From 299,792,458 m/s to 0

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Fun with science — physicists have just managed to (very briefly) stop light in its tracks!

The research differs from work published in 2001 that was hailed at the time as having brought light to standstill. In that work, light pulses were technically “stored” briefly when individual particles of light, or photons, were taken up by atoms in a gas.

>

Harvard University researchers have now topped that feat by truly holding light and its energy in its tracks – if only for a few hundred-thousandths of a second. “We have succeeded in holding a light pulse still without taking all the energy away from it,” said Mikhail D. Lukin, a Harvard physicist.

(via Prairie)

A bus driver I can relate to

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Extreme traffic on James St from Broadway to I-5. At one point an ambulance was trying to get through. The driver was on his PA instructing blocking motorists:

“Please pull forward and to the right.”

[PAUSE]

“…and get off the phone.”

(found on co149)

Safari bug: Amazon Associates Build-A-Link

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Safari/Amazon bug screenshot

I’ve been noticing a bug in Safari over the past few days, and finally figured it was worth writing up and seeing if this is a “just me” thing or not.

I just recently started using the Amazon Associates Build-A-Link tool to create the product boxes for certain items that I talk about (like the one for Season 7 of Deep Space Nine in this morning’s post). Unfortunately, once I find the item I want to create the product box for, when Amazon sends me the page that is supposed to give me the appropriate HTML code to copy and paste into my entry, the textarea field is blank. In order to get the code, I’ve either been using Internet Explorer (shudder) or just viewing the source code for the Amazon page and digging through until I find the code snippet in question.

The code in question is found about 80% of the way down the source code. Here’s the relevant section of what Amazon sends, with what I should be seeing in that blank box on line six:

<tr>
  <td>
    <form name="snippet_form">
      <center>
        <textarea name="snippet" rows="7" cols="35">
          <iframe marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" width="120" height="240" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?o=1&l=as1&f=ifr&t=djwudicom-20&p=8&asins=B00008KA57&IS2=1&lt1=_blank"><MAP NAME="boxmap-p8"><AREA SHAPE="RECT" COORDS="14, 200, 103, 207" HREF="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm/privacy-policy.html?o=1" ><AREA COORDS="0,0,10000,10000" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/djwudicom-20" ></MAP><img src="http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/rcm/120x240.gif" width="120" height="240" border="0" usemap="#boxmap-p8" alt="Shop at Amazon.com"></iframe>
       </textarea>
        <br />
        <input type="image" style="margin: 3px;" src=http://g-images.amazon.com/images/G/01/associates/build-links/highlight_html.gif name="highlight" onClick="javascript:this.form.snippet.focus();this.form.snippet.select(); return false;"/>
        <p style="margin: 5px;"><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2">Paste all the HTML into your Web site's HTML.<br /> Note: your tracking ID, <strong>djwudicom-20</strong>, is already embedded in the HTML.</font></p>
      </center>
    </form>
  </td>
</tr>

My immediate guess is that because the code ends up looking as if it’s requesting an iframe inside a textarea, Safari is just discarding what it sees as “bad code”. Unfortunately, as placing code inside a textarea is a fairly common way to avoid issues with long text strings that muck up a page’s layout (such as, well, this very post), that behavior effectively breaks the Amazon tool.

I’ve submitted a bug through Safari’s bug reporting feature, but I figured sending a TrackBack ping to Dave of Surfin’ Safari couldn’t hurt, either. ;)

3-Way Capitalism?

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Stop Capitalism

Mom and Dad just got back to Anchorage after a trip to Florida and Indiana to visit Mom’s parents and Dad’s family, respectively, and Dad just posted his pictures with commentary. The picture of the stop sign made me laugh, and for the same reason that it amused Dad — yet another indication of just how alike we can be at times.

A picture of Dad’s brother Doug, who I haven’t seen in about three years, also caught my eye when I noticed just how much he and Dad resembled each other — something that I’ve also been noticing about my brother and I more and more as we age. Apparently the Hanscom genes run strong in our family!

It is sad to hear that, as tends to happen over the years, age is starting to catch up with some of our family. Mom’s parents will soon be moving into an assisted living facility, as Grandma is essentially blind, and Grandpa has, quite unfortunately, started to find his mental faculties declining. On Dad’s side of the family, “Uncle” Bud (my Dad’s uncle, my great-uncle) is battling liver cancer, and there are fears that the treatment may be as difficult to get through as the disease itself. However, all three of them are still getting along, and as no-one on either side of the family could deny being described as “strong willed”, I expect all three of them will continue on as best they can for as long as they can.

My cousins appear to be doing quite well, too. Eric has just graduated high school, and both Hannah and Kayt (“Katie”) are as gorgeous as ever (and I do mean gorgeous — Kayt is becoming one heck of a knockout, and she’s only thirteen…the boys don’t stand a chance).

All in all, it looks like a good trip, and while I’m not always in touch with my extended family very often, it’s always good to be able to catch up vicariously through Mom and Dad.

The Dominion War keeps distracting me…

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Just a quick note on the relative lack of posts (especially any of any real substance) lately — having never seen Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before, I’ve finally made it into their final season on DVD.

The war is at its peak now that the Breen have joined forces with the Dominion, the Founders appear to be dying, Gul Dukat (disguised as a Bajoran) is manipulating Kai Wynn’s lust for power on Bajor to try to release the Pah Wraiths, and we just lost the Defiant in a major battle. Things are looking really grim, and I’m watching as many episodes as I can each night in order to find out how it all wraps up without staying up too late and not being able to concentrate on work the next day.

So for the moment, I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with my Trek-loving geek self, and settle for a few “this-is-nifty-go-here” posts each morning until I wrap things up with Sisko and crew.

Gore endorses Dean

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The news actually “broke” yesterday, with a bunch of “this is about to happen” articles, but now it’s official: Al Gore has endorsed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign.

Al Gore endorsed Howard Dean’s bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination on Tuesday, substantially deepening Dean’s fast-developing drive for dominance in the nine-candidate field of would-be challengers to President Bush.

“I’m very proud and honored to endorse Howard Dean to be the next president of the United States of America,” Gore said.

[…]

“In a field of great candidates, one candidate clearly now stands out and so I’m asking all of you to join in this grassroots movement to elect Howard Dean president of the United States,” Gore said.

[…]

“He was the only major candidate who made the correct judgment about the Iraq war,” Gore said. “And he had the insight and the courage to say and do the right thing. And that’s important because those judgments — that basic common sense — is what you want in a president.”

“Whether it is inspiring enthusiasm at the grassroots, and promising to remake the Democratic Party as a force for justice and progress and good in America, whether it is a domestic agenda that gets our nation back on track, or whether it is protecting us against terrorists and strengthening our nation in the world, I have come to the conclusion that one candidate clearly now stands out,” Gore said.

Excellent news, I’d say — nice to get an endorsement from the candidate who was actually elected President of the United States back in 2000! ;)

Stradivarius' secret

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While I’ve never had the opportunity to hear one in person, nearly anyone involved in the world of music is aware of the near-legendary quality of the instruments created by Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari. It appears that scientists may have narrowed down one intriguing factor in what makes a Stradivarius sound the way it does — it’s all in the wood.

…a tree-ring dating expert at the University of Tennessee and a climatologist at Columbia University offer a new theory — the wood developed special acoustic properties as it was growing because of an extended period of long winters and cool summers.

[…]

Grissino-Mayer at Tennessee and Dr. Lloyd Burckle at Columbia suggest a “Little Ice Age” that gripped Europe from the mid-1400s until the mid-1800s slowed tree growth and yielded uncommonly dense Alpine spruce for Antonio Stradivari and other famous 17th century Italian violinmakers.

[…]

“I think it is very, very interesting, and it seems to me a valid observation,” said Helen Hayes, president of the New York-based Violin Society of America, which hired Grissino-Mayer to examine “The Messiah.”

“But on the other hand, nobody in this field … would ever say that if you put the best wood in the world in the hands of a mediocre maker that you would get a good instrument,” she said. “So it is never a complete explanation. Nor is the varnish nor any of the other things they have talked about. I would dare say there is no one piece of the puzzle.”

(via Marginal Revolution)

LotR Research Project

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A team of researchers at Lord of the Rings Research is going to be looking for our impressions of Peter Jackson’s films, with the questionnaire going live the day that Return of the King opens. Could be interesting…

A unique opportunity for you to record your thoughts on the final part of The Lord of the Rings. From the day the film is released, you will have the opportunity to take part in the biggest ever international research project, to find out what audiences in all countries thought of The Return of the King. What did you enjoy about it? Did anything disappoint or annoy you? Was it important to you?

(via hegemony rules)

Get a cheap PC from AOL

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Okay — I’m no great fan of either AOL or Windows-based PCs, but I have to admit that if you’re looking for a cheap computer and are willing to settle for Windows XP Home and use AOL for your ‘net connection, this isn’t a bad deal (though not quite as good as they lead you to believe on first blush).

For \$299 plus a one-year AOL subscription at \$23.90/month (for a total cost of \$585.80), you get:

  • Desktop mini-tower PC with:
    • 1.7Ghz Intel Celeron Processor
    • 256Mb DDR RAM
    • 56k modem
    • 40Gb hard drive
    • 52x CD-ROM
    • 10/100Mb Ethernet
    • Windows XP Home
  • 17\” CRT monitor
  • Lexmark Z605 Printer

Now, admittedly, if you are willing to settle for Windows XP and AOL, you have my pity. But I do realize that in the real world, sometimes low cost and immediate availability can take precedence over actual ease of use, lack of viruses, stable operating systems, and general peace of mind, so I figured I’d pass this along. ;)

(via Things that…)

MiddleEarth mania, week one: The Fellowship of the Ring

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Saturday Prairie and I started our three-week string of Lord of the Rings movie watching with the Cinerama‘s showing of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition.

We started by wandering down to Westlake Center to get lunch at the Indian shop in the food court, then spent some time window shopping and trying to avoid the holiday shopping crowds. We wandered up to the Cinerama to see if there was a line a little over an hour before the show, and (no big surprise, really) one was already forming, so we hopped in and spent the next hour or so chatting and watching people line up. Thankfully it was a sunny day without too much wind — I doubt I can expect that for the next two weekends, but the wait wasn’t all that bad this weekend, and we ended up fairly close to the front of the line. After about an hour, we made it in, found great seats (dead center, about six rows back), and waited for the movie to start.

One of the things I really appreciated about this was that they didn’t waste any time. The Cinerama is already a nicer experience than many other theaters, in that they don’t have the obnoxious advertising slides projected on the screen before the show. Not only was that the case this time, but when the movie started, it started right in — no “pre-show entertainment” (commercials), not even any trailers — just a short AMC Theaters splash reel, and then we went right into the movie.

The film itself was, of course, excellent. I hadn’t watched it in about a year, since Prairie and I watched it on DVD just before going out to see The Two Towers in the theatre. Just being able to see this version of the film in the theater is such a treat. The entire audience was great, too. One of the things I noticed and liked a lot was how many families showed up for this, some with kids who couldn’t have been more than 8 or 9, and how involved they all were. Well-behaved, no fussing or whining (pretty impressive for a 3+ hour event), and even when things on screen were scary (the cave troll and the Balrog, for instance), they were obviously fun-scared, not nightmare-scared.

I do have to admit, though — while I was originally a little disappointed that I couldn’t get tickets for the full LotR marathon, after sitting in the theater through one film, I think I’m glad. I’m not sure my butt could handle 9-10 hours in a theater seat!