Category Archives: General Science

Ultima Thule

Congratulations to Alan Stern and the New Horizons team. The flyby appears to have been a success, we now know that it’s bilobal, and it didn’t have a light curve because the spacecraft was (coincidentally) coming toward its spin axis. Not enough data yet to know if it has a 15-hour or 30-hour period, but we’ll start getting high-res pictures tomorrow. It will take two year to download all the data, though, to give similar resolution that we got for Pluto.

[Update a while later]

High(er) res tomorrow, not high-res.

The Paleo Diet

Forget it; go neolithic.

I’ve never been orthodox paleo. Basically, I’ve just cut way back on processed foods. I’m back to my college weight, my cholesterol is a little high, but the ratio is good, and my triglycerides are almost unmeasurable. I’m supposed to worry because both my parents died fairly young (father at 55, mother at 68) from coronaries, but they both were overweight, had terrible diets, and were inveterate smokers. Every time I check my arteries, no issues are found.