Went by this heading into Tremonton today. I have no idea what the story is; seems very unlikely to be snow or ice related, since it’s been in the 40’s the past few days and the roads are clear. I could dream up a scenario where this car tried to pass someone driving slow, and lost control, I suppose. It must’ve been entertaining to watch.
Clearly there must’ve been an injury, since there’s an ambulance. I have no further data.
You know who doesn’t care? That would be Marvin.
An 18-foot-long rhinestone-covered replica of a U.S. Predator drone was set up for display at a multimedia art exhibit on March 1 at the Hampden Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The goal of the exhibit, titled “Home Drone,” is to expand viewers’ minds to imagine their reaction if thousands of deadly drones had struck in Massachusetts, rather than in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
Oy. Go take a look. The artists (one of whom is a “a social intervention artist,” whatever the hell nonsense that is) went to all this bother, but couldn’t be bothered to even *try* to accurately replicate a Predator drone. LAAAAAAME. Who pays for this sort of dreck?
As far as the goal: I’d think it’d be equally valid to set up a display to expand viewer’s minds by getting them to imagine their reaction if the Taliban was setting off thousands of explosions in Massachusetts instead of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Here’s a question: let’s say you were wandering around the bottom of the Atlantic ocean and you stumbled across the remains of an F-1 rocket engine. Assume that it has serial numbers and whatnot on it. How would you know which Saturn V flight it came from? Is there some master list of All The Bits somewhere?
Every few years I re-watch the whole “Babylon 5” series on DVD. As it was a relatively low budget show that started twenty years ago, a lot of it can be fairly said to be a bit dated an creaky. A lot of the effects are, by todays standards, kinda weak; some of the sets were kinda lame; some of the acting, especially in the first season, was bad; and a lot of the dialogue is just a bit painful. Still, it was a smart show that broke new grounds in the use of CG effects, as well as breaking TV sci-fi out of the “Star Trek” mode where nothing happened in the course of an episode to change things. You can watch Star Trek and TNG in pretty much any order you want; it doesn’t matter. But B5 had over-arching story arcs, the stories advanced and changed from episode to episode, characters died and new ones were introduced and changed over time. At the time, I heard many complaints of it being like a soap opera in that regard; but had not B5 established the concept, there would not have been shows like Deep Space Nine, Enterprise or Battlestar Galactica.
I just finished watching the series again, finishing with the series finale “Sleeping In Light.” Another way that B-5 was different: the TNG finale made me go “meh.” The DS:9 finale made me shrug and somewhat sad to see it go. The BSG finale irritated the hell out of me. The Stargate: SG1 finale just sorta faded away. But the B5 finale, “Sleeping In Light,” remains an astonishingly emotional hammerblow of an episode. Nothing much really happens that you didn’t see coming; much of it was telegraphed, some of it as far back as the first season. And yet, it was a hell of a thing; reportedly the cast and crew had a hard time filming it since they were themselves screwed up by it. When it aired, fans across the land reported being converted into horrible gelatinous blobs of sadness by it.
No boom today, but boom tomorrow – there’s always a boom tomorrow. All love is unrequited. Human style is superior.
The speed of action for quantum entanglement has bee measured at more than 13,800times faster than the speed of light. I find it interesting that it seems to be a measurable multiple of c… I would have expected exactly c or infinity, but not something in between.
Paper HERE.
North Korea has announced it is voiding non-aggression pacts with South Korea and severing its hotline with Seoul, hours after threatening the US with a pre-emptive nuclear strike.
North Korea “abrogates all agreements on non-aggression reached between the North and the South,” the state-run Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said in a statement.
Neat!
Looking over her shoulder:
Expressing her opinion:
In her perch:
In 1963, the Atomics International division of North American Aviation studied a terrestrial modification of the SNAP space-based reactor. The SNAP 4, also known as COmpact Multi-Purpose Automatic Controlled Transportable (COMPACT), had a 1 cubic foot core made of uranium zirconium hydride. The heat generated would boil water, which would drive steam turbine generators. The steam would be condensed and returned to the reactor to be boiled. The closed-loop system would in turn be cooled be either an external water source or via air cooling. Electrical power output was expected to be from 300 to 3,000 kilowatts. The core lifetime was to be from 1 to 5 years, with no maintenance required for 12 months at a stretch. The whole package would fit in an envelope 8 feet in diameter and 30 feet long, ranging from 48 to 125 tons depending on application.
The COMPACT system was meant to be a truck, train, ship, barge or aircraft transportable auxiliary or emergency power supply system (for disaster relief and such), or as primary power supply for remote locations. The claim was made that if put into production, electrical cost from the COMPACT system would be comparable to that from deisel-electric generators.
A Japanese TV show interviewed Leonardo DiCaprio. What I got from it was that Leo looks really quite uncomfortable with the whole thing… which I can understand. He doesn’t speak Japanese, so the whole process has to be filtered through interpreters. Additionally, the Japanese do seem to love throwing extraneous graphics on screen. I’ve seen quite a number of clips for Japanese shows that have a small inset showing some seemingly random schmoe watching… well, the same interview *you* are watching. What this is supposed to add to the process, I’ve no idea. And while all the extra stuff is distracting, bear in mind that American TV ain’t no better… there’s usually a blizzard of extra garbage on screen, from the network logo “bug” to streams of info at top and/or bottom of the screen.
[youtube AIZcD_Jk0nc]
I’m left to wonder what Japanese TV would be like had Japan somehow developed the technology on their own *without* US cultural influences.
Nork Foreign ministry released a statement saying they’re going to nuke the US as a pre-emptive strike. Yeah, good idea. Takes inane saber-rattling to a whole new level.
Of course, if the Norks nuked the US, or nuked South Korea, or just invaded South Korea… even with the current US administration, North Korea would get leveled. And perhaps – just perhaps – that’s the goal. Get the US to flatten North Korea, surrender, then the US has to rebuild the place. And a post-war reconstruction could hardly produce a country worse off than one that has been under Communism for nearly 70 years. Kim Jong Etc. was edumacated in the west, so he must know what a craphole his nation is; it’s just barely possible that he might actually want to make the place better. And losing a war against the US would do it. The current terrible infrastructure would get built into something modern; the economic and cultural cancer that is collectivism would be replaced with capitalism (even Obama could not prevent that); the “excess population” would be reduced. North Korea five years after losing to South Korea and the US would be an infinitely better place than North Korea today.
Sadly, it’s perhaps just as likely that they’re crazy enough to think they could win.