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Outlaw13 | Thursday, 2nd of September 2010 at 06:37:59 PM
This is the view from the solid rocket booster on the Space Shuttle as it’s launched into orbit, and then the ride back to earth (with audio). The real money shot for me is at around the two minute mark when the boosters separate from the shuttle.
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Floyd | Thursday, 2nd of September 2010 at 02:14:12 PM
A man whose girlfriend has broken up with him has bought a $15,000 sex doll that is just — mostly — like her.
The 50-year-old man took a collection of snapshots of his ex and told adult toy maker Diego Bortolin: “I want it just like her but with bigger boobs.”
Diego – who refuses to name [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 1st of September 2010 at 11:29:55 AM
Johann Sebastian Bach… not just good for your ears and good for your soul… good for you period. From Miller-McCune:
A newly published study from Mexico reports repeated listening to certain classical works — including one by Mozart — helps ease the debilitating symptoms of clinical depression.
“Music offers a simple and elegant way to [...]
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Rufus | Wednesday, 1st of September 2010 at 09:21:56 AM
(2nd Anniversary re-print. Original posted 12/01/2009)
I hope I don’t offend anyone; this is a sincere question and I am very interested in learning what y’all (you’se guys for Rich and Stosh, you’ins for Eric) have to say. I haven’t looked at the numbers but there is no question our nation graduates way, way, way too [...]
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Floyd | Monday, 30th of August 2010 at 07:16:23 AM
Calling all science guys and gals! I came across this piece in The London Telegraph on how thorium is the “magic bullet” — or may be — that renders oil and uranium obsolete.
There is no certain bet in nuclear physics but work by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) [...]
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Outlaw13 | Sunday, 29th of August 2010 at 07:38:51 AM
From today’s Washington Times…
President Obama’s EPA is already well down the path to regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, something the act was not designed to do. It has a problem, however, because shoehorning greenhouse gases into that 40-year-old law would force churches, schools, warehouses, commercial kitchens and other sources to obtain costly [...]
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Floyd | Friday, 27th of August 2010 at 06:29:53 AM
h/t: Arts & Living Daily
Good-bye Kodachrome.
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Floyd | Sunday, 22nd of August 2010 at 10:06:12 AM
A new study shows that astronauts that spend 6 months at the International Space Station become as weak as 80 year olds.
Marquette University biologist Robert Fitts, who led the study, stresses that the accelerated space aging is temporary: Astronauts’ muscles recover after a few months back on Earth.
But what if a crew needed to make [...]
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Floyd | Saturday, 21st of August 2010 at 07:55:29 AM
Did Germany outstrip England’s growth — reaching industrial parity in 1900 because it didn’t have copyright laws? This article from Speigel online makes that claim.
The entire country seemed to be obsessed with reading. The sudden passion for books struck even booksellers as strange and in 1836 led literary critic Wolfgang Menzel to declare Germans [...]
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Outlaw13 | Monday, 16th of August 2010 at 04:54:18 PM
Supersonic shock waves explained…the video is cool as well.
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Outlaw13 | Thursday, 12th of August 2010 at 06:17:23 AM
From The Jawa Report
That vile weed of tobacco has helped many a Soldier deal with the stress of deployment. But don’t count on getting any tobacco products in the mail from you nasty habit enablers anymore.
Consistent with the Pentagon’s stated campaign to rid the U.S. military of all tobacco products, the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 11th of August 2010 at 08:11:06 AM
From MY FOXNY:
Your thumbprint might soon be the key to an afternoon candy bar. A Massachusetts based vending machine company is joinng the growing ranks of companies that are field-testing new technologies.
Next Generation Vending and Food Service is experimenting with biometric vending machines that would allow a user to tie a credit card to [...]
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Floyd | Tuesday, 10th of August 2010 at 07:50:01 AM
Stephen Hawking… super genius… thinks we should abandon planet Earth. Right.
Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has some advice for the people of Earth – it’s time to get off.
“I believe that the long-term future of the human race must be in space,” Hawking said to Big Think , a global forum that includes interviews with experts.
“It [...]
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Floyd | Sunday, 8th of August 2010 at 08:47:37 AM
Part of the big lie of feminism has been the notion that men are lazy and women can and do alot more than men. After all they work hard outside the home and then do ALL the chores at home too. Right? Wrong. A new study from the London School of [...]
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Outlaw13 | Sunday, 8th of August 2010 at 05:21:26 AM
Watch this time lapse video of a Space Shuttle being prepared for launch…pretty cool and soon to be no more. You also might want to adjust your speakers this thing opens to 100% and starts playing on its own…sorry
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trzupr | Thursday, 5th of August 2010 at 06:25:18 PM
The Sikorsky X-2 demonstrator set a new world speed record for rotary-winged aircraft today: 258 mph. The old record of 249 mph, set by a Westland Lynx (British, in other words) had stood for 24 years. Say it with me: U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!!!
No tail rotor, special anti-vibration technology, a pusher propeller and coaxial contra-rotating main [...]
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trzupr | Tuesday, 3rd of August 2010 at 03:14:14 PM
Not only did W “drive American into a ditch, ” it seems that he pissed off a certain giant gasbag (and I’m not talking Al Gore!) How else could we explain the following? According to FOX:
Earth is bracing for a cosmic tsunami Tuesday night as tons of plasma from a massive solar flare head directly [...]
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Mike | Sunday, 1st of August 2010 at 09:09:17 AM
Here are a couple of fascinating ideas to noodle around with:
Are We Living Inside a Black Hole?
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Floyd | Saturday, 31st of July 2010 at 08:42:44 AM
Here’s an interesting article from a journal called In Character about how we used to be in awe of our machines and how now that we know less and less about how they work — we take them for granted.
Visiting the Paris Exhibition in 1900, the American writer Henry Adams saw something so remarkable he [...]
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Floyd | Friday, 30th of July 2010 at 01:06:47 PM
If this is true we have nearly two centuries of government and media fueled hysteria ahead of us. I think the Armageddon scenario is just the thing. Though we could raise the battleships Yamato and Bismark — turn them into spaceships and fight this thing.
Maria Eugenia Sansaturio and scientists from the Universidad de [...]
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trzupr | Friday, 30th of July 2010 at 08:50:33 AM
Yesterday Floyd linked to a post from Reason that celebrated the death of cap and trade (yay!) and suggested that this could be a turning point, to wit: the beginning of the end of global warming hysteria. As reasonable as that reasoned conclusion seems, there are many reasons to suggest that this is not the [...]
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Floyd | Friday, 30th of July 2010 at 07:25:43 AM
What’s a principled agnostic to do caught betwixt and between believers and the New Atheists who are often more fundamentalist than their Christian counterparts? This article from Slate.com seeks to carve out territory for agnostics Here’s a bit:
Let me make clear that I accept most of the New Atheist’s criticism of religious bad [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 28th of July 2010 at 07:43:33 AM
Notice the above… pretty cool postcard huh? Well it wasn’t just a measly postcard. No, it was much much more… See what it was below the fold:
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Floyd | Friday, 23rd of July 2010 at 05:09:26 AM
Christina Hendricks from Mad Men
The early 21st century is an interesting time to be alive. Science has proven two things for sure… Politicians ARE bigger boobs and women HAVE bigger boobs — and not from Silicon Valley. Where do you go to get that Ph.D? From Sydney Morning Herald:
Many women may have [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 21st of July 2010 at 08:13:13 AM
The above is a successful test of an anti-aircraft laser by Raytheon at the Farnborough Airshow in Hampshire. BBC has the story:
Peter Felstead, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, told BBC News that CIWS was the start of real world applications for military solid state lasers.
“OK, so a UAV isn’t armoured, nor is it flying [...]
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Floyd | Saturday, 17th of July 2010 at 07:02:24 AM
This article from The American Spectator by Angelo Codevilla called “America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution” nails how I think and feel about the state of our culture — and the escalating culture war (about much more than coarse pop culture and abortion — this is an existential war). That’s not [...]
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JohnFN | Thursday, 15th of July 2010 at 07:28:20 PM
Kevin Costner made a rather revealing comment about his new mechanism, used to clean oil spills from water. Costner said it wasn’t scientists or the academics that usually come up with solutions, but usually a guy with a wrench. The comment revealed an element of Costner quite missing from much of our governmental and corporate [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 14th of July 2010 at 09:34:15 AM
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 — continuously operating since 1977… and Voyager 1 is headed for the border of our Solar System. From Popular Science
Next time you’re marveling at the fact that Spirit and Opportunity have been roving Mars for over six years now, ponder this: the two Voyager spacecraft have been hurtling through [...]
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Floyd | Sunday, 11th of July 2010 at 07:59:30 AM
It’s been awhile since we had some Michael Ramirez…
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Floyd | Saturday, 10th of July 2010 at 08:39:51 AM
These here Interwebs are great for learning and answering questions. A little bit of providence doesn’t hurt either. Yesterday we took the kids to Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles (highly recommended — beautiful, interesting, and free) — added bonus… it’s above The Greek Theater and the strains of Peter Frampton and Yes were [...]
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Floyd | Thursday, 8th of July 2010 at 01:38:31 PM
Humungous (sic) bubbles blown from small black hole
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trzupr | Tuesday, 6th of July 2010 at 09:42:12 AM
Sadly, these episodes will no longer be part of mission briefings.
And then this happened:
“It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the _____ (nations),” [...]
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Floyd | Thursday, 1st of July 2010 at 03:46:31 AM
This might not be the best of all possible worlds had Gottfried Leibniz not been born on this date in 1646.
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Floyd | Tuesday, 29th of June 2010 at 08:17:08 AM
I teach a few courses in our forensic psychology program so I find this stuff fascinating. NPR (which actually has some very good stuff) is doing a series of stories on neuroscience and crime…. here’s a link to the first one about neuroscientist James Fallon — a professor at UC-Irvine and a descendant of [...]
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trzupr | Monday, 28th of June 2010 at 01:05:59 PM
“Alex, I believe the question is: how many windmills would we have to build to replace petroleum in order to fulfill president Obama’s dream of a green, all-electric America?”
“You are correct sir!”
If you like thought experiments and/or math, keep reading. If not, move along and take your chances with Floyd’s latest – you’ll be terribly [...]
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Floyd | Sunday, 27th of June 2010 at 11:45:50 AM
According to a Dutch study… people who label themselves as “swingers” — those who trade partners or engage in group sex(Go Google Ads go!) have a much higher rate of STD than prostitutes. From CBS News:
Dutch researchers analyzed almost 9,000 patients at three sexual health clinics and found that 10.4 percent of older couples [...]
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Floyd | Saturday, 26th of June 2010 at 06:54:49 AM
From Wired’s Gadget Blog:
Oscar, a three-year old British cat, has joined the rarefied ranks of bionic animals. After a horrifying accident chopped off his hind legs, Oscar has gotten a second lease on life through two bionic leg implants.
Oscar lost his legs to a combine harvester last October. With heavy blood loss and bits of [...]
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Floyd | Thursday, 24th of June 2010 at 06:51:54 PM
Socialists and green whack jobs do no play. Witness this story from Spain — courtesy of Pajamas Media:
Spain’s Dr. Gabriel Calzada — the author of a damning study concluding that Spain’s “green jobs” energy program has been a catastrophic economic failure — was mailed a dismantled bomb on Tuesday by solar energy company Thermotechnic.
Says [...]
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Floyd | Tuesday, 22nd of June 2010 at 08:41:30 AM
It’s Junk Science Week at The Financial Post — and the awards are in!
Here’s one of the awards for climate change cover up.
The Rubber Duck award in the climate category goes to Lord Oxburgh, who gave “peer review” a whole new meaning in rushing out the first whitewash of the Climategate scandal. He headed an [...]
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Floyd | Friday, 18th of June 2010 at 07:51:26 PM
A camera that separated from Japan’s Ikaros solar sail looks back to snap a picture of the fully deployed sail in outer space.
Besides maps — I love all things space. This courtesy of Cosmic Blog via Instapundit:
Japan’s Ikaros solar sail has sent back stunning self-portraits that show the experimental craft fully deployed like [...]
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Mike | Sunday, 13th of June 2010 at 05:11:35 PM
We’re all used to the insertion of opinion into news stories, of course. It happens all the time. I don’t know why, but I still get aggravated when it occurs in science news.
From SPACE.com:
Dark matter and dark energy are two of the most mind-boggling ingredients in the universe. Ever since these concepts were first proposed, [...]
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Floyd | Sunday, 13th of June 2010 at 01:27:09 PM
Since we’re talking Belgium and reading The Vancouver Sun, let’s have another wonderful story from that wacky place that gave us Fat Tire ale, Jean Claude Van Damme, Rene Magritte, Leopold’s Congo, and ran away from Rwanda like scared rats.
Euthanasia… “mercy killing” or “murder”. This was sold to Belgians — and is [...]
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trzupr | Saturday, 12th of June 2010 at 08:26:11 AM
Trying to explain quantum mechanics is like trying to teach someone to speak Swahili, a task that’s infinitely more difficult when you yourself understand about ten words of Swahili. Nevertheless, Rufus seems to be fascinated by the subject and, since we always try to keep RTF happy (i.e., distracted) here goes.
Electrons are strange beasts. Since [...]
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Floyd | Wednesday, 9th of June 2010 at 05:59:35 AM
Would you guys keep it down? I’m thinking! Grumpy… it’s good for you. From the BBC:
An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly.
In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed.
While cheerfulness [...]
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Floyd | Tuesday, 8th of June 2010 at 05:53:29 AM
The British medical journal Lancet has become somewhat well-known for publishing a study of Iraqi war dead putting the number of civilian and combatant dead at around 650,000 from 2003 into 2006. New research seems to show that not only is that number wrong, but the study on which it is based shows signs [...]
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