KERBOOM

KERBOOM

Breaking News: SeaLaunch rocket explodes on the pad

Update: Here's the video:

Technorati Tags: Space, SeaLaunch

CHAOS

CHAOS

I spotted this on the Cosmic Conservative blog:


How freaking cool is that. Looks like about the only thing that the CHAOS robot from Autonomous Solutions can't do is climb a tree.

Technorati Tags: Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Video

a bit of a surprise

a bit of a surprise

Everyone has seen those silly "what _____ are you?" quizzes around. I just took the "what science fiction writer are you" quiz, and got a bit of a surprise. I've never even heard of this guy, and I've read a lot of science fiction - particularly the old grandmasters. Looks like I'm going to have to check some of his fiction out.

I am: Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs) A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.

Which science fiction writer are you?

Technorati Tags: Books, Authors, Stupid Quizzes

A Taxing Question

A Taxing Question

Is there a law on the books, anywhere, that requires the average American worker to pay a direct, unapportioned tax on their labor or services? Watch this video, and decide for yourself. (A DVD version of this video is available at http://www.freedomtofascism.com/)


By the way, if anyone can show me that law, there is a $50000 reward offered for it by the We The People Foundation that I'd love to collect.

Update: I posted this video here after watching only 15 or 20 minutes of it. Now that I have had the chance to watch the whole thing, I can see that it goes a lot further down the rabbit hole, exploring such topics as the Federal Reserve Bank, the National ID card, and a world government. Scary stuff. Pass it on.

Technorati Tags: Politics, History, Law, Income Tax, Video

introducing the Indy Science Blogs

introducing the Indy Science Blogs

Last year, I along with dozens of other science-type bloggers applied to be involved with scienceblogs.com. Science blogs sent out a mass email rejection letter to myself and the aforementioned dozens, but in what must have been a mental slip, did not do so as blind copies. Instead, they sent the rejection letter out as CC's, thus sending all our email addresses out to dozens of strangers around the world.

Well, a few of us strangers felt that we ought to form our own science blog aggregator. So, we banded together and formed the Independent Science Blogs (real science... independent voices). After putting together the website and tweaking away the bugs over the last few months, we decided to finally launch publicly today. Here's a copy of the press release:

ATTACK OF THE SCIENCE BLOGS

INDEPENDENT BLOGGERS AIM TO UNVEIL THE SECRETS OF SCIENCE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Scientific research is the latest area of public life to draw the interest of bloggers hoping to shed light on under-reported stories.

IndyScienceBlogs.org, a grassroots coalition of academics, scientists and science nuts, is the latest, officially launching Jan. 22. It joins Seed Media's Scienceblogs.com, ScienceBlog.com and ScienceNewsBlog in this burgeoning category.

Some science bloggers, whether professional or amateur scientists, are driven by intense interest in topics that may be too niche for major magazines. Others have a point of view that's at odds with the mainstream scientific media. Like all bloggers, they enjoy the freedom to express their opinions that blogging allows.

The IndyScienceblogs crew is indicative. They include:
- Emily DeVoto, a healthcare consultant who covers policy and news
- Aleksandr Kavokin, a Russian M.D. with a special interest in unusual medical conditions
- Susan Kuchinskas, who tracks research on the hormone oxytocin
- Barry Leiba, an IBM researcher who cherry-picks ideas from many disciplines
- Ed Minchau, an engineer with a fascination for robots
- Sibin Mohan, a computer science doctoral student who blogs about everything from movies to philosophy to gadgets
- Mike White, who brings his expertise in genomics and molecular biology to his posts about cutting-edge research
- Trisha, who writes about the research involved in women's health issues.
- And The Beauty Brains, two anonymous cosmetic chemists who decode the mysteries of beauty products

The science blogs trend is good news for the general reader: Bloggers pore through journals, translate arcane scientific data and explain what it means for the rest of us. Full contact information and background for a story on this trend are available, and interviews can be facilitated at your convenience.

We can be contacted via email at indyscienceblogs@gmail.com

I'm glad to be a part of this rather diverse group of science bloggers. I guess this means that I should blog more.

Technorati Tags: Science, Blog, IndyScienceBlogs

a bit of a delay

a bit of a delay

Spaceports reports that Spacex is going to delay the launch of their rocket until mid-February.

SpaceX launch

SpaceX launch

In about three days, SpaceX is going to force Jeffrey Bell to swallow his words.

Technorati Tags: Space, SpaceX

Farmer In The Sky

Farmer In The Sky

This is definitely a movie I'll be seeing next month.


Technorati Tags: Space, Science Fiction, Movies

comet McNaught

comet McNaught

Comet McNaught will be reaching perihelion on January 12th. At a magnitude of -1, comet McNaught is the brightest comet since 1975. On January 9th, Vidar Martinsen took several successive photos of comet McNaught and put them together in this animation.


cross-posted at Space Feeds
Technorati Tags: Space, Astronomy, Comet McNaught, Video

Yep, that about covers it

Yep, that about covers it

Bush Derangement Syndrome explained. Excerpt:

I think, what it is, is he took a bad guy down. We’ve had Presidents do that before, too…but President Bush did it in the modern age, when good & evil are supposed to be matters open to individual interpretation. In an age where evil is supposed to be a subjective viewpoint…he targeted someone. He’s an unwelcome paradigm shift, and the shift is in an direction that makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Once you go down the road of insisting there is no such thing as “absolute” evil, you can stay there as long as you choose to…until someone else comes along, defines evil as being really evil, and does something about it. This makes the nihilist/anarchist crowd look bad.

It hurts their P.R. You stand there “helplessly” watching a house burn, you look okay. Someone else grabs a hose while you sit there on your ass watching…now, you’re embarrassed. If the other guy didn’t happen along, the house would have burned to the ground. But you’d look good. Nothing else really counts, right?

Technorati Tags: Politics, President Bush, Moonbats

classical metal

classical metal

One of the things I like most about YouTube is that amateur musicians can show their stuff to the world. It is amazing how many young heavy metal guitarists out there are so heavily influenced by classical music. Here's a sampling:

Bach's Toccata in D


Mozart - Sonata number 11 (Rondo Alla Turca)


... and again, on 5 string bass


Mozart - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik


Beethoven - Für Elise


This next one is the fourth-most-viewed video in YouTube's history:
Pachelbel - Canon in D


and finally,
Rimsky-Korsakov - Flight of the Bumblebee


Technorati Tags: Music, Video, Classical, Heavy Metal

Ramen inventor dies

Ramen inventor dies

College students everywhere owe this guy, big time.


More here.

Technorati Tags: Ramen

Blue Origin test flight

Blue Origin test flight

The highly-secretive Blue Origin has finally released some pictures and video to the public. Below is a video they made of their first test launch of the Goddard, the precursor to their New Shepard suborbital passenger vehicle.


Blue Origin is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com. And, they're hiring.

Technorati Tags: Space, Blue Origin

The Red Ensign Standard

Over the last couple of years, I have been involved in the Red Ensign Brigade. The reason for the Brigade can probably best be summed up by this quote from Dust My Broom:

There is no core idealism in the group other than we love our country [Canada] and take pride in its history.

Since mid-2004 (that's a millenia in blog years) the members have been taking turns hosting the Red Ensign Standard, a sort of Carnival of the Canadians. While that might still happen from time to time, an easier way to aggregate the Red Ensign bloggers' posts is now available.

Over the last couple of days, I have put together the Red Ensign Standard blog aggregator as a permanent home for the Standard. On that page is the brigade blogroll, a list of the previous Red Ensign Standards, and an aggregate of the 50 most recent blog posts by the Red Ensign bloggers.

Joining the Red Ensign Brigade

It is easy to join the Red Ensign Brigade. Simply send an email to Nicholas at Quotulatiousness, giving us the name of your blog, your blog URL, and the URL of your blog RSS or Atom feed.

We only consider blogs that have an at least six month track record. After we check out your blog and make sure it isn't spam, our Membership Committee will discuss it and see if it likes what it sees. If the answer is "yes," then Nicholas will add your blog to the blogroll, and he'll provide you with the code to display the blogroll in your sidebar, and I will add your site feed to the Red Ensign Standard blog aggregator.

That's it, that's all there is to it.

If you want to get a little fancier and do the scrolling blogrolls like I have in my sidebar, you can find the necessary code to do that here.

Technorati Tags: Red Ensign

To Serve All My Days

To Serve All My Days

Over the last couple of years, the folks at Star Trek: New Voyages have been putting together what would have been the fourth season of the original Star Trek. They've done a superlative job: precisely recreating the sets, updating the special effects (tons of CGI), and writing excellent scripts. The acting has been fairly decent, and even that is getting better and better as they do more episodes. All in all, it has been a top-notch production.

They have done such a good job, they have attracted the attention of many of the people involved in the original series. What follows is episode 3, To Serve All My Days. It was written by one of the original writers (D.C. Fontana) and stars Walter Koenig in what has to be some of his finest Trek work.











More information on Star Trek: New Voyages is available on their Wikipedia entry.

Technorati Tags: Science Fiction, Star Trek, New Voyages, Video

Dream Big

Dream Big

MOON World Resorts has put together this video outlining the concept for their resorts. I remember seeing their concept a few years ago (at a different website) but since then the concept has only grown even bigger and better than before.


I had to laugh at some of the names they used in this video (ie a golf course designed by Lion Irons, heh). From what I saw in the video, it looks like MOON could very well become one of the world's premier resorts.

Technorati Tags: Space, Moon, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Resort, Casino