Dear 17-year-old Doors discoverers,
Well, this was probably unavoidable. You are about to think some very dumb stuff about poetry, women, and dead Native Americans. This is a tradition, or affliction, that has been passed down to at least three generations of 17-year-old white boys and then foisted upon 15-year-old-white girls for just as many decades— girls your own age are way past this shit, stick with the sophomores. You are going to abuse the word “shaman” in ways that will violate international torture conventions. You’re going to think that something important and meaningful is happening to you, even though you haven’t left your room for three days. You are going to sit at the feet of the master of total self-regard, one James Douglass Morrison, the “Lizard King,” and think yourself the Prince of Salamanders and heir to a throne carved from your own bullshit.
Aphantasia: A life without mental images – BBC News
Interesting.
Close your eyes and imagine walking along a sandy beach and then gazing over the horizon as the Sun rises. How clear is the image that springs to mind?
Most people can readily conjure images inside their head – known as their mind’s eye.
But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualise mental images.Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind’s eye.
He knew he was different even in childhood. “My stepfather, when I couldn’t sleep, told me to count sheep, and he explained what he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn’t,” he says.
Alexander: Do those new chip-based credit and debit cards need protection? – StarTribune.com
I was chatting with the cashier supervisor at the local Large Mart, asking if Large Mart would be going to the new, chip-based credit cards.
“Yeah, we’re going to get those within the next few weeks,” he said.
I nodded. “Well, I’ve been the victim of credit card fraud so many times that I welcome the extra security.”
“The new cards also have security problems,” the supervisor answered. “With the chip cards, thieves can read your cards while they’re in your wallet.”
That was news to me. The chip on my card is definitely a contact card, and any RFID-based credit card would be wide open to the world and truly offer zero security. Fortunately, banks aren’t using RFID, but Near-Field Communication (NFC), and only in some chips (i.e., not in the U.S. at this time). NFC has a range of 2-4 inches, which is about 1/12th the range of an RFID tag. Also, an NFC-capable device does encryption, while an RFID tag would only stupidly transmit static numbers.
So, tl;dr: current chip cards in the U.S. are contact-only, and NFC chips won’t be readable outside of your wallet. Bring on the chipped-card revolution, I say!
Q: Do the new EMV chip credit cards (named after the developers, Europay, MasterCard and Visa) require a protective cover so that they can’t be scanned by nearby thieves, just as RFID (radio frequency identification) cards do? Do other radio frequency ID cards, such as hotel key cards, pose a risk of identity theft?
Jan Sartee,
San Rafael, Calif.A: There are two types of credit cards using EMV chip technology. One is read by a slot in a point-of-sale terminal; the other is read by holding the card near the sales terminal.
If your EMV card requires physical contact inside a reader, its transactions and account information can’t be scanned remotely by thieves. If it is a contactless card, there’s a chance it could be read by nearby spying equipment, although the credit card industry says that’s unlikely.
Source: Alexander: Do those new chip-based credit and debit cards need protection? – StarTribune.com
The Strange Saga of the MH370 Plane Part — NYMag
Speaking of MH-370, remember that Boeing 777 wing flapiron that washed ashore last month on Reunion Island? It turns out the ID plate on it is curiously missing, and the wing part appears to have been marinated somehow to artificially boost its barnacle growth.
This mystery gets stranger and stranger.
Tomorrow marks one month since a piece of a Boeing 777 washed up on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion, but French investigators are no closer to confirming that the part came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. In fact, leaks from within the investigation suggest that the part might not have come from the plane at all.
Malaysia Airlines MH-370
A few of my friends asked how we can so easily track mobile phones but a jumbo jet like Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 can disappear without a trace. First off, one of these is designed to transmit all the time, but aside from that difference it is a big ocean out there and it’s still possible to lose things in it.
I responded to my friends with this:
Radars don’t reach everywhere. Polar-orbiting satellites scan the globe but are not always around. Mobile phones have a hard enough time connecting to a tower when turned on in a plane at the terminal. Over the ocean? Forget it.
Boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park
Cruising Resurrection Bay
On the morning of the 13th (a Thursday), we hustled to get out the door to make the hours-long drive to Seward, where we would be taking a boat tour around the Kenai Fjords National Park. If we had to boil our whole vacation down to one activity, this would be it. This tour was a truly amazing experience!
We arrived a bit early at Kenai Fjords Tours in Seward to check in, knowing that the Alaska Railroad was soon to bring another load of tourists to town. We then had a few minutes to walk around the docks and get a quick peek at Seward.
The marina was alive with activity. Pleasure boats and commercial fishing boats occupied every slip. The smell of fresh halibut (which wore on me after a short while), filled the air. The strong morning sun lit up the brightly-painted boats and cast the clear sky in a dazzling blue. It was a postcard-perfect scene. The town of Seward was just as welcoming, with many shops and restaurants lining the main street. Pedestrians and cyclists wandered through town. Beautiful parks and community spaces provided inviting places to play. It seemed far more cheerful than Anchorage to me.
After a quick look around the dock, we joined a line of passengers waiting to board our boat. Kelly’s eyes rolled as one tour worker told a cheesy joke as he made a boarding announcement. We handed in our tickets and climbed aboard the modern, two-level tour boat. We found an unoccupied four-spot table on the top deck but soon left it for spots on the more exciting bow.
Continue reading
Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey
A friend forwarded this HuffPost story on cold fusion research and I was surprised to learn that a Raleigh-based company called Industrial Heat is said to have working technology.
Perhaps the most startling (and most controversial) report is by an Italian-American engineer-entrepreneur named Andrea Rossi. Rossi claims that he has developed a tabletop reactor that produces heat by an as-yet-not-fully-understood LENR process.Rossi has gone well beyond laboratory demonstration; he claims that he and the private firm Industrial Heat, LLC of Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, have actually installed a working system at an (undisclosed) commercial customer’s site.
According to Rossi and a handful of others who have observed the system in operation, it is producing 1 MWatt continuous net output power, in the form of heat, from a few grams of “fuel” in each of a set of modest-sized reactors in a network. The system has now been operating for approximately six months, as part of a one-year acceptance test. Rossi and IH LLC are in talks with Chinese firms for large-scale commercial manufacture.
Source: Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey
Back from Anchorage
Well, over 12 hours and 3,500 miles later we are back home from Anchorage, having walked out of RDU around 11 AM. It was an amazing, unforgettable trip filled with many stories I have yet to tell. The red eye on Delta was exhausting, however, and my head does not know what day, time, or place it’s in. I thought I would blog more tonight of our trip but catching up on lost sleep seems more prudent.
Tomorrow I may awaken to wonder if it was all just a dream.
Anchorage and crime
Knowing the number of tourists that must pass through here, I was hopeful that Anchorage’s downtown would be a welcoming place.
I was wrong. I never felt fully safe when we were there, always having my street-smarts kick in to move us along whenever danger seemed to show up. There were a some guys here and there who seemed to be sizing us up as we walked by, causing me to walk us a bit faster. Suddenly, carrying that gift shop bag through downtown didn’t seem so smart.
One evening we parked downtown and headed over to see the “Aurora” showing at the Anchorage Center for the Performing Arts. I overheard the usher there chatting with another tourist.
“Anchorage has a great downtown,” he said without much conviction. “Sure, it has it’s problems …,” he continued, never finishing his thought.
Continue reading
Independence Mine
Independence Mine from above
Independence Mine is outside of Palmer, only a 20 minute detour from our route home. The weather was clear and breezy as we drove up ever-winding roads towards the pass. The road narrowed as it reached the top of the pass and soon we were at 3,500 feet in the Independence Mine State Historical Park. A cluster of freshly-painted wood buildings stood near the parking lot as several other tourists milled around.
The mine opened in 1934 and was active for a short amount of time, from 1934 to 1950, but in that time unearthed gold worth over $17 million (in today’s dollars). Though the work was hard accommodations were actually fairly luxurious, with heat, electricity, hot water, excellent food, and semi-private rooms.
Continue reading