Monthly Archives: September 2011
AwesomeOh When The Saint Go Marching In.
September 29, 2011 – 5:21 pm
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyLjbMBpGDA&w=700]
Richard Feynman on doubt, uncertainty and religion
September 26, 2011 – 3:05 pm
Update: Feynman on Beauty
Pleasure in Intelligent Dissent
September 26, 2011 – 1:36 pm
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent that in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
– Bertrand Russell
Print Your Own Gun At Home
September 20, 2011 – 2:14 pm
Anyone with a 3d printer, available from several different sources at prices close to or under $1,000, can now print out parts for an AR-15 assault rifle.
The AR-15 lower receiver and A 3d printable model for a 5 round magazine .
The Lower Receiver is the frame that holds together all the other pieces of the firearm. In the States, all the other pieces can be purchased without a permit – over the counter or through the post. The Lower Receiver is the only part which requires a background check or any other kind of paperwork before purchase.
Typically this part is made of aluminium. A rifle with a Lower Receiver made of plastic can be perfectly functional.
The revolution will be printed at home.
What Does It Feel Like to Fly Over Planet Earth?
September 19, 2011 – 5:36 pm
Photographs from ISS the stitched together into a fantastic short video.
This movie begins over the Pacific Ocean and continues over North and South America before entering daylight near Antarctica. Visible cities, countries and landmarks include (in order) Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, Los Angeles. Phoenix. Multiple cities in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. Mexico City, the Gulf of Mexico, the Yucatan Peninsula, Lightning in the Pacific Ocean, Guatemala, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and the Amazon. Also visible is the earths ionosphere (thin yellow line) and the stars of our galaxy.
Moore’s Law vs. Processor Power Efficiency
September 16, 2011 – 5:23 pm
As CPU clock speeds start to level off, researchers have noticed that another power law has appeared in the electronics industry: power efficiency doubles every 18 months.
If you look at any human endeavor that enjoys the benefits of the application of tremendous amounts of determined brainpower, the metrics by which that endeavor is considered a success have a tendency to obey power laws. The periodicity of each, however, varies from field to field. See Kevin Kelly excellent research on the subject of Moore’s Law and air speed records. Processor power efficiency is the key now that portability is of the utmost importance and the rate of growth of battery storage capacity, while itself is also obeys a power law, the chemical nature of the endeavor leads to a much longer doubling time. This leads to all sorts of fun facts such as:
Imagine you’ve got a shiny computer that is identical to a Macbook Air, except that it has the energy efficiency of a machine from 20 years ago. That computer would use so much power that you’d get a mere 2.5 seconds of battery life out of the Air’s 50 watt-hour battery instead of the seven hours that the Air actually gets. That is to say, you’d need 10,000 Air batteries to run our hypothetical machine for seven hours.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world
September 16, 2011 – 5:12 pm
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
– Franz Kafka
Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney
September 9, 2011 – 5:22 pm
Steve Hendrix, reporting for the Washington Post:
Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan.
Via: Daringfireball.net
Real World Side Scrolling Game
September 9, 2011 – 5:09 pm
These guys managed to build a side scrolling game in a brown box.
It’s a video game in a box!
Using a Teagueduino and a few inputs and outputs, we put together a physical side-scrolling video game. To control it, there’s a knob on the side. As time advances the game gets faster and faster — can you avoid all the obstacles and make it to the end?
Brilliant.
I can’t escape from you by Brendan Byrne
September 6, 2011 – 6:40 pm
Every time the train stopped, I thought they were going to take me off and shoot me. And we stopped often; oh shitgibbering loveless god did we stop often. For the work crews to lay down new tracks, the old ones shoddily made and never maintained. New, new, make it new; everything has to replaced, don’t you know. Otherwise, nothing works.
Painters on the Brooklyn Bridge Suspender Cables-October 7, 1914
September 2, 2011 – 3:56 pm
Home