I got a bunch of questions about “water-striders”, the life-span of turtles, and the function of tails.  Frankly, I loved responding, liked my response, and love sharing this biological awesomeness.

Water striders are some of the coolest organisms imho.

This is such a cool biological adaption.  They utilize COHESION TENSION.  this is so frickin cool I love this stuff.

Fill up a glass of water to the brim.  Notice that the top of the water (the meniscus) is actually above the rim of the glass (this works best if you slowly add water and will not work as well if you gush water in).  It’s almost like there’s a “skin” on the water.  This is cohesion tension.

The negatively charged oxygen atom forms a weak hydrogen bond with the positively charged hydrogen atoms of the H20 molecule.

Cohesion tension froms the “skin” of water, but more importantly (and a seperate and more botanical discussion) is that it is what makes transpirationa-pull of water through plants, possible.

So you the water strider simply adroitly and delicately avoids breaking the cohesion tension on the water.  It does not have some super-hero water-walking ability, and thus, there’s nothing we coudl “inject” ourselves with.  Our best bet would just find a way to avoid breaking the very weak (but strong enough for plants to utilize it for transpirational pull) cohesion tension force.

Water striders are extremely lightweight and don’t break the cohesion tension on the water surface.

Turtles lifespan

“. A typical pet turtle can lives 10-80 years or so while larger species can easily live over 100 years. The oldest recorded age of a turtle was 250 years in India.”   (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_life_span_of_a_turtle)

This article is excellent

http://www.slate.com/id/2138560/

Basically it says that animals and their lifespans revolve around how quickly they can reproduce.

Animals have adaptations to help their genes get passed on such as:

reproducing quickly (these animals usually have shorter lifespans)

having poisons (protection)

being larger

having armor (like the turtle)

sea turtles are large and have armor, thus, both those contribute to their longevity.

TAIL

Basically, tails serve different purposes for different animals.

Deers use tails (the underside) to signal and flash it’s friends to warn of danger.

Fish use their tells form locomotive movement through the water.

Monkeys and opposums use their tails for grappling branches.

Cats and kangaroos (sort of similar to the monkey function of the tail) use their tail for balance.

Scorpion tails inject venom as a protection.

Dog tails show mood.

So you see, the tail is quite and amazing thing and depending on the animal, the tail could

inject venom

signal friends

show mood,

maintain balance

grab branches

propel through water.

WOW talk about versatile appendage!!! Awesome!

From  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail

DNA — Deoxyribonucleic acid is the “blueprint” for our cells and cells make up body parts (including tells) including the lightweight ability of water-striders.

I could tell you weren’t trolling.  Your question is interesting.  Seems like you’re interested in getting a tail and walking on water??? haha!  Basically, without genetic mutation, we would need to slowly adapt through natural selection to need those things.  But we don’t have a use for tails anymore and we used to have them!  Our ancestors (thus, or geneological dna) used to be swinging from the treetops with our prehensile (tree-branch-grabbing) tails about 65 million years ago.

Also, we don’t have a need to float on the cohesion tension of water?  Why?  Humans can build boats!! xD.

With advances in genetic copying i’m sure some geneticists could isolated the genes/alleles for extracting the “tail” dna “code” or the water strider’s code for being lightweight and not breaking the cohesion tension, but “injecting” that in and just expecting a tail to pop up wouldn’t be practical.  Also, you ahve to understand that the water-strider ability is based on it’s lightweight and it’s distribution of weight over the surface of the water (and not some special ability to turn water into a solid while standing on it or something).

Cheers!

Gotta love aus news though (it may not be as topnotch as uk, but it’s much more worthy than an american news).  A cat somehow ends up in Tasmania and safely arrives back at home in Queensland another cat was shot 13 times and survived.  What’s with bizarre cats surviving the worst?

Also, this epic sandstorm (worst in 70 years apparently so since 1939 roughly) hits Sydney. Interesting.  Also the pizza ransom row was ludicrous, absurd, but amusing.  Obviously the pizza delivery dude on low wage couldn’t handle not getting paid probably.

In UK, this epic treasure find illuminates the silent and shadowed dark ages, a token reminder that that awesome land holds immense and incredible history in the ancient land (Londinium, for example) .  Couple that booming discovery (revealing something of the here feudal times reigned and so much of the modern europe’s skyscrapers or fields are hovering on grounds that previously held treasures, cDark Ages, back in the days of yore, loot & pluder, damsels and knights) with the discovery of water on Mars?   This is epic, breakthrough and exciting times for very cool areas.  Fascinating times.  The martian agua discovery is absolutely fascinating.  There’s so much exciting news currently from epic sandstorms to martian discoveries, to illuminating the dark ages? This is epic!

For something completely different.

Response to this:

Excellent article. I stumbled upon this earlier before I had known of Tim ferriss, but gave it a second and more scrutinized read the second go. I like the simplicity of the rules. Seems like this holds together (especially with the surprising tat-loss-inducing 1day/week junk food binge) with the repetitive no-white carb food groups and then repeating meals.

Currently I’ve been doing 2 meals a day at 8am and at 1pm. I have very different sleep schedule though and usually rise at roughly 1am and sleep by 6pm ish. This may fluctuate, but I hope it does not. I usually have a piece of fruit at 6am. The pork and beef look vile so those are out.

Substituting a lot of vegetarian-based protien (the beans, fallafel, etc) is good.

I’ve never been a diet person and loathe diets because most always induce yo-yoing. I’ve always had robotic eating patterns so that’s great repetitive nutrition is built into this diet.

Most diets people can’t stand to get off and yo-yo. Additionally, diet based on “1 pound of fat down!” 2 pounds of fat down! are fail. A diet cannot be weight-based or it will always, inevitably collapse. Has to be a nutrition restructuring relationship with your body (whatever that means, and I think that means. You have to like the new nutrition timing, amounts, and substance).

I like how you have set 3-4 categories and then 4-5 options from each of those for roughly 20 different foods you can have with each meal to pick and choose variety. That makes for easier grocery shopping too.

It’s easy to get creative and create good high-protien stirfries with a lot of spices and the like. anyways, cheers. I doubt I’ll try this completely because I don’t usually ever copy other people’s methods (it’s impractical because every lifestyle is so vastly different) but I have integrated a few ideas (like

the 20 food group selection array,
consistent eating times,
1 glass of wine/day is nice,
the caloric distribution in greens versus for example white rice (which I eat A LOT of) was interesting. About a 20:1 Rice:green caloric ratio. THAT’s FASCINATING and useful.
the junkfood day is also fairly practical.

In a lot of my massively alterred eating habit bouts (some of which have included fasts), you get this wave of junkfood eating when the interest dissipates or changes so it’s good that that’s built in.

Flexibility with adaptability some cool ideas. cheers.

Sure there’s a few rare incidents of them attacking humans

but the same is true of lightning

and lightning strikes are actually more frequent than shark bites.  If Spielberg had created Zappers instead of Jaws, about how frequently people get struck and killed by lightning would there be a greater fear irrational fear of the atmospheric discharge of electricity and indifference to our cartilaginous friends?  I think so.

Sharks are beautiful.

And the belief that they’re man-eating, devouring, aquatic killing machines is a purely irrational fear.

Not too much to say here.  Rob Stewart says it all.  I’m a huge fan, benefactor, philanthropist, afficionado, and exited knowledge learner of sharks.  They’re endangered.  The shouldn’t be.  Spielberg’s Jaws started irrational fear.  I’ve said that message to many a people, but Rob Stewart says it with incredible clarity.  His message is important!

Check the sharks tag for more insightful reads on the beauty and sophisticated of sharks.

Like I have to go pick up a printer ink cartridge and that has plastic wrapped in it. I like Hansen’s soda, but it comes in a can. I need to pickup this xyz product and it only comes wrapped in plastic. I feel pretty unsettled and think this “scare” articles are Great. Hey, it worked. I’m scared and saddened by the amount of plastic infestation in our oceans, but they need to attach a solution to this. All these articles always end with the tone of :”This is royalled F$@%ed up..and we’re working on a solution.” There needs to BE a solution attached to these articles because when a normal person (like me) reads them, they want to do something but can’t really take any kind of action except feel saddened, frightened, and maybe frustrated by the foul pollutants in our oceans, in our fish, in our very food. So where’s the solutions man? The solutions that individual can take on their own? This is a group endeavor but everyone can contirbute. I mean I can avoid purchasing plastic-wrapped items but sometimes it’s a necessity and reusing plastics, too. But yeah, freaky stuff.

Also from a global POV yeah this a MASSIVE dangerous, harrowing, freak-out-city problem! But from a consumer POV. Where are the people marketing CHEAP, INEXPENSIVE products that have no environment-contaminating plastic wrapper and such? I know there’s tuna brands that don’t harm dolphins…great. But where’s the equivalent of that kind of product that I can purchase instead that doesn’t contain harmful plastics (that will ultimately recirculate back into our own body! Plastic goes into ocean, eaten by small fish, eaten by larger fish, we eat the larger fish that contains the plastic. F$@!ed up!)

I seriously thought the reporter was acting. how could she be so serious and controlling and almost hostilely reprimanding?? wtf?!!! lol. have people become so foully political that a good party is severely scolded? WHERE the hell do you have raging good parties where you can be LOUD (and everyone’s safe, all good stuff, etc.) did people forget how … Read Moreimportant actually having fun is? Is everyone like this? Where are the people who embrace the occasionally extremely lively party?!! IF there’s so much time for hush hush, there has to be time for loud, uproarious good solid awesome parties too! lol.

Sure, doing this every night would be too much simply because people couldn’t sleep. So a little discretion there, but really, it’s something that should be heralded in many respects.

While calling this kid a savior, may be a teeny bit far-fetched, he’s damn close to it! Due to conformity, fear, lack of identity, and subversion into politics, people have completely forgotten and neglected the meaning and the act of a good party. I thought the parents and the reporters were seriously “actors” because their reactions (shock and outrage) appeared so unnecessarily inflated. haha… Read More!! Thank god there still exists people like corey in the world who choose to listen to their inner voice and their own “iron string” instead slipping into delusions of what you’re supposed to do. This kid is a walking example of Emersonian self-reliance. Long live aussie corey!! haha! Self-reliance!

The kid’s so frickin funny! haha lol. he’s so good at pissing people off and simultaneously having like amounts fun worth being jealous over haha!! I love it, people seem to perpetually stumble and tiptoe around on eggshells these days, and this kid just like sledge hammers them!! so outrageous!

I mean seriously..no one died, no one was injured, the intentions were for a party, a spirited congregation for togetherness…like the media has become so revoltingly clogged with negative news, catastrophes (fires, murders, trials, blah) that when something actually in good spirits (a party) accumulates enough critical mass to catch the eye of the media, the media ALWAYS has this compulsion to frame things in a negative destructive light. Not only is denouncing this kid’s party as bad, wrong, or “out of line” destructive, but condemning and negatively framing spirited gatherings like this show negatively warped, myopic and clouded many of the status quo beliefs have become — people are so maladjusted to fires, murders, “negative news” that news of people actually converging for a purpose of merriment and recreation, appalls people!; and THAT is appalling! haha.

Obama is a story of a person inspiring and leading a disillusioned country. I’m adamantly a supporter of Obama.

Man he definitely has tremendous words of hope, unfathomably inspiring hope, but they aren’t hollow; you can tell what Obama says is authentic and originates from a source of true belief.

In terms of his speaking style, the way he floats from a comical message, like the puppy in the whitehouse, to the seriousness of his mother’s death.

But belief is contagious, so you believe like he believes in the positive shaping of our country. With his very words Obama has launched the country already into a positive uplifting state of change. Additionally, he’s realistic in his promises. He doesn’t say we’ll fix everything 100% with 0% setbacks. He acknowledges the few bumps in the road. And in that flexibility, lies is his strength. You believe in Obama, hearing him believe! I believe in Obama!

Self-reiance, indiviudal liberty, national unity — he knows the best values. I feel more faithful and more empowered just HEARING Obama; so having him actually make changes galvanizes just heaps of goodness. haha.

I actually heard this author on presidency speak in person and Greenstein

“gives Obama high marks for running his transition with the same brand of assertive self-confidence he showed during the campaign. The transition has been characterized, he said, by “a very strong sense of maintaining control and professing to be waiting in the wings but filling up all the presidential space, and doing things in textbook order.”

A former Clinton aide thought,

“I find it hard to believe that, no matter how skillful he is, he can sustain this level of hope and support,”

. Well, that’s where our part comes in. Obama has the right stuff — the intelligence, the action-oriented certainty, the confidence, and the clarity to make the best changes; we just need to continue believing in his capacity to inspire, create, and galvanize things to the way they should thrive!

Obama Article

Great News: Man, amazing passion speech. It was really wise to speak of unity, a topic that gets people charged, instead of complex policies from the get-go of his opening speech. Obama appears extremely intelligent, honest, good, and unlike his predecessor, Obama truly understand and most importantly believes the words that he communicates. Obama should be awesome. Hope reigns in america again.

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding “magnetosphere”. Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Politics: Arnold Schwarzenegger cast his vote for McCain, joking that McCain has now 100% of the vote from ‘Austrian-born bodybuilders’, a joke that was just clever and a bit goofy. Meanwhile his wife, being a member of the Kennedy lineage, has voted for Obama. It’ll be interesting to see how the rest of the nation votes.

Bottom-line: Election process before Obama won.

Economy: Oil Prices have evened out after spiking in July. In London, Brent crude oil was up to $65.91 but have tapered off to $58.38. In the U.S. the $71.77 July peak has dropped to $69.88. I remember in July hearing stories of automobile commuters who practiced “stepping on the gas” the least amount possible. By using inclines and avoiding stop lights to “save on gas”. But trade in oil in the U.S has slowed. It’s hopeful that recent growth in China and India will help re-establish equillibrium with the oil market.

Bottom-line: Oil prices begin to balance out after spike in July.

Legal Crap and Frightening News: There’s a lot of lame crap going on in the legal world. The attorney general of California sued three small trucking companies for violating labors to avoid paying payroll taxes. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was convicted on 7 counts of corruption and should serve 5 years for each count, but apparently may serve much less. On a much scarier note, the Alchohol, Tobacco, Firearms bureau successful stopped anotehr school killing spree before it started. Some idiot neo-nazis had some heinously inhuman plan to decapitate African Americans and assassinate Barrack Obama. Wow. It’s times like these where corruption, illegal earning, and racist brutality seem to clog the news that you feel pretty pathetic calling yourself American. At the very least it certainly doesn’t make you feel safe! In fact, the news in America has gotten so foul and disturbing (I can’t believe there’s still racist neo-nacist hate group buffoons still around), there’s really no point in continuing to cover it. But just the fact that dangerous hate-group racism still exists in America really causes you to scrutinize that irrationality. The opinions on slavery from the Civil War really might have left a scar and some racist people remain dangerously confused and primitive, but this chunk of news just reeks of a lot of fear. Jeez, just the thought that if Obama gets elected he could be under the threat of a racist assassination is, well, a sad sign that maybe some haven’t evolved as much as they should have. Fortunately, tomatoes have evolved!

Bottom-line: Sometimes current events are so atrocious, at times it’s good just to not pay attention to the news.

Health: Interesting news, very intriguing. The genetically modified research has sprouted a new invention: purple tomatoes cross-bred with a snapdragon flower. The resultant creation is jacked with antioxidant and supposedly has huge cancer-prevention properties! The combination of snapdragon with the tomato produces anthocyanin which is an extremely antioxidant-rich pigment.

Bottom-line: New snapdragon genetically-infused tomato may help cure cancer.

Environment: Good news on the horizon of environmental conservation, specifically emissions control! While,

“there is currently no agreed method of allocating international emissions to individual countries”

, members of the British Parliament are

“determined that international aviation and shipping should be part of a comprehensive approach for tackling climate change”

. I guess you never factor in exhaust from airplanes polluting the atmosphere contributing to the green house effect, but it’s good to know that emission control standards on that form of communication are being set in place.

Bottom-line: Airplanes’ emissions control will help environment.

Athletics: Roger Bannister, born almost 80 years ago, in 1929, was the first human ever to run a mile in under four-minutes. He accomplished this amazing feat in 1954 during a track meet in Oxford, UK. The winds were high at first, died down, Bannister ran, and when the announcer announced his time of “3…” the crowd went mad. His official time was 3:59.4.
That’s a great achievement but what was even more fascinating that the psychological barrier was shattered. Instantly after Bannister did a sub-4, other runners believed it was possible and consequentially more and more sub-4 miles were accomplished. John Walker went on to run 129 sub-4 miles, alone, and Daniel Komen of Kenya, in 1997, doubled up Bannister’s original record to run a sub-8 minute 2-mile (two sub-4 miles back to back). So all this “breaking the barrier” business in athletics — or any arena of accomplishment — has a big emphasis.

Certainly, three sub-4 miles back to back resulting in a sub-12 minute 3-mile race is certainly a goal for some, but an even more prominent goal is the sub-2-hour marathon barrier. People have gotten close, but no one has ever run a marathon in an amount of time that begins with “1-hour”…x minutes, x seconds. Right now, the person to do that most likely is Gebrselassie, an amazing Ethiopian runner. You can read the full article, but basically prior to Haile Gebrselassie’s race in Berlin about 2 weeks ago a 2-hour 4-minute marathon was a barrier. Gebrselassie went on to break that with a 4:44 mile pace to get 2:03:59. There are skeptics and optimists of the 2-hour marathon barrier, but if anything, Gebrselassie brought the world a whole lot closer to the accomplishment of shattering such an outstanding barrier.

Bottom-line: Gebrselassie pushes the sub-2-hour marathon record.

Bizarro News: I normally don’t cover the disturbing or unsavory news, but this murder trial of a former “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” actor was just too, well, bizarre. He lured some yacht sellers out onto the boat and apparently tied them to an anchor, plunging them to a watery death. I’d like to know how they discovered his guilt, maybe they had Angela Lansbury on the case, and frankly this sounds like something out an episode of Murder She Wrote, as opposed to real-life!.
And for some comic relief from the above incident “SNL’s People getting punched in the face just before eating!”.

Technology: I know I covered Apple’s “iBrick” rumors last week, but frankly, I just love this IT company. New news with Apple is that they’ve released an LCD screen designed for it’s simplicity in connected with a macbook notebook and a new macbook notebook, sleeker and more polished in its appearance, making it someone visually similar to a miniature macbook pro. Personally, I liked the sturdiness of the older version macbook, which was built like a tank. But nothing can beat the humor of the iBook version 1 which has become notoriously known around the mac community as the “toilet seat notebook” because of its uncanny, um, hardware design.

Kudos for Apple’s release of the new macbooks, but honestly I think the LCD was a bit overkill. Apple has released some incredible monitors and LCDs for high-end graphics, those are only mainly used for high-end graphic designers; the typical consumers will just vie for a cheaper LCD screen to connect their macbook to a desktop environment. But it’s certainly excellent to know that the LCD option exists for die-hard apple fans (like myself).

Miscellaneous-Home: One of the things I like most about this guy is that he’s not special, certified trainer. He’s just a normal bloke who seemed to have taught himself how to train a cat! The scientific theory behind all of the conditioning is fascinating as well as nostalgic. I remember training a rat to tap a lever and visit different corners of a box for a psychology class. It’s just amazing watching the cat — over the course of a very short period, no doubt — slowly get the gist of the “light switch gimmick”. Over the course of the operant conditioning period, you can almost just envision that cat saying to itself:“Well, I don’t really know what this is about, but if I bump that white thing…how do I bump it again?…oh alright, I flick this stupid thing and I get food, so works for me!”

Works for me, too. Clicker-training has a fascinating background and Skinner’s operant conditioning functions as its fundamentals. It’s fun for the pet; fun for you, and simply illuminating (pun unintended) to see the applications of science in your pet from turning on a light switch to other tricks!

Bottom-line: Operant conditioning applies to household pets.

Real estate: Apparently there’s some discrepancies in data that show southern californian homes being some of the most expensive, and now, they apparently look as though the prices of plummeted, resulting in a greater number of house sells in recent months.

“Last month’s median home price in the six-county region fell 33.2 percent to $308,500 in the six-county region, compared to $462,000 in September 2007, San Diego-based MDA DataQuick said”

. Interesting, well high or low-priced, still a great place.

Bottom-line: House prices decreases, causing house sales to increase.

Good Times:  At least the Aussies still know how to have fun  Graduating 12 years from Xavier College allegedly streaked through their school wearing the ties as g-strings, set off fire works, and caused a ruckus like no other on their “Muck up Day” as a graduation prank.  It’s hysterical if you read the readers comments.  Some woman apparently got her her gnomes beheaded and bird bath tipped!  And another ’68 alumni praised the pranksters! Ah, the life down under! hehe.

Technology: Apple’s innovation cease to amaze. The cutting edge rumor is that they intend to release a special laptop known as “the brick”. Doing its name justice, “the brick” is supposedly carved out of a solid “brick” of titanium, making it seamless and screwless! The price for such water-blasting crafted item sounds like it would be extraordinary. While it may not be 100% indesctructible, the durability of Apple’s new laptop technology will be a practically unprecedented release sturdy portability. Here are some cool factoids about it:

Macenstein had the best prediction of its bizarre codename:

“it is likely that it is simply a name for an upcoming product (or group of products) that Apple thinks will be sexy enough to pull a huge marketshare away from Microsoft. After all, how do you break “Windows”? You throw a brick through them!”

iPhone Savior predicts it will be some kind of new mac mini:

“a re-design of the Mac Mini super-sized to reveal a Mac Mini Pro of sorts.”

Whatever this new innovation will be, it officeally releases (if on schedule) today. So it will be exciting to find out.

Bottom-line: Apple’s iBrick’s creating a sensational quality hype.

Economy: We’ve heard a lot of people griping (others outright wailing) about the economic slump, specifically of the stock market. Well, good news for all. Pessimists complained that the stock market was as bad as it was during the Great Depression. Maybe, but I’m an optimist and now I recognize is as flourishing as it was during the Decade of the Glorious (but of course after the Great Depression and without the distorted Keynesian economic blunders that caused the drop nearly 6 dozen years ago). And evidence of our recently flourishing economy lies in the crisp numbers of the stock market: stocks skyrocketed 11% yesterday, which is the biggest jump since 1933. So clearly, optimism will always prevail over of the pessimists.

The cause of this? Not so reassuring. Many believe this will hurt more then help the economy, but the Bush Administration shifted into a “$250 billion of the $700 billion bailout program recently passed by Congress to purchase stock in U.S. banks, providing the banks with desperately needed money” and the FDIC will temporarily provide insurance loans for the banks as well. Why would the Bush administration do such a maneuver when he’s practically no longer in office? Possibly a somewhat desperate attempt to boost the economy, or malevolent ploy to screw with the economy before it shifts into more adept hands. hehe. Probably the former.

Apple stock shot up a whopping 13.26 points yesterday, too, so apparently “the iBrick” (see above) made an impression on shareholders.

Bottom-line: Stocks sky-rocket because banks rework a bailout plan.

Health: New breakthroughs in nutritional science have shown recent significance of Vitamin D in building bones and preventing cancer. Preventing cancer, after all, is simply about creating balance in the body. Scientists don’t understand the direct cause of cancer so they create all these assumptions of measures to take to indirectly prevent it. Undoubtedly taking more of a balance of Vitamins will create body balance and it’s that physiological equilibrium that ultimately prevents any kind of deterioration in the body (cancer included). So in another few months scientists will have a “big breakthrough” stating that we need to be taking more Vitamin A! And then more Zinc! etc. Framing these as real breakthroughs would be impractical; they do serve a good purpose though; old-fashioned reminders to take in healthy Vitamins. People are more apt to change their habits (in this case “vitamin consumption”) if it’s labeled as a “new breakthrough”. In any case, you can get more D in smelly fish like mackarel, tuna, and sardines, supplements, or our sun.

Bottom-line: Double your intake of Vitamin D.

LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It’s like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It excites me and most scientists, too, though.

Basically it gives us an inside look into how the universe was created, re-manufacturing some big-bang like instances that will answer jumbles of of scientific questions, clarify models (like the Stand Model) that were purely theoretical practically, and illuminate a lot of “shaky and uncertain” areas of science. Basically the LHC will provide is with a “Director’s Cut Edition” on the making of the movie of the “Universe”. haha!

Here’s the breakdown of what the components will do. They basically track different things, some of which we haven’t ever known about until now.

Anti-matter tracking — LHCb is in charge of this. We’ve got a TON of matter in the universe, but can’t seem to find the anti-matter! The big bang had equal amounts of matter and anti-matter, but all we’ve been able to put our fingers on is matter. LHCb will track where the anti-matter goes in the miniaturized, microscopic Big Bang replica.

Quark-Gluon Plasma tracking — ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) will track liquid-like plasma that existed ONLy after the big bang, so that’ll clear that up.

Dark Matter & Higgs Boson tracking — CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) and ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) both function as the core kind of general all-purpose tracking dark matter and the so-called “god particle”. Understanding the Higgs Boson particle’s (the only unobserved particle of the Standard Model) role in the univese could reveal how massless energy transformed into mass.

Other Dimension, Origins of Matter, and new Physics tracking — ATLAS will scope out all of these new ground-breaking discoveries.

The Higgs Boson particle (along with quarks, leptons, photons, and gluon particles) is a key particle in the Standard Model, but unlike all the other 4, it’s purely theoretical. The LHC will hopefully prove the existence of the Higgs Boson, completing a major puzzle piece to the cosmological big picture.

While the LHC Rap video

is award-winning, this debriefing

is the most ilustrative I’ve seen.

Finally, this video

had some great invterviews from an eclectic handful of CERN scientists and physicists.

Transportation: Interestingly enough, local Californians and many other commuters have grown a liking to the public transportation method of commuting they adopted to deal with outrageous gas prices not too long ago. Now that gas prices have dropped, many commuters still prefer the public transportation method. Hey, better for the environment, less pollution, and cheaper; they just have to make sure they get a good bus driver!

Real Estate: Californian real estate continues costs top dollar, especially compared to other places around the U.S. Take La Jolla’s average house cost of $1.8 million compared to Sioux City’s average house cost of $133,000. You’ll get comparable actual houses for 13 times more or an additional $1.67 million in California. One small factor is unemployment in some mid-west states like Ohio or Michigan, unemployment rates have slashed home values, but that’s not the bulk of the price variation. So what’s the deal? I think local home owners would agree that mountains, ocean, surfing access, and perfect year-round whether is well worth 20 times the amount of paying to live in a place with no ocean, no mountains, and colder temperatures half the year. So in a sense, CA real estate is a bargain! Going international, however, it turns out Dubai, United Arab Emirates takes the cake for most expensive home, costing $2.5 million, or a 1/3 more than the average La Jolla cost. However, some east coast places like Greenwich, CT ranked in at comparable prices to the expensive California coast cost. While on the other end of the spectrum, the study showed house prices like Jackson, MI, Akron, OH, and Arlington, TX as the lower end prices, but obviously, that cost cut reflects the cut in climate quality and environmental resources.

Technology: Google plans on ousting Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with its own browser, Chrome. While Microsoft remains convinced its newest IE 8 will hold the market, Google’s browser undoubtedly will be tough competition given their dominance in internet searches already. The announcement could’ve effected stock prices already as MSFT dropped a few cents while GOOG jumped over a $1 but those prices could have been coincidental. Some features of Chrome are going to be tough breaks for Microsoft though. Like “protected tab surfing” or “crash control” where (not unlike the protected memory feature of Mac OS) if one tabbed page crashes while surfing only that single tab will restart, not the entire browser, making for much less glitchy web surfing. And features like “incognito” which keeps hidden your Internet navigation history as well as an auto-updated list of top site visits. It’s quite possible that the introduction of the iPhone, Bill Gates’ departure, and now Chrome poking tough competition at IE 8, could have started a slippery slope for Microsoft, inhibiting it from holding the monopolizing technological stance it once had. However, it’s important to point out that most all features present in Chrome alreasy existant in Apple’s Safari browser.

Immunology: New discoveries in the origins of poison ivy reveal insights into developing an immunity to the plant, but a consistent cure remains to be found.

Science: Oh…and there’s just one more thing. The Large Hadron Particle Collider could change the way we view the entire universe, gravity, and our relationship between matter and energy. Just one last tidbit to throw in there. I found this little rap pretty convenient and instrumental in explaining all the fine details of the process:

LHCB is where the antimatter’s gone. ALICE and ATLAS looks at collisions of lead ions. CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind. They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find. The LHC acclerates the protons and the lead and the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It’s like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It’s amusing how much irrational fear this amazing scientific breakthrough has caused. Talks of “the end of the world”, “silly Jesus stuff”, “recreating the big bang’s destructiveness” are just ignorant and irrationally loony. It’s astonishing how far ignorance and blind naivety will allow people to take them; some people even went as far as trying to have a legal barring of this incredible and fantastically monumental breakthrough in science. But people always fear what they don’t understand albeit one the biggest cosmological breakthroughs ever, so hopefully the above rap will eradicate that fear with a simple explanation:

size = 17 miles, cost = 8 billion, energy consumption = 14 trillon electron volts

but a complex explanation could be even more enlightening, but this inside look is what really takes the cake for being the most helpful. Of course, learnign something about Higgs boson and the Standard Model couldn’t hurt either. This is a the collaborative product of over 8000 physicists and 85 countries. It’s a grand uplifting event not a destructive one! The collaborative efforts of that type are second only to things like the Olympics. This most certainly is a fine day for the world and for science.

C to the E to the R to the N

…ahh that’s the best part of the rap.

Conclusively, I say:

The LHC will reveal to us details about dark and antimatter. It’s like an opportunity to replicate some never before-seen conditions, and answer millions of unknown questions; doing that, sometimes scares people! haha.

It excites me and most scientists, too, though!

Entertainment: Hollywood does it again, with the inverse relationship between entertainment and economy — if the economy slumps, movie ticket profit soars — Hollywood has made $4.2 billion from May to Labor Day. Interesting to note that the big box-office sellers were super-hero movies like “The Incredible Hulk”, “Batman”, “Hancock”, and “Iron man”. Who knew that some adventure action movies would be the big box office hits?

Humorous: Talk about your ultimate typos, The Bloomberg News accidentally released an obituary of Steve Jobs, despite the fact that he is still very much alive to this day. The multiple-paged obit, apparently “hold for release”, got out of the bag and wasn’t held. You can view it here. And here is actually a list of the embarrassing history of many untimely obituaries of the past, some of the most astonishing are Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Mark Twain on two accounts! The painter, James Whistler, read his accidentally published premature obituary and said it actually made him feel better: “”tender glow of health”!

Weather: While, hurricane Gustav’s 45 mph winds caused 2 million people to evacuate Louisiana’s coast, the local resident’s there were more-or-less prepared after the hard-learned lessons from Katrina in 2005.

California: Good ol’ Scharzeneggar has created a temporary solution to get moving with the california budget. No one could decide how to close the 15.2 billion deficit. Republicans disliked the idea of tax raises, while democrats vied for tax increases and cuts to clear the deficit. Likely using a trusty math calculator, Arnie crafted a temporary budget to short-term raise sale taxes and make a few cuts to make back $4 billion toward the budget and a little more then next to years. It likely would be a miracle, but then the $15.2 billion deficit would be cleared in three years and and the current sales taxes could rebound back to lower than its current amount.

I like Arnie’s words with respect to the amount of state funding from taxes already. Californians make a lot of money and that helps out the state:

“I think the people of California are sending to Sacramento plenty of dollars, 130-some billions of dollars they are sending every year for us to function. If we cannot function with that money, then there is something wrong with the system rather than with the people”

.

Even though those wise words slightly contradict his actions of increasing sales tax, I revere both the words and the actions (despite their inherent contradicton) because his words show appreciation and his actions provide a solution. Arnie is good stuff.

Transportation: Avoid spanish airlines when possible!
The worst aviation catastrophe happened in spain

The deadliest disaster in aviation history occurred in Spain in 1977 as a result of a runway collision between two fully loaded Boeing 747s in the Canary Islands. A total of 583 people died.

and Spanair Flight JK5022, full of vacationing Europeans, bound for Las Palmas crashed immediately after take-off. Devastating. Sure, automobile transportation is still statistically more dangerous but these devastating aviational crashes get horrendous.

Athletics: Dara Torres first competed in the Olympics in the 1984 Los Angeles games. She then has gone on to hit up the ’88, ’92, ’00, and the ’08 games recently in Beijing setting the record for being the only american swimmer to compete in 5 games. And she just didn’t compete for “participation points” she really showed up, earning three silvers in Beijing in the 4×100 free relay, 50 free, and 4×100 medley.