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Levers and chads are very different technologies. Lever machines were approved for use in the 1920 election, whereas paper punchcards came over 40 years later! Check out this informative website from the Smithsonian for more information about the progression of voting technology through the ages.

Oh, and I have read that quote many times before. Some rich guy telling his buddies that he wants to help his party is different from vote rigging. Think about it; would you have made that statement if you were trying to commit fraud? If I had his job and were trying to defraud voters I would have donated $2000 (maximum donation) to Kerry and joined MoveOn.org. When you read this, remember the GP. I do not think electronic voting is the best option but I do not believe that there is a massive conspiracy out there to get us.

We're still trying to get that flying saucer thing to work.

Mechanical Engineering Power did a study that came up with much the same results as the white paper already linked -- see here. (gas engine for comparison -- about half the well-to-wheel efficiency.)

In general, your back-of-the-envelope numbers are mostly wrong. Generating plants often exceed 50% efficiency), transmission loss is about 7%, switching chargers lose in the range of 5-20%, and overall drivetrain loss is around 55% for an electric motor, for a total of about 22% (as above).

That huge drivetrain loss is known as the "tank-to-wheel" efficiency, and it's what really kills the gas car -- those have about 14% efficiency for that process, giving them 11-12% overall efficiency (also known as "well-to-wheel" efficiency). So in general a gas-powered car takes about twice the energy to run that an all-electric car does, with hybrids somewhere in the middle. Google "well-to-wheel" and you'll find a great deal more on this.

Manufacturing costs play some role in overall energy requirements, but it's pretty minor. A typical car in the US fleet will see about 160,000 miles; at 22mph (average), that's about $22,000 of gas (at $3/gallon), which totally dwarfs the energy costs involved in constructing the car in the first place. Careful about total-lifespan costs, though -- there was a deeply bogus study that came out a few months ago that used nonsensical assumptions (e.g., "cars last for 100,000 miles, trucks for 250,000" even though the figure as measured for the US fleet is 150,000 vs. 170,000), so there's some false claims floating about.

You are apparently correct, and this Web site is in error, since it says "In all, 32 Saturns were launched". I double-checked with Wikipedia, and it confirms your count. Probably www.nasm.si.edu counted all Saturns they could find, not just Saturn V. Saturn I was flown 10 times. I do not know where they took the rest of the missions from...

Dave Barr has been there, done that,years ago. He placed four marble tetrahedra at points on the globe (New Guinea, South Africa, Greenland and Easter Island) so that they describe a giant tetrahedron inside the earth itself.

It's called The Paul E Garber facility, and it does have occasional openhouses.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/garber/

Apple already had a product called the Black Apple. And it was actually an Apple product - and I actually used one (and came close to buying one) when they were being sold.

Devi Station? Are we at the end of Kali Yug already?

Evolution occurs through one of two means. It is either a means of survival where the parent species is forced to adapt or die. Or evolution occurs through random mutations being passed on.

There is no part of evolution that is by design. Evolution is random. If the mutation allows the offspring to be more 'fit' and occupy a niche better than their ancestors, then there's a chance an evolutionary mutation has occurred.

Take a look at ants. Ants have lived exponentially longer on this planet than us. Their lifespan is shorter, and in the same period of time, they have more generations than us. And they outnumber us.

Yeah, look at ants - there's over 8000 documented species of ants living today. Think that's all of them? And you think that's the total number that have existed? Guess what - each of the 8000 known species is ALL a product of some evolutionary adaptation.

Now, please, do us all a favor, and crawl back under your rock.

Here is a nice diagram that gives some context to the finds. "Missing Link" is hype and "Proof of Evolution" is very misleading. But the diagram is an amazing summary and speaks for itself.

There are roughly 280 to 560 times as many active volcanoes in the world as Mt. St. Helens.

No, not really. The exact number of active volcanoes varies based on your definition of "active" and of "volcano," but an estimate of 50-70 each year is more accurate.

Even if there were that many volcanoes and they all put out the same amount of CO2 as St. Helens, you'd have matched the state of Washington with all the active volcanoes in the world. Now add Oregon. Now add California. Now add the other 47 states of the Union, and then add the other 191 countries in the world.

I repeat: Drop in the bucket.

Place the Atlantis, intact, into the Simthsonian.

Just make sure all the toxic monopropellants have been thouroughly cleaned out.

Not necessary, the Enterprise is already there...

Currently at the NASM annex out near Dulles airport.

It never flew in space, but was used for various atmospheric stability/landing tests.

http://www.nasm.si.edu/imagedetail.cfm?imageID=388

You were probably there when that whole museum wing was roped off. You can get reasonably close now. Check out this camera

And being in the Smithsonian is no guarantee that it will remain intact. You will find that at least one of the leading edge panels on the Enterprise is a replacement mock up. Alas, it seems like they needed the real one for some destructive impact testing.

And being in the Smithsonian is no guarantee that it will remain intact. You will find that at least one of the leading edge panels on the Enterprise is a replacement mock up. Alas, it seems like they needed the real one for some destructive impact testing.

A more accurate list of Teslas accomplishments.

This kind of technology, using an animal to control a vehicle by converting the animal's responses into control inputs for the vehicle, goes back at least to WWII... you can see a picture of one of Skinner's pigeon-guided bombs here and here, and more details here.

It was never deployed, but it worked more than half the time in test runs... how good are today's "precision" munitions?

in context I belive they are talking about the first U.S. jet powered aircraft, something like http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/lock heed_xp80.htm

Branson's endeavour is Virgin Galactic and it will be using Spaceship Two. Spaceship One has been moth-balled, next to the Spirit of St. Louis.

Please cite your source. How does it stand in relation to this interview?

Dereje said that the split is the beginning of a long process, which will eventually lead to Ethiopia's eastern part tearing off from the rest of Africa, a sea forming in the gap. The Afar desert is being torn off the continent by about 0.8 inches each year.

The ocean will take a long time to form I would guess. Maybe they could stock it well with natural/regional fish and plant species and replenish a source of food?

I am not sure if this is the same Boina, but it is an interesting picture of an active Ethiopian volcano nonetheless.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0 201-14=&VErupt=N&VSources=Y&VRep=N&VWeekly=N&volpa ge=photos&photo=111075
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0 201-14=&volpage=photo

Dereje said that the split is the beginning of a long process, which will eventually lead to Ethiopia's eastern part tearing off from the rest of Africa, a sea forming in the gap. The Afar desert is being torn off the continent by about 0.8 inches each year.

The ocean will take a long time to form I would guess. Maybe they could stock it well with natural/regional fish and plant species and replenish a source of food?

I am not sure if this is the same Boina, but it is an interesting picture of an active Ethiopian volcano nonetheless.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0 201-14=&VErupt=N&VSources=Y&VRep=N&VWeekly=N&volpa ge=photos&photo=111075
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0 201-14=&volpage=photo

http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0 201-113&volpage=var

Speaking as an amateur geologist, I think I can safely use the geophysical jargon and say, "MAN that is FREAKY!"

This Smithsonian article covers some of the same ground in much better and revealing detail. Via a diarist at dkos.

just to set the record straight -- donating computers to kids and schools
has long been part of steve jobs' mission -- he personally offered to donate
a hundred thousand computers to every school in america back in 1979...

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist /sj1.html

(exerpt from Smithsonian Interview with Steve Jobs)

SJ: There were two kinds of customers. There were the educational aspects of Apple and then there were sort of the non-educational. On the non-educational side, Apple was two things. One, it was the first "lifestyle" computer and, secondly, it's hard to remember how bad it was in the early 1980's. With IBM taking over the world with the PC, with DOS out there; it was far worse than the Apple II. They tried to copy the Apple II and they had done a pretty bad job. You needed to know a lot. Things were kind of slipping backwards. You saw the 1984 commercial. Macintosh was basically this relatively small company in Cupertino, California, taking on the goliath, IBM, and saying "Wait a minute, your way is wrong. This is not the way we want computers to go. This is not the legacy we want to leave. This is not what we want our kids to be learning. This is wrong and we are going to show you the right way to do it and here it is. It's called Macintosh and it is so much better. It's going to beat you and you're going to do it."

And that's what Apple stood for. That was one of the things. The other thing was a little bit further back in time. One of the things that built Apple II's was schools buying Apple II's; but even so there was about only 10% of the schools that even had one computer in them in 1979 I think it was. When I grew up I was lucky because I was in Silicon Valley. When I was ten or eleven I saw my first computer. It was down at NASA Ames (Research Center). I didn't see the computer, I saw a terminal and it was theoretically a computer on the other end of the wire. I fell in love with it. I saw my first desktop computer at Hewlett-Packard which was called the 9100A. It was the first desktop in the world. It ran BASIC and APL I think. I fell in love with it. And I thought, looking at these statistics in 1979, I thought if there was just one computer in every school, some of the kids would find it. It will change their life.

We saw the rate at which this was happening and the rate at which the school bureaucracies were deciding to buy a computer for the school and it was real slow. We realized that a whole generation of kids was going to go through the school before they even got their first computer so we thought the kids can't wait. We wanted to donate a computer to every school in America. It turns out that there are about a hundred thousand schools in America, about ten thousand high schools, about ninety thousand K through 8. We couldn't afford that as a company. But we studied the law and it turned out that there was a law already on the books, a national law that said that if you donated a piece of scientific instrumentation or computer to a university for educational and research purposes you can take an extra tax deduction. That basically means you don't make any money, you loose some but you don't loose too much. You loose about ten percent. We thought that if we could apply that law, enhance it a little bit to extend it down to Kthrough 8 and remove the research requirements so it was just educational, then we could give a hundred thousand computers away, one to each school in America and it would cost our company ten million dollars which was a lot of money to us at that time but it was less than a hundred million dollars if we didn't have that. We decided that we were willing to do that.

It was one of the most incredible things I've ever done. We found our local representative, Pete Stark over in East Bay and Pete and a few of us sat down an we wrote a bill. We literally drafted a bill to make these changes. We said "If this law changes

There are no numbers on that page. How the hell do you "derive that it will be at least twice as long?" And no, this isn't "very technologically advanced." Proton Exchange Membranes ain't from the future.

B.S., B.S., more B.S.

How's this: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre e.html

Just observation, I'm afraid, but there are quite few links in there. Not really missing since there are fossils. You can click on the different entries in the family tree and see them. The skulls are the best part, of course, watching them change with time.

What exactly is "in it's own kind?" Is a yellow rose the same kind as a red rose? How about tomatoes that can grow in climates that would kill their progenitors? Bacteria that are completely immune to antibiotics that devastate their ancestors? A chihuahua and a great dane? How much functional and/or structural change do you need demonstrated before you can extrapolate a decade's color change or immunity across a billion years and regard this evolution thing as a likely theory?

Interesting. I seem to remember lots of displays of some of the proto-humans that have been discovered. Especially the skulls. Showing the development from very ape-like creatures to more and more modern-man looking remains. Lots of names too. Homo erectus, aferensis... oh, here's a good page where you can see the family tree, and pictures of the fossils: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tre e.html.

Look like a lot of intermediate forms to me.

Besides, Darwin wasn't a modern scientist. He was a naturalist. His idea of evolution has since been refined into a modern theory.

Ha! Great story.

A few years back, I knew a fellow (he had the unfortunate name of Willie Williams) who'd been involved in the re-introduction of pergrine falcons to the canyon lands of south texas. The problem was that the birds wouldn't breed in captivity. The answer: artificial insemination.

This dude's job was to collect the sperm from the male falcons. He'd go in to their enclosures wearing a special hat with a very-anatomically-correct model of a female falcon on it.

The mid 19th Century was home was lit by natural gas (if you could afford it) or by kerosene and other petroleum based lamp oils (dangerous).

Think for a moment how fifty to seventy-five years of experience with gas illumination affects interior design, men and women's fashions, cosmetics, etc.

There were real barriers to change, Competition to Edison's Lamp

Mareta West determined the landing site for Luna 9 (the first spacecraft ever to land on the Moon)? I doubt that. Perhaps what the author meant is "the first manned flight ever to land on the moon"?

GlobalFlyer is not done flying:

http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com/

The NASM also holds a Rutan Vari-Eze:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/research/aero/aircraft/ruta n_eze.htm

I want to say thank you to Paul Allen for the funding first.

I want to say thank you again for donating the ship to the Smithsonian. For those who don't know, Paul Allen has his own recently-opened Sci-Fi museum in Seattle. It would be very tempting to not give SSOne to the Smithsonian, instead to give it to his museum and loan it to the Smithsonian (so it would mention his museum on the plaque and he could bring it back from time to time) or to exhibit it at his own museum for a while to generate traffic/money.

Paul Allen didn't do these things.

Thank you very much Paul.

It's be great to see this exhibit/web page updated soon:

http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal100/gal100.h tml

I've actually seen SSOne, I was there at its first flight into space. But I'd really like to see it next to the X-15 (which the Smithsonian also has) so I can see how much things have changed (and what hasn't) over almost 50 years.

This is actually an old story. It had been reported earlier in the year that this was going to occur.

The SS1 Prototype has actually been at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Annex (Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum (UHASM)) in Dulles, VA since late July / early August awaiting transfer to the downtown Washington, DC center.

For those who would have wanted to see it there, while it was not on active display, it was there at the west end of the building under a great big blue tarp. They had it under the tarp because the director of the UHASM did not want to allow it on display because he "did not want to upstage the downtown facility's unveiling". For what it's worth, since it was there (and its not hard to recognize it under the tarp), I thought that it would not have hurt to have been not on active display but out from under the tarp and just have a temporary placard stating "Awaiting transfer to downtown facility for official showing".

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Homepage:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/

This is actually an old story. It had been reported earlier in the year that this was going to occur.

The SS1 Prototype has actually been at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Annex (Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum (UHASM)) in Dulles, VA since late July / early August awaiting transfer to the downtown Washington, DC center.

For those who would have wanted to see it there, while it was not on active display, it was there at the west end of the building under a great big blue tarp. They had it under the tarp because the director of the UHASM did not want to allow it on display because he "did not want to upstage the downtown facility's unveiling". For what it's worth, since it was there (and its not hard to recognize it under the tarp), I thought that it would not have hurt to have been not on active display but out from under the tarp and just have a temporary placard stating "Awaiting transfer to downtown facility for official showing".

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Homepage:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/

Link to Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/museum/udvarhazy/

Well, the three LRVs did over 50 miles...

Still, the idea of mimicking natural forms has a certain appeal. Evolution is a heck of an interesting engineer, even if billions of years of work result in kludges like the human nose. Designs like the penguin are amazingly successful in harsh environments. (I only hope Morgan "Easy Reader" Freeman narrates the launches.)

North America is no stranger to large, free roaming, wild cats. Most of the time, we get along just fine (read: leave each other alone).

Pumas aren't the only large cats in the US, here in Arizona we have recently started getting these guys . Around were I live in SE Arizona we have large populations of javelinas which are their natural prey species.

Doh! Sorry, I just realized the shuttle at Huntsville is only a full-scale model. The real Enterprise is at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the National Air and Space Museum (according to this). But it is up on blocks while it's being worked on, just like an old pickup truck! : D

I know some engineers. Here is a working spec. Shuttle Replacement

They need to stick the Shuttle in the Smithsonian....

I hope the shuttle comes home safe and then gets parked in a museum.

There is already a shuttle in a museum. Udvar Hazy at Dulles Airport, part of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. It's "just" the Enterprise, and has never been in space, but you can get up close.

I couldn't believe it myself, but the other day an internet friend of mine pointed out, by way of IM, how Lucass is a racist. First he pointed me to this page. He said that this guy is like the king of Palestine or Arabia or some place like that. Then he pointed me to this web page and told me to note the striking similarities. It is quite apparent that Lucass mounted Fahd as the Jabba the Hutt character, proving racism!! Study the positions of their hands and the appearance of the face and opening of the mouthal area. This is all the proffs to make the case that George Lucass is a racist! It's true! I didn't want to accept it because I so loved the Star Wars saga, but Lucass has forever ruined this for me with his hidden racism. Due to this reasons, I am studying with more clarity the possibility of even more festering racism in the Star Wars movies. I think, if we get to the bottom of this, we'll be on the road to getting Lucass behind bars for illegal racism. A lot of people might think I am joking but I am not. This is a truly serious matter that deserves the attention of the entire movie going world public. Please make sure to pass this along to everyone you know on IM chat rooms and in RL too!!!

I would not be buying a lightsaber...but then again
The people who created "All in the family" DONATED Archies chair to the smithsonian.

Maybe I expected more out of billionaire George Lucas than a rummage sale on cultural icons...then again considering what he did with the Special editions of Episodes IV-VI and what he did with Episodes I-III I shouldnt be surprised.

In contrast the original LARGE USS Enterprise model from the tv series is in the smithsonian.
In case you are curious

http://www.si.edu/resource/faq/where/phaser.htm

I think that the payload should be AT THE BOTTOM of the rocket.
You know.
Like Goddard intended.

I remember seeing pictures of these on Japanese office buildings in the early 80s. They were called "Sunflowers", and they were mostly prototypes I think, and had a honeycomb set of collectors which piped the sunlight into the building.

You mean like the alternate design with stages that used the Saturn F-1 engine? http://www.nasm.si.edu/exhibitions/gal114/SpaceRac e/sec500/sec542.htm has photos and descriptions of the preliminary designs. Seems like the CEV will likely be top-mounted rather than side-mounted. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Exploration_Vehi cle (Please, no side-talking jokes.)

Glove design for EVA suits was/is one of the toughest challenges NASA and the Russian space program had to face. It's not "weird technology," it's one of the more crucial parts of an EVA suit. There's an excellent exhibit in the new National Air and Space Museum extension that illustrates the different designs and challenges that engineers went through.