One of my blog readers sent me the link to this.
It’s… um… well, let’s call it a “commemorative statue” of Obama. Errr, a statue 7 1/2 inches tall, made of rubber. No batteries needed.
I’m sure it’ll be very popular. It’ll help some of the more enthusiastic Obama fans get, err, closer to their idol.
One of the more seriously bad-ass concepts in modern science fiction is the “Dyson Sphere.” The idea as generally portrayed (such as in the “Relics” episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation”) is a hollow spherical shell a hundred million miles or so in radius, with a star at the center. The purpose of this vast effort would be to capture all of the output of the sun, not just a small fraction, and to create a place to live with trillions of times the surface area of an Earth-like world.
A few small problems, not least of which being that it probably could not be made to work. For starters, gravity. No matter how massive the shell is, if it’s even remotely evenly thick and dense, there will be no net gravitational force inside the sphere. If a person (represented in the detailed schematic below by the little purple figure) happens to be near the wall of a hollow spherical shell, the mass in “Area 1” will obviously attract him. But subtending the same solid angle is “Area 2” on the opposite side of the shell. And while “Area 2” is vastly further away from the person than “Area 1” (say, 200,000,000 miles, as compared to six feet), “Area 2” compensates by being vastly more massive than “Area 1.” The end result is that the two areas cancel each other out. A consequence of this is that the only gravitational force felt within the sphere is that cause by the central sun. Typically, in science fiction hand-wavy “gravity generators” are built into the wall so that someone could stand on the inner surface.
Several alternatives to “gravity generators” have been dreamed up to counter this little problem:
1) Stand on the outside of the sphere. Duh. (but it’s cold and dark…)
2) Build a transparent sphere inside the larger opaque one, smaller in radius by a hundred miles or so. This will trap a hundred-mile-thick blanket of air, and will keep stuff from falling into the sun. The solar gravity, and the gravity felt by being on the *outside* of the transparent sphere would be minimal; for all intents and purposes, it’d be freefall. But it’s also be *weird,* and over time everything – dirt, trees, water, dead folk, bird crap – would cover the transparent sphere.
3) Spin the sphere to generate centrifugal force. But this will cause everything to fall downhill to the equator, leaving most of the surface area barren, uninhabitable and at an unfortunate slope. More, all the air will pool at the equator, so good luck with those climbs…
4) Build the Dyson Sphere not as a solid spherical shell, but as a stacked set of Ringworlds. Each Ringworld would be a ribbon of material a million miles or so wide, with rims several hundred miles high. Each would spin to create centrifugal force. Stack Ringworlds of various radii together to form a sphere. There would need to be frictionless (magnetic, most likely) bearings between the worlds, and the closer to the “poles” you get, the further down towards the horizon the sun would get. But this would seem to maximize the total livable area; plus you could have rings with different gravities. Below is a crude schematice of a cross-section of such a sphere. The individual rings are shown *way* bigger than in reality. Rather than a dozen or so, you’d probably want a hundred or two.
And… there’s:
5) Build the Dyson Sphere the way physicist Freeman Dyson actually wanted. Not as a solid sphere, but as a collection of separate, individual artificial space habitats. Instead of a solid wall intercepting all the energy of the sun, there’d simply be so many colonies that they would blot out the sun. This would seem to be not only the easiest way to make a sphere that traps all of a star’s energy, it would also seem to be damn near inevitable, assuming we can get off this rock.
There has been a long arguement over exactly what Dyson meant when he first described the concept, whether solid shell or cloud. Well, rather than hash that out, here are the letters (from Science magazine, all from 1960) where he first describes his concept. There are three letters of note: his letter of June 3, where he describes what seems to be a solid sphere, a rebuttal letter from July 22, where a reader takes him to task for the concept, and a reply from Dyson somewhat later where he clarifies his position to that of the “cloud.” The scans are made from crappy photocopies I made… yikes, about 18 years ago.
An email floating around contains a number of photos of Odin, the white Bengal tiger that resides at the Six Flags Discovery Kingdom Zoo near San Francisco. Odin, it seems, is fond of chunks of meat (and what cat isn’t), but also likes water. And, when swimming in a pool with a nice, thick plexiglass wall, makes for a hell of a photo op.
These are the photos in the email (and I took precisely none of them). Many more elsewhere on the web.
Get the right level of snow on the mountains and cloud in the sky, and you can’t tell where one ends and t’other begins.
On dispaly a tthe Udvar-Hazy annex of the National Air and Space Museum is a 1/10 scale model of the V-1. That’s not terribly newsworthy… but the model is not of the V-1 London came to know and love, but instead it’s a model of one of the very early test designs, with a vertical rudder placed in front of the pulsejet engine (Why? Don’t friggen’ know.) Also features the different tail, inlet and nose that the early V-1’s had.
<>One afternoon a month or two back I slapped together a large box out of scrap drywall. The box was about 4 feet to a side, and was built up against the side of my workshop. Since he side of the workshop is just thin sheet steel, it was a simple job to hack a small hole in the wall, and build a cheap wooden “awning” or entryway over it. The pruose and end result of this carpentry abomination was to build an entrace into the side of my worskshop so the farmcats could come in out of the weather when they were of a mind to, but would not have free roam in my shop (where they would, undoubtedly, poop on everything).There’s a small hole in the top of the box to allow food to be poured in. A visit to the thrift store garnered some dirt cheap towels, which the cats can use as bedding.
Much to my amazement, they often actually do use the catlock. One of the reasons for building it was to provide a feeding place for the cats that gets them the hell out of my way… whenever I open the garage door, there they are, romping all over, in, under, around and behind my car. So, the ritual is that if I leave, I first get them into the catlock with a bit of food. Better’n running them over.
Behold the power of claws…
Ye gods.
Printed in a size that easily fits into pocket or purse, this book is an anthology of quotations borrowed from Barack Obama’s speeches and writings. POCKET OBAMA serves as a reminder of the amazing power of oratory and the remarkable ability of this man to move people with his words. His superb and captivating oratory style has earned comparisons to John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and this historic collection presents words that catapulted his remarkable rise to the American Presidency. It is an unofficial requirement for every citizen to own, to read, and to carry this book at all times.
I’m stuck in a Poe’s Law-like quandry here. The website seems to be fully legit. They seem to be serious. But… I mean, come on. Really? Really?
Here’s a picture of the book from the sales page: Update: the image has been replaced. The webpage for the book has been wiped clean. Amazon still lists it for sale, though.
From this, it looks as if the book is *blank.* Which means one of three things:
1) The webpage is a gag
2) The webpage is just using some stock “book” imagery
3) It’s legit and an accurate photo… and when you get your little booklet of all Obama’s Great Sayings, you’ll find that it’s empty and blank. Thus being political satire which I could appreciate.
It’s sold only in packs of TEN, if that helps.
But assuming that this book is really packed with Obamisms, there’s really one desperately obvious reference that must b e made.
UPDATE:
Amazon.com now a has a page for selling these books. Sadly, it doesn’t help narrow down the satire vs. worship question, as it includes evidence for both.
For about 15 years beginning in the late 1940s, Mr. Horne was ubiquitous, perhaps the most widely seen male model in the country, appearing in hundreds of advertisements in magazines and newspapers, on billboards and catalog covers, in television commercials and industrial brochures. He died on Dec. 29 in Manhattan, at 91. His wife of 45 years, Francesca Marlowe Horne, said the cause was cancer, but added that he also had congestive heart failure.
This is the picture they use to show Mr. Horne:
And not, strangely, this far better known shot:
The Intarweb tubes mourn.
EDIT: Howdy to Fark!
Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”
He’s not just “the decider,” he’s apparently “six friggen’ years old.”
When is he going to break out “MINE! MINE! MINE!!!!!!” when someone doesn’t give him what he wants?
One of the first news laws to be proposed under the Obama administration.
Former Black Panther and Illinois congressman Bobby Rush(D) does an end run around the 2nd Amendment
Under HR 45, if you can’t pass a complex test written by the U.S. Attorney General (described in detail below), pay the tax, give up fingerprints and a biometric-capable photo of yourself (that can be turned into a digital facial-recognition number and used as a de facto national ID), every gun you own will become contraband and subject to confiscation, while you stand trial before imprisonment.
Here’s the Irony (that’s “irony” with a capital “I”): The bill is being pushed by Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush… former Black Panther. So what we have is a black guy who is using written tests (Jim Crow voting rules, anyone?) to push gun control (pro-KKK anti-guns-for-the-black-folks laws in the post-Civil War South, anyone?).
I have a hard time seeing this sort of law, and those who support it, as anything less than outright treason.