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29 November 2002 ::
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We already did Steven Seagal vs. an old man and Steven Seagal vs. Crocodile Dundee. What's left?
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The European Space Agency is considering the questions which its Venus Express probe will help to answer.
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A company named Radiation Shield Technologies has developed a fabric called Demron, which the company states provides as much protection as a lead vest. The fabric's polymer substance presents a large electron cloud to any incident radiation, absorbing it. It is not yet clear whether (or how) the fabric degrades when it is irradiated.
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Via the Lunar and Planetary Institute, NASA provides a small library of images of the planets. The library is actually the catalogue for a series of slide sets which one can purchase, but in true NASA fashion the slides are available in lower resolution on the Internet for free. Among the images is my favorite crater (and only an astronomy geek can have a favorite crater),
Manicouagan, in Canada.
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28 November 2002 ::
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I mock you with my monkey pants
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The Discussion group is back online. Not bad for a free service.
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Busy weekend coming up, so posting here will be sporadic to nonexistent. Today is Thanksgiving (for my American readers - not that I have any readers from outside the US of whom I am aware), and tomorrow is the first night of Chanukkah.
You can tell who married into a culture by noting who has to look up the spelling of its major holidays. Chanukkah. Chanukkah. One of these days I'll be able to spell that without resorting to Google.
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What do the Gallilean moons of Jupiter have to do with the sons of Ghengis Khan? Find out in the newest page of A Miracle of Science.
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I got bored and created a CIA Factbook page for the Discworld nation of Uberwald.
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It never rains but it pours... First Nation States goes off the air for a bit, and now the Discussion group is offline. If it doesn't come back by the weekend, I'll find a substitute. For the time being I have put my email over on the right.
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27 November 2002 ::
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You fall down and I will post conspiracy theories on the Internet
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It's both a free Internet game and marketing for a new novel: Nation States, the game where you get to play the leader of a country. Once a weekday (or more often, if you like) the game pops out a political dilemma on which which you get to decide policy. Your decision causes your nation's politics and economy and such to shift.
After a long and bloody revolution, the Commonwealth of Uberwald has become an independent nation under the benign rulership of yours truly. Join up, then move over to the Uberwald Region to join the up-and-coming democracy of Uberwald in its path to glory.
Known local members of the "Werewolf Economies" of the Uberwald region are:
The Commonwealth of Uberwald under President Kilgannon
The Free Land of Joy under First Citizen Juskiewicz
The Commonwealth of New Hoboken under Prime Minister Sachs
The Republic of Rlyeh under Evil High Priest Hagmaier
The Principality of Teep under Patrician Gothie
The Borderlands of Silvania under Academician Babcock
Update: Nation States is down due to its sudden popularity. I'll link to it again when it's back up to full functionality.
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Just in case you like classical history as much as me, have some more info about Posidippus, this time in somewhat more depth. For more, see the entry on Posidippus from earlier this week.
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It's not mad science, but it might as well be: Amateur Science News. Link found via the Evil Genius Hoax page, last mentioned here in July of 2001. (The Evil Genius Hoax page includes the most brilliant idea ever: the Kindergarten Solar-powered Death Squad.)
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Irony [n]: Performing a play based on Animal Farm in China.
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26 November 2002 ::
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[He] likes his danger like he likes his oatmeal: overwhelming!
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Herr Foering asked, over in the Discussion group, where the quote for November 22nd came from. It was part of a comment at Unicorn Jelly, a web comic that I have been reading pretty much since its beginning. It is updated every weekday, and contains one of the most fully-detailed - and unusual - science-fiction universes you will ever see.
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Fred Coppersmith upholds the fine Penn State ideals of mocking the Daily Collegian while confusing the hell out of its editorial staff. I used to know people on the Collegian editorial staff. Confusing them may be considered a citizen's duty.
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Fred Coppersmith
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Future Schlock: A developer is considering building a casino (as if Vegas needed another darned casino) which will feature the International Space Station as part of its design.
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The theory of loop quantum gravity may marry quantum mechanics to relativity.
But a spin network represents the entire universe, and that creates a big problem. According to the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, things remain in a limbo of probability until an observer perceives them. But no lonely observer can find himself beyond the bounds of the universe staring back. How, then, can the universe exist? "That's a whole sticky thing," Markopoulou Kalamara says. "Who looks at the universe?" For her, the answer is: we do. The universe contains its own observers on the inside, represented as nodes in the network. Her idea is that to paint the big picture, you don't need one painter; many will do. Specifically, she realized that the same light cones she had used to bring causal structure into quantum spacetime could concretely define each observer's perspective.
Because the speed of light is finite, you can see only a limited slice of the universe. Your position in spacetime is unique, so your slice is slightly different from everyone else's. Although there is no external observer who has access to all the information out there, we can still construct a meaningful portrait of the universe based on the partial information we each receive. It's a beautiful thought: we each have our own universe. But there's a lot of overlap. "We mostly see the same thing," Markopoulou Kalamara explains, and that is why we see a smooth universe despite a quantized spacetime.
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25 November 2002 ::
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Hell, just looking at you I can think of half a dozen reasons why you're not really there
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22 November 2002 ::
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I am happiness against all odds.
I am dancing in the heart of darkness.
I am a smile at the end of the world.
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21 November 2002 ::
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Your high school class voted you "Most Likely to eat the Pope"?
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20 November 2002 ::
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That's "President Disembodied Head" to you
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The US Department of Energy is contracting IBM to build ASCI Purple, a supercomupter to be used to simulate the aging and operation of the American nuclear weapons stockpile. At 100 teraflops, the ASCI Purple will have a processing capability equal to Hans Morvec's calculated computational power for the human brain. The computer will lack the "software" of the human mind, however, so it will be quite stupid and will only be able to out-think UFO cultists, Holocaust deniers, and some of the dumber species of squirrel.
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NASA is considering cutting the number of crew on Shuttle flights if the Orbital Space Plane is up to spec.
"If [the OSP] proves sufficiently safe and reliable, it could ultimately replace the shuttle as the primary crew transport and, thus, free up [the] shuttle to focus on cargo functions (especially if [the] shuttle can be flown autonomously with no crew) or, possibly, a heavy lifter for ambitious science-driven exploration missions."
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19 November 2002 ::
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The human body is just a complicated machine that takes in food and produces stupidity
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More Lovecraft goofiness: The stars are right! Raise the Elder Gods! So mote it be!
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If you have no idea what I was talking about on the 18th, then you should visit the Lovecraft Library, last mentioned here on Halloween.
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Beware the popups, but play with the Sloganizer!
Never Knowingly AfAP.
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Craig Powell
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The first clear night in weeks greeted the Leonids this morning. The International Space Station curved across the heavens, steady and brilliant; a spy satellite arced overhead from south to north, watching quietly and pouring encrypted warnings down onto the frozen ground. One spark, then another, fell from the sickle of stars until the sky rained light at the peak of the display. If you missed it, you can see it again in 2098.
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18 November 2002 ::
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I'm downright amazed at what I can destroy with just a hammer
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I have a fillip of humor that I can't wrangle into a full-fledged joke. This unattached bit of humor has been banging around inside my head for a couple of days, and now it's going to bang around inside yours:
Welcome to Arkham Mall. Please patronize our fine shops such as Home DeepOne, R'lyeh Shack, and, of course, Sears.
R'lyeh Shack: You've got questions, we've got shoggoths.
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Roses and robots await you in this issue of A Miracle of Science. In the next issue, Leslie Nielsen rides up on a horse, dismounts, and trips over a dog, landing in the mud of the Roman Forum and dirtying his toga.
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If you can, go outside on the morning of November 19th (or stay up very very late tonight) to see the Leonid meteor storm. The experts are predicting between two and six thousand meteors per hour during the peak, which means we may see more than one meteor a second. This is the last big Leonid storm for the next century, so don't miss it.
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Thieves have stolen a copy of Principia Mathematica from a museum in Russia. I know it's most likely been stolen for the rare book trade, but I find myself hoping it was stolen by a mad scientist who needed to look up a few formulae.
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Mike Ryan
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The band Atom and His Package is both local and goofy. Anyone who would write a song extolling the virtues of the metric system is aces in my book. Warning: Contains bad language, so turn the volume way up when the boss walks by.
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Craig Powell
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Extremely well drawn, extremely silly: Hamlet: The Manga, starring all your favorite characters from the anime and manga series Slayers.
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Mark Sachs
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13 November 2002 ::
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Building a suit that fits cybernetically-enhanced rescue rats is now a mission-critical task
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I'm driving to Dayton, Ohio, with my wife - a round trip of something over 1200 miles, according to the kind folks at the American Automobile Association, a.k.a. the First Church of Blessed Acceleration. I won't be updating this site until Monday, as I am given to understand Ohio is a howling wilderness full of frontiersmen and tax revenooers with nary a telegraph line or WiFi node to be found.
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Keep watching the skies! The Leonid meteor shower will be occuring before dawn in the eastern sky on November 19th.
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Radial Pong is a pretty cool update of the old Pong game. You can get some wild rebounds off of the curved paddles.
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12 November 2002 ::
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And we can't guarantee that the fabric is treated - or not treated - with special death-inducing gamma-waves
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11 November 2002 ::
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The atomic structure of my brain makes for a natural chemistry genius! --Glenn Juskiewicz
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10 November 2002 ::
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I certainly hope there is a logical explanation for this, like drugs or excessive alcohol
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In a recent CNN interview of John Stewart, we learn the source of the rage at journalism that informs all his humor:
KURTZ: What did you make of the sniper coverage? Were the media trying to scare people?
STEWART: I thought it was the media's finest hour, the sniper coverage.
KURTZ: Finest hour?
STEWART: Absolutely, by watching the 24-hour news networks, I learned that the sniper was an olive-skinned, white-black male -- men -- with ties to Son of Sam, al Qaeda, and was a military kid, playing video games, white, 17, maybe 40.
I am fully aware I made up the bit about the rage. I am so sorry for misinforming you. However, my sorrow won't last long - I have a lucrative talk show on Fox News to make crap up for prepare for.
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9 November 2002 ::
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It's bulletproof and tastes like feta!
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The Gladys Dwindlebimmers Ralston Gallery of the Unidentifiable is a clever parody of a dry academic historical site. From the second century BCE Egyptian computer mouse to the Embroidered Brass Handkerchief, the Gallery has it all. The Programmable Armor is a good representative sample:
By the 16th century the art of armor manufacturing had reached its peak in Europe. Body armor had become so complex that it took a knight an entire day to be properly prepared for attack, by which time the battle was usually over. The aristocracy was understandably disturbed, conservatives fearing that the role of the mounted knight was coming to an end, and that future wars would see knights simply shooting at each other with firearms like common soldiers.
Technology saved the day, however. The Austrian firm of Kaiprow, Kompak und Ozborne introduced programmable armor at the ArmorWorld Trade Show in Leipzig in 1520, which allowed a knight to instantly adapt off-the-shelf armor to his needs by inserting a 5¼" floppy disk into the helm and resetting the EPROM (E-Z-armor Pre-stressed RhinoTufSteel™ Over Mail) settings. It should go without saying that programmable armor became the fad of the decade, and anyone who could program in COLDBOLT or FORTRESS was worth his weight in Saracens.
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I can't make stuff like this up: behold the epistemological horror that is No Kill I., the Star Trek punk rock band. I don't know how Craig knows of this band, and I frankly fear for the fragile sanity of the human mind were he to reveal his sources.
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Craig Powell
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8 November 2002 ::
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What he lacks in smarts he makes up for in lack of smarts
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Specialized knowledge finds its niche on the Internet: You can look up the lyrics to songs broadcast in anime shows on the animelyrics.com site.
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Anyone who doesn't believe that planetary science has real benefits for real people needs to read this paragraph in a press release from the 44th Annual Meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics regarding turbulence in experimental fusion reactors:
Researchers at the DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics have discovered that turbulence generates its own flows that act as a self-regulating mechanism. These flows, which are predicted theoretically and have been observed in computer simulations, create a "shearing" or tearing action that destroys turbulent eddies, as indicated by the figure. Such flows are like the large-scale zonal jets and patterns seen in the atmospheres of Jupiter and other large planets.
"NASA funding is a waste of money that could be spent on ending poverty," my ass. Cheap fusion will end poverty long before welfare will.
Yes, I am fully aware that's a strawman argument. So are the arguments against planetary science, and therefore I feel fully justified in getting down in the mudpuddle and flinging some mud.
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7 November 2002 ::
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Leave it to me to live in a defective fictional universe
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6 November 2002 ::
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Some kittens explode much easier than others
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5 November 2002 ::
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Your adoration is important to me. Please continue to grovel and I shall answer your supplications in the order in which they were received. --Joe Foering
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I just returned from voting. I was approached outside the polling place by a representative of the GOP who handed me a "sample ballot" requesting I vote Republican. I politely informed him that the Republicans had lost my vote when they turned into the religious right party, and they had forced me into the arms of the Democrats when they decided John Ashcroft belonged in the Cabinet instead of the closet.
I like voting. I makes me feel American. Go do it now.
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A reminder to my American readers (which would be all three of you): go out and vote today.
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The X-31 Vector is a stubby little plane that looks something like the Eurofighter Typhoon but moves like a Harrier on meth. If you have a high bandwidth connection, check out the videos of the X-31 in action. If you watch no other videos on the page, look at the two Mongoose Maneuver clips (one, two).
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New computer techniques allow art historians and conservators to knit together many low-resolution infrared photos of the underdrawings of old paintings to determine how the paintings were planned and executed. I often find myself more intrigued by the methods used by painters to make their artworks than I am in the works themselves.
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4 November 2002 ::
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Apparently Buffy has decided the problem with the English language is all those pesky words
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Revelations and secrets await you in the next page of A Miracle of Science.
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The early eighteenth century shipwreck tale of Robert Drury was thought for centuries to be the work of an unknown fiction author. New discoveries in Madagascar show the tale to actually be true, while the text hints that the story was edited by none other than Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe.
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MIT is designing open courseware to be used freely by anyone to teach college courses. The future rushes onwards.
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This racing game is a simple, but effective, time waster.
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3 November 2002 ::
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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Part of this nutritious breakfast.
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I swear, either Florida's elections are cursed or the Florida Republican Party has a volume discount on damnation from the Devil. A call center contacted a Florida man, urged him to turn in his absentee ballot five days late, and claimed to be from the McBride campaign. McBride's campaign has no knowledge of the calls. The Florida Democratic Party (McBride is a Democrat) suspects dirty tricks - and, after the Republican rent-a-mob and racial voter disenfranchisement, I harbor suspicions they are right. I think it's time for Florida to outlaw the Republican Party and bring in a replacement with less of a reputation for lying and dirty tricks, like the Peronistas or the Baath Party or something.
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2 November 2002 ::
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If that doesn't sound like an epic match-up between one brave desiccant packet willing to do what it takes and an evil, demented robot bent on world domination, then I don't know what does
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Go, now, and watch Ryosuke Aoike's Catman. It's a series of seven animated shorts, each about two minutes long, that range from
Matrix-like action to
melancholy introspection. The cartoons are made memorable by infectious music, a unique art style, and eloquent touches like Catman's rooftop dance with his blazer jacket in Catman Shoots.
All of the shorts use music from the ska group The Planet Smashers, and there is even a wonderful bonus music video for the Planet Smashers' song "Blind."
The series tells a complete story, so watch the episodes in order. If you can only watch one because you're on a dialup connection, watch Catman Shoots.
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1 November 2002 ::
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Heavy construction equipment is so cute when it's trying to be subtle
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You might think an annotated gallery of silica dessicant packets would be dry (ha!) and uninteresting. But you'd be wrong.
Another name brand packet, this is a "Power-Dry", by Saenam Materials Co.. This is not just a desiccant, it's a neo-desiccant, the One desiccant destined to free us all from the Matrix. Heck, did I say Packet 05 was the only packet likely to spawn a sci-fi movie? I stand corrected. The website has this to say: "was born in Korea will lead world desiccant market!" Now I'm wondering is this is actually some charismatic new religious leader who has been reduced to granule form and shipped around the world.
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By studying a piece of cheese preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, scientists have discovered that the cheese which ancient Romans ate harbored a number of dangerous microorganisms, including the one which causes brucellosis.
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The United Nations web site provides information on the status of international treaties regarding space exploration and exploitation. According to the treaties, everything has to happen in the open, must be verifiable, must be open to examination by other spacefaring nations, and astronauts in trouble are to be rescued by any other astronauts who can do so - regardless of nationality.
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Laika, the first living creature shot into space, lived only a short time, contrary to the claims of the Soviets at the time.
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(The Side of the Angels)
Projects:
A Miracle of Science
Other Pins:
Project Apollo
Glenn's LiveJournal
Alyce Wilson's Portfolio
Teep
Blogfonte
G. Webber
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Biomechanoid
Radioactive Fanboys
Pinfeathers:
Occasional Fish
House of the Whispering Woods
Crummy
Maximum Verbosity
Spyderella
Features:
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