More at: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/04/spaceshiptwo-powered-flight/
The Galactic Virgin | See Wired’s cool photo gallery
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Cool Coolidge
From the Liberty Law Site: Silent Cals 6 Simple Rules
1. “Don’t hurry to legislate.”
2. Don’t promise much.
3. Economize.
4. “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”
5. The Meaning of Progress.
6. Humility.
Coolidge was not looking to return to the days of “horses and bayonets,” as Obama has joked. “We review the past,” he said, “not in order that we may return to it but that we may find in what direction, straight and clear, it points into the future.” Several of Coolidge’s speeches read like short history lessons, tracing the path of civilization from the Greeks and the Romans, to the Pilgrims and the Puritans, to Washington and Lincoln. To Coolidge, the history of western civilization culminated in the American founding.
Crystalline Time, what a great SiFi title!
Physicists plan to create a “time crystal” — a theoretical object that moves in a repeating pattern without using energy — inside a device called an ion trap. Image: Hartmut Häffner
It appears to violate conventional physics but does it? Seems like this has some chance of creating a link between ‘classic’ and Quantum physics, maybe?
Galactic Virgin Rockets Away!
Love the Logo-shot! The space ship’s pretty simple really, it’s biggest downside would seem to be no fly around capacity if one misses the runway line up, but 1) how often does that happen theses days? 2) if theirs any juice left in the oxidizer tank a short burn would do the trick. Anyone know the plan: depend on getting it right every time or lighting ‘er up for the go-round?
Snowbirds Snapped From Space
Snowbirds Snapped From Space – Flightglobal
all of their aircraft dragging smoke, it was a real calm day!
Duh! … Well intended policies have negative impacts …
Well-intentioned policies to make achieving tenure more family-friendly actually have negative consequences for the salaries of college faculty, says a study co-written by University of Illinois labor and employment relations professor Amit Kramer:
“The norm in academia is that success requires the focused pursuit of academic work at the expense of other responsibilities, including family,” he said. “That suggests that the use of these policies may be detrimental to the career outcomes of tenure-track faculty members. In particular, evaluators may perceive stopping the clock for family reasons as an indicator that the faculty member lacks the commitment to his or her academic role. And that, in turn, may constrain their career prospects.”
This ‘unintended consequence’ should have been predicted (and my bet is that it was) by any rational adult who has worked in even a moderately competitive workplace (and academia in main line universities is anything but just moderately competitive.) This sort of thing is a fact of life among us monkeys, move on, nothing to see here! Trying to add some kind of anti-bias bias, as suggested later in the article, is nuts and will only make things worse.
If you want to provide this sort of benefit, do so knowing there will be ‘unintended consequences’ of this sort and allow your adult, professional staff figure out their own best path. I think providing more personal days per year and allowing them to accrue along with a reasonably strict use policy to offset impacts to the company / coworkers would be more fair and flexible.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-family-friendly-tenure-policies-result-salary.html
Eye Candy : Wired Photo Gallery
Boston…this is the proper takeaway
Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the much admired Archbishop of Boston: “The tragedy… shakes us out of our complacency and indifference and calls us to focus on the task of building a civilization that is based on love, justice, truth and service.”
From: The American Interest: Religion and the Boston Marathon
Meta material technique allows for high efficiency coupling of light on a surface AND the ability to switch direction via polarization
An electron micrograph shows the nanoscale perforations at the surface of the plasmonic coupler. Credit: Jiao Lin and Balthasar Müller.
(Phys.org) —A Harvard-led team of researchers has created a new type of nanoscale device that converts an optical signal into waves that travel along a metal surface. Significantly, the device can recognize specific kinds of polarized light and accordingly send the signal in one direction or another.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-physicists-left-solution-on-chip-optics.html
Pretty important stuff, ducting light around on chips is an important ability for future electronics…or maybe one should say, nano- electro- optic- systems. Cool stuff…
RADICAL SCIENCE | GETMYO.COM | motion interpretation by reading muscle signaling and position
Cool stuff
(Phys.org) —”Wave goodbye to camera-based gesture control.” That is the confident directive coming from a one-year-old Waterloo, Ontario, startup called Thalmic Labs. The company is prepared to ship its next batch of wearable-computing armbands for device controls early next year. The $149 armbands called MYO do not require cameras in order to track hand or arm movements. The armbands can wirelessly control and interact with computers and other digital consumer products by recognizing the electric impulses in users’ muscles.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-myo-armband-muscle-video.html#jCp
Using groundbreaking technology, MYO is able to measure electrical activity in your muscles instantly. The result is a seamless way to interact with computers, and a truly magical sense of control.
Read more at: https://getmyo.com/
The Senatorial Launch System | Asteroid Capture | Clueless Politicians | Pork | Engineering Jobs + Corporate Welfare
This plan is getting pushback because its not a return to the moon or a Mars landing plan. But the reality is that this idea is all NASA can afford given the cost involved with the Senatorial ( or Space, take your pick) Launch System A Saturn V + class heavy lift direct ascent launch system
The lack of resistance is tied to Senate support of the Space Launch System. Senators from key NASA states – Florida, Texas and Alabama – pushed President Barack Obama to build it, and the asteroid mission is seen as a way to give purpose to the rocket, once criticized as a “rocket to nowhere.”
Illustrative of that point was the initial reaction of Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
“NASA should continue to explore the universe and challenge scientific and technical boundaries,” he said in a statement. “However, NASA should maintain focus on its core mission and continue development of the Space Launch System so that it will be ready for any future NASA mission.”
So my question is, why the SLS, don’t get me wrong some of the SLS related work like resurrecting the Saturn V F1 engine (as I pointed to a few days ago) is a good thing, but reality is it should be part of getting a commercial venture to back development. NASA shoulddevelop Orion and its support module, but the booster should be gov’t sponsored / stimulated effort as part of a get to the moon, Mars, big asteroids plan, in support of the commercial civilian space efforts.
If you look at all the recently proposed and ongoing civilian efforts and roll in appropriate gov’mnt support you can see a very robust human and robotic space development plan emerge.
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-nasa-chief-asteroid-agency.html/
This World and Others 