Online Cortex

Amazon Green

drknuth — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 03:01:22 +0000

Amazon.com has launched Amazon Green to help customers select and identify products that are environment-friendly.

You can enter your favorite green products and Amazon will add them to the green category.

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Advances in Science and Exploration

drknuth — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:29:23 +0000

I have been thinking about human science and exploration, and how long it takes for these processes to initiate and result in acceptance and conclusion. When considering exploration, it seems it takes about two human lifetimes to go from the initial explorations to settlement. Perhaps this is the cultural time required for the old guys and their ideas to die off, and the next generation to think seriously about the problems. Science seems to progress similarly.

This suggests the following timeline:

1969 Humans walk on the Moon

2050 Humans begin colonizing the Moon
2050 Humans begin exploring Mars

2150 Humans begin colonizing Mars
2150 Humans begin exploring the Outer Solar System
2150 Robotic explorers begin surveying Alpha Centauri and neary stars

2250 Humans begin colonizing Outer Solar System

Its too bad that this will take a long time, but each step requires dramatic cultural changes, which take lifetimes to perform.

Kevin Knuth
Boraceia, Brazil

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Selling Domain Names

drknuth — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:58:41 +0000

Over time, I have collected a variety of domain names… mostly as an experiment on how selling domains works.

I have found that Sedo.com is a great place to sell them.
I currently have the following for sale:

These three should go together in one portfolio focused on Asian business / investing / marketing opportunities:

asian-opportunities.com
asian-opportunities.net
china-opportunities.net

Asia is growing fast!

This one I imagine could be a site on politics… focused on people who aren’t focused on politics:
politics4idiots.com, maybe focused on the politicians themselves?

This site could be focused on stupid fun and games:
submoron.com, who doesn’t love a little mindless recreation now and again?

With the American economy suffering, I know a lot of people are selling their precious metals:
sellyourmetal.com, such as gold and silver.

and to explain to my wife how this all works, we purchased:

gourmetbooze.com - the name says it all gourmet booze, liquor and alcohol of all forms.
extremecoupon.com - everyone looks for coupons on the web! If you dont, you should.
Its easy to get good coupons, and great coupons are even harder to find. But extreme coupons! WOW!!!

We’ll see how they do!

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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Quetzalcoatlus and Maribous

drknuth — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 03:23:51 +0000

(The painting above is by Mark Witton click here for better image)

The Quetzalcoatlus is a giant pterosaur from the late Cretaceous Period with a 30 foot wingspan… the size of a small airplane. Many of the smaller pterosaurs, which populated the edges of the Western Interior Seaway of North America of old (now the Great Plains region), probably ate fish like modern gulls and pelicans. But it is not clear how the Quetzalcoatlus behaved. Their neck was probably too long and unwieldy to fish like gulls and pelicans, but it has been suggested that they might have behaved like skimmers skimming the water for their prey. Other ideas have included scavanging like vultures.

In a recent New Scientist article, Mark Witton and Darren Naish of the University of Portsmouth, UK, found that this group of pterosaurs ”lacked all 30 specialised adaptations for skimming seen in the head and neck of the modern avian skimmer”.

Instead they suggest that the stiff neck of the Quetzalcoatlus and their great height (15 feet… taller than a giraffe) would work well for hunting small prey on the ground or in shallow water much like herons or storks. Since Quetzalcoatlus fossils are found in inland regions, they reason that these animals probably behaved like Maribou Storks (more links to images here), which inhabit the dry savannahs of Africa and eat just about anything (dead or alive) that they can get their beaks on.

Here is a painting of hunting Quetzalcoatlus by Mark Witton
(better image here)

Phoenix from Space

drknuth — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 04:15:37 +0000

Two great images from the HiRISE camera!

This is the Phoenix probe parachuting into Mars’ north polar region from orbit with Heimdall Crater in the background. A larger image can be seen at Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This image shows the Phoenix probe on the ground.

At this point, a camera under Phoenix may have found a hard icy substrate underlying the topsoil (story here).

Kevin Knuth
Albany NY

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