View what the ISS would see in real time

The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two
LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen.

The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes
with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro
mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as
much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive
bays for up to 960GB of storage.

It's all in an 11-lb. brick -- five times the weight of netbooks,
such as the Asus Eee 701, and at least double the weight of typical
laptops -- that is encased in the ThinkPad's trademark ebony exterior.

"This is the nitro-burning drag racer of ThinkPads," said Craig
Merrigan, vice president of global consumer marketing at Lenovo, in a
briefing this week.

The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.

News about the W700ds was originally timed for release the week of the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. But details leaked out on blogs earlier this month after a Web page went live early on IBM's Web site.

"Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their
desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on
their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.

The primary WUXGA 17-in. screen is brighter and more colorful than
other notebook PC screens, Williams said. The main screen is rated at
400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than any other notebook in
the market, he added. It also has a color gamut equivalent to 72% of
Adobe RGB that is better than other notebooks and a plus for
photographers and graphic designers, Williams said.

The W700ds' secondary 10.6-in. vertical screen is about the size of
a typical netbook display, Lenovo said, or about 40% the size of the
W700ds' primary 17-in. display. It can also be tilted up to 30 degrees
like a car's rearview mirror.

The W700ds also includes a built-in WACOM digitizer, also called an
electronic drawing pad, and color calibration software. Despite its
power and weight, Williams claimed that the W700ds runs "incredibly
cool" because of the use of dual fans and dual-heat reduction systems.

The trade-offs? Besides price and weight, the W700ds is bulkier than
typical laptops, measuring 16 inches by 12 inches, and is 2.1 inches
thick. The ultrathin MacBook Air, by comparison, is 13 by 9 inches and only 0.75 inches thick.

Richard Shim,
an analyst at research firm IDC, said the W700ds is a "very niche-y,
technical showcase type of product" that will nevertheless likely be a
"big hit" with photographers, designers and developers who will value
the included productivity-enhancing tools over its shoulder-aching
weight.

Lenovo unveiled the single-screen version of the ThinkPad W700 in August. That machines starts with a price tag of about $2,500.

To connect to external monitors, the W700 includes both DisplayPort video adapters as well as dual-link DVI.

The W700ds is so wide that it boasts a separate numeric keypad, a rarity on laptop keyboards.

Can a television ever be too big?

All the talk of "carbon credits" and "carbon trading" miss the point completely. Carbon taken from the atmosphere and re-emitted is a zero-sum process. The ONLY carbon that should be considered is that obtained from fossil fuels, since it is currently locked away: burning it is a one-way process. It should be remembered though that once this carbon was in the atmosphere, and on a geological timescale atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are even now very low.

Whether fossil fuels are burnt at the current rate, or at a higher rate or lower rate also has little impact on eventual atmospheric carbon dioxide - the fact is if you use it all 50 years or 500 years is nothing on a geological timescale.

New models (I'm skeptical of ALL models, but this one can be balanced against the usual fear-mongering ones) suggest that the extra CO2 will actually help stave off the next ice-age. And all things considered an ice age is a far greater threat to life on Earth that any moderate warming (currently the Earth is in a cool period).

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Zoom from 15,000,000,000 light years in

The subject was a 14-year-old male Indian elephant named Tusko being housed at the Lincoln Park Zoo. As previous research had suggested that high doses to LSD were needed to get perceivable effects in "lower animals," they decided to start with a 0.1 mg/kg dose of LSD for Tusko. That came to about 297 milligrams (in 5 mL of water, injected intramuscularly) of LSD for 7000 pound Tusko. The injection was delivered via a pressurized CO2 dart gun. For comparison, the threshold dosage for an effect in people is around 20-30 micrograms and a recreational 3+ hour dose would be around 100-200 micrograms.

After injection:

"Tusko began trumpeting and rushing around the pen, a reaction not unlike the one he had shown the day before (during the placebo shot). However, this time his restlessness appeared to increase for 3 minutes after the injection; then he stopped running and showed signs of marked incoordination. He began to sway, his hindquarters buckled, and it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain himself upright. Five minutes after the injection he trumpeted, collapsed, fell heavily on his right side, defecated, and went into status epilepticus."

The researchers were understandable quite surprised and distressed by the elephants seriously bad reaction to the LSD (they theorized that elephants were actually quite resistant to psychotropic substances). They tried to alleviate the seizures by administering promazine hydrochloride (Thorazine, 2800 mg!), which had a modest effect in reducing the spasms but did nothing for Tusko's overall state. A last ditch effort to save the animal by injection of pentobarbitol sodium was also unsuccessful, and Tusko died 1 hour and 40 minutes after the LSD dose.

Read more about it here

Here's a comparison of various subways drawn to scale. I've used quite a few of these - I hadn't realised that Paris' was so small.

People often think an opinion heard repeatedly from the same person is actually a popular opinion.

Whether people are making financial decisions in the stock market or worrying about terrorism, they are likely to be influenced by what others think. And, according to a new study in this month's Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA), repeated exposure to one person's viewpoint can have almost as much influence as exposure to shared opinions from multiple people. This finding shows that hearing an opinion multiple times increases the recipient's sense of familiarity and in some cases gives a listener a false sense that an opinion is more widespread then it actually is.

In a series of six experiments that included 1044 students, from the University of Michigan, Princeton University, Rutgers University, University of Michigan -- Dearborn, University of Toledo and Harvard University, researchers sought to understand individuals' accuracy in identifying group norms and opinions. The experiments included dividing students into three groups, (three person control group, single opinion group and repeated opinions group).

Participants in the three person control group read three opinion statements each made by a different group member. The participants in the repeated opinion group read the same three statements but they were all attributed to one group member. Those in the single opinion control group read one opinion statement from one group member.

The studies found that an opinion is more likely to be assumed to be the majority opinion when multiple group members express their opinion. However, the study also showed that hearing one person express the same opinion multiple times had nearly the same effect on listener's perception of the opinion being popular as hearing multiple people state his/her opinion.

Researchers examined the underlying processes that take place when individuals estimate the shared attitude of a group of people and how that estimation of collective opinion can be influenced by repetition from a single source. Since gauging public opinion is such an essential component in guiding our social interactions, this research has implications in almost every facet of modern day life.

From Science Daily
"This study conveys an important message about how people construct estimates of group opinion based on subjective experiences of familiarity," states lead author Kimberlee Weaver, (Ph.D), of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. "The repetition effect observed in this research can help us to understand how our own impressions are influenced by what we perceive to be the reality of others. For example, a congressman may get multiple phone calls from a small number of constituents requesting a certain policy be implemented or changed, and from those requests must decide how voters in their state feel about the issue. This study sheds light on the cognitive processes that take place that may influence such a decision."

Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of "clinical death"—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?

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This chair needs to be seen to be believed.

This is a very strange phenomenon

Copy and paste the following code into the address bar of your web browser:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

Space Shuttle Atlantis undocks from the International Space Station as it eclipses the sun. (Zoom in a look at the specks on the left)

Get a Leatherman instead.

The Falkirk Wheel is the world's only rotating Boat Lift and is used to connect the Forth & Clyde and Union canals in central Scotland.

Designed to replace a series of lock gates built in the 19th Century - long since demolished and replaced by housing - the Falkirk Wheel is the showpiece of the Millennium Link project where coast-to-coast navigation of the canals has been re-established for the first time in since the 1960's.