Personal site of Eric T. Meek, MD FAWM
Ever been out camping and wonder what is the temperature. Well, never wonder again . . . at least if you can count, add and listen to crickets chirp. Basically, count the the number of chirps in 13 seconds, add 40 to it and you’ll have a really good approximation of the outdoor temp. Kinda cool.
Source: Natural Clocks: Cricket chirps
On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 am, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
That won’t happen again for a thousand years.
Just think about all those significant, insignificant things you miss every day 🙂
A while ago I heard on Paul Harvey that Woman were ~80% more likely to spontaneously burst into flames while pumping gas into their car. Later, I learned in my chemistry that one of the risk factors for Spontaneous Human Combustion was being a woman. I sorta laughed both off until I saw this while filling up my car.
As it turns out, woman are 80% more likely to reenter their car while filing up with gas. While reentering their car it is possible to have an undesired effect of generating static electricity while sliding across the seat. The net result of this static electricity with all the gas fumes is an explosion when the electricity is discharged on the pump handle as the first metal object touched.
Ouch.
I just received the most incredible pictures in a powerpoint presentation attached to an e-mail entitle “So you can’t make it into work today?”. I wish I could give proper credit, but the only credit I could find was in the document properties of a name of “Dom” and company of “Bart.”
This is one of the pictures and the rest are on the full page.
I did a quick search on Google and found this page with more info regarding the storm as well as more pictures.
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The Miami Herald is reporting on a fascinating find in the everglades of a 13-foot python swallowing a 6-foot American alligator. There is some question as to how this all took place, but my favorite theory is from Frank Mazzotti at the end of the article,
Mazzotti said it’s also plausible the snake scavenged a dead gator. Then time, decay and heat could explain what happened next: a nasty blowout of the snake body. ”You’ve got a deteriorating carcass, you’ve got a buildup of gases, you’ve got sharp claw points . . . ,” he said.”
Finally uploaded photos from my last several trips. Captions are included with the pictures describing where the photos were taken. My favorites photos are from the Congressional Library, the photos of the really beautiful building.
On a side note, I’m trying out a flickr account to see how I like it. I’m still unsure of it, especially with the 20MB free limit for upload of photos. I’ll probably only use it for camera phone pics.
I’ve always been told by friends my thinking is strange, different and sometimes just crazy. Until now I’ve always just laughed with them, but now I realize I should thank them for the complement. According to Ker Than, a staff writer at LiveScience, in an article entitled “Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity and Insanity” that means I’m creative.
Unless, of course, I’m just insane 
Watch the shuttle launch!
And if that isn’t good enough, watch the all new shuttle tank camera all the way into space (yes, that is the Earth in the background)! 
Read more about the Return to Flight.