Oct 182013
 

This is why I stopped paying attention to Glenn  Beck:

Creationists Dealt Major Blow in Battle Over Evolutionary Content in Texas Biology Textbooks

At its basis this is a news story that’s good news: creationsts failed in their effort to jam religion into science classes. But… read the comments. The level of derp there is astonishing. If only weapons grade dumbth was flammable, the US could become energy independent just by harnessing the thermal output of the blazing stupidity of a thousand creationist shills.

 

Of course, the old chestnut “if humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes” is trotted out (with a number of good counters, including “if Americans descended from Europeans, why are there still Europeans”), along with the evergreen “evolution is just a theory, not a fact, so lets teach religion as established science.”

 Posted by at 3:33 pm
Oct 182013
 

Of all the delusions a person can have…

Common Sore Cream Can Make You Believe You Are Dead

A new study published in Journal of the Neurological Sciences has identified a link between Acyclovir – also known as the common cold sore cream Zovirax, (which can additionally be used to treat herpes, chicken pox and shingles) – and Cotard’s syndrome, a rare condition causing people to believe they have died, that parts of their body do not exist, or that they have ‘lost’ their blood and internal organs.

Yeesh.

spock-nope

 Posted by at 1:55 pm
Oct 172013
 

Newly discovered asteroid could hit Earth in 2032

2013 TV135 is 400 or so meters in diameter, a mass of 8.9e+10 kg and an impact energy of 2,400 megatons (2.4 gigatons), and is currently sitting at an impact probability on August 26, 2032, of 1.6E-5 (one chance in 1,250), with a Torino scale of 1.

So… not terribly worrisome. But let that not stand in the way of panicking!

648px-Torino_scale.svg _39474297_torino_scale_203inf

The neat thing here is that 2032 is just about the right timeframe for the US to pull its thumb out and get back into space. Perhaps we’ll have astronauts on the moon again by that point…

funny-astronaut-moon-Earth-destroyed

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 Posted by at 6:57 pm
Oct 172013
 

Huh. Kansas City Chiefs vs Oakland Raiders Fly Over October 13, 2013. Arrowhead configuration for the Arrowhead Stadium; pink smoke for a breast cancer fundraiser.

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 Posted by at 2:50 pm
Oct 172013
 

Very little has emerged from the Strategic Defense Initiative days revealing *actual* weapons designs. With the exception of some of the Brilliant Pebbles and Zenith Star designs, almost nothing apart from unreliable artwork has been released. On occasion, though, bits have come out. Three neutral particle beam satellite weapon concepts were shown, in low-rez and frustrating detail, in a report on power systems for SDI use.

The Martin-Marietta NPB concept:

Martin NPB

The Ge/Lockheed NPB concept:

 

GE Lockheed NPB

The TRW concept:

TRW NPB

The drawings are too small to glean details such as full-scale dimensions, or even get a really good handle on layouts. The GE/Lockheed design seems to come equipped with large  panels, presumably radiators, held within a triangular cross-section framework.  The Martin and TRW concepts appear to be roughly cylindrical. And unlike the majority of the artwork produced for public consumption, here you can make out the nuclear reactors meant to power the systems.

While dimensions are either unavailable or illegible in these illustrations, two show the SP-100 reactor and associated radiator system.  The radiators change from illustration to illustration of the SP-100, so cannot be firmly relied upon as a scale reference, and the Sp-100 reactor itself is little more than a dot, but this illustration of the SP-100 should help to give a rough idea how big it, and by extension the NPB concepts, were going to be.

sp-100

 Posted by at 2:28 pm
Oct 162013
 

Here’s another extrasolar planet to add to your wish-list of places to visit: COROT-3b. Some details:

Distance: 2200 lightyears, in the constellation Aquila

Mass: 21.66 +/- 1 times that of Jupiter

Diameter: 1.01 +/- 0.07 times that of Jupiter

Surface gravity: 53.6 +/- 8.7 g’s

Note that it’s more than 20 times more massive than Jupiter, but basically the same size. This is only possible because it’s dense. *Really* dense… 26,400 kg/m3, more dense than Osmium. And the vast bulk of that highly dense matter is good ol’ fluffy hydrogen. But it’s under such pressure that the hydrogen has collapsed down past the metallic hydrogen phase. If you could somehow teleport a handful of this stuff out of the planetary core, it would blow up in your face with great enthusiasm.

 Posted by at 5:11 pm
Oct 152013
 

Chicago man to Harvard: Pay more for rare papers or I’ll burn them

As a guy who has a fair supply of rare & historic documents (well, depending on your views on obscure aerospace stuff), the idea of them catching fire fills me with a crateload of the uncomfortables. Still, it’s an interesting strategy. Some Guy came into possession of some rare documents, appraised at more than $65k. The papers are Harvard-relevant, which university – with an endowment of, what, $30 *billion*  – offered only $7,500 for them. Since the papers cost the guy nothing to procure and have no sentimental value to him, burning them would cost him nothing. So… he’s threatening to torch them unless Harvard coughs up rather more.

I’ve seen this before:

if-you-dont-buy-this-magazine-well-kill-this-dog-1973

Historical note: The National Lampoon was an offshoot of the Harvard Crimson. So Harvard should be well acquainted with this form of fundraising.

Also: http://www.savetoby.com/

 Posted by at 10:33 pm