HoodedHawk

Professor Richard Dawkins was at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. tonight, giving a reading/discussion of his new book, “The God Delusion“. Notice the imposing bodyguard in the background. Another was stationed on his left. When asked, he said he had not received threats; they were just hired by his publisher.

I’d estimate that there were about 200 people (or more – standing room only going way back into the store) at the reading/signing. I managed to get there early enough to get a seat in front, and a place at the front of the line for the signing.

When Prof. Dawson came on, he noticed the size of the crowd and decided to “skip the reading of Chapter One, which has a conciliatory tone – and start with Chapter Two, which is decidedly not conciliatory”. There’s a reason Prof. Dawson has been labelled “Darwin’s Rottweiler“. His basic premise is that God does not exist (yes, he is an atheist), and religion in general has not done us much good – on balance. One of the questions posed to him after the reading had to do with the “faith-based” recovery methods of groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous. He admitted that he was not aware that Alcoholics Anonymous had a religious undertone – “that’s just terrible” (or some such comment – my memory isn’t as good as it could be due to Preston being up most nights lately).

I recorded the reading and the discussion after.

Kirsten gave birth to our son, Preston, today. Preston is 10 lbs, 4 oz., 22 in. Baby and mom are doing just fine. Click on Preston below for a slideshow, or see him under Photography, Family.

I have to get back to them, so more later.

[update 10/18/2006: more pictures are up…]

If you are having issues with your Powerbook waking up at the wrong time (in your backpack for instance) because the lid latch is weak, then run the following command from a concole window:

sudo pmset lidwake 0

(more…)

IBM just got a contract to build the first petaflops supercomputer (that’s 1000 trillion computations per second). The machine will be used at Los Alamos to simulate nuclear explosions. What is really interesting is that some of the specialized processors that will be used were originally designed for the PlayStation 3.

An ancient hair dye formula, used by both the Romans and Greeks 2000 years ago (and still marketed as Grecian Formula) is based on nanoparticles, researchers say. The dye contains lead, which when applied to hair reacts with the sulfur in keratin protein to precipitate dark lead sulfide crystals. Using X-ray diffraction and other techniques they imaged the crystals. They appear to be like today’s lead sulfide quantum dots created via techniques from materials science, and are just 5 nanometers wide. Ancient Nanotech!

An article in SCIENCE this week [September 15 2006, 313 (5793)] reports the discovery of a stone block believed to be about 3,000 years old (dating to ~900 B.C.E). The block has chiseled into it a series of glyphs thought to be the earliest writing in the Western Hemisphere, and is attributed to the Olmec civilization. The Olmecs pre-dated the Maya and Aztec cultures of Central America. The block of text has yet to be disciphered, and it may never be – until a Rosetta Stone equivalent is found. The discovery of a new form of (ancient) writing is a rare event, so this is a major find.

Interestingly, the block was found by workers in Veracruz, Mexico while building a road. Unfortunately is was not left in place, but was brought to a local antiquities official along with some shards of pottery also found. This was back in 1999, and the official kept the pieces in his house all this time. While it is fortunate that the workers saved the block rather than using it for fill, it is unfortunate that it now has to be studied “out of context”, as it were. Plans are in place to go back to the site of discovery to hopefully find more artifacts.