Carnivalia, and an open thread

post from Pharyngula on 24 November 2006 12:45:29 PM. © Pharyngula

Some light reading:

Everyone is so reluctant to say what they think in the other threads, so fire away here.

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Friday Random Ten, Nov 24

post from Good Math, Bad Math on 24 November 2006 12:31:53 PM. © Good Math, Bad Math

Kate Bush, "Pi". I've been waiting for this to show up in my shuffle for the FRT! Kate Bush, singing the digits of π!
Suzanne Vega, "Knight Moves". This is an old favorite of mine. The lyrics have somepersonal significance, but it's a lovely song.
Explosions in the Sky, "Have You Passed Through This Night?". Post rock, very much in thevein of "Godspeed You Black Emperor". Not as good as Godspeed, but still pretty good.
New Grange, "Weetabix". Very nice bluegrass tune performed by a supergroup of sorts. For theanniversary of the founding of Compass Records, they put together this band of the top Compassartists. It's quite a lineup. Allison Brown on banjo (of course; AB is the founder of Compass);Tim O'Brien playing a guitar-style Bouzouki (a bouzouki is strung like a mandolin - four pairs of strings tuned in fifths), but it's much lower, in the same range as the guitar); Mike Marshallplaying Mandolin; Darol Anger playing fiddle; Todd Phillips on bass; and Phillip Aaberg playing piano.
Rachel's, "Artemisia". Yet more post-rock, this time from the more classical side. Rachel's is one of my favorite groups, just overall amazing, wonderful composers and performers. Listening toRachel's is a little slice of heaven.
Hugh Blumenfeld, "Longhaired Radical Socialist Jew". The only gospel song that I like! Hugh is a great singer/songwriter and english professor. This is a hysterically funny song. To give you a sense of what it's like, here's the first verse: "Well, Jesus was a homeless lad/With an unwed mother and an absent dad/And I really don't think he would have gotten that far/If Newt, Pat and Jesse had followed that star/So let's all sing out praises to/That longhaired radical socialist Jew."
Solas, "The Wiggly Jigs". Solas is a great traditional Irish band, led by an unbelievable multi-instrumentalist named Seamus Egan.
Flook, "Asturian Way". A great tune from my favorite trad Irish band.
Dirty Three, "Stellar". Another really wonderful classical-leaning post-rock band.
King Crimson, "Eyes Wide Open". A brilliant piece off of Crimson's latest.

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Ingratiation

post from Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) on 24 November 2006 12:29:45 PM. © Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)

I see words as providing people with a deeper and richer meaning to their emotional and professional lives, especially because much of our lives rely on words. So not every word that I use in this little feature is completely unfamiliar to you, or at least I hope it isn't, because teaching you obscure words is not my primary intention, although I do sometimes do this to give you some fun.

Instead, my goal is to demonstrate the beauty, versatility and subtlety of the English language and to acquaint you with the many wonderful languages that have contributed to English. And of course, I hope that you choose a word or two each week to use in your daily conversation simply because it is fun to be erudite and articulate. Keep in mind that you only have to repeat something 20 times for it to become a habit. Why not pick up a few special word and make them your own unique verbal signature?

I found this word in Living with Geese (not yet online), an interesting and well-written story about geese and the people who anthropomorphize them by Paul Theroux, published in the December issue of Smithsonian magazine.

Ingratiation (in-GREY-shee-ey-shun) [Origin: 1615-25 Latin in gr?tiam into favor, after It ingraziare]

noun

to establish (oneself) in the favor or good graces of others, esp. by deliberate effort (usually fol. by with): He ingratiated himself with all the guests.

Usage: Their [geese's] sounds vary in pitch and urgency, according to the occasion, from wheedling murmurs of reedy ingratiation, along with the silent scissoring of the beak, as they step near knowing you might have food, to the triumphant squawk and wing-flapping of the gander after he has successfully put to flight one of his rivals.

tags: ingratiation, word of the day, vocabulary

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Geekish girls

post from Sciencebase Science Blog on 24 November 2006 12:17:56 PM. © Sciencebase Science Blog

The Cnet newsite has a rather politically incorrect item this week listing the Top Ten girl geeks. I’m not entirely sure how they’re defining geek but among those listed are Marie Curie, Ada Byron (Lovelace), Rosalind Franklin (after whom my wife wanted to name our daughter), and…Paris Hilton (don’t ask).So, where’s crystallography pioneer Dorothy Crowfoot [...]

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Pathological Programming by String Rewriting

post from Good Math, Bad Math on 24 November 2006 12:03:53 PM. © Good Math, Bad Math

Todays tidbit of torture is a simple little language called Leszek, with an implementation available here. Leszek is based on the idea of iterative string rewriting, which is actually a useful and valuable concept. Of course, Leszek takes it to an extreme of insanity which takes a perfectly good idea, and turns it into a horror. But thats what makes it fun!

In Lezsek, there are no variables; no loops; no state. A program is just a string with a collection of embedded rewriting operators. The way that things work is, the interpreter looksat the string. It finds all of the rewriting commands in the string, and executes them, concatenating the results of those commands. When it's done all ofthe rewrites in the entire program, it takes the resulting program string, and executes that. It keeps going until there is no possibility of any more rewrites generating output, and then it halts.

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Friday Cephalopod: Thanksgiving leftovers

post from Pharyngula on 24 November 2006 11:43:46 AM. © Pharyngula

How many of you have a picked-over carcass in your refrigerator?

Architeuthis sp.

Figure from Cephalopods: A World Guide ^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}, by Mark Norman.

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Farewell Tiny Dancer: Mars Global Surveyor May Be
at Mission's End

post from Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. on 24 November 2006 11:10:54 AM. © Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet.

NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has likely finished its operating career. The spacecraft has served the longest and been the most productive of any mission ever sent to the red planet. "Mars Global Surveyor has surpassed all expectations," said Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "It has already been the most productive science mission to Mars, and it will yield more discoveries as the treasury of observations it has made continues to be analyzed for years to come." Its camera has returned more than 240,000 images to Earth.

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Lucky break gives scientists unique view of
underwater eruption

post from Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. on 24 November 2006 11:08:24 AM. © Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet.

A combination of luck and being in the right place at the right time allowed a University of Florida geologist and other scientists to capture and record an undersea volcanic eruption for the first time ever. The eruption, which took place early this spring thousands of feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, is described in a paper set for release Thursday in Science Express, the journal Science?s online magazine.

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Evidence is always the best way to resolve a
debate

You know how we great clumsy gallumphing unsophisticated atheists are always comparing belief in gods to belief in fairies at the bottom of the garden or tooth fairies or whatever? We may have to revise those arguments.

Now we really have to worry. If some space probe snaps a picture of an orbiting teapot, we'll have nothin'.

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NASA Loses Mars Surveyor: Good News or Bad News

post from CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries on 24 November 2006 10:31:12 AM. © CR4 - Recent Forum Threads and Blog Entries

Planet mapping surveyor probe missing for more than 2 weeks! This 10 year old probe has exceeded its life expectancy by 8 years. Mars Re...

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