Plantagenet Penguinista

I was surprised to discover that an international composite science team has been measuring quasar emissions and is now raising “the possibility that the fine structure constant (“the proton-electron mass constant”) might have changed slightly as the universe got older” — which, given that other teams and individuals are disputing the default/assigned ages typical asserted at quasars, might have a more immediate impact than first expected. What surprised me a little more was discovering a 2001 report (5 years so far) also covering this approach . If the change is upheld, there will be new, genuine, and potentially massive changes in how physics is applied in real life (especially but not only in a large scale), which could speed revolutionary development within science (both “factoid” and “political”) in important ways.

It seems that one of our big technical companies has discovered that most DNA junk is not junk. As reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), regions of the human genome that were assumed to largely contain evolutionary leftovers (called “junk DNA”) may actually hold significant clues that can add to scientists’ understanding of cellular processes. IBM researchers have discovered that these regions contain numerous, short DNA “motifs,” or repeating sequence fragments, which also are present in the parts of the genome that give rise to proteins. ¶ If verified experimentally, the discovery suggests a potential connection between these coding and non-coding parts of the human genome that could have a profound impact on genomic research and provide important insights on the workings of cells. I hope that the many kilos I appear to have “evapourated” with surgical assistance a couple of months ago were not such, since they amounted to abou...

One side-effect of falling victim to a pointless vandal’s tricks is the loss of “30kg” of bulk — a mass which seems to be very close to 26-27kg in real life (but that is at least half of the entire mass of one of my startlingly dynamic Physio leaders and a significant proportion of the calmer/heftier one all taken away “instantly”). Far from making me similarly and dynamically fit, energetic and agile (/ME picturing said agile leader or the patient/less-disturbing/stronger fellow-leader), however, all it seems to mean in practical terms is that I don’t need to unfasten my jeans’ fasteners to exit them now. Also tallying against this as a possible “instant scale correction” is an enormous amount of risk (think “DOA”, of course sans any real notice), pain and probably expense — not to dwell too long on personal distress for many people — which brings “stop eating junk” into a clean, useful, pr...

Hokay, so National Geographic has announced a 2m tall oviraptor like “a giant, flightless turkey” (well, IMESHO, it looks like a drunken goobledygook — not that a real/modern turkey is any icon of decorative extravagance to start with) which “could probably run as fast as [...] 48 kilometers an hour” (notable quotes: “could you please have a little chat with my very large turkey while I run this way like a rabid emu?”). To add to the glory, it apparently didn’t sport any detectable feathers. That’s kind of like winning a lottery — nice in theory but practically never happens to real people. Then they report a Tyrannosaurus-Rex replacement(ish) from the Argentinan (that’s a seriously busy community) scientist Rodolfo Coria, named Mapusaurus Roseae ; the name is hyperphonic with my youngest daughter’s, but HP might mature at over 12m long (thankfully, Small Miss has a less majestic target to reach — imagine t...

If all goes well administratively, I’ll be heading home for good (modulo a single later session of cranioplasty — a long word for “reassembling skull bones in place” — at the big surgery) next weekend. Thank you, RPH branches and many heart-breakingly good staff, for reassembling and keeping together my frail little living-kit, and thanks even more to the beings and forces which stood behind your top-class skills to ensure that y’all together worked what amounted to serial medical astonishment [hearing my hardworking, skilled and knowledgeable family GP (Mr CN) speak to all of this progress is beyond amazing] and that all above/beyond your well-proven and amazing talents plus self-discipline. Thank you also, the truly stunning number of not-fundamentally-medical people who both directly and indirectly supported my recovery (including one hard-working and patient wife, three marvellous children and more other family, friends, coworkers and penguinista...

I saw some (digital) photos of a handful of people amusing themselves in a nice little “canyon”-like gorge in the Kimberley area, rinsing off under a bucket-or-two-a-second of water running down on the back of the gorge. Next came some photos from 8 minutes after a ver similar scene (same place on a different day). Some gentle rain upstream had enthused the water (in those 8 minutes) to run up from bucketfuls to many tens of tonnes of water per second. I say (somewhat vaguely) “tens of tonnes” of water because the flow was also heavily silted, which makes any guesstimate of mass kind of inaccurate, but in real life we’re probably seeing around about 20-30 cubic m (≈30-40 tonnes) every second through a runoff lip maybe 10m wide. The cameraman — although positioned by the top rim — was rapidly forced to leave lest the view go a little... well, downhill all of a sudden. Let’s just leave the summary description at “swimming didn...

...went shopping to prove it (with a brace of Occupation Therapists, including the most widely-reading therapist I’ve ever met, of almost any sort (hi, B!)). Out for this weekend, too — and if all goes well, from next weekend onwards as follow-up. It’s been excellently rewarding hunting down and euthanasing many of the little gremlins-of-life (examples: broken handles, full disks, lack of excellent pizzas and pasta , black car lights) yesterday afternoon. It’s not a perfect universe and all, but that part turnd out to be a very fulfilling segment of the husbandly role. Looking forward to more food variety again later; SWMBO did excellently well in recent meals. I suspect that despite OT practice sessions, my own culinary efforts would not be within shouting distance of hers, let alone rationally competitive.

Our marvellous landlord (Shane) visited today and officially started the wet season by attempting to do some gardening with a 5-kilo-ish axe. He had about half an hour before the weather got the hint, and managed to weight-loss the tree in question by about 100kg in that time, plus get it dragged and stacked out in the front yard for Council pickup. Shane then had lunch, which put said weather off-stride, then returned and completed the job in the dry — to the complete fascination of our littlest girl. Shane’s early-teen son did a very efficiant and neat job of “tidying” then exporting (wheelbarrowing) the smaller sections of tree with a 2-3kg axe at the same time. Small Sir, watching from the balcony, was definitely impressed by the speed and neatness of Master Early-Teen’s mission. Note to self: no axes in Small Sir’s or Small Madam’s sight/reach until after real training has happened for each (and for me as well, come to consider things ...

One of the interesting things which a naif approach to software can do is teach you a lot about how the naïveté sees your results. I haven’t viewed this page in Internet Exploder; characters work perfectly in every browser I have; I’m not going to find a virus-magnet (’Doze) just to test how standard HTML characters [any reported rejects as at posting-time testing appear to be Blogger adjustments simply to flatter Exploder] display in it. Today, Small Sir showed me a new view of a multi-megabit CPU, display and gigibits of memory and hard disks. The small-looking computer we keep for children’s games was switched off, but Sir wished to play a favoured game upon it, one which displays golden five-pointed stars when anything significant is achieved. Since the power leads for the computer are (very wisely, in reconsideration) not visible, he simply started with paper/plastic gold stars from his beloved Mum’s excellent literary/art kits. This was ...

Thanks, David Starkoff, for a reference to a striking social/moral point which has evidently been missed or ignored by many powerful people. I confess to having started this thought in the computer industry scene, where at least one of the prime candidates — apparently deliberately — builds their software fragile, so that they can often make more money from a customer’s suffering than from their benefit; this is not, however, the only place this destructive manner of trap is placed. Anyone who can’t see what manner of disaster is being teed up (or continued) for both customers and the greedy perpetrator’s own self is invited to seriously study a number of kilowords of a variety of accurate commercial history before the trap totals your business (or in a few instances, it totals your life).

My PICC and “Trache” lines are now obsolete and removed, as is my “yellow card” (potentially a Golden Staph-ish warning), which means that things are now easier all around and I look less like a medical experiment. On the topic of people in general, I’ve (big surprise) met even more impressive people for my expanding “excello-person” collection, but I’ve also noticed a kind of gross education deficiency in Australian males (haven’t tried checking female training on this, and don’t expect to): after 20, 30 or in some cases more than 40 years, many of them/us still aren’t able to competently manage standing before the porcelain “throne” with any obvious sign of recognisable skill. Not even many of the visually healthy and steady ones. Igniting or releasing intoxicants and/or pushing control buttons to make rabid video sprites disappear is apparently easy, hitting a steady hole bigger than your backside at a rang...

I was reminded of this by tales from a Kiwi resident of a bird from there called a Kea or (in languages I am far from proficient in) a Mountain Parrot. For amusement, they strip things like the rubber door-seals out of quite large cars (I have seen video of one unsealng a solid door in a very few seconds). I search-engined around for a while and found many vaguely-related-looking variants but none even claiming ownership. If you do in some way “own” the joke, please tell me in detail so that I might acknowledge a genuine author. What you read below was basically cobbled together from overhearing several (effectively random) versions spoken, and typed in ad-hoc. As far as I know, it is genuinely unique. It is “clean” (as in “not even slightly obscene” for anyone I’ve test-run it against) and almost child-safe (as often, this depends entirely on the child’s world-view, but none of mine (16g, 6b, 4g) have objected or are even gently uncomfo...

To my great surprise, a “random” staff member (name unknown to me but dressed in Shenton Park (Rehab) Hospital uniform and present therein) mentioned that my (re)developmental improvement has been “miraculous” (“trachea” line and PICC [Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter] patches and so forth apparently included) so my case — at this person’s word — has been “officially designated miraculous”. What this practically means, I do not yet certainly know — not even if this is (as I presume) officially good progress. I plan to see about officially validating all of this on Monday and will follow through as I get Internet access. Comments from our family MD (who is getting and reading current and relatively detailed copies of the medical reports) are — to put it very mildly — surprising-in-content and encouraging. Internal ShPH therapists and staff have also been very encouraging — while expressing sad...

Pick a site with 1000 active computers in it — admittedly, that tally is to keep the numbers simple and understandable, but the principle works in the same pattern for 20 or 50,000 or however many machines — and say that you replace one machine with a Linux box, set up with a little thought. One of the workhorse machines from Motium — with dual disks — is quite a reasonable choice, and say you then disappear for three years. The other machines, typically running MakeBux4BillO$ , will require repair of some sort (e.g. active spyware or virus cleaning, finding lost docs etc) every few months on average. Say that JRandomTech charges AUD$80.00 an hour and a visit typically takes him 2.5 hours to survive the experience (call it 3 billed hours or AUD$240.00 per visit on average), that’s AUD$920.00 per annum per machine. 1000 machines adds up to about AUD$920,000 per annum. Say that your machine runs for 3 years without manual intervention (with automatic updat...

A great many micro-milestones have been crossed, although it may be the better part of a year before I can realistically emulate full functionality, if indeed ever. I have met even more excellent people, wonderful in many ways — including other patients who have been hurt far worse than me and are showing me how to take damage well. I can’t imagine how to thank most of them adequately. Also staff special in different ways, many simply great and some of them... different. For example, how do you thank someone for teaching how to yawn properly again and actually enjoy it? To my surprise, I was able to do so effectively and acceptably. Try it, with care. Finally, on nurses in general... I’d like to find useful ways of making their lives easier — they untangle some (to my uneducated vision) mind-wrenchingly complicated rules into genuinely useful results, most of which are barely if ever formally acknowledged. I do not mean to bury these human miracles in more formal...

Quick answer: set yourself up to ambush cyclists with your car exactly where police expect you to and neighbours will also be videotaping you. Result: no vehicles left to you, no licenses, years of “holiday” time amongst many other losers — plus big fines — plus no real future. The choices for me the victim were poor. Rather than be crushed by heavy traffic or headbutt a hard wall at about 17 m/sec, I chose the car door... and went through to headbutt the following footpath, destroyed the stack-hat, broke lots of stuff (including a partial craniectomy), learned some interesting things about police methods, bounced through Joondalup hospital with good effort and incredible speed to fetch up at Royal Perth not many minutes later within an ace of being DOA despite the effort... got operated on by some miracle workers who turned me from essentially a lump of meat with most of a pulse back into an ambulatory, vocal, functional human within a startlingly short time....