House of Jorob

Donuts. Tea. Solve the Energy Crunch.

I'm not a big fan of powdered-sugar doughnuts.

You get that white stuff all over everything.

I prefer a glazed doughnut.

Or a chocolate doughnut.

But when I have to power my house, well....

There's nothing like a dozen powdered-sugar doughnuts.

It's all about the Titanium Oxide.

And the tea?

It's purple.

And very tasty.

Grad students are wonderful creatures.

Video is here.

Write and Feel Better. Burton and King Have Proved It.

Researchers took 49 college students and asked them to write for two minutes, for two days in a row, on something they found to be emotionally significant.

The participants showed immediate improvement in mood.
They performed better on standardized measures of physiological well being, too.
But the first sentence is easier to digest, since you don't find yourself asking questions.
Like, "There are standardized measures of physiological well being?"

The researchers comment, "This study shows that health benefits follow from just 2 minutes of written
expression. Certainly these results do not mean that spending more time expressing emotion is bad but they do show that the minimum dosage required may be lower than previously thought."

There you have it.

The fastest relief available without a prescription.

Big Bang: Universal expansion and acceleration

The universe is expanding.

Faster than my waistline.

Has been, ever since the Big Bang.

Scientists have recently tossed out the idea that gravity will be a force to affect the universal expansion.

The universal expansion is accelerating.

The whole idea of gravity slowing, then reversing, then pulling the universe back into itself, into a Big Crunch is so early 21st century.

So, what's causing the acceleration?

Scienctists have come up with a name for it:

Dark Energy.

Dark Energy is driving the acceleration.

Nah.

They're not thinking big enough.

It ain't dark energy within the universe that's causing the acceleration.

It's gravity.

Just like they thought.

But not inside the universe.

There's something on the other side that's attracting the universe.

Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live

Author and MacArthur fellow Carl Safina writes, "Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution."

The Stony Brook University adjunct professor's New York Times essay the other day sums up the problem: "Charles Darwin gets so much credit, we can’t distinguish evolution from him."

" “Darwinism” implies an ideology adhering to one man’s dictates, like Marxism. And “-isms” (capitalism, Catholicism, racism) are not science. “Darwinism” implies that biological scientists “believe in” Darwin’s “theory.” "

With something to believe in, others do not....giving equal footing amongst the other -isms to creationism.

***

And speaking of evolution, cleanup of the Hadron collider's faulty soldering job continues to delay the mega-billion dollar collider's restart.

***

Long live Slashdot.

World Clock, Spiritual Awakening, and Where's the Joy?

This is the World Clock.

A neat idea.

On the surface.

But the damn thing is soooooooo subtley negative. Right there, under the coolness of it all.

Negative.

Which is really ironic.

Considering Peter Russell is a spiritual kind of guy. And a bit of a pioneer. He's had a website going since 1996.

That's the stone age, as far as the Internet is concerned.

Back then, you coded by hand.

In Notepad.

And uploaded on a 56K modem on your house telephone line.

The hell with everyone else in the house wanting to use the phone at the time.

But to return to the point.....

I don't think the negativity is intentional.

But the choice of what's being tracked is what's doing it.

Births. Deaths. Population growth.

Deforestation.

Communicable/noncommunicable diseases.

Species Extinct.

Abortions.

Hot-button items, all of them.

Each stat is rising, of course, because the figures on the clock are approximations based on past stats and estimates, and then aggregated since the thing started counting, whenever that was.

And when you're done being impressed with the stats, the negativity kicks in.

The world sucks. People suck. We're killing ourselves.

<sigh>

Where are the counters for:

• successful organ transplants
• dollars donated by individuals for disaster relief
• babies and older children adopted
• spayed and neutered puppies and kittens
• teenagers getting their driver's licenses
• weddings
• barrels of single-malt whiskey
• pounds of aluminum, glass, and paper recycled

I mean, if you're going to seek spiritual enlightenment--using these clocks--why not leave a little joy around for others to find?

Anti-Matter: Billions and Billions.....

They've created billions of anti-matter particles in a lab in Livermore, California.

All we need now is a plentiful source of dilithium crystals and the universe is ours for the taking.

And the brains to put the whole project together.

Google Flu Trends: Google saves the world

When you can aggregate billions of pieces of search data, you can do some amazing things.

Like figure out where the flu is reaching epidemic proportions ahead of everybody else.

During last year's flu season, an early version of Google Flu Trends was used to share data with the CDC. According to Google, "Across each of the nine surveillance regions of the United States, we were able to accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports."

Two weeks can save lives.

Read more about how Flu Trends works here.

By the way, get a flu shot.
Even the $30 shots at the local CVS or Walgreens are cheap when compared with the amount of money lost when you actually get sick.