Archive for the ‘Reading and News’ Category.
A few posts back, I was talking about beekeeping. Shortly afterwards, I saw a couple articles about a Philips urban beehive. Click through one of those links for images.
I kind of wonder about cleaning the thing, but bees are pretty obsessive about hygiene, so maybe there is no issue. Let me know how it goes.
This beehive is part of the company’s Microbial Home design project.
It is now possible to check out e-books from some libraries on the Kindle (see Amazon’s Kindle Gets a Library Card). This is not available at all libraries; you can see if your library has this service here (click on “Library Search”).
The King County Library System offers e-book check out for the Kindle.
I enjoyed reading this article: Beekeeping as a Business. It is short and describes a little on how to get started in beekeeping (or rather how to learn more about getting started), about how the hobby can easily turn into a business on the side after a while, and some of the products that come from beehives. Also, I learned that every state has a bee inspector.
So am I about to set up a hive or two of my own? I don’t think the HOA in the condo complex where we rent would be happy with me housing hundreds of bees thirty feet from the community pool. Maybe later. Still, attending “beekeeping school” might be interesting to learn something new.
Netflix announced a split of the streaming and by-mail movie subscriptions last week. The announcement led to an uproar of dissatisfaction with the move, and I saw many comments accusing Netflix of greed.
My opinion is that Netflix certainly mishandled the announcement since it gave no explanation for the changes, but many seem to forget that Netflix is dependent on publishers to provide it with streaming content, and these publishers motive, means, and opportunity to negotiate much higher rates when contracts expire (as long as they can see that Netflix has the profit to support the hike).
That view is confirmed in “Netflix’s vanished Sony films are an ominous sign” by analyst Michael Pachter, who estimates that the cost of Netflix’s streaming contracts will increase from $180 in 2010 to almost $2 billion in 2012. The increase in streaming contract costs must play some role in the plan changes.
I also expect that Netflix wants to start weaning customers off of DVDs since the cost of that service is much higher for Netflix than streaming — at least until content providers raise costs beyond some threshold.
This is a report on the funniest internet comment I have seen today.
In the comment section of an article about an indecorous argument between two U.S. Representatives there was a post by an apparent future opponent of one of the elected officials (most ellipses are mine):
Help me defeat …, come to my town hall rally this Saturday July 23rd from 1pm to 4pm at … located at … We need to bring true … values back to congress and in district 20.http://…
Later in the thread was this hilarious response:
Hahaha…campaigning on a newspaper message board? Was Craigslist down or something? You should put up some “guitar lesson” fliers up at the local mall to see if you can attract some more support. Maybe you can sneak in frame behind the local “on location” weather guy with a poster or something. Hahaha…I’m an indie from CO and have no dog in this race, but this style of politicking is pretty rich! Good luck.
I just read Meteorite hunter: My two months in an Omani jail. It is an interesting interview about a meteor-hunting trip in Oman that ended in a prison sentence for Michael Farmer. His comment on risk jumped out at me.
Do you regret your last trip there?
No. We have had adventures there that money can’t buy. Those of you who have never taken a risk cannot understand that those of us who gather these stones that fill museums and collections around the world knowingly risk life and limb. Those who are unwilling to take a risk usually gain little.
I just started looking at distributed data processing platforms. There is, of course, the Apache Hadoop project, but I have also come across HPCC Systems, a system used by LexusNexus Risk Solutions, and Disco, a system developed by Nokia Research Center.
There are thousands of underground coal fires around the world and more than one hundred in the United States (see Deep Underground, Miles of Hidden Wildfires Rage). Most of these fires start due to mining activities, but some fires started are ignited naturally. They are difficult to extinguish, and can burn for years, decades, or longer. Amazingly, there is naturally-occurring coal fire in Australia that is believed to have burning for 6000 years so far (see Burning Mountain)*. According to the article linked above, some scientists estimate that three percent of the annual coal emissions are caused by these fires, but they admit there is a lot of room for error in their estimates.
A new Chinese supercomputer — Tianhe-1A — has achieved 2.5 petaflops on the LINPACK benchmark. Not bad! Jaguar was at 1.75 petaflops in June’s Top500 list. More information here.
One interesting point, according to the article above, is that the machine has a Chinese-developed network that operates at twice the speed of Infiniband.
I recall when the Earth Simulator came out and perceived a sense of surprise and urgency from certain groups due to the top machine not being in the United States. In this case, it is less of a surprise, but it would be interesting to see how people respond.
I clearly recall being told in elementary school that the skin colors of dinosaurs are unknown because the necessary parts do not survive the fossilization process. I think that bothered me at first. I got over it eventually and had no trouble accepting that dinosaurs probably were similar in color to some selection of extant reptiles. Still that’s not as nice as knowing for sure.
Let’s put aside dinosaur skin color for now. Scientists have discovered pigments in the protofeathers of some dinosaur fossils. The new observations are of melanin-containing organelles called melanosomes, which exist in the feathers of birds today.
The two most common types of melanin found in modern birds are eumelanin, associated with black and grey feathers, and phaeomelanin, found in reddish brown to yellow feathers.
Both of these types melanin were seen in the fossils being studied.
National Geographic: Dinosaur True Colors Revealed for First Time.
