Archive for November, 2010
Watching: rare earth minerals
22Nov10
Rare earth elements are considered critical metals for high-tech industries. They are: La lanthanum Tb terbium Ce cerium Dy dysprosium Pr praseodymium Ho holmium Nd neodymium Er erbium Pm promethium Tm thulium Sm samarium Yb ytterbium Eu europium Lu lutetium Gd gadolinium Y yttrium (source) Rare earth elements (RRE for short), although being quite common, [...]
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Tags: China, exports, geopolitics, Japan, rare earth, technology, USA
Tech today- Madonna on magazine covers, 1983-2011 2011/10/27You can see the evolution of Madonna's look in this collection of magazine covers...one per year for the last 28 years. Her first cover appeared just a month after Amy Winehouse was born. (via ★janelle) Tags: Madonna magazinesJason Kottke
- Oliver Stone directing The Power Broker movie 2011/10/27Oliver Stone is set to direct a movie for HBO based on Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker. Moses, who at one time was dubbed the city's "master builder,' was among the most powerful men in 20th century urban planning and politics, having influenced New York's infrastructure as much as any other individual. The […]Jason Kottke
- Richard Feynman on beauty 2011/10/04Richard Feynman talking about the beauty of science and of the natural world over a bunch of video footage taken from NASA, Microcosmos, and BBC nature docs like Planet Earth? This is fantastically right up my alley. Part two is Honours and part three is Curiosity. If I ever go on hallucinogenic walkabout in the desert, I'd want Richard Feynman to be my […]Jason Kottke
- Watch lectures on mind, brain, and human nature 2011/10/05On Monday, I told you about The Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College, in St. Peter, Minn., where top neuroscientists are speaking about the mind, the brain, and what it means to be human. Now, I have some good news for those of you who couldn't play hooky this week, couldn't get tickets to the free event, and/or don't actually live an […]Maggie Koerth-Baker
- OCCUPY WALL STREET (the theory) 2011/10/03Really simple: Occupy Wall Street is an open source protest. This type of protest has been very effective over the last year in toppling regimes in north Africa. It's proving relatively successful in the US too. Open source protest is an organizational technique. Probably the only organizational technique that can assemble a massive crowd in today […]John Robb
- How Anonymous emerged to Occupy Wall Street | Ayesha Kazmi 2011/09/26Mocked at first by some, Occupy Wall Street is showing the potential of online 'hacktivism' allied with street protestDefying harsh critiques from Stephen Colbert and slews of bloggers who scoffed last week at the "leaderless", "directionless", Frisbee-throwing hipsters camping out on cardboard at a random New York City park in […]Ayesha Kazmi
- Political science: why rejecting expertise has become a campaign strategy (and why it scares me) 2011/09/04On this long Labor Day weekend in the US, we're bringing you a set of opinion pieces from various Ars writers—and we'd love to have you join the conversation in the comments. "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy." With that tweet, Jon Huntsman set himself apart from every other candida […]jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer)
- Learn a New Skill This Weekend [Weekendhacker] 2011/10/01A weekend may not seem like a lot of time, but you might be surprised by what you can learn in just 48 hours. Here are a bunch of new skills you can pick up on the weekend, or at least master the basics. More »Adam Dachis
- How tide predicting, analog computers won World War II 2011/09/26Without Lord Kelvin, there would have been no D-Day. There's some very cool science history in the September issue of Physics Today, centering around a collection of analog computers, developed in the 19th century to predict tides. This was a job that human mathematicians could do, but the computing machines did the job faster and were less prone to sma […]Maggie Koerth-Baker
- Facebook Is Tracking Your Every Move on the Web; Here's How to Stop It [Facebook] 2011/09/26Over the weekend, Dave Winer wrote an article at Scripting.com explaining how Facebook keeps track of where you are on the web after logging in without your consent. Nik Cubrilovic dug a little deeper, and discovered that Facebook can still track where you are, even if you log out. Facebook, for its part, has denied the claims. Regardless of who you believe, […]Alan Henry
- Madonna on magazine covers, 1983-2011 2011/10/27
