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FreeWill Plays With Kryptonite
Aug. 1st, 2017 05:49 pmSagittarius Horoscope for week of August 3, 2017
Your eyes are more powerful than you realize. If you were standing on a mountaintop under a cloudless night sky with no moon, you could see a fire burning 50 miles away. Your imagination is also capable of feats that might surprise you. It can, for example, provide you with an expansive and objective view of your entire life history. I advise you to seek that boost now. Ask your imagination to give you a prolonged look at the big picture of where you have been and where you are going. I think it's essential to your discovery of the key to the next chapter of your life story.
Many is the time when I drive to Sevier County, I curse myself for not bringing my binoculars.
Purr-tificial Gravity
Jul. 30th, 2015 12:35 pmOriginally posted by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
dieselsweet at Purr-tificial Gravity
dieselsweet at Purr-tificial Gravity
Let’s mix it up with some of my theoretical physics research tonight.
FreeWill Looks Quizzical
Jul. 2nd, 2015 12:48 amSagittarius Horoscope for week of July 2, 2015
There are lots of inquiries and invitations coming your way -- perhaps too many. I don't think you should pursue all of them. In fact, I suspect that only one would ultimately make you a better human being and a braver explorer and a wiser lover. And that one, at first glance, may have not as much initial appeal as some of the others. So your first task is to dig deep to identify the propositions that are attractive on the surface but not very substantial. Then you're more likely to recognize the offer that will have lasting value even if it doesn't make a spectacular first impression.
You WOULD have to say that to a research addict, would you?
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The Ultimate F
Aug. 24th, 2013 10:49 pmSpace. The Final Everything.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
This month NASA announced their latest Astronaut candidates (they won't earn their wings till they go to space)...and gave some insight into the qualifications for the position.
Applicants must have a Bachelor's Degree or better in a "hard science", plus three years of experience in their field. (Of course, I don't meet either because I only made it to Associate's...and have zero experience in my own field!)
But let's go to an alternative continuity to another version of Stephen Bierce. His parents were more successful and more affluent (Jane made the Times Best Seller List, for a possibility) so he got to finish secondary education with a Bachelor's in Astrophysics, then went into the military (probably Air Force, tho' perhaps his mother's cousin the commander of a Top Gun Tomcat squadron could have lobbied him for Navy) for two tours. Maybe he'd have seen action in the former Yugoslavia or the Shock-And-Awe phases of Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Then, he'd apply for NASA...
...And even now, still be waiting, as it nominally takes TEN YEARS for an application to go through all the checks and cross checks. And furthermore, the odds of success are a measly 0.2%. One in 500.
Some "Space Age" this is.
...'Cause I'm already standing on the ground...
Sagittarius Horoscope for week of March 7, 2013
Ready for a reality check? It's time to assess how well you know the fundamental facts about where you are located. So let me ask you: Do you know which direction north is? Where does the water you drink come from? What phase of the moon is it today? What was the indigenous culture that once lived where you live now? Where is the power plant that generates the electricity you use? Can you name any constellations that are currently in the night sky? What species of trees do you see every day? Use these questions as a starting point as you deepen your connection with your specific neighborhood on planet Earth. Get yourself grounded!
The bathroom is between me and North. Rather Manor has "city water", the source is off the Holston River near New Market. Moon phase is just past Last Quarter. The Cherokee people lived here, although the Shawnees lived just to the north of here. This area is between two hydroelectric dams, the Douglas on the French Broad River south of here and the Cherokee on the Holston to the north. The night sky is clouded over due to the storm. There is a maple tree outside my window, along with a hackberry, a sycamore and several chestnuts stand in the back yard.
Sagittarius Horoscope for week of March 7, 2013
Ready for a reality check? It's time to assess how well you know the fundamental facts about where you are located. So let me ask you: Do you know which direction north is? Where does the water you drink come from? What phase of the moon is it today? What was the indigenous culture that once lived where you live now? Where is the power plant that generates the electricity you use? Can you name any constellations that are currently in the night sky? What species of trees do you see every day? Use these questions as a starting point as you deepen your connection with your specific neighborhood on planet Earth. Get yourself grounded!
The bathroom is between me and North. Rather Manor has "city water", the source is off the Holston River near New Market. Moon phase is just past Last Quarter. The Cherokee people lived here, although the Shawnees lived just to the north of here. This area is between two hydroelectric dams, the Douglas on the French Broad River south of here and the Cherokee on the Holston to the north. The night sky is clouded over due to the storm. There is a maple tree outside my window, along with a hackberry, a sycamore and several chestnuts stand in the back yard.
SPACE: 1969
Jun. 2nd, 2012 09:29 pm
The Orion ship design, as rendered for the companion book to Carl Sagan's Cosmos TV series. If I built it as a 1/72nd scale model, the result would be over six feet long.
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I went to the library's annual book sale and got a hardback copy of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which I'll probably spend the summer reading and re-reading.
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
What piqued my immediate interest are diagrams of the three main hypothetical starship designs of the Sixties and Seventies: Orion, Daedalus, and the Bussard Ramscoop. I'd first learned about Orion from The Future of Flight by Dean Ing and Leik Myrabo, a book I got when I was a Freshman in college--some twenty-five years after the program's cancellation following the imposition of the Nuclear Weapons Test Ban Treaty. The Orion program centered around a rocket whose thrust was generated by atomic bomb blasts. The U.S. Air Force had already succeeded in tests with a scale model powered by conventional explosives and had started spadework on a full-size vehicle when they were ordered to drop it and move on to other things.
The full-sized ship would have been over 100 meters long, probably weighed in the neighborhood of 100 thousand tons, and have a likely crew of 35 people. And, if the program had contined, manned missions to the planets and possibly even beyond the Solar system would have begun by 1970.
Now I'm thinking about building a model of the ship and plotting out a low-budget movie asking the question: "What if an Orion had been built and secretly launched out of the Solar system then? Where could the ship be now?"
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Writer's Block: Muwahahaha!
May. 16th, 2012 04:36 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Dr. Scribbles is working on a device to move the planets of the Solar system to new orbits. To prove it, he'll set Mercury so its new orbit perpetually eclipses the Institute and puts all those fools "where the sun don't shine".
Dr. Scribbles is working on a device to move the planets of the Solar system to new orbits. To prove it, he'll set Mercury so its new orbit perpetually eclipses the Institute and puts all those fools "where the sun don't shine".
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Machines And Minds
May. 5th, 2012 01:13 amRadiolab did a very good program on Artificial Intelligence; I heard it overday.
As I'm sure I said before, there is little in the way of problems that an AI could solve better than a human being as yet. Tho' I was thinking of one possibility.
Suppose a Cleverbot-variety AI were to go through your existing canon of social media output. Every face, space, tweet and blog. Every text, pic and vid. And then it would find "keys" in that content and ask you about them. Perhaps get to to think about why you say what you say. Maybe find your psychological or social "blind spots" and help you work through them.
As I'm sure I said before, there is little in the way of problems that an AI could solve better than a human being as yet. Tho' I was thinking of one possibility.
Suppose a Cleverbot-variety AI were to go through your existing canon of social media output. Every face, space, tweet and blog. Every text, pic and vid. And then it would find "keys" in that content and ask you about them. Perhaps get to to think about why you say what you say. Maybe find your psychological or social "blind spots" and help you work through them.
Writer's Block: I'm Doing Science!
Apr. 7th, 2012 04:00 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
Liquid fueled rocketry. The only way off this hunka junk.
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Writer's Block: Out of this world
Dec. 7th, 2011 12:46 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
Depends on where it is. I halfway expect the first liveable planet discovered outside the Solar System to be dubbed Vulcan.
I play around with the concept frequently, as a budding science-fiction writer and space wargamer. The reality is that whoever is going to colonize a world is going to be the ones who name it.
You Are HERE
Oct. 1st, 2011 01:21 am
*Arrow pointing to the southeast side of the Milky Way Galaxy*
And this is just the Local Group. The graphic shown here is just the first step of a much larger and grander mapping of the Known Cosmos. It wouldn't surprise me if there existed an Earthlike planet for everybody now living on Earth, if not in the Milky Way then in the Local Group, because we are talking about billions and trillions of star systems.
Writer's Block: Blast to the past
Sep. 7th, 2011 02:17 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
"Take Algebra--now. You'll like it more than Practical Math, and you'll be able to get in the cool Science courses."
"Take Algebra--now. You'll like it more than Practical Math, and you'll be able to get in the cool Science courses."
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I Speak Too Soon
Aug. 23rd, 2011 03:43 pmYesterday on Facebook, the FB presense for HobbyTown USA asked, "What hobbies haven't been invented yet?" to which I replied "Fashion Fabbing."
Turns out I wasn't that far from the mark. Today I got the latest issue of Laser Focus World and its cover story is about printable 3D metamaterial. Just as stereolithography can make solid objects, it could also make fabrics. Already they are talking about fabrics that light up, change colors, even display video (imagine a movie theater without the need for physical projectors!--or laptops without the mass of a video unit!).
In theory, you could have your measurements on file, get a design file, and have a suit constructed by a fabbing machine with absolutely no tailoring and it would fit you perfectly, as well as have features that you can't get from a store-bought suit. How about a t-shirt that cycles through a variety of graphic "screens"? A travel jacket with a built in GPS so all you have to do to get directions is look at a sleeve? A space suit or wet suit that is seamless and completely impermeable?
We ARE living the future.
FP
Turns out I wasn't that far from the mark. Today I got the latest issue of Laser Focus World and its cover story is about printable 3D metamaterial. Just as stereolithography can make solid objects, it could also make fabrics. Already they are talking about fabrics that light up, change colors, even display video (imagine a movie theater without the need for physical projectors!--or laptops without the mass of a video unit!).
In theory, you could have your measurements on file, get a design file, and have a suit constructed by a fabbing machine with absolutely no tailoring and it would fit you perfectly, as well as have features that you can't get from a store-bought suit. How about a t-shirt that cycles through a variety of graphic "screens"? A travel jacket with a built in GPS so all you have to do to get directions is look at a sleeve? A space suit or wet suit that is seamless and completely impermeable?
We ARE living the future.
FP
Tuesday's Blog...TODAY!
Jul. 29th, 2011 12:52 pm(Monday) I was walking a shopping mall in Knoxville with Mum when we came to the area where a certain internationally-known retailer of women's undergarments and related apparel was located. As we approached another woman, wearing a t-shirt with the name of one of their set of shops walked going the other direction and I had a science-fiction moment.
Remember the scene in MINORITY REPORT when Tom Cruise's character is in the clothier and the store knows him on sight? Well, I had a more insidious concept then and there. What if subliminal devices outside a store were rigged so if you looked at somebody you saw them wearing an advertisement for that store? Of course, the other person might not be aware of being in the advertising business. With THAT thought I checked and made sure I was still wearing a USF shirt!
The night after, I had a may-or-may-not-be-related dream that in my mail, I got a little pamphlet that an Artificial Intelligence had generated. What it had done was trace my entire existance that it could find in public records and over the Internet, and with that data had made a syllogistic examination of who I was. There was a lot on information that was new to me and it all made sense.
I have this weird feeling that some companies already have this capability to so microscopify a person's reality with such accuracy, but are keeping the technology a secret. Governments would not have it, or else they'd be rounding up all the world's terrorists and criminals with it at the forefront of their efforts.
Remember the scene in MINORITY REPORT when Tom Cruise's character is in the clothier and the store knows him on sight? Well, I had a more insidious concept then and there. What if subliminal devices outside a store were rigged so if you looked at somebody you saw them wearing an advertisement for that store? Of course, the other person might not be aware of being in the advertising business. With THAT thought I checked and made sure I was still wearing a USF shirt!
The night after, I had a may-or-may-not-be-related dream that in my mail, I got a little pamphlet that an Artificial Intelligence had generated. What it had done was trace my entire existance that it could find in public records and over the Internet, and with that data had made a syllogistic examination of who I was. There was a lot on information that was new to me and it all made sense.
I have this weird feeling that some companies already have this capability to so microscopify a person's reality with such accuracy, but are keeping the technology a secret. Governments would not have it, or else they'd be rounding up all the world's terrorists and criminals with it at the forefront of their efforts.
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Writer's Block: See you on the dark side
May. 2nd, 2011 12:07 pm[Error: unknown template qotd]
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
You bet your sweet @$$ I'd go! Space Cadet for life am I.
I got my catalog from TEKO today (http://www.teko.it or http://tekoenclosures.com). They manufacture what are called enclosures for the electronics industries. Other people make gadgets; it's TEKO's job to wrap it up in a practical case that people can use. A lot of TEKO's cases are used in medical machinery, security alarm hardware, remote controls, scientific equipment, home/building thermostats, e-book reader units, smartphones and so on.
So why am I excited? My long-term flight sim dashboard project. I'm already seeing possibilities in console design and display integration.
So why am I excited? My long-term flight sim dashboard project. I'm already seeing possibilities in console design and display integration.
Let's put a story through its paces and see how it's put together.
TITLE Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff
STORY PREMISE: The birth of America's space program, told from the perspective of test pilot Chuck Yeager and the seven Mercury Astronauts.
SETUP: The X-1 rocket plane is brought to Edwards Air Force Base, and Chuck Yeager volunteers to make the first attempt at supersonic flight.
PLOT POINT I: Yeager's success and the Space Race with the Soviets leads to the official demand that military test pilots be recruited and trained for space duty. The candidates endure an arduous selection program.
PINCH I: The Mercury Astronauts move to Cape Canaveral to await their missions.
MIDPOINT: Alan Shepard is the First American in Space--after a horrible delay.
PINCH II: Gus Grissom's launch nearly results in disaster.
PLOT POINT II: John Glenn's flight is a great success in spite of a glitch that could have ruined everything.
RESOLUTION: Gordo Cooper's flight completes the program on a high note, and sets the stage for further adventures in spaceflight.
TITLE Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff
STORY PREMISE: The birth of America's space program, told from the perspective of test pilot Chuck Yeager and the seven Mercury Astronauts.
SETUP: The X-1 rocket plane is brought to Edwards Air Force Base, and Chuck Yeager volunteers to make the first attempt at supersonic flight.
PLOT POINT I: Yeager's success and the Space Race with the Soviets leads to the official demand that military test pilots be recruited and trained for space duty. The candidates endure an arduous selection program.
PINCH I: The Mercury Astronauts move to Cape Canaveral to await their missions.
MIDPOINT: Alan Shepard is the First American in Space--after a horrible delay.
PINCH II: Gus Grissom's launch nearly results in disaster.
PLOT POINT II: John Glenn's flight is a great success in spite of a glitch that could have ruined everything.
RESOLUTION: Gordo Cooper's flight completes the program on a high note, and sets the stage for further adventures in spaceflight.
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