Peter Nixon
I'm involved in music and multimedia.

 



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Peter Nixon

  Thursday, 31 October 2002



Afghans tell of Guantanamo ordeal. Three Afghans provide first-hand accounts of life inside a US military base on Cuba, after being set free following months in captivity.

[BBC News | WORLD]
1:24:31 AM    

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  Monday, 28 October 2002



Japanese proverb. "One kind word can warm three winter months."

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
11:31:23 PM    

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"Oh Pleez GAWD I can't handle the success!".

Excerpts from Kurt Cobain's journals (published in Newsweek) reveal an oddball genius battling severe physical pain -- and imagining a Nirvana reunion tour sponsored by Depends.

[Salon.com]
10:14:50 AM    

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  Saturday, 26 October 2002



scintilla.

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
5:59:38 PM    

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  Thursday, 24 October 2002



Penis size linked to index finger

[Daily Rotten]
10:19:48 PM    

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Finding a Reincarnated American Classic on a Trip to Australia. On his trip to Australia, General Motors' vice chairman Robert Lutz found a sports coupe he hopes will invigorate the Pontiac brand. By Mark Phelan.

[New York Times: International]
12:55:20 AM    

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EDS to cut more jobs

[Australian IT - Business]
12:53:29 AM    

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Nazis first with antigravity machine?

[Daily Rotten]
12:49:07 AM    

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'They're Coming After Us.' But Who Are They Now?. So what is the current Al Qaeda? An organization? A movement? An ideology? Answering the question is a key to figuring out how to fight it. By Douglas Frantz.

[New York Times: International]
12:27:48 AM    

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Brave Civil War colonel attacks villainous hound

[Daily Rotten]
12:20:24 AM    

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Tracing the would-be sniper. Rep. Rob Andrews talks about his proposal to record every gun's "fingerprint" -- and the White House's opposition to it.

[Salon.com]
12:01:05 AM    

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  Wednesday, 23 October 2002



effulgence.

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
11:50:41 PM    

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Man accused of having wife duct-taped to himself

[Daily Rotten]
11:41:21 PM    

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News of Ex-G.I. in North Korea Only Deepens Mystery. The Army maintains that Charles Robert Jenkins deserted in 1965. He resurfaced this week when his wife, who was kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970's, visited Japan. By James Brooke.

[New York Times: International]
11:33:54 PM    

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An Environmentalist Who Loves to Eat Whales. Masayuki Komatsu has taken up the cause of restoring Japanese whaling to its golden days, with what many see as an indigestible mix of old-fashioned nationalism and transparent political ambition. By James Brooke.

[New York Times: International]
11:18:57 PM    

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  Monday, 21 October 2002



Two dead in Melbourne shooting

[ABC News]
4:35:07 PM    

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riparian

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
4:27:13 PM    

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  Sunday, 20 October 2002



Australia mourns its Bali victims. Millions of Australians observe a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the bombing on the Indonesian island of Bali last week.

[BBC News | WORLD]
4:43:34 PM    

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Who committed the Bali massacre?

[Daily Rotten]
4:35:58 PM    

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A nation in mourning

[Sydney Morning Herald]
4:27:14 PM    

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  Saturday, 19 October 2002



Indonesian police arrest Bashir

[ABC News]
9:53:39 PM    

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On the subject of Bush, here's a bit of fun.
3:42:51 PM    
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Check this out.

It's a very interesting analysis of President Bush's October 7 speech about Iraq.
3:35:25 PM    

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Sun Microsystems to cut jobs

[Australian IT - Business]
3:31:21 PM    

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Denied sex, wife bites husband to death

[Daily Rotten]
3:21:03 PM    

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MS profits more than double

[Australian IT - Business]
3:03:42 PM    

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  Friday, 18 October 2002



Go now, Australians told

[Sydney Morning Herald]
6:47:48 PM    

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Relative risks and snipers, or, how I learned to stop worrying and live my life.

The "experts" have been coming out of the woodwork to talk about the Washington DC sniper murders, currently occurring all around where I live. A lot of "advice" is being thrown around concerning what people should and shouldn't do. But can we really trust that advice and does it have any foundations? To answer this question we really need to understand the nature of risks and relative risks.

For example, I have heard some "experts" recommend that people should fill their car fuel tanks at places away from major roads. Doing so may reduce your risk - we don't really know by how much - but it will almost certainly increase other risks, such as the risk of being killed in a car accident because you spent longer on the road.

At this point most people say, "Hang on, the increased risk of a car accident is minuscule, and there is a much reduced risk associated with staying out of the sniper's fire." But this argument may not be valid. Our intuition with regards to risk assessments are notoriously poor. Essentially every study on the public understanding of risk shows that people just can't estimate levels of risk when the risks are extremely small.

I don't know which change in risk is greater - I haven't tried to work out the numbers, and I suspect that they would be very difficult to calculate with any decent precision. But it seems entirely possible that these two changes in risk could balance each other out or you could increase your risk by driving a greater distance on less familiar roads more than you decrease your sniper risk.

Another example, just to show this isn't an isolated piece of advice that has an uncertain statistical basis: Some commentators are recommending that you don't walk in straight lines as this makes it harder for a sniper to target you. Considering that a walking person is already a difficult target and the sniper seems to have chosen stationary victims in most cases, how much does this decrease your risk? Then consider what risks it increases. Walking erratically increases the chance of tripping and falling, hitting your head, and your brain hemorrhaging. It increases your chance of stumbling in front of passing traffic, perhaps to be hit by the person driving to a different fuel station, unaware that pedestrians walk so close to the road in this area...

These increased risks may seem ludicrously small but how much did you decrease the risk by walking erratically in the first place?

The point is that we can't make valid recommendations about how to change behaviour unless we try to work out these statistics. Practically any change of behaviour will result in increased risks. Do we know for sure that increase is compensated for by the risk decrease we are aiming for?

Perhaps we shouldn't be changing our behaviour at all. What are some comparable risks?

We need to make a couple of assumptions to make any meaningful comparison. Assume that the series of shooting stops, for whatever reason, in a month. Assume that an episode like this only happens in the DC region once every decade. (This is probably an overestimate of the risk but we'll stick with it for now.) Then the risk of being shot by a sniper in the DC area is about 24 in 3.5 million per decade (the 24 is the number of expected shootings in a month - again, this might be an overestimate if the shootings are now at 3 or 4 per week.) This works out to a risk level of about 7 in a million per decade.

Now for some comparisons: the chance of dying in a car accident, as the driver, is about 240 per million per decade. The chance of dying from a fall at home is about 90 per million per decade. The chance of being hit by a car, as a pedestrian, is about 15 per million per decade. The chance of being hit and killed by lightning is about 1.5 per million per decade.

So you are only slightly more likely to be shot by the sniper than hit by lightning. You are twice as likely to be hit by a car while walking down the street than being shot by the sniper. You are more than ten times as likely to trip and fall at home than being shot by the sniper. You are 35 times more likely to die in a car crash while driving than being shot by the sniper.

When you go out of the house, do you worry about dying from driving, being hit by a car, tripping over and falling to your death, or being hit by lightning?

Perhaps you want to argue with the details of the statistics but I have been aggressively overestimating the risks from the sniper and they still come out far lower than a lot of everyday activities, including ones that we have no control over.

The take home message: don't trust your instincts about risk and be careful how you change your behaviour in response. It's entirely possible that you could be increasing your risk by being too worried.

(Note: some of the data I used to estimate risks came from here. The data may not be perfect for the DC area but I would expect it to be something like this.)

[David Harris: Science news]
1:11:18 AM    
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Interview with Abu Bakar Ba'asyr

[ABC News]
1:03:05 AM    

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Australian toll may rise to 119, fear officials

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:58:37 AM    

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Indonesia at the crossroads. The terror attack in the world's most populous Muslim nation could stir up rage against Islamic extremists, says an expert. But if the U.S. invades Iraq, all bets are off.

[Salon.com]
12:49:49 AM    

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Misconduct: the aftermath.

A series of articles in this week's New York Science Times looks at how recent findings of misconduct are affecting science.

His Reputation Is Shredded. What About His Papers? by Kenneth Chang

Lucent is coordinating the retractions of all papers of Schön's that were found to contain fraudulent data. Schön and his co-winners have agreed to return a valuable prize they were awarded on the basis of research now shown to be invalid.

On Scientific Fakery and the Systems to Catch It by Kenneth Chang

This article explores what Schön's co-authors really knew and what the role of co-authors should be. The ripples begin to expand...

At Lawrence Berkeley, Physicists Say a Colleague Took Them for a Ride by George Johnson

On to the other misconduct of the moment, Johnson's piece also questions the role of co-authors in the case of Ninov and the mystery of element 118.

[David Harris: Science news]
12:31:35 AM    

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Am I being unreasonable?

The New York Times Has an article (quite reasonably) on three victims of the Bali bombing. What makes me uneasy? It's that assumption that only Americans matter, only Americans grieve. I know I'm overstating this, but this is certainly what came across a year ago with the twin towers. Americans cared for lost loved ones, but it didn't matter so much that as a consequence the odd wedding party would be bombed in Afghanistan. Were there no grieving families for those dead?

Surfing, Teaching and Rugby Drew 3 Americans. The three Americans who are thought to have been killed in the Bali bombing represented the diverse reasons that send people to the far corners of the earth.

[New York Times:International]
12:20:02 AM    

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  Thursday, 17 October 2002



IBM reveals details of PowerPC 970

[The Macintosh News Network]
12:39:48 PM    

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Mummified dinosaur discovered

[Daily Rotten]
12:27:14 PM    

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Mr. God becomes Who I Am

[Daily Rotten]
12:08:53 PM    

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  Wednesday, 16 October 2002



Carter's Nobel tainted by Korean massacre

[Daily Rotten]
11:28:17 PM    

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deride

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
11:23:16 PM    

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I got this from Dave. It's just too precious.

"After eight years as a Macintosh owner, I switched to a PC with Windows XP and Office XP. Why?

A picture named msmodel.gifBTW, she's not a real person. Thanks to Jim Stegman for the pointer to the Slashdot thread where it is revealed that she's a model in a stock photo database. You'd think Microsoft could at least find one real person to say they made the switch from Mac to Windows and were happy about it. (Postscript: MS nuked the page. Should have taken a screen shot. Damn.) 

Bing! Niklaus Gustavson grabbed a screen shot before they took it down. I love the Internet. John Foster sent me one too. Mike Donnelan had the HTML source in his cache. Paul McJones points out that it's still in Google's cache.  


1:15:36 AM    

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  Tuesday, 15 October 2002



Microsoft counters Apple's Switch campaign

[The Macintosh News Network]
8:13:20 AM    

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Killer of Sth Aust public servant still at large

[ABC News]
12:33:02 AM    

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Al-Qaeda blamed for Bali bombing. Al-Qaeda and allied local militants are accused by Indonesia's defence minister of involvement in the Bali attack that killed at least 188 people.

[BBC News | WORLD]
12:22:43 AM    

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Apple to use 64-bit IBM processors in Macs

How cool would this be?

[The Macintosh News Network]
12:18:43 AM    

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  Monday, 14 October 2002



contradistinction.

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
6:59:49 PM    

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Bombing in Bali Seen as Opening New Front in Fight on Terror. The blast that killed nearly 200 people on the Indonesian island of Bali over the weekend will open a new geographic front in the campaign against terrorism. By Raymond Bonner.

[New York Times: International]
6:51:01 PM    

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PM condemns 'barbaric act of mass murder'

[Sydney Morning Herald]
6:44:06 PM    

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Australia Waits, Fearing a High Death Toll. Thirteen Australians are confirmed dead so far in bombings in Bali, an Indonesian island just a short flight from Australia, and 60 are among the wounded. By John Shaw.

[New York Times: International]
6:37:08 PM    

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Indonesian shares plunge 6.6 per cent

[Sydney Morning Herald]
6:32:32 PM    

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Terrorism strikes home

[Sydney Morning Herald]
2:14:39 AM    

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National security committee to assess terrorist risk after Bali blasts

[ABC News]
1:49:15 AM    

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Could medical science get any stranger?

Using HIV to fight Parkinson's

[Daily Rotten]
1:38:38 AM    

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"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed." -Albert Einstein

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
1:32:53 AM    

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First planeload of Austs wounded in bomb blasts takes off from Bali

[ABC News]
1:11:05 AM    

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Could this be Australia's September the 11th?

Most non-Australians would not know that Kuta beach (and its resorts) is inhabited largely by Australian tourists; and at this time of year, fit young male tourists, because it is a favoured spot for end of season football club tours.
12:59:23 AM    

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Huge death toll from Bali bombing. At least 182 people most of them Westerners are now known to have died in a bomb attack on a nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali.

[BBC News | WORLD]
12:54:58 AM    

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Seven Australians identified among 187 dead

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:51:38 AM    

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At least two Australians among 182 killed in Bali blast

[ABC News]
12:48:14 AM    

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Bombing at Resort in Indonesia Kills 182 and Hurts Scores More. A car bomb that detonated in front of a nightclub on the Indonesian resort island of Bali was one of the worst attacks on civilians in Southeast Asia in many years. By Raymond Bonner.

[New York Times: International]
12:44:21 AM    

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  Saturday, 12 October 2002



crepuscular.

[Dictionary.com Word of the Day]
6:25:13 PM    

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US warns of terror threat to Australian power stations

[ABC News]
9:27:01 AM    

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Man puts firecracker in penis

[Daily Rotten]
9:22:49 AM    

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Yahoo's revenue doubles

[Australian IT - Business]
8:58:23 AM    

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Dad hires call girl, gets daughter, heart attack

[Daily Rotten]
8:52:29 AM    

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Carter wins peace award

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:03:32 AM    

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  Friday, 11 October 2002



Last gang rapist jailed for 40 years

[Sydney Morning Herald]
11:59:38 PM    

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iMac is PC Magazine's editor's choice.

[Apple]
11:48:51 PM    

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MPEG zooms in on new video codec. A new compression format for digital video is turning heads over claims that it can deliver DVD-quality broadcasts on the Internet using fewer network resources than rivals.

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
11:45:51 PM    

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EDS is coping with tough times with particular reference to the huge contracts it has in Oz. As someone working for the South Australian government I am at their mercy constantly and don't find it a pleasant experience. As Dave says, BOGU (bend over and grease up). I have a very small number of friends in the stratosphere of other government departments who say the EDS contract has been resposible for pulling SA out of the stone age. What do you think?

[Australian IT - Business]
11:30:08 PM    

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The greatest journalistic correction... EVER!

[Daily Rotten]
11:21:20 PM    

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Hitachi, Mitsubishi to integrate Chip stuff mainly it seems.

[Australian IT - Business]
11:15:58 PM    

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Riding along with the Internet Bookmobile. Angered by a law that extends copyright terms for 20 years, a crusader named Brewster Kahle wants to use the Internet to make books available to everyone.

Of course, it sounds like he's taking Project Gutenberg into non-PD realms as protest. Interesting.

[Salon.com]
11:10:11 PM    

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A must upgrade. PC experts agree OSX is very groovy!

[Apple]
11:03:14 PM    

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Bush twists facts to fit, analysts say

[Sydney Morning Herald]
10:56:28 PM    

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New Part of China's Great Wall Found. A new 50-mile section of China's iconic structure has been discovered in northwestern China, centuries after being submerged by the sands that move across the arid area each year. By The Associated Press.

[New York Times: International]
10:52:04 PM    

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  Thursday, 10 October 2002



Police search Falconio suspect's property

[ABC News]
11:41:13 PM    

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Powell Finesses a Sour Note from Harry Belafonte, 'a Friend'. Harry Belafonte, the singer and liberal political advocate, denounced Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, likening him to a plantation slave. By Todd S. Purdum.

[New York Times: International]
11:30:39 PM    

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"I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot and I missed. I have failed over and over again in my life. And that's precisely why I succeed." -Michael Jordan

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
11:22:45 PM    

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Emergency $10,000 cash to families who lost homes

[Sydney Morning Herald]
11:12:06 PM    

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World Briefing: World. Thousands of species facing extinction, but two thought to be extinct species turn up!

[New York Times: International]
11:04:31 PM    

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Gang rapist sentenced to 32 years in prison

[ABC News]
6:08:32 PM    

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Elvis, the Peach and the Hulk head for the front line

[Sydney Morning Herald]
2:38:20 PM    

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Non-technical summary of the Physics Nobel Prize.

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to three physicists for their work in exotic astronomy. All three published the landmark papers for which the Nobel was awarded in the American Physical Society journal Physical Review Letters.

Neutrino astronomy

Ray Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba win the prize for their work in detecting neutrinos, elusive particles that rarely interact with anything. Trillions of them pass through our bodies every second almost always undisturbed. Neutrinos are the only detectable particle that come from the active energy-producing center of the Sun and are a key to understanding how it works. They also play an important role in many other reactions that occur both on Earth and throughout the universe.

Davis, who did a significant part of his work while based at Brookhaven National Lab, detected neutrinos coming from the nuclear fusion processes that power the Sun. Over 30 years, he was able to detect a mere 2000 neutrinos in 600 tons of cleaning fluid in a tank sitting at the bottom of the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. Many physicists thought this detection was too hard to even attempt but Davis persisted and succeeded. His feat has been compared with finding a single specific grain of sand somewhere in the Sahara desert. (The sign of a neutrino is a single argon atom appearing in the 600 tons of chlorine-based fluid.) The data he collected was the first hard evidence that nuclear processes do occur in the center of the Sun. Davis now lives on Long Island, near Brookhaven Lab. He turns 88 on Monday.

Koshiba, at the University of Tokyo, ran the Kamiokande neutrino detector in a mine in Japan and improved on Davis' experiment because it showed the direction the neutrinos came from and gave results instantly. In February 1987, the Kamiokande detector registered 12 neutrino observations over a 17-minute period. They came from a supernova (an exploding star) in another galaxy. This is actually a huge number of neutrinos compared to the usual number that are detected, so it indicated a particularly violent cosmic event.

X-ray astronomy

Riccardo Giacconi was the first person to discover x-rays hitting the Earth from space. These x-rays are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere and not detectable at ground level so he sent a rocket up above the atmosphere. He was specifically looking to see if the Moon gave off x-rays after being bombarded with energy from the Sun. He found no evidence for that but as the rocket tumbled through its six-minute flight, he detected a strong burst of x-rays from elsewhere in space. He also discovered a weak background of x-rays coming from all directions. Later, he launched the Uhuru, a satellite specifically designed for looking at these cosmic x-rays. It was followed by the Einstein X-ray Observatory and the Chandra satellite. The field of x-ray astronomy has vastly improved our understanding of the universe and some of its more exotic inhabitants, like black holes. It has also provided some of our most spectacular images of the universe.

More information at the American Physical Society

[David Harris: Science news]
2:20:06 PM    
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Check out this spectacular sight of a solar flare with the earth shown as a size comparison.
1:47:38 PM    
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"A ship in harbor is safe -- but that's not what a ship was built for."

--MMF in Earlytorise [Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
12:57:50 AM    

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Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The 2002 Chemistry Nobel Prize is being given "for the development of methods for identification and structure analyses of biological macromolecules" and going to John Fenn and Koichi Tanaka "for their development of soft desorption ionisation methods for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules" and Kurt Wüthrich "for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules in solution".

More details at the Nobel site

 

[David Harris: Science news]
12:53:25 AM    
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This man asked for our help - now he's dead

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:11:49 AM    

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  Wednesday, 9 October 2002



"Modern man thinks he loses something -- time -- when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains -- except kill it."


Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving, 1956) [Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
11:58:00 PM    

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Japanese Masters Get Closer to the Toilet Nirvana. Toilets in Japan are far more than mere hygienic necessities: new models test biological samples, provide climate control and even soundtracks. By James Brooke.

And yes, the Japanese are unlike the rest of the wold.

[New York Times: International]
10:22:20 AM    

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Nobel Prize in Physics.

The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced a few minutes ago as going to experimentalists for the detection of cosmic neutrinos and the discovery of cosmic x-ray sources.

Ray Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba  share half the prize for their neutrino studies and Riccardo Giacconi wins the other half for the x-ray work.

Details at the official Nobel site

Some background reading:

Physics Today, August 98, Kamiokande oscillation results
Physics Today, August 01, early SNO results
Physics Today, July 02, later SNO results
Scientific American, Jan 97, RXTE
Physics Today, May 00, x-ray background
Physics Today, Nov 00, Chandra results
Scientific American, May 90, Bahcall, solar nu problem
Scientific American, Aug 99, Kamiokande oscillation results
Physics Today, July 96, SNO

The articles from Physics Today will be available online at some time during the day at http://www.aip.org/pt/

Some relevant websites:

SNO website: http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/
US-Kamiokande: http://www.phys.washington.edu/~superk/
Beamline, Winter 99: http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/beamline/pdf/99iii.pdf
Early ref to neutrino oscillation: http://www.aip.org/physnews/preview/1998/neutrino/text.htm
long-baseline oscillation experiments: http://www.hep.anl.gov/ndk/longbnews/
AIP Photo Archive: https://raptor.aip.org/OA_HTML/aipCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=10005
Ray Davis history: http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/neutrino.html
Swedish Academy: http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/2002/phyreading.html
Physics Today articles: http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-55/iss-10/nobel.html
APS journal articles: http://www.aps.org/media/
Chandra X-Ray Telescope: http://chandra.harvard.edu/
Kamiokande: http://www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index.html
Associated Universities Inc.: http://www.aui.edu/
Ray Davis: The scientist and the man: http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Popular/RayDavis/paper.pdf
Photographs of Ray Davis: http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jnb/Papers/Popular/JohnRaypictures/johnraypictures.html

Other awards to the Laureates:

Raymond Davis, 1988 winner of the Tom W. Bonner Prize in Nuclear Physics: http://www.aps.org/praw/bonner/index.html
Raymond Davis, 1992 winner of the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics: http://www.aps.org/praw/panofsky/index.html
Masatoshi Koshiba, 2002 winner of the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics: http://www.aps.org/praw/panofsky/02winner.html

Original research papers:

--Raymond Davis, Jr--

The first two back-to-back papers showing that neutrinos from the sun should be detectable.

Solar Neutrinos I: Theoretical
John N. Bahcall
Phys. Rev. Lett. 12, 300[^]302 (16 March 1964)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v12/p300

Solar Neutrinos II: Experimental
Raymond Davis, Jr.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 12, 303[^]305 (16 March 1964)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v12/p303

The first experimental results

Search for Neutrinos from the Sun
Raymond Davis, Jr., Don S. Harmer, and Kenneth C. Hoffman
Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1205[^]1209 (20 May 1968)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v20/p1205


--Masatoshi Koshiba--

The next generation of neutrino detection experiments

Observation of 8B solar neutrinos in the Kamiokande-II detector
K. S. Hirata, et al.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 63, 16[^]19 (3 July 1989)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v63/p16


--Neutrino review papers--

A review of solar neutrino experiments and theory

Solar neutrino experiments: results and implications
Till A. Kirsten
Reviews of Modern Physics, 71, 1213-1232 (July 1999)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v71/p1213

A brief history of neutrino physics

Neutrino physics
L. Wolfenstein
Reviews of Modern Physics, 71, S140-S144 (March 1999)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/RMP/v71/pS140


--Riccardo Giacconi--

Evidence for x Rays From Sources Outside the Solar System
Riccardo Giacconi, Herbert Gursky, and Frank R. Paolini
Phys. Rev. Lett. 9, 439[^]443 (1 December, 1962)
http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v9/p439

 

[David Harris: Science news]
10:11:08 AM    
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Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz and John E. Sulston was announced in Stockholm this morning.

The winners were recognised for their work in understanding how genes play a role in determining how organs develop and removing old cells so as to keep organs just the right size.

Although their initial work was all done in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, they went on to show that equivalent genes exist in other species, including humans.

More details at the official Nobel site

[David Harris: Science news]
10:05:23 AM    
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  Tuesday, 8 October 2002



Digidesign announces Pro Tools 6.0 for OS X

[The Macintosh News Network]
6:42:37 AM    

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  Monday, 7 October 2002



The Arab satellite TV station al-Jazeera broadcast an audiotape today in which a male voice attributed to Osama bin Laden said the "youths of God" were planning more attacks against the United States.

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:37:02 PM    

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Oil has always been top of Bush's foreign-policy agenda

The White House decided that diplomacy was not an option in the Middle East, writes Ritt Goldstein.

[Sydney Morning Herald]
12:33:52 PM    

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Thousands at Central Park Rally Oppose an Iraq War.

Several thousand people filled the East Meadow on Sunday afternoon to protest a United States invasion of Iraq. By Michael Wilson.

[New York Times: International]
12:28:47 PM    

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Muslim anger at Prophet slur.

Iran adds its voice to condemnation of Jerry Falwell for dwcribing the Prophet Mohammed as "a terrorist".

[BBC News | WORLD]
12:23:55 PM    

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Adam Curry has done it again!

British Journal of Urology: "There was no statistically significant correlation between shoe size and stretched penile length."

This is handy information.

[via psychologisch nieuws] [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
12:20:06 PM    

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  Sunday, 6 October 2002



Predictions for the 2002 Nobels.

Anybody care to share their predictions for the 2002 Nobels? My personal pick for the physics prize: Ray Davis and John Bahcall for their work on the solar neutrino problem. Then in a few years time, others such as Art McDonald can win for discovering neutrino oscillations.

This is analogous to the 1997 and 2001 prizes. After Bose-Einstein condensates were created in 1995, there was an obvious Nobel prize. I guessed wrongly at that point that Wieman, Cornell and Ketterle would win the prize almost immediately. I forgot to take into account that there really needed to be a prize for the work that allowed them to create BECs. So the 1997 prize went to Cohen-Tannoudji, Phillips and Chu for their laser trapping and cooling. The BEC discovery was rewarded in 2001.

[David Harris: Science news]
11:14:17 AM    

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Daily News: "Martha Stewart was walloped with a one-two punch this week."

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
11:11:03 AM    

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Ig Nobel prizes awarded for amorous ostriches and belly button lint.

The Ig Nobel prizes honour achievements that "cannot or should not be reproduced" and were presented this week in the lead up to the real Nobel prizes.

This year's Ig Nobels were awarded for research into the mating habits of ostriches, belly button lint, beer foam, a computer-based automatic dog-to-human language translation device, and a washing machine for cats and dogs, among others.

For a full list of winners see the Ig Nobel prize page at the Annals of Improbable Research site, my favourite science humour journal.

[David Harris: Science news]
11:05:15 AM    

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Japanese Proverb. "Fall seven times, stand up eight."

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
10:59:58 AM    

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Swiss Call a Meeting to Re-examine the Geneva Conventions. Switzerland will hold a meeting to try to update how the Geneva Conventions, rules of warfare that began 150 years ago, are applied. By The New York Times.

[New York Times: International]
10:55:00 AM    

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Ralph Lee, a King of the Road, Is Dead at 99. Ralph Lee, a celebrated knight-errant of the British road, died on Sept. 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. He was 99. By Douglas Martin.

[New York Times: International]
10:51:33 AM    

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"Red Dragon". Anthony Hopkins? Big deal! We've already seen the prequel to "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal" -- and it was better the first time as Manhunter.

[Salon.com]
10:41:26 AM    

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  Saturday, 5 October 2002



Where does Adam Curry find these things?

I can always trust Dennis to find a link like this story about Britney's lesbian lust.

[Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
8:51:04 AM    

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Here's a bit of a look at how Saudis see September 11.

Inside the 'garden of evil'

[Sydney Morning Herald]
8:25:43 AM    

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Cornered Crean caves in to save job

[Sydney Morning Herald]
7:58:46 AM    

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  Friday, 4 October 2002



Douglas Adams. "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
6:24:16 PM    

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  Wednesday, 2 October 2002



Madison Avenue and your brain. New advances in neuroscience are explaining why people just do it, exactly as they're told to, when that commercial comes on.

[Salon.com]
11:42:24 AM    

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You have to love the many levels of government!

San Francisco Chronicle. From the San Francisco Chronicle: Two days after Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill legalizing the use of the electric Segway Scooter on California sidewalks, San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly introduced legislation that would ban the two-wheelers in the city.

[Paul Boutin]
11:29:53 AM    

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Happy birthday, Leni Riefenstahl. Hitler's favorite filmmaker turns 100 -- and still says she didn't do anything wrong.

[Salon.com]
11:23:07 AM    

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Theodore Roosevelt. "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
10:58:49 AM    

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Contact lenses increase "pulling" power.

Contact wearers were three times more likely to hug, four times more likely to kiss and six times more likely to "fondle" than glasses wearers.

Of course, when you look into the fine print, you discover that the study was funded by Novartis, a company that makes contact lenses so you had better read the conclusions with that in mind...

More details at the University of Warwick

[David Harris: Science news]
10:54:45 AM    
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Oh yeah!

"My problem is reconciling my net income with my gross habits." -Erroll Flynn

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
3:28:20 AM    

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The New York Times asks Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?.

The last sightings of Osama bin Laden of which his pursuers can be reasonably certain were in the White Mountains of southeastern Afghanistan. By John F. Burns.

[New York Times: International]
3:24:17 AM    

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Ditto this one!

Goldberg 2.3: free QuickTime viewer/editor

[The Macintosh News Network]
3:16:18 AM    

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Storm Music Studio 2.0: audio creation app

Sounds good; OSX, not too expensive.

[The Macintosh News Network]
3:11:52 AM    

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I think this is so important. Dave has been on about this for years.

Watson author talks Apple developer relations

[The Macintosh News Network]
3:03:39 AM    

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Seneca. "One should count each day a separate life."

[Rick@Leaders.net: Quotes]
2:56:38 AM    

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Last update: 27/9/05; 8:51:30 PM.