Geekery Alert!
Scientist and science fiction author, Arthur C Clarke, died Wednesday in Colombo, Sri Lanka. He was a truly amazing character. You can start by reading about Sir Clarke at Wikipedia, I promise that will prompt a further exploration.
I don't know if it's ironic, spooky, sad, or appropriate that, Dextre (that's Canadian...), the first space robot "came to life" the same day that Sir Arthur Clarke died.
The Large Hadron Collider which is being constructed across the borders of Switzerland and France is one big-ass project (known as a BAP around our house). You can follow the progress of the thousands of scientists. For a great article about it, including bunches of remarkable numbers, check out this recent piece in Scientific American. Here's just a nibble:
The nearly 100 million channels of data streaming from each of the two largest detectors would fill 100,000 CDs every second, enough to produce a stack to the moon in six months.
Hey, I warned you...
One Response to “Wednesday Open Thread”
Ah Mel! I just read a story in a business magazine where a guy was trying to find a way to make his customers feel more special so that they would, well, buy more stuff I guess. The consultant in the story told him to raise his prices so that he could then offer discounts to make customers feel special. The guy didn't really like that too much because he felt that his customers would see through it and get annoyed. So, the consultant says, OK, have them fill out a survey and give them the special price for submitting that.
Ugh.