Month: September 2003

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In order to detect black holes, astronomers have been concentrating on observing their event horizons, the edges where matter is just starting to be pulled in. While observing ripples in matter in the Perseus Cluster “caused by the rhythmic squeezing and heating of the cosmic gas by the intense gravitational pressure” of a black hole, astronomers observed that jets of matter were ejected, creating pressures that generated sound waves. Astronomer Andrew Fabian of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, England says that “The intensity of the sound is comparable to human speech,” but the B-flat “pitch of the sound is about 57 octaves below the middle C at the middle of a standard piano keyboard.” This is obviously well below any tone that a human can hear, but I think it’s pretty cool to think of the universe as a cosmic orchestra. Although maybe this is annoying the hell out of someone out there… 😉

It’s apparently a very good time to view Saturn, because “at times during Saturn’s 29.5-year orbit, the rings open up to a maximum angle of 26 degrees.” Space.com reports that the Hubble Space Telescope took full advantage of this fact, capturing a series of photographs of the ringed planet in March, releasing them today.

The DoN Naval Historical Center displays the first “computer bug,” a moth found trapped between relays in a Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator in September 1945. Who knew…

Slashdot reports (via the Washington Post) that Berkeley Breathed, cartoonist of Bloom County and Outland, is returning to the Sunday papers on November 23rd with a new comic strip entitled Opus, starring the famous cartoon penguin of the same name, of course. I’m really looking forward to this, as I really miss Bloom County. Now if only Bill Watterson would make his triumphant return as well…

OK, folks, the YACCS server is back up and running, so feel free to share all of those pent-up comments I know you’ve been dying to write! C’mon, throw me a frickin’ bone here… 😉

Singer Warren Zevon died on Sunday at the age of 56 of mesothelioma, asbestos-caused cancer. He revealed that he had terminal cancer in September 2002; his initial prognosis was only three months, although this pronouncement infuriated his son Jordan: “Human beings have no right to tell other human beings how long they have to live unless they have some kind of firearm in their hands. Thank God he didn’t take it and use it as an excuse to throw everything away and give up.” And by all accounts Zevon did not give up. He was able to survive for a whole year after his diagnosis, spending his remaining days with his children and working on a final album, the development of which is chronicled in a VH1 special (which I ironically Tivoed but haven’t watched yet). I really enjoy his work, especially his trademark sardonic wit, although I must admit that I only own his greatest hits CD. I had planned on buying his latest album, The Wind, although it will certainly have a different perspective to it now.

Initially I hadn’t planned on posting anything about Zevon’s passing, but I decided that this was a story worth telling, even if I’m not qualified to do so. One of the best online tributes I came across is this series of pages, so you should really visit them to read more about him. Warren Zevon’s official page has a final message that is quite fitting, considering his penchant for facing death “with the same dark sense of humor found in much of his music:” “Enjoy every sandwich.”

The Presurfer links to a very cool site: “The Royal Society of Chemistry has created a fascinating virtual look into the Periodic Table of Elements. The site offers an original artistic interpretation of each element, information on its history, electron configuration and current uses.” (use the Flash portion of the site for best results…)

The Sacramento Bee interviewed Jim Koch, “sixth-generation brewmaster and founder of the Boston Beer Company, the New England brewery best known for Samuel Adams Boston Lager” about the release of the new Samuel Adams Utopias MMII beer, which is being marketed as the world’s strongest beer with 25% alcohol content. It is being sold as a collectible, limited-edition run of 8,500 24-ounce bottles, “aged for roughly two years in bourbon, scotch, cognac and port barrels and packaged in a kettle-shaped, copper-colored bottle” and selling for $100 a bottle (!). Although “legally, technically and practically, it’s beer,” “don’t expect it to taste like beer.” The Sacramento Bee held an informal taste test, concluding that “Utopias ‘is obviously not a quaffer – it’s a sipper,’” and that “after tasting this extreme beer, ‘you’ll probably want a real one.’” Reviews at The Beer Advocate were decidedly more positive, but I don’t think I’ll be trying this any time soon…

When I read this article, the first thing I thought of was The Simpsons episode (Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk) in which Homer bought one bottle of Henry K. Duff’s Private Reserves beer for $25 when he prematurely sold his stock in the nuclear plant… 🙂

This makes my brain hurt.