Filed in 1945, granted and published in 1946, this design patent issued to the Bell Aircraft Company revealed the basic design of the X-1 supersonic aircraft almost ten months prior to the X-1 breaking the sound barrier.
Feb 032011
Feb 032011
Religious iconography is apparently alive and well at Reuters.
Feb 032011
James May of Top Gear presents an interesting idea on how to make electric cars practical:
1: Make ’em hybrids
2: And give em the long antenna-like power connectors that are used on dodge cars, and build overhead power systems along major roadways.
The cars would use gas engines along minor roads, and overhead electrical power along major roads. This would reduce or eliminate the need for the large, massive, crappy batteries that currently make electic cars useless jokes. He also suggests that the cars be given “autopilos” so that they could drive themselves while on the overhead power grid. To provide the electicity, he suggests nuclear power, in particular fusion. And to provide the fusion power, he suggests that the US go back to the moon.
So far, it seems like an intriguing set of ideas. But its here where his lack of science knowledge comes into full force, and throws the whole idea (and his editors ability to, you know, edit) into serious doubt:
President Barack Obama should reverse his decision to cut funding for further Nasa Moon missions. Once established on Luna we can mine it for tritium, or hydrogen-3, which could be the basis of ultra-clean nuclear fusion. One space shuttle-load of tritium could, I’m told, satisfy the entire energy demand of America for a year.
Tritium? Really? Not, you know, helium-3?
Sigh.
Feb 012011
The HL-10 may have been a single-seat reasearch vehicle of quite small dimensions, but that doesn’t mean that nobody had bigger ideas for it. Take, for instance, McDonnell Douglas’ ILRV (Integral Launch and Re-entry Vehicle) design from 1969, an immediate predecessor to the Space Shuttle porogram. This particular design used a two stage fully reusable vehicle, with the upper “shuttle” stage being an overgrown HL-10. The shuttle would have had substantial interior propellant storage space; the final Shuttle did not, as all the propellant was stored in an expendable external tank.
Feb 012011
Everything you see online is the unvarnished truth. As evidence, I present the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.
Now, while the plight of the Tree Octopus is a well-known and well-documented case of Undisputable Fact, there are those who doubt it. And even use it to slander today’s schoolkids!
Tree octopus exposes internet illiteracy
Researchers asked students to find out information about the endangered Pacific Northwest tree octopus. Students had no problem locating a Web site dedicated to the cause, http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ “but insisted on the existence of the made-up story, even after researchers explained the information on the website was completely fabricated,” according to a press release.
Most students “simply have very little in the way of critical evaluation skills,” Leu said. “They may tell you they don’t believe everything they read on the Internet, but they do.”
Pfff. Come now, people aren’t that gullible. By the way, Jesus called and said you are supposed to send me all your spare cash.
Sarcasm mode OFF.
It’s fair to point to the interwebs as an obvious nexus of gullibility. But the fact is, people’s lack of critical evaluation skills are hardly limited to the Web, and hardly began with it. Schools seem to do an extremely poor job of even trying to teach the whole concept of critical thinking or skepticism. Hell, “skeptic” is far too often used as a negative, to connote not a reasoned desire to weight the evidence, but instead as another word for “cranky curmudgeon.”
Lack of critical thinking leads to people buying into things like spaghetti trees, being sent to the medical supply room for a pack of fallopian tubes, getting sent into the hangar for a bucket of prop wash, believing that the Apollo missions never happened, that the WTC collapse was caused by thermite bombs planted by US government agents, that bananas are proof of Godly Creationism, that raising taxes is a good thing, that the solutiuon to crime is to disarm the law abiding, that the Holocaust was a hoax, that magic is real (especially the execrable “magick”), that any politician elected to anything higher than county-wide office actually wants to Help The Common Man, that America would be better off with more laws, that God (whatever “god”) crammed into law would be both good and Constitutional, that nukes are bad. Too often the way things are taught is not “determine what events would follow from Action X,” but instead, “how would you feel about implementing Action X.”
Sigh.
In any event, I see that, once again, the elitists focus on the fashionable, hipster-infested Pacific Northwest and it’s Tree Octopus, but completely ignored the North Georgia Mountain Squid.
Feb 012011
There’s a great big pile of Global Warming laying a smackdown on the Great Plains just now. From space it looks modestly impressive:
See more: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/snowstorm_feb2011.html
And how’s Utah doing? Cold, a bit windy, and bright sunshiny skies.
Feb 012011
About one Frank Buckles, who turned 110 today, who is Americas last veteran of WWI. Only two other WWI vets remain, both Brits.