Random Thought

The Xbox one supposedly can run Windows 8.1. Looks promising to crack it.

I'm kind of curious how the issue with France turns out. Of everyone in nato french intel has been not very friendly, kind of isolated themselves.

Northern China has gotten more smog lately because of the need for everyone to burn more fuel to keep warm as the days get colder.The Aircopalypse has been so bad that people living in the city of
Harbin have been told to keep their lights on as they drive in the daytime.Not only that but a bus that started out on it's 5:30 route got lost until 8:30!

Yeah, this winter time is bad for them. The cold air makes all the smoke stay near the ground. It can only get worse. One problem is by law the free/unregulated burning of coal and wood in those (northern) regions. It's a necessary law for these impoverished people in these undeveloped regions. They aren't han-chinese so there won't be any change any time.

Spider attack on a british school!!! The school had to close in order to fight the infestation. I couldn't avoid having various arachnia stories come up in my mind.

According to a newly published research our human faces are the result of trash DNA.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24462-your-face-may-have-been-sculpted-by-junk-dna.html
a new definition of "beautiful face" = ugly face but it's still an insult, though.

According to this new report at least 60 billion are invested into new and more powerful n-devices.
And it's not called replacement but refurbishment.

Japan is about to have new laws against whistle blowers. Heh, it's a joke. Obviously they just want to prevent more talk about their political/social incompetence, Tepco & Fukushima. Everybody knows they can't keep secrets, and I doubt that's gonna change. It's all thanks to their cultural & social hypocrites.
And yeah, Japan just got hit by a 7.3 earthquake. Tsunami warning is out. It's gonna hit in some minutes from now.

A starsystem with 7 planets has been found: KOI-351
The interesting thing is that their orbits as good as matches our inner planet's orbit except it has 3 planets instead of one Mercury. Looking at the findings something like having 4 habitable planets seems possible, just what our consumerism needs right now. I doubt we will get ideal groups of systems like in Battlestar Galactica or Firefly, but maybe half is possible. But such tight groups mean lots of cosmic dangers...

On other news.
Well, my sources say there are no longer any christian churches in Syria.
Turkey is having its 90 anniversary of founding (of democratic turkey). And for the 7th time in a row the PM Erdogan is calling in sick so he can't take part in celebrating democracy.
Since Turkey has practically one single party he's gonna be sick many more times annually. Even thought there's a 10% public support requirement some people still try to found a new opposing party...

Interestingly VHF radio in germany is also having its 90 anniversary. Even though I think a lot of things were going slow, the pace of science and technology was still fast overall.
We went from 19th century tech & infrastructure to the computer-age in just 60 years. Since then we haven't any real revolutionary physical or mathematical breakthrough except some confirmations & proofs, though. I still feel we have hit a wall of possibilities.
Since not everything has been covered there's still lots left to do in technological/inventions terms.

Three years on, the Mars-One project's participation application for round one has already ended. It seem things have calmed down and they have fleshed out their plans with more reasonable data.
And that only after a storm of criticism during this year. It was imho very layman for a long time. Oh well, next year will reveal more truths or reality to it.

There's a forum for this week's "Global Soil week"
http://globalsoilweek.org/
Well, europe is already buying eastern soils. Not to mention, we already are mining the oceans for soil used for concrete for years...

EA cancelled C&C free to play online. EA isn't exactly famed for listening to customers and since they said they would eventually continue it I suspect it's all due to some investment reason or perhaps Xbox One/PS4 schedule reasons.

The pope being "swirled" by a boy and spied on by a certain organization was fun to see.


http://phys.org/news/2013-10-quantum-reality-complex-previously-thought.html
For a while there have been indications that the holographic universe theory might be wrong. Well, it's complicated .... anyway
http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/10/new-type-of-quantum-excitation-behaves-like-a-solitary-particle/

It must be nice to celebrate xmas and halloween together. I certainly wouldn't be a backsie on it.
Apropos, Switzerland celebrates 30 years of local radio!  And they had to fight for having it. Duh.

Hmm, some research say 90% of plant mass grow within human controlled areas (e.g farms), 90% of mammal biomass are lifestock & pet, >75% of ice free land have been changed by humans. Therefore, they say nature does no longer exist. Well, nothing that can be changed. Due to global warming I'm more concerned about the bad things like parasites & diseases.

The new destroyer has been launched & christianed, and is captained by James Kirk (seriously). It seems the cost is at 3.45 billion USD now. Not quite finished yet, though. Frankly, the ship is already outdated at least in term of strategy which is a result of the Somalia & Irak experience. According to the analysis, at least 3 are needed for a coastal assault, hence, the minimum number of hulls ordered has come down to 3. Currently, we want to shoot from any place on the globe to any target on the globe. So any ship could serve that role as long as the missiles can be fit in.
Well, the new ones don't really fit into the old canisters but it shouldn't be a real problem. It only means the old ships can carry less after conversion.
I still find it funny how some yacht builders go back to the thumblehome design just because it has become a "fashion" for stealth.

The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) reveal that galaxies have growth rings. This adds to the long standing insight that old stars are at the rim while young ones are inside. Not like the crap Star Wars spreads.

Well I was reading at Townhall today and there was a column stating that Virginian Libertarians and
Libertarian leaning Republicans should basically torpedo the Libertarian candidate and vote for the
Republican now that there's only a few points between him and the Democrat.I found that a bit
       
I mean seriously if they wanted the Libertarians to vote for the GOP candidate they would have made more of an effort than this.Also contrary to what the column says there is no reason to think the Republican candidate would be more acceptable to Libertarian ideas than the Democrat would.

I saw McAuliffe's speech on Fox News yesterday.It was pretty good.But time will show if he really will
cross over the aisle and offer to work with the GOP as Governor of Virgina.I think though this is another example of the GOP having a rather weak candidate,note that McAuliffe mentioned all the
Republicans who crossed party lines to vote for him.
Here in Washington state I-522,the GMO branding initiative seems to have gone down to spectacular
defeat.Only the four counties of King,Whatcom,Jefferson and San Juan voted in favor all the other 35
counties voted no.
It should be pointed out that King county is the most liberal county in the entire state.
One of the major problems with it was the illogical usage of exemptions for example dog food would've been exempted but steak from the same source would have been labeled. 

Well, in all these matters it's rather boring in the lone star state. Other than the bayou news letters no interesting local stories to tell. The local indian newspapers is way more interesting... And Perry....is just lucky nothing more. Ahem.

http://exoplanet.eu/diagrams/
After the recent release of thousands of new exoplanetary data I was hoping to find some ideal exception(cheat) from the rule, a larger but lower density rocky planet ideal for colonization & easy space access. I'm just asking for a 5-10% difference from the rule but it doesn't seem that likely. The mass-radii ratio is logarithmic linear so there is still hope.

I think even if we do find a planet exactly like Earth the distances will make any sort of colonization effort totally worthless unless you plan on a long term generational type voyage.And by that time who knows what will have happened to the target planet.
As far as the whole alien contacting Earth my opinion is as follows either:
1.They don't exist at all.
2.They exist but in the form of unintelligent bacteria.
3.They exist and are intelligent but are primitive.
4.They exist and are intelligent and have advanced civilization but don't care about space exploration
5.They exist and are intelligent and have advanced civilization and are interested in space exploration but don't care about contacting us because we're either:
a.too violent or
b.too primitive.

How about 6th option =)
6. They exist, but space travel is plainly not possible (taking distances into account), so - no contacts whatsoever between different civilizations.

mitsuki lover wrote:And by that time who knows what will have happened to the target planet.

Well, time doesn't matter to nature. Whether it be thousands or millions of years a planet doesn't change, unless it's some natural planetary catastrophe. As far as life goes chances of a civilization spawning in the mean time are not that high either. And even if we will eradicate or enslave them. *Whahaha*
As for us, as long as we survive our resource troubles time doesn't matter either.
It may not happen in our lifetime but maybe some hundreds of years later.

Desgael wrote:How about 6th option =)
6. They exist, but space travel is plainly not possible (taking distances into account), so - no contacts whatsoever between different civilizations.

It all depends of solving the gravity problem, the last force to be united. Imho once solved it's a lot more likely we can use warp. *shrugs*

Any "biological" (=not silicon based) lifeform will likely develop similar trains of thoughs to us. Animal research have shown that they are not so different to us in the ways they think (as I have been saying all along). Animals have art and civilizations/culture, too. The difference is ethics and higher technology. Unless you consider monogamy and sharing as ethics then there is no substantial difference. And thinking we humans are better is just wishful thinking.
For any kind of civilization space will become a place to get there sooner or later, whether it be out of curiosity or because of resources. Only a civilization where there's a perfect society wouldn't have a need to reach for the stars but, frankly, that's unnatural.

I don't think anyone would be interested in a primitive civilization for their knowledge. I think the allure lies in ideas/art and (natural) inventions in general.
Taking an example from another discussion I had. Imagine a feline civilisation. Since they have claws they would never invent swords or axes.

Or
7. It's a matter of time until something comes by. (It could be just voyager 11.)
8. Some people could send a bomb or just mine places to prevent others from taking until they get there themselves...

Speaking of felines,I read in the paper today that a woman working at a Wild Cat conservatory in the
Portland,Oregon area was killed by a cougar.According to her fellow workers she was well expierenced and was comfortable working with the Big Cats.Except she seems to have forgotten Rule Number 1
when working with Wild Animals,especially the Big Cats:Don't Go Into The Closure By Yousrself,Always Have Back up Helpshe apparently went into the closure alone and without anyone else on the outside to back her up in case something like what happened occured.
It should be noted that cougars are some of the most dangerous of the Big Cats and Wild Animals
and have a habit of lurking where hikers and others in the woods can't see them until it's too late.

Yeah, and it's the 2nd or 3rd time this year it happened in a "zoo".
Cougars are related to tigers, leopards, panthers. All of which are man-eaters.
Lions are a different branch, the difference lies in the claws etc. as well as social structures. Still, Lions are also man-eaters...

New oldest big cat fossil found.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913291
I've always found it interesting that many prehistoric big cats lived on mountains.

Despite what the media says, the relief efforts for the Philippines have been doing great works in spite of the circumstances. It's a bit unfair to say its a failure on the international side. After all thanks to the new satellite support system these days and crowd effort a lot was achieved within 4 days.

AMD wants to introduce Mantle as the new API for graphics..putting the work onto the (game)program developers, hence, allowing custom solutions. IMHO (perhaps exaggerated) this will kill off kickstarters and whoever has to rely on available graphics libraries.

The SpaceBot Cup has ended with no one, no one making it through. -_-

And now for something totally different:

61 year old white supremacist Craig Cobb,who has planned to take over the North Dakotan village of
Leith,appeared on the NBC nationally syndicated Trisha Goddard Show to have his DNA ,which he
voluntarily submitted,be revealed at a show taping.
Much to the delight of both host and audience and to the chagrin of Cobb he came out with 86%
European and......................................................14% subsaharan African! 
Of course Cobb was not amused and swore that he would get up to three more DNA tests done.

 
But you gotta to hand it to him: he got guts to gamble.
So it means he grand parents were half bloods plus some. To be fair most people are mixed blood or mutants anyway...unless they are one of those some thousand people living in some jungle.

Tina Turner gave up her american passport for switzerland. Does she actually speak switzerdütsch(spelling?)?  

Now we got the urine powered artificial heart! Really, the urine & feces tech that appear these days are so out of the box. (not like Bear Grylls drinking elephant dung or so  )

 

Yes,that's why genealogy can be so interesting you never know what you might find.For example who'd have thunk it that Obama was related distantly to both Sarah Palin and John McCain!

I have ancestors who could speak Swiss German like natives of Switzerland,which they were.  

The most interesting about switzerland is that they used to be like a "mercenary kingdom" taking part in wars here and there while pillaging getting paid. It's only thanks to a certain saint that they stopped (except for the Vatican).


Anyway, Strontium Titanate becomes very conductive after receiving light.
http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v111/i18/e187403
And it last for days without much decay. Looks like we will have computer crystals after all.

It seems now we got more certain proof about the origins of domestic dogs
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24946944
They supposedly come from locis in europe before human settled there. They started to trail humans for their leftovers. The explanations seem plausible.

Which also explains why dogs have been treated better in Europe than say the Mid-East.
It's interesting when you read the Bible how dogs are viewed.Then again the dogs of the Mid-East in Bible times were mostly scroungy scavengers which is why calling someone a dog was a big slur.

Speaking of mercenaries according to the story some of my Swiss ancestors were brought into
Hesse,Germany not as military mercenaries but as forestry workers.They were supposed to have been guarenteed certain rights but the Hessian authorities reneged on everything.Eventually my ggg grandfather got disgusted with the situation and immigrated to Pennsylvania.

Well, people in the Mid-East seem to fear dogs, hence, there aren't anybody who keeps dogs. Africans don't have much to do with dogs either (not that there are a lot of dogs in africa). For asians dogs are watch dogs that chase away demons...but many are too poor to keep one. That's why the rich chinese are so eager to have "luxurious" dogs. The australian aborigines on one side do keep dogs but also eat them... So I guess Europe & wolves are kind of a unique relationship.

Hmm, Central African Republic is falling into ethnics & religious strife. Now that Holand has become very unpopular he'll probably send the legionnaires again.

These seems to be a week for anniversaries.
First the Gettysburg Address 150th was yesterday and then on Friday it'll be the 50th of the
JFK assassination.
C.S. Lewis also died on November 22, 1963.

Most of the snow here is gone but it is still cold.At night it has been down as far as 10 degrees F.

Australia's governor-general supports a republic (sometime in the future).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25065030
I doubt it's gonna happen anytime soon, though. Wonder if she gets recalled.

Boeing got new problems with icing on the new GE engines. The worst is it happens for the all important altitudes for long-distance flights it was meant to serve.

http://spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=44976
Anyway, back to Mars One. Maybe I remember it wrong but it appears to me they quietly changed their schedule. Originally, I think, people were meant to arrive in 2018, but now it says in 2023/4. Hmmm. I won't bother to check all the entries but someone else already noted a disparity between milestones in September. I haven't seen any technical progress (significant details) either. It looks less and less real to me.