The Way to Go

I have previously written of how I don't want to leave this earth. This, however, seems a much better way to go. Death by chocolate (well, blunt trauma to the head, but close enough).

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Writing time: 2 minutes
Time since last post: too long
Current media: none, although I have been rewatching season 9 and 10 of Stargate SG-1 (the Ben Browder years, or alternatively, the no-Macvyver years)

A hero in his own way

This guy in Libya turned down a bribe from a drug smuggler worth more than 1300 times his monthly salary. We need more people like this everywhere. It is good to see such actions being commended.

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Writing time: 5 minutes
Time since last post: a day or so
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The Financial Crisis Explained

Well, more properly, the sub-prime mortgage crisis explained.

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Writing time: 30 seconds
Time since last post: a while
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Lucky Bastard

This guy is one lucky bastard. Getting paid to build lego models all day. Why isn't that my job?

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Writing time: 2 minutes (this isn't a very long post)
Time since last post: a day?
Current media: Stargate Continuum

One Tough Chick

I like to think that I have courage of my convictions, but I know that I am fortunate in that life has rarely tested me to any sort of extreme.

Malalai Kakar is the ideal I'd like to meet, but I know I fall short. She is a police officer in Afghanistan. She gets death threats delivered to her door, carries an AK-47 with her on the way to work, has gunfights with the Taliban, is raising six kids, and is an inspiration and leader for the small but growing group of female police in Afghanistan.

Malalai deserves recognition for her courage and dedication. She does a tough job in a place I'd be scared to visit, let alone live. The best word I can think of to use here is hero.

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Writing time: 22 minutes (I got a little distracted along the way)
Time since last post: two days
Current media: Robot Chicken

PS: I didn't think I'd ever link to an article by Marie Claire.

I can't wait for this to be finished

Japan makes a lot of crazy shit, and a lot of the time it's just crazy. But sometimes the crazy stuff is actually just crazy awesome. This is a case of the latter.

Japan are planning to hold a conference to organise building a space elevator. If just the name isn't cool enough, the actual idea is. A massive cable attached to a satellite up in space with an elevator system attached, allowing us to move stuff to and from space at a fraction of a price it takes to send up a rocket.

It's not a new idea. A Russian came up with the idea in 1895. Arthur C Clarke was writing about it as science fiction in 1979. We just happen to be living in the time when it may just be feasible. We truly live in remarkable times.

The space elevator is one of those ideas that will change the world once it is realised. The new possibilities it will open up are amazing, and those are just the ones we can think of. Just like the wheel, fire, the assembly line, the computer, and all those other inventions that completely reshape the world we live in (can you imagine a world without fire?), so too will the space elevator.

This obviously won't be finished tomorrow, but it's exciting to see people seriously looking at this as something to do, and not just a nice idea for stories.

The one down side to the whole thing is the consequences if it falls down. Not a pretty scenario. I should hope that doesn't come to pass.

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Writing time: blah minutes
Time since last post: bleh time units
Current media: none

Someone is awesome

Following cuts in its budget Fermilab has had to make some drastic cuts to its staff numbers and pay. This is without a doubt a bad thing. Fortunately someone has stepped in to help. An anonymous person has donated 5 million dollars to Fermilab, no strings attached. And while it's not enough to keep everyone their job, it's a big help.

So to the anonymous donor, whoever you are: You are awesome.

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Writing time: 3 minutes
Time since last post: ten minutes or so
Current media: still nothing

Extreme Hard Drive

One of the positives of disasters is that they generally provide opportunities for awesomeness to be demonstrated in the aftermath. I'm not saying that disasters are good, just that sometimes to do your best you have to be in the worst possible situation.

Such is the case of a team of hard drive recovery experts. They were given a hard drive that was among the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia. The hard drive was used to store data from an experiment that was performed on the shuttles last mission, and was found among the debris on the ground. This is a hard drive that was on a shuttle that broke up and burnt at an altitude of 63 kilometres.

These guys were able to extract enough data off the hard drive that the scientists who had planned the experiment were able to determine the results, which have recently been published.

This is an impressive job by the data recovery guys.

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Writing time: 20 minutes
Time since last post: 2 days
Current media: None

Watch This

This is an amazingly cool video to watch. It's a simulation of all the flights over the United States covering a period of a 29 hours (Mar 19 21:58 to Mar 21 2:01 GST). It's really impressive to watch. You can actually kind of make out the shape of the country just from watching where the planes go. Hawaii is kind of obvious sticking out in the middle of nowhere, and you can tell a lot of large cities by the amount of flights going in and out. Watch it and be amazed.

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Writing time: 6 minutes
Time since last post: An hour or so
Current media: None

Pulp Shakespeare

Some guy has rewritten some scenes from Pulp Fiction in the style of Shakespeare. Read and enjoy.

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Writing time: 1 minute
Time since last post: a few hours
Current media: The Office

Awesome + Awesome = Awesome

Scrubs meets The Muppets. Enjoy.
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Writing time: 2 minutes
Time since last post: 1 day
Current media: This post

Another win for the space station guys.

Some more awesome stuff from the guys on the space station. It turns out that in their spare time they set up a rig to take detailed photos of cities on Earth. The pictures are awesome. Here's a video of the results.


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Writing time: 4 minutes
Time since last post: 1 day
Current media: Dead Like Me 1x02