Everyday Experiments

Here's a nice cartoon to start the new year:

With economic recession (and depression, conversely) still in full swing (not to mention crime rates, mortality, and stress) I find it quite hard to adopt a more upbeat attitude about the year. Pragmatically speaking, it is indeed very hard to stay happy and perky the whole year long.

Here's a less depressing take on the same theme:

I've written zilch in the last 3 months. 3 months of sleepless nights, drowning in report after report, spewing out graph after figure after paper. I guess this is how my brain should feel like right now:



I think I'm going on a loooong needed (and deserved!) vacation right now. Preferably in a cold, dark cave where I can sleep undisturbed until Christmas :-p

Just in from Discovery blogs: a fully operational high-intensity lightsaber - er, portable laser - is up for sale by consumer laser manufacturer Wicked Lasers. This baby boasts of being the first ever 445-nm direct blue diode portable laser in existence. For $200, you get your own Li-ion battery powered version of Luke Skywalker's bright blue lightsaber.



It cannot cut through flesh like it was butter, but the S3 Arctic Spyder III can cause instant retinal damage, permanent blindness, and skin cancer, among other things. Yes fellas, this lightsaber - sorry, Class 4 portable laser - is not a toy and should not be used for puerile entertainment.


So what's exactly the point in making a portable lightsaber with a hilt that looks exactly like the one from the popular George Lucas franchise? It seems that Lucas is taking the hint. Lucasfilms is now planning to sue Hongkong-based Wicked Laser if they do not change the design of the laser. (More on that story here.)

I was in the middle of compiling my personal Jane Austen movie collection when I came across this message from a site I frequent for my movie fixes:

I finally made it to the Helium Homepage! And my article got top spot at that!

I'm so happy and thrilled and ecstatic that I just might forget my previous and present hang-ups about the site (namely, the inability to log in occasionally, and also the... oh, heck, I'll just drop my nitpicking). I've been part of Helium for 3 months and have written only 9 articles so far....and I was absolutely thrown off my seat when I got the email from Helium congratulating me for making it to the homepage. I'm so happy and proud I'm literally bouncing off my rickety office chair and doing cartwheels in my head. Yey for me.

Now only if being featured meant receiving some sort of prize or compensation... oh well, guess I'll have to do with my 15 minutes of fame and short-lived bragging rights for now. Yipee!

You can visit the Helium home page here.

Has the husky voice of a man ever turned you on so bad it can elicit uncontrollable shivers through your spine?


Well, it turns out that there's probably an evolutionary reason why women find men with very masculine voices especially irresistible. A study just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society has found a correlation between perceived masculinity in a male's voice to actual macho-ness in terms of physical strength. In the study, male and female subjects were asked to listen to speakers from four distinct language groups and asked to evaluate their upper-body strength based on their voice alone. Results showed that male speakers perceived as physically strong actually fared better than their counterparts in tests of hand grip, chest strength, shoulder strength, and bicep circumference. This, the subjects gleaned just from hearing the males say “When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow.”

Guilty as charged :-p