Links

Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.

150 SETI@home possibilities

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A few years back, I was part of the SETI@home project, which uses spare processor cycles on your computer to help look for possible signals from life elsewhere in our galaxy. Unfortunately, various reformats, computer changes, and my own fickle interests led me to stop contributing to the project a while back.

As it turns out, though, the project has produced a list of possible candidate signals, and three members of the team will be going to the Aricebo telescope in Puerto Rico later this month to investigate 150 possible signals! Very cool!

Of course, one has to wonder how much of a bill 150 intergalactic wrong numbers would be…

Tom Tomorrow

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I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Tom Tomorow really should be on your reading list. He should be on everyone’s reading list. I end up wanting to point people over to his site with nearly every post some days. So, failing either that, I’ll just point you to his site (again).

Happy Space Alien Day!

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Dad sent me a link to an amusing story today about how New Mexico Representative Dan Foley has proposed legislation to create Space Alien Day — to “enhance relationships among all the citizens of the cosmos, known and unknown.”

Amusing enough on its own, but the kicker for me was the final quote from Rep. Foley, which goes down in my book as one of my favorite political quotes ever…

If we can capitalize on something that did or did not happen in 1947 then it can help the entire state.

Oh, the number of times in my life — past, present, and future — when it’d be so nice to capitalize on something that did or did not happen!

tw@

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Following up (again) on the the text messaging as writing thread, the BBC has a page where they’re asking for user submissions of classic works in ‘abbreviated’ format.

Reading some of these produces an interesting dichotomy — I’m impressed by the creativity of some of these, while simultaneously cringing at what’s being done to such classic literature!

4scr + 7a ugo r 4fthrs brt 4th on this cn10nt a nu nAshn cnCvd in lbRT + ddc8d 2 th prop tht (evRE1) r crE8d =

aka: “Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Amusingly, though, in the comments to the post at Green Fairy where I found this (no permalink available, unfortunately — her post was on March 3^rd^ if you want to search for it), someone suggested the abbreviation ‘tw@‘.

I like that one.

ILNY, it's a gr8 plc.

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Following up on an issue from last September, a teacher in London is reported as having received an essay that they couldn’t read, because of the student’s use of text messaging acronyms.

The teenager’s essay which caused the problem began:

“My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :-O kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.”

In translation:

“My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York. It’s a great place.”

Stonehenge porn?

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Here’s a fun little story that dad pointed out, from the Discovery Channel — Female anatomy inspired Stonehenge?

The design of Stonehenge, the 4,800-year-old monument in southwestern England, was based on female sexual anatomy, according to a paper in the current Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

[Anthony Perks] noticed how the inner stone trilithons were arranged in a more elliptical, or egg-shaped, pattern than a true circle. Comparing the layout with the shape of female sexual organs showed surprising parallels.

Perks believes the labia majora could be represented by the outer stone circle and possibly the outer mound, with the inner circle serving as the labia minora, the altar stone as the clitoris and the empty geometric center outlined by bluestones representing the birth canal.

It came from Outer Faith

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Dad sent me this great little quiz from Beliefnet — It came from Outer Faith.

Though no one’s yet written a book on how to convert aliens, some religions do accept the idea of extraterrestrial intelligence. Find out how much you know about the intersection of faith and sci-fi.

I got seven out of ten when I took it, missing just questions five, seven, and eight. Not too bad, I think!

tail -f access_log

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A geek-fascinating look at traffic as a new weblog is discovered.

I’ve only ever run web sites on Apache or one of its ancestors, and this lineage of web servers has always written its statistics into a file named access_log. I think anyone who’s running a Web site, or who cares about the Web, ought to, on a regular basis, spend some time watching the access_log in real time.

Too often we get this image of the Web as a vast well-oiled machine, with glossy browser screens in front and masses of gleaming software in back. Watching the access_log is like a window into the side lobby of the legislature, or a tour of the fermentation vats at the brewery.

(Via Dave Winer)

Snowflake pictures

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A single snowflake

Gorgeous pictures of snowflakes at this site, along with more information than I ever thought there would be about the little buggers.

My parents have often teased me about how long it would take me to walk the three blocks to school when I was a kid, usually assuming that I had to examine every snowflake I saw to see if they were really all different. In normal Alaskan winters, of course, there are a lot of snowflakes. Even in only three blocks.

That said, though, I never got quite this into examining snow. Probably because the downside to examining snowflakes was being out in the cold, and at ten years old, I was a bit short of the capital it would take to build my own laboratory for experiments like this. Bummer!

(Via /.)