16 Mar 2004
Dihydrogen Monoxide

This tale told by the link below reminds me of a little ditty I learned in my high school chemistry class:

Charlie was a chemist, but Charlie is no more.
What Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4

(link) [Sacramento Bee] (via Secular Blasphemy)

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Speed Meets Feed in Download Tool

An innovative use of RSS, to be sure. It still seems to be that it would require an "always on" connection to the 'Net, but it would appear to solve some serious UI issues with huge downloads. I may have to play with it a bit.

Big files are a pain for sender and receiver. A programmer proposes a slick solution: a marriage of RSS and BitTorrent. By Paul Boutin.

(link) [Wired News]

00:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Locusts swarm across Australia

Lot's of folks think this is just something out of ancient times - but locusts are still a big problem, especially in developing countries. Kinda rare, I suspect, in Austrailia.

Millions of locusts are moving from the Australian outback into southern towns, say officials.

(link) [BBC News | World | UK Edition]

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

Healthier milk straight from the cow

I've got to wonder the obvious: healthier in comparison to what? Standard dairy cows, pumped full of grain and antibiotics? Probably.

I would like to see a study comparing the "healthiness" of both beef and dairy products from cattle raised on grass, and cattle raised on man-made feeds and grain. I just have a hard time believing that milk from a cow stuffed full of rapeseed would produce healthier product than that from a cow raised the way cows are supposed to be rasied: on pasture.

Cows fed a diet rich in rapeseed yield healthier milk, and butter that can be spread straight from the fridge, research reveals.

(link) [Nature] via The Green Man

00:00 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link