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Six Degrees of H. Jon Benjamin

What do Dr. Katz, Home Movies, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Venture Bros., Parks and Recreation, Archer, and Bob’s Burgers have in common? Well you read the title of the article, so you know already. It’s voice actor H. Jon Benjamin!

(c)AP

#H Jon Benjamin #TV #voice acting #entertainment #six degrees

Copywrong-Again! Games Workshop Tries It On!

Who knew we could get two of these in a week? Not me. Apparently, copyright isn't just used to steal, it's used to bully. Apparently, someone's book was taken off of Amazon after Games Workshop claimed copyright of the phrase "space marine" belonged to them. WTF?

#bullshit #copywrong #copyright #space marine #GW #Games Workshop

Copywrong! School Board Tries Stealing by Copyright

Copywrong is my new bon mot this morning. You use it when an organization (or individual) tries to claim copyright over something that clearly isn't theirs. For random example, Prince George's Board of Education is considering a proposal that would claim ownership of "work created by staff and students for school". WTF?

#copywrong #stealing #Prince George's #bullshit #theft #copyright

Are More Characters Better? Examining A Song of Ice and Fire

Last year, I read the entirety of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series so far, and boy did it have a lot of characters. No spoilers ahead (unless you consider the names or number of types of characters spoilers, in which case, please do not continue reading).

#George R.R. Martin #A Song of Ice and Fire #Game of Thrones #writing #Song of Ice and Fire

Geek Podcast of the Week: Drunks & Dragons

For the second installment of this feature, I went with something fun, geeky and grown up. The Drunks & Dragons (DnDpodcast on Twitter) podcast is regularly all three!

#4th ed #Geek Podcast of the Week #dungeons and dragons #podcast #DnD

Seeing the Past at High Speed

I doubt there are many people left who are entirely unfamiliar with the infamous superluminal travel of the Star Wars universe- punching the accelerator of a ship with purpose while the stars streak into oblivion at the edges of the camera field.

A group of students published a paper controverting that iconic image in the University of Leicester's annual Journal of Physics Special Topics. Instead, our intrepid space travelers would see a disc of bright light centered ahead of their spaceship. Basic relativity makes the lack of streaking stars unsurprising- as the ship's velocity increases, incoming photons from stars and other objects will be doppler shifted into ever-higher frequencies and pass out of human visual range altogether (no comment on whether or not Wookies can see x-rays).

So where does the disc of light come from? At these speeds, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation will be shifted into the visible spectrum, enabling people to view it without instrumentation.

CMB radiation is one of the truly ancient hallmarks of our universe. When the universe was younger, denser, and hotter, It didn't look much like home. Instead of a visually dark, transparent space, it was filled with a white-hot plasma fog. It was literally too hot for atoms to form. As the universe expanded, it cooled, and once protons and electrons could form stable relationships, this thermal radiation could no longer be absorbed. The photons carrying this radiation were in a sense abandoned, and they've been traveling through every corner of the universe ever sense, getting longer, and colder, less energetic, until they passed well below what human eyes could ever hope to see.

It wasn't until 1964 that astronomers confirmed the presence of the CMB radiation. This radiation is remarkably uniform in all directions with relatively little variation. It's the last fading fire from the birth of our entire reality, one of the few relics left from those early, early days, one of the only clues to tell us from whence we came.

I can't say I ever envied Han, Luke, or Leia their star-streaked skies. But there may be just a little jealousy in my heart for these hypothetical future travelers, able to see one of the most elusive elements of the past with their very own eyes.

#physics #hyperspace #speculation #CMB radiation #astronomy

Why Do Women Love Daryl Dixon?

With AMC's television adaptation of The Walking Dead on hiatus, I have plenty of time to reflect on the series thus far. I ask myself this question a lot recently. Why is just about every woman on the internet in love with Daryl Dixon?

Maybe they're in love with the actor. Let's deal with the obvious, his good looks. If you remove the redneck and the grime and just look at the actor Norman Reedus, he cleans up pretty well in my opinion.

From Adam Fedderly

#Daryl Dixon #Norman Reedus #Television #The Walking Dead #AMC

Nerdy Knits: Doctor Who

Maybe you knit. Maybe you watch Doctor Who. Maybe you do both. If you do, you might be in heaven because I have gathered for your enjoyment a handful of free Doctor Who knitting patterns.

Please note: Some of these are only available through Ravelry. If you are a knitter or crocheter, you should sign up (it's free and they won't e-mail you) and start enjoying it, it's great!

1. Doctor Who Fair Isle by Amy Shilling (great for anything-hats, scarves, etc)

(c)Amy Schilling

2. Tardis Socks by Gina Waters (I know it should be TARDIS, I didn't name it)

(c)Gina Waters

3. Doctor Who Scarves by Tara Carstensen (not a singular pattern-this is a treasure trove for all the various scarves)

(c)USA Today

4. Doctor, it's the Daleks! by 4mpersand (exterminate the coldness of your hands!)

(c)4mpersand

5. Mummy's Little Dalek Jumper by Allison Bitter (adorable)

(c) Allison Bitter

6. Bigger on the Inside by Kate Atherly (for appearing grown up)

(c)Kate Atherly

Until next time!

~Boudieka

#Doctor Who #knitting #TARDIS #dalek #doctor scarf #fair isle

Why You Need a Little "Salt"

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky is one of the strangest and most endearing non-fiction books I've ever read. It is at once one part quixotic obsession, one part history class, and a riveting lesson in how far people will go to get the things that they need.

Today we think of salt as a very common substance- cheap and ordinary, and indeed, at least in the US we often reflect that we have altogether too much of it. For most of human history, this has been far from the truth. Abundant sources of underground salt and the means to mass produce crystals of uniform size, resulting in the tiny pure white grains we recognize from big blue cans in our pantries to tiny tubular packets at restaurants, are a recent development. For much of the past, salt was a necessary yet precious commodity that inspired all manner of inventions in both the scientific and economic spheres to procure- and in turn spawned inventions and industries of its own.

Kurlansky takes us on a strange journey to the ancient pipelines of historical China, where the deepest wells of the early world were crafted specifically to access natural gas deposits used to heat the huge boiling pans that were a necessary part of producing salt from underground reserves of brine. We travel to Africa, where we discover an entire city made of salt blocks and trading hubs that lived and died with salt commerce. He explains how the need for salt-preserved food held the economy of medieval Europe in a vise grip, how the salt industry collapsed the very ground beneath industrial-age British cities, and how the need for this "common" seasoning played a critical role in the American civil war and contributed to the discovery of oil.

It is a fascinating and factual narrative that creates a compelling tale about a very ordinary substance. Kurlansky's strength as a story teller shines through on every page as he leads the reader from one topic to the next, relating anecdotes ranging from humorous to dramatic to tragic without ever abandoning his primary subject. The history of salt, as it turns out, is fundamentally a very human history.

Lili's Rating: 5 stars

#book review #salt #history #Mark Kurlansky #nonfiction #great read

Geek Podcast of the Week: Quit It!

If you don't listen to podcasts, there is a chance you haven't heard of Brian Thompson of AmateurScientist.org. If you like laughing, you have been missing out. Amateur Scientist produces a handful of excellent podcasts. I'm kind of a nerd comedy junkie, so my favorite is Quit It!

#Brian Thompson #Geek Podcast of the Week #Quit It #comedy #interview #podcast

The Lives and Times of Very Ancient Stars

There’s recently been a lot of hullabaloo about what may be the oldest star ever discovered. Official name HD 140283, this second-generation star is thought to be at least 13.2 billion years old. (For comparison, the universe is presently thought to be ~13.8 billion years old.) “Second generation” means exactly that- the first stars following the Big Bang coalesced and died, most of them in supernovae due to their extraordinary size, and second generation stars formed from their remains. Though the article recently published in Nature magazine did not specify stellar mass, this ancient star must be very small to have husbanded its nuclear fuel for so very long.

Many articles have been published on this topic since the discovery was announced January 10. However, I see many of the same scientific questions arising in the commentary of these articles. I’d like to take some time to address the most common of these as they raise basic questions of stellar mechanics and evolution that are required for understanding many topics in astronomy.

The article reports HD 140283 contains traces of heavier elements that identify it as a second generation star. Shouldn’t the abundance be higher after all those years of fusion?

Stellar fusion is a much more complicated process than it’s made out to be. The key point for our very old star is that it is likely to still be on the main sequence (stars still fusing hydrogen in to helium). I was unable to find sources confirming its stage of evolution, but given that it must be a red dwarf (a class of very low-mass stars) this seems probable. Not enough time has passed for the star to exhaust its hydrogen fuel, as the lower the mass the slower the star burns. The star has simply not advanced far enough to begin to fuse heavier elements. It’s also important to note that in astronomy, “heavy elements” can refer to anything heavier than hydrogen and helium, since those elements dominate the universe and are primordial, having been created in quantity during the cooling of the early universe.

Some heavy elements are only created via special processes rather than fusion reactions. All elements heavier iron were first created by supernovae. (Once they existed, it became possible to generate elements via something called the s-process, using the heavy elements as seeds, but that’s another topic.) We know HD 140283 must be a second-generation star because it contains elements that simply did not exist in the universe when the first generation of stars formed, and it has them in the right abundance for the second generation. The universe is becoming increasingly enriched in heavy elements as time goes on.

The distance to HD 140283 is estimated at 190 light years, relatively close to the Sun in astronomical terms. How is it possible the oldest star is within striking distance, or that two stars of such different age could exist in close proximity?

First of all, nobody is claiming HD 140283 is the “oldest” star, though I’ve seen this assumption made repeatedly. It’s simply the oldest we’ve detected to date (probably).

The Sun’s age is estimated at only 4.6 billion years. It coalesced well after galaxies were firmly established in our universe. HD 140283, however, first began to shine while galaxies were still forming. It’s “allegiance”, as it were, may not be as solid as our sun’s. Rather than forming within the Milky Way, it may have simply found itself in the large gravitational hole that became our galaxy. Or it could have been one of its very first stars.

Stars tend to form in “nurseries” known as giant molecular clouds, enormous nebulae of gas and dust, often staying together as a loosely bound group after formation. These groups are known as open clusters and can contain up to a few thousand stars that possess similar age and chemical composition. However, open clusters are easily disrupted by close encounters with other gravitational bodies, and over the course of 13 billion years, it’s not surprising that some of those early stars may be wandering alone. Additionally, some stars are interlopers in our galaxy, having been ejected from satellite galaxies, globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way, or even more exotic locales. Information about the orbit and velocity of HD 140283 could tell us much about its possible origins.

Finding this ancient star in our backyard isn’t so much of a stretch as a happy coincidence, and not as statistically unlikely as it first sounds.

#astronomy #oldest star #stellar evolution #science #HD 140283

Jocks CAN Be Like Nerds: The Non-Existent Girlfriend Hoax

If you're any stripe of geek/nerd, you have probably heard at least about a fake girlfriend. Not the kind that can't tell an Atari controller from a Nintendo controller-that BS has been addressed elsewhere. I mean the kind that simply doesn't exist. Well, someone exists behind those online conversations, phone calls, texts, and e-mails. But it's a guy. And when the victim finds out, the fallout is terrible.

From BlackSportsOnline

#Te'o #fake girlfriend #nerd #geek #hoax #rant #Manti Te'o

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