Watch very closely, one of these Olympic athletes, Oscar Pistorius — nicknamed Blade Runner — is not like the others …
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Watch very closely, one of these Olympic athletes, Oscar Pistorius — nicknamed Blade Runner — is not like the others …
Curiosity will be landing, or trying to land, at about 12:30 AM Central Time in the US. A press conference is in progress here, the panelist all opened by saying they’re having to remind themselves to breathe. I’ll be adding to this post throughout the day.
At a press conference today Richard Cook described what is planned. The deep space tracking network will be relaying real time communication with the rover, the first opportunity to hear from the vehicle is likely to be within seconds of landing. Shortly after 12:31 AM engineers will probably know if the landing was a success and there could be images returned a little after that time. On the next pass by an orbiter about two hours later images will probably be returned by the fish eye HazCam.
Corporations are people too, blowing a softball question on one of your purported Olympian strengths, ducking the press, moonwalking back and forth on every issue under the sun while insisting you are steady and stationay as Plymouth Rock. These toastmaster adventures cry out for a term of their own. Matt Miller obliges: [Read more…]
For us science wonks thermodynamics is the study of heat and work and those properties of substance related to heat and work. But for creationists, it’s the basis for a prized whopper endlessly passed off as fact in the fundamentalist jihad against natural history. A recent editorial offers up the classic zombie lie: [Read more…]
Mitt Romney addressed and it was a trainwreck. He was booed and openly heckled, applause was tepid and halting (Word is the Romney campaign made sure some supporters attended, maybe they were just too embarassed to clap at times). Funniest goddamn thing: At several points, after it was clear just how bad this would be, someone on the organ keyed dramatic notes in a sort of comedic pitch, the kind you hear when a bad guy wearing a black fedora is twirling his mustache. I can’t imagine who in the Romney campaign thought this was a good idea, but they were wrong.
Aside from that, the speech was full of the usual whoppers, main difference being Mittens wasn’t speaking to the indoctrinated ditto heads he typically enjoys. Politico has a recap of some of it here.
It’s rather beautiful in its alien cloudy-ness. The Derecho. A rare phenomenon characterized by a shelf of low, ominous clouds leading sustained winds, at times exceeding hurricane strength, trailing thunderstorms and sometimes hail in its wake. An unusually violent and gigantic Derecho was herald for some of the storms that hit the east a few days ago (I think I flew through one of these once, see below). Speaking of weather, we keep on rolling snakes eyes: [Read more…]
You walk down an ordinary drab aisle in a supermarket, but you see grocery items stand up and dance a jig, below them are prices, special offers, and nutrition profiles. In the corner of your eye a counter keeps track of the total bill for items already chosen, taxes included, and flashes red when it reaches a predetermined value. A neighbor speaks to you in Mandarin, but text scrolls past your field of vision, maybe a tiny speaker whispers the english translation in your ear. Oh, and if the power goes out, no matter. You can see in the dark.
This may sound like the future, but if Google’s new project succeeds, the future starts now. [Read more…]
Prof. Sean Carroll will be live blogging the “Higgses announcement,” expected early July 4th, US time. But the news is likely to be … a little more certainty that the elusive mass lending weirdo particle exists and lives at 125 GeV. Whether the findings will go beyond that is unclear. But it’s still a BFD, because the Higgs Boson is almost as elusive as God (As Embertime notes in comments, it’s probably down the back of the soda) and it’s the most important goddamn particle in physics. What is the Higgs you ask? In layman’s terms: [Read more…]
Dozens of Mormons from three states gathered in a Salt Lake City park to declare independence from the LDS church. Key to their discontent was the intolerance and social conservatism pushed onto Mormon members by the old guard and traditional doctrine. [Read more…]
THE ENTIRE AFFORDBALE CARE ACT HAS BEEN UPHELD AS CONSTITUTIONAL BY THE SUPREME COURT
SCOTUS Blog live streaming Q & A: Amy Howe: Here’s a super-short summary of the main issue in the health care case in Plain English, in a response to a question: Does it violate the Constitution for Congress to require virtually all Americans to obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty? If the Court’s answer is yes, then it has to decide whether just the requirement — the so-called “individual mandate” — is invalid, or whether part or all of the rest of the health care law must go with it.
C-SPAN now streaming live video with commentary from outside the courthouse including live stream from SCOTUS blog above. Kudos to them. [Read more…]