If you’re more worried about value instead of calories, always order the large pizza because, math.
A pizza is a circle, and the area of a circle increases with the square of the radius.
So, for example, a 16-inch pizza is actually four times as big as an 8-inch pizza.
Keeps you and the wallet fat.
Interesting video from The Atlantic on the U.S. Naval Observatory which regulates the nation’s time clocks. It talks about how time is calculated, why it’s important they be as accurate as possible, and the problems we’ll face as clocks become even more accurate.
via Kottke
In 1914, the last Passenger Pidgin died in captivity; its population numbered in the billions fifty years earlier but was hunted to extinction. But scientists believe they can bring the bird back using cloning techniques used on Dolly.
This cloning method, called somatic cell nuclear transfer, can be used only on species for which we have cellular material. For species like the passenger pigeon that had the misfortune of going extinct before the advent of cryopreservation, a more complicated process is required. The first step is to reconstruct the species’ genome. This is difficult, because DNA begins to decay as soon as an organism dies. The DNA also mixes with the DNA of other organisms with which it comes into contact, like fungus, bacteria and other animals. If you imagine a strand of DNA as a book, then the DNA of a long-dead animal is a shuffled pile of torn pages, some of the scraps as long as a paragraph, others a single sentence or just a few words. The scraps are not in the right order, and many of them belong to other books. And the book is an epic: The passenger pigeon’s genome is about 1.2 billion base pairs long. If you imagine each base pair as a word, then the book of the passenger pigeon would be four million pages long.
There is a shortcut. The genome of a closely related species will have a high proportion of identical DNA, so it can serve as a blueprint, or “scaffold.” The passenger pigeon’s closest genetic relative is the band-tailed pigeon, which Shapiro is now sequencing. By comparing the fragments of passenger-pigeon DNA with the genomes of similar species, researchers can assemble an approximation of an actual passenger-pigeon genome.
They hope to have recreated the species by 2025 but there are a host of issues that need solving before any repopulation can take place.
I’m writing this post using Draft, an online writing tool. Somehow, I only learned about it today after it was featured on Curious Rat. So far, I’m very impressed and I can see this being a go-to website for me. It has some great editing features that I think will come in handy for me.
I’d love to see an iOS app that uses an API but only because I’d love to use this where an internet connection isn't always a sure thing — in the Subway or while flying.
