I love Weird Al.
Archive of entries posted on 11th September 2020
Bear Stories Are Always Fun
… I clicked on the light and stared through the window onto my porch — into the eyes of an adult grizzly licking my barbecue grill three feet away. Startled, the bear dashed away as quickly as I stepped back, but that rush beat the devil out of any cup of coffee.
In my case, I’d been lax on cleaning or locking up attractants, any odors that can attract a hungry bear. A grizzly’s sense of smell is the stuff of legend. They are capable of locating a carcass under water, sniffing out crumbs dropped from your campsite lunch, and chances are, they even know what you had for breakfast as you hike down a trail. My biologist friend, Kate Kendall, a veteran bear researcher, told me that anecdotally, they’ve seen grizzlies sniff out a meal a half mile away.
After my late-night visit, I stopped composting and brought in the bird feeders. When I built a barn for my horses, the grain room was made to be secure from four-inch claws. If I’ve had unwelcome visitors since, R.D. and I must have slept through it.
Despite my changes, bears also don’t forget a good meal. In 1988, a massive grain spill just outside Glacier National Park brought in bears for miles to feed on the rank, fermenting grain. Even after a cleanup, officials, wanting to be good neighbors (and avoid conflict), closed a nearby campground and prohibited stopping on a passing highway for years. Bears remember a food source and can return as long as they live.
— Amy Grisak, Popular Mechanics, July 3, 2020
I was going to add a photo, but then realized that your own imagination would do a much better job of creating an image of a grizzly (which can run through heavy underbrush at up to 35 miles per hour).
And She Hasn’t Killed Herself
I’m Just Glad They Are In Our Country
Device Creates Negative Mass—and a Novel Way To Generate Lasers
January 10, 2018 / University of Rochester via Phys.org
Most objects react in predictable ways when force is applied to them—unless they have “negative mass.” And then they react exactly opposite from what you would expect.
Now University of Rochester researchers have succeeded in creating particles with negative mass in an atomically thin semiconductor, by causing it to interact with confined light in an optical microcavity.
This alone is “interesting and exciting from a physics perspective,” says Nick Vamivakas, an associate professor of quantum optics and quantum physics at Rochester’s Institute of Optics.
“But it also turns out the device we’ve created presents a way to generate laser light with an incrementally small amount of power.”
I don’t appreciate that wording, unless you define the increment.
The device, described in Nature Physics, consists of two mirrors that create an optical microcavity, which confines light at different colors of the spectrum depending on how the mirrors are spaced.
Researchers in Vamivakas’ lab, including co-lead authors Sajal Dhara (now with the Indian Institute of Technology) and Ph.D. student Chitraleema Chakraborty, embedded an atomically thin molybdenum diselenide semiconductor in the microcavity.
The semiconductor was placed in such a way that its interaction with the confined light resulted in small particles from the semiconductor—called excitons—combining with photons from the confined light to form polaritons.
“By causing an exciton to give up some of its identity to a photon to create a polariton, we end up with an object that has a negative mass associated with it,” Vamivakas explains. “That’s kind of a mind-bending thing to think about,
Yes, I think we can all agree on that.
because if you try to push or pull it, it will go in the opposite direction from what your intuition would tell you.”
Other research groups have been experimenting with similar devices, Vamivakas says, but this is the first device to produce particles with negative mass.
I’m thinking negative mass can help with the development of Land Speeders. Can they be on the market by Christmas?
No?
Then forget it.
Wheel and Mouse
Credit: Phys.org
Consider the freedom that is provided by the mouse, its wheel, and its click buttons.
Are they (and their blue-headed stepchild, the hotlink) the most far-reaching invention of the last 50 years?
Imagine how different your web experience would be if you had to type in commands, or use arrow keys for everything you wanted to do.
Oh, Yeah: Forgot About the Mayans
Tech Support Provides Worker With New Laptop After Old Monitor Becomes Unreadable Due to Sticky Notes
Rocky Balboa’s Reminder to Americans
“Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!
“Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!”
― Sylvester Stallone in Rocky Balboa
Link of the Day: Some People…
Straight Line of the Day: Bob B Has Noticed That Biden Is Now Quoting Shakespeare. For Example…
Straight Line of the Day: Bob B has noticed that Biden is now quoting Shakespeare. For example…
Welcome to IMAO: We Think We’ve Got the Dose of Chloroform Correct (?)
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9/11, 19 years on
We’re not doing a lot of 9/11 stuff today. Not that we don’t think it’s important, because it is. But when I say that we aren’t doing a lot of stuff, it’s because we’re leaving it for you. This post is intended to be a place for you to vent, to remember, to share what you want to share. Normally, that’s for the overnight open thread posts, but we’re adding this post for that special purpose, if you want to do that.