Faux stereoscopic photos: "space wiggle" Burning Man images.

While it's true that a fair amount of actual wiggling takes place at Burning Man, the "space wiggle" images at this site are just a nifty optical illusion:

"This method of presenting stereo images uses animated .gifs to rapidly switch between left and right images. For most of us the brain will impose a crude sense of dimensionality on a wildly wiggling scene."

Link to smaller image size (for dialup folks), Link to larger images (for broadband gluttons). NSFW warning: includes naked (and wiggling) body parts. (Thanks, JP!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Cool hack!

I'll have to give it a try. Anyone else?

7:44:05 PM     leave/read comments []

Promised the Moon: The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race [Scientific American]

In a world where a woman, Dr. Shannon Lucid, holds the record for longest spaceflight for an American, this book is a good reminder of how far we've come......and how far we haven't.

One story resurfaces every few years: the tale of the Mercury 13--13 women whom NASA recruited for the space program, then ditched with nary a launch or an explanation. Or so the story goes. According to Promised the Moon, the fine new book by Stephanie Nolen, a foreign correspondent for Canada's Globe and Mail, the whole truth went deeper.

For its astronauts the U.S. space agency recruited only military test pilots--male test pilots, of course. They flew higher and faster than anyone. But Randolph Lovelace II, chairman of NASA's Life Sciences Committee, theorized that women might make better astronauts. An average woman would be shorter and weigh less than the average man. She would breathe less oxygen and allow less fuel to be carried for those maneuvering rockets. She'd even eat less. Every ounce counted.

1:42:48 PM    

Spidering Hacks. The latest book in the O'Reilly Hacks series, "Spidering Hacks," (written by Kevin "Morbus Iff" Hemenway and Tara "ResearchBuzz" Calishain) is out. It's the site-scraper's bible, with 100 tips and tricks for sucking in data from the Web.

Spidering Hacks takes you to the next level in Internet data retrieval--beyond search engines--by showing you how to create spiders and bots to retrieve information from your favorite sites and data sources. You'll no longer feel constrained by the way host sites think you want to see their data presented--you'll learn how to scrape and repurpose raw data so you can view in a way that's meaningful to you.

Written for developers, researchers, technical assistants, librarians, and power users, Spidering Hacks provides expert tips on spidering and scraping methodologies. You'll begin with a crash course in spidering concepts, tools (Perl, LWP, out-of-the-box utilities), and ethics (how to know when you've gone too far: what's acceptable and unacceptable). Next, you'll collect media files and data from databases. Then you'll learn how to interpret and understand the data, repurpose it for use in other applications, and even build authorized interfaces to integrate the data into your own content.

LInk

(via Ben Hammersley) [Boing Boing Blog]

12:43:04 PM     leave/read comments []

Top 10 Bushisms

Top 10 Bushisms The Stupidest Things President George W. Bush Has Ever Said

10) "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." -LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

9) "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." -Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

8) "I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here." -Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

7) "I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." -Washington, D.C., Oct. 3, 2001

6) "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." -George W. Bush, Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

5) "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right." -Rome, July 22, 2001

4) "I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure." -AP interview, Jan. 18, 2001

3) "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." -Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

2) "They misunderestimated me." -Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

1) "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" -Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

Makes me all creepy-tingly.

12:16:42 PM     leave/read comments []

Album covers redone in Lego.

Famous album covers re-envisioned in Lego. Can you guess this one? Nirvana's Nevermind. Link (thanks, jean-Luc!)
[Boing Boing Blog]

Smells like..........plastic!!!!

10:57:15 PM     leave/read comments []

Orbital wins contract for four NASA launches. Orbital Sciences Corporation reported Thursday that it has won orders for four launches of NASA... [spacetoday.net]

OK, this is cool- NASA is outsourcing satellite launches to a privately developed launch vehicle company. A modified Lockheed L-1011, carrying an X-15-like unmanned launch vehicle, will carry the LV to a high altitude where the LV will be released and make its way to orbit. It's cheap and reusable and gets the job done.

It's the privatization of things like satellite launches that will make the utilization of orbital space a viable long-term prospect and free NASA to concentrate on exploring the solar system.

10:55:18 PM     leave/read comments []

Way to go OWC!!!

10:43:40 PM     leave/read comments []

Fox threatens to sue Fox over Simpsons. Fox News threatened to sue Fox Entertainment because a Simpsons parody of the Fox News crawler hurt Rupert Murdoch's feelings.

"Fox said they would sue the show and we called their bluff because we didn't think Rupert Murdoch would pay for Fox to sue itself. We got away with it," Mr Groening told National Public Radio in the US.

"But now Fox has a new rule that we can't do those little fake news crawls [tickers] on the bottom of the screen in a cartoon because it might confuse the viewers into thinking it's real news," he added on NPR's Fresh Air programme.

Link [Boing Boing Blog]

Wow, whatta maroon!

10:41:05 PM     leave/read comments []

Happy Halloween!

Grovers Corners says, "I am soooooo embarassed."

Radio play upsets Americans

"Martian invasion " of United States taken seriously

Tuesday November 1, 1938

A wireless dramatisation of Mr. H. G. Wells's fantasy, "The War of the Worlds" - a work that was written at the end of last century - caused a remarkable wave of panic in the United States during and immediately after its broadcast last night at eight o'clock.

Listeners throughout the country believed that it was an account of an actual invasion of the earth by warriors from Mars. The play, presented by Mr. Orson Welles, a successful theatrical producer and actor, gave a vivid account of the Martian invasion just as the wireless would if Mr. Wells's dream came true.

6:07:32 PM    

From http://www.pe.net/

6:03:55 PM     leave/read comments []

Lawmaker gives thumbs-up to RIAA clampdown [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Yes, he's the best congressman money can buy, friend to the multi-national downtrodden and enemy of the creeping menace that is the American Music Fan:

The head of the House of Representatives panel that oversees copyright law on Friday applauded the music industry's recent lawsuits against peer-to-peer file swappers. "The legal action taken by the recording industry is necessary to protect intellectual property rights from being violated," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property.

5:53:57 PM    

Spotty display riles some PowerBook buyers. Hundreds of owners of Apple Computer's new 15-inch PowerBook G4 are complaining about an apparent design fault that causes white spots to show up on the notebook computer's display. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

Nooooooo!!!! Another illusion shattered! Oh the woe! The heartbreak! The......what?

They're HOW much?

Well, by the time I've got the cash for one, this should be sorted out. As for folks with bucks, caveat emptor norton. Or something like that.

5:49:33 PM     leave/read comments []

Yo! Everyone's side-talkin' these days!

Side Talkin'!

I WONDERED IF PEOPLE MIGHT BE like ot talk ON THE SIDE... I KNEW THE HUMAN DUDES WAS BUILT FOR TOTAL SIDETALKING STYLE... BUT I NEVER EVER EXPECTED THIS! for the most part

5:38:35 PM    

A Concorde Heads to New York to Make the Intrepid Its Home. People in New York will soon be able to see the Concorde doing what it was never built to do: sitting still. By Edward Wong. [New York Times: Business]

11:32:35 AM     leave/read comments []

Neil Strauss spends seven days with the Strokes. Neil Strauss spends seven drink-filled days in the company of the world's most fashionable rock band. [Guardian Unlimited]

The entire article is amusing, but this was terribly amusing:

He is wearing a green work shirt with the words "US garbage company" over the pocket, and faded black trousers. The shirt is the property of his roommate, Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. On his wrist, there are three fraying coloured wristbands that he has not bothered to remove - one from a Kings of Leon concert a week ago, another from a Stooges show two weeks ago, and a third from a Vines show from who knows when.

I will see Casablancas nearly every day for the next week: his clothes and bracelets will not change, though he claims his underwear and socks do. He will end every night in the company of a girl he does not sleep with. And he will talk about everything from strip clubs to night terrors to his hatred of Pringles crisps. But when it comes time for a formal sit-down, he will give me the worst interview I have ever experienced. It will last seven minutes.

Though this is pretty ripe:

The actual seed for the Strokes was planted when Pierre, brother of Strokes bassist Nikolai Fraiture, gave Casablancas a Velvet Underground CD for Christmas while he was in high school. The music was an epiphany for friends Fraiture, Casablancas, Valensi and Moretti. The dream when they formed the Strokes, according to Casablancas, "revolved around taking the Velvet Underground and thinking, 'If only they were really famous.' And the goal was to be really cool and non-mainstream, and be really popular. Why does everything that has to be big and popular suck?"

Let me get this right- he hears the Velvet Underground and his epiphany is "Gee, I wish they'd been more famous?" Gosh, I have no idea where people get the idea that these guys are mindless twits. OK, yeah I do.

Busted.

11:28:21 PM     leave/read comments []

11:19:47 PM     leave/read comments []

Senate Rejects a Measure on Curbing Global Warming. The bill called for research on climate change and incentives and curbs to prod industrial plants into lowering greenhouse gases. By David Stout. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Although the bill was defeated, a glimmer of hope was seen in the political mathematics:

While the issue was far from the most exciting to come before the lawmakers, today's vote was politically interesting nonetheless. It contrasted sharply with the 95-to-0 vote in 1997, when senators turned down any global-warming policy that would significantly hurt the American economy.

The 43 senators who voted today in favor of steps to curb emissions may have done so because they sense greater awareness among the electorate.

Let's hope this bit of sanity is catching.

10:50:15 PM     leave/read comments []

Bush Sr-Japanese WWII (Telegraph).

Seems that George Bush Sr. barely avoided getting cannibalized by Japanese during WWII, according to a new book. [Nippon Goro Goro]

Wow, this reads like one of those, "if you could go back in time and stop WWII by killing the goat that ate Hitler's testicle, would you?" things.

George Bush's comrades eaten by their Japanese PoW guards By Charles Laurence in New York (Filed: 26/10/2003)

The former President George Bush narrowly escaped being beheaded and eaten by Japanese soldiers when he was shot down over the Pacific in the Second World War, a shocking new history published in America has revealed.

Many years later, he would return the favor by vomiting on the shoes of the Japanese Prime Minister.

10:43:02 PM     leave/read comments []

Panther glitch erases some hard drives. A problem is causing some of those who install the new version of Mac OS X to lose the data stored on their external hard drives. [CNET News.com - Front Door]

This, of course, is not news to readers here.

Apple releases AirPort Software 3.2. Apple on Thursday released an update for its AirPort Software, bringing the current version to 3.2. According to notes provided with the update, version 3.2 provides support for the Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) specification for the AirPort Extreme base station and AirPort Extreme client. Also included in this release is v5.2 of the AirPort Extreme base station firmware. [MacCentral]

Good news! (I hope.) The range of my dad's Airport Extreme base-station seems to be slightly less than my old 1st gen base-station, so I'm hoping this will fix that shortcoming.

I will be moving all the FireWire drives in the house to a secure and undisclosed location during the upgrade, however.

10:35:16 PM     leave/read comments []

Thank Ghod!

But still, for my dad's Fire Wire drive: too little, too late.

8:39:26 PM     leave/read comments []

Capitol Alert Set Off by Toy Gun. Capitol police say Cannon Office Building incident over, and gun was plastic revolver. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Yes, trigger fingers all over our nation's capital were in need of Gold Bond Medicated Powder, as congressional staffers prepared for Halloween.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House of Representatives was ordered shut down Thursday following a reported security breach at a nearby congressional office building, but police swiftly determined that a plastic revolver and Halloween costume were to blame.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terence Gainer said ``two staff members bringing in Halloween costumes'' were responsible. ``I don't think they had any ill intent,'' he said, adding he expected no charges would be filed.

Well, thank goodness it wasn't a 9-year-old child because with that sort of threat Johnny Law would have to get all medieval on their asses.

4:25:41 PM     leave/read comments []

Time for a Cosmic Reality Check. Surprise! Thanks to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, we now know our little corner of the universe is even smaller than we thought. A commentary by Bruce Sterling from Wired magazine. [Wired News]

Bruce Sterling points out that reality is very much not what we thought, thanks to a NASA space probe.

Already, the probe's findings have provided a few salient new notions about the nature of cosmic reality. For starters, the universe is 13.7 billion years old. Unlike previous figures, this is not a rough estimate; the margin of error is about 1 percent. In addition, the universe is flat. Forget all that mind-boggling space-time-is-curved stuff. Euclid was right all along. And the space-time pancake will expand infinitely. There's no such thing as an end to this particular universe.

Website for the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).

3:58:07 PM     leave/read comments []

New virus hits computers. A virus dubbed Sober which affects many versions of Windows is starting to spread more widely online. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Thanks to Windows, it is now impossible to be both clean and Sober.

In a related story, sun rises in east.

Anti-virus firms are warning about a Windows worm called Sober that is starting to spread widely online.

The virus emerged at the weekend and is multiplying because so many versions of Windows are vulnerable.

12:33:15 PM    

Heheheheh...that's like, dirty.

12:08:52 PM     leave/read comments []

Despite predictions of s lightshow over Lincoln, the aurora failed to show up in my neighborhood. The sun produced a massive coronal ejection and all I got was this not-so-crappy .gif! (From www.spaceweather.com)

1:18:37 AM     leave/read comments []

'Brain itch' keeps songs in the head Research in the US has found that songs get stuck in our heads because they create a "brain itch" that can only be scratched by repeating the tune over and over. [BBC News]

Oh, I can't get you out of my head, song your tune is all I think about oh I can't......

Songs such as the Village People's YMCA, Los Del Rio's Macarena, and the Baha Men's Who Let The Dogs Out owe their success to their ability to create a "cognitive itch," according to Professor James Kellaris, of the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration.

"A cognitive itch is a kind of metaphor that explains how these songs get stuck in our head," Professor Kellaris told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"Certain songs have properties that are analogous to histamines that make our brain itch."

1:07:03 AM    

cataract: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. cataract [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]

cataract KAT-uh-rakt, noun:
1. A great fall of water over a precipice; a large waterfall.
2. A downpour; a flood.
3. A clouding or opacity of the lens or capsule of the eye, which obstructs the passage of light.

"Since the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, along with the rest of the world, has seen a cataract of woe descend upon all the actors in the region."

Or maybe:

"Possessed of a moral cataract not seen since the turn of the 20th century, the Bush administration pushed its radical agenda incessantly forward, blind to the destruction and chaos around it."

Original medical illustration by Mark Erickson

5:45:15 PM     leave/read comments []

No update for the non-Panthered among us.

5:29:43 PM     leave/read comments []

It'll Thrill Ya, It'll Kill Ya. The Old Sow demands respect as she comes roiling to the surface of the Atlantic off the Maine coast. She's the largest tidal whirlpool on earth and you trifle with her at your own peril. Michelle Delio reports from Eastport, Maine. [Wired News] Photo: Courtesy of Old Sow Publishing

Wow! I didn't know such maelstroms really existed. (Said the lass from Nebraska)

Even when the Sow isn't present in all her glory, smaller whirlpools referred to as "piglets" often can be seen swirling in the bay. There are also 100-foot-long trenches that suddenly open in the ocean. And there are the "boils," circular sections of water that rise like a giant zit and sometimes explode into fountains that spew water up to 20 feet high.

There are several causes for all this watery chaos, Godfrey explained. First, the Passamaquoddy Bay has remarkably high tides; 40 billion cubic feet of water pours into the bay with each incoming tide.

Directly outside the opening to the bay there's a 400-foot trench in the ocean floor that's bisected by a 281-foot undersea mountain. Before entering the bay, the incoming water has to make a sharp right turn, where it slams into the mountain.

"Mix that terrestrial configuration with a good high tide and a heavy wind, and it's total liquid chaos," said Godfrey.

Cue Kirk Douglas and Peter Lorre!

5:22:35 PM     leave/read comments []

MPs vote to downgrade cannabis. MPs back a move to introduce less serious penalties for cannabis possession, although dealers will receive harsher treatment. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Sanity broke out today in the U.K.'s House of Commons, as the MPs voted to scale back the penalties for possession of marijuana and marijuana-related accessories.

MPs have backed a move to downgrade cannabis, putting it in the same group as tranquilisers and steroids.

The reclassification of the drug from Class B to Class C was supported by a majority of 156, despite Tory warnings it would lead more young people into harder drug use.

Junior Home Office minister Caroline Flint rejected claims that cannabis would become "semi-legal", claiming the move was part of an "honest and credible" strategy to tackle the wider drug problem.

5:14:37 PM    

Michael Hanscom's Blog

5:08:28 PM     leave/read comments []

Powerful Geomagnetic Storm Strikes Earth. DENVER (AP) -- The most powerful geomagnetic storm possible hit Earth early Wednesday, threatening power outages, disrupting airlines communications and damaging some satellites. By The Associated Press. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Whoa.

The storm is rated a G5, the highest intensity on scientists' scale of space weather.

The last time a G5 storm hit Earth was in 1989, researchers said, which damaged the power grid and caused electrical blackouts in Canada's Quebec province.

``It is extremely rare to get this level of geomagnetic storming,'' said Larry Combs, forecaster for the Space Weather Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. ``This is one of the strongest storms that we have received during this cycle.''

1:29:31 PM    

Morons in the News: Cops arrest 9yr old kid for playing with toy. Brave Ohio policeman keeping the streets safe from toy-toting pre-teens. God Bless America [Morons Dot Org]

Have the police of the United States all lost their minds? Are they collectively dipping into that bag of PCP in the evidence room? Have they gone from a "protecting and serving" Officer Friendly to Tony Montoya with a badge, all up on the crank?

WTF?!?! It's a kid! With a toy! Give me a break, Officer Jackboot.

From The Cleveland Morning Journal:

LORAIN -- A 9-year-old boy was arrested at gunpoint and handcuffed Saturday because he was waving a toy gun over his head while seated on a bench outside a store, according to a Lorain police report.

His mother, Tamyka Saunders of Sheffield Lake, said her son, Thomas Clark Jr., told Lorain police when they approached him outside a Broadway business that the gun was a toy. An officer aimed his weapon at the boy's head, ordered him to the ground, handcuffed him and arrested him for juvenile delinquency by reason of inducing panic, according to the police report.

Saunders, 28, was also charged with obstruction of justice and resisting arrest when she pleaded with police not to arrest her son and to give him a warning, according to a police report.

1:02:32 PM    

Green Tea And Ginger Show New Cancer-Combatting Abilities [Scientific American]

It tastes good and is good for you! Green tea! Ginger! All the more reason to hang out at the sushi bar.

The potential health benefits of drinking green tea are varied, ranging from preventing bad breath to protecting your heart. Recent studies have also suggested that a topical cream based on the beverage may help fend off skin cancer. Findings presented yesterday at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research indicate that components of green tea could be effective at fighting other types of cancer, too.

For more info about tea, you can't beat Tea and Sympathy. Have a cuppa!

1:02:01 AM     leave/read comments []

2002: A Bob Odyssey (.mov 2.1M)

12:47:02 AM     leave/read comments []

Police Watch Abducted Gnomes Gather Dust [ Reuters ]

Where is the love for these mirthful concrete guardians of garden whimsy? Coldly abandoned by their owners, they languish in a stinking French jail, unlike the common criminals that took them from their posts.

PARIS- A French police station has been stuck with a room of homeless garden gnomes, victims of a wave of gnome abductions, after a fresh bid to trace their owners failed.

Only a trickle of people showed up for Monday's "gnome return day" at the police station in Saint-Die-des-Vosges, near the eastern city of Strasbourg, and only one person was reunited with their stolen gnome, police said.

Ah, what can be done? ::gallic shrug::

"In wanting to set them free, the (Gnome) Liberation Front has virtually imprisoned them," policeman Sylvain Brucker told Reuters...

How like life; there is pain and abandonment. Even for the little gnome. I must go watch zee Jerry Lewis.

4:36:46 PM     leave/read comments []

I smell an update. Folks have posted that the version that was on Apple 's website wasn't compatible with Panther.

4:12:11 PM     leave/read comments []

click to make big © Aaron McGruder

Oy. Looks like someone has misplaced their balls again.

posted by colorful Brother Scrim

The Post drops selected "Boondocks" strips. More wussiness likely to follow.

I'm not sure what precisely Condee Rice's problem is (although perhaps her poor choice of company is to blame), but then again I don't think about it all that much. But cartoonist Aaron McGruder has. In fact, he thought about it so much that he came up with a bunch of comic strips to (forgive the pun) illustrate his theory.

Too bad The Washington Post was too chicken-shit to publish them.

I guess I shouldn't be so critical of the Post: It's not like comics strips are known for containing political satire or anything. Oh wait, yes they are!

4:03:28 PM    

The Panther Roars (in Pain). A hapless Wired News reporter forgets to back up his hard drive while installing Apple's latest update to OS X, code-named Panther. The installation glitch leads to a world of hurt. A product review by Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

Oh thank ghod, it's not just me.

After no headaches from the first two machines, backing up the iBook was foolishly skipped. Typically, the iBook was the only one of the three machines loaded with several years' worth of digital pictures, music, e-mail, writing and other precious files. Little of it, naturally, was saved elsewhere.

Halfway through the install, the iBook inexplicably hung, refusing to boot just as the second installation CD was due to be inserted. Despite several forced re-boots, and other fiddling about, the machine would neither boot from the CD nor the internal drive.

Dumbass.

In a related story, Maggie Osterberg was quoted as saying, "Damn! That is one black-ass kettle!"

We'll keep ya posted.

2:46:01 PM     leave/read comments []

Shades of the Nixon administration! Once again, the U.S. space program is in jeopardy, thanks to ill-advised foreign misadventures. As the article in Space Today says:

In a letter to NASA Administrator Sean O[base ']'Keefe, dated October 21 and released to the public Monday, Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) and Ralph Hall (D-TX), the chairman and ranking minority member, respectively, of the House Science Committee, asked O'Keefe do defer any additional work on OSP. They reached that conclusion because of the combination of a lack of clearly-defined goals for NASA after the completion of the International Space Station, as well as a realization that a previous five-year budget plan for the program is "no longer credible."

In other words, "don't expect any money, as it's all going to Iraq for the foreseeable future."

Smells just like Viet Nam vs. Apollo.

2:12:28 PM     leave/read comments []

I want one of these so badly, my teeth hurt.

But, as MacWorld says:

Macworld's Buying Advice

The new 15-inch PowerBook G4s are impressive pieces of engineering, with stunningly bright screens, plenty of power, all the right ports, and a solid feel. We hope that by the time you read this, Apple will have worked out the kinks in the consistency of its PowerBooks, so the laptop you receive will be the laptop you love.

12:02:23 PM    

For a quick overview of superstrings, check out: Superstring Theory

1:32:44 AM     leave/read comments []

SpaceShipOne completes fourth drop test. SpaceShipOne (SS1), a suborbital RLV being developed by Scaled Composites, successfully completed its fourth unpowered... [spacetoday.net]

SpaceShipOne (SS1), a suborbital RLV being developed by Scaled Composites, successfully completed its fourth unpowered drop test earlier this month, correcting a problem noticed in a drop test last month. The test took place October 17 in the skies above Mojave, California, as SS1 was released from its White Knight carrier aircraft at an altitude of 14,100 meters.

This is an exciting project- the folks behind Voyager, the around the world on a tank of gas airplane, have set their sights on creating a sub-orbital spaceplane. Scaled Composites, a company with a history of innovation (ghod, that sounded like marketing copy...but it's true!) and an outgrowth of the Rutan Aircraft Factory, has "developed....38 different types of Rutan-designed manned aircraft [and] have flown research test programs."

So, if anyone is going to be able to pull off a private X-15, it's them.

11:54:38 PM     leave/read comments []

Yay!

Welcome home, guys!

See, we can still bring people back from orbit without killing them.

The Soyuz landed on target in the steppes near the town of Arkalyk, about 330 km from the Kazakh capital Astana.

"They have landed. Everything is fine, soft landing engines have worked. Everything went according to plan," an official from Russia's Mission Control told Reuters news agency.

OK, the Russians can.

11:33:03 PM     leave/read comments []

Multiple items!!! Hold on to your hats, wake the neighbors and call the children!

Reader-Submitted: Can we have a zero tolerance policy towards zero tolerance?. Student expelled when school decides fictional story (in a private diary) about a girl dreaming that she kills her teacher is, in fact, a threat against a teacher's life. [Morons Dot Org]

So, here in Ashcroft's Amerika, not only do you have to watch what you read, you better be careful what you write, especially if you're a 14 year old girl.

Reader-Submitted: College Removes "Controversial" Photo Display. An art professor's photo display of Ken and G.I. Joe dolls in "controversial" poses (like "holding hands") has been removed from Shelton State Community College's gallery. [Morons Dot Org]

Added to the "We sure hate them damn homos!" file.

Current Editorials: Fundamentalist Christianity and Halloween! It's that time of year again, and once again conservative Christians are denouncing Halloween as the devils work. Plus bonus fundyism!

The ghosts, goblins, ghouls, demons, devils and mini-Britneys have become the least-scary thing about "Satin's Holiday." You want scary? Go as a preacher.

11:24:38 PM     leave/read comments []

Here's a snippet:

C-Span Moderator: (worshipful silence) ok. Andyou spent the day at walter-reed.

caller: Yeah. And I spent the day with, I mean they were great guys...and the the men that took me around were in the...you know...the services,you know, they were fabulous men...uh...Mike and John ...and they these boys had unbelievable courage and they still said for the most part hat they were glad that they they did it, they felt that it was their duty...and there were a few of the national guards that felt it was their duty that once they were over there but they wondered why they were taken out of America to spend that much time as actual service men when they really felt that their job was to be, you know, protecting this country. ...but I I have to say that they had the most unbelievable courage and it took everything that I have as a person to...to not...you know... break down while I was talkin to these guys...but I just think that if there was no reason for this war this was the most heinous thing I'd ever seen... and also I wonder why...why are none of Cheney, Wolfowitz, Bremer, the president, why arent they taking pictures with all these guys? Because I dont understand why these guys are so hidden and why... and why there arent pictures of them because you know, talking about the dead and the wounded...that's two different things but these wounded are so devastatedly wounded...you know...that I think that... the wounded...its just... it''s unbelievable...its just unbelieivable to me and i'm an independent but I....

Cher's a class act. It's well worth reading the entire transcript.

11:10:26 PM     leave/read comments []

Hermes is a twin! Mountain lube!!

I love science.

Hermes, the long-lost asteroid that astronomers were stunned to rediscover this month, has been found to harbor another surprise: it is not one rock, but two.....

....Such binary asteroids are not unknown, but the researchers say that Hermes is unusual in that the rocks are roughly the same size- about a quarter-mile in diameter.

9:37:38 PM    

Morons in the News: Middle-schooler caught in FBI probe after internet research. Getting information about the wrong public structure online for a school project causes terrorist task force to verify boy's identity [Morons Dot Org]

So, doing web research on a public structure will earn you a visit from the Stasi FBI?

When the Boys' Latin middle school headmaster, Rick Brocato, went to school the previous morning, he had an unexpected visitor: Jim Drotar of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force.

"We need verification," Drotar said. "About someone who claims he's a student here. It's about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge."

Brocato, relaxing on a couch in his office the other day, laughed about it. "I knew some of the boys were investigating bridges," he said. "The FBI had initials, but not a name. The initials were J.M." (The FBI had no tie-in to the Bruce Willis character, or any "Saddam" suspicions.)

"Somewhere in his questioning," said Brocato, "John had mentioned Boys' Latin. And the FBI guy said, 'All I need to know is, is he a student here?' He said terrorists can impersonate people to get information. I assured him John McLean was a student, and he was doing a paper on the bridge. He said, 'You need to know, students need to identify themselves.' They're very sensitive about bridges and tunnels."

All of this leaves one question: How did the FBI stumble onto the information? Are there agents who spend their days monitoring millions of private messages?

"In today's environment," says Baltimore FBI spokesman Barry Maddox, "we take all leads very seriously. We had to make sure this was a legitimate school project. The kinds of questions he was asking about the bridge, we have to have a sense of caution. [ From Sunspot.net ]

Apparently it's now a thoughtcrime to request information that is supposedly publicly available to any and all.

This chills me right down to the bottom of my socks- when the FBI is the arbiter of what law-abiding citizens of the U.S. can and cannot read, this is a serious breech of the civil liberties that countless patriots fought and died for, year after year throughout our history. Reading should not be something that brings the Secret Police to your home or workplace or school with demands to justify your choice of reading material.

This is the U.S.A., not the DDR.

9:20:54 PM     leave/read comments []

Well, as I sit here at my thankfully untouched G4 Powermac (still running 10.2.8), waiting for my iBook to finish with its recovery from backup, I've had time to reflect on my experience installing Apple's new OS, Mac OS X 10.3, "Panther," or as I like to call it, "Panturd."

What happened, you ask?

Well..........

All the data on my father's OWC Mercury Elite 800 FW drive was lost when I installed Panther. Also, the Finder got stuck in a quit/relaunch loop and would not stop until I physically disconnected the drive from my dad's 17" G4 iMac.

The same thing happened with my 500MHz G3 iBook, but thankfully my OWC ME FW 400 external drive was in OK shape and is busy restoring 10.2.8 to my laptop.

As for dad's iMac, things are less than rosy.

Now the finder will run, but none of my third party apps will- they all "quit unexpectedly" at startup. Even Photoshop.

Photoshop.

Photoshop won't run on my dad's Mac. At all.

The loss of 50GB of data and backup was bad enough, but Photoshop won't even run now.

This is as close to a computing disaster as I can imagine.

Apple's really laid a stinker on us. SHAME!!!

There are similar reports coming at Macintouch and at MacNN forums.

BEWARE!!!

Apple left a bunch of us a trick, not a treat.

8:35:06 PM     leave/read comments []

Novelty farting dog sparks US terror alert. Malodorous mechanical mutt mayhem [The Register]

Of course, the Dept. of Hömeland Secürity isn't doing a thing about the stinky schnauzer that has been terrorizing me, night after night. Of course not, they're too busy chasing pheaux pharters:

Page designer Dave Rogerson's life-size mechanical terrier set off a security detector at Norfolk Airport in Virginia.

Armed security staff were alerted when the toy's wind-breaking mechanism registered as a high explosive on sensitive monitoring equipment.

Mr Rogerson, 31, from Thorner, Leeds, was questioned by FBI agents and looked on in amazement as they took a series of swabs from the mechanical toy's rear end. [ From BBC News ]

"It smells like ass, sir."

1:56:16 PM     leave/read comments []

It's HERE!!!!

So, things will be a bit quiet here today, as we backup drives and install and set up Panther on our various machines here at Stately Bobbington Manor.

In the meantime, here's a Panther-related item about all the goodies out there waiting for you:

Panther software updates galore. Third-party software updates to assure compatibility with Mac OS X v10.3, "Panther," are coming fast and furious. Here's a roundup of some of the most recent applications announced to have Panther compatibility. [MacCentral]

1:36:32 PM     leave/read comments []

And now, the Nazi Pussy reads the Most Amusing Spam Subject Line of The Day!

12:33:16 AM     leave/read comments []

Phonecamming the fires in LA and San Diego.

There's a public phonecam blog here, where people are snapping and uploading mobile shots of the fires currently raging throughout Southern California: Link. OMFG. The fire situation here in San Diego/LA is completely insane. I could see ash in the sky here in Los Angeles -- nevermind see, I can taste it. The air is dense with smoke, and we're like 40-50 miles away from the major blazes.... but even here, okay: I can usually see the Hollywood sign from the cafe where I spend most of my Sundays, and today I can barely see a couple of blocks away. There are fires in San Diego, too -- and several major airports were closed here for at least part of the day today, including LAX. Also, Sean Bonner at Sixspace gallery posted this. [Boing Boing Blog]

12:31:01 AM     leave/read comments []

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Shenzhou spacecraft. By Mark Wade [Astronautix.com]

A comprehensive look at China's manned spacecraft, from one of the best space technology and history sites on the web.

Other Designations: Project 921-1. Manufacturer's Designation: Project 921-1. Class: Manned. Type: Spacecraft. Nation: China. Agency: CASC. Manufacturer: Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.

The Chinese Shenzhou manned spacecraft resembled the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but was of larger size and all-new construction. Like the Soyuz, it consisted of a forward orbital module, a re-entry capsule, and an aft service module. Unlike the Soyuz, the orbital module was equipped with its own propulsion, solar power, and control systems, allowing autonomous flight. The Shenzhou project received limited funding, resulting in a protracted development program. Work began in 1992, with annual unmanned flights finally beginning in the winter of 1999/2000. The development of Shenzhou's thirteen sub-systems took the effort of thousands of engineers and technicians in 300 organisations in China. The first manned flight was planned for the autumn of 2003. Shenzhou would be used to develop manned spaceflight techniques (extravehicular activity, rendezvous and docking) and later serve as a ferry to Chinese space stations and as a lunar orbital and landing spacecraft.

5:37:00 PM    

Unix Geeks, have at it.

5:20:14 PM     leave/read comments []

Afghan beauty trades burka for bikini Afghan woman is first to enter beauty contest in 30 years [MSNBC]

Now that's what I call "Winning The War On Terror!"

THE FIRST AFGHAN entrant in an international beauty contest for 30 years, and the first since the fall of the hard-line Islamic Taliban government in 2001, joined more than 50 other women at a posh hotel in the Philippine capital this week to fight it out for the Miss Earth title.

 The dark-haired Samadzai, 25, was born and raised in Afghanistan, but left for the United States in 1996 to escape the turmoil of civil war and the rise of the Taliban religious movement.

[base "]I would like to make people aware that as Afghan women we are talented, intelligent and beautiful,[per thou] Vida, posing in a revealing swimsuit, told Reuters.

You know, beauty contests are pretty dumb and all, but you know, this is kinda cool.

Also, she is a major hottie.

Which was nice.

I'll get me coat.

3:02:26 PM     leave/read comments []

Sad girls and boys.

2:33:26 PM     leave/read comments []

It's a Girl! (Will the Economy Suffer?). Couples with boys tend to invest more in their families and divorce less often than couples with girls. By David Leonhardt. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

Just when we thought that American girls had lost their cooties, we're informed that it just ain't the case.

While Cambodian young men are busy gang-raping prostitutes, American parents are showing a subtle misogyny in the choices they make about their families.

One way to look for such a preference, they realized, would be to see whether parents of girls divorced more often than parents of boys, as has long been the case in male-centric societies like China. So the two economists scurried back to their respective offices and, over the next three days, did what economists do: plugged reams of data into a computer and ran regressions, statistical speak for the search for patterns.

"We thought, 'There is no way we are going to find something systematic,' " Mr. Moretti said. "The results were shocking."

In every decade since the 1940's, couples with girls indeed divorced more often than those with boys, United States Census Bureau data showed. The effect was not huge - just a few percentage points - but it was unmistakable. It happened in every region of the country. It happened among whites more than blacks and among people with only high school diplomas more than those with college degrees.

Lou Reed may have said "Kill Your Sons," but it's more like "drown your daughters (before it's too late)."

2:08:26 PM     leave/read comments []

Another example of men with power preying on women and the price of institutional violence in a culture.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia -- Sipping a beer in an Irish pub, Doc looks every bit the privileged young man that he is. Neatly dressed in a buttoned-down shirt and khaki pants, he is polite and quick with a smile, especially when talking about his favorite pastime - gang rape.

Asked how many times he has gang raped a prostitute, the 23-year-old pauses, looks at the ceiling, and grins while venturing a guess: "I don't know.

Maybe 100 times."

Whether the number is true or not, Doc is among an alarming number of young Cambodian men in the habit of gang-raping prostitutes, a practice called bauk, which means "plus" in Khmer.

10:40:19 AM    

The Bad News: Hotel attacked by rockets.

The Worse News: Wolfowitz unharmed; still a danger to U.S. and Iraqi populace.

10:15:57 AM     leave/read comments []

A black hole behind a cloud of obscuring material......I'll just let you imagine the dumb fart joke.

1:11:47 AM     leave/read comments []

12:20:01 AM     leave/read comments []

Bob, hanging out in the window of our apartment in San Francisco.

12:05:20 AM     leave/read comments []