“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” – Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)
I've been travelling a bit in the past year, and thus I have accumulated so many hundreds of photos and videos that I'm not sure where to start.
Stay tuned for a more substantial series of blog entries soon, but for now, here are some videos about the transportation I took during a short trip to Kuala Lumpur a couple of months ago.
Physics are gonna kill you, Harry! Physics are gonna kill you, Harry!
It's gonna kill you and make you dead.
Physics gonna pull out a gun. Shoot you right in the head. BLAM oh no, look out now! Hey...
Physics.
Oh yeah. Oh...
Oh...
I can't wait to make love... to physics.
Gonna love her all night long. Making physics love, singing the physics song. Throw another downwards to double jump. Or throw it up to not jump as high.
Do it Harry, do it to win.
Punch that missile right in the face. Punch that missile all over the place. One two three four, punch that missile!
With the international media spotlight on the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant emergency, radiological terms such as "millisievert" have entered the public consciousness.
Here is a video that clearly explains what the sievert is, plus a demonstration of two instruments that are used for measuring radioactivity:
It is understandable that the international media is more focused on Fukushima than the devastation caused by the tsunami, since they reflect the concerns of foreign nationals living in Japan.
However, some of their headlines seem sensationalistic and have the potential to cause unnecessary worry among Japanese residents.
Take for example this headline - "Tokyo radiation levels 23 times normal: officials". This brief article states that radiation levels in Tokyo "surged to 23 times normal on Tuesday" and reported a measurement of 0.809 microsieverts, presumably over the hour (10am local time) mentioned.
Without explaining the significance of this reading, a 23-fold increase in radiation levels sounds very serious indeed.
However, if we take into account the average annual background radiation dose per person, which is around 2000 microsieverts, we can see that the reported radiation level spike is actually about 1/2470 of the average annual dose.
Further, by doing this form of comparison, we can find out that 0.809 microsieverts is about:
- the dose received during 6 hours of flying time in a jet airliner. - 1/120 of the dose of a chest X-ray. - 1/12400 of the dose of a CT scan. - 1/24700 of the annual limit of a radiation worker (20mSv). - 1/124000 of the lowest level that can cause a measurable increase in cancer rates. - 1/309000 of the lower limit for acute radiation sickness.
The article states a measurement of 0.05 microsieverts per hour, slightly higher than the background level of 0.035 microsieverts per hour - which could have led to a headline like "Tokyo radiation levels 143% of normal!", but their editors didn't do that.
A severe earthquake hit Japan today at 2.46pm local time (0546h GMT).
The epicentre of the quake was about 100km off the east coast of main island Honshu, at a depth of about 20km.
The Japan Meteorological Agency reported it to be 8.8 on the Richter scale, which makes it the most intense earthquake ever recorded in Japan.
In addition, the northeastern coast of Honshu was hit by tsunamis as high as 10m. Boats, cars and even houses were swept away in the flood caused by a series of tsunamis. The worst hit areas appear to be in the region around the city of Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture.
Earlier today I watched some of the live TV coverage of the earthquake on NHK World; for those of you without cable TV, here are a couple of videos:
Severe Tremors at NHK Sendai Newsroom (from NHK World)
CCTV Footage of Tsunami Wave at Sendai Airport (from Russia Today)
I think this footage of the wave front sweeping into the airport - almost at a walking pace but gradually covering the entire tarmac - is especially chilling.
It is disturbing to see how unstoppable and how much damage the visually unspectacular flood flow was causing, if you compare these scenes to the hyped-up special effects in Hollywood disaster movies.
Videos taken by the NHK helicopter also show the wave front moving gradually and relentlessly, engulfing everything in its path. As it moved inland over farmlands and residential areas, the wave front picked up so much mud and debris that it became dark in colour and had a chunky appearance.
Live video from the air also helped to convey the huge scale of the tsunami waves as they approached the coast. The photo below is a screen capture from NHK video that shows several such waves, each of them hundreds of metres long, about to reach the coast of Sendai (treeline at the lower left):
Based on latest reports, at least 300 people are dead.
Please click here for a compilation of the latest reports on casualties and damage.
For quite a while now, the YouTube.com main page has been showing a "Featured Video" section on the top right part of the page.
This feature appears every time you visit YouTube.com, whether you are logged in or not, and often displays videos that are completely irrelevant to your interests.
Unfortunately, it cannot be removed like the customizable modules on the left side of the page. It also cannot be minimized or even shifted downwards.
Apparently there are many YouTube users who dislike this "Featured Video" section on their YouTube homepage.
If you google "how to remove featured videos on youtube", you'll get a whopping 777,000,000 results!
"I agree completely. I used to love watching featured videos when they were good, but now, all they feature now is stupid makeup and gossip videos I don't even want to see"
"I know , i hate those Featured Videos , they got nothing interesting on it, not only that, i have blocked some of the users on my account and still they keep showing up on the feature list, i don't want to see them at all, i don't like their videos , i don't want to know about them , and i wish i could remove them from my list forever and never see them again. but they keep showing up. Youtube pls ."
"I hate the featured videos. But what I hate more is the fact that youtube does not give us the option of disabling them. Who cares if they pay to have them on there? Some of these featured videos are just garbage that equate to visual polution. Let us turn it off!!! Well I guess there's always Vimeo; hmmm, maybe I'll give them a try."
As mentioned by some other commenters, one method of preventing the Featured Video from appearing is to use the Mozilla Firefox browser and install ad blocker addons.
However, there is a simpler method to avoid seeing Featured Videos - by avoiding the YouTube.com page altogether!
Here at Fresh Brainz we have worked out how to do this:
First, you'll need to delete the "http://youtube.com/" autocomplete entry from your Web browser.
Eg. For IE8, just type "youtube" in the address bar and a dropdown box will appear below with the "http://youtube.com/" suggestion. Use arrow keys to highlight this line and press delete (or click the red "X") to remove the entry.
I've been travelling a bit in the past year, and thus I have accumulated so many hundreds of photos and videos that I'm not sure where to start.
Everything is better with Auto-Tune.
With the international media spotlight on the Fukushima 1 nuclear power plant emergency, radiological terms such as "millisievert" have entered the public consciousness.
For quite a while now, the YouTube.com main page has been showing a "Featured Video" section on the top right part of the page.
