The Brown campus is in the midst of some major construction. After a rather obtrusive utilities upgrade, Brown will boldly connect it’s Main Green to the Pembroke campus. This noble effort is known as “The Walk”. It involves many stages of demolition and construction, and threatens to tear down all structures that stand in its [...]
Last spring I was excited to learn that Starbucks would no longer be the only coffee house on Thayer Street. An independent establishment, Blue State Coffee, was on its way. I wasn’t sure about the name (a reference to Rhode Island’s official nickname perhaps?), so I looked it up on google. This page from bluestatecoffee.com [...]
My house has been getting weekly vegetables from a Scratch Farm thanks to one of Rhode Island’s many fine CSAs. Last week we received several delicious heirloom tomatoes and one giant freak tomato which threatened the sanctity of our kitchen. From the angle of this photo, it looks a lot like leatherface in produce [...]
Steven Dubner wrote a post today highlighting the bursty nature of the linescore for the Rangers recent 30 to 3 victory over the Orioles. Knowing that the Rangers scored 30 runs, Steven says he would have predicted an inning-by-inning score that looked something like 4 3 1 0 5 6 3 5 3, but the [...]
I’m pretty surprised I missed this article in last week’s Science Times. It highlights the work of Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford known for the Simulation argument. He observed that humans are likely to one day produce highly complex computer simulations of the universe. These simulations would contain conscious humans. At that point, many [...]
I came a came across a choice set of wheels on Amazon today. It’s called the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank . As personal tanks go, it’s a steal. Only $20,000! The customer reviews are quite entertaining:
I’ll admit it. Shopping for a personal tank can be a bit daunting. Many times in the past I’ve purchased [...]
For the last two nights a house on nearby Barnes Street has claimed it’s being broken into. It’s loud robotic warning goes a little something like this:
“Burglar! Burglar! Burglar! Burglar! Burglar! Burglar! Burglar! Burglar!…”
Last night some friends mentioned the recent news coverage of two German scientists claiming to have measured photons traveling faster than light. Ars Technica provides some informed debunking of these claims, but true or not, my friends wanted to know why super light speed travel was such a big deal. In particular, they had heard [...]
Following some rather lengthy posts, here’s a photo of the world’s tallest man meeting the world’s shortest man. Oddly they are both from the same part of Mongolia.
Also, here’s a story about the world’s oldest person who happens to live in the same Indiana country as the world’s tallest women. Simply amazing!
Yesterday I rambled on about Facebook in lieu of discussing a New York Times article explaining why women and men must have the exact same average number of heterosexual partners, despite what survey’s reveal. Unfortunately the article fails to acknowledge the difference between a medians and averages, nor does it offer any real explanation for [...]