Sunday, July 6, 2003

We have talked about Hydra before, but I recently used the latest version (1.1) in a collaboration at a conference. This is a fantastic piece of software - if you have OS X on a laptop you should give it a try. There are several things I would like it to do (photo attachments for example) but, to first order, this just works. 10:22:23 AM     Ah Britain - if the politicians in power only owned the media like they do in the US. The popular nickname for Tony Blair these days is Tony Bliar. He clearly has a problem... 8:25:34 AM     The Oyez Project is now releasing arguments in mp3 format. 5:59:50 AM     This is very amusing - file sharing and Christian music. 5:59:33 AM     One of the major questions to be answered by the Apollo lunar program was an explanation of moon's origin. The basic explanation is that a Mars sized object struck the Earth spewing matter into orbit which later coalesced into the Moon, The amount of material from the impact body that became lunar material has been a subject of hot debate - estimates have ranged from one to ninety percent. A recent article in Science (C Müncker, et al Science 301 84) compares tantalum and niobium ratios from rocks from the Earth, Moon, Mars (there is a tiny bit of martian material on earth!) and meteorites. Without going into details (the paper is highly recommended if this is of interest) the results suggest the impact took place as the mantle and iron core of the Earth formed - in fact the impact probably aided that process. The researchers claim the impact is older than 4.5 billion years and an upper limit on the percentage of impact material transferred to the moon is about 65 percent. 5:58:49 AM     Getting a signal from your iPod to your car's stereo system can be frustrating - the cassette adapters and FM transmitters are low-fi. What you really need is a direct connection. I've been looking for something and several people have recommended Blitzsafe. Of course digging into the car may be a challenge. update George sent a note that he had a very bad experience with Blitzsafe. They didn't offer any real support and the item they sent didn't match the specs of what he needed. He recommends going through a local stereo installer. You should get quotes, but he suspects $50 to $100 should do the trick for most cars. 5:58:30 AM

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