CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

Wednesday, July 28

Cool

Oh Deary Me

Kenya, yet again.

(The management accepts no responsibility, you understand. None at all.)

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Life

Not Dead

Just... Well, doing stuff. Back soon.

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Thursday, July 22

Geek

Units Of Measure

Today on Pixy's Science Theatre: Tales of the Very Small!

A micron, or micrometre, is one millionth of a metre, 10-6 m. A typical human hair is about 80 microns thick (the range is rather large, from 18 to 180 microns). A human red blood cell is 6 to 8 microns across; the average bacterium is between 1 and 10 microns. The wavelength of visible light is around half a micron - ranging from 0.38 microns for violet to 0.74 microns for red. The smallest features of today's computer chips are just 0.09 microns wide.

An Ångström is much smaller, one ten-thousandth of a micron, one ten-billionth of a metre, 10-10 m. Atoms are around one Ångström wide - half an Ångström for hydrogen, the smallest of all atoms. X-rays have a wavelength of around an Ångström. The double-helix of DNA is about 20 Ångströms across.

The Fermi is far smaller still, one one-hundred-thousandth of an Ångström, one quadrillionth of a metre, 10-15 m. A proton or neutron is about one Fermi in diameter.

The Planck Length is really ridiculously small: about a tenth of a billionth of a quadrillionth of a Fermi, 1.6 x 10-35 m. According to current theoretical physics, that's as small as you can go: any distance smaller than a Planck Length doesn't actually exist.

62 orders of magnitude in length
83 orders of mangitude in mass

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World

Eeek?

Update:
Iraq's Interior Ministry dismissed as "stupid" a report in a local newspaper on Wednesday that said three nuclear missiles had been found near the town of Tikrit.

A senior U.S. military official told reporters he had no information on the report in the newspaper al-Sabah. He said officials were checking the report.

Asked by Reuters about the report, a spokesman at the Interior Ministry said: "It's stupid."


I doubt this story is true, but if it is, I have two responses:

1. Eeeeek!

2. We have at most twenty-four hours of grace before being told by the Left that WMDs were never the issue.

Iraqi security reportedly discovered three missiles carrying nuclear heads concealed in a concrete trench northwest of Baghdad, official sources said Wednesday.

The official daily al-Sabah quoted the sources as saying the missiles were discovered in trenches near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"The three missiles were discovered by chance when the Iraqi security forces captured former Baath party official Khoder al-Douri who revealed during interrogation the location of the missiles saying they carried nuclear heads," the sources said.

I suspect that they may have found missiles, but with conventional or possibly chemical warheads. Or likely the whole think is bunk. But...

If it does pan out, where the hell did he get nuclear warheads from? We know he never got close to making them himself. The only country in the Middle East with nukes is Israel, and I somehow doubt that is the source. North Korea might have one or two, but would they sell their ace-in-the-hole? India and Pakistan are more worried about each other than about bringing in a few bucks. The US and UK we can rule out. One would certainly hope we can rule out France, and China hasn't been acting that stupid lately. So, did the Russians lose track of some of theirs? If so, we have a hell of a problem.

Probably jumping at shadows. Probably.

(California Yankee via Evil Glenn)

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Life

Of Moores And Men

My current boss went to visit my former boss, who is now semi-retired and owns a bookstore (Dymocks on the corner of Pitt & Hunter, open 'til 7pm weekdays) and bought a copy of Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man, which my former boss who now owns the bookstore got in specially from the US because it isn't available through his Australian distributor.

How cool is that?

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Wednesday, July 21

Rant

Nazis. I Hate These Guys.

Well, I've always hated the Nazis, but I didn't know until today that their extermination program extended to sufferers of Huntington's Chorea.

So if they'd had the chance, they would have murdered my mother's family as well as my father's. Bastards.

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World

Sockgate

The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce:
Law enforcement sources said archive staff told FBI agents they saw Berger placing items in his jacket and pants, and one archive staffer told agents that Berger also placed something in his socks.

That allegation drew sharp responses from two of Berger's associates. President Clinton's former spokesman, Joe Lockhart, said Berger "categorically denies that he ever took documents and stuffed them in his socks.

"That is absurd," said Lockhart, who is now advising Berger. "And anyone who says that is interested in something other than the truth."

Former Clinton aide Lanny Davis challenged any unnamed official who accuses Berger of stuffing documents into his socks to come forward and level that charge publicly.

"I suggest that person is lying," he said. "And if that person has the guts, let's see who it is who made the comment that Sandy Berger stuffed something into his socks."

So a former National Security Advisor stuffing classified documents into his jacket and pants, taking them home, and losing them, is okay, but to put them in his socks is beyond the pale?

Thank you, CNN.

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Blog

BYOP*

I hate doing server migrations. You can't start until everyone else has logged out and gone home, and then you have to be the first one in the next morning in case anything breaks.**

Bleah.

Meanwhile, barbecue at Susie's place!

* Burn your own posts.
** Something always breaks.

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World

M N O Goldfish

Geeze, it's only July and already the Democrats are circling the drain.

I was hoping for more entertainment than that.

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Friday, July 16

World

Upside The Head

Y'know, blogging - and indeed the internet as a whole - is pretty much a case of Think locally, act globally.

Don't know that this is particularly profound, but it's all I've got right now.

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