Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Moonsilver's LiveJournal:

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Tuesday, June 30th, 2009
6:13 pm	Learn to be a bat! Hey, evcelt! Did you know humans can learn to echolocate? "Spanish scientists develop echo-location in humans" They see it first as something that would be useful for blind people (apparently a few blind people have taught themselves echolocation by trial and error), but that anyone should be able to learn it. A few choice bits: However, no special physical skills are required in order to develop this skill. "Two hours per day for a couple of weeks are enough to distinguish whether you have an object in front of you, and within another two weeks you can tell the difference between trees and a pavement" Another of the team's research areas involves establishing the biological limits of human echolocation ability, "and the first results indicate that detailed resolution using this method could even rival that of sight itself". In fact, the researchers started out by being able to tell if there was someone standing in front of them, but now can detect certain internal structures, such as bones, and even "certain objects inside a bag". Pretty wild! I'm not sure if I'm dedicated enough to do this, but it definitely sounds like a fine addition to "things that weird guy down the hall in college knew how to do." Current Mood: impressed Current Music: palate clicks ;-) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
12:02 pm	Medical advice from Stephen Colbert Stephen Colbert (via Twitter) has some advice for i_scribble: @StephenAtHome i forget - are you supposed to put heat on a bad back or fire? @StephenAtHome it was fire. back feeling better now, thanks to the distracting pain from 3rd degree fire wounds Best wishes for a quick recovery! Current Mood: silly Current Music: birds outside my window (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
3:13 pm	Negative information content So, there was a sign on the door to our building yesterday, reading something like: On Tuesday, June 23, we will be testing the fire alarm system from 8:30am to 2:30pm. This is a silent test, the alarm will not sound. What useful information does this convey? All I get from it is the idea that if the fire alarm goes off, it may be because they've screwed up the test, not because there's a fire. But since I don't know, the only reasonable response is to treat it exactly like a real fire alarm, which is what I would have done if they hadn't put up the sign. When they're doing audible fire alarm tests, they say "ignore the fire alarm, we'll come tell you if it's real," which may not be entirely safe, but at least it makes sense. Current Mood: restless (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 8th, 2009
4:11 pm	Virginia Democratic Primary tomorrow Hey, Virginia readers! In case the 200 robo-calls haven't made it clear enough, tomorrow is the Democratic primary in Virginia. If you're a Democrat, go vote -- with the tiny turnout that we have in primaries for state office, this may be the biggest influence you can have on your government. If you're a well-intentioned Republican, go ahead and vote, too, if you like -- we don't have party registration in Virginia, and only the Democrats are having a primary this year, so you won't be missing out on anything. (I don't think much of crossover voting to screw with the other party, but I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it to support the candidate who you think would be best, or least bad. The one time I seriously considered voting in the Republican primary was to vote against Oliver North, who I thought would be dreadful to have representing our state.) Personally, I'm supporting Brian Moran for governor and Jody Wagner for Lt. Governor, and Bob Hull for delegate in the 38th, my district. I'm also working for Mark Keam for delegate, who's running in the 35th District around Vienna (stretching from near Tyson's to near Fair Oaks.) I can't vote for him because I don't live in that district, but I got to know him on the Obama campaign and I think he'd be a fine addition to the legislature. If you're undecided and want to know more about why I favor these candidates, I'd be happy to tell you. But since most people probably don't care that much, the summary version is that for each of them, it's a large measure of who is most in line with my political views (both how the state should be run and bully-pulpit leadership issues) and what their bio and record say about their ability to succeed, and to a smaller degree, how effective they are at running a campaign, which indicates whether they'd be able to get elected and another indicator of how successful they might be at pushing their agenda. I'd be happy if you help get the nomination for my preferred candidates, but whoever you support, please come out and vote. Citizenship isn't something you are, it's something you do. Current Mood: patriotic and stuff Current Music: Green Day, "Know Your Enemy" (earworm) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
3:57 pm	Unusual sighting I saw a Baltimore Oriole in our neighborhood as I was leaving for work. I've only seen one of those one other time in my entire life! Wow! Current Mood: pleased (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 1st, 2009
9:15 pm	Grrr... You know what I really hate? People who organize conference calls, and even encourage you to get all the volunteers you have working with you on the call, too, and then do nothing but go through the material they sent in email, which didn't really require any additional explanation. In more unnecessary detail than the original material. And repeating some stuff. And only asking for status (other than "any questions?") from the people at the top of the hierarchy, making it even less necessary for me to be on. And when anyone asked for anything to be done a little differently to make things work better for them, explaining that the process had been decided by other people who weren't on the call and couldn't be changed. And I left another more productive meeting to participate. At least I had some prior experience with this, and had the good sense not to invite any of my volunteers to participate. As with several recent suggestions from this person, my mental response was "yes, I could do that if I wanted to drive them away and have them never want to help again." That was a half hour of my life I'll never get back. (But mercifully only a half hour, though it seemed longer.) Current Mood: annoyed (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:52 pm	Quote of the Day "The act of discovery was not complete for him until he had taught it to someone else." -- W. Daniel Hillis on Richard Feynman (The whole article is well worth reading, too.) Current Mood: tired (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 18th, 2009
6:27 pm	Resolutions I almost never make New Year's resolutions. I tried a few times when I was younger, because it was one of those things you were Supposed to Do, but I generally had trouble even remembering them, much less following them. This year I came up with a couple of them, some time well after New Year's, which have been working rather well. Perhaps previously I'd been making the wrong kind of resolutions. My two resolutions were "Don't volunteer for something unless I really want to do it" and "Don't get into arguments with idiots." I'll start with the second one. I participate to one degree or another in quite a few political discussions and blogs, and some scientific ones as well. "Don't get into arguments with idiots" is a way of avoiding discussions that are just going to piss me off and are extremely unlikely to actually accomplish anything. It's not about avoiding people I disagree with -- there would be little point in participating then, and I'm not interested in just hearing news I already know or positions I agree with repeated back to me. But as anyone who's participated in online discussions (and offline political discussions) knows, there are people who have honest disagreements, people who are just trying to piss people off, and people who are too stupid or pigheaded to consider any point of view other than their own, to the point of not even presenting any real argument or evidence. The first group are worth talking to, the others aren't, but it can be really hard to resist. Having the mantra of "Don't get into arguments with idiots" has been really useful; it saves a lot of time and aggravation. I've lost count of the number of times I've started to get into something, or even written a paragraph, then stopped and thought, "Don't get into arguments with idiots," and dropped it. The first resolution, "Don't volunteer for something unless I really want to do it," is a little more subtle. On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer; why would I be volunteering if I don't want to do it? But it's not just about spontaneously volunteering out of the blue, it's also about responding when someone asks for volunteers, or when someone asks me to take up a task. I've been really bad about that (especially the last), but it didn't hit home until I had several cases over the past few years where someone asked and I thought "sure, I can handle that," and then spent weeks being stressed about it because I didn't have the time or energy to do something that I wasn't that interested in. This resolution hasn't come into play as much as the Idiots one, but it's been pretty important. Most of the time it's just kept me from sticking my hand up when there's peer pressure for someone to step up, or reminded me to say "tell me more about it and let me think it over." But once or twice, it's helped me keep more control of my own time, rather than feeling weighed down with commitments from my natural desire to be helpful. As to what made these resolutions different from my past unsuccessful ones, I'm not sure. They're things I really wanted to change, but that's not necessarily new. Maybe it's that they just tweak behavior, rather than requiring big plans. Current Mood: contemplative Current Music: noises from the hard drive -- a bit more of a symphony than I'd like (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
6:50 pm	Science Thursday Here are some neat science stories I ran across this week. First, some songbird songs are generated by a multi-generation recursive genetic process. Basically, this is the deal -- zebra finches have complex songs, which are learned from adult finches when they are young. If they are raised in isolation, they have a "raspy, arrythmic song." But this raises a "chicken and egg" question -- if it's not genetic, how did the adults start doing it in the first place. Well, it turns out that if you take the birds raised in isolation, and breed them for a few generations, they develop songs similar to wild finches. With the simpler song as "input," the next generation develops a more complex song, and so on. So in a sense, even though the behavior is partially learned, it is all in the genes, it just takes more than one generation for the algorithm to run. The other story is an alpha-geek story. A guy took his kids on a short vacation to Mt. Rainier to run a home relativity experiment. I think this is possibly the most science-geeky parent I've ever heard about. Here's the background: Most people know at least vaguely that relativity predicts that acceleration causes time to run slower compared to a non-accelerated frame of reference (relativistic time dilation.) What's less commonly understood by non-science geeks is that gravity cannot be distinguished from acceleration in relativity. In other words, that feeling of being pressed into your seat that you get from stomping on the accelerator and the feeling you get from the gravity that's holding you down in your seat are the same thing. And as you get further from the center of the Earth, the strength of the Earth's gravity gets less. Enough that if you have an accurate enough clock, you can measure the difference in how fast time passes between sea level and the top of a mountain. (Down here at sea level, time passes slower, because the stronger gravity is like having more acceleration.) I know that, and I think it's pretty cool, but it's taking it to another level to actually load your car up with atomic clocks (Lots of photos and layman's explanations, as well as a link to more technical information.) I especially liked the part where he explained to his wife that by staying behind, she'd be twenty nanoseconds younger than the rest of them. <g> Current Mood: geeky Current Music: car tires on wet pavement (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
9:54 pm	Apollo anniversary For the coolest commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo, a launch of a 1/10-scale Saturn V rocket! It's the largest model rocket ever, weighs 1600 pounds, and is powered by nine high-powered model rocket engines. It flew to a height of over 4000 feet. More details here, but I can't resist one more quote: "the nine engines produced over 8,000 pounds of thrust, enough to lift a VW Bug over half a mile in altitude". Current Mood: impressed Current Music: the mockingbird in our front yard (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 24th, 2009
11:35 pm	Suck on that, penguins! In the promo for the new Disney Earth movie, there's a voiceover by Ian McKellan quoting reviews, one of which is "Even better than March of the Pengins." To which I can't help adding "Suck on that, pengins!" Out loud, even. <g> Current Mood: mischievous Current Music: random teevee stuff (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 16th, 2009
3:43 pm	Dewey Defeats Tarzan I stumbled on a new webcomic that I wanted to share (via a link from PartiallyClips, called Dewey Defeats Tarzan. It's a clip-art comic like PartiallyClips, but specifically uses vintage art, and its style seems particularly suited to my kind of people. A few highlights, cut for large images: ( Read more... ) Current Mood: amused (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, April 10th, 2009
2:39 am	Pagan music Okay, so I had this idea, that for certain kinds of events, it would be cool to have some of the standard pagan chants set to a modern dance beat. And I figured that this would be so easy for anyone with a modicum of skill at audio mixing (which I don't have) that someone must have done it. But alas, either it doesn't exist or Google has failed me. (I also tried poking around on some of the music download sites, but needless to say, this genre is not a major part of their content.) It's possible that it's not as easy as it seems because there aren't many recorded versions of the chants laying around to be mixed (since people generally chant them, not listen to them.) But I'm hoping I just haven't looked in the right place. Ideas, anyone? Current Music: None, dammit! (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
4:02 pm	Man, I wish I had $75000 to throw around Josh Freese (permanent drummer for DEVO, also drummer for Nine Inch Nails and many others) has electronically released a new solo album. (I wasn't specifically familiar with him before, but the music is good -- you can listen online before buying.) But that's not the best part. You can buy the album in various "packages", ranging from the simple $7 digital download or the $15 CD set, on up to $75000 for... well, just go look. :-) Okay, just a couple of samples. The package includes items like: Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from TOOL's Lamborgini OR we play "quarters" and then hop on the Ouija board for a while. If you don't have a band I'll be your personal assistant for a month (4 day work weeks....10 am to 5 pm) and then we take a limo down to Tijuana and I'll show you how it's done (what that means I can't legally get into here, right this minute). </blockquote Slightly cheaper packages include items like "Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from DEVO and I take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on youtube of course)." He describes them as "a prank that isn't a prank." Yes, if anybody puts down the money, he will actually do those things. (And heck, it works. I'm gonna buy the album when I get home, and I don't know if I'd have given it a second look if he wasn't a complete nut!) Current Mood: amused Current Music: josh freese, of course! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 20th, 2009
11:18 pm	Hitch-Hikers' Guide to Galactica So I'm watching the finale, and I'm suddenly reminded of Hitch-Hiker's Guide, specifically Restaurant and the End of the Universe. Galactica is the "B" Ark. (Apologies to those who take the serious more seriously. Almost. ;-) Current Mood: mischievous Current Music: closing credits music (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
12:47 am	Want some trees? I'd like to order the set of seedlings that are being offered by the Northern Virginia Soil & Water Conservation District, since we've had many of the trees in our yard killed by the droughts over the past five years or so. It looks like a nice selection of trees and shrubs, all native to the area, and friendly to local birds and wildlife. However, you get six trees and six shrubs, and even if my sometime brown thumb takes out some of them, that's still way more than we need in our yard. (And honestly, I'm not sure what to make of something that's described as a shrub, but grows to 10-15 feet high.) Anyone interested in some of them, assuming I'm not too late in ordering them? (This is for Northern Virginia friends only, I'm afraid. No long-distance deliveries. :-) Current Mood: plan-ful (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009
5:32 pm	More wrong I knew I had one more bit of wrong sitting around, but I couldn't remember what it was. Two words: bacon brittle. Current Mood: wrong! Current Music: wrong! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
6:35 pm	Your weekly wrongness This is just wrong. This is from way back in October, but I keep forgetting to post it. A group of evangelical Christians got together around the bull statue on Wall Street to pray for God to fix the economy. Really. Now I understand that the twisted "prosperity gospel" is all the rage now (apparently "if you're good, Jesus will make you rich" packs 'em into the megachurches a lot better than the more accurate "Jesus spoke against rich people a lot, and against sex and abortion not at all), but you'd think it might have dawned on someone that clearly violating one of the Ten Commandments by re-creating a scene from the best-known movie adaption of the Bible ever might not be the best way to go. Oh, well, at least the bull isn't golden. And finally, as a non-wrong palate cleanser, geek humor and cuteness. Current Mood: quirky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009
2:53 am	Success! Comet Lulin was not hard to see at all. One trip outside to try to guess which of the bright stars was Saturn, then in again to try to match up what I'd seen against the star charts, and when I went outside again it was really obvious which was which. (Saturn is noticeably yellow, too, but it's always hard to be sure if that's real, or just seeing what you want to see.) Then a look at Saturn with the binoculars, and there it was, below and to the right! anthro_geek even noticed the green color; but my color vision for faint light isn't that good. With our binoculars and at our level of light pollution and regular pollution, I couldn't see the tail or any detail, but it definitely had a shape, not just the point of a star or the circle of a planet. I also couldn't see enough background stars to look for motion, but it was still pretty cool. Also, once I knew where it was, I'm pretty sure I could just make it out without the binoculars, but that may have been wishful thinking. Worth a look, and possible to find quickly enough that you don't freeze! It'll be near maximum brightness with no moon in the sky for a few more nights, so if the weather is clear, you'll have more chances. Current Mood: excited (Comment on this)
Monday, February 23rd, 2009
6:26 pm	Random notes Important safety tip: If 25mph winds make for unpleasant walking weather, 32 degrees with 25mph winds will be even less pleasant. Though the fact that it was sunny today helped quite a bit, and the strategy of staying in the woods as much as possible to keep out of the wind was also effective. New Comet Lulin is making its closest approach to Earth tonight, and it's supposed to be visible with binoculars even in urban and suburban areas (and possibly visible to the naked eye in darker areas.) Around 1am it will be high in the southern sky, and only two degrees away from Saturn. SpaceWeather.com has more info and sky maps full of constellations I probably won't be able to recognize, but I remember from some other sky maps I looked at that the line from the two stars at the handle end of the Big Dipper's bowl will point between Saturn and Regulus, so that may help. They also have webcasts from telescopes, if it's too cold to go out. Me, I'm going to brave the bitter cold and see if I can catch a glimpse. The coolest thing about this comet is that it's in an orbit in the opposite direction from the planets, so it's moving very fast relative to us. People who've seen it with binoculars say that if you look at it several times five or ten minutes apart, it will have visibly moved relative to the background stars! And that's at 38 million miles away! Also, this, from the Lawrence Welk Show, is just wrong. But stay to the end for Welk's characterization of the song. And finally, your daily dose of impossibly cute. Current Mood: okay Current Music: Bohemian Rhapsody (deliberate earworm to fight off that other song above) (Comment on this)