Check out this revolutionary breakthrough. (CHT Tennyson.)
Tag Archives | Science Fact
And the Bowl of Petunias Thought, “Oh No, Not Again”
This is supposed to happen tomorrow (CHT Reed Richter):
It looks a tad tricky.
If it succeeds, we can go into Randian rhapsodies about the triumph of human reason.
If it fails, we can go into Hayekian jeremiads about the fatal conceit of top-down planning.
So it’s all good.
Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology
Saruman boots up his iBall
Last night, around 2 a.m., after frustration at trying to transcribe the sometimes illegible file I’d gotten off of Google Books, I submitted an interlibrary loan request to the Auburn University library via the AU website. (They still call it interlibrary “loan” even when what’s requested is a scan or photocopy rather than a physical copy.)
Some time this morning, someone in the AU library sent a request to someone at the University of Michigan, who then went into the UM library stacks, found the 19th-century French periodical I was interested in, scanned a clean legible copy of the article I needed, and sent it as a PDF to my library – and it was waiting for me in my email by 10:21 a.m.
Unfree Minds, Unfree Markets
An interesting set of observations from dL on abortion, intellectual property, public goods, communitarianism, oligarchical collectivism, and the senses in which the u.s. government did or did not create the internet.
In Hoc Signo Vinces
From Christian News Wire. (CHT Bruce Majors; be sure to read the whole thing.)
A Cross made from the Cross carried Around the World on foot by Arthur Blessitt (319 nations, island groups and territories almost 40,000 miles) Is ‘Now Orbiting The Earth’! The Cross went up on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Dragon Spacecraft. Celestis was the launch company.
The Celestis canister with the Cross was carried as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9’s second stage & is not on the Dragon. The cross in space is expected to remain in orbit for a year or more.
In other words, it was discarded and left to fall to earth in flames?
The Cross was carried Around the Earth on foot and Now the is Cross Flying Around this Earth over Washington DC, Saudi Arabia, Jerusalem, Asia, Australia etc.
I’m having trouble picturing the shape of this orbit. I think Isaac Newton might be puzzled too.
The cross is passing over you where ever you are.
Okay, that doesn’t help with the orbit thing.
SpaceX Marks the Spot
The private space exploration company SpaceX has just launched an (unmanned) space capsule, headed for a rendezvous with the international space station.
SpaceX is under contract to NASA, so this isn’t true privatisation yet; but at least it introduces a bit of independence.
This seems an appropriate occasion to post once again a link to “How the West Wasn’t Won,” an excellent parable on the incoherence of NASA.