Links With Your Coffee - Saturday
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Pythagoras, imagine that. (tip to Nigel )
Quicktime Video .12 MB | Duration: '23
Quicktime 7 required
This file is available for download here.
Ctrl-Click and 'Download Linked File' (Mac)
or Rt-Click and 'Save Target As' (PC) the link above. - Australia’s Prime Minister Defeated After Four Terms This must be good, a friend of Dub's taking a drubbing.
Prime Minister John Howard of Australia suffered a comprehensive defeat today, with a coalition led by his Liberal Party losing its majority in parliament.
After four terms in office, he will be replaced by Kevin Rudd, a Labor Party leader and former diplomat. Mr. Rudd, 50, campaigned on a platform of new leadership looking for new answers for new challenges. He has said his first acts as prime minister will include pushing for the ratification of the Kyoto climate agreement and to negotiate the withdrawal of Australian combat troops from Iraq. - Animation: What they say, what we hear Animation
- Are we safer? - Los Angeles Times
We have more than six years of experience with the Bush administration's war on terror, and there has not been another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. But can the administration take credit for that? Below is a link to a report card on what the administration's counter-terrorism strategy has achieved, and what it has cost. The figures are drawn from official government sources, reliable news accounts, institutional reports and our own continuing review of data.
- Pharyngula: Stem cell breakthrough
A recent discovery in stem cell research is no minor event: researchers have figured out how to reprogram adult cells into a state that is nearly indistinguishable from that of embryonic, pluripotent stem cells. This is huge news that promises to accelerate the pace of research in the field.
The problem has always been that cells exist in distinct states. A skin cell, for instance, has one set of genes essential for its specific function activated, and other sets of genes turned off; an egg cell has different patterns of gene activation and inactivation. Just taking the DNA from a skin cell and inserting it into the egg cell isn't necessarily going to create a functional egg cell, because genes essential for egg cells may be switched off in the skin cell DNA, and we don't know how to specifically switch them on. The process of somatic cell nuclear transfer has been hit or miss for that reason, with very high failure rates—scientists are basically trying to make the right configuration of genes switch on by giving the nucleus a good hard kick, and hoping that something in the cells will reconfigure the pattern of gene activation into something appropriate. - Run Household With Battery? Apparently, it is not only possible to run a household with a battery, but to run 25,000 with a battery: a battery that uses uranium hydride.
Comments
Well... the L.A. Times piece is really well done... but there's that pesky "We haven't been attacked on US soil" claim again.
It's gotten so pervasive that even people who are pointing out the folly of the War on Terror are using it.
Saying that John Howard being defeated in this election is a good thing because he is "a friend of Dub" is silly to say, don't you think? He recognized that America is a necessary and strong ally, and the fact that George is running the country is a mere triviality.
Kevin Rudd said in his victory speech that he recognizes our good friends and allies the Americans, and looks forward to working with them in the future. That means that Kevin Rudd will be a friend of Georges too, until George ceases to be president next year.
After that Kevin Rudd will be friends with whatever president that Americans vote for.
John Howard's landslide defeat by Kevin Rudd (or, as the tabloids are calling it, a "Ruddslide") is comprehensive enough for it to be a repudiation of the Howard government's push to what in Australian terms is the far right. It is therefore a repudiation of George Bush's policies, particularly in Iraq. The significance for Bush is that he is now quite alone, isolated from anyone whom he might have thought was a close ally. As Gunther says, though, it doesn't mean that Australia is repudiating the US as a whole. Some of our best friends, etc... We just don't as a nation like those policies and those political extremes.
Your link to the NY Times article surely shows two things:
The lack of world awareness of even the 'better' quality US newspapers and
That the US doesn't need to work hard to annoy even its allies.
quote:
"Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia "
I don't think an Aussie would think of himself or herself as living in Asia.
Your link to the NY Times article surely shows two things:
The lack of world awareness of even the 'better' quality US newspapers and
That the US doesn't need to work hard to annoy even its allies.
quote:
"Australia’s prime minister, John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia "
I don't think an Aussie would think of himself or herself as living in Asia.
Great story on the uranium hydride battery!
Some surprising studies are coming to light regarding nuclear radiation and the health of people exposed to it.
Nuclear Exaggeration
There you go again: What's it with you secular mathematicists? It's only a small step from arithmetics to teenage pregnancies. Pythagoras? Only a theory, as far as I'm concerned.
We should teach the controversy.
The Pythagoras video is great. Where's it from? I'm wondering if there are other videos like it.
Aglee: I sent it in after seeing the Mobius video, knowing it would probably appeal. I found the Pythag video ages ago, along with other (less compelling videos) but I never found the site again. The file itself references Joe Corrigan, who is a mathematician at Caltech. Hope this helps....
Perhaps nobody else is mistaking that pythagoras video for a proof (as I did at first), but in fact it isn't. It's just a demonstration of content.
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