Blog

  • Woman hangs self during drug trial

    While news that a 19-year-old killed herself is always tragic, the fact that this article has to then paint the event as tragic for a drug company, which incidentally may have been contributory in her death, is beyond my comprehension.

    Or, it may have everything to do with the fact that said drug company is located in the same town as the newspaper?

  • Too Cool

    Opportunity looks over the rim of the crater it is in and sees the plastic shield and parachute used during landing.

    CNN Link

    JPL Link

  • Celebrity Chef

    While I may not be able to faithfully reproduce many of his recipes, he does make me laugh and, more importantly, experiment in the kitchen again. Who is he? Why, who else could it be but Alton Brown?

  • What I'm Currently Reading

    Kuro5shin hosts a story called The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect, a trippy (sometimes stomach turning) theory about the future. It’s not the best thing I’ve ever read, but the vision of this future-world is fascinating. It’s written by Roger Williams.

    Link

  • Mars

    In my travels around the net, it struck me today that, despite all the horrible things that occur in the world, we live in a pretty amazing time. Right now, as I type this on a machine that, when my parents were my age, was unimmaginable, two machines the size of golf carts are moving around another planet, controlled by a person in California. One of these was debugged from over 33,000,000 miles away.

    Maybe there’s hope for this species yet.

  • Columbia Memorial Station

    I should have highlighted the Spirit landing site as well, which has been named the Columbia Memorial Station after the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia. Spirit turned and took this picture of the landing site, which will remain in Gusev crater long past our lifetimes, a fitting memorial indeed.

  • The Critic is BACK!

    This is awesome! If you’ve never seen the cartoon The Critic, you’re missing something great. Much like The Family Guy (which was cancelled far before its time), The Critic was not appreciated because (1) it was funny and (2) you had to work at it sometimes to get the joke. It’s easily the best thing that Jon Lovitz did post SNL.

    Now, thanks to Atom Films, you can watch all the shows in Flash format.

    Link

  • Space Shuttle Challenger Crew Memorialized on Mars

    From NASA:

    NASA announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Opportunity rover in honor of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s final crew. The area in the vast flatland called Meridiani Planum, where Opportunity landed this weekend, will be called the Challenger Memorial Station.

    The seven-member crew of Space Shuttle Challenger was lost when the orbiter suffered an in-flight breakup during launch Jan. 28, 1986, 18 years ago today.

    Read entire story

    Here’s a shot of the site

  • Oldest Tech Manual!

    Stolen from Slashdot:

    “How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chauncer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe–the predecessor to the sextant. Read Chauncer’s ‘A Treatise on the Astrolabe here.”

  • Oil to Deep Fry a Frog

    Jacques Chicrac wasn’t so much better-than-thou as he was cruder-then-thou in his opposition to the Iraq invasion.

    Read the story