rainbowboys shirt design 2010

Jim Carrey's website

Check it out, it's seriously wtf. It loads a little slowly, but there's tons of weird shit to see.

The Mandelbulb: first 'true' 3D image of famous fractal

NewScientist

It may look like a piece of virtuoso knitting, but the makers of an image they call the Mandelbulb (see right) claim it is most accurate three-dimensional representation to date of the most famous fractal equation: the Mandelbrot set.

There have been previous attempts at a 3D Mandelbrot image, but they do not display real fractal behaviour, says Daniel White, an amateur fractal image maker based in Bedford, UK.

Spinning the 2D Mandelbrot fractal like wood on a lathe, raising and lowering certain points, or invoking higher-dimensional mathematics can all produce apparently three-dimensional Mandelbrots. Yet none of these techniques offer the detail and self-similar shapes that White believes represent a true 3D fractal image. Two years ago, he decided to find a "true" 3D version of the Mandelbrot.

Really good write-up on nuclear versus renewable power

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but this site really has a good summation of why we need nuclear, and how wrong most of the anti-nuclear arguments are. So if you ever find yourself arguing with an eco-tard or just someone who is naive about the truth of nuclear energy you can link them to this page.

Some examples:

Q12. What about the waste?

The waste issue has been solved. Indeed it is not waste. It is ‘once-used-nuclear-fuel’. We’ve used about 1% to 10% of the energy so far. We will use the rest of the energy in the future, by recycling the once-used-nuclear-fuel through Generation IV nuclear power plants. The waste from these plants has a half-life of 30 years and will degrade back down to natural background levels within 300 to 500 years.

Used fuel is stored safely in containers like this:

This is all the ‘once-used-nuclear-fuel’ from 31 years of power generation from a now decommissioned power station.

The amount of used fuel is minuscule compared with the waste from fossil fuel power stations, much of which is far more toxic and lasts forever.

Q15. Is there enough uranium?

Yes.

There is enough uranium to provide all the world’s energy indefinitely. Indeed, we’ve already mined enough uranium to power the whole world using next-generation nuclear power for 700 years!

There is sufficient uranium and thorium in the top 4 km of the Earth’s land areas to supply all the energy needs of 10 billion people at the USA’s current rate of energy consumption for 220 million years. That’s as long as far ahead as the start of the dinosaur era is behind. But actually, the rivers of the world naturally replenish sea water with 30,000 tonnes of uranium each year due to erosion, so we wouldn’t even need to dig this up.

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Ukraine No. 1

This is the current number one hit in Ukraine, Okean Elzy with the song "Bilshe Dlja Nas". You can find the complete chart here.

Kepler Spacecraft Finds 750 Exoplanet Candidates

Already a bit old news (June 15th), but somehow I missed it. Pretty exciting stuff.

The Kepler spacecraft has found over 750 candidates for extrasolar planets, and that is just from data collected in the first 43 days of the spacecraft's observations. "This is the biggest release of candidate planets that has ever happened," said William Borucki, Kepler's lead scientist. "The number of candidate planets is actually greater than all the planets that have been discovered in the last 15 years."

This is an astounding amount of potential exoplanets from data taken during such a short period of time, however Borucki added that they expect only about 50% of these candidates to actually turn out to be planets, as some may be eclipsing binary stars or other artifacts in the data. But still, even half would be the biggest group discovery of exoplanets ever.

And the exciting part is that 706 targets from this first data set have viable exoplanet candidates with sizes from as small as Earth to around the size of Jupiter. The team says the majority have radii less than half that of Jupiter.

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Video from my new phone

My new phone can record in 720p! Though it isn't super sharp, it is quite good. You do really see that the phone has zero image stabilization though.