Growing diamonds

"Silicon is so twentieth century." That's what one PhD student at MIT says of silicon being used for computer chips. There is a certain plateau with silicon chips -- the element gets hotter the more energy the chips use, thus the chips break down and the speed of the processors is limited. So what's a better alternative? Diamonds.

One thing about diamonds is its high thermal conductivity. They can withstand higher temperatures, frequencies, current, and voltage (a centimeter thick diamond plate can endure about 10 million volts). Actually, diamonds have the highest thermal conductivity of any material known. So why don't we use them for computer chips more often? It's much more expensive, of course, but it's also very hard to find two diamonds in nature that have the same exact properties for them to properly work for transistors. That's where chemical vapor deposition (CVD) comes in.

CVD is basically a fancy term for "growing diamonds." Scientists are now beginning to build diamonds atom by atom inside vacuum chambers. That way, every diamond will be the same, making it easier to use for chips.

It probably won't totally replace silicon, though. Some circuitries in computer chips call for specific types of semiconductors, a number of which can only be made with silicon. That's why many in the field believe that diamonds will in the future supplement silicon, replacing it in some applications and working with it elsewhere.

For more details check out the NOVA scienceNow clip. And here's how they make them:

Apercu

Apercu means "an immediate estimate or judgment."

All-electronic toll collection

Bush Turnpike in my city, Dallas, TX, is now the first existing facility in the country to transition to all-electronic toll collection (AETC). AETC is where there'll be no more cash toll collection; the people who have a TollTag will go by normally, people who don't will get a bill in the mail at a 45% higher rate than the TollTag customers. That way, no one has to idle on the tollway, which saves gas money and improves air quality. There will be no more stopping to pay tolls regardless of payment type.

Camp Quest

Camp Quest is a summer camp for nonbelievers. It was established by Edwin Kagan in 1996 in Kentucky and is now operating in Hamilton, Ohio.

The camp doesn't indoctrinate its nontheistic views or discourage religious belief. Rather, it equips kids with "the tools to learn how to think, not what to think." The instructors teach the youngsters about evolution and debunks supernatural phenomena such as crop circles. The children also learn about other religions, famous skeptics (such as Thomas Jefferson), and moral philosophy. The activities include those of any other summer camp: hiking, canoeing, campfires, swimming. But it usually involves a twist. You may spot birds with small beaks in an environment with insects as food and discuss natural selection, or you can joke about your friends' crazy religious beliefs around a campfire.

The standout activity is the Invisible Unicorn Challenge. Campers are told that two invisible unicorns live on the campgrounds, that cannot be seen, heard, touched, etc. Anyone who can prove the unicorns exist will be handed a bill that predates the dollar bills of 1957, when the phrase "In God We Trust" was first printed on them. No one has won yet.

Now the camp will be introduced in England this summer, funded by Richard Dawkins.

I found a clip about Camp Quest on The Colbert Report. This one's dated July 24, 2006:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
ThreatDown - Camp
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

Why does President Obama use so many pens to sign a bill?

I've noticed recently that every time the president signs a bill he uses an array of pens. Why? I don't have a "reputable" source for this but several forums can't be wrong.

Because he gives them out as souvenirs to the people who helped craft the bill. About ten pens are given out. Apparently, other presidents have done this as well. It's some kind of tradition or something.

This is how we fight the Taliban

Duster

A duster is a loose-fitting, long coat. The original ones were worn by horsemen to protect their clothing from trail dust.

DeCavalcante crime family

The DeCavalcante crime family is an organized crime family in New Jersey whose lives were loosely portrayed on the TV show The Sopranos.

The DeCavalcante Family:
part 1
part 2
part 3
part 4
part 5

United States v. Reynolds

United States v. Reynolds was a landmark Supreme Court case in 1953 that saw the formal recognition of State Secrets Privilege.

In 1948 in Norcross, Georgia, an airplane carrying military personnel and civilians crashed while conducting tests of "secret electronic equipment." The widows of the three dead civilians sued and wanted full disclosure of the Air Force's accident investigation report. The Air Force refused because they deemed releasing the documents would threaten national security. The District Court and Court of Appeals had decided in favor of the civilians.

But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision on a 6-3 vote. The justices ruled that cause for privilege must be reasonably demonstrated, our current system.

Iranternet

I guess we're all learning a little bit about Iran's internet savviness because of the massive uprisings. It turns out that Iran's internet penetration is around 35% -- higher than the Middle East average of 26%. There are an estimated 60,000 active Persian blogs, with Farsi being the tenth most popular language in the entire blogosphere.

It's not the first time Iranians have displayed their technological know-how during a rebellion. Thirty years ago Ayatollah Khomeinei clandestinely sent cassette tapes of his seromons from his exile in France to Iranians, who would smuggle them in the country to copy and mass distribute them. It's what started the 1979 revolution.

Abattoir

Abattoir means "a slaughterhouse" or "something likened to a slaughterhouse."

HIPPO

HIPPO is an acronym used to describe the destruction of a species. The letters stand for:

Habitat destruction
Invasive species
Pollution
Population
Overharvesting

Usually, it all starts with Population. Too many people consume the land/sea area and the accompanying resources (Habitat destruction); introduce their own pigs and other animals that displace the native species (Invasive species); contaminate the soil and/or sea area, thereby wiping out more species (Pollution); which makes humans hunt even more to the point of (near?) extinction of the species (Overharvesting).

McAllen, TX

McAllen, TX is the nation's second most expensive health care market. Only Miami -- which has much higher labor and living costs -- spends more per person on health care.

Kampuchea

Kampuchea was the name of present-day Cambodia from 1975-1979 when Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces defeated Lon Nol's Khmer Republic.

Johnny Knoxville

Johnny Knoxville's real name is Philip John Clapp.

Victory garden

To reduce the pressure on the public food supply during World Wars I and II, ordinary Americans planted victory gardens, which were home vegetable and fruit gardens. By 1943, 20 million Americans had planted their own victory gardens, harvesting an estimated 9-10 million tons of fruits and vegetables -- it was the patriotic and American thing to do. But when the second world war ended everyone soon became complacent and neglected the need for homegrown foods.

How about we plant more of these victory gardens? Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton explain why we should in their new book A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil.

Gigantopithecus

Gigantopithecus is an extinct genus of ape that lived from around 1 million to 300,000 years ago alongside Homo erectus in what is now China, India, and Vietnam. Gigantopithecus blacki was the largest primate species ever, standing up to just under 10 feet and weighing in at 1,200 pounds.

Since no pelvis or leg bones have been found, no one knows for sure whether Gigantopithecus walked on all fours or stood on its hind legs. The majority view is that it was quadrupedal, though some suggest it was bipedal. The scientists who favor the bipedal view point to the few jawbones discovered which are all U-shaped and widen towards the rear. This would make space for the windpipe to be within the jaw and allow the skull to sit squarely upon a fully-erect spine.

Gigantopithecus blacki has also been popular with the Bigfoot theory.

Why don't we care for the environment?

From E.O. Wilson's book The Future of Life:

The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good common sense. Why do they think in this short-sighted way? The reason is simple: it is a hard-wired part of our Paleolithic heritage. For hundreds of millennia those who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring -- even when their collective striving left their chiefdoms and empires to crumble around them. The long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal.

So there you have it. Why don't we care for the environment? Why don't we innately like learning about other people's cultures? The answer obviously has to do with a lack of altruism, but the reason why we as a species tend to look out only for ourselves is explained above by none other than the master, E.O. Wilson.

This theory also applies to all animals, not just Homo sapiens.

Black helicopter

The term black helicopter refers to conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. It became popular with the militia movement in the 1990s as a warning sign that there would be a military takeover of part or all of the U.S. Of course, one of the prime targets for conspiracy theorists (and people on the Right in general) is the UN, so they'd cook up rumors that the UN patrolled the United States with black helicopters ready to take the country over.

The most media attention black helicopters received was in 1995 via freshman Republican Idaho Representative Helen Chenoweth. She claimed to The New York Times that some of her constituents spotted armed federal agents who landed black helicopters on the ranches of Idaho farmers to enforce the Endangered Species Act.

Yeah, you gotta love (and by love I mean hate) conspiracy theorists.

Running barefoot

Since there are no studies that show that running shoes prevent injuries, some people, such as Christopher McDougall, support running barefoot or nearly barefoot. Let's say I'm jogging slightly leaning on my left side. With my big and clunky shoes on, I have no way of knowing that one side of my left foot is getting a bit tender. But if I'm running with a thinner sole, I can quickly readjust my spine until I can feel my foot getting better. This will prevent any pain I may experience in the future from the constant incorrect running.

Human beings ran barefoot for hundreds of thousands of years before shoes were introduced. We chased down animals in the hot African savanna without the aid of footwear. So we've evolved to move without something on our feet, anyway.

One company that makes "barefoot shoes" is Vibram FiveFingers. McDougall says (25:05) he's been using them for about a year and a half and it's like running free in the wind. They haven't worn out yet, either. But they're not only for exercise; they can be used for any purpose in life. FREE YOUR FEET!

An article in the Daily Mail by McDougall.

His new book, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, can be found here.

Doggy wanna cracker?

First, watch this video.

I didn't even know dogs can do that, maybe because I have the 39th gene called "I hate pets." Of course, much like parrots, the dogs are not really talking. They're just in it for the snack they'll get for performing the trick.

Esperanto

Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. It was invented in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L.L. Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist living in modern-day Poland. The language has somewhere between 100,000 and 2 million speakers, with about 1,000 native speakers -- the most famous being George Soros.

Esperanto is not an official language of any country, but the short-lived man-made island of Rose Island declared it as such in 1968.

The language's purpose was to foster peace and international understanding, and has been described by Penn Jillette as the idealist's language.

Why does food go down the wrong pipe?

Skip ahead to 4:50-7:17.

What Anne Frank might have looked like at 80

Panspermia

Panspermia is the idea that "seeds" drift from planet to planet, bringing new life to each location. Whatever happens to those seeds is left to evolution.

Panspermia was once ridiculed but now adds another respectable and possible explanation for the origin of life.

The Sea of Hands

Andrea Jaeger

Andrea Jaeger was a tennis prodigy in the 1980s, turning pro at age 14 and easily beating Billie Jean King in the 1983 Wimbledon semifinals after King made a snide comment about her. But she intentionally lost the final match to Martina Navratilova -- if you want to know why click the link above. Basically, she grew tired of the game.

Now, Jaeger is an ordained Anglican Dominican nun who helps children with cancer. She also tries to warn teenage sports phenoms of the destructive psychological pitfalls they may fall into at such a sensitive age. She knows because she was one of them.

Reflexology

*** This has been put in the section 'Posts I wish I could take back.' Reason below. ***

Reflexology's basic premise is that specific locations on the soles of our feet (can also apply to our hands or ears, but feet is the most common) correspond to specific parts of our body, like the heart or liver. Massaging or "manipulating" these areas is supposed to heal the associated body organs.

This concept dates back to ancient Egypt and has also been found in Native American cultures. It is so popular that in China, Denmark, and the UK, it is part of their mainstream health care.

Reflexology was introduced to the U.S. by Eunice Ingham, a physical therapist who published her findings in 1938 in Stories the Feet Can Tell.

Does it work? Unless you've tried it, one can only read from other people's experiences:
Proponent's view.
Opponent's view.



Update 05.16.10: This post came before the days when I fully understood the pseudosciences and their effects. In reality, reflexology is like any other massaging technique that claims to "cleanse your body of toxins." Instead, I gave it the kind of justice that CNN anchors would envy: I presented a false balance then linked to the views of a proponent and opponent without saying which is correct. What I should have done, if I had known more about the pseudosciences, was shit on the idea of reflexology.

James Hutton

James Hutton is considered the father of modern geology.

As a curious farmer in Scotland, he attempted to explain the rock formations around him. In 1785, after about 25 years of work, he published his findings in Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe. Essentially, he argued that the composition of the land was such that it could not have taken 6,000 years to evolve, the prevailing biblical view of the earth's age, but much longer. Spoiler alert: he was right.

Ancient Mediterranean tsunami

Around 8,000 years ago an avalanche occuring on Mt. Etna in Sicily sent a massive tsunami that spread across the Mediterranean Sea and destroyed the shores of three continents. It carried enough rock and sediment to cover the entire island of Manhattan in a layer of debris thicker than the Empire State Building is tall.

The tsunami is also linked with the emergency evacuation of Atlit-Yam, an ancient village on the coast of present-day Israel that is now entirely underwater. The rupture of the human skulls and bones that were found and the missing teeth suggest there was a powerful force that hit the town.