One of the most powerful earthquakes known of in continental North America since European settlement was the New Madrid earthquake in 1811. Damage occurred over an area of nearly 240,000 mi2, and the quake itself was felt over an area of nearly 2 million mi2. Here’s a partial description of the impact: At the onset […]
Man gets stuck in elevator for a long, long time: The longest smoke break of Nicholas White’s life began at around eleven o’clock on a Friday night in October, 1999. White, a thirty-four-year-old production manager at Business Week, working late on a special supplement, had just watched the Braves beat the Mets on a television […]
Video o’ the day: (Here are the lyrics if you need them.) I find this video particularly endearing because the lead girl looks (dresses, acts, reads, etc.) so much like my 22-year-old daughter Salem (except Salem [aka Emily] is cuter). Hat tip to Bad Astronomy. ..bruce w..
I’m a fan of Howard Phillip Lovecraft, not because I think he was a great writer (his prose is a bit purple by today’s standards), but because he really was the father of 20th Century post-Gothic horror. Sadly, all the film adaptations of Lovecraft’s work to date have been mediocre at best and usually wretched, […]
Bloomberg business news brings us word of General Electric’s fall in profits and reduction in forecast: April 11 (Bloomberg) — General Electric Co. dropped the most since the 1987 stock market crash after reporting an unexpected decline in profit just a month after Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt assured investors 2008 earnings would be met. […]
As you may or may not be aware, Hugo Chavez, strong man of Venezuela, recently banned “The Simpsons” from Venezuelan TV, replacing it with — wait for it — “Baywatch Hawaii.” Shawn Macomber, over at the American Spectator blog, likewise pointed out that during his recent visit to Venezuela, episodes of the shows “Men in […]
A blast from the past, circa 1992. The place is San Diego, the company is Pages Software. Back then the internet was not yet invented, but we has usenet news groups. The following appeared Jan 17, 1992 in comp.sys.next.misc Just how many Bruce’s are there at Pages? Well, I have recently gotten a couple of […]
UPDATE: 04/10/08 – 1255 MDT: We’re currently getting winds in the 35-42 MPH range, which has dropped the wind chill down below zero (it was at -2 deg F a minute or so ago). And yes, it’s still snowing. ============== There was no snow on the ground at all when I went to bed late […]
I’ve posted Improv Everywhere videos before — particularly the famous “I need a napkin” musical — but this one is the most elaborate and professional that I’ve seen: Be sure to read the whole article over at Improv Everywhere to get a sense of the planning that went into this. Hat tip to Metafilter. ..bruce […]
CO2 Mashup – Largely Hot Air
Click on image for greater detail Word via io9 that Purdue has put together a map of the US showing their guess of CO2 emission density. They call the System “Vulcan” and it’s interesting because there is no sensor grid for CO2. Instead Vulcan derives a guess on CO2 density from local air pollution data […]
Read More