a page on Facebook. Guess which I think you should do.
I agree with everything he says right up to the point where he recommends getting a Facebook page too. Not because it might not be good for your career, but because I think it’s an ugly, stupid service designed to teach you to systematically undervalue your privacy.
Mastering One’s Own Domain, and No, This is Not a Seinfeld Reference
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Why writers should have their own domains
It’s hard to believe that such an alien sight exists on our Pale Blue Dot. Photographed by Emmanuel Coupe, this photo shows frozen gas bubbles in a Canadian lake. In his own words: More
Two research teams have found new evidence of transformations in elusive elementary particles called neutrinos. The findings may finally help explain why the universe didn’t vanish shortly after its birth.
“These results are just the beginning of the story for neutrinos,” said physicist Robert Plunkett of Fermilab in Chicago. “They could lead to clues and tell us why there’s now far more matter than antimatter.”
Most neutrinos are emitted by the sun, and are so small and ghostly that billions pass through our bodies every second. Most go right through Earth without hitting anything. But some human-built devices—slabs of iron and plastic, big chambers of oil or water lined with photon detectors, or detector arrays plunged into seawater or Antarctic ice—can record the blip of light when a neutrino occasionally slams into an atom.
Using these detection events, physicists have identified three types of neutrino, called muon, tau and electron neutrinos. Further discoveries suggested that each type can transform into another, with muon-to-tau and tau-to-electron neutrino transformations being dominant, at least in particle-accelerator-powered experiments. Researchers proposed a third and weaker change, that of muon-to-electron neutrinos, but until now lacked evidence for its existence.
On June 14, the Japanese Tokai-to-Kamioka experiment reported the significant detection of muon-to-electron neutrino changes. On June 24, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment at Fermilab reported the same. While the ranges of their data varied, the basic claims were the same.
“[The values] differ because we used different techniques and distances, but they overlap at one part. They’re complementary,” said Plunkett, a co-spokesperson of MINOS.
With a more complete understanding of neutrino transformation in hand, Plunkett said physicists can now design experiments to investigate larger questions about the universe. The largest among them: why there’s far more matter than antimatter.
Matter and antimatter particles annihilate when they meet. Each type is thought to have appeared in equal proportions shortly after the Big Bang, yet the matter-rich universe as we know it still exists. As a result, physicists are seeking evidence of “asymmetries,” in which matter-antimatter encounters end up emitting more matter particles.
Some matter-favoring asymmetry shows up in the annihilation of quarks, though the effect is relatively meager. But physicists say a muon-to-electron neutrino transformation supports the possibility of more significant asymmetries.
“We now have a good enough handle on neutrinos to design experiments and try to address such a big mystery,” Plunkett said.
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Neutrino transformation could help explain mystery of matter
The shift away from landlines continues, as 24.9 percent of all American adults now live in homes with wireless-only voice connections. Among younger adults aged 25 to 29, the numbers are twice as high; more than half have only a cell phone.
Don't feel too bad for the phone companies. The largest wireline companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are linked with wireless units that have cashed in on the switch to cell phones and now rake in huge profits.
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Half of US twenty-somethings have no landline