This post started as a comment on my friend Ambrose's blog but it was getting long enough to justify a post. Check it out for context.
Let's start with this: marriage cannot be defined by the biological prospect of having children, because that would rule out sterile couples and menopausal women. As simple as that.
The previous post showed how magnification changes with various lengths of extension tube, using a simple inexpensive fixed focal lens. Today, I want to show how changing other factors can affect your pictures, and for this I'm going to use a much more expensive lens, a 70-200mm telephoto lens.
Macro lenses are expensive. There is a cheap alternative, though, that can transform a regular lens into a macro lens: extension tubes. Extension tubes are simply hollow tubes that you put between the lens and the body of the camera. Optically inert, they shorten the focal distance and depth of field and bump up magnification, at the price of a loss of light.
If I told you that the emergence of blogs, Twitter and Facebook have changed our societies in more profound ways than we imagine, you’d be justified in telling me that I’m being neither original nor very pertinent. There is certainly something to be said about the amplification effect those services have on self-centeredness and gossip, and how those are sometimes more powerful than the few examples we have of new media spreading freedom, truth and democracy. Still, I think we are seeing the first signs of a profound revolution, one that is remodeling society in a way that is more in tune with our evolutionary origins. One where the notion of tribe makes a comeback, but with a couple of twists.
The date and time have come and gone and you are still here. As we are waiting for the rationalization from Harold Camping, it is time to ponder what this means for you. A few possibilities:
You have heard about "Botox Mom", haven't you? This charming lady claimed on TV that she was giving her 8-year old daughter Botox shots in order to remove imaginary wrinkles and prepare her for some of those horrible "beauty" pageants.
Portals are not Aperture Science's only remarkable scientific accomplishment. Among their other inventions is the Light Bridge, that provides a stable and seemingly immaterial surface that people can stand on. The bridge can also be turned on or off instantly.
You heard it like me, someone just asked about the physics of Aperture Science's neat Portal Gun. I'll try to give an account of what we know from the material that Aperture recently made available and from what can be deduced from demonstrations of the product.
Sir Martin Rees said this right after receiving a huge pile of money from the Templeton Foundation:
[…]I think just as religion is separate from science, so is ethics separate from science. So is aesthetics separate from science. And so are many other things. There are lots of important things that are separate from science.
I just read Brian Dunning's post about the Fukushima explosion and was about to comment there but they are blocking comments from behind proxies, which is incredibly stupid on their part. So there, new post.