Author: Robert Zimmerman
The $23-Million Textbook
More details, including images, of China’s proposed space station.
More details, including images, of China’s proposed space station.
The countdown for Endeavour’s last launch has begun
The countdown for Endeavour’s last launch has begun.
Confirmed: one of two tickets for lunar flyby has been sold
Confirmed: one of two tickets for a lunar flyby on a Soyuz has been sold. More here.
John Browning
An evening pause: As this year is the 100th anniversary of the M1911 pistol, probably the most popular pistol ever made, here is the part one of a four part documentary telling the story of the man who designed it, John Moses Browning.
Last Typewriter Factory in the World Shuts Its Doors
Technology marches on: The last typewriter factory in the world has shut down.
China looking to public to name space station
China is asking the public to name its space station.
A hotel carved out of a mountain
In Turkey: A hotel carved out of a mountain.
One of the largest statues of an Egyptian pharaoh unearthed in Luxor
One of the largest statues of an Egyptian pharaoh ever found has been unearthed in Luxor.
SETI suspends operations
Out of funds, SETI has suspended operations while it looks for new investors.
The Hudson River School
An evening pause: Four minutes of paintings by artists from the Hudson River School.
Anyone who has ever hiked along or sailed on the Hudson River knows it to be one of the most beautiful rivers in the world, a quiet wide river winding south nestled between lush green hills. In the 19th century American artists Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt among others were inspired by this beauty to paint some of the world’s greatest landscapes. If you can find the time, go to a museum that has some of these paintings and see them in person. They show us the majesty of the universe.
Update: Unfortunately, the video that I had originally embedded here disappeared from youtube last night. Here is the work of Alfred Bierstadt, set to the Connie Dover’s “Who will comfort me?”
Japan’s tsunami waves top historic heights
Japan’s tsunami in March produced the largest waves in history.
Some waves grew to more than 100 feet high, breaking historic records, as they squeezed between fingers of land surrounding port towns.
To me, however, this is the biggest takeaway:
Although terrible, the preliminary estimate also finds a better-than 92% survival rate for people living in coastal towns hit by the waves, Bourgeois says. “In that sense, given the magnitude of the unexpectedly large earthquake, things could have been even worse,” she says.
Good grammar equals white oppression
Modern educational theory: Good grammar equals white oppression.
World’s smelliest flower opens for the first time in 75 years
The world’s smelliest flower has bloomed for the first time in 75 years.
Past House GOP Tactic Proves Useless to Democrats
A past House GOP parliamentary tactic is proving useless to Democrats.
This article is instructive in giving a sense of where the political winds are strongest. The Republicans stand firm, because they feel the public will support them in their votes. The Democrats, meanwhile, caved frequently in the last Congress out of fear of losing the next election, a fear that was proven justified.
Shell abandons oil drilling plans in Alaska after EPA ruling
And Obama wonders why oil prices are high? Shell has abandoned its oil drilling plans in Alaska after an EPA regulatory board denied it permits. This after the oil company had spent $4 billion over five years developing those plans. To me, the quote below reveals much about the political agenda behind the EPA’s decision:
The Environmental Appeals Board has four members: Edward Reich, Charles Sheehan, Kathie Stein and Anna Wolgast. All are registered Democrats and Kathie Stein was an activist attorney for the Environmental Defense Fund.
U.S. Forest Service closes more caves
An excellent editorial on the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to shutter more caves. Key quote:
The closures . . . seem like an overreaching government solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. The Forest Service could certainly be spending its time in more constructive ways – like taking public comment on the “emergency” closures, which are set to start May 1.
NASA puts spacecraft above rockets in its commercial funding
In picking the winners for its commercial manned space subsidizes, NASA gave more priority to the spacecraft — either capsules or spaceplane — above the rockets needed to launch it.
Observations of Comet Hale-Bopp at 30 AU
In a paper published tonight on the Los Alamos astro-ph preprint website, astronomers described new observations of Comet Hale-Bopp at a distance of 30 astronomical units, or 2.8 billion miles, from the sun. Their conclusions:
- These observations were the most distant detection of any known comet.
- The comet’s starlike appearance and its drop in brightness since the last observations suggest that the comet has finally ceased, or is about to cease, all activity, and that they are now looking directly at the comet’s nucleus instead of the coma cloud surrounding it.
- Nonetheless, the comet is brighter than expected, which also suggests that a thin layer of new ice covers its surface and thus increases its albedo.
To quote the paper, “Observing Hale-Bopp in a completely frozen state would be extremely important because a thick coma was constantly present during the entire appariation [Ed. the fly-by of the Sun]. The coma obscured the nucleus which was not observed directly. Lack photometric data of the bared nucleus, its size — one of the most important input parameter in activity models — remains uncertain.”