Max Plank Institute makes a faux-pas!

The use Chinese characters on the cover of their magazine depicting housewives stripping in a brothel!

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/chinese-classical-poem-was-brothel-ad-1058031.html

The Women Dictionnary

Very funny !

The Economic Meltdown - should you be concerned

from PhD comics

"The Big Bang Theory"

A new show full of people with Phds in Theoretical Physics! hahahaha. . . .

Channel 42, Mondays at 7pm.

Undergrad abuse in the basement of RLM

Ike is coming...

LHC

SCOOT ALONG - Top Stories

"Name-brand scooter sales in the U.S have risen 24 percent in the first three months of 2008, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, a nonprofit national trade association that represents motorcycles and scooters."MORE on the Daily Texan website

F-hain vs. Kreuzberg

from der Spiegel:

WASSERSCHLACHT 2008

Dirty Diapers Soil Berlin's Annual Food Fight

The latest Wasserschlacht battle between the inhabitants of two proud -- and now administratively unified -- neighborhoods of Berlin was held on Sunday. What has traditionally been a food fight has expanded its offerings to include fish and dirty diapers. [more]

[...]

Each side has its own smaller teams of combatants. On the Kreuzberg side, for example, there are the Kreuzberger Landwehr ("Kreuzberg Militia") and the Kreuzberger Patriotische Demokraten/Realistisches Zentrum ("Kreuzberg Patriotic Democrats/Realistic Center"). For Friedrichshain, among others, there are the Total Krasse Kreuzberg-Gegner ("Totally Wicked Kreuzberg Opponents") and the Anarcho-Zynistische-Offensive-Berlin-Fraktion Friedrichshain ("Anarcho- Offensive Berlin Faction Friedrichshain").

[...]

Obamafest

From the NY Times:

On Thursday evening in a glittering Berlin, Mr. Obama delivered a tone poem to American and European ideals and shared history... [more]

Run your car on water...

http://www.runyourcarwithwater.com

Kara S. saved over 130$ last month...

Free Documentary Online

Haven't tested it yet, but looks promising to me:

http://www.snagfilms.com/films/browse/topic

Battle at Kruger

An amazing scene between Lions, Buffalos (or whatever you call them) and crocodiles :-) Guess who wins ?

Are you cool enough to become a German citizen?

http://ocs.zgk.de/mdsocs/mod_quiz_quizstart/quiz/KS_Einbuergerungstest/ocs_ausgabe/ksta

I got 3 out of 7 correct! Some of those answers did not make sense to me. . .

Here Come the Code Wars: How Android Will Take Down iPhone 3

popularmechanics.com — No phone maker today is poised to take advantage of the software chinks —however small—in the iPhone's armor. Companies like BlackBerry may have excelled at direct, no-frills interfaces, but with the flood of new iPhone applications due to arrive July 11, it will take a true software giant to mount any sort of defense. A giant like Google. Read article

Eye-Fi

here is some new gadget to buy...if you don't have the camera yet, how about this one here : Canon Digital Rebel XTi 10.1MP









Upload photos automatically from your digital camera to your computer and favorite photo site with the world's first wireless memory card.

http://www.eye.fi/

American To Charge For First Checked Bag | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

From the Onion:

Mars Phoenix First Pictures

First pictures of Mars Phoenix that landed yesterday night:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/images.php?gID=0&cID=8

64-year-old Frenchman to Sky Dive from Space

This former paratrooper is crazy ! He is gonna jump from the limit of the stratosphere (~50km), that's above the ozone layer and just below shooting stars. He will go supersonic and break a few world records. He will take off this Sunday in Canada in an air balloon and after more than 2hours of climbing will open the door and jump !

His website:
http://www.legrandsaut.org/

A video of his training:
http://www.javno.com/en/world/clanak.php?id=145208

An article about him:
http://men.style.com/news/blog/2008/05/tom-petty-shoul.html

Heavy storms wreaked havoc on Central Texas

These are some pictures PJ, my office mate, took during the storm yesterday night (see his Flickr page).There was golf ball size hail in my backyard and apparently a tornado touched down somewhere in Burnet.


from KXAN: Streets in the French Place neighborhood just east of Interstate 35 look like someone just shook the trees, and all of the leaves have fallen down. Residents there saw just chunks of ice falling from the sky. Some residents woke up to find trees had fallen on their home.




Just after the stroke of midnight Thursday morning, a severe thunderstorm exploded in intensity right over Downtown Austin.

Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole

from the NYTimes:

In Walker Percy’s “Love in the Ruins,” the protagonist, a doctor and an inventor, recites what he calls the scientist’s prayer. It goes like this:

“Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction.

“Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.”

Today we require more than prayers that a scientific experiment will not lead to the end of the world. We demand hard-headed calculations. But whom can we trust to do them?That question has been raised by the impending startup of the Large Hadron Collider." Critics have contended that the machine could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or something equally catastrophic. ... Dr. Kent, in a 2003 paper, used the standard insurance company method to calculate expected losses to explore how stringent this bound on danger was. He multiplied the disaster probability times the cost, in this case the loss of the global population, six billion. A result was that, in actuarial terms, the Rhic collider could kill up to 120 people in a decade of operation"
[...]
"Besides the random nature of quantum physics means that there is always a minuscule, but nonzero, chance of anything occurring, including that the new collider could spit out man-eating dragons."

read article

NASA/CNES Ocean Surface Topography Mission Ocean Survey Spacecraft Arrives at Launch Site

Source:" http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25347 "

PASADENA, Calif. -- A NASA and French Space Agency (CNES) spacecraft designed to continue a long-term survey of Earth's oceans has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., for final launch preparations. The new satellite will study ocean circulation and the effect oceans have on weather, climate and how Earth is responding to global climate change.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission, called OSTM for short, will be flown on the Jason-2 spacecraft, which was transported on April 24 from its manufacturer, Thales Alenia Space, in Cannes, France, to Toulouse, France. It was loaded onto a Boeing 747 aircraft for its trans-Atlantic journey and after refueling in Boston, it arrived April 29 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Following final tests, it will be integrated onto a United Launch Alliance Delta II launch vehicle in preparation for a planned launch in June.

With the launch of this satellite, the science of precisely measuring and studying the height of the sea surface across Earth's oceans will come of age. Continuous collection of these measurements began in 1992 with the NASA/CNES Topex/Poseidon mission and continued in 2001 with NASA/CNES's Jason-1 mission, which is currently providing near-real-time data to a variety of users.

The addition of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) as partners on OSTM/Jason-2 begins transitioning the responsibility for collecting these data to weather and climate forecasting agencies, which will use them for short-range and seasonal-to-long-range ocean forecasting.

The 15-plus-year climate data record that this mission will continue is the only one capable of addressing how ocean circulation is linked to climate change and how global sea level, one of the most important consequences and indicators of global climate change, is changing.

Satellite observations of Earth's oceans have revolutionized our understanding of global climate by improving ocean models and hurricane forecasts, and identifying and tracking large ocean/atmosphere phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina. The data are used every day in applications as diverse as, for example, routing ships, improving the safety and efficiency of offshore industry operations, managing fisheries and tracking marine mammals.

The spacecraft will be launched into a 1,336-kilometer (830-mile) circular, non-sun-synchronous orbit at an inclination of 66 degrees to Earth's equator, allowing it to monitor 95 percent of Earth's ice-free oceans every 10 days.

The Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 is an international and interagency mission developed and operated as a four-party collaboration among NASA; NOAA; the French Space Agency, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales; and EUMETSAT. CNES is providing the spacecraft, NASA and CNES are jointly providing the payload instruments and NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center is responsible for the launch management and countdown operations for the Delta II.

After completing the on-orbit commissioning of the spacecraft, CNES will hand over operation and control of the spacecraft to NOAA. NOAA and EUMETSAT will generate the near-real-time products and distribute them to users. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information on the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2, visit:

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/ostm.html

Could the Universe be a Gigantic Brain Cell?

Found on the web:

"One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe. Together they suggest the surprisingly similar patterns found in vastly different phenomena."

Picture

Singapore Airlines

Here is a video of the really spacious lounges and private beds in the A380 of Singapore Airlines. I wonder if Singapore Airlines does Austin <=> Paris :-)

Take your gun to work

...in case there is another robbery, from the latest Onion edition:

Infographic

April 16, 2008 | Issue 44•16

Florida Legalizes Taking Guns To Work

Florida legislators passed a bill allowing citizens to bring their guns to work. Here are some of the other pro-gun laws enacted recently.

Alaska—Members of endangered species now permitted to carry concealed firearms for self-protection

Louisiana—Now legal for residents to shoot at hurricanes

Minnesota—Any resident may fire a single shot every five years, or when Vikings win

Idaho—You can have a gun, or a grenade, but not both

Virginia—Non-gun-owning residents must apply for a permit to not own and operate a firearm

New York—Guest stars on Law & Order may bring their own guns to the set

Kansas—Children as young as 8 can bring guns to school on the condition that there's no funny business

Texas—That huge cattle gun used by Javier Bardem's character in No Country For Old Men now legally available at Fiesta Mart grocery stores

The Adventures of Gordon Killemal

My friend Dylan is a writer (Daily Texan for example). He just put up the first installment of "The Adventures of Gordon Killemal" in response to the armed robbery at RLM last week and the discussion about carrying concealed guns that ensued on our gradlist. Enjoy!!

Crazy Traffic in Shanghai

Surfer-Physicist's Unified Theory Leads to Fame, Backlash

Everyone's probably already seen this, but I thought it was appropriate for the blog.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/02/ted_lisi

GFZ

Hey Andreas, this is for you!

Down and dirty

Mar 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Energy: If geothermal energy, which exploits underground heat reserves, is to become widespread, it will have to work outside volcanic areas

IN THE world of environmental activism there is a good rule of thumb. If an energy source comes out of the ground, it is probably bad (think coal, oil, natural gas and, in the view of many, uranium). If it does not, then it is probably good (think wind, wave and solar power). But there is an exception. Even the most hair-shirted environmentalist finds it hard to argue against geothermal energy. When what comes out of the ground is merely hot water or steam there is, as it were, little to get steamed up about.

The problem is that traditional geothermal power relies on volcanism. That is fine if you live in Iceland or New Zealand. But it is not so good in a geologically passive place such as Germany. Which is why Wulf Brandt, of the National Research Centre of Geosciences in Potsdam, has dug a deep hole in the ground at Gross Schönebeck, near Berlin .... (read more)

see what happens when you work at night...

"To all IFS and FRC staff, students, and scientists:

About 9 p.m. last night, a physics grad student on the 12th floor of the RLM building was robbed by a man wearing a mask and carrying a gun, who entered his unlocked office. UT police came and investigated afterwards..."

What can you accomplish in one week of web 2.0 ?

Obvious thought about Social media on Read Write Web:

"Let's be honest here: we're all a bunch of social media addicts. We're junkies. Whether it's a new Twitter app, a new Facebook feature, or a new social anything service, we're all over it. But we may not be the norm. The truth is, being involved in social media takes time, something that most people don't have a lot of. So how can regular folk get involved with social media? And how much time does it really take?"