Russian news agency Interfax is reporting that thieves have stolen a three-tonne meteorite from the yard of the Tunguska Space Event foundation, whose director said it was the part of meteor that caused a massive explosion in
Via - Interfax
Gather 'round while I sing you of Wernher von Braun,
A man whose allegiance
Is ruled by expedience.
Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown,
"Ha, Nazi, Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun.
Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown,
But some think our attitude
Should be one of gratitude,
Like the widows and cripples in old London town,
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun.**
You too may be a big hero,
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero.
"In German oder English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese!" says Wernher von Braun.
Wernher von Braun, perhaps NASA's most famous Nazi, had it right through when he argued that
rockets must be symmetrical from tip to tail. Having irregular protuberances anywhere along
the profile of the rocket -- solid rocket boosters, an auxiliary fuel tank and all the pipes,
cables and trusses holding everything together -- at the speeds and forces that a spacecraft
is subjected to shaking off its earthly shackles and re-acquiring them is bound to folly. And
so has it proved with this last space shot. NASA reports today that they will extend the mission
by another three days to determine (and repair if necessary)this twenty-odd year old's spaceship's
space-worthiness. Isn't it time to give the old bird a rest?
Supposedly, one hundred and thirty years today, Edison made his first recording. Edison was however so closed-minded that he imagined recording as an office efficiency device and not a music carrier. Indeed, when recorded music did come into fashion -- just showing how pigheaded he was -- he personally surveyed every singer that came by his door dismissing them if they even deviated once from what he considered good singing out to be. Some of these recordings are now known to have survived. Fortunately, cooler (and less anti-semitic) heads prevailed and a music industry was born. While there are those that still play and collect vinyl -- for god knows what reason --the lowly CD is most probably on its way out too. I don't however think people should get too upset about the diminished sound quality of the MP3 -- they really can be that good and you need good equipment to hear the differences of recordings made below 160 kps -- memory and bandwidth will be so cheap that all will be delivered without loss. I'll be sure to spin an lp or two today.
Original Release Date: June 26, 2007
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Capitol
ASIN: B000PY32CE
On placing the marginally warped record on the table and lowering the needle, I found the LP to be more than aptly named. There is not a great song on it, the whole thing is a mix-up, and sonics are nothing to write home about. Indeed, the whole thing sounds like outtakes, bad-ones at that. Indeed, there is little original or fresh here. And those great Beastie lyrics (and the amazing delivery of them) is conspicuously absent. I’d like to say more, but just don’t have that much to say. In writing this note, I did learn a little about Groove (nown and verb) Holmes and look forward to hearing more. I recommend that fans of the Beastie Boys give this one a miss. If you need Beastie fix, go Check Your Head.
Well. After yesterday’s successful launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour into space yesterday evening, this is the latest news from NASA, ‘Endeavour Undergoes Heat Shield Inspection.’
The article goes on:
‘Pilot Charles Hobaugh, and mission specialists Tracy Caldwell and Rick Mastracchio are using the shuttle’s robotic arm to unberth the Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS) to take an extensive and detailed look at the orbiter’s thermal protection system.
No doubt they will find a missing tile or three, or a rip in the foam, and there will be much hand-wringing as to whether the Space Shuttle is safe to return. Amidst the parade of Astronaut Wannabes spokesmen and experts opining about the dangers of the lucky 7 returning to terra firma, and though the astronauts may fix the broken gyroscope and install the truss on the outdated space station, and replace a few tiles, few will ask that most jejune of questions: ‘With such risks and costs, why go in the first place?’ Trips are supposed to be from A to B, not A to nowhere (for is that not what space is, nothing).
It’s true that there are certain trips that do not have a set destination and are for the pleasure of enjoying the journey but not the joys of the destination. A Sunday Drive or hoot through the back roads on a Motorcycle, for example, that Starts at A and ends at A are both fine examples of journeys that take do not have destinations, but I don’t think we can scale these examples to that of the folly sending 7 astronauts in an asymmetrical vehicle to nowhere where they will primarily engage in preparing to return to somewhere at enormous cost and risk to human lives broadcast on the NASA channel like a reality show, but this is a reality show with a body count.
Very soon we will see the launch of VMWARE’s IPO.
VMWARE, which started out pretty much as a science project of EMC (EMC-N) the Network Attached Storage Kings, makes software that allows large computers to run many smaller computers virtually.
It’s a neat trick and I remember running Windows 98 through VMWARE under Linux a few years back. It was very slow and on the hardware I had there was not much point and it seemed, very, very difficult to exchange data from the computer’s principal Linux OS to the virtual Windows 98 PC running within a window. It was useless – to me anyhow – but neat.
I would like, however, to point out that virtualization is just a short step from emulation and that bright nostalgic geeks have been writing emulators (sometimes with legal ROMS, sometimes without—their status is somewhat vague) for years. Mame, the 80s Arcade Simulator, is probably the best known, but there are also ones available for PDP-8s, Commodore 64s, and of course Apples. One great one I just came across is called ‘Apple-on-a-stick’ where you emulate an early 128k Apple MacIntosh off a USB key. You can find all you need to know about how to run an Apple off a USB stick or in my case an IPOD (now there’s an irony) here: http://nothickmanuals.info/doku.php?id=minivmac
Scroll to the bottom for the easy way. Voila!!! What can you do with it? Pretty much what you could with an old Mac 128 running OS7 – not much, but what was Shakespeare able to do with only pen and paper? – but I think that’s beside the point unless someone can find me a copy of Risk.
There’s a sweet geek nostalgia to all this that the principals of VMWARE will do very well by. No one of course has any spare time, but if you should happen to want to revel in a bit of eighties Mac nostalgia, I can think of no better way. It is, really, pretty cool. Perhaps not as cool or useful as an Iphone. But certainly cheaper?
When I saw on the news the curious pomegranate of a submariner vessel that had the temerity to approach the Queen Mary II in New York's harbour, a curious bell rang. Hadn't I seen just such a boat before while reading books to my son before bed the night before last. A quick consult of my son's bedside table and the bell authenticated itself. Sure enough, the basic design of this week's unterseafruitboat was taken from a hand operated (and by this I mean also hand propelled) vessel that had last been used in the United State's so-called War of Independence!
It's the Cimabue of course, and my personal favourite, and I suppose it's rather a banal observation following the transformation of the women in white from driven snow through come up and see me sometime on to friends with JFK, but I still find it remarkable. I have deliberately left out the material girl (though own more than a few records by her) because of her, unlike the others, very materiality.
To those who know me it should come as no surprise that when I am hungry I like my food. Those who know me even better know how much I hate buffets, particularly Chinese ones. The very idea of an all you can buffet sends over me waves of nausea as I imagine the weird, ugly heat of the hot lamps, the stainless steel trays full of rice and unidentifiable meats in unidentifiable sauces, that insult to hens everywhere, chicken balls, and of course those Homerics jostling among us at the steam tables looking for you to nod in agreement when they say ‘You can go up as many times as you want and you won’t have to have dinner either. Just look at all these Egg Rolls.’
(China not quite as shown.)
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