Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 94 of 153).

Lightning and nuclear reactions

We had a few close bolts of lightning during last evening’s thunderstorm. One of the bolts caught fire to a neighbor’s backyard shed. It was one of the scarier lightning storms I’ve experienced.

I decided to look up some info on lightning today and came across this PBS page written by a lighting expert. Dr. David Dwyer, Associate Professor of Physics and Space Sciences at Florida Institute of Technology, answers questions about lightning. I found this Q&A particularly intriguging.

Q: Within the NOVA Web site I read that lightning heats the surrounding air of a lightning bolt to ~50,000°F, or hotter than the sun. The sun, as I understand it, generates heat through fusion reactions. So why don’t we see fusion reactions taking place within the surrounding air of a bolt of lightning? Casey, La Jolla, California

The surface of the sun is about 10,000°F, which is much cooler than the hottest part of lightning. However, the nuclear fusion that powers the sun occurs only near the center where the temperatures are much higher (30 million°F) and the pressures are very large. In comparison, lightning is downright chilly. As a result, no nuclear reactions are expected to take place during lightning. Having said all this, several independent research groups have recently measured nuclear by-products associated with lightning, which according to our standard picture doesn’t seem possible. If these results are correct, then something very unusual is happening with lightning—so stay tuned.

I did more poking around and found some articles of studies that seem to show that lightning can produce gamma rays. Those bolts may also be hurling antimatter into space! Fascinating!

via NOVA | Lightning: Expert Q&A.

In getting it wrong the NCAA might have actually found their voice

The NCAA slapped Penn State with a massive $60 million fine, vacated a decade of victories, and took away scholarships for four years as punishment for the Jerry Sandusky scandal. While I don’t know how Joe Paterno slept at night knowing the evil that Sandusky was committing, I’m not sure sanctions are right for this case. Paterno’s actions may have been cowardly and cold-hearted but the athletes and alumni aren’t at fault. Punishing them seems misguided.

Meanwhile, over in Chapel Hill it’s beginning to stink to high heaven with the allegations of egregious academic fraud, yet those in Baby Blue get off with a slap on the wrist. Go figure.

To me, as heinous as this matter is — and it is undeniable that it is far worse than impermissible benefits or academic fraud — it was still a matter for law enforcement as opposed to the fellow member institutions that make up the NCAA. The people responsible for what occurred are either in jail for life, headed there, or dead. What has happened today, with the announced penalties, severely punishes hundreds of people who had exactly nothing to do with the past culture of football isolationism.

via In getting it wrong the NCAA might have actually found their voice – WRALSportsFan.com.

Little Raleigh Radio kicks off its donation campaign!

Little Raleigh Radio


Little Raleigh Radio, the LPFM station I’m helping launch, has gone live with its Kickstarter donation campaign! After just one day it’s already reached 1/3rd of its goal of $10,000!

Help bring really local radio to Raleigh! Donate today!

We are building a community radio station and we need equipment so we can start broadcasting.

We are doing this. We are starting a community radio station in downtown Raleigh and we are doing it legit.

This studio will launch our internet broadcast stream and it will also prepare us to be on the air with a low-power FM signal in 2013. We need to populate the studio with more hardware than a couple of laptops and microphones borrowed from our volunteers. We are using Kickstarter to raise $10,000 to purchase gear including soundboards, CD players, turntables, microphones, speakers, cables and supportive equipment. We need your help. We believe in the value of community and we want our volunteers to be able to create community through radio.

via Little Raleigh Radio // We'll do it live! by Little Raleigh Radio — Kickstarter.

Milk: it does a body good? Perhaps not.

Here’s an interesting take on milk and how we’re probably drinking too much of it.

Today the Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for dairy is a mere three cups daily — still 1½ pounds by weight — for every man, woman and child over age 9. This in a country where as many as 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75 percent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews. The myplate.gov site helpfully suggests that those people drink lactose-free beverages. (To its credit, it now counts soy milk as “dairy.”)

There’s no mention of water, which is truly nature’s perfect beverage; the site simply encourages us to switch to low-fat milk. But, says Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Sugar — in the form of lactose — contributes about 55 percent of skim milk’s calories, giving it ounce for ounce the same calorie load as soda.”

via Got Milk? You Don't Need It – NYTimes.com.

MyBillJohnsonStory.com

The N&O’s John Murawski covers a Bill Johnson fan site, http://www.mybilljohnsonstory.com So now we won’t get just Jim Rogers’s and Bill Johnson’s version of events, but the people who worked with Johnson, too.

Call it the unofficial Bill Johnson Fan Club.

Current and former employees of Progress Energy and Duke Energy are posting their testimonials about the deposed utility chief executive on a web site created by a former Progress PR handler who considers Johnson a personal friend and mentor.

The site — http://mybilljohnsonstory.com/ — is reminiscent of a virtual memorial wall funeral homes create for the deceased, suggesting the sorrow Johnson’s firing from Duke Energy has engendered among his admirers.

Aaron Perlut, the architect behind the site, wanted to provide legions of Johnson admirers an outlet for their emotions.

via .biz – Bill Johnson admirers fill up virtual wall with testimonials | newsobserver.com blogs.

Apple cancels Rev. Horton Heat event

The band Reverend Horton Heat was invited to play at an Apple store but found the gig a bad fit, with Apple placing some unreasonable demands on the band. The band posted an update on their Facebook page today, explaining how the gig blew up. I found it to be an insightful look at these no-pay corporate gigs:

Reverend Horton Heat
In case you don’t know what happened with Apple….We were supposed to do an in-store appearance at their 1 Polk Street store (Market Street really) on the afternoon of the 14th of July. Of course, they wanted some kind of striped down or acoustic thing. I was working on figuring out what songs would work in that “retail” enviroment. It’s not easy to do a gig like that. It’s completly different than what we do. Of course, it was for publicity only – ie no pay. There was going to be a Q&A with the people in attendence. They wanted to record the thing and make it a podcast. All fine, except then, I found out that they wanted me to come up with an MC and figure the whole thing out – not exactly welcoming. It kind of seemed that they wanted us to play for free, set the whole thing up and get ourselves there too without doing too much to make the event a success. Getting ourselves there is hard because we have an upright bass. It would be impossible and expensive for us to bring the bus with trailer. Anyway, I made a post on facebook about how it wasn’t right to throw everything on the artist instead of doing they’re best to welcome us. That was bad and I’m a bad, bad man evidentally. They got on the phone to our agent and said that they didn’t like the post. Later that day, I took the facebook post down – maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did. Then, today, I hear that they canceled the event. They didn’t call me. I just heard. So, my preparation was for nothing. I think that anytime an artist is coming to your store (and they’re bringing their fans into your enviroment where you are trying to sell something), you should be especially appreciative. The Mom and Pop stores, now closed down forever, used to go out of their way to make us feel comfortable and wanted. Those days are gone forever…evidentally. Call the store if you can. Ask them why.

redhat.com | The first [open source] American

Back in 2006, Red Hat Magazine published an article on Ben Franklin from Amy Anseim which claims that Franklin was the first open source American. Franklin would’ve been right at home with the open source movement that we know today. Not only today’s open source proponents, but all of society owes a debt to Franklin for his devotion to the free exchange of knowledge and information.

Kids know him as the guy flying a kite in a lightning storm. Adults know him as the face on the hundred dollar bill. Historians know him as"The first American." His achievements and contributions to mankind, particularly to the fledgling United States of America, have shaped much of what we do on a daily basis, from the clauses of the Constitution to the maxims of Poor Richard’s Almanack.

But all of Ben Franklin’s ideas, actions, and contributions can be linked back to his own ideals. An appreciation of community. A love of truth. His belief in an inherent responsibility to his fellow man.

Franklin was truly ahead of his time. He wasn’t just the first American, he was the first open source American.

Freedom. Transparency. Collaboration. Accountability. Sound familiar? This was how he lived his life and impacted society.

via redhat.com | The first [open source] American.

Google Maps captures me capturing it

Who’s that weirdo in the bushes with the camera?


I saw the Google Maps car parked outside the Crabtree Blvd. Bank of America last week. It reminded me to check to see if Google Maps has been updated from the last trip the camera-equipped car drove through.

Remember last year when I spotted the Google Maps car as it drove through the neighborhood and I couldn’t wait to see the bald guy with the camera standing in the driveway? Well, here he is!

The Downside of Liberty

Interesting.

THIS spring I was on a panel at the Woodstock Writers Festival. An audience member asked a question: Why had the revolution dreamed up in the late 1960s mostly been won on the social and cultural fronts — women’s rights, gay rights, black president, ecology, sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll — but lost in the economic realm, with old-school free-market ideas gaining traction all the time? What has happened politically, economically, culturally and socially since the sea change of the late ’60s isn’t contradictory or incongruous. It’s all of a piece. For hippies and bohemians as for businesspeople and investors, extreme individualism has been triumphant. Selfishness won.

via The Downside of Liberty – NYTimes.com.

Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

As a techie, I could see Microsoft’s decline as it unfolded. Still surprising, since Microsoft seemed invincible for so long. I suppose every industry titan becomes lazy from success.

Vanity Fair always has great writing. I might actually buy the dead-tree edition just to read this.

Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishingly foolish management decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.

via Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant | Blogs | Vanity Fair.