Links and Minifeatures 09 12 Wednesday

My new host has a function that tracks the most recent few hundred visitors. I just went over this log, and counted a visit a "success" if any of the html codes for the visit was not 404. Success rate: Just over 15%, and a large number of the successes were web crawlers. I've explained the situation about as thoroughly as I can on the 404 error page, and people just aren't following directions. Through the first 10 days of September, I'm showing 143,000 404 errors, and only 29,000 successful page requests.

I'm working as fast as I can, but there's only so many hours in the day. Anybody have any ideas to raise the success rate until I can get everything fixed?

UPDATE: I've been made aware of an issue viewing the site with Internet Explorer. Evidently, on the main page only, the dark footer on the bottom of the page overlays everything starting about a paragraph down. In Firefox, the main page is the only one with the huge gap in the left sidebar. So I think these problems are likely to be somehow related, but unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure them out yet.

To quote Shrek, "It's on my To Do List" If anyone with more knowledge than I would like to help, I'd appreciate it. In the meantime, Firefox is both free and much closer to compliant with standards.

Evidence that there are gaps in our knowledge about the universe: Kilo prototype mysteriously loses weight

I'm not going to get all mystical on you. It's possible that the custodians have gotten careless and left fingerprints or partial fingerprints on the bars, although I'd think it likely they would deal with that possibility before discussing it with the news media. This sample mass and several exact copies were made at the same time, from the same material, to the same standard. Measurements to this standard were well within the capabilities at the time. The difference between the masses now is significant, even by the standards of when they were made. This difference cannot be explained by any known phenomenon. Therefore, there's something we don't understand going on. This is not to say that there's anything supernatural happening. I suppose that's possible, but it's not a leading hypothesis. But known masses that start identical should stay identical, according to theory I remember studying. Perhaps there's some natural process going on on the quantum level, and over 118 years, it has become noticeable. And just to point this out, should there be some sort of matter creation or destruction going on, by Einstein's famous e=mc squared, 50 micrograms is 4.5 billion Joules (300 million meters per second squared times 50 times ten to the minus 9th kilograms). The Solar constant is 1366 Watts per square meter. So if you had a solar power array in orbit, 100 meters on a side (roughly the size of two football fields), pointed straight at the sun, it'd take just shy of 330 seconds, or five and a half minutes, to generate that much energy. If your car engine generates 200 horsepower, that's 28,300 seconds or almost eight hours of that engine running flat out, to match the energy of 50 micrograms of matter.

No I haven't forgotten 9/11. I've said what I have to say. Nothing has changed, except how shrill those who blame the United States have become. Since I have nothing new to say, I'm going to adhere to Tom Lehrer's advice and shut up.