-
The situation in Gaza
Ah, a new year. A perfect time to start posting about things going "Boom" in the Middle East.
This time, though, the post isn't going to be here. The lovely and talented amysun and I have been sitting together over the past few days and discussing the situation in Gaza in great depth, and she's posted her summary of the situation, together with a good ( Read more... ) -
Hah!!
Thanks to a number of music-loving friends, and their friends as well, the mysterious music has been identified. It's Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D. The mysterious theme I remembered was the entry of the full orchestra at measure 127 of the first movement.
Victory!! -
How to identify music...
I really wish there were some systematic way to identify music that you can partially remember ( Read more... ) -
Proud to be an American
I've gone through an enormous emotional roller-coaster today. This morning, halfway through filling out my ballot, I was struck hard by a sense of civic pride, hard enough that I had to pause for a moment before continuing. I had just voted for a man named "Barack Hussein Obama," who is black and half-Kenyan, and I was allowed to vote for him, and ( Read more... ) -
Side thought
Where I work, I'm considered fairly senior. I've got a good deal of experience, and people generally respect my opinion ( Read more... ) -
Protocol buffer tips
(FYI: The following entry is going to be much more technical than most of what I post. Anyone who doesn't care about code or data serialization can pretty much hit "next" right now.)
A few days ago, Google open sourced one of its key data serialization formats, protocol buffers. There's already been some chat on how they're similar to or different ( Read more... ) -
Angry.
The day's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina are drawing to a close. In the large scheme of things, these probably aren't going to shift the course of history; but the things I've been hearing all day today have made me angry, much angrier - and much sadder - than anything I've seen in the United States in a while. (And God knows, there has ( Read more... ) -
Observation about physics
Based on the current best measurements of the large-scale structure of the universe, 73% of the total mass-energy is cosmological constant, a.k.a. dark energy; of the remainder, 90% is dark matter of various sorts. The remainder is 90% intergalactic gas, and the rest luminous matter ( Read more... ) -
Eka-Thorium
Now, this is neat: A superheavy element (Z=122, A=292, tentatively named "eka-Thorium" or "unbibium") which is relatively stable (t1/2 ≥ 108 yr) has been observed in nature, in natural Thorium samples. (It's called eka-Thorium because it would sit directly below Thorium on the periodic table; as a result, it's chemically very similar to Thorium, ( Read more... ) -
The Lord's our shepherd, says the psalm, but just in case...
On 6 Sep 2007, Israel bombed the hell out of a facility in Syria which, rumor has it, was nuclear in nature. Today the CIA gave a presentation to Congress showing the detailed evidence, which the Washington Post has kindly presented here ( Read more... )