Jason Wehmhoener

http://www.tkrg.org/upload... - Jason Wehmhoener

Oh Thanks! I have made a first journey through it: a so rejoycing one. Well and carefully choosen, some (very) rare ones; it's a declaration of love for good wine. Greatissime! - Véronique Rabuteau

not surprising. i'd love to see that cellar - James Cox from IM

"Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omlette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system.... more... - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"I like to say that observational cosmology is the cheapest possible science to go into. Every time you put milk into your coffee and watch it mix and realize that you can't unmix that milk from your coffee, you are learning something profound about the Big Bang, about conditions in the very, very early universe. This is just a giant clue that the real universe has given to us to how... more... - Jason Wehmhoener

Rusty Hodge is reading my mind and spinning discs just for me, I'm convinced of it. - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"Relaxing on an idyllic beach on Grand Cayman Island in the Caribbean, Anthony Aguirre vividly describes the worst natural disaster he can imagine. It is, in fact, probably the worst natural disaster that anyone could imagine. An asteroid impact would be small potatoes compared with this kind of event: a catastrophic encounter with an entire other universe. As an alien cosmos came crashing into ours, its outer boundary would look like a wall racing forward at nearly the speed of light; behind that wall would lie a set of physical laws totally different from ours that would wreck everything they touched in our universe. “If we could see things in ultraslow motion, we’d see a big mirror in the sky rushing toward us because light would be reflected by the wall,” says Aguirre, a youthful physicist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “After that we wouldn’t see anything—because we’d all be dead.”" - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

There seem to be a number of unfounded assumptions in this article. Interesting speculation though. - Tanath

I was mostly intrigued by the idea of heading to the Grand Cayman to talk about this stuff. ;-) - Jason Wehmhoener

"Only in very serious minds can these conceptions of the US government co-exist: 1. The US government is so hopelessly inefficient and incompetent, that any attempt to deliver government-provided health insurance (or the option thereof) to the uninsured (and some/all of the already-insured) is an unprecedented fool’s pipe dream of a fantasy of a boondoggle with no chance for any positive outcome. Also, socialism. And at a price tag of $1.2 trillion dollars over ten years, there is no way we can afford to chase such fantastical chimera. AND 2. The US government is so remarkably efficient and competent that it can transform (wholesale) Iraqi and Afghan societies (at the same time) and remake those societies into US-friendly, Western-conceived models of good governance, free market economics and liberal democracy all through multi-decade armed occupations. These goals are easily attainable for a government so adept at devising and delivering effective political, economic, social service... more... - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"This list contains 168 definitions of obscure colour terms using combinations of 'normal' colours of the rainbow and descriptive adjectives; e.g. cardinal = deep scarlet red; russet = reddish brown. Note that most English speakers outside the U.S. spell colour with the added British 'u' rather than the American version color. Don't worry if the colours (or colors) in your universe don't match up with the definitions I've given for these words, though - I've been known to have skewed perceptions of reality ..." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"As even their critics admit, Levitt and Dubner have performed a useful service in drawing greater popular attention to geoengineering. Garden hoses to the sky,however, are not the only approach. Iron fertilization is simpler, cheaper and much more easily testable. Most people are aware that CO2 and temperature are positively correlated in the long historical record but fewer people know that iron dust correlates negatively on the same scale - that is, temperature and CO2 levels are low when iron-dust is high. The graph illustrates. The basic mechanism that appears to drive the association between low temperature, low CO2 and high iron-dust levels is that iron-rich dust sometimes sweeps off the continents into the oceans where it creates a plankton bloom. Phytoplankton take up CO2 in order to grow and as they die and produce fecal matter (I kid you not) carbon sinks to the lower depths or bottom of the ocean where it may remain for 100 to a 1000 or to even to millions of years (in the... more... - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

Absolutely. - Jason Wehmhoener

"STEWART Brand, author of "The Whole Earth Catalog," visited Seattle last week, promoting his latest environmental manifesto and surprising more than a few members of the audience with his ideas about tackling our energy and climate crises. In sum, while judging that solar and wind power are part of the mix of renewable energy sources required to sustain world living standards, Brand flatly asserts that we must rapidly deploy nuclear power plants to meet both environmental end energy goals." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

Yes, please introduce some sanity into the green movement. - Cristo

A recent wander through the outer suburbs of Flickrville yielded an exciting find – a set of Temari spheres, decorative thread balls combining mathematical principles, as well a love of colourful decoration. Originally developed in China and later spreading to Japan, Temari were traditionally made by grandmothers to give to their grand children. These engaging kaleidoscopic [...] - Jason Wehmhoener

"The homogenous fossilization of our desires proposed to us is like a bad joke, and instead of laughter we respond with social war. Confronted with those who neglect to recognize themselves in our orgies of negation, we offer neither dialogue nor criticism but only our derision. We must negate all banality—in secret. In the construction of becomings, we reject those who would have us give up the radical joy of crisis for the catastrophe of mobilization." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

Awesome. - Bren, Photophobe

"Ezra Klein sat down with an insurance industry CEO to try and better understand what’s going on with our health care system. The most interesting part of the conversation (to hear him tell it) was seeing charts that actually assign costs—in dollars—to different units of care (like pills, doctor visits, and lab tests), and then compare those costs to the same units in different countries. He describes the United States column in all the bar charts like “a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines” in comparison to all the other countries. And, looking at the charts, it’s hard not to agree. The takeaway: our health care costs more because we let insurance companies and care providers charge more. In other countries, governments set the rates for different treatments and drugs." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"In a bad mood? Don't worry - according to research, it's good for you. An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly. In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed. While cheerfulness fosters creativity, gloominess breeds attentiveness and careful thinking, Professor Joe Forgas told Australian Science Magazine." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

Ouch, true, Jason. Maybe that's not so good afterall :( - Adam Lasnik

Phew, 2 days of editing and uploading I seem to have kept about 200 frames. It was so beautiful. I'm ready to turn around and get right back on the plane. - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

Kauai is my favorite of the Hawaiian Islands I've visited (only Oahu, Kauai, Maui and Hawaii so far). - Spidra Webster

"Football faced a version of this question a hundred years ago, after a series of ugly incidents. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called an emergency summit at the White House, alarmed, as the historian John Sayle Watterson writes, “that the brutality of the prize ring had invaded college football and might end up destroying it.” Columbia University dropped the sport entirely. A professor at the University of Chicago called it a “boy-killing, man-mutilating, money-making, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport.” In December of 1905, the presidents of twelve prominent colleges met in New York and came within one vote of abolishing the game." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"CSSEmbed, a tool to automatically embed images into CSS files as data URIs. This is a very small, simple tool that reads in a CSS file, identifies the images referenced within, converts them to data URIs, and outputs the resulting style sheet. The newly-created stylesheet is an exact duplicate of the original, complete with comments and indentation intact; the only difference is that all references to image files have been replaced with data URIs. Because it preserves the original formatting of the style sheet, it can be used both on nicely-formatted source code and crunched source code without worry." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"Coming from the house of Michigan-based design firm Jruiter, here is an inner city bike concept that seems to be more about fashion and culture than speed and performance. Designed as a Spartan two-wheeler for short-range urban travel, the city bike features a minimalist design for easy commutation and parking in urban environments. Drawing inspiration from the “hobby horse” and the cafe racer, the bicycle removes basic key components to create a new type of minimal city bike. Integrating 29″ rims, huge big apple tires, a rear hub (planetary internal freewheeling, unicycle through axle) and a single front disc brake, the stripped-down bike is easy to control and allows quick turns while generating huge power from the rear wheel." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

"Eric Testroete, a 3D character artist from Vancouver, sent us this awesome self-portrait costume, an homage to Big Head Mode in videogames." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet

BIG HEAD MODE? AWESOME! - teh Dork Knight

"There are open source and freeware server/network monitoring tools that will supervise your infrastructure for any issues that may arise. These tools are meant to aid you in avoiding being taken offline and evaluating if your resource needs has outgrown your infrastructure." - Jason Wehmhoener from Bookmarklet