Franklin Chang-Diaz wants to build magneto-plasma rockets. In Central America.
Doing the jobs Americans won’t do, I guess.
Data-Free Policies
Glenn notes an article about how the obesity wars have moved into the schools.
…like other misguided public health campaigns (remember “Just Say No”?), putting children on de facto diets at school just doesn’t work. In a 2003 experiment involving 41 schools, more than 1,700 children
Monty Python
…springs to life in England:
Single Paul, of St Leonards, East Sussex, told how he yelled that he would report the railman
Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Groening
The Simpsons as philosophy.
[Via Geek Press]
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
Apparently, our ancestors and chimps just couldn’t keep their hands off each other:
The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines.
That genetic collaboration then gave rise to two separate branches, one leading to humans and the other to chimps.
This will no doubt drive the creationists ape.
[Via The Speculist]
Religion Of Intimidation
Australian model Michelle Leslie explains why she wore a burqa. Unfortunately, even wearing one isn’t sufficient to prevent abuse of women, since it’s endemic. But hey, it’s just another culture, right? And cultures are good.
Rampant Sexism
I just noticed the MediaBistro poster’s name: Patrick Gavin. A man. I guess we all look alike to him.
Revenge On The Pagans
Lileks reviews the Da Vinci Code (book, not movie). He’s less than impressed. One suspects that he’ll leave the money in his wallet, and save himself the time out of his life that seeing the movie would involve.
Fedora Partition Overcapacity Update
OK, per the suggestion in comments here, I decided to see just what it was that was filling up the /var partition. Here it is:
##########################################
[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/*
12 /var/account
773872 /var/cache
16 /var/crash
28 /var/db
16 /var/empty
60 /var/gdm
56716 /var/lib
8 /var/local
128 /var/lock
86208 /var/log
448 /var/lost+found
4 /var/mail
232 /var/named
8 /var/nis
8 /var/opt
8 /var/preserve
340 /var/run
72480 /var/spool
8 /var/tmp
8 /var/tux
13936 /var/www
24 /var/yp
#################################
I can live without the contents of cache, right?
Well, maybe not:
[root@linux-station ~]# du -s /var/cache/*
80 /var/cache/alchemist
472 /var/cache/gstreamer-0.8
1344 /var/cache/man
8 /var/cache/mod_proxy
8 /var/cache/mod_ssl
384 /var/cache/samba
771568 /var/cache/yum
#######################################
Note that it’s all cache/yum. Does that mean that if I blow it away, my ongoing yum upgrade gets clobbered? Getting rid of logs will help a little, but I suspect that the yum cache will quickly fill up the available space if I give it any. What now?
Future Generations
Keith Cowing notes a useful cause, if you’re interested in interesting kids in space.