Friday, April 18, 2008

Birds Are Actually Quantum Birds! Run!

In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.


Or if you're observing a quantum event taking place on your own retina, your magical brainwaves make the reaction go so slow that it tells you where you are on Earth.

The wierd part is, I'm not making up the second one.

How birds use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate has puzzled researchers for decades. In recent years, a growing body of evidence has pointed to the possibility that a weak magnetic field can influence the outcome of a certain type of chemical reaction involving the recombination of pairs of ions in bird retinas. The trouble is that the ion recombination is known to happen too quickly for the Earth's weak magnetic field to have any effect. Now it looks as if the quantum Zeno effect explains all, says one researcher (abstract). This is the watched-pot-never-boils effect in which the act of observing a quantum system maintains it for longer than expected. That's extraordinary news because it means a quantum sensor is determining the macroscopic behavior of living birds.

Now this is really, really cool to me.

And also terrifying, because pigeons have a better grasp of quantum mathematics than humans.

Scary, n'est pas?



Also... giggle.



Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Eating Healthy Will Fucking Kill You Dead


* "Doctors cure Nature’s mistakes
with mistakes of their own."
~ Leonid S. Sukhorukov



More specifically, scientists tracking over a hundred thousand people taking verying amounts of vitamins and minerals found that the people who took more DIED FASTER. In particular:

...

Beta-carotene was tested in 24 trials, vitamin A in 16 trials, vitamin C in 33, vitamin E in 54 and selenium in 21 trials. Researchers found that 17,880 of 136,023 study participants who took the supplements died (13.1 per cent), compared to 10,136 of 96,527 participants who did not take the supplements (10.5 per cent).

The antioxidants also appeared to offer no benefit to people with gastrointestinal, heart, neurological, eye, skin, rheumatoid, kidney and endocrine diseases, according to the authors. The authors believe that although low levels of antioxidants consumed in fruits and vegetables may be beneficial for health, they may act as "double-edged" swords, adversely affecting "key physiological processes." In the study, they link vitamin A to an increase in oxidative damage, while beta-carotene "may act as a co-carcinogen" or cancer-causing agent.

Awesome. Who feels healthy?


Tuesday, April 15, 2008

There, See? I Have A Topic

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I've done two posts in the past week, but I always discard them by the time I'm finished writing, for assorted reasons (ironically, the reasons I do that are covered by the posts that I deleted.) Now, however, I genuinely have something to talk about.

A while ago, someone in my office was in a car accident.  She's fine now (and truth be told, she was fine THEN, but she didn't let that on).  She's been back at work for about a week.  The thing I want to talk about... why do people feel it is now their job to walk up to her and talk about car accidents they've witnessed recently? Our office manager had her cornered this morning, talking about a car accident she passed downtown.

To me, this is akin to someone getting out of the hospital after getting a tumor removed, and only having people talk to them about OTHER people with tumors, or someone getting out of a weight loss clinic and only having people talk to them about OTHER fat people.  Yes, she was in a car accident, but I think I missed the leap of logic that instantly ascribes to her the property of "wants to hear about OTHER car accidents".

It confuses me.  Arg.

As long as YouTube is teh unblock-ed, I'll try to add something here.



Wednesday, April 9, 2008

"Post More Often"

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Be ye serious?

I've told people many times, if you want me to blog more often, then leave me some evidence that you're READING any of this crap.  Leave a comment down below, so I have something to show for my efforts other than trolling / phishing bots saying that my post was "excellent interesting", and would I please like to click these links without knowing what they are? (I wouldn't).

This blog has no theme.  It has no goal. It has no purpose.  It has no porpoise.  It has no sports equipment or marine mammals whatsoever. It's just where I post random crap when I feel like it, as long as it's not controversial or offensive or any other long adjective.  I haven't felt like it, lately.  I haven't felt like ANYTHING lately.  All I've wanted to do is just go off somewhere and be alone for a week, and sleep.  Instead I'm back to working six days a week, and I have to get a whole shitload of stuff organized for the Energy Fair, and I have to do two complete sets of transfer drawings, CAD and Photoshopped, for the Kelson guys, and they want it fairly soon, plus all the family-man crap I do at home that keeps me busy until sometime after 9:30, or what I call "The Magical Southpark Freedom Time".

If you want to hear from me, if you want me to blog some stuff, then give me things to blog about.  Drop me a comment, send me an article, do SOMETHING.  I'm tired of feeding the void.

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