Did you hear the one about...

.... the hipster who wanted to become a ham radio operator?

Uh, yeah, he heard that hams can bounce signals off the ironosphere.

Here, press the button.

Content later this weekend.  I've got to get to work right now.

Now Coffee's Bad for You

First good.  Then bad.  Good again.  Now bad.  Guess what it'll be next week.

MDs are so cute when they're trying to do research.  It's like watching a bunch of puppies scrambling all over each other to get at a scooby snack.

Movie Review: What We Do in the Shadows

Awkward roommates, vast age differences, exes, unusual diets, topsy-turvy sleep habits, the new kid, the wanna-bees – it sounds a lot like grad school.  Except that this is a movie about vampires, not scientists.  Considerably safer however, there being neither high voltages nor radiation, and the hygiene standards are a notch or two better in these guys' apartment.

Look, this is a damn funny movie that you should go see.  There's not a lot of plot, it's just a mocumentary about some vampire roommates trying to get along in the 21st century.  As you might imagine, it's full of awkwardly funny situations and jokes based on well-known vampire tropes.  There is a lot of comic gore, so be warned.  Apart from that... all you need to know is that it works.   3.25 out of 4 stars.

ps: Trailer here.  What you see is what you get!  Just more of it.

Electromagnetic Drive Results Confirmation Claimed

I occasionally get questions on this topic from friends and family, so it seems like a good time to mention this thing.  No, I really don't have a clue as to how this thing is supposed to work.  Here is a link to the most recent paper, and here is a link to the Wikipedia article, from which many links spring.  Having only glossed over the material, it seems as if someone added up a very long column of zeros and came up with a very small non-zero result.  I will get on reading through the published literature in the next week or two, and post back if there's any there there.  In the meantime, here's a popular press article on the latest results associated with this gizmo.

On one hand, of course I really want this to be true.  On the other hand, it seems unlikely in the extreme, and there is an awful lot of pseudo-theoretical tap-dancing going on in some quarters.  We shall see.

Sympathy for the Mustang II

Over at Hooniverse.  He does have a point, but I still can't bring myself to agree.

Bleh.  Reminds me too much of Ford, Carter, The Malaise, and disco.

BTW, net's still out and posting remains light.  Pack it up, see what tomorrow brings.

It works that way. It doesn't work that way.

House net's still out, so here's a link to today's SMBC comic.  (go read it, otherwise the rest of this makes no sense)  Sometimes, seeing things in k-space simplifies things enough that you decide you don't even need the inverse transform on the back end.

Saturday Linkage re: Shortwave

Cable's out at the house, so I'm posting through my phone's hotspot capability and this'll be short.  There's a new blog in town with an interesting article, On the Importance of Shortwave Radio.  It's brief, go read the whole thing.

BTW, the overall blog is called

and it can be found here.  Only three posts so far, but there's lots of good links to informative from there.

OK, that's all I have patience to post via this bog-slow cell phone hotspot.  Think I'll go watch a movie now.  The old fashioned way, you know, from a spinning disc being scanned by a laser.