Nikola Tesla - Smarter Than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs Combined

Yeah...you know who I'm talking about
Nikola Tesla
The greatest geek who ever lived

Let's just say that basically every major technical advance of the early 20th Century, from alternating current to hydroelectricity, radar to radio, came directly from Tesla.
The Oatmeal.com gives us a basic Tesla for Dummies post that is worth reading.
Is Tesla had lived longer, he surely would have invented the internet.

Oh...So That Explains It

I love reading about obscure medical studies
because the more of them that you read the more likely you will find one that reinforces some projection that you have about yourself and your well being.

Take for example the study by the Copenhagen University Hospital that found that the thinner your thighs, the greater your risk of heart disease. So after all these years of being disappointed because I didn't inherit my mother's gazelle like legs, I can finally be happy with my haunches. (Now if I can only find a study that will say that my acne and fat ass will prevent future arthritis, allergies and Alzheimer's...)

Or you will find a study that explains some current social or cultural phenomena that has had you shaking your head.
Like this one from the University of Sheffield
Taking the pill for past 40 years 'has put women off masculine men'

Scientists say the hormones in the oral contraceptive suppress a woman's interest in masculine men and make boyish men more attractive.
If the theory is right, it could partly explain the shifting in tastes from macho 1950s and 1960s stars such as Kirk Douglas and Sean Connery to the more wimpy, androgynous stars of today, such as Johnny Depp and Russell Brand.
Here is the explanation
On days when women are not fertile, their tastes swing towards more feminine, boyish faces and more caring personalities, researchers have shown.
However, if women are taking the Pill they no longer have fertile days.
That means they no longer experience the hormonal changes that make them more attracted to masculine men and those with dissimilar genetic make-up.
Well that seems logical

And I guess that explains why stars with masculine looks like Gary Cooper

have been replaced with baby faced effeminate stars like Zac Efron

I fear for our world

Norman Borlaug - America's Albert Schweitzer

Taking a break from posts about fashionista-ish subjects
I wanted to recommend to you this WSJ editorial about
the greatest American of the 20th Century


Norman Borlaug arguably the greatest American of the 20th century died late Saturday after 95 richly accomplished years. The very personification of human goodness, Borlaug saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived. He was America's Albert Schweitzer: a brilliant man who forsook privilege and riches in order to help the dispossessed of distant lands. That this great man and benefactor to humanity died little-known in his own country speaks volumes about the superficiality of modern American culture.

In 1999, the Atlantic Monthly estimated that Borlaug's efforts combined with those of the many developing-world agriculture-extension agents he trained and the crop-research facilities he founded in poor nations saved the lives of one billion human beings.

Saving billions of lives, imagine that

Norman Borlaug RIP

Diamonds - Another Reason To Love Them

People, I'm not making this stuff up... really...it's science!

Diamonds Are A Wound's Best Friend

Women tend to like them, meteors tend to make them and De Beers tends to hoard them, but now diamonds turn out to have a more constructive use: making nasty wounds heal faster.

As if we needed another reason to love diamonds...

Maybe I Don't Drink Enough Champagne

From the AP
ROME – Rita Levi Montalcini, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, said Saturday that even though she is about to turn 100, her mind is sharper than it was she when she was 20.
Levi Montalcini, who also serves as a senator for life in Italy, celebrates her 100th birthday on Wednesday, and she spoke at a ceremony held in her honor by the European Brain Research Institute.
She shared the 1986 Nobel Prize for Medicine with American Stanley Cohen for discovering mechanisms that regulate the growth of cells and organs.
"At 100, I have a mind that is superior — thanks to experience — than when I was 20," she told the party, complete with a large cake for her.


Wow...a brilliant woman with such a sense of style.

Check out the big bracelet....and the booze!

Love it!

and God do I wish that I could say that I am as sharp as I was at age 20....

I Heart This - I Think

I saw this photo of a baby ox with the heart shaped birthmark on its forehead and thought that it was so adorable...especially at Valentine's Day.

Then I realized that I just finished this book by Michael Crichton.
Genetic engineering...nanotechnology....
Ayyyyy...what did those evil scientist do to that poor baby ox???

Celebrity Nonsense - Science Is Not Their Subject

Scientific Advisors - Oprah and Tom Cruise

From The Independent
Scientific illiteracy all the rage among the glitterati

When it comes to science, Barack Obama is no better than many of us. Today he joins the list of shame of those in public life who made scientifically unsupportable statements in 2008.
Closer to home, Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith faltered on the science of food, while Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all get roastings for scientific illiteracy.

The Celebrities and Science Review 2008, prepared by the group Sense About Science, identifies some of the worst examples of scientific illiteracy among those who profess to know better – including top politicians.

Kate Moss, Oprah Winfrey and Demi Moore all espoused the idea that you can detoxify your body with either diet (scientifically unsupportable) or, in the case of Moore, products such as "highly trained medical leeches" which make you bleed. Scientists point out that diet alone cannot remove toxins and that blood itself is not a toxin, and even if it did contain toxins, removing a little bit of it is not going to help.

highly trained medical leeches...is she high? Exactly how do you train a leech?

Obviously, I assume that none of you would look to Nigella Lawson, Kate Moss or Demi Moore for scientifically based health advice.

But I ask, how many women worship at the "Church of Oprah"? Seriously...she has millions of female fans who believe everything she utters. And do I even need to go into the the whole "Woman's Conference" that she puts on every year where all the highly connected and wealthy California women from Maria Shriver down to the billionaire hedgefunder's wives go to get their update on the politically correct approach to the issues of the day.

So what does all this have to do with Coleridge and Newton?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Isaac Newton

Well just that this is nothing new.

There is something so "junior high" about all of this, like the way that the "cool kids" express their opinions on subjects they know nothing about, like science, to the their sycophant friends who are ever so ready to look down on the "geeks".

Taking this back to one of the ultimate hipsters of the late 18th Century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Coleridge, best described by the The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature as a "poet, philosopher, theologian, critic, journalist and playwright", leaving out the part about him being an opium addict, wrote about Newton in an 1801 letter to Thomas Poole,

"My Opinion is this—that deep Thinking is attainable only by a man of deep Feeling, and that all Truth is a species of Revelation. The more I understand of Sir Isaac Newton's works, the more boldly I dare utter to my own mind ... that I believe the Souls of 500 Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the making up of a Shakspere [sic] or a Milton... Mind in his system is always passive—a lazy Looker-on an external World. If the mind be not passive, if it be indeed made in God's Image, & that too in the sublimest sense—the image of the Creator—there is ground for suspicion, that any system built on the passiveness of the mind must be false, as a system."

About the last thing that I would say about Newton was that he was a lazy looker on an external world.

Monday Morning Miscellany

The Fashioniste is not a fashion blogger but an Art-Fashion-and-Literature Synthesist


I'm fascinated with the way that his latest post highlights Dior's 1789 with commentary on women and revolution by leading intellectuals of the 19th Century, including these quotes from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.

Ever since the French Revolution, women's influence in Europe has decreased to the same extent that their rights and ambitions have increased; and thus the “emancipation of women,” in so far as women themselves (and not only shallow males) are demanding and encouraging it, turns out to be a curious symptom of increasing weakness and dullness in the most womanly instincts. There is stupidity in this movement, an almost masculine stupidity, which a truly womanly woman (who is always a clever woman) would have to be utterly ashamed of. -Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Part Seven: “Our Virtues,” Section 239, (1886), translated by Walter Kaufmann (1967).

Was it not the case in France that the influence of women, which steadily increased from the time of Louis XIII, was to blame for that gradual corruption of the Court and the Government, and which brought about the Revolution of 1789, of which all subsequent disturbances have been the result? However that may be, the false position which women occupy nowadays, demonstrated as it is, in the most glaring way, by the institution of the “lady,” is a fundamental defect in our social scheme, and this defect, proceeding from the very heart of it, must, by its very nature, spread its irritating and burdensome influence in all directions.-The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism (1851), translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1891), and slightly modernized for clarity by me.

and if that wasn't enough Schopenhauer for you...

[The fact that] woman is by nature meant to obey may be seen by the fact that every woman who is placed in the unnatural position of complete independence, immediately attaches herself to some man, by whom she allows herself to be guided and ruled. It is because she needs a lord and master. If she is young, it will be a lover; if she is old, a priest.-The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: Studies in Pessimism (1851), translated by T. Bailey Saunders (1891).

On one hand the 19th Century produced philosophers like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and their ilk. On the other hand it produced a scientist of the caliber of Marie Curie who despite her study of mathematics, chemistry and physics at the Sorbonne, was denied a position as a professor at Krakow University because she was a woman.

Ultimately, whose work was more important...Schopenhauer's or Curie's...the answer is evident.

interesting, non?

This Week's Good News

I don't want to dwell on bad news this week so from the Australian, here's the news we've finally been waiting for.

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh

We can finally stop worrying about global warming because sun spot activity is showing that we are in a trend of global cooling.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.
It will be difficult for people to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or hopes for social change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at stake.

Meanwhile the Daily Mail reports on the Mea Culpa from Green Goddess, Trudy Styler and husband Sting about their not so Green lifestyle resulting in a huge carbon footprint. Not to worry Trudy. Just keep flying back and forth between your 6 mansions on your private jet, including flying your Italian Chef from your Tuscany villa up to London to deliver food.

However, Miss Styler clearly feels she is doing her bit for the planet - and managed to offer some advice on the subject, too.
She said: "I think within the next year we have a period of huge responsibility for this country to keep GM at bay.
"We spend a lot of time in America and you often don't know when you are eating GM food. I say keep GM out of Britain."

And thank God Trudy, in a time of food shortages you are doing you best to keep GM at bay!

Glenn Reynolds - Green and Smart

Glenn Reynolds in the NY Post makes the argument for concentrating on the development of new technology rather than on the limitation of hydrocarbon emissions.

But what if we could reduce greenhouse gases without impoverishing the world? That would be worth doing anyway, because along with those greenhouse gases come all sorts of other nasty substances we're better off without.

And, he makes the green argument for more research and development in nanotechnology.

Nanotech offers dramatic improvements on the side of energy consumption, too: As computing and other devices become smaller, they become more efficient - and nanotech will allow drastic improvements in both size and efficiency.
Nanotech is starting to yield super-strong, super-light materials, too. Imagine how much more efficient a family car could be if you cut the weight in half, even if you kept burning gas. But nanotech is also likely to produce better batteries and better motors, meaning that your lighter car may also be electric, powered ultimately by those nanodot solar panels.
All of these things are in the works now to greater and lesser degrees, but they could happen faster if there were more research and development support.

A Friend of mine has written on the need to create a 21st Century Manhattan Project to develop cleaner and cheaper energy sources that will stop our dependence on imported oil. Yeah, it can't happen too fast.

Edward Lorenz the Father of Chaos Theory

Chaos...that to some degree what my life is all about. Yours too?

Well Edward Lorenz, the man who taught us all about Chaos Theory has just died.

His studies led him to develop what became known as the "butterfly effect." The term stemmed from his 1972 academic paper "Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly's Wings in Brazil Set off a Tornado in Texas?"

Men More Forgetful Than Women

And all this time I thought that I was just being ignored.

According to Live Science it's not that they aren't listening..they've just forgotten what you've said.

Men are more likely than women to have problems with memory and other thinking skills, symptoms considered to be an early stage of dementia, research suggests.

Come-to-Bed Looks are Comely

After all of the brain enhancing drugs, Scientists have come up with a new study on sex as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sex starts with the jaw, nose and eyes: study

It's called love at first sight, and if you don't believe in it, then you're out of step with the latest research on the human face and sexual behaviour published by scientists in Britain.
In the study of 700 twentysomething heterosexuals by the universities of Durham, St Andrews and Aberdeen, results showed that one look can be enough to gauge whether a long-term relationship is on the cards, or just a one-night stand.
According to the research entitled Evolution and Human Behaviour, subtle sexual signals emanate from the shape of the jaw, nose size or narrowness of the eyes - although people were not always sure about their judgments, the authors noted.
"Lots of previous studies have shown that people can judge a lot about a person from their face, including things like health and even some personality traits like introversion," said Ben Jones, from the University of Aberdeen's Face Research Lab.
"But this really is the first study to show that people are also sensitive to subtle facial signals about the type of romantic relationships that others might enjoy."
Men with traits perceived as more virile - square jaws, larger noses and smaller-than-average eyes - were more regularly imagined by women as chasing short-term gratification.
The study added that women who give off come-to-bed looks are considered the most attractive by both men and women.
"Our results suggest that although some people can judge the sexual strategy of others simply from looking at their face, people are not always sure about their judgments possibly because the cues are very subtle," added Lynda Boothroyd from Durham University's Psychology Department.
"Yet preferences for different types of face were actually quite strong.
"This shows that these initial impressions may be part of how we assess potential mates - or potential rivals - when we first meet them."

I wish they would have defined come-to-bed looks.

I'll Have What They're Having

Breitbart.com has reported on a study showing that Scientists are taking performance enhancing drugs, such as Ritalin to boost brain power.

Of the 288 scientists who said that had taken one or more of these drugs outside of a medical context, three-fifths had used Ritalin, and nearly half Provigil.

In the survey, 80 percent of all the scientists -- even those who did not use these drugs -- defended the right of "healthy humans" to take them as work boosters, and more than half said their use should not be restricted, even for university entrance exams.

All I know is that my brain power could use a little boost too.

A New Net From CERN

The Times Online has reported that the brainiacs at the Geneva based CERN , the European Center for Nuclear Research, who invented the world wide web have now developed "the grid" a super fast fiber optic based system.

David Britton, professor of physics at Glasgow University and a leading figure in the grid project, believes grid technologies could “revolutionise” society. “With this kind of computing power, future generations will have the ability to collaborate and communicate in ways older people like me cannot even imagine,” he said.

The power of the grid will become apparent this summer after what scientists at Cern have termed their “red button” day - the switching-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the new particle accelerator built to probe the origin of the universe. The grid will be activated at the same time to capture the data it generates.

Here's a picture of the new huge particle accelerator running under seven cities including the petit ville where I used to live.

And you thought Geneva was all about Swiss Banking and Swiss Chocolate.

Ruthlessness - Nature versus Nurture

This fascinating article from Nature News discusses a study that shows that there is a genetic factor for ruthlessness. Somehow after watching the actions of multiple generations of certain families, I'm convinced that nature more than nurture plays a role in how ruthless people will be.

Diamonds are a Geeks best Friends

And you thought that diamonds were just for showing off...

As reported by Idex. I have no idea what this means for the future of mankind but I think this is very important.
And don't you just love qubits?

Tiny Diamond Ring Helps Researchers Solve Quantum Computer Dilemma
(March 27, '08, 4:51 IDEX Online Staff Reporter)
This 300 nanometersthick and 5 micrometerswide diamond ring was made to help develop quantum computers. (Photo: P Olivero, BFairchild and S Prawer,School of Physics,University of MelbourneResearchers at the University of Melbourne in Australia have made the world’s smallest diamond ring – 5 micrometers across and 300 nanometers thick – carved from a sliver of a lab grown diamond. They hope the tiny ring will allow them to build powerful computers that use properties of quantum physics.

According to ABC Science, the researchers hope the ring will enable them to manipulate single photons – the smallest unit or ‘packet’ of light – and help them overcome some of the obstacles to building quantum computers capable of performing enormous numbers of processes at the same time.

Although scientists know in theory how this type of quantum computer could be created, they stress that, until now, there have been many logistical barriers to creating it in the real world.

But they may have discovered part of the solution in the properties of diamonds. “For quantum information processing, diamonds have some truly unique possibilities,” explained Professor Steven Prawer, whose research team recently revealed images of the ring at a meeting of the American Physical Society.

With diamonds, Prawer explained, a scientist has an ideal way to produce qubits, the equivalent in quantum physics to bits that store information on regular computers. Although like normal bits, qubits have two different values – 0 or 1 – qubits also have the ability to exist in a state of superposition – to be in both states, or two places, at once.

Microscopic impurities in diamonds – when a single nitrogen atom and a tiny gap upsets the stone’s normal carbon structure – meet the requirements of qubits very well, said Prawer. Scientists can take advantage of the gaps by shining a laser into one, producing single photons of red light, which can be easily manipulated.

“The diamond offers a fantastic platform in order to make qubits because diamonds offer us a gift from nature,” he explained.