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Submission + - The Periodic, Somewhat Obligatory "Earth is Flat" Argument Rears It's Head Again

mjjochen writes: A little something to make you smile (or cry). NPR reports on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson calling out rapper B.o.B. in a twitter (& rap) argument over the status of the earth (are we round or flat?), article can be found here: http://www.npr.org/sections/th.... Rapper B.o.B. references the usual conspiracy theories to support his case in his throw down. Neil deGrasse Tyson responds, actually his nephew responds, on why B.o.B.'s points are not very well-informed: https://soundcloud.com/drtyson.... As Tyson puts it, "Duude — to be clear: Being five centuries regressed in your reasoning doesn't mean we all can't still like your music." Shall we start leaching the four humors from the body again to achieve balance? Hrm.

Submission + - WW2 carrier pigeon and undecoded message found in chimney (bbc.co.uk)

BigBadBus writes: "The BBC is reporting that the remains of a World War 2 carrier pigeon were found during renovation of a chimney in England. What is interesting is that the pigeon's remains still had its message attached to the leg ring; even more interesting, this is the first recorded instance of a code being used rather than plain text. The successor to WW2 code-breaking HQ Bletchley Park, the GCHQ, is trying to decipher this unique code. Maybe a slashdot reader can beat them to it?"

Comment Re:Yogurt does the same thing (Score 5, Interesting) 183

I would never ever wish C-Diff on anyone, not even my worst enemy. After the wife was put on broad spectrum antibiotics for an ear infection, then came what we thought was a bit of the flu or stomach virus (a.k.a. the trotts). Never-ending trotts. After exploratory colonoscopy & cultures to verify, & several different rounds of antibiotics, what finally worked for us was one last round of antibiotics combined with an insane intake of yogurt & probiotics (as we were finishing off the antibiotics). I think it was the combination that worked for us. We now start a (paranoid) regimen of yogurt & pro-biotics whenever someone is on antibiotics. Would we have gone for the "shit enema" (as unappealing as that sounds)? Perhaps. Let me put it this way, after weeks of the most debilitating pain (doubled over in pain), not eating for days, and blood literally pouring out your hind end, you are ready to grasp at anything that might work. Wife said that child birth had nothing on the C-Diff pains (& she went through 2 births with not so much as an aspirin -- another story. . .). I'll joke about a lot of things, but not this. So if this works (faster), more power to it. Oh yeah, cases of C-Diff are on the rise -- yay ( http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mens_Health_Watch/2010/June/clostridium-difficile-an-intestinal-infection-on-the-rise & http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/03/06/148072242/deaths-from-dangerous-gut-bacteria-hit-historic-highs ).

Comment Workweek Saving Day (Score 4, Funny) 395

Since many of us are interested in shifting clocks to allow for a more productive work day, and save lighting expenses, I propose a new twist to this system: the Workweek Saving Day. It is a very simple concept, really. Each Saturday night, instead of it becoming Sunday at the stroke of midnight, it becomes Monday. How awesome is that?! This way, we can all provide one more productive day of work to our beloved employers and do busy busy things to make the big cog-wheel turn. Come on li'l gipper, ya with me?!

Comment Re:Maybe (Score 3, Funny) 502

With power comes responsibility. So it's your fault that my wife won't let me replace the living room furniture with that awesome bean bag & lava lamp setup from KMart! Oh, wait. He said "would have all the power. . ." Dammit.

Comment Re:What about false positives? (Score 2) 104

Um, two things:

1. Lesson Plan
2. Prepare before going into the classroom

Seriously, if you are planning your lecture while doing it, you're doing a huge disservice to your students. That's not to say that open discourse and exploratory learning aren't good in the classroom, this can be great - let the discussion go where the students take it. But on the technology/course material side, I would be very concerned with adding material to my class at the last minute. What happens if that image/movie/website that you were counting on weren't there? What if your connectivity tanks when you wanted it? What if you get that huge phallus instead of the ICBM that you were looking for? I download anything that I want to use ahead of time.

If you are doing this last minute, to me that demonstrates that you are not taking your planning/prep seriously (or that you are lazy), and that you are putting your laziness ahead of the learning of your students. They (the students) deserve better than that.

Now that I've nibbled at the troll-bait, I think this is seriously off course - search by sketch, search by term, they all have the same possibilities to return content that someone out there may find offensive. So I fail to see how this is any different. That's the glory & risk of the Internet - use at your own risk.

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