It’s Okay To Be Smart: Piles of things figuring out piles of things

It’s Okay To Be Smart: Piles of things figuring out piles of things jtotheizzoe: Every atom in the universe is created equal. Or, I suppose more accurately: Everything in the universe is created of equal atoms. None of them really have a leg up on any other, unless having more or less electrons is considered an advantage, and I’m not in a position to judge such things. Yet one day, there happens a particularly curious arrangement of those atoms, on a planet called Earth, which is itself a particularly enormous pile of atoms pulled together by an interaction called gravity that every one of the former is still trying to figure out.

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Phil Plait: We walk past wonders in the sky all the time, ignoring them. The Sun, a million miles wide, performing stellar alchemy in its core. The Moon, battered and airless, a 4-billion-year history laid out for all to see. Saturn, a billion miles away, ringed and gaseous and attended by dozens of icy moons, a jewel of the solar system. Countless stars scattered across the Universe. If all that can be just over your head without you even knowing, what are you missing right here on Earth?

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Biology’s cruel joke goes something like this: As a teenage body goes through puberty, its circadian rhythm essentially shifts three hours backward. Suddenly, going to bed at nine or ten o’clock at night isn’t just a drag, but close to a biological impossibility. Studies of teenagers around the globe have found that adolescent brains do not start releasing melatonin until around eleven o’clock at night and keep pumping out the hormone well past sunrise.

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shockofthelightning: (Via Huffington Post) “Supermoon” in an nutshell

fuckyeahfluiddynamics: One downside to many flow visualization techniques, like those using dye, smoke, or particles, is the difficulty of dealing with their aftermath. You can only introduce so much of them into a wind or water tunnel before it’s necessary to shutdown and clean everything. One alternative is to use temperature, as shown in the video above. By simply introducing a warmer fluid and using an IR camera, it’s possible to accomplish many of the same effects without the mess.

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Adulting: A pre-trip checklist

Adulting: A pre-trip checklist adulting: Have you … 1.) Made a packing list, and then packed all of it? 2.) Put up an out-of-office email message, and sent a brief note to people who regularly contact you (read: your mom) to let them know you’re away? 3.) Made sure you’ve done everything necessary at work and/or laid out ground rules for how much contact you’ll be in while you’re gone?

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elizabeth-swanson: alcoholicgifts: I would wear this everywhere Reblog for R. Mitchell Scott

engineeringisawesome: One of the most curious buildings in Japan is the Gate Tower Building in Osaka, Japan. This building is the result of an unusual compromise between the land owner and the Japanese government. The 5th, 6th and 7th floors of this 16-story office building is occupied by an express highway – passing right through the building. On the building’s floor information board on the ground floor, the tenants for the three floors are listed as the Hanshin Expressway.

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minimalmac: Yep. Pretty much sums it up. (via W&CIE)