Shannon Jiménez

"1671: “A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors” In one of the most famous experiments ever, Newton used a glass prism to spread a beam of light into a rainbow spectrum, demonstrating that colors were a property of light’s refraction. Not mentioned, however, is Newton’s earlier studies of light, in which he stuck a needle into his eye and recorded how colors changed as he pressed his retina into different shapes." - Shannon Jiménez

I learned the above from reading Cryptonomicon. The Newton in that trilogy was a lot more fascinating the Newton we learned about in school. I always feel sorry for people who never start/finish the trilogy I learned so much more just reading it. - Anika

"In a movement that seems ripped from the pages of Comedy Channel writers, John Marcotte wants to put a measure on the ballot next year to ban divorce in California. The effort is meant to be a satirical statement after California voters outlawed gay marriage in 2008, largely on the argument that a ban is needed to protect the sanctity of traditional marriage. If that's the case, then Marcotte reasons voters should have no problem banning divorce." - Shannon Jiménez

I like it...from a satirical standpoint... - Rob Michael (Atmos Trio)

"Britain and Canada protested yesterday over a proposed law that would result in gays in Uganda being imprisoned for life or even executed.... According to Clause 2 of the Bill, a person who is convicted of gay sex is liable to life imprisonment. But if that person is also HIV positive the penalty — under the heading “aggravated homosexuality” — is death.... The Bill proposes a three-year prison sentence for anyone who is aware of evidence of homosexuality and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. And it would impose a sentence of up to seven years for anyone who defends the rights of gays and lesbians." - Shannon Jiménez

"Costco customers may have to look elsewhere for Coca-Cola products now that the retailer has stopped carrying them because the pair are fighting over prices." - Shannon Jiménez

They better resolve this soon, because my Diet Coke has to come from somewhere! - Shannon Jiménez

Smart and Final? - Victor Ryden 美久太阿

"Populations of one of the world's most highly desired and valuable fish, Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), have dropped 97 percent since 1960. As the numbers have crashed, market prices have soared. Earlier this year, two Japanese sushi bars paid a record $104,000 for a single, 128-kilogram tuna. For several years now scientists and conservation groups have called on the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) to reduce the amount of catch it allows its 48 member nations to net each year and thereby allow bluefin populations to recover. At a meeting Sunday in Brazil the ICCAT did just that, deciding to lower the annual quotas for Atlantic bluefin tuna to 13,500 metric tons. This continues a downward trend for ICCAT's quotas: the 2009 quota was 22,000 tonnes, and the previous year's came in at 28,000 tonnes. But do these quota reductions go far enough? Several studies presented to ICCAT during its 10-day meeting called for even lower limits. One study said that even a "strictly enforced 8,000-tonne quota" would have only a 50 percent chance of allowing the species to recover—by 2023." - Shannon Jiménez

:( - Rodfather

"In the burgeoning world of translators and interpreters (translators deal with written documents, interpreters with the spoken word) it's all about the niche. "It's not just having the language skill. It's also having the expertise in the subject matter," said Dahlberg, whose story was striking enough that Nicholas Hartmann, president of the American Translators Assn., retold it during the group's 50th convention in New York last month." - Shannon Jiménez

Shannon, nice to see what you are doing in print! - amelia arapoff

Coolest table ever. - Shannon Jiménez

"People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind." - Shannon Jiménez

"In 1988, an associate professor started growing cultures of Escherichia coli. Twenty-one years and 40,000 generations of bacteria later, Richard Lenski, who is now a professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University, reveals new details about the differences between adaptive and random genetic changes during evolution" - Shannon Jiménez

Twitter jumps on the crowdsourcing bandwagon. Idiots. - Shannon Jiménez

"Classical Indian dancing is a tradition that extends back 2,000 years. Unlike much Western dance, it is intended to express specific emotions and tell detailed stories. The Natyasastra, a text from the first or second century A.D., offers instructions for how to depict nine primary emotions, and these rules continue to be followed in Indian Classical dance today.... Can people who've never been exposed to the dances still understand the emotions the dancers intend to express?" - Shannon Jiménez

"How did three Stanford computer science alumni and a friend make a huge mark on the world of social networking? With social networking, of course. The story of the founding of FriendFeed, an influential social information sharing site acquired in August for a rumored $47.5 million by Facebook, is a tale of investing in relationships." - Shannon Jiménez

You mean, people form startups with friends and people they have worked with before? - ⓞnor

Decisions, decisions. Should I get this with the points saved through my 4-can-a-day Diet Coke habit, or save up for something bigger? - Shannon Jiménez

I've been accumulating them for awhile as our household consumes Coke products fairly regularly. I need to take a look at the rewards soon. - Anne Bouey

"Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi delivered a rambling address to the United Nations in New York City on Wednesday morning, calling Barack Obama "our son" and railing against the U.N. Security Council. He spoke not in Arabic, Libya's official language, but a local Libyan dialect. Does the United Nations have an interpreter for every dialect in the world? No. Speakers at the United Nations are supposed to deliver their speeches in one of the organization's six official languages: English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese. U.N. interpreters then translate the lecture into the other five languages. If the speaker doesn't use an official language—either as a political statement or because he doesn't know one—the speaker has to bring along his own interpreter. That interpreter then translates into one of the official languages—usually English or French—and the other interpreters translate from that interpretation." - Shannon Jiménez

Google's beta translation toolkit is nicely built (http://translate.google.com/toolkit), but we have concern about TOS: "You may not modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on this Content (either in whole or in part) unless you have been specifically told that you may do so by Google or by the owners of that Content, in a separate agreement." and "By submitting your content through the Service, you grant Google the permission to use your content permanently to promote, improve or offer the Services. If Google publicly displays any of the content you submitted through the Service, Google will display only portion(s) and not the entirety of the content at one time." - τorƍue

"This is a poster presented by Bennett and colleagues at this year's Human Brain Mapping conference. It's about fMRI scanning on a dead fish, specifically a salmon. They put the salmon in an MRI scanner and "the salmon was shown a series of photographs depicting human individuals in social situations. The salmon was asked to determine what emotion the individual in the photo must have been experiencing." I'd say that this research was justified on comedic grounds alone, but they were also making an important scientific point. The (fish-)bone of contention here is multiple comparisons correction. The "multiple comparisons problem" is simply the fact that if you do a lot of different statistical tests, some of them will, just by chance, give interesting results.... Luckily, during the 1990s, fMRI pioneers developed techniques for dealing with the problem: multiple comparisons correction. The most popular method uses Gaussian Random Field Theory to calculate the probability of falsely "finding" activated areas just by chance, and to keep this acceptably low (details), although there are other alternatives. But not everyone uses multiple comparisons correction. This is where the fish comes in - Bennett et al show that if you don't use it, you can find "neural activation" even in the tiny brain of dead fish." - Shannon Jiménez