New World Plant Extravaganza!

All of these plants are originally from North or South America.  The exchange of plants, animals, and diseases between the "new" and "old" worlds that happened beginning in the late 1400s is known as the Columbian Exchange.  None of these plants existed in Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia prior to then.

Corn!!
yes, that includes popcorn, which believe it or not, does grow on a cob

Potatoes!!
no Irish potato famine without these bad boys.  also, imagine potato-less pierogi's!?

Of Mousers and Men

This is my cat, Chairman Mao (RIP). Mao (猫) means cat in Chinese. Funny, right?

What else is funny about this cat? 1) He's in a bag, isn't that cute? and 2) He has thumbs! Most cats have four toes on their front paws. Chairman had five toes and at least six claws (one between toes). Many people are surprised to learn that cats with extra digits are fairly common. They are known variously as polydactyl cats, mitten cats, and sometimes Hemingway cats. Apparently Ernest Hemingway was a big fan. Many Hemingway cats still reside at the Hemingway estate in Key West. They are especially common in port towns because sailors thought they were good luck, or at least very good mousers. They can come in a few varieties:

Where does "toxic red sludge" come from???

As you may know, on October 4th a reservoir retaining wall collapsed near Kolontar Hungary, releasing over 180 million gallons of what is being called "toxic red sludge".  Before we delve into the nature of this sludge and why it is produced, here is an insane video of the sludge flowing through Kolontar:

Gamepocalypse is coming

Jesse Schell, an assistant professor at carnegie mellon university gave a mind-melting seminar entitled "Visions of the Gamepocalypse" at the Long Now Foundation's SALT series. I highly recommend listening to this podcast (and all other SALT podcasts for that matter), as he is a really energetic speaker and lays out a pretty convincing description about how games are going to become integrated into every part of our lives. The seminar is a bit long though (still highly recommended), so for those ADHD folks out there, here is a snippet of a different talk that gives a decent summary of his basic idea:

In case you're not interested in watching or listening to either, his basic point is that wi-fi and sensors of all kinds are becoming extremely cheap and abundant, and that combination allows you to turn everything into a game. In this case everything mainly involves things related to a consumer society, though the government could get involved as well. I don't think he talked about the possibility for your parents/spouse/family to turn your life into a game, but that seems plausible..."mow the lawn and you'll get a power-up" "wash the dishes or I'll cast a level three polymorph spell on you".

I came from That??!?

Last weekend I visited the Field Museum in Chicago.  It may come as no surprise to some of you that this museum completely blew my mind.  My friend Willard and I spent almost the entire time in their "Evolving Planet" exhibit, which walked us from the formation of the earth through to the present day.  Afterwards we talked about asteroids and looked at some wicked crystals.

Anyhow, the most surprising discovery from this visit concerned Dimetrodon, which when I was a child was one of my favorite dinosaurs from my extensive collection of plastic dinosaur toys.  My Dimetrodon toy looked vaguely like the one below, minus the "Dino-Strike Clamping Jaws".

What an awesome sail on his/her back, right?  Coolest dinosaur ever, or so I thought until my weekend stroll past the "Synapsid vs Diapsid" section of the evolving planet exhibit.  It was in this section that one of my childhood dino dreams died, and out of the ashes rose what I like to call the phoenix of discovery!  I discovered that Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, but was instead our ancestor!!!!!  While that sinks in, here are some cool Dimetrodon pictures.

The Correlation of Human Skin Color and UV Radiation Levels

AMAZING!!!!!!!!!

For more on this, go here and here.

Where's My Hoverboard!!???!!!

Crap!  Here I am in the year 2010, no flying cars, no hoverboards, I am pissed!  Nobody has even levitated anything yet!

J/K!  Levitation exists!

Here is a video of Dutch scientists levitating things like water droplets, cherry tomatoes, and even a frog:



They are able to do this by taking advantage of a property known as diamagnetism, which is possessed by many materials.  Many common things such as wood, plastic, and water are all diamagnetic (frogs are mostly water).  Diamagnetic objects are repelled by magnets.  Diamagnetism can be thought of as the opposite of ferromagnetism, which is the property possessed by objects made of many metals such as iron and nickel.  Ferromagnetic objects are attracted to magnets.  However, this attractive, ferromagnetic force is much stronger than the repulsive, diamagnetic force.  So, in order to manipulate diamagnetic objects, you need STRONG magnets.  The Dutch scientists used a 16 Tesla magnet, which is around a million times more powerful than a pretty strong refrigerator magnet.

For more on this experiment, visit the Radboud Univeristy Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory page.