Posts by Ian Dalziel
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also – I’m loving the Met Service’s city webcams for Auckland Wellington and Chchch – timelapse shots that ‘mousing over’ can animate – from dawn to realtime – you can watch the all the boats rise on the tide in the Viaduct harbour, and I’m sure one day I’ll spot a tagger finishing their work in the Chchch one…
The link is just to the right of the forecast (as you look at the screen)
The rain radar and satellite shots are neat too…
…and elsewhere there’s always http://www.abbeyroad.com/crossing for evening entertainment here in the antipodes.
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Random factor post...
Not sure where to put these links - science stories that may have huge impacts down the line...
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-state-two-dimensional-material.htmlAn international team of researchers have found evidence of a mysterious new state of matter, first predicted 40 years ago, in a real material. This state, known as a quantum spin liquid, causes electrons - thought to be indivisible building blocks of nature - to break into pieces.
Quantum spin liquids are mysterious states of matter which are thought to be hiding in certain magnetic materials, but had not been conclusively sighted in nature.
The observation of one of their most intriguing properties—electron splitting, or fractionalisation—in real materials is a breakthrough. The resulting Majorana fermions may be used as building blocks of quantum computers, which would be far faster than conventional computers and would be able to perform calculations that could not be done otherwise.A Technicolor scientist surrounded by the latest virtual reality technology inspects a vial containing a few droplets of water -- and one million copies of an old movie encoded into DNA.
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DNA is almost unimaginably small -- up to 90,000 molecules can fit into the width of one human hair -- so even such a large library is totally invisible to the human eye. All you can see is the water in the tube.
"This, we believe, is what the future of movie archiving will look like," Bolot said.
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The company's work builds on research by scientists at Harvard University, who in 2012 successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data -- around 700 terabytes -- in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a factor of one thousand.
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The contents are "read" by sequencing the DNA -- as is routinely done today in genetic fingerprinting -- and turning it back into computer code.
Converting movies into man-made DNA brings huge advantages, said Bolot, who points out that the archives of every Hollywood studio, currently taking up square kilometers of floor space, could fit into a Lego brick.
Another problem overcome by DNA storage is that the format for reading it doesn't become obsolete every decade or so, unlike celluloid, VHS, DVD and every other medium in the history of filmmaking. -
Take this
it’s Ok to make rules and laws that are wrong – because democracy.
and add
Is your political ideology in your head?
The differences between conservatives and liberals may be psychologically fundamental
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The research, led by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Mark Mills, revealed that negativity bias -- where greater weight in our cognitive processes is given to negative information over positive or neutral information -- is stronger in political conservatives and that the negativity bias transfers to how well they remember stimuli.
In other words, conservatives in the study were more likely to remember things that evoked negative emotions -- images of war, snakes, dead animals -- than their more liberal counterparts.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160331105728.htm
Could explain a lot...
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Speaker: Banning begging will be about…, in reply to Joe Wylie,
Anxiety, empathy, it’s a deep animal thing.
This may be tangential, but an interesting read and insight...
http://mosaicscience.com/story/australia-traditional-bush-healers-ngangkariTreating social and mental health issues is a cultural activity as much as a medical one. For tens of thousands of years, the ngangkari have played a significant role in their communities, and they still do today.
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Rubbing, massage and touch – pampuni – are all important in ngangkari practice, along with singing and dancing – inma – and a blowing technique that is a bit like soothing a child by blowing on a graze. But plants are a vital component. The desert fuchsia is also known as ‘medicine number one’ and, like many of the plants used by ngangkari, it contains active compounds with medicinal potential.
Plants from all over the world have provided treatments for mainstream medicine, not least Australia’s native eucalyptus tree, which has decongestant properties. In recent years, scientists have identified antibacterial compounds in the desert fuchsia, and the World Health Organization has reported on the antiviral potential of the Casuarina tree, native to Australia and other countries. An Aboriginal ‘pharmacopoeia’ documenting indigenous medicines, their active compounds and their traditional uses was published in 1988, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is currently working with indigenous people on a new atlas of medicinal plants to preserve more of this knowledge in print.
Medicinal activity and 60,000 years of practice are not enough for ngangkari treatments to be recognised and regulated as part of mainstream healthcare, however, and some campaigners feel this is a big problem for the health of indigenous people. -
Polity: A wilting rose, in reply to Steve Barnes,
I just think “Business Attire” is the wrong thing to wear in Parliament,
I thought it was all about business satire...
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This might have already been noted / posted:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/30/legal-highs-ban-uk-delayed-concerns-law-enforceable-psychoactive-definitionThe (British) government’s blanket ban on legal highs that was due to come into effect on 6 April has been postponed for at least a month, the Home Office has said.
The Psychoactive Substances Act, which has reached the statute book, has been delayed following claims that its current definition of a psychoactive substance is not enforceable by the police. -
Speaker: Banning begging will be about…, in reply to ,
It's a place that homeless people can drink cups of tea with art students.
Kind of like a cat cafe?
Those art students are awfully cuddly...
;- )Chchch used to have a similar set up called Floyds, which was struggling to get back on its feet and the earthquakes finished off - a pale remnant exists....
http://ngoupdater.org.nz/community-organisations/friends-of-floyds/?PHPSESSID=6917c688f0d38f622eaeca1eecc9d6abThere is a mental health foundation drop in centre in Phillipstown, and a youth drop in centre - but they're not quite the same set up.
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Polity: A wilting rose, in reply to Rob Stowell,
tired of 'rent a crowd' - you can own this one!
yearning wistfully for a bit of rabble-rousing
https://www.rebelpress.org.nz/publications/rabble-rousers-merry-pranksters
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Speaker: Are we seeing the end of MSM,…, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Clouseau wears Sherlock’s hat? AAAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHH
I hear your pain...
...any fool knows it's more of a Drop Brim Fedora -
...didn’t feel I could usefully respond to its requirement to score each drug
Can you get them all at the same place?
:- )
But seriously, without personal experience of each drug and its effects on you or others around you, where could you start to 'rate them' on 'harms' of any sort...I understand that some people who die may have traces of cannabis in their system, but it is duplicitous to suggest that was the main cause of the death.
There a case in the states where a college kid bought legal 'hash cookies' and ate more than the recommended amount and ended up jumping off a balcony?
see: http://www.thecannabist.co/2014/04/02/denver-coroner-man-fell-death-eating-marijuana-cookie/8519/
