Thursday, 28 October 2010

FOCUS is EVERYTHING

A few weeks ago I mentioned the book "Ghost Map" about Dr. John Snow's dedication in discovering the cause of Cholera in the London suburb of Chelsea.

Last night as I watched a BBC special on the miraculous rescue of the 33 miners in Chili, I couldn't stop thinking about the incredible amount of resources that had been brought together from around the world, and about the last headline I read on my internet news reader.... "Haiti cholera death toll passes 250 "....

As I watched caravans of trucks that brought water across a desert to keep the drill cool (the first one, that never made it to the miners) I kept thinking about the 250 and growing death toll in Haiti.... We know what killed them... it's the water... and yet..... there seems not to be any great need on the part of the world to rush to Haiti and drill water wells, much easier than a hole to extract miners from a cave deep in the earth... and saving tens to hundreds of times as many people...

I loved the rescue, the beautiful technology applied, and then, we turn our head... or maybe not..

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Water For People helps people in developing countries improve quality of life by supporting the development of locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities, and hygiene education programs. Around the world, 884 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion are without adequate sanitation facilities. Every day, nearly 6,000 people who share our planet die from water-related illnesses, and the vast majority are children. But the real failures are all the broken pumps, filled latrines, and solutions that aren't. We want to change all that. The solution? Programs that last and examine entire districts and regions rather than purely households and villages. Create solutions that last, and not only do people benefit for a long period, but organizations don't have to expend time and energy going back again and again to the same location.

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

A Little Math Humor



Shecky, who blogs at Math Frolic had a link to a site with some math jokes... This was the one that gave me the best chuckle.

Addendum: My Apologies to Steven Colyer whose blog "Multiplication by Infinity" is the blog I linked to above. Sorry not to have credited Steven in the first place... just must have been a busy day. Mia Culpa

Physics and Poker and NPR, Oh My!

The folks at "All Things Considered" are talking about how physics may make you a better poker player.

A few years ago, physicist Jeff Harvey invited Eduard Antonyan to a game of poker at a friend's house. Antonyan was a graduate student of Harvey's at the time, in the physics department at the University of Chicago.

"I invited Eduard to play because we're always looking for new victims," Harvey tells NPR's Guy Raz. "But it didn't exactly work out that well."

Monday, 25 October 2010

They Found a Way to Measure How Long it Takes to Fall in Love?

NO fooling.... the header reads,
Falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second. The findings raise the question: "Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?"


Here is the link on Science Daily...see if you can figure out what they are measuring, or how they measured it... Keep in mind you have to put two people who are not in love in a situation in which they fall in love, and be measuring love (somehow) when it happens.