Stephanie Dosen

Lost cities...

If you think that our cities and civilisations are going to be around forever you should check out what we've lost...

OK, how about Metacafe?

Along the lines of searchable video databases there is also Metacafe.

Blinkx is a must-know

Blinkx promotes itself as the most advanced video search engine on the Web. So does it work? Yep, seems to. Also has a cool Pico-bar that monitors what you are doing and feeds you suggestions... hmmm. I think I'll leave that option alone for a while.

Bulk blogging from yrs truly

But what does it mean?

I just dug this out of the "This Week in SCIENCE" emails from AAAS, from May 12 2006, 312 (5775). The AAAS says: "Not So Fast...The strength of the Earth's magnetic field has decayed since accurate measurements began in 1840, and these changes have led to speculation that the field will disappear or reverse within this millennium."

Which would be pretty scary. We'd either have no north/south poles or our north would become south and vice versa. You can imagine how confusing and dangerous that alone would be... but whjat of electronic gizmos in general and the potential for not just pole reversals but concomitant electromagnetic field disturbance?

Anyway (this was back in May, 2006 remember)they (the researchers, Gubbins et al) have devised a method to use paleointensity measurements in conjunction
with directional information to extend the record of the Earth's magnetic
field back to 1590. Contrary to the recent steep decline, they find that
the dipole moment fell hardly at all until around 1800. So there. It may not be moving so fast after all. Still, it's something to watch.

BBC Languages site

Here's an excellent resource - the BBC Languages site...

Lost? Try this map...

It's a map of the Internet, folks. Now that's gotta be useful...

Where the bloody hell are you? (As the saying goes...)

Music: a wealth of Who resources

Can't help myself... some sites worth reading that relate to Pete Townshend and the Who...

1. Pete's partner... Rachel Fuller on Wikipedia
2. Rachel's excellent, audio-fied site on Myspace.com
3. In the Attic TV - videos of Rachel, her interviews and perhaps some Pete as well
4. A Frappr map of Rachel's fans
   
5. The Kids are Alright: lots to read here about the progeny of rock stars, but my interest was in Emma Townshend
6. A quote from the above link: 'Before signing to East West records, Emma studied for a masters and history of science PhD, and taught undergraduates at Cambridge for two years. She is shameless about her reasons for giving that up. 'I know this sounds terrible, but it's crap money,' she says. 'And if you've grown up like I grew up and gone on really nice holidays, when you're working and you can't afford to go anywhere, you think, "I can't live on the amount of money you get paid for teaching!" '
7. Cambridge? It seems Emma's teaching at Oxford now
8. Review of Emma's Winterland album here on TWAS
   
9. Longliverock.org
10. An interview (in text form) with Pete on Sirius radio.