Mar 9th 10
90 Second Public Service Announcement
Embrace Life – What a great way to hammer home the message.
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Mar 5th 10
What if Twitter… came to life?
Twitter: The Criterion Collection
What if Twitter… came to life?
We asked some of our friends to film their favorite tweets. We didn’t care how they did it. They could read it. They could...
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Feb 17th 10
Mrs. Mulverhill discovers Libertarians
In the Iain Banks book Transition, where the characters can evidently shift, at will, to alternate realities (I gotta read this book!), one of the main characters, Mrs. Mulverhill, defines one...
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Feb 17th 10
The Pale Blue Dot
About twenty years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward it’s launching point and took the now famous “Pale Blue Dot” photograph. The arrow points to us. That’s Earth…...
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Feb 17th 10
The Cuddle Recliner!
We just purchased some new furniture this past weekend and my favorite piece is now comfortably situated in front of the big TV just inviting me to come watch movies until… well…...
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Feb 12th 10
Satire is a beautiful thing
Amazingly enough, there are still people who claim to understand the science behind global warming, yet make the mistake of thinking localized cold temperatures, such as the recent snowstorms...
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Feb 12th 10
Death Bear removes your bad memories
Oh, Death Bear… you’re ever so helpful to those in need!
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Feb 9th 10
Orca pack hunting
Jerry Coyne, of Why Evolution is True, linked to a video today of a pack of orcas hunting together and working cooperatively to get a seal off an ice floe. There’s more info at his article...
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Feb 9th 10
Foxes playing on a trampoline
Lori showed me this video the other day of some foxes playing on a trampoline. One of them obviously likes the bounciness!
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Feb 5th 10
BioShock 2 looks… AWESOME!
I played BioShock and was completely enthralled with the entire game… the playability, the graphics, the interface, and most dramatically, the atmosphere. The creepy, art-deco look and...
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NASA Image
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Snapshot of the International Space Station
On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image was taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR
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On March 13, 2008, the International Space Station passed across the field-of-view of Germany's remote sensing satellite, TerraSAR-X, at a distance of 195 kilometers, or 122 miles, and at a relative speed of 34,540 kilometers per hour, or more than 22,000 mph. In contrast to optical cameras, radar does not 'see' surfaces. Instead, it is much more aware of the edges and corners which bounce back the microwave signal it transmits. Smooth surfaces such as those on the station's solar generators or the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat, unless directly facing the radar antenna, tend to deflect rather than reflect the radar beam, causing these features to appear on the radar image as dark areas. The radar image of the station therefore looks like a dense collection of bright spots from which the outlines of the space station can be clearly identified. The central element on the station, to which all the modules are docked, has a grid structure that presents a multiplicity of reflecting surfaces to the radar beam, making it readily identifiable. This image has a resolution of about one meter (about 39 inches). In other words, objects can be depicted as discrete units--that is, shown separately--provided that they are at least one meter apart. If they are closer together than that, they tend to merge into a single block on a radar image. Since this image was taken, the station has expanded and is more than 90 percent complete, including a full complement of solar arrays. Image Credit: DLR
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