Steve's Data Dump

Darren the Robot from Good Game Spawn Point gets some humour every few weeks by talking about the enormous data dump he can barely contain. Who am I to not follow such champagne humour?  Here are some things that have caught my eye the last coupla weeks:

 * The Guardian had a profile of Derren Brown, whose shows on SBS I have recently mentioned. Interesting.

* Another Guardian profile, this one of David Mitchell, who is probably the funniest comedian/actor in Britain at the moment. He's written an autobiography (probably at an inappropriately young age) but still, as he is soon to be married, I forgive him.

* Localised electronic warfare via cruise missile appears to be getting closer (remember, I suggested this sort of device, which I guessed may already exist, would be useful in any Israeli attack on Iran):

The Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) is an effort to build a missile that flies over -- not into -- a target, be it an entire military base, neighborhood, or a even a lone tank and shuts down all the electronics inside without harming a soul. (Think of it almost as a mini-EMP in a rocket.) On Oct. 16, a CHAMP missile flew an hour-long preprogrammed route low over the Utah desert, "degrading and defeating" the electronics inside seven different targets. In a building along the route packed with computers, the screens all went dark as CHAMP sailed by, emitting a blast of high-power microwaves, according to CHAMP-maker Boeing's Oct. 22 press release announcing the test flight. (The weapon even took out the remotely controlled TV cameras that were monitoring the tests, claimed Boeing.)

 *  Here are two Fukushima stories:

1.   Cosmic rays may be able to be used to provide a sort of "x-ray" of the interior of damaged nuclear reactors.  Cool.

2.   Fish from near Fukushima are still not safe to eat, which is hardly surprising, I guess.

*   New York's finest:  via Mind Hacks, you can read a New York Times story about the police Emergency Service Unit, which has the task of talking down would be suicide jumpers off the city's building and bridges.   They get about 500 jobs a year, by the looks, and if you want some confirmation of the type of person who might be expected to be the most selfish, look no further:

 On building rescues, the reactions of onlookers are as varied as the city’s neighborhoods. In Midtown Manhattan or the financial district, for instance, pedestrians are more likely to yell, “Jump!”; in residential areas, like Harlem or Brooklyn, where the would-be jumper might be a familiar face, residents will provide officers with information about the person. They will cheer and applaud officers who make a successful grab, Detective Taylor said.

*  One of the oddest ideas for a medical test ever:

The medical engineers at Queen Mary used 60 healthy volunteers and 60 patients to test whether self-measurement of the shape of the urine stream could be used to predict maximum urine flow rate. They found that a simple measurement of the characteristic shape of the flow pattern could accurately predict the maximum urine flow rate; important in the diagnosis of urinary problems such as those associated with prostate enlargement.

 *  A study indicating that sea surface temperatures (in at least parts of the ocean) 250 million years ago could have been very hot indeed:

It is also the first study to show water temperatures close to the ocean's surface can reach 40°C – a near-lethal value at which marine life dies and photosynthesis stops. Until now, climate modellers have assumed sea-surface temperatures cannot surpass 30°C. The findings may help us understand future climate change patterns. The dead zone would have been a strange world – very wet in the tropics but with almost nothing growing. No forests grew, only shrubs and ferns. No fish or marine reptiles were to be found in the tropics, only shellfish, and virtually no land animals existed because their high metabolic rate made it impossible to deal with the extreme temperatures. Only the polar regions provided a refuge from the baking heat.

 *  The Babbage blog at the Economist said that its possible that the future zero emission car of the future will be powered by vaporising liquid nitrogen.  I had never heard of this idea before...

*  Horrible Histories continues to amuse.  I did like this Shakespeare song the other week, even if it wasn't laugh out loud funny:  it was just clever and well done: