Winter was very dry and pretty warm. Summer was extremely dry and very hot. I figured these would conspire to assure that any trees that dared to be green would promptly turn brown, with none of that tedious mucking about in reds and yellows. It seems I was wrong. I took, quite literally, an entire DVD’s worth of photos yesterday, one of which is below. I have a bunch of panoramas and such to process, but I decided to get this one out there to appease my legions of impatient fans.
Actually a bit of a rare occurrence… these two chilling out with each other. Usually Fingers has no patience for Buttons. Buttons, i think, is the only one of my cats who probably misses Fluffy, since those two used to have a grand old time rolling around whacking the hell out of each other. Now Buttons has nobody to roughhouse with.
This is from World Net Daily, which tends to be a little, ah, partisan, so take it for what it’s worth:
The short form: the article includes several blurry photos of Obama’s wedding ring, which according to some expert or other has Arabic script saying “There is no god but Allah.” Meh. To me, it just looks like art-scribble, not specific Arabic text. But what *does* interest me is that earlier photos dating back to 1981 show that he was wearing the very same ring on the very same finger all that time. Which is interesting, because he was wearing a gold “wedding ring” on the finger traditionally associated with the wedding ring, for more than a decade before he met his future wife. Bwuh?
It’s gotta please Michelle no end to know that Barky couldn’t be bothered to change any of his jewelry for her.
The SRB-X is one of the most derided launch vehicles ever seriously considered. Initiated by NASA in the early 1980’s, the idea was to use Shuttle hardware – specifically Reusable Solid Rocket Motor components – to provide Shuttle-class payload capability. Theoretically the SRB-X, a stack of large solid rocket motors, would provide a low-cost semi-reusable launcher that would be rugged, reliable and could continue to fly if the shuttle itself was laid up for some reason. In reality, it would very likely have been every bit as expensive as we’ve come to expect from the Shuttle program.
In 1983 Boeing analyzed the SRB-X system for NASA, studying detailed designs as well as a range of alternates. The basic SRB-X booster used a core vehicle composed of RSRM segments, using RSRMs as boosters. In order to use stock Shuttle launch facilities, the boosters were mounted well outboard of the core… with the same separation distance as between the RSRMs on a standard Shuttle stack. This added considerably to structural weight. Alternates studied included versions that were just linear stacks of RSRM-derived stages (leading to very long boosters) and versions that used Titan hardware including the UA-1205 boosters and the Titan III first stage as the second stage of the vehicle.
Schlieren photos, for those unaware, are photos that show supersonic flow fields around – typically – models in wind tunnels. As air flows supersonically past a fixed object (or, of course, the other way ’round), shockwaves are set up as the air is shoved to the side. Air being compressible, it is compressed. And thus the density is very briefly increased. As the density of air increases, so does its index of refraction… thus light is “bent,” like looking through a lens. A further description of Schlieren photography is HERE.
I’ve always gotten a kick out of Schlieren photos. The best of ’em seem to me to be better art than much of what’s actually intended to be art. Every now and then NASA (and it’s predecessor the NACA) wind tunnel tested some generic shapes, as well as re-entry vehicles, wings, hypersonic aircraft designs, etc. I figured I’d show a few, what the hell. Here, for example, is a flat-faced cylinder at Mach 6.86, flat face forward:
And here’s one of a sphere at Mach 6.86:
Neat, eh? Better’n a can of Campbell’s Soup, at the very least.
From a 1960 US House of Representatives Committee on Science and Astronautics staff report “The Practical Values of Space Exploration,” the suggestion is made that the Saturn I launch vehicle would cost several million dollars per launch. Would it be worth it?
I keep hearing that stem cell research has been banned. Of course, it hasn’t been; all that was “banned” was government funding for embryonic stem cell research. And to me, that’s just fine… because it might drive researchers *from* embryonic stem cell research *to* adult stem cell research.
The difference between the two is vital. Embryonic stem cells might lead to treatments, but the transplantation of cells from someone else will lead to a lifetime on anti-rejection drugs, leaving the patient subject to infections. Adult stem cells will be your own cells, meaning anything grown and embedded within you is really *you,* and your immune system will very likely leave it alone.
Well:
These two fellers, one British, the other Japanese, worked on different sides of the planet and decades apart, and both showed that adult cells could be turned into “embryonic” stem cells, thus paving the way for actual, useful and practical stem cell treatments.
Huh. One more reason to not go to New York, I suppose. I have some difficulty imagining the Al Qaeda flag being so prominently flown here in Utah. Or in Texas.
Especially Texas.
[youtube HjFSi1AZTq8]
One sign that someone can chose to see as hopeful, if that someone is a wildly optimistic sort: it seems that most of the time when you see Jihadi whackjobs spouting off some of the more extremist nutjobbery, such as the several in this video, they almost never have American accents. This is, I believe, due to the fact that most people are not by their very nature stupid and crazy, and thus most people, even ones born into a cruel and backwards religious ideology, come to understand that the US is on the whole a pretty good place, and they’d just as soon not blow it up.
And for those who proudly hoist that black flag, they should keep in mind that it’s not the only black flag in history. As Mencken wrote:
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
While the Falcon 9 successfully delivered its Dragon capsule to the proper orbit, one of its nine first stage engines failed during flight. The engine was automatically shut down after a loss of pressure was detected, and it appears that the sudden loss of exhaust pressure caused the collapse of the aerodynamic fairing around that engine. Not good. But it did the job, and hopefully SpaceX will learn & improve. The failure can be seen at about 1:30 here:
[youtube tRTYh71D9P0]
Or in slo-mo here:
[youtube y6zsZiVa998]
Arab edition:
Short form: Arab author asks “hey, maybe sixty-plus years of trying to kill the Israelis was misdirected effort.”