Sigh... well, at least they fixed it. Rapidweaver, my old nemesis and blogging software package, suffered a severe setback in Nov-Dec. It would frequently crash, delete entries, and do various other nasty, terrible things. They released an update which I eventually managed to install and now things seem to be ok. We’ll see how long it lasts. In the meantime I hope to add the entries that were lost from Nov and Dec.

For now I’ll leave you with a link, not just a single article, but several from a guy at UCLA that has been generating x-rays using scotch tape. Move over MacGyver. I don’t think they will be replacing synchrotrons any time soon, but it’s a clever example of nature behaving in a way that A) nobody was really expecting and B) in hind-sight makes a great deal of sense.