The life and ramblings of Mr. Skjæveland
Since I’ve announced it everywhere else, I might as well say it here, too: I’ve got a new job. At New Year’s, I’ll be moving to Longyearbyen to study polar cap patches, an obscure phenomenon in dayside northern lights. If all goes well, I’ll have a Ph.D. to my name in three years.
Oh, one more thing:
Wheeeee!
Admittedly, only a meagre fourth author, but still, first post!
One of the incrediblest things I’ve heard in a while: over a hundred children have had half their brains surgically removed as treatment of extreme seizures. Apparently it works remarkably well.
So another thing I decide that the world needs:
Voilà, I can reenact Hamlet’s conversation with Yorick with my own skull. Or, at least, a replica of it. And contemplate the mystery of the brain using my own as a paperweight.
All the technologies are right here. We have them today. We had them years ago. All that is needed is for Someone™ pull a wire from one to the other and connect them.
Finally, somebody took the trouble to enumerate and rank the various methods for destroying the Earth.
So I stumbled across this neat blast radius simulator. Now, seeing as I don’t really have any real grasp of how big Manhattan is, I found Oslo around (10.76, 59.92) instead. Very interesting. Since it’s Google Maps-powered, I found my apartment at (10.76021, 59.93917). Quite… interesting to simulate the collateral damage in the event that somebody nukes me. Some interesting numbers: 15 kT (Hiroshima), 21 kT (Nagasaki), 50 MT (Tsar Bomba).
Go Darwin! Go Darwin! It’s your birthday!
It looks like somebody doesn’t like Escherichia coli.
Just a few days past perihelion, a comet has finally brightened enough to be worth looking at. Pity it took so long, because it’s bloody close to the sun now, and hard to see. Couldn’t see it this morning, there were clouds in the way.
På dagen eitt år etter at eg tok hovudfagseksamen får eg servert det … fjerde beste nordljoset eg har sett. Lukke.
The Spaceweather newsletter informs me that a coronal mass ejection has just left the building sun, and might very well cause auroras in a couple of nights’ time. Good thing the skies have been reasonably clear the last couple of days.
The newsletter also has this nice bit:
GEMINID METEORS: The Geminid meteor shower peaks tonight. Start watching around 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday, Dec. 13th. The display will start small but grow in intensity as the night wears on. By Thursday morning, Dec. 14th, people in dark, rural areas could see one or two Geminids every minute.
Whee!
Evening update:
Bloody weather.
