Mister Ian's Weblog

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  • Holographic disk drives

    Wow! Reading the new issue of Popular Science, there are now on the market by Maxell 300 GB disks meant for professional archiving. And they expect by 2010 to have 1.6 TB (that’s about 350 DVDs worth) drives. And they write data to the disks about 30 times faster than DVDs also.

    The data is stored in 3 dimensions in a special gel that they say should last 50 years.

    At C Net here’s more information or just search Google for more.

    Wait, this is even better, go to Maxell from one of these links as I see the link in the C-Net article is broken.

  • What to do if you find out you are in a fairy tale

    From the following post on bookofjoe:
    bookofjoe: fora.tv — ‘Eggheads on the web’

  • God’s Grandeur

    Beauty in nature

    God’s Grandeur

    THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
    Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
    Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
    Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

    And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
    And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
    Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
    From Bartelby.com

    I don’t know where I saved this link from but I had it in my bookmarks from a while back.

  • The Cost of Bottled Water

    image_322.jpg
    The above is “organic” bottled water we got here. The bottle says it is filtered through fields that are certified organic.
    The real cost of bottled water on the environment. There is certainly a lot drunk in the developing world and in the gulf! You could extrapolate the numbers whatever way.

    Triple Pundit: AskPablo: Exotic Bottled Water

    And here’s another post on what a gallon of various things costs.

  • Photographing Squirrels

    This is funny!

    mental_floss magazine – Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix

  • Alcohol, Tobacco Worse than Pot, Ecstasy

    In research published in The Lancet, Professor David Nutt of Britain’s Bristol University and colleagues proposed a new framework for the classification of harmful substances, based on the actual risks posed to society. Their ranking listed alcohol and tobacco among the top 10 most dangerous substances.

    Read the rest of the post at: Sahaja Yoga Meditation News – Light of Love » Alcohol, Tobacco Worse than Pot, Ecstasy