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Friday, January 16, 2004

American Dialect Society's 2003 Words of the Year. ass-hat: noun, a thoughtless or stupid person. cliterati: collective noun, feminist or woman-oriented writers or opinion-leaders. flexitarian: noun, a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. freegan: noun, person who eats only what they can get for free. Some winners from the American Dialect Society's 2003 Words of the Year. [MetaFilter] 4:36:26 PM  Permalink  comment []

NASA abandons Hubble. A few minutes ago, Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, announced his decision to cancel SM4, the next servicing mission to Hubble Space Telescope, saying it was his decision alone. One observer called it "a dark day for astrophysics." Here is... [JD's New Media Musings] A sad day. http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/ 4:07:45 PM  Permalink  comment []

Colour photographs from 19th century Russia. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, working in the years just before World War I, developed an ingenious process for creating color image projections -- three black and white photographs were taken (using red, green, and blue filters) and recombined later via a projector. Now, Addison Godel has gotten hold of a bunch of these images from the Library of Congress archives -- and, using Photoshop, has recombined them to provide unique colour photographs of turn-of-19th/20th-century Russia. [Link] [Discuss history] [Charlie's Diary] 3:59:55 PM  Permalink  comment []

U.S. National Debt Clock. When will the American government solve their debt problem? It's over $7 trillion, and currently growing by $2 billion daily, in effect saddling future generations with debt before they're even born at the tune of over $20,000 per person. [via PrestoPundit.com] [Jinn of Quality and Risk] 9:27:05 AM  Permalink  comment []

Electric Arc of Death?. Maybe you've seen the Electric Arc of Death video. OK, so maybe it's just capable of death if you get too close. But, if you work in the power industry like I do, I was amazed to see this rather impressive <a href="videohttp://oldcrows.net/~oldcrow/Lugo_SWR.mpg">video of a switchyard problem. Electric arcs involving switchgear for transmission lines are nothing new, and this link provides an excellent analysis of why this arc is occuring. Make sure you turn the volume up for an extra charge of excitement. [MetaFilter] 8:36:53 AM  Permalink  comment []

Designed for Life. "Don Norman on (...) why gadgets in the real world are still so hard to use, and why computers need emotions." (Wendy M. Grossman - New Scientist)... [InfoDesign: Understanding by Design] 8:31:55 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.