I’m not really sure what it is called, but when people combine two words where the last letter of the first word and the first letter of the second word are the same they sometimes just use one letter.
I *HATE* that…
This seems to happen pretty often for software for some reason… I guess someone thinks it is witty or that they are saving tons of money by omitting one letter or something…
“Updatexpert”
It isn’t Updat Expert nor is it Update xpert… Just put the other damned “e” in there!
Okay… I always thought that pagodas looked pretty cool, but I don’t think I ever really knew anything beyond the “look” of them.
Turns out that they’re actually pretty interesting. Of the hundreds of pagodas in Japan only 2 are known to have collapsed or fallen over. Many more have been burned down or destroyed, but that doesn’t count!
So their question in this article is why… turns out it is a pretty interesting structure that is really held together (level by level) by gravity and the levels themselves are only held together by loose joints… Then in the middle of the pagoda is something called a “shinbashira” which is apparently a large tree trunk sort of thing that sounds like it serves multiple purposes… 1) provide weight to help gravity hold things together and 2) to counterbalance movements of the different levels…
That’s pretty friggin cool really… now I want to go see one…
Take a minute to read this…it is really pretty cool…
Okay… something about windows really really pisses me off. Today I have a service that gets stuck in a status of “stopping” but it won’t allow me to kill the process so that it can be restarted. So I am stuck in a state that allows nothing to work.
I am logged onto the machine as administrator. There is no higher level of permissions. I want to kill this task and it continues to tell me “Access Denied.”
Look…I’m on as the f’ing administrator… I should be able to kill anything on this system I want. I should *NEVER* **EVER** see the words “Access Denied.” Tell me that someone has the file open and warn me… but damnit if I need to terminate something I should be able to terminate it. That is why I am the ADMINISTRATOR. If I screw something up then it is my fault… that is really the whole reason to have different accounts with elevated permissions.
<sigh>
I’m mentally preparing myself for a huge leap in how manipulate human genes…
First… I saw that you can now get a home test to look at traits, potential diseases, and also to trace your lineage by paternal and maternal genetics. With a home kit for $399. Awesome! 23AndMe.com
Second… I saw that someone had done some genetic modification on marmosets (which are apparently pretty genetically close to us humans.) So they glow green under ultraviolet light… Awesomer! BoingBoing
Third… These marmosets had babies… and the genetic modification actually passed to the children. It was a permanent genetic modification. Awesomest! Reason.com
Of course some stiffly stiffersons really don’t care for this sort of work.
“We should never do it in humans,” Chan said. “We don’t want to change our evolutionary path. That would have a profound impact on the next generation.”
Well… doesn’t basically everything we do have a profound impact on the next generation? Burning fossil fuels? Drinking pops? Cooking on teflon? Fluoridating our water? etc… I think it is a little short sighted to say that we should never do something. Results of this could have a HUGE positive impact on the human race… let’s not make ridiculously sweeping statements before we even know what is possible or HOW it could be used. The evil is never in the tool, but in how you use it.
“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” – Ani Difranco
Okay… this weirds me out….
Thank god it is on sale!!!
http://www.buy.com/prod/radio-control-interactive-alive-chimpanzee-wowwee/q/loc/20269/202504705.html
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