firehose

The L.A. Times features a description of what space camp is like, not for for its traditional demographic of teens and pre-teens interested in science (and possibly thinking of careers in space), but for adults. The Huntsville program where writer Jane Engle spent three days playing astronaut gives adults a chance to experience simulated low gravity and fighter jet simulation. "We also spent hours inside mock-ups of a space shuttle cockpit, NASA mission control and the International Space Station, the settings for simulated shuttle missions that formed the core of our training. Working in teams, we took turns crewing the space shuttle orbiter, monitoring the mission, conducting research experiments and doing extravehicular activities, a.k.a. spacewalks, to make repairs." The price strikes me as surprisingly reasonable, too: about $550.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

hot in there - Dynamite Cop (Sega - Dreamcast - 1999)

requested by carsonfuckingdaly

GREEN BAY, WI—Seeking to quicken the game’s pace by not cuddling up before every snap, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers confirmed that his team plans to run a no-cuddle offense on Sunday against the Detroit Lions.

“A Star Is Burns” (season six, episode 18; originally aired 3/5/1995)

The first startling thing you notice about “A Star Is Burns” is that Matt Groening’s name has been scrubbed from the opening credits. Not even very well—when we cut to the TV bearing his name along with James L. Brooks and Sam Simon’s, there’s just a fuzzy blue gap at the bottom where Groening’s name should be. Groening was furious that this episode crossed over with The Critic, a show created by former writers Al Jean and Mike Reiss and produced by Brooks. It was beginning its second season with The Simpsons as a lead-in and Brooks had pitched a film festival episode to bring its lead character, Jay Sherman (Jon Lovitz) to Springfield.

Groening thought it was hacky and tried to get the episode pulled (a pretty much impossible demand, showing ...

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SNK orders Neo Geo X Gold manufacturer to stop producing, selling units and games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 05 Oct 2013 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ria-rha:

designislaw asked:

Have you seen Divinity: Dragon Commander? They have a lady skeleton bartender who has massive cleavage - the catch is it’s two giant pumpkins wrapped up in her robe! Pretty funny response to this mindset.

That is funny, and actually says a surprising amount about her character. It must be hard wanting to be sexy when you’re a skeleton; liches have it so much easier.

-Staci

twentypercentcooler:

Japanese Spiderman is the best Spider-Man.

VorpX makes games compatible with 3D, Oculus Rift originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 05 Oct 2013 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Techdirt has an interesting followup on the arrest and indictment of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, in connection to which the FBI seized 26,000 or so Bitcoins. From the Techdirt piece: "However, in the criminal complaint against Ulbricht, it suggested that his commissions were in the range of $80 million -- or about 600,000 Bitcoins. You might notice the disconnect between the 26,000 Bitcoins seized and the supposed 600,000 Ulbright made. It now comes out that those 26,000 Bitcoins aren't even Ulbricht's. Instead, they're actually from Silk Road's users. In other words, these were Bitcoins stored with user accounts on Silk Road. Ulbricht's actual wallet is separate from that, and was apparently encrypted, so it would appear that the FBI does not have them, nor does it have any way of getting at them just yet. And given that some courts have argued you can't be forced to give up your encryption, as it's a 5th Amendment violation, those Bitcoins could remain hidden -- though, I could see the court ordering him to pay the dollar equivalent in restitution (though still not sure that would force him to decrypt the Bitcoins)." The article also notes that the FBI's own Bitcoin wallet has been identified, leading to some snarky micropayment messages headed their direction.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

opsena:

Milunka Savić (1888 – 5 October 1973) was a Serbian war heroine who fought in the Balkan Wars and in the First World War. She is recognised as the most-decorated female combatant in the entire history of warfare. She was wounded no fewer than nine times during her term-of-service.

GIRL POWER!

This is not a fever-dream of my thirteen year-old nephew. This is Salty Bet’s Dream Cast Casino, the unholy copulation of a 4chan post and a cockfight. Salty Bet is an online fighting game where automated bots battle other bots 24/7. The audience cannot directly participate, but they can bet fake money, and jeer “POTATO” at inept bots. These seem to be people with questionable upbringings—your NeoGAF and Something Awful and Reddit hangers-on—who gather by the several-of-thousands at the nihilistic epicenter of the web, where pantsu and Thriller and an Everything is Terrible! meme of a kid churn in a queasy disarray.

MajikJon writes "The BBC junking policies of the '60s and '70s resulted in the loss of hundreds of episodes of the classic series in its earliest years. Through the work of ardent fans over the succeeding decades, dozens of these lost episodes have been painstaking recovered and added back into the BBC archives. Now, it seems, the searchers have struck the mother lode. According to the Wikipedia, there are currently 106 missing episodes of the serial. If reports are correct, we may finally get to see all the episodes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Early Twitter backers who can expect an IPO windfall include a Saudi prince, a Hollywood insider and a Murdoch lieutenant.

Photographs of Earth from the ESA Archive Title: Walt Whitman The icy waters of the Baltic Sea surrounding Germany’s largest island, Rügen, JAXA/ESA A phytoplankton bloom swirls a figure-of-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands. Different types and quantities of phytoplankton exhibit different colours, such as the blues and greens in this image, ESA The landscape of the Tanezrouft Basin, one of the most desolate parts of the Sahara desert, in south-central Algeria. The region is known as ‘land of terror’ because of its lack of water and vegetation, JAXA/ESA The southern Atacama Desert, with the border of Chile (west) and Argentina (east) running down the middle. The Atacama is believed to be the driest desert in the world, and the lack of cloud cover in this image highlights the dry climate, ESA Beijing, NASA/ESA Clearwater Lakes, located to the east of the Hudson Bay, what appears to be two separate lakes is actually a single body of water that fills two depressions. The depressions were created by two meteorite impacts, believed to have hit Earth simultaneously up to 290 million years ago, USGS/ESA The northern part of the country of Namibia. Namibia is located on the west coast of southern Africa between Angola and South Africa, ESA Lake Powell, USGS/ESA In this false-color image of the Mississippi River delta, land vegetation appears pink, while the sediment in the surrounding waters are bright blue and green, USGS/ESA The sand seas of the Namib Desert, KARI/ESA The Paraná River cuts through this image of southern Brazil, ESA The northern end of the Persian Gulf, along with the border of Iran and Iraq and the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab river, USGS/ESA Sand and dust blowing northeast from the Arabian Peninsula across the Persian Gulf toward Iran (visible at image top), ESA The foothills of the Andes mountains near the southern coast of Peru, KARI/ESA Sand and dust from the Sahara Desert blowing across the Atlantic Ocean along the coasts of Mauritania (top), Senegal (middle) and Guinea Bissau (bottom), ESA North central Siberia, ESA Three of the five Great Lakes of North America. Lakes Huron (left) and Erie (bottom) are partially ice-covered following snow storms in Michigan and Cleveland, while Lake Ontario (right) is completely visible in blue, ESA Running across the image, the Okavango River forms the border between Namibia to the south and Angola to the north, KARI/ESA Rolling hills of farmland in part of the Palouse Region in the northwest United States, KARI/ESA The Tibesti Mountains, located mostly in Chad with the northern slopes extending into Libya, ESA More photographs of Earth Atley

The Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream lock is a cute idea, but seriously… if you don’t want to share a pint of ice cream, you can eat the whole thing. It’s only 1,400 calories. For shit’s sake, this is America. If you can’t put away 1,400 calories of ice cream in one sitting, you’re not even in the 50th-percentile of ice-cream eaters in this country.

Check more spaceship animations on our friend Dan Brown's website.




















Keywords: concept spaceship starship render designs by dan brown adamant high definition hd flash turntable animation and bellicose cgi computer generated spaceship models sample images from danbrowncgi.com

oceanaroll:

vastderp:

confectionerybliss:

click here to read more 
{by Handle The Heat}

USEFUL! Now I know exactly how to get the cookie texture I prefer (use more brown sugar)

science

Courtesy of Dynamite, CBR presents an exclusive preview of "Red Sonja" #4 by Gail Simone and Walter Geovani. Has the She-Devil with a Sword fought her last fight? Find out October 9!

Polanzani, Francesco, 1700- La penna da scrivere all’ uso corrente, [1768?]

TypW 725.68.706

Houghton Library, Harvard University

We might not see the end result for another two months, but it's official: The Eleventh Doctor has left the building.

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Because nothing says fun, amusement and good times for all the family like bible studies, there was Holy Land USA, a Christian tourist attraction filled with religious exhibits in Waterbury, Connecticut between 1958 and 1984. At its height, Holy Land attracted up to 40,000 visitors a year to the park.

karenhurley:

An absolutely shocking campaign that is truly brilliant. These images are of actual human rights abuse victims taken by traveling journalists form a variety of countries that have been placed into Switzerland’s surroundings. The shock of seeing these individuals right in front of the public eye certainly shed new light on the issue and caused a global stir. 

Watch the video

Campaign: Not here, but now 
Agency: Walker, Switzerland Via

Ornamental (wood & metal) turning in late 18th century France was an art form most associated with the upper ranks of society and particularly the royal court. Publishing a how-to manual on turning under your own name in the 1790s against the backdrop of the French Revolution wouldn't have been the most sensible of life choices because the author's association with the hated aristocracy would be printed in black and white for all to see.

So the true author of The Turner's Manual - 'Manuel du Tourneur' - (the eminent lawyer, Louis Georges Isaac Salivet) decided against using his own name on the title pages of the first two volumes when they were released in 1792 and 1796, respectively (together making up the 1st edition).

Instead, Salivet employed two allonyms (like pseudonyms, but real people), Louis-Eloy Bergeron and his son-in-law, Pierre Hamelin-Bergeron, with whom Salivet was said to be at least acquainted, if not actual friends. There is no record as to whether or not the substitutes agreed to their names being used in this way. Citations online are divided between authors Salivet and Bergeron, but the latter probably dominates.

Salivet (or perhaps one of the Bergerons) was said to have owned a Paris firm "that sold rose engines, tools, lathes and materials for turning. This seminal work contains numerous engravings of various objects and patterns from which to model both turning equipment and turned objects." [source]

There appears to be only occasional commentary available online with respect to the technical qualities of the volumes. There are sparse references to its having merit in the first half of the 19th century both because it was an assiduous chronicle of continental development in the field of lathe-work and turning, and because there was no comparable literature available at the time in England (in fact, I don't think Salivet's Manual was fully translated** until just a few years ago). The 'Manuel du Tourneur' was specifically aimed at the amateur craftsman with the machines, models and techniques outlined relating to woodworking (most) and metalwork, with modest primers on glass engraving and ivory work.

A musical instrument journal article - predominantly a translation of text - about the flute and related instrument machining (illustration plate seen above) found inconsistencies in some of Salivet's descriptions and measurements. They conclude he wasn't a flautist himself, but very probably had obtained descriptions from (a) Parisian flute-maker(s), and he didn't have the background to adjust the information for context.

The revised 2nd edition of 'Manuel du Tourneur' (1816) was enlarged to include an atlas volume containing engravings by Nicolas Louis Rousseau from drawings by Gallet. The earlier edition had a smaller series of illustrations after designs by Louis-Jacques Goussier (known for his technical drawing contributions to Diderot's 'L'Encyclopédie' and illustration redesigns for 'Les Anatomies' by Vesalius). The atlas contains more than seventy regular and hand-coloured engravings in total.

**Just prior to posting this entry I found details about the 2010 translation of the Bergeron/Salivet 'Manuel du Tourneur' into English, and the following quote is found here (it's only mentioned at a couple of sites, both listed among the bullet points down below):

"The Society of Ornamental Turners has released in hardback a translation of Bergeron's 'Manual du Tourneur'. Volumes I and II are text only and contain no plates; the third volume often (called the 'Atlas') contains all the Plates referred to in Volumes I and II. Editor Jeremy Soulsby has translated the previously un-translated 239 pages as well as extensively revising the style and content of the earlier works so as to clarify obscure terminology and techniques. He has fully indexed the volume and provided a glossary and extended notes.

As described from the SOT website: 'First published during the turbulent times of the French Revolution, Bergeron's Manuel du Tourneur or The Turner's Manual has been admired for over two hundred years as a comprehensive record of all the tools, machinery and techniques required by an eighteenth century amateur wishing to establish a fully equipped workshop for the hobby of turning. This, the second volume of text which uses the 1816 revised and expanded second edition by P. Hamelin-Bergeron, is available for the first time in an English translation. It deals with the more elaborate elements of the subject and gives instruction in the use of the complex lathes of the period which were used to make many of the artefacts now to be seen in museums'."

• 'Manuel du Tourneur' is available online in full through the Swiss National Collaborative Libraries host portal, e-rara. [note the links lower left to each of the three volumes; thumbnail page views are available]
• Woodworker's Manuals 1900 and Before.
• Books on Ornamental Turning from *Ornamental Turning - The online resource for "OT" enthusiasts*.
• Bergeron at Circuitousroot (commentary on the article below & web edition listings).
• Bergeron book translation listing at The Society of Ornamental Turners - contains more information and sample pages {SOT homepage}.
• 'Bergeron on Flute-Making' by Michael Wright IN: The Galpin Society Journal (Vol 29. May 1976. pp. 26-34).
• Amazon listings for Salivet publications.
• Previously: The Wood Book and, more generally: Machines.
• Thanks John!
• This post first appeared on the BibliOdyssey website.

David Bowie’s Fa Fa Favorite Halloween Costumes by Brian Brooks


David Bowie’s Fa Fa Favorite Halloween Costumes by Brian Brooks


David Bowie’s Fa Fa Favorite Halloween Costumes by Brian Brooks


David Bowie’s Fa Fa Favorite Halloween Costumes by Brian Brooks

David Bowie’s Fa Fa Favorite Halloween Costumes, Brian Brooks

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) could end up owning up to 5% of all bitcoins in circulation following its crackdown on the illegal drug market Silk Road. Update: This speculative number is based on an assertion of an FBI spokesperson, who guessed that the Silk Road founder’s personal bitcoin wallet could contain up to $80 million in bitcoins. That would require that founder Ross Ulbricht had kept essentially all of the revenue he earned from Silk Road in bitcoin, which is highly unlikely.

The FBI’s plan for the stash? ”We will probably just liquidate them,” an FBI spokesperson told Kashmir Hill of Forbes.

That means markets that trade the alternative currency should brace for a fire sale.

Most of the bitcoins seized by the FBI are encrypted, so the agency won’t know exactly how many they have until whoever is responsible for cracking encryption on seized assets has had a go at them. (Perhaps they’ll enlist the NSA?)

Hill estimates the FBI could ultimately have seized 600,000 bitcoins.

The headquarters for Futurama's delivery service has been hiding in Liège, Belgium.

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The Pentagon on Saturday said it would call most of its 350,000 furloughed civilian workers back to their jobs, concluding that a recent law allows officials to consider them critical to protecting national security.