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To Mars By A-Bomb
11.26.2009
03:07 pm
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Clip from a BBC Four documentary on the US government’s bizarre Project Orion, a plan to send spaceships around our solar system with nuclear power. The extent to which the space program was actually a high-level fusion of hard tech and just batshit crazy science fiction plans has always fascinated me. These guys were looking to science fiction writers as their creative team, basically. The romance of just making insane ideas real, and it actually working (well, at least to some extent)... why isn’t it like this anymore?

The extraordinary yet true account of a secret US government-backed attempt to build a spaceship the size of an ocean liner and send it to Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, propelled by thousands of miniature nuclear bombs.

Beginning in 1958 Project Orion ran until 1965, employing some of the best scientists in the world, including the brilliant British mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson. “Freeman Dyson is one of the few authentic geniuses I’ve ever met”, says Arthur C. Clarke. “Orion isn’t crazy. It would work. The question isn’t whether we could do it, but whether we should do it”.

The film uncovers a contemporary angle to Project Orion. Arthur C. Clarke states that today’s generation are once again serious about going to Mars and that NASA has once more become interested in similar nuclear technology as used by Project Orion in the early 60s.

(Swen’s Blog: Project Orion)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.26.2009
03:07 pm
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Intel Wants Brain Implants in Customers’ Heads
11.25.2009
03:56 pm
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The latest advance in the great Man-Internets Fusion project: Intel is developing brain implants that will psychically interface human beings with their technology. I suppose it was only a matter of time… You have gone too far, science! Although… will I be able to use this implant to turn off other people’s cell phones and Blackberries at a distance?

By the year 2020, you won’t need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Scientists at Intel’s research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people’s brains.

The scientists say the plan is not a scene from a sci-fi movie—Big Brother won’t be planting chips in your brain against your will. Researchers expect that consumers will want the freedom they will gain by using the implant.

(Intel: Chips in brains will control computers by 2020)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.25.2009
03:56 pm
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3D Animation of Earth With Rings Like Saturn
11.20.2009
01:39 pm
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This is a 3D animation of how the earth would look if it had a ring system like Saturn. From the creators of the video:

Ring views from the Earth’s surface were created according to the location’s latitude, northern or southern hemisphere, and the viewer’s orientation. The size of the rings was calculated respecting the Roche limit for the Earth.

(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.20.2009
01:39 pm
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The App of Khan: Klingon-to-English translator iPhone app
11.19.2009
06:23 pm
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Here’s another head-scratching—yet wildly popular—new iPhone app to ponder: a Klingon-to-English dictionary, with translator and grammar checking software.
Designed by Ultralingua, a Dinkytown, Minn.-based language-learning software company, the app offers users the ability to look up common conversational phrases in Klingon such as, “What is all this debris?” and “I’d like a black ale.” (We hope “Where is the pan-galactic bathroom, please?” is in there someplace.) “Worf,” played by “Star Trek” actor Michael Dorn, coaches users on pronunciation employing an authentic Klingon accent. Although this is probably standard-issue stuff for Starfleet academy graduates, it might also prove useful to Klingons as well, who can use it in the opposite direction to speak with “Terrans” (that’s Earthings, you and me).

For the project, Ultralingua employed a linguist named d’Armond Speers who rather infamously spoke only the fictional alien language to his own son for the first three years of the tot’s life. “I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

Clearly Speers was the right man for the job, but let’s hope that this “teaching kids Klingon” stuff doesn’t become a meme within Trekkie circles. I mean, sure, I suppose it would amuse your Vulcan friends when Junior starts babbling about SpongeBob SquarePants in Klingon, but this sure sounds like a recipe for raising a crazed loner to me…

Cross posting this from Brand X

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
06:23 pm
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Do blind people hallucinate on LSD?
11.19.2009
12:07 am
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LSD by Damien Hirst
 
Cut-n-pasted from the Mindhacks blog:

I’ve just found a remarkable 1963 study [pdf] from the Archives of Opthalmology in which 24 blind participants took LSD to see if they could experience visual hallucinations.

It turns out, they can, although this seems largely to be the case in blind people who had several years of sight to begin with, but who later lost their vision.

Those blind from a very early age (younger than two years-old) did not report visual hallucinations, probably because they never had enough visual experience to shape a fully-functioning visual system when their brain was still developing.

It is evident that a normal retina is not needed for the occurrence of LSD-induced visual experiences. These visual experiences do not seem to differ from the hallucinations reported by normal subjects after LSD.

Such phenomena occurred only in blind subjects who reported prior visual activity. The drug increased the frequency of visual events such as spots, lights, dots, and flickers. However, the complex visual experiences reported by 3 subjects after LSD did not occur after placebo or in ordinary experience.

It is interesting to note that duration of blindness was not related to the occurrence of visual hallucinations; nor was intelligence, acuity of visual memory, or use of visual imagery in speech.

Read the entire post at the Mindhacks blog.

Thanks Dan Levy!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.19.2009
12:07 am
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New Scientist: Mystery “Dark Flow” Extends Towards Edge of Universe
11.16.2009
11:47 pm
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New Scientist reports that there is some huge freaking thing at the edge of our universe that has been labeled “dark flow.” I just… just… DEAR GOD I HOPE IT’S NOT GALACTUS.

Something big is out there beyond the visible edge of our universe. That’s the conclusion of the largest analysis to date of over 1000 galaxy clusters streaming in one direction at blistering speeds. Some researchers say this so-called “dark flow” is a sign that other universes nestle next door.

Last year, Sasha Kashlinsky of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and colleagues identified an unusual pattern in the motion of around 800 galaxy clusters. They studied the clusters’ motion in the “afterglow” of the big bang, as measured by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The photons of this afterglow collide with electrons in galaxy clusters as they travel across space to the Earth, and this subtly changes the afterglow’s temperature.

The team combined the WMAP data with X-ray observations and found the clusters were streaming at up to 1000 kilometres per second towards one particular part of the cosmos (The Astrophysical Journal Letters, vol 686, p L49).

Many researchers argued the dark flow would not turn up in later observations, but now the team claim to have confirmed its existence. Their latest analysis reveals 1400 clusters are part of the flow, and that it continues to around 3 billion light years from Earth, a sizeable fraction of the distance to the edge of the observable universe (arxiv.org/abs/0910.4958). This is twice as far as seen in the previous study.

The dark flow appears to have been caused shortly after the big bang by something no longer in the observable universe. It has no effect today because reaching across this horizon would involve travelling faster than light.

While the rest of the world freaks out about swine flu shots and the new 2012 movie, I will be hiding under the bed from the Smasher of Universes Who Wields the Power Cosmic, thank you very much.

(New Scientist: Dark Flow Extends Towards End of Universe)

(Bonus: Galactus is Coming!)

Posted by Jason Louv
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11.16.2009
11:47 pm
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DIY: Janet’s Whizbang Chicken Plucker
11.15.2009
12:02 pm
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(Warning: video is not for vegetarians or for folks who like to cuddle with chickens). Here’s an odd DIY chicken plucking machine built from Herrick Kimball’s book “Anyone Can Build A Whizbang Chicken Plucker.” Um, I think I’ll stick with my salad spinner.
 
(via Arbroath)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.15.2009
12:02 pm
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Inside The Martian Torture Chamber, Preparing For Contact
11.09.2009
03:31 pm
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Is photosynthesis possible on Mars?  Scientists at the German Center for Aeronautics and Space Research (DLR) seem to think so.  They’re rigged up a hermetically sealed steel chest consisting of 95% carbon dioxide, set the thermostat to ?

Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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11.09.2009
03:31 pm
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Lachanophobia: Fear of Vegetables
11.09.2009
11:14 am
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Vicki Larrieux, a 22-year-old student from Portsmouth, claims she is unable to keep to a healthy diet because she is frightened of vegetables.

She suffers from a fear known as lachanophobia, which leaves her sweating and stricken with panic attacks at the merest sight of a sprout or a pea.

Miss Larrieux survives on a diet of meat, potatoes, cereals and an occasional apple but refuses even a single slice of carrot on her dinner plate.

“I have always had an irrational fear of vegetables even as a child I used to properly freak out if some carrots or a few peas were on my plate,” she said.

“But as it continued into adult life I started to think it might not just be a dislike for vegetables but an actual phobia.

“Every time I would see vegetables not just on my plate, but anywhere I would get feelings of panic, start sweating and my heart rate would shoot up.

“People might think it is a bit of a laughable affliction but I have a genuine fear of greens it’s not just that I dislike the taste of sprouts or broccoli, but the actual sight of them fills me with dread and I could never touch them.”

The unusual fear affects just a few thousand people in Britain and treatments for the condition include “psychological re-programming” to control the anxious response to seeing vegetables.

Miss Larrieux’s condition makes routine trips to the supermarket or a night out at a restaurant with her boyfriend Joseph Jade, 25, a major problem.

“It is a bit of an ordeal to go to the supermarket because the veg is usually right by the door,” she said.

“My boyfriend is very understanding and does his best to accommodate me. It is a good job he isn’t a vegetarian because it just wouldn’t work.

Read more of Woman diagnosed with fear of vegetables.
 
(via Arbroath)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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11.09.2009
11:14 am
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Sorted for E’s and Wizz: Man Takes 40,000 Hits of Ecstasy in Nine Years
11.08.2009
10:16 pm
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Bez from the Happy Mondays has nothing to do with this article.
 
Why would someone do this to themselves? I mean, no wonder! How the hell did this guy expect he’d end up after taking 40,000 E’s?

Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George’s Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest previous lifetime intake on record is 2,000 pills. Though the man, who is now 37, stopped taking the drug seven years ago, he still suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth. The doctors believe many of these symptoms may be permanent.

The man, known as Mr A in the report in the scientific journal Psychosomatics, started using ecstasy at 21. For the first two years his use was an average of five pills per weekend. Gradually this escalated until he was taking around three and a half pills a day. At the peak, the man was taking an estimated 25 pills every day for four years. After several severe collapses at parties, Mr A decided to stop taking ecstasy. For several months, he still felt he was under the influence of the drug, despite being bedridden.

His condition deteriorated and he began to experience recurrent tunnel vision and other problems including hallucinations, paranoia and muscle rigidity. “He came to us after deciding that he couldn’t go on any more,” said Dr Christos Kouimtsidis, the consultant psychiatrist at St George’s Medical School in Tooting who treated him for five months. “He was having trouble functioning in everyday life.”

The doctors discovered that the man was suffering from severe short-term memory problems of a type usually only seen in lifetime alcoholics. But evaluating the full extent of his condition was difficult as his concentration and attention was so impaired he was unable to follow the simple tasks involved in the test.

“This was an exceptional case. His long- term memory was fine but he could not remember day to day things - the time, the day, what was in his supermarket trolley,” said Dr Kouimtsidis. “More worryingly, he did not seem aware himself that he had these memory problems.”
 
Below, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker sings his wryly observed outsider’s tale of being on E at a rave and not quite getting it, Sorted for E’s and Wizz:
 

 
The strange case of the man who took 40,000 ecstasy pills in nine years

Posted by Richard Metzger
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11.08.2009
10:16 pm
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