Compared to the rest of the world, we’re all the 1%

Posted by on November 9, 2014 11 comments
I'm completely on the side of people in the USA who raise their voices against the level of income inequality we're seeing here.  (And no, I'm not advocating some sort of government mandated redistribution, just policies that encourage a market where extreme wealth concentration isn't as big of a problem.)

However, I wonder how many of us recognize the fact that we're all the 1% when compared to much of the rest of the world. 

The idea makes me uncomfortable because I like my stuff and don't want to give it up!  

Then I think about how that's analogous to the 1% here in the US, and suddenly I've got a lot more empathy.  Not that it changes my stance on the matter, but it makes it harder to frame the 1% as the bad guys and the rest of us as the good guys.

Originally posted on Google+ · November 9, 2014

North America next to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

Posted by on November 2, 2014 7 comments

more: http://astronomycentral.co.uk/astronomy-the-size-of-stuff/

Originally posted on Google+ · November 2, 2014

Animated V12 engine pistons

Posted by on October 31, 2014 9 comments

Originally posted on Google+ · October 31, 2014

If you tell me you're allergic to gluten, I will not believe you

Posted by on October 28, 2014 7 comments
This sucks for people who actually have celiac disease, but that's what happens in situations like this.

While there are no scientific data to demonstrate that millions of people have become allergic or intolerant to gluten (or to other wheat proteins), there is convincing and repeated evidence that dietary self-diagnoses are almost always wrong, particularly when the diagnosis extends to most of society.

Against the Grain
Nearly twenty million Americans now say that they regularly experience stomach problems after eating products that contain gluten. Credit Illustration by Paul Rogers

Originally posted on Google+ · October 28, 2014

All the planets fit between the Earth and the Moon

Posted by on October 25, 2014 2 comments

Originally posted on Google+ · October 25, 2014

Why do I get G+ notifications for spammy public posts?

Posted by on October 23, 2014 6 comments
I'll get a notification about a post by people I don't have in a circle, and they haven't +mentioned me in the post, and the post says it is "Shared publicly".  These are usually spammy posts like this one:

 https://plus.google.com/u/0/104315922029442462440/posts/GEC5VMwfAgm

Why do I get notifications for these?  By "notification" I mean I get the red indicator by the bell at the top of Google sites, and a notification via G+ on my phone.

Originally posted on Google+ · October 23, 2014

This guy implemented his own Cray-1A, the coolest supercomputer ever made

Posted by on October 16, 2014 11 comments
If anyone out there has access to any software that ran on the Cray-1A, contact this person.  Apparently, SGI destroyed their software archives and this is the one thing you can't find on the internet.

» Homebrew Cray-1A
As part two (see previous attempt) of my ongoing series in ‘computational necromancy,’ I’ve spent the last year and a half or so constructing my own 1/10-scale, binary-compatible, cycle-accurate Cray-1. This project falls purely into the “because I can!” category – I was poking around the …

Originally posted on Google+ · October 16, 2014

Tetrachromacy and John Cavil’s wish to see gamma rays

Posted by on October 13, 2014 16 comments
I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to — I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body.

From the article:

She’s also a tetrachromat, which means that she has more receptors in her eyes to absorb color. The difference lies in Antico's cones, structures in the eyes that are calibrated to absorb particular wavelengths of light and transmit them to the brain. The average person has three cones, which enables him to see about one million colors. But Antico has four cones, so her eyes are capable of picking up dimensions and nuances of color—an estimated 100 million of them—that the average person cannot. “It’s shocking to me how little color people are seeing,” she said.

This Woman Sees 10 Times More Colors Than The Average Person
A unique genetic mutation and a well-wired brain mean that Concetta Antico is like no other artist on Earth.

Originally posted on Google+ · October 13, 2014

People crossing the plaza at La Defense, Paris

Posted by on October 1, 2014 1 comment

Originally posted on Google+ · October 1, 2014

Mining bitcoin by hand

Posted by on September 30, 2014 No comments
Not much to say about this other than that it's pretty cool.

Mining Bitcoin with pencil and paper: 0.67 hashes per day
I decided to see how practical it would be to mine Bitcoin with pencil and paper. It turns out that the SHA-256 algorithm used for mining is pretty simple and can in fact be done by hand. Not surprisingly, the process is extr…

Originally posted on Google+ · September 30, 2014