Leon Atkinson's Blog, page 30

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Audio courses in many foreign languages. All free since it’s from the U.S. federal government.

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language courses developed by the Foreign Service Institute.

Dead Milkmen post three new tracks

I have seen many punk acts from my youth live in recent years. The Dead Milkmen were outstanding when I saw them earlier this year. Also, don’t trust the happy; the happy are insane.

Dead Milkmen post three new tracks

The Dead Milkmen have recently posted three new tracks on Soundcloud. Click the song titles below to have a listen.

Dark Clouds Gather Over Middlemarch
Ronald Reagan Killed the Black Dahlia
Little Rebel Mine

Have a PHP question? Have 20-30 minutes? Ask Stack Overflow.

It looks like if you don’t ask a really hard question about PHP or Javascript, you will will get an answer almost immediately.

How long waiting for an answer in StackOverflow – Interrupted

I think it’s amazing the speed an answer is given for any asked question, like freaking fast. If you are using Google Reader to peek new questions filtered by tag, when you see a question, almost for sure it’s already answered.

Fortunately all StackExchange data is open, so we can see exactly how fast is that. I used the online data browser, more than enough for the task.

I decided to consider only the questions having an accepted answer, since questions with many bogus answers should not be treated as having an answer at all.

12-year-old uses Dungeons and Dragons to help scientist dad with his research

Only mentioning this because D&D is cool.

12-year-old uses Dungeons and Dragons to help scientist dad with his research | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine

Alan Kingstone, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, had a problem: all humans have their eyes in the middle of their faces, and there’s nothing that Kingstone could do about it. His 12-year-old son, Julian Levy, had the solution: monsters. While some monsters are basically humanoid in shape, others have eyes on their hands, tails, tentacles and other unnatural body parts. Perfect. Kingstone would use monsters. And Julian would get his first publication in a journal from the Royal Society, one of the world’s most august scientific institutions.

Research suggests your grandfather’s smoking affects you

This research is showing that a parent who smokes passes on changes in DNA that may manifest two generations later. The study is about asthma, but this link suggests anything you might do to your body prior to conceiving a child might effect on all your progeny.

Conditioning Research: scary epigenetics….you suffer because your grandad smoked?

Germline epigenetic marks imposed by exposure to nicotine during pregnancy can become permanently programmed and transferred through the germline to subsequent generations, a ground-breaking finding that shifts the current asthma paradigm, opening up many new avenues to explore.

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Smoking can causes asthma in third generation
Quitting by 40 dramatically cuts risk

Doug Stanhope impersonates John Lydon for Huffington Post interview | Punknews.org

Ha ha! Punk rock! Baba Booey!

Doug Stanhope impersonates John Lydon for Huffington Post interview | Punknews.org

Standup comedian Doug Stanhope impersonated Sex Pistols and Public Image Limited frontman John Lydon after a Huffington Post interviewer erroneously called him twice. Stanhope described the exchange via his official website.

How Evolution Does Rapid Prototypes

There’s a common line of thinking in the paleo lifestyle crowd: milk is for babies. Paleo folks didn’t drink the milk of other animals. Other adult mammals don’t drink milk. So, don’t drink it. Richard Nikoley, fellow mortal enemy of religion in all forms, points out that if you have the right genetics, milk is a a nearly perfect food. Continue the thought with this idea: the ability to drink milk was an spectacular mutation that spread in ancient Europe with unprecedented speed. Oh, also, yogurt gives you big balls.

Why Milk?

Throughout evolutionary history, most adult homo sapiens could not drink milk. Even today, most adults cannot drink milk. Adults who cannot drink milk don’t seem to lose very much, particularly as they can still eat yogurt and cheese. And yet the gene that allowed some adults to drink milk spread incredibly rapidly suggesting massive advantages to milk drinkers. Why? No one knows for sure but it seems to coincide with civilization. Slate has more.

js-url: small library for parsing out parts of URLs

This will come in handy. You pass in a full URL and quickly pick out all the parts.

websanova/jquery-url · GitHub

url() – A simple, lightweight url parser for JavaScript. Also includes a jQuery version of the plugin that can be called via $.url() with all the same options. If you’re already using jQuery it may be better to use the jQuery version to avoid namespacing issues.

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jQuery URL Parser

SCOTUS hearing case on re-selling copyrighted works

My bet is they rule in favor of whoever has the most money already. That is, they will rule that copyright holders can limit what you do with a book printed in another country. Also, it won’t matter in the least because printed books are rapidly losing significance.

Supreme Court to hear arguments in case of student who resold books – CNN.com

Oral arguments are set for Monday in closely watched Supreme Court copyright case of a student who resold books to help pay for college.

Related articles

Supreme Court Weighs First-Sale Case and Why It Matters to You

Valve Offers Beta Steam For Linux

I filled out the survey and hope to give it a spin. It will be really interesting to see if Steam on Linux can take hold.

Valve Linux Steam Client Beta Application

We’re looking for Linux gamers to install and test our new Steam for Linux client. We are primarily interested in experienced Linux users.

Related articles

Steam for Linux beta now open for applicants
Steam for Linux needs beta testers, Left 4 Dead 2 Steam Workshop closed beta “this week”