Eat a burger for your health
A recent study found that processed meats in particular may be what causes the increased risk of heart disease usually associated with red meat. The key may be that processed meats have almost four times as much salt as steaks, burgers, and other non-processed meat-like substances.
Get Your Masters in Vampire Literature
After stumbling across the post on Neatorama's website, I thought perhaps it was a belated April Fool’s joke. So, after applying some of Baylee’s famous Google-Fu I checked, The Guardian (UK paper), io9, and (of course) I visited the university's site. Oh god, it's really real. And that's not all.
The Masters program, which Dr George will be teaching, will start in the Fall of 2010 and will gather “experts” from around the world to examine how vampires in all their assorted flavors relate to us, and of course the various meanings that we can pin to these creatures within literature, art, music, etc. Wherever Vampires are found (literature, music, and art) experts determine their meanings... all of which will ooze information on social standings, gender roles, technological development, and the list goes on.
Catholic School Denies Admission to Child of Lesbians
In order to feel as though there are Catholic believers in their midst, the Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School has decided that anything (selectively, of course) not pertaining to the Catholic faith will be expelled. A preschooler has been denied education in this institution because her parents are lesbians and according to the school, this does not "uphold the Catholic principles." Funny how children with parents who are divorced or are taking birth control are allowed to attend...
What was once thought to be a place of safety is now obviously a place with selective thinking. Organized Religion/Cult anyone? ^_~
Read the fun here:
TheDenverChannel.com - Catholic School Rejects Child Because Of Lesbian Parents
A look at Portal 2
If you want to look at someone who took pictures of the pages of a magazine and try to read the text, then click here to see what Portal 2 might look like
Sea Monkey Experiment: Epic FAIL!
Here's a followup on the Sea Monkey Experiment. On Thursday, there were about 30-40 baby sea monkeys happily swimming. When I checked them today, there were maybe 4 or 5 babies. MASS EXTINCTION! Both older Sea Monkeys were still alive.
So, not sure what happened here. I don't think it was the food, because they seemed content when I left them. There was no issue with environment as I had both the control group and the Sea Monkeys on Mars tank right next to each other, and there was no change in the population.
Conclusion: CONFUSED!
Hella Big Numbers
With various committees, under the authority of a 54 nation diplomatic treaty, the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures(BIPM) maintains world-wide uniformity of measurements in relation to the International System of Units (SI). This is why units of measure in quantities of 1,000 (103) are referred to as kilo and 0.000000001 (10–9) are referred to as nano. The last change to the official units of measure was in 1991 when BIPM adopted zetta and yotta to handle measurements of 1021 and 1024.
Now thanks to Austin Sendek, a physics student at UC Davis, a new unit of measure may be on the horizon. Sendek has proposed that a measurement of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 units should be referred to as hella. Certainly anything measured to 1027 values would be hella big, but should it be official?
Massive Earthquake Strikes Chile
A magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck central Chile at 0634 GMT (12:34am Yaysoft time) Saturday, February 27, 2010. According to the US Geological Survey, it registers as the fifth-largest earthquake measured since 1900. News is still breaking as of this writing, but reports indicate that a 9-foot high wave has extended outward from the epicenter, resulting in tsunami alerts for Chile and Peru.
The epicenter of the earthquake was located 56 miles north-east of Concepcion, Chile’s second largest city (population 200,000) and 197 miles south-west of Santiago, Chile’s capital and largest city (population 5.4 million). Buildings in Santiago were violently shaken for 10 to 30 seconds and electricity, telephone, and internet services in Chile seem to be greatly damaged. No information is available yet as to the full extent of the structural damage or the number of casualties.
The last time an earthquake of this severity struck was on December 26, 2004, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. That quake registered a 9.1 to 9.3, the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph, and caused the infamous tsunami that ravaged Southeast Asia and left more than 227,000 people dead.
Also, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in January of this year, resulting in a death toll currently estimated to be between 217,000 and 230,000 people (and that figure is still climbing).
The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that just struck Chile released over 500 times more energy than the January earthquake in Haiti. While energy release is closely correlated with destructive power, other factors play into the resulting damage -- how deep under the ocean the earthquake occurred, the quality of the infrastructure of the areas affected by the quake, and the government response post-quake will all play major roles in what happens next in Chile.