21 % of New Yorkers live in poverty. The remaining 79% in New York City. Not sure which is worse
Apr 172012
Apr 172012
Yeah, about that…
Nazis get their own lobbyist on Capitol Hill
Apr 172012
Awesome, if true:
Spitfires buried in Burma during war to be returned to UK
… in July 1945, officials fearing a Japanese occupation abandoned them on the orders of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the head of South East Asia Command, two weeks before the atom bombs were dropped, ending the conflict.
“They were just buried there in transport crates,” Mr Cundall said. “They were waxed, wrapped in greased paper and their joints tarred. They will be in near perfect condition.”
Giggity. Now, if only the same could be said of a six-pack of B-29s…
Apr 162012
A few things:
1) From 2010: put on the glasses, and you can see Matchbox/Hot Wheels-sized computer generated cars roll around on your desktop. The company behind this uses a Microsoft Kinect mounted above the desk looking down; the system analyses the view, figures out the geometry, and animates accordingly, adjusting the view for the position of the glasses so that what you see looks like the cars are actually interacting with the physical world.
[youtube S7qbjGNyi88]
2) Do you have arachnophobia? Do you want to get rid of it? Then apparently one of the best therapies is to get a bucketload of spiders to crawl all over you. If you don’t have access to a Kentucky Fried Horrormonster Family-sized Spiderbucket, you can always try augmented reality spiders. The same company presents this impressive bit of high-tech nightmaresauce:
[youtube 7FLyDEdQ_vk]
Article:
Virtual spiders creep and crawl their way toward phobia treatment
3) And once you’re done having computer generated arachnids harrow your very soul, finish it off by hooking up a toy to your radio, TV, or iProduct and have it talk at you. A commercial I saw on the tube a few days ago showed that you could also plug it into your in-automobile GPS system so that you could have a dancing, talking plush lion on your dashboard giving you directions. Because sure, why not.
[youtube pnpMmx8LCio]
Someone has got to get one of these and post a YouTube vid showing an Obama speech as filtered through this modernized Teddy Ruxpin.
4) And then fire up the idiot box and watch the forthcoming “Tron: Uprising” animated series, set between the two movies. looks like it might be good.
[youtube 1JqpoLZJkx0]
Apr 162012
Cracked.com has a pretty good article about how Hollywood has turned most people into *mo-rons* when it comes to basic knowledge of firearms.
Dropped guns go off
Ceramic guns are a thing
Bullets make everything spark
Shotguns are room-clearing murder factories
Deadly on the gun range = deadly in real life
Bullets turn people into pulp
Apr 152012
I missed it by a day:
Sixty years on, the B-52 is still going strong
It was 60 years ago today, on April 15, 1952, that a B-52 prototype built by Boeing took off on its maiden flight. The 1950s-vintage B-52s are no longer in the U.S. Air Force inventory, but the 90 or so that remain on active duty (a total of 744 were built, counting all models) aren’t that much younger. They’re all the H model of the B-52, delivered between May 1961 and October 1962.
The B-52 is expected to make it to at least 2040.
On the one hand, it’s impressive that the design has lasted this long. Ont he other hand, it’s sad that nothing better has come along.
Apr 152012
Without a tripod (not allowed in the NASM), some parallax errors were introduced, which means the stitching between images is a bit of a mess… but if you don’t look too close, these aren’t too bad.
Apr 152012
The proposed X-15A-3 was a stretched, delta-winged version intended for extended duration flight at Mach 6+. As with the X-15 and X-15A-2 versions, the plan was to launch the X-15A-3 from a B-52 underwing pylong. However, North American Aviation proposed launching it from atop a B-70 bomber. The theory was that the B-70 could get the X-15 up to around Mach 3 prior to separation, thus greatly improving the rocketplanes performance. However, launchign winged vehicles from the back of supersonic aircraft is non-trivially difficult… as the M-21/D-21 crash demonstrated.
A high-rez of this can be downloaded HERE.
Apr 152012
… for you to build yourself.
The news article:
Scientist beams up a real “Star Trek” tricorder
The website:
The photos show what is, essentially, a “Next Generation” tricorder as made by a fan. Which means it looks kinda… crappy. But it’s a crappy-looking tricorder that freakin’ works.
And from the article, the inventor says: “Star Trek inspired me to be a scientist.”
I’ve seen a lot of people dis Trek, saying that claims that it inspired kids to become scientists and engineers is just an urban legend… and yet I also keep seeing scientists and engineers say that Star Trek inspired them.
The Tricorder Mk 2 measures:
Atmospheric Temperature and Humidity
3-axis Magnetic Field Sensor
Atmospheric Temperature and Humidity
Colour RGBC Sensor
Absolute Pressure Sensor
Non-contact IR Thermometer
Light-to-digital converter
GPS Receiver
Ultrasonic distance sensor
Sparkfun Inertial Measurement Unit
———
I imagine that future versions would include things like cameras (still & video, yanked from a cel phone), a chemical sensor or three, radiation detector, a biomedical microscope (also yanked from a cel phone), communications systems, and eventually some form of sonogram/X-Ray/MRI thingie.
Apr 142012
[youtube mL3cKY1ptlw]