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it's hard to believe no one has recommended Gravitation yet. This comprehensive, well-written, and authoritative book on general relativity is tailor-made for the mathematically sophisticated. One of its strong points is it does everything twice using both coordinate-free and coordinate-based differential geometry to help solidify your understanding and so you can do both theory (coord-free) and calculations (coords).

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

I think the important thing to realize in your situation is that whatever you _need_ to know to do your masters your classes and your professor will point you to the right books. As such, what you really need to do is go back and fill all the wholes that were left from a non-physics undergraduate degree. Most of these textbooks that I will list are the standard for MIT, and Harvard and the like. So let's begin.
Classical Mechanics:
Kleppner and Kolenkow
If you have time: Goldstein

Electricity and Magnetism:
This one is a little tricky, I'll give you the 1st undergrad, the Junior level undergrad and then the two Grad texts. You can probably just read the Junior level text.
Purcell
Griffiths
Jackson and Schwinger

Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics:
There are really no agreed upon texts here (sorry), I used Baierlein at MIT but that seems to switch every year.
Same goes for graduate texts, BUT the MIT profesor who has been teaching grad stat mech just put out his own books which I hear are quite good. We'll call them Kardar 1 and Karadar 2

Quantum Physics:
What you really need is an introduction to two fundamental ideas, the wave-function formalism and the linear-algebra formalism.
Wave-function: French and Taylor
Linear Algebra: Griffiths - Best Book in this list in my opinion.

Special Relativity and General Relativity:
Special: French
General: Carroll

That should fill in everything that you missed. What we are skipping is every other specialty in physics, but, it seems like you've already chosen one, so no big loss.

Mathmatical Methods for Physicists by Arfken. If it's not in here, you won't be using it in a physics class till you get into some really hard core theory.

The Amazon links to a newer version than I have, but presumably it's the same beast.

For a solid mathematical background (and a price that won't force your bank account to violate the second law of thermodynamics), try Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker. Excellent mathematical descriptions, but short on the kind of insight you can find in Feynman's work. A used, earlier edition costs very little and would be good reference for a person with a degree in mathematics.

One of the best, and most consistently relied upon, physics texts is Fundamentals of Physics, by Halliday and Resnick. The link leads to the 2007 edition - prior editions are still available for lower cost.

I used this book in high school, and then had the opportunity to use it again during several courses in college. The text is now in its 8th edition, and has been regularly updated and improved. Depending on where most of your colleagues went to school, its likely some or many have been exposed to H&R.

H&R does not spoon-feed; some of the exercises are difficult. Working through the text is assuredly not going to be a random walk in the park.

A number of the other comment threads discuss Feynman's lectures, which are also excellent.

Learning about the basic theories on how galaxies form is going to be underlying a lot of your work if you would like to more than dabble in cosmology. I found this book rather useful.

Some books on how to get women? I think you'll need to get up to speed. Once you start down the path to astrophysics you'll be swarming in the ladies, and you need to know how to deal with them.

One in fact wonders how large a percentage of buyers of Neil Strauss' The Game were math or physics majors. Male academics working in other fields are usually so surrounded by women, due to the high proportion of female to males in universities nowadays, that there's not much challenge.

Newtonian Mechanics

Vibrations and Waves

Special Relativity

Newtonian Mechanics

Vibrations and Waves

Special Relativity

Newtonian Mechanics

Vibrations and Waves

Special Relativity

Fundamentals of Physics (Extended) by Halliday, Resnick, and Walker

In that case, I recommend:

Get a Financial Life
Dating For Dummies
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

In that case, I recommend:

Get a Financial Life
Dating For Dummies
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

In that case, I recommend:

Get a Financial Life
Dating For Dummies
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

In that case, I recommend:

Get a Financial Life
Dating For Dummies
Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Physics for Dummies might help u.

What books would you recommend that would help a mathematics graduate convert to a physicist?

The Tao of Physics
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
To get you thinking the right way, then, for a new classic, try:

The Road to Reality
For some seriously heavy slogging.

What books would you recommend that would help a mathematics graduate convert to a physicist?

The Tao of Physics
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
To get you thinking the right way, then, for a new classic, try:

The Road to Reality
For some seriously heavy slogging.

What books would you recommend that would help a mathematics graduate convert to a physicist?

The Tao of Physics
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
To get you thinking the right way, then, for a new classic, try:

The Road to Reality
For some seriously heavy slogging.

However, if you are up for it, please enlighten us.

Sure.
You can pass that to Obama once you are done with it.

Get some better hardware for that firmware.

That just means you didn't use the gold-plated Monster cables. Silly audiophile. Copper is for kids! You probably also don't have a proper Ethernet patchcord for your PC. here, let me help you out. Kids these days. I swear...

"Even though they say that EA is NOT behind this deal, I have to believe it is. This sounds too much like something EA would pressure them into doing. They were fine pressing back release dates BEFORE EA came on scene."

The way MMORPG development goes, I do think it's more likely that it's Mythic that's run out of cash, and this is the point where the suits rip their hair hair out and demand income asap. Probably EA has done nothing except given them their last agreed-upon advance check.

It's really way more likely that it's Mythic running out of money than EA. Classic tragedy of computer game companies -- they know how to make stand-alone games, step up to an MMORPG and think they're all set skill-wise, and then get shocked by the time and money it takes, and freak out.

This cycle's all laid out in the book "Developing Online Games" by Mulligan & Petrovsky.
http://www.amazon.com/Developing-Online-Games-Insiders-Nrg-Programming/dp/1592730000

less heat -> less thermal expansion = less power)

The power may be less but the engine may be more efficient. It works in EGR. (I don't really care for the article) The amount of fuel consumed goes down more proportionally than the amount of power produced (aka bsfc goes down). (citing Heywood chapter 15)

The official teaching of the Catholic Church is summarized in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The teaching of the Catholic Church is suprisingly self-consistent.

I would even say it is more consistent than the world view held by your average Joe -- such as yourself.

The Shuttle was a lie from the get-go, though I don't think the original intent was malicious. I suspect they were "overly optimistic."

The Shuttle is what happens when you have multiple governmental bureaucracies funding a single project, yet each bureaucracy has a wildly different idea of what they want to fund. NASA wanted a space truck, but the Air Force wanted something that could snatch Soviet satellites and perform other military duties. The problem is, the military duties required the shuttle to go to significantly different orbits than typical commercial payloads. Hence, the Shuttle was redesigned with a different wing along with a host of other changes that made it heavier, more expensive, and less flexible.

The changes in program costs snowballed from there, affecting a myriad of other decisions. Solid or liquid boosters? Solids were deemed to have lower up-front costs but higher long-term costs compared to liquid boosters, so solids were chosen. And since solids can't be throttled or even turned off once lit, that led to the decision to abandon any sort of crew escape system. The result was America's first man-rated spacecraft without any type of abort mode during the first -- and most dangerous -- minutes of launch.

The lack of abort modes led to another problem: if the astronauts can't escape, then the system has to work perfectly every time, on time, without degradation. This causes NASA no end of headaches in the form of launch delays, because every quadruple-backup system has to be quadruple-checked and quadruply readied or the flight is scrubbed. This drives up per-flight costs dramatically.

I could go on, but I'd instead direct you to a great book that reveals a lot of the compromises and problems that came out of the Shuttle design period. It's called The Challenger Launch Decision , and it details the decisions -- some of them all the way back to the Shuttle conceptual stages -- that set the stage for Challenger. Another good one is Comm Check which details what happened to Columbia. It references a lot of historical problems with the Shuttle program as well. The former is something of a dry read in parts because it deals with the psychology of decision making. The latter is much faster paced, a real page turner, and has much more engineering information. Both are highly recommended.

The Saturn V stood as a monument to JFK, and folks from the Republican Party saw an opportunity to tear it down and replace it with the Shuttle. Burns my bacon, it does.

The Shuttle had no more to do with Republicans than with Democrats. Both parties had equal hands in trying to snag pork-barrel funding for their respective districts. If blame must be laid somewhere, blame it on those who tried to take a square peg and a round peg and fit both of them into an oval hole. The Shuttle is an object lesson of what happens to an engineering project when it's asked to be all things to all people.

The Shuttle was a lie from the get-go, though I don't think the original intent was malicious. I suspect they were "overly optimistic."

The Shuttle is what happens when you have multiple governmental bureaucracies funding a single project, yet each bureaucracy has a wildly different idea of what they want to fund. NASA wanted a space truck, but the Air Force wanted something that could snatch Soviet satellites and perform other military duties. The problem is, the military duties required the shuttle to go to significantly different orbits than typical commercial payloads. Hence, the Shuttle was redesigned with a different wing along with a host of other changes that made it heavier, more expensive, and less flexible.

The changes in program costs snowballed from there, affecting a myriad of other decisions. Solid or liquid boosters? Solids were deemed to have lower up-front costs but higher long-term costs compared to liquid boosters, so solids were chosen. And since solids can't be throttled or even turned off once lit, that led to the decision to abandon any sort of crew escape system. The result was America's first man-rated spacecraft without any type of abort mode during the first -- and most dangerous -- minutes of launch.

The lack of abort modes led to another problem: if the astronauts can't escape, then the system has to work perfectly every time, on time, without degradation. This causes NASA no end of headaches in the form of launch delays, because every quadruple-backup system has to be quadruple-checked and quadruply readied or the flight is scrubbed. This drives up per-flight costs dramatically.

I could go on, but I'd instead direct you to a great book that reveals a lot of the compromises and problems that came out of the Shuttle design period. It's called The Challenger Launch Decision , and it details the decisions -- some of them all the way back to the Shuttle conceptual stages -- that set the stage for Challenger. Another good one is Comm Check which details what happened to Columbia. It references a lot of historical problems with the Shuttle program as well. The former is something of a dry read in parts because it deals with the psychology of decision making. The latter is much faster paced, a real page turner, and has much more engineering information. Both are highly recommended.

The Saturn V stood as a monument to JFK, and folks from the Republican Party saw an opportunity to tear it down and replace it with the Shuttle. Burns my bacon, it does.

The Shuttle had no more to do with Republicans than with Democrats. Both parties had equal hands in trying to snag pork-barrel funding for their respective districts. If blame must be laid somewhere, blame it on those who tried to take a square peg and a round peg and fit both of them into an oval hole. The Shuttle is an object lesson of what happens to an engineering project when it's asked to be all things to all people.

And he'll write a book.

Too late... He already did.

Definitely worth a click to read the comments, the accompanying recommended items (The Joy of Gay Sex?) and the tags. Comedy gold.

sponsored by people who believe Adolf Hitler was a "liberal"

Because Hitler WAS a liberal.

In the back of that book Goldberg lists the entire Nazi Party Platform. Modern liberal Democrats favor the overwhelming majority of those "ideals".

Isn't morphine still widely used in military applications? In his novel Red Mars , Kim Stanley Robinson even sees morphine in the inventory of a space journey. Why ban media with the real use of an approved drug in a realistic environment?

Pre-teen.. when I was in the 2nd to 3rd grade I always liked the Danny Dunn series. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw/104-4144480-7670368?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=danny+dunn&x=0&y=0

The collectors value of this stuff is going to go though the roof.

I liked My Teacher is an Alien series by Bruce Coville. Link to all the small books in one big book. http://www.amazon.com/Teacher-Alien-Collectors-Bruce-Coville/dp/0671035711/

The details are discussed on Canonical's blog:
http://blog.canonical.com/?p=18

We've been working with ValuSoft who are a distribution company that specialise in the US retail channel. The boxed set comes with an Ubuntu 8.04 CD, a Quick Start Guide and 60 days of support from the ValuSoft team, trained and backed by the Canonical support guys. The support covers installation and getting started using Ubuntu and is priced at $19.99.

Amazon.com is selling it as well:
http://www.amazon.com/ValuSoft-71685-Ubuntu-Linux/dp/B0018KAN9E/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1215634100&sr=8-16

The game and the book are related, but artistically independent.

It is a sci-fi twist on the Spartan warrior story. Kids are taken away and trained, augmented with technology, and then defends humanity against overwhelming odds. They are easier to read (think star wars kind of difficulty), but a very enjoyable.

Note: If you do go along these lines, Don't bother with "The Flood".

That's such a delusion. People you talk to online are not anything like what you think of them. You're not interacting with a person, you're interacting with your own imagination, seeded with a few select facts or fictions from someone else.

Apparently you, too, feel that there's some value in these interactions, or you wouldn't have bothered to post this reply.

Honestly, I'm with you -- internet communications only show you a part of the people you communicate with, and it's good to be mindful of that. But they're not *total* fiction.

The problem isn't new, either. People have been dealing with this for ages -- communication by snail mail shares the same difficulties. Hell, we have literature dating back centuries describing emotional connection shared over snail mail.

E.g., Love Letters Of Great Men And Women: From The Eighteenth Century To The Present Day

No, it's not the same as face to face communication, but there's some solid evidence for real emotional connection through the written word.

I've learned that to calligraph well (at least before you've absorbed it better than I have? ;)), you need to think of it as DRAWING letters (and the spaces between), rather than WRITING letters. Changing that mindset has helped me immensely when doing calligraphy. (I suspect that if I were a professional calligrapher, I'd be able to do things faster and not need to think of it as "drawing" as much.)

Ironically, my handwriting is absolute crap, but when I toggle the brain switch to calligraphy mode, it improves dramatically. The speed is cut by probably an order of magnitude, though. People that have seen my calligraphy (which, admittedly, is only amateur) are shocked, shocked to see how bad my handwriting is.

If anyone's interested in learning calligraphy, I highly recommend Mark Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy. It spends a lot of time about the history of various hands (what one might call "fonts" now), and the way they developed. If you're at all a history geek, you might love it. I know that I found it much more enjoyable than I thought I would.

Make sure that you use a dip pen, rather than one of the cartridge ones. It's a pain in the ass to re-dip every few letters, but you get a more intimate feel for what you're doing. I started with a Schaefer cartridge pen, and it was great -- but it never worked right after I replaced the ink cartridge. (The Schaefer was a great starting pen, though, I just find I enjoy using a dip pen much more.)

There are lots of other companies which sell the CD including Canonical itself:

http://www.amazon.com/Canonical-Ubuntu-8-04-DVD/dp/B0019KKM4O/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=software&qid=1215628185&sr=8-1