the frig blig

Shamelessly stolen from Jennifer Daniel via NYT of Jan 22.

Neutrinos are in the news. Scientists at CERN successfully repeated their recent experiment in which they measure the speed it takes these subatomic particles to go from CERN to the Gran Sasso lab in Italy.

Besides exceeding the speed of light, what’s interesting to me [a non-physicist and non-scientist] about this scenario is the following:

1. Neutrinos pass through solid matter.

2. Neutrinos are neutral [do not possess positive or negative charge].

Therefore I wonder wonder wonder how do scientists and/or technicians steer them? You can’t use mirrors, or magnets, or barrels. How they point those little critters in the desired direction in order to perform their measurements?

The first one who provides the correct answer gets a free beer.

Editor, NY Times:

In yesterday (Sunday)’s editorial page, Carol Giacomo asserts:

“The biggest issue for the United States is how to counterbalance an increasingly assertive China — and reassure its increasingly nervous neighbors — while trying to cajole and goad Beijing into being a more responsible world player.”

I agree that while it would be refreshing to see more nations acting less assertively on the world stage, expecting nations to take a lesser role in furthering their own interests is wishful thinking.

However, taking an unbiased look at the history of the United States, I can only marvel at Giacomo’s audacity in thinking this nation possesses any moral authority for cajoling and goading any other nation to act responsibly.

-FB

The annual occurrence of kids’s most popular holiday came last night to our neighborhood. Kids dress up in costumes, and go begging for candy.

When I was a kid we did it too. The routine was to ring the doorbell, and chant ‘Trick or treat!’ when the door opened. After taking the proffered candy, the polite among us would say ‘Thank you.’

Kids these days, more often than not, after taking the candy say ‘Happy Halloween!’. WTF? I suppose it’s happy for the little freeloaders. But something about that phrase is just too like ‘Have a nice day!’. It’s unnecessary expression of facile kindness.

Boo-hoo on you!

Just a brief note to announce that I posted a minor update of my android app SFD Mobile to the Android Marketplace. Version 1.1 updates the fire stations listing and fixes a minor display bug [which I blame on Socrata, but who knows?].

Search the Marketplace for SFD to find it.

Q: How much coconut is in a package of Coconut M&Ms?
A: Would you believe, none?

That’s right, none. Zero. Zilch. The ingredient that the product is named after does not exist in the product.

I found this rather shocking. After all, peanut M&Ms contain peanuts. Almond M&Ms contain almonds. Peanut-butter M&Ms contain peanut-butter. So I got a little teed-off when the ingredients list on coconut M&Ms did not list coconut.

Here is the actual list of ingredients as printed on the package:

Ingredients: milk chocolate (sugar, chocolate, skim milk, cocoa butter, lactose, milkfat, soy lecithin, salt, artificial flavors), sugar, cornstarch, less than 1% - corn syrup, dextrin, coloring (includes yellow 5 lake, red 40 l ake, blue 2 lake, yellow 6 lake, yellow 5, blue 1, red 40, yellow 6, blue 1 lake, blue 2), artificial flavor, gum acacia.

Screwing up my eyes and looking closer at the front of the package, I saw the fine print: Artificial Flavor.

Is coconut really so prohibitively expensive that Mars Inc. can’t afford to put even 1 percent coconut into their coconut flavored product? Or does including actual coconut do strange things to M&Ms, like make them melt prematurely or mottle their pretty shell colors?

Only their kitchen and/or lab knows for sure. Me, I’m never buying coconut M&Ms again.

I picked up a copy of Nick Lowe’s 2001 CD The Convincer in the used bin at Everyday Music the other day. I had high hopes, since I was a big fan of Pure Pop for Now, People and Rockpile back in the day.

Well, I am very disappointed. Let this be a warning to anyone who’s wondering how NL’s doing these days. Some nice titles, a couple of covers, but on the whole pretty lame I’m sad to report. Save your money for something better.

As a guitar player, I use my fingernails as little string pickers (I finger pick rather than strum with a plastic pick). So when I split my right thumbnail going through airport security, the result was that I couldn’t use my thumb for playing guitar. This is a major problem if I want to play.

I mentioned my torn thumbnail to my guitar teacher in an email, and he replied:

‘You can just cut up a tea bag and place it over the crack as a patch and then super glue on top.’

Long story short: I tried it and voila — it works! I just played a little Bach using all my picking fingers. Cool tip, thanks to JW.

I keep notes in text files on computers. Lots of them. Since I will be taking my android phone with me to Europe tomorrow, I copied my travel notes file to my phone and then realized there was no built-in text file reader.

I searched the market for ‘text reader’ and found an app called CoolReader which listed tons of ebook formats as well as good old text. I downloaded and installed it, browsed to the folder with my file, and CoolReader displayed zero files in that folder. Zero, zip, nada, none. Perhaps files need special name formats for this brain-dead app. I don’t want apps to dictate what to name my files.

Uninstall and back to the market.

Next I found an app called ‘Text Edit’. This was less ambitious, it didn’t claim to read every ebook format under the sun but was intended for simple text files, which was just what I needed. As a bonus it lets you edit as well. Download, install. Browse to folder, click my file, open. I can scroll through the whole file instantly. Nirvana. I review my file several times during the course of the day, and it makes me smile.

The next day, I checked out the configurable settings for Text Edit. There’s one that enables auto-recognition of urls and phone numbers that sounded useful, so I checked it and returned to my open file. Strangely, the app hung and I had to force it closed. I relaunched it and it hung immediately. I rebooted my phone, relaunched and it hung again.

Looks like a bug in the app. Sometimes I would report this to the author and try to work with him/her to fix it. But I’m leaving the country tomorrow so no time for that. Uninstall.

Browsing the market I found an app called Jota Text Editor. It claims to support large files. Download, install, launch. Browse to folder, open file, looks good. I’m not messing with the settings (Jota calls them ‘Preferences’) until after my trip — better safe than sorry!

So for now, Jota is my text edit app. Time to get packing!

The following are all headlines from today’s BBC ‘US and Canada’ feed:

Wiener quits over lewd photos- eh, what took him so long?
Obama: US action in Libya ‘legal’ - all US presidents believe they are above the law.
Giffords released from hospital - what I really want to know is, why did her hair color change?
Agents ‘let cartels buy US guns’ - weapons are the top US export, so their lobby has some clout.
Oil imports increase US deficit - the oil wars will intensify, I predict.