"It doesn't sound as bad in mph"

From the Irish times today:

A judge said yesterday that a speeding driver's 180km/h did not sound "as bad" when converted to miles - 112mph

This guy was driving down the Bundoran-Ballyshannon bypass at 80kmph over the speed limit when he was caught. His sentence was reduced from an outright ban to a fine based on the fact that he would lose his job if he had a ban.

.... but he was travelling at 180kmph! Even driving on the Autobahns in Germany I've never clocked that speed (and it would be legal). However for me its the Judge's asinine remark about it not seeming as fast when converted to mph that is the most astounding part of this report. It would sound even less bad if it were converted into light years per hour (1.9 x 10^-11), but thats not the really the point.

Seriously, how are the roads to get safer if people don't take speeds like this seriously?
What'll kill you (or someone else) in an accident is the amount of kenetic energy that your vehicle has. The thing about kenetic energy though is that it is proportional to your speed squared. So someone travelling 180kmph has over 3 times the kenetic energy of someone travelling at 100kmph. The penalties for driving recklessly should reflect this.

(rant over :-)

Dog shoots man.

From the Gaurdian:

James Harris, 37, was shot last Friday while out with a party shooting for pheasants in Poweshiek county in the midwest state.

The Iowa natural resources department said the victim rested his gun on the ground while retrieving a shot pheasant. As he crossed a fence a dog trod on the trigger and shot him in the calf from just a metre away.
Although he was hit by more than 100 birdshot pellets his injuries are not life threatening. He is recovering in hospital in Iowa City.

Alan Foster, a department spokesman, told the AFP news agency that it was not uncommon for hunters to be shot by their dogs.

"I hear about it a couple of times a year," he said. "They'll step on the trigger assembly and, if the gun for whatever reason wasn't on safety, it doesn't take a whole lot to trip a trigger."

On the evolution of words

I'm a bit late with this (to be honest its been really busy lately.. hence no posts ;-).

A fascinating study by Mark Pagel (whom I've met a couple of times) on the rates of evolution of words in languages. 

Have you ever wondered why some words are so similar in some languages and others are so different?

For example, the word for "two" in many of the european languages are related (Scots: "twa", Dutch: "twee", Swedish: "Tva", Danish: "to"), check out this site for listings of many more examples of numbers.

However, many more words are completely different. 

Pagel and colleagues examined the similarities and differences between many Indo-European languages and found that those words that are used more often evolve more slowly compared to those words that are used less often.

 This was all done using bioinformatics techniques designed for analysing the evolution of DNA. Interestingly, their results bear a striking resemblance to the the rule of thumb that those genes that are more important tend to evolve (or change) more slowly than those genes, whose functions are less important to the organism.

Their paper was published in nature and you can read the abstract here.

For the Biology Nerd in your life

Giant Microbes specialise in making plush toys that look like various disease causing bacteria and viruses and different human cell types. The little guy to the left is a white blood cell (or leukocyte), while to the right is a type of brain cell (a neuron to be exact). I can't wait for the conference lecture where someone starts their talk by producing one of these as a visual aid! . Check out their wesite here

First the Rugby.... and now this!?!

Well now we really are the laughing stock of the international community!

The Irish national bridge team failed to get through to the quater finals of the World bridge team championships in Shanghai on Saturday.

Next someone is going to say we aren't going to be good enough to get through to the finals of the Bog snorkling world championships! Then where will our national pride be?

Water taxi starts on Liffey today

From The Irish Times

The first ferry to run services traversing the river Liffey in more than 20 years will be launched from Dublin's Docklands today.

The water taxi will take passengers across the river from the City Moorings on the north quays to Sir John Rogerson's Quay on the south side for a €2 charge, reinstating a service first introduced on the river more than 500 years ago.

This will run between IFSC and the Grand Canal Square as a pilot scheme for two years while the Macken Street Bridge is going through the planning phases.

The Ig nobel Awards

So its that time of the year again. I know plenty of Scientists that would love to win one of these :-)
From their website:

The Ig Nobel Prizes honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology.

The winners as announced on Thursday were (drumroll.......)

MEDICINE
Brian Witcombe of Gloucester, UK, and Dan Meyer of Antioch, Tennessee, USA, for their penetrating medical report "Sword Swallowing and Its Side Effects."

PHYSICS
L. Mahadevan of Harvard University, USA, and Enrique Cerda Villablanca of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, for studying how sheets become wrinkled.

BIOLOGY
Prof. Dr. Johanna E.M.H. van Bronswijk of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands, for doing a census of all the mites, insects, spiders, pseudoscorpions, crustaceans, bacteria, algae, ferns and fungi with whom we share our beds each night.

CHEMISTRY
Mayu Yamamoto of the International Medical Center of Japan, for developing a way to extract vanillin -- vanilla fragrance and flavoring -- from cow dung.

LINGUISTICS
Juan Manuel Toro, Josep B. Trobalon and Núria Sebastián-Gallés, of Universitat de Barcelona, for showing that rats sometimes cannot tell the difference between a person speaking Japanese backwards and a person speaking Dutch backwards.

LITERATURE
Glenda Browne of Blaxland, Blue Mountains, Australia, for her study of the word "the" -- and of the many ways it causes problems for anyone who tries to put things into alphabetical order.

PEACE
The Air Force Wright Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio, USA, for instigating research & development on a chemical weapon -- the so-called "gay bomb" -- that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other.

NUTRITION
Brian Wansink of Cornell University, for exploring the seemingly boundless appetites of human beings, by feeding them with a self-refilling, bottomless bowl of soup.

ECONOMICS
Kuo Cheng Hsieh, of Taichung, Taiwan, for patenting a device, in the year 2001, that catches bank robbers by dropping a net over them.

AVIATION
Patricia V. Agostino, Santiago A. Plano and Diego A. Golombek of Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Argentina, for their discovery that Viagra aids jetlag recovery in hamsters.

The return of the Radioactive Boy Scout

David Hahn is famous for trying to build a nuclear reactor in his mother's shed as part of his eagle scout project in the early nineties. It all went wrong when he realised that it was emitting large amounts of radiation. He was eventually discovered and a huge radiation cleanup plan was initiated. (You can read the entire story here). He inspired a book and a tv film and I, like many others thought that we had heard the last of him.
A lesson learned you might think?
.
.
.
Apparently not. David (now 31) was arrested in August for stealing smoke detectors (the source of his radioactive isotope from his teenage years) a charge to which he admitted. It looked like he was starting to stockpile them.... perhaps for a second chance to complete what he started as a teenager?

more details: foxnews, wikipedia

Lab unintentionally creates explosive

Ok... a little sensationalist :-)

A controlled explosion was carried out early yesterday on a chemical used in the research centre of Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin, after it was found in an altered state.

The altered state in question was that it had dried out and turned to powder. As a liquid, this chemical is used often as a staining agent for slides in labs that routinely study bacterial samples. However as a powder it has been used in the past as a high powered explosive. I can understand completely how something like this could happen. A bottle gets left on the top shelf and forgotten.... etc.
You have to congratulate the person who not only noticed this, but realised that it was potentially dangerous.

More on Picric Acid.

Mystery Woman and Chihuahua!

The world is getting more and more bizzare!

A woman presented herself to Store street Garda station on Sunday morning last with no recollection of who she is or any details about herself.
She is described as being in her mid-30s, 5ft 9-10in tall, of slim build and with collar-length brown hair. She has hazel eyes and an American/Canadian accent. She can also speak French.

She has three tattoos: two are of Arabic-style writing on her left upper arm and the back of her neck; the third is a Celtic design on the back of one of her legs.
She was wearing a black skirt and top with a black trench coat, leopard-skin shoes and a multicoloured headscarf. She was carrying a Chihuahua dog.
more from the Irish times.

This is very reminiscent of the "Piano man"

Happy Birthday Space Age!

The Space age is 50 years old today!


History changed on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I. The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a basketball, weighed only 183 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. That launch ushered in new political, military, technological, and scientific developments. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race.

more from here

Leapfrogging mayor bruises tomato

I think that I need add no more.....


By Bryce McGarel
BBC News

The Lord Mayor of Belfast has apologised to a council worker left with back injuries after he tried to leapfrog her during a photoshoot.
Lorraine Mallon suffered a slipped disc when Jim Rodgers' knee accidently hit her head as he attempted to vault her.

Ms Mallon had been dressed as a tomato to launch a gourmet garden event in Botanic Gardens last month.

The Ulster Unionist councillor said he attempted the act of athleticism at the request of photographers.

"I have been absolutely devastated over what has happened," he said.


"There had been three false runs and I think Lorraine thought this was just another one.


"I just caught the top of her head and unfortunately I injured her."

Mr Rodgers said he was confident he could have made the vault.

He said: "I'm very fit and look after myself, but it was just one of those unfortunate things.

"I have kept in regular contact with her and my thoughts and prayers are with her.

"I just hope now that she makes a speedy and full recovery."


Ms Mallon, who works for the arts section of Belfast City Council's development department, has been unable to return to work since the accident happened on 4 September.

Biscuit Wars!

From the Irish times:

Jacobs has accused rival biscuit firm McVities of "living dangerously" in a High Court row over fig rolls and cream crackers.

Seriously. You couldn't make this stuff up!

Heidelberg Herbst

I just about managed to survive the Heidelberg Herbst (Autumn festival) in the old town this weekend. Normally I'd be all for this kind of thing, but this particular festival is nearly unbearable. All the shops lining Hauptstrasse set up stalls outside the front of their premises and this squeezes everyone together on the street. I guess the real problem is that its just to damn  popular! You can't move anywhere unless you know the back streets. Later on this become a bit of a messy night to with all the drinking outdoors etc...

This festival is the antithesis of the reserved german festivals that I've become used to over here....perhaps I've been here to long :-) 

Heres a selection of photos from flickr on the event (perhaps its not as bad as I make out :-)

ARGH!

I am well fed up of listening to/reading stuff about the failure of the irish team to get out of the pool stages of the rugby world cup. ENOUGH ALREADY!