Delicious LiveJournal Links for 10-15-2009

[andrewducker]

• US special forces tool up with plasma blades
  Sadly, not quite as cool as you might think. Still pretty cool though.
  (tags: technology medicine TheFuture)
• iPhone saves woman from bear
  Is there anything it can't do?
  (tags: iphone bears)
• 'Lying down' NHS staff reinstated - a victory for common sense
  Dismissal was over the top - what they needed was to be shouted at and then sent back to work.
  (tags: work law pranks)
• A new dimension for genome studies
  They've found how DNA is stored. Most impressive.
  (tags: 3D dna genetics biology fractal)

Comments

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

Amazing... those folks were initially fired for playing a stupid game but we can't even get a guy fired who used homophobic and racist slurs in his class room.

[andrewducker]

That's ridiculous! Have you tried recording him and then using it as evidence?

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

Ah I was referring to this story: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-homophobic-remark-13oct13,0,6142131.story

This has not happened to me in HS or University luckily. I just get conservative prof's who don't think before they start nattering at us with their opinions.

ETA: The outcome was a slap on the wrist: http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/2009/10/13/80301805/index.xml

[makyo.livejournal.com]

I think even shouting would have been a little over the top. Personally I'd have gone for a wryly raised eyebrow and an "if you lot have quite finished, perhaps you'd like to get on with some work now".

[frankwu.livejournal.com]

Cool links. My favorites were the woman saves herself from a bear with an iPhone. You'd think maybe someone would develop an app with blinking lights and noises to attract a bear's attention so you could run away.

And the DNA thingo was cool. I got my Ph.D. in studying DNA replication, and learned all about histones (the proteins that DNA is wrapped around - like the spools of a cassette tape) - but this new study is really really cool, quite an advancement in figuring out how some genes are turned on and some turned off. Just by physically sequestering the DNA. Amazing!

[simont]

I was a bit disappointed that all she did was chuck the iPhone at the bear to distract it. I'd hoped that either there'd be a dedicated bear-mollifying or bear-distracting iPhone app, or else she'd managed to hastily google "what do I do if a bear is heading for me" and get an answer quickly enough to help.

(In a cartoon, of course, the bear would have whipped out its own iPhone and they'd have had a good chat comparing notes about whether the latest software upgrade was worth it.)

[frankwu.livejournal.com]

The "In Case of Bear Attack" app should also have a feature that if you leave it running it disables the iPhone's automatic sleep mode - so the screen never goes dark, and the app basically runs with all lights blinking and full sound (I hear that bears are attracted to calm, firm human voices though I wonder about their reactions to freaked out screaming).

Is there a way to override the automatic-sleep feature on an iPhone?