Studying alternative medicine with taxpayer dollars
$374,000 showed that sniffing stinkpretty doesn’t heal wounds.
$666,000 showed that prayer doesn’t cure AIDS.
$406,000 showed that coffee enemas don’t cure pancreatic cancer.
$1.25 million showed that massage makes people with cancer feel better.
$104,000 to study “energy healing.”
How do I get a grant to study whether dirt makes a good rocket fuel and water a good oxidizer?
Oy vey.
Members Of Christian Paramilitary ‘Savior Unit’ Charged For Home Invasion
Or…
Two charged in Gautier home invasion; investigation continues
Police confiscated an operations manual for the para-military group that calls itself Tactical Search Unit (TSU) of The Savior Unit and states that its purpose is to “promote Christ, obtain offenders who are a danger to society, do community service work for churches and halfway houses, and do security for different functions.”
As one of the commenters on the news site says:
Tactical Search Unit (TSU) of The Savior Unit? Really? I’m not sure there’s a “Book of SWAT” in the New Testament.
What’s not described in adequate detail is *why* these paragons of virtue decided to go a-burgling. Was it a matter of a couple of friends out to score some cash… or was it because they felt the people in the house weren’t sufficiently Godly? Neither is particularly heartwarming… but both can be Biblically justified if you know where to look.
I suspect that they got a lot of their paramilitareligious training from the Book of Armaments.
Especially if you are a sci-fi writer:
(and other outer solar system objects)
A list of asteroids, planetoids, Kuiper Belt Objects and such floating around past Neptune. Includes basic orbital elements, brightness, diameter and any known moons that they may have.
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Similar to previous.
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Keep tabs on the rocks out there that will KILL US ALL.
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Related to the Impact Risks page, this provides Java-based 3-D orbit diagrams of asteroids and planets. Zoom in and out, rotate around, animate them forward and backwards in time, watch how DOOM WILL COME AND SMACK EARTH UPSIDE THE HEAD.
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If you want to write science fiction involving spacecraft, spaceflight or space battles, and you want it to be scientifically plausible, and you don’t have a relevant college degree… you’d be an unforgivable chump if you don’t pay a whole lot of attention to this website.
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There are more of them than you might think… 708 as I write this. Cataloglists planets based on discovery means… direct imaging, microlensing, astrometry, etc.
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Enter the basic data of the DOOM-BRINGING rock or comet, and find out just how big of a hole it’s going to make in the Earth, and just how big that blast is going to be.
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Did I miss any? Yes. yes, I did. Feel free to add relevant links to the comments. I will add more to this listing as they occur to me (or commented links that I think are especially good).
Calif. teen takes $100K national science prize
Angela Zhang, 17, of Cupertino, CA, won a hundred grand for inventing a nanoparticle that delivers drugs directly to cancer cells but avoids healthy cells. Better yet… it’s LASER POWERED.
Bah.
Kids these days…
Round Two in ExcessRez is available HERE.
A North American Rockwell concept from early 1971 for a Space Shuttle using a cluster of five seven-segment 120-inch solid rocket motors for the first stage. Payload was 45,000 pounds; gross liftoff weight was 4,675,000 pounds.
The title to this post comes from the comments from THIS STORY. The short form: a caterer was paid $10,000 to provide chow for a wedding. They provided chow; nobody seems to be complaining about the amount of food or quality of the food. What they’re complaining about is the actual food itself, including: rice with pork sausage, potatoes with ham, salad with bacon, and ham sandwiches. Who could *possibly* complain? Well… the grooms Muslim family, apparently. They seem to have a problem with tasty, tasty pork.
I’ve never paid out ten grand for a meal. But I suspect if the day ever comes when that actually seems like a good idea, I think I’ll actually try to plan the damned thing out in advance a little bit. You know, like check out the menu. If I shell out ten grand for a pizza party and didn’t actually specify pizza in advance, I guess it’s partially my fault if the caterers show up with ten grand in lutefisk.
“Since you’ve lawyered up and alerted the media, I guess there is nothing left save this: jihad.”
Some more stuff that will either get sold to all y’all, or put on eBay. If you want one or more of these, please say so in the comments. The books will ship in the US via USPS Media Mail for $3 each, or $5 for 2 or more. Other shipping options (including foreign) available.
1) First edition hardback of Robert Heinlein’s “Rocketship Galileo.” Illustrated, in fairly good condition, but no dust jacket. $25 + postage. Purchased.
2) First edition of Hank Searls’ novel “The Pilgrim Project.” In good shape with dust jacket. Based on a Bell Aerospace concept for a one-way mission to the moon, and served as the basis for the movie “Countdown.” $5 + postage.Purchased.
3) First edition of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” by Steven Spielberg. In good shape with dust jacket. $5 + postage
4) “German Secret Weapons Blueprint for Mars” by Brian Ford. One of the first books that helped spur off the craze for “Luftwaffe 1946” and similar popular interest in advanced and wacky WWII German weapons. $4 + postage
5) “Rocket Fighter” by William Green. Paperback about the development of the Messerschmit Me 163. $4 + postage.
6) Rocket dirt. Sure, why not. This is a 2 ounce glass vial filled with some of the dirt that fell from the sky following the ATK test of a five-segment modified Shuttle solid rocket booster for the now-cancelled Ares rockets, back in August of 2010. I collected a handful of the stuff on the day it fell, and another handful on the next day. They were put in separate ziplock bags. The second-day-collected dirt was and is substantially lighter in color than the first-day-collected dirt, which I’m guessing is due to outgassing or evaporation of… something. In any event, it’s kinda strange stuff, and it’s not like they’re making more of it… $10 plus postage.
Turns out Buttons is fascinated by government propaganda films about the Dyna Soar project. Who knew?
Posted a medium-rez version of this a while back. But I’ve made a full-rez 4 megabyte version available Over Yonder.
