Posts tagged ‘news’
Southwest 812
April 25th, 2011 at 11:41 pm by Dr. Drang
The National Transportation Safety Board put out a press release today, summarizing its initial findings in the investigation of Southwest Flight 812. That was the flight that had make an emergency landing a few weeks ago because a five foot long hole ripped through its fuselage during a flight. It’s a very well written summary—better,…
Foamed cement and the BP oil spill
October 29th, 2010 at 11:13 am by Dr. Drang
You may have read recent news reports about problems with the cement used by Halliburton to seal BP’s Macondo well that blew out and led to both the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If the discussion of casings, foamed cement, and stability has left…
That religion quiz/survey
September 30th, 2010 at 11:05 pm by Dr. Drang
You’ve probably read about that survey by Pew into the religious knowledge of Americans. Like all such surveys, it proves that we’re as dumb as fence posts. The original survey had 32 questions. Pew has put up an online quiz with 15 of those questions, so you can test yourself and see how you stack…
Good Times, bad Times
June 22nd, 2010 at 6:29 am by Dr. Drang
The New York Times has a big article about the Deepwater Horizon, the failure of regulatory agencies to recognize and act on the hazards associated with offshore drilling, and—most interesting to me—the safety device known as the “blind shear ram” that was the last line of defense against a spill. When a newspaper covers an…
God as a thing
May 13th, 2010 at 10:29 pm by Dr. Drang
I was away from the internets yesterday and didn’t see this item until today: A recording of a 1966 Beatles press conference at which John Lennon was quizzed over his controversial comments about Jesus is to be auctioned. This is an August 17 press conference in Toronto, not the one in Chicago on August 11…
Biking season is like deer season
May 4th, 2010 at 9:52 am by Dr. Drang
If you’re a bicyclist who rides in Naperville, you’ll be interested to know that the cost of attacking you with a car has just been set by a DuPage County judge: 21 days, to be served in three-day increments over seven weeks. And although the attacker has been forced to give up her gun owner’s…
Scratch off
April 21st, 2010 at 11:35 am by Dr. Drang
This NY Times article about banning an app from the App Store is really poorly written and jumbles up a couple of related, but distinctly different, aspects of iPhone OS development. The main topic is Apple’s recent decision to remove the Scratch Viewer app from the App Store. Scratch is a teaching language/environment from the…
Playstation 3 leap year bug
March 1st, 2010 at 9:46 pm by Dr. Drang
As a big fan of Reingold & Dershowitz’s Calendrical Calculations, I’m always on the lookout for calendar-related programming news. This morning I heard (via @jamesthomson) that the Playstation 3 has a leap year bug that screwed up a lot of users yesterday when it became midnight GMT and the calendar flipped from February 28 to…
Chile’s earthquake
February 27th, 2010 at 9:59 pm by Dr. Drang
I’m not surprised that—so far, at least—the death toll from Chile’s earthquake is so low compared to Haiti’s, despite the much stronger quake. I was trained as a structural engineer, and my department was loaded with graduate students from South America. Latin American countries tend to take earthquakes very seriously, and their engineers are highly…
Afghanistan and Iraq, November 2009
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 am by Dr. Drang
November was a relatively good month. Military deaths underwent a big drop in Afghanistan and stayed low in Iraq. November was also the month in which the right wing pushed hard on its talking point that “Obama’s dithering is endangering the troops.” You can always count on the right to be out of step with…
