Philip.paulssonFor Kevin
You need this.
Facebook: National-Fox-Welfare-Society
Philip.paulssonAs long as I can transfer my consciousness into a machine body before the AIs take over the galaxy, I'm good.
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have brought up the potential dangers of super intelligent AI several times over the past few years (Musk even donated $10 million toward cautious AI research), but now Bill Gates is also getting into the mix. In his Red...
Philip.paulsson"License and Registration please."
"I'm sorry officer, my battery died!"
For all the recent talk of moving to digital wallets, you can't really ditch the old-school kind yet -- you still need to carry physical copies of your driver's license and other forms of ID. If you live in Delaware, though, you may eventually have o...
Philip.paulssonChucklefuck. I like it.
Today, I was ringing up a woman at work. I saw she'd bought a birthday cake, so I smiled and said I hope whoever it was for has a happy birthday. She looked at me in disgust, told me to mind my own business, then called me a "chucklefuck bitch". Okay then. FML
Philip.paulssonI'm curious whether this works or not. Who wants to try it??
This is a great way to prank your friends IF YOU’RE SATAN.
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
Philip.paulssonWoah.
Knope, knope, knope.
Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty Images
Imeh Akpanudosen / Getty Images
Amanda Edwards / Getty Images for Sundance
NBC / Via giphy.com
Philip.paulssonNice. Also, who let those original ads run in the first place?!
Marvel’s first Muslim superhero puts out a call for “all bigotry busters.”
Philip.paulssonBoobies!
Yes, really. Mums planning to attend a breastfeeding event in Edinburgh next month were initially told that the venue “couldn’t accommodate breastfeeding”.
Getty
Delegates were also told in a statement posted on the event website:
This event is mainly aimed at professionals and service providers, working with women both pre and post birth to support them to breastfeed for as long as possible. The views of women who have recently been supported by these services is key to informing our wider thinking in this area.
However, this conference has not been designated to accomodate mothers who are still breastfeeding and wish to bring their babies or infants to the event. We will look at other opportunities to engage with mothers, in a more appropriate setting, in the future, but we would ask that for this conference, babies and infants are not brought along.
Dr Lesley Taylor, who runs the Normalising Public Breastfeeding in Scotland Facebook group, said to the Record:
A few [delegates] asked if they could bring a nursing child or requested an aisle seat in case they needed a quick getaway with their baby.
But they were told the summit could not 'accommodate' breastfeeding. The advert for the event said the government is trying to break down the barriers to breastfeeding.
A Scottish government spokesman told MailOnline:
A statement was put on the event website advising attendees that the conference was mainly aimed at professionals and service providers, and that facilities for mothers were limited.
However, the number of mothers with babies planning to attend the event was underestimated. Consequently we have already arranged for an extension to the baby changing facilities, and a quiet area for mothers and babies to ensure that all who wish to attend can.
Philip.paulssonLOL
Philip.paulssonEnded up in the mood for a dumb movie and watched this last night, despite the warnings. It was ok. I probably would've been disappointed if I hadn't been warned though.
As promised, the movie Kim Jong Un preferred you didn't see is now available if you have a Netflix subscription (and an account in US or Canada). Whether or not watching The Interview is a good idea is still a matter of taste/importance, but at this ...
Philip.paulssonNice. Though I've heard mixed reviews.
In the midst of Netflix's Q4 financial report (if you're wondering - it added the expected amount of subscribers this time, unlike Q3) it revealed a few things viewers will actually be interested in. First of all, it's going to have The Interview ava...
Philip.paulssonOMG Totally worth the click through. The US one is pretty crazy, too.
Welcome to the best, and simultaneously worst, part of the pageant.
(Miss India at her fitting.)
Reuters
J Pat Carter / AP
J Pat Carter / AP
J Pat Carter / AP
Philip.paulssonhahah whoops!
Rut roh.
Note: Images were taken before the alleged damage.
During routine maintenance to the Egyptian Museum exhibit, someone allegedly broke off the braided beard by accident and gave the pharaoh an instant shave. The mask is over 3,300 years old.
Though reports vary, conservators also claim that after using epoxy to glue it back on, it was scraped off with a spatula, leaving scratches, according to the AP. "The problem was that they tried to fix it in half an hour and it should have taken them days," an unnamed official told The Guardian, requesting anonymity to protect his job.
Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images
The head of the department, Elham Abdelrahman, told The Guardian that the issue existed before the director, Mahmoud el-Halwagy, even began working there: Conservators were apparently worried that King Tut's beard was a bit too loose and applied an approved glue — and that adhesive is just too visible.
She also said that if that had happened, it would have been taken very seriously and reported. Currently an expert committee is reviewing the claims and will report its findings at an undetermined date.
King Tut's resting place was discovered in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt's most famous collection of fancy tombs. Tutankhamun is believed to have died at 19, most likely due to his genetic impairments, not a chariot accident as previously theorized, a 2010 study shows.
Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images
Potato Jesus, forever in our hearts.
Via reddit.com
Philip.paulssonWeird, I hadn't heard of this before just now, yet I used the term "grey goo" earlier today.
To remembers how big RTS games were, you need to have been playing games since before Blizzard added “World of” to its Warcraft franchise. That moment was the beginning of the RTS decline; even Starcraft 2, one of Blizzard's RTS pillars, has seen its popularity plunge in favor of MOBAs' free-to-play pastures.
But the RTS genre is now getting some new attention in the form of Grey Goo. This indie outing comes courtesy of Petroglyph Studios, a developer made up from remnants of the old RTS masters at Westwood Studios (Command and Conquer, Dune II). While Petroglyph has been around for more than a decade, its last notable creation was Universe at War: Earth Assault, a 2007 release that was a flagship of Games for Windows Live (remember that?). Can Grey Goo revitalize a genre?
Grey Goo is a throwback to the simplistic storylines of the RTS games of old. You have your three warring factions, a sci-fi super-substance that fuels everyone's economies, and the promise of a greater, fourth threat that just might bring them all together in the end. "Grey goo" might as well describe the game's premise, given that it's an indistinguishable glob of science fiction game tropes catalyzed by some surprisingly plentiful (and gorgeous) cutscenes.
Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Philip.paulssonNice.
Interior View
Some prefer
windows, and these are the best available on board the
International Space Station.
Taken on January 4,
this snapshot
from inside the
station's large, seven-window Cupola module also shows off a
workstation for
controlling Canadarm2.
Used to grapple visiting cargo vehicles and assist
astronauts during spacewalks, the robotic arm is
just outside the window at the right.
The Cupola
itself is attached to the
Earth-facing or nadir port of the station's Tranquility
module, offering
dynamic panoramas of our fair planet.
Seen from the station's 90 minute long, 400 kilometer high orbit,
Earth's bright limb is in view above center.
Tomorrow's picture: light-weekend
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman
Specific rights apply.
NASA Web
Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of:
ASD at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Philip.paulssonHeh
If you made an elevator that would go to space (like the one you mentioned in the billion-story building) and built a staircase up (assuming regulated air pressure) about how long would it take to climb to the top?
—Ethan Annas
A week or two, if you're a champion stair-climber. Or 12 hours if you're on a motorcycle.
A tower to space would be very different from a space elevator. A space elevator would be about 100,000 kilometers tall, while a tower "to space" would only need to be 100 kilometers. As Ethan mentions, it would need to be pressurized, with an airlock every few miles.
A stairway to space[1]If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, well, uh, boy, I don't know what to tell you. I guess ask it to leave? would have about half a million steps. World-champion stair-climbers[2]or "towerrunners" like Christian Riedl or Kristin Frey can travel roughly a Mount Everest's height in a day; Riedl set the half-day record last October by climbing 13,145.65 meters in 12 hours. At that pace—taking the other twelve hours to rest, eat, and sleep each day—it would take him a little over a week to reach the top.
Climbing all those stairs would burn calories, which would mean you'd need to carry food. It turns out that the most efficient food you can carry, in terms of calories per pound, is butter—which is why Arctic explorers carry so much of it.
Suppose your backpack holds 9 liters. Climbing 10 stairs burns about a calorie, which means climbing all the way up to space will burn about 72,000 calories. If you fill your backpack with butter, it would hold almost enough calories to get you to the top.
However, since it would take you weeks to climb all those stairs, you'd also need your normal dietary allowance of 2,000 calories (three sticks of butter) per day. Combining that with the 72,000 calories just from climbing the stairs, and you'd probably need to upgrade to a more serious 16-liter backpack. If you fill that backpack with butter, it will let you carry around 110,000 calories,[3]Coincidentally, about the amount you get from eating a human body. which should be enough to get you to the top if you're really dedicated.
If you didn't want to eat 35 pounds of butter,[4]For whatever weird reason. you could try getting to the top by motorcycle. Based on how quickly this rider ascends 45 stairs, a motorcycle could conceivably make it to the top in a day.
Ok, so you got to the top. Now what? Getting up to space isn't that hard, after all—the hard part is getting into orbit, and the tower doesn't help you very much with that.
So what else could you do?
Michael Longuet-Higgins was a research professor at the University of Cambridge and an expert in fluid dynamics, bubbles, and unusual types of waves.[5]Given his apparent research interests, this video would blow his mind.[6]Or this one, or this gadget, or this. In 1953, Dr. Longuet-Higgins was shown, by a colleague, an "interesting toy" which had recently appeared on the market. This toy, "Slinky," had some unusual properties. The professor immediately set to work analyzing it, and wrote up his results in a paper.
Dr. Longuet-Higgins first determined through mathematical modeling that the rate at which the Slinky descends steps should depend only on the properties of the spring itself, and not the size or shape of the stairs. He and his colleague conducted a series of experiments "on five different flights of stairs, of various dimensions, in Trinity College, Cambridge." Their conclusion: The Slinky descended a constant rate of about 0.8 seconds per step.[7]Except on some wide, flat stairs, where the Slinky "came to rest after three or four steps at most," which gives me a wonderful mental image of two disappointed British professors at the bottom of a staircase.[8]Sadly, this was before the invention of the StairMaster. Fun fact: After a surprise StairMaster management shakeup in 2011, for some reason not a single newspaper ran the headline "StairMaster CEO steps down".
Dr. Longuet-Higgins determined that the Slinky quickly reached a constant descent rate after first few steps. This tells us that if you placed a Slinky (similar to his) at top of the stairway to space, and gave it just the right nudge ...
... it would make it back to the bottom in just over five days.
Or, to put that in more appetizing units:
Philip.paulssonGreat! Until they stop self-destructing and consume the whole planet. Grey goo here we come!
We've seen nanobots do some neat stuff so far (aquatic dance routines immediately come to mind), but them administering drugs inside a living organism's been the stuff of scientists' dreams. Researchers at the University of California San Diego, howe...
Philip.paulssonOculus Rift killer?
For the second time in as many months, I feel like I've taken a step into the world of science fiction—and for the second time in as many months, it's Microsoft who put me there.
After locking away all my recording instruments and switching to the almost prehistoric pen and paper, I had a tantalizingly brief experience of Microsoft's HoloLens system, a headset that creates a fusion of virtual images and the real world. While production HoloLens systems will be self-contained and cord-free, the developer units we used had a large compute unit worn on a neck strap and an umbilical cord for power. Production hardware will automatically measure the interpupillary distance and calibrate itself accordingly; the dev kits need this to be measured manually and punched in. The dev kits were also heavy, unwieldy, fragile, and didn't really fit on or around my glasses, making them uncomfortable to boot.
But even with this clumsy hardware, the experience was nothing short of magical.
Read 20 remaining paragraphs | Comments
Philip.paulssonLOL!
When Jaq and Gus Gus from Cinderella get dirrrrty.
Walt Disney Pictures / Via random-ness.wikia.com
Walt Disney Pictures / Via rebloggy.com
Disney
Necklace beads? Look again.
Walt Disney Pictures / Via youtube.com
Philip.paulssonMight be a reason for me to grab an XBone at some point...especially if Sony keeps dragging its feet in the media part of the PS4.
In what could go down as one of the most important Microsoft events of recent years, the tech giant invited people to its Redmond, Washington, headquarters to break down the next version of Windows. As part of this, Microsoft just revealed that Windo...
Philip.paulssonLOL
Philip.paulssonLove me some slow-mo.
Philip.paulssonHaha Mario Party was a great pre-drinking game.
| archive - contact - sexy exciting merchandise - search - about | |||
 |
|||
| ← previous | January 22nd, 2015 | next | |
|
January 22nd, 2015: If you are named Mario Partee BOY do I have an installment of Dinosaur Comics for you!! – Ryan | |||
Philip.paulssonWhich is awesome, until one crashes into a competitor or something.
Last September, the Federal Aviation Administration began working with movie and TV groups to grant them approval for operating drones in national airspace. Most recently, cable news channel CNN got the green light from the FAA to use these UAVs for ...
Philip.paulssonHahah
A quadcopter has recently crashed into a Mexican supermarket parking lot located somewhere near the country's California border, and one of the possible reasons is that its payload was just too heavy for it. No, it wasn't carrying cameras or even fer...
Philip.paulsson3-second rule? It's the 5-second rule!
Philip.paulssonLOL #5!
Because… balls.
