ratogi.net

…10th anniversary to ratogi.net, which I just rediscovered was registered as a domain on October 1, 1999.  Enjoy  a serving of your favorite confection in its honor. 🙂

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxOXBMA7Rro

One of the timeless classics… “Solace of You” by Living Colour.

The eastern half of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is being replaced.  So what should be done with the old bridge when the new one is finished?  Caltrans is planning to scrap it, of course, but a couple of architects have proposed turning it into a park and sports complex instead.  Granted, doing so would require the same costly seismic retrofitting that led Caltrans to decide to replace the bridge in the first place, but reusing abandoned bridges in this way is still an intriguing idea in places where the ground doesn’t move.

The article says it best: “Scientists are starting to understand that death isn’t caused by oxygen deprivation itself, but by a chain of damaging chemical reactions that are triggered by sharply dropping oxygen levels.  The thing is, those reactions require the presence of some oxygen.”

So in principle, if you replace that small amount of oxygen with something like, say, the normally deadly hydrogen sulfide, it just might slow down those chemical reactions enough to buy your doctors time to save you.  Suspended animation in a more literal sense than the levitating mice from two posts ago…

Here’s an interesting article about the real Luddites.  The modern use of the word refers to people who are anti-technology.  Actually, the original Luddites were against the wholesale replacing of people (in particular, themselves) with technology and other cost-cutting methods in the “new economy” of early 19th century England.