Either one really.

It's a science joke.



The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known better as CERN, plans to begin testing their Large Hadron Collider beginning in August. The particle accelerator, which was built approximately 300 feet below ground and straddles the French/Swiss boarder, has been receiving a lot of attention lately as many researchers speculate that a particle accelerator of this size could produce a black hole that could engulf the earth.

For those who don't follow nuclear physics for fun like I do, a particle accelerator is a device that uses electrical fields to propel electrical-charged particles. Your grandparents old console television is essentially a particle accelerator, or better yet take your computer CRT monitor (not the flat panel kind but the big bulky one). If you've ever moved your computer monitor you've undoubtedly noticed that the back of the monitor is significantly heaver than the front. This is because the back of the monitor houses the "electron guns" which fire the charged particles to the front screen thus creating an image. I won't go into much detail but you pretty much get the point... I hope.

Anyway, people at CERN have built a gynormous particle accelerator that they hope will answer some of physics biggest questions including such hot topics as dark matter, electromagnetism, and other grand unified theories.

The reason why many physicists in the community are up in arms about the super collider is that many fear that the intense acceleration of particles will essentially tear time a new asshole, basically creating a black hole that could swallow everything around it. Researchers at CERN have assured speculators that no such event could happen. But still, the speculation is frightening if not the least bit concerning.

They're only a working demo right now, but creator Scott Hobbs is looking to partner with a manufacturer and get these things into the hands of working DJ's.



I'd like a pair.

I'd also like them to be free.

You may remember a post I did a while back about the Apple iPhone, and how I made fun of people for paying so much for one only to have the price drop a hundred dollars only a couple months later. Well I officialy joined the ranks of those who pay too much for shit. And although I do find the iPhone very convenient, I do kinda sorta mean it when I call it "shit". Let's just get the bad stuff out of the way shall we?

BAD:

It doesn't support flash so I can't watch any YouTube videos that are on Imageyenation or any other website. If I want to watch a video, I need to use the YouTube application that comes with the iPhone. You'd think that would be okay but there's a format/codec/licence issue that makes it so you can't watch all the videos you normally would. And the worst is that you can't watch porn on it either for the same reason. Most porno sites use Windows Media or Quicktime for the viewer (both of which the iPhone doesn't support).

It crashes every so often. When I take a picture of someone (to have their face pop up when they're calling me) my phone occasionally crashes. It's a minor problem that I may just say "fuck it!" to.

You always have to remember to plug it in to charge. The iPhone is a mini computer. It's not like a normal cell phone that can go days without needing a charge. It's a minor inconvenience.

No FTP support either. I can't find an FTP program to transfer files around without "hacking" the iPhone. I just spent 400 dollars on the thing. I'm not about to "hack" into it and potentially break the thing. So sadly I'm stuck with posting blogs from a computer still.

"EDGE" network is slow as molasses flowing uphill in January.

GOOD:

iCal rocks my socks off! I use Apple computers so having a device that actually syncs with my computer is so awesome. I can also sync my contacts as well.

Internet is real internet. Well aside from the whole douchebaggy flash bullshit, the browser on the iPhone is pretty dope. Some websites recognize the iPhone browser and load a site formatted for the device. I have mixed feelings about this. I feel like I'm getting cheated out of what everyone else is seeing.

Typing could go either way. At first it was weird to get used to. I was always pressing slightly off center so that I could see which letter I was "hitting" and see it light up. It caused me to misspell a couple things but fortunately, the iPhone comes with a very efficient spell-check that auto corrects your mistakes. But now I am about 93% accurate with my typing.

That's pretty much the gist of my beef and praise for the iPhone. Oh, it's sexy too. Real sexy.

A team of scientists claim to have found the secrets to the origins of our universe in a substance they eloquently call "space dust."

The Spitzer Space Telescope identified large quantities of freshly made space dust in a quasar about 8 billion light years from here.

Astronomers used the telescope to break down the wavelengths of light in the quasar to figure out what was in the space dust. They found signs of glass, sand, crystal, marble, rubies and sapphires, said Ciska Markwick-Kemper of the University of Manchester in England. She is the lead author of a study that will be published later this month in Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Dust is important in the cooling process to make stars, which are predominantly gas. The leftover dust tends to clump together to make planets, comets and asteroids, said astronomer Sarah Gallagher, a study co-author at the University of California Los Angeles.

"In the end, everything comes from space dust," Markwick-Kemper said. "It's putting all the pieces of the puzzle together to figure out where we came from."

The authors of 'The Bible' and the 'His Dark Materials' series, which both posited similar notions, could not be reached for comment.

Seriously. Get off of the cell phone!

Or I'm gonna get you off of it myself.



Oh yeah, you too doggy. Quit all that barking!

Or I'm shutting you up my damn self.

It seems like it was only two months ago that we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Apple iPhone. Ah... I remember the stories friends told of the lines of people waiting outside the posh Apple store to get their grubby consumer paws all over the technological marvel that had a price tag of 600 bucks. Two months later and two hundred dollars cheaper, the iPhone still sucks to type on and it's data connection is damn slow. But don't worry iPhone owners, Uncle Steve will fix everything. Won't he?

Sorry but a hundred dollars ain't gonna get you shit from an Apple store.

I'm not sure what this video is for or from, but it's really cool. It shows the battle between the red "Don't Walk" guys and the green "Walk" ones.



Points to you if you can tell me what the name of the background track is.

Spam! Spam! Spam!

Because you're tired of repeating the same story over and over again.

FINALLY!

And between "all seeing eye" street advertisements and Microsoft's Surface computer, it looks like the future is also going to be 'Minority Report'. Which is lucky for me and my store of chilled eyeballs.

Announced just a few weeks ago, and tentatively scheduled for a late 2007 commercial release,

A Surface computer is able to recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a dynamic surface that provides interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

What this means is the next time El Keter wants to photoshop pictures of his friends, he can do it like a real artist, paintbrush in hand.

The Surface computer seems like it'll be pretty cool, even if the UI looks like it was completely ripped off of Apple's design of the iPhone. But even still, Microsoft just can't win over the cool kids:

Scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Institute for Interfacial Catalysis have developed a new method of converting the sugars found in plants into a"building block" that could replace crude oil as the source for plastics, fuels and other chemicals.

"What we have done that no one else has been able to do is convert glucose directly in high yields to a primary building block for fuel and polyesters," said Z. Conrad Zhang, leader of the research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Institute for Interfacial Catalysis.

The "building block" is hydroxymethylfurfural, or HMF -- a chemical derived from carbohydrates such as glucose and fructose.

Glucose found in plant starch and cellulose is nature's most abundant sugar, said Zhang, "But getting a commercially viable yield of HMF from glucose has been very challenging.

And just think, with all of the plant waste our society already produces that could be used as a source for the productions of fuels and plastics we wouldn't even need to raise or harvest any specific crop to do this like we're currently doing with corn for Ethanol!

Forget the "all seeing eye" in the sky and that "all seeing eye" on the back of the dollar, an "all seeing eye" connected to street advertisements could be the wave of the future if one group of Canadian media technology eggheads gets it's way!

The eyebox2 from xuuk is a palm-size video camera surrounded by infrared light-emitting diodes. It can record eye contact with 15-degree accuracy at a distance of up to 33 feet. A simple glance from a passerby scores an impression, providing a tally that enables new Google-like measurement metrics that real-world advertisers could only dream about until recently.

"It will revolutionize the digital-signage industry because it solves the half-missing part of the business model," explains xuuk CEO Roel Vertegaal, who spent several years developing the gear in the Human Media Lab of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. "Right now they're pushing ads to clients, and they don't even know if those clients are seeing those ads."

Vertegaal's team has overcome some traditional barriers to eye-tracking gear by leveraging the red-eye effect that frustrates many photographers, in which light is reflected back to the camera from the subject's retina. The eyebox2 registers a view by deliberately inducing an instance of infrared-eye. When your eyeballs are aimed in its direction, they reflect light back to the camera, which detects the reflection and registers the fact that someone is looking at it.

People are already raising concerns over potential privacy violations, but I'm more concerned about all this infra-red light being shot into unsuspecting peoples' eyes. Do we really need more extra conscious "noise" and electro-magnetic radiation polluting our lives?