It is sometimes said that the reason Soviet Union has produced so many outstanding scientists is that a lot of attention was being paid to introducing kids to science early and in a way that kept them interested. Indeed, a large amount of popular science books has been printed over the years as well as translations made of the best ones offered in the rest of the world. Martin Gardner and Richard Feinman, absolutely fascinating Robert Wood biography, Smullyan, Soviet authors Perelman and Makovetsky - all of those made me fall in love with physics, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry as a kid. And of course these books were fairly accurate as they were either authored or reviewed by respected professionals.

Times change and these days people find that you cannot blindly trust books you buy. Quite recently a very lively discussion took place in one of the LiveJournal communities (very popular in Russia). It was about a book recently printed in Moscow called "Unabridged Encyclopedia of Astronomy". The book that contains 25000 articles, has many entries that make even a casual student of science do a doubletake (some of it could be explained by the fact that the entire author team somehow did not have a single specialist in astronomy or even general physics among them).

Here are some gems (translated from original Russian as closely as possible)

"Gravitational waves - are emitted by electrical charge oscillating in space"

"Barnard star - a stationary star with visual magnitude of 9.5m... Known for being fast-moving..."

"Visible radiation - radiation that is not only visible to the naked eye, but to the special astronomical equipment and devices..."

"Visible light - light being radiated by a heated body..."

"Escape velocity - [is] defined as speed required for a man-made satellite to reach the Earth orbit. Equals 12km/s"

"Galactic Cannibalism (Extragalactic Astronomy) - a part of Astronomy dealing with celestial bodies (stars, galaxies, quasars etc) that exist outside our Galaxy"

"Ultraviolet radiation - radiation emitted by the Sun and stars"

"Interference - wave oscillation produced by the light source generates so called spherical wave fronts"

"Polar Star - the main star L of Ursa Minor constellation and the brightest star of the northern hemisphere"

"Rigel - the brightest star in the constellation of Orion and in the entire sky"

"Lynx - one of the constellations of the southern hemisphere"

"Triton - a constellation discovered by Lassell in 1846. It's mass is calculated at 2.14x10^22 kg"

The next one is tricky. It makes no sense at all in Russian, so be prepared for the same in English translation.

"Phase angle - an angle situated at a distance from the Sun to the Moon as well as from the Moon to the Earth"

"Fundamental Astronomy - modern physical-mathematical discipline growing interdependent with advances in science and technology"

Fortunately, some astute readers (one of them employed by Moscow planetarium - must know her astronomy, eh?) were able to spot it and raise some ruckus. As they were not able to get any response from the publisher, someone suggested to make a formal complaint to the russian authorities, invoking Consumer Protection Act. We'll see how it goes.

 Over the weekend actor Ryan O'Neal has been arrested on assault charges
(allegedly assaulted his son, Griffin O'Neal)
(The news article is here)

From TFA:

    Ryan O'Neal's film credits include "Love Story," "Paper Moon," "Green
Ice" and "Barry Lyndon."

and further

    Griffin O'Neal appeared in a number of B-movies, including "The Assault
of the Killer Bimbos."

I have to say that father's movie career impresses me somewhat more. I think
under circumstances I would have slapped my offspring a few times too...

It's been pointed out quite a few times how Google AdSense sometimes produces the results that are not exactly what was intended. But the Google is not the only one that suffers from this. Here is a screen scrap of a new article that tells about a not-so-bright Tennessee town mayor who unknowingly agreed to shooting a scene of a movie called Thong Girl 3 in his office. I mean I understand he might not have read the script, but what about the title???

Anyway, the good part is actually the ad inside the article.

I live in California. It is quite common to see things here written in both English and Spanish. I suspect that there might be even a law that mandates having Spanish translation available for certain public establishments. Having said this, I admit I did a double-take when I saw a list of services offered by the Customer Service department of out local supermarket:

Notice “Check cashing” and immediately after it “Cheque cashing”. Apparently we here have a lot of respect for our neighbors across the pond and their cute if peculilar way to spell things.

Today in the Compact Framework public newsgroup I spotted a code snippet (seemed like a piece of a newsreader application) where a variable was called neueNachricht. Try doing something like that in English. I don't think so.

I was walking around CES floor and found a booth around which a long line of people was circling. At the head of the line a scruffy guy with curly hair and a short beard was signing photos. I asked someone who already got a picture, “is that supposed to be someone famous?”. The guy sputtered and said, “Of course. It’s Weird Al Yankovich”

Then I went to the next booth and spotted a much shorter line with a cute chick that was signing posters, on which she modeled in some audio hardware ad. A few chinese guys were even photographing each other with her (in a “posessive” way). I decided to get a signed poster for coworker. When it was my turn, she asked who to sign it for. I asked if this was necessary. She was kind of taken aback and said that everyone wanted it signed. I agreed and gave the guy’s name. Then I asked her if that was her in the poster. She pouted and said, of course, why else would she sign them. I brought it back and it was an instant success. I became suspicious and asked “Is that supposed to be someone famous?”. The guy sputtered and said, of course, she was in those series - and then he couldn’t remember which ones. And then in a couple of hours it struck me - she was Lori Loughlin - “Becky”, “Jesse’s” wife in Full House - series that my daughter loves. Now my daughter can’t forgive me that it’s not she who got the poster.

It just occured to me that the way we potty-train small children so that they stop making messes, we also should train older children to look the stuff up instead of asking endless questions. More and more I find myself answering another question like Daddy, what is Cassinian Oval, with “lookitup”. And what better place there is than Google (with all caveats related to the safe search issues).

I even went as far as coining a term - “google-trained”, although in my case I send her to Encarta first. The thing is that google has already become synonymous with search (same as Xerox meant “to copy”). Training by the way includes an ability to recognize a potentially unsafe or junk result.

Are your children google-trained?

Despite the expected context of this blog this is not about Personal Computers. It about being Politically Correct...

Recently Microsoft has issued an update to a Bookshelf Symbol 7 font. The font was found to contain "unacceptable symbols". A press-release with apologies has been promptly issued. The blame went to poor oversight and artist mistake. Apparently what caused the whole thing was a presence of two swasticas in the font. A few things are worth mentioning:

1. The actual font file has a copyright of Ricoh Corp inside - it seems that it was licensed from Ricoh
2. The swastika (or swastica) was borrowed by Nazis from ancient India culture as an Arian symbol. Other cultures has also embraced this symbol to some extend. Most notably in Buddhist countries, especially in Japan, this symbol is associated with Good Luck and Prosperity.
3. The swastika in the font was a part of a range of Japanese (Kanji) characters.
4. This character (or rather its mirror image is a sign used on maps in Japan to designate the location of Shinto temples (can be seen on Yahoo Maps)
5. Here are the screen shots of the font before and after:

Before:

After:

This is something I have seen, while returning from Lake Tahoe this weekend. A sign said: "Such and such, Attorney at Law. Crime Pays." 'nuff said.

Another ad grabbed my attention as I was passing Bay Bridge. It was a Nextel billboard featuring their newest Java phone i730 and saying "If you want a fashion accessory - buy a poodle". I'd say this is somewhat arrogant coming from a company known to offer ugliest phones on the market.

In a pile of junk I found today a video tape labeled "Apple's Operating System Strategy. March 1997". Interesting... It's a pity I do not own a VCR anymore...

It was frequently pointed out that ugly cars have their special kind of charm. One can learn to love Porsche 964. Nissan 280 ZX has quite a following. I own a 1997 Jeep Wrangler SE (no picture is available), which many consider not quite an appealing design. To that I say, that rugged faces are not necessarily beautiful. Suddenly Daimler-Chrysler introduces a Jeep Treo concept - um, interesting...