links for 2009-01-29

"The researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to obtain infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit). "

"Yesterday, on the Deerskin thread, Mary Frances passed on Lois Bujoldâs recommendation of Womenâs Work: The First 20,000 Years by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. I immediately rushed to the library to get it, and so far it seems really good. The thing with books like this is that the details of how people lived in the past, and particularly the details of how they actually did everyday things, are absolutely invaluable for building fantasy worlds. You donât want a fantasy world to be exactly like history, of course, but much better that than it should be derived from Hollywood and from other fantasy books. History is real and solid, and if you know it you can make changes from a point of knowledge, not ignorance. "

"Why haven't colleges given up the bookstore ghost
altogether and simply set up a link on their home page to an Amazon
site listing all of the texts that students should buy? (Or Alibris,
or Powells, or whatever.) Surely these bookstores don't earn money,
and their nontextbook revenue streams (shot glasses, beer steins,
corkscrews, and sweatshirts) could be housed in smaller and even more
profitable-per-square-foot stores."

"By cruel twist of fate, the use of "factoid" has been distorted to the point where its original meaning has been obscured. Over the years it's been misused (usually by the media ironically) to the point where if you look the definition of this troublesome word up in the dictionary today, the two definitions you are presented with are as follows:

1. A piece of unverified or inaccurate information
2. A brief, somewhat interesting fact."

"When you use your credit card...
How much does it cost the merchant to process the transaction? "