Slashdot Mirror

angkor writes "The date has been set. Space.com has the news. Mir will plunge into the Pacific Ocean on March 6, 2001. Farewell old friend!" It looks final this time. Update: 01/13 03:32 PM by michael : I swear we won't post about Mir anymore until the pieces start raining down. :)

Anonymous Coward writes "There's a Canadian company that wants to introduce a new sport called "space diving." It's like sky diving, but from space down to earth. But the interesting thing is the inspiration behind space diving: NASA had a wacked-out idea in the '60s for astronauts to return to earth without a capsule. The astronauts were expected to leap from the capsule toward earth with nothing but a spacesuit, a backpack, and a retrorocket gun to save them. A ballute (maybe filled with nitrogen or helium but I checked and a light foam was considered) in the backback would slow the reentry so the astronaut wouldn't char, and then parachutes would guide a traditional descent. But the weirdest part is they'd have to fire the gun to point themselves to the right height and position to come down over land. I'd never heard of this escape system before. Read the article."

RA writes "China is one step closer to enter a elite club. It could be the third nation after Russia and the US to place a person into Earth orbit. Space.com is carrying a story with more detail."

Digitalia writes: "Using a biological soup that mimics our stomachs, the gastrobot is the first commercial robot that "feeds" on organic matter to get its energy. Chew Chew, as it is called, takes a cube of sugar and turns it into enough energy to roll around for 15 minutes. I particularly enjoyed the creator's explanation as to why his bots aren't carnivores. Check the article out here." 15 minutes seems a pretty good run for a sugar-cube, but hasn't anyone explained the carbohydrates theory to this robot?

Ant writes: "There's an interesting article from theorists attempting to explain some of the "missing mass" in the universe now say there may be entire galaxies that are dark. The new idea, proposed by Neil Trentham of the University of Cambridge, along with colleagues Ole Moller and Enrico Ramirez-Ruizof, suggests that for every normal, star-filled galaxy, there may be 100 that contain nothing, or at least nothing that we understand."

MousePotato writes: "Space.com is reporting that former NASA scientist turned Wall Street guru Dennis Tito has apparently gotten final approval (paid in full I guess is all you really need) for launch aboard a Soyuz by the end of April. Destination: ISS. Tito was originally slated to be one of the first tourists aboard the rapidly declining MIR space station. No specific figures are available on the site as to how much for the mircograv vacation but the rumor mill is placing the cost of the trip at $20 million USD. This may be just a few dollars more than buying your own rotary rocket company at auction but might just give the space tourism industry the kick it needs..."

MousePotato writes: "Space.com is reporting that former NASA scientist turned Wall Street guru Dennis Tito has apparently gotten final approval (paid in full I guess is all you really need) for launch aboard a Soyuz by the end of April. Destination: ISS. Tito was originally slated to be one of the first tourists aboard the rapidly declining MIR space station. No specific figures are available on the site as to how much for the mircograv vacation but the rumor mill is placing the cost of the trip at $20 million USD. This may be just a few dollars more than buying your own rotary rocket company at auction but might just give the space tourism industry the kick it needs..."

Regular contributor Ant sends word of a far-fetched plan to send robotic ants out into the asteroid belt with this story at space.com. "NASA may mimic the ant in its future efforts to explore the belt of asteroids that lies between Mars and Jupiter, a resource-rich region that astronauts might tap as humans move out in the solar system."

An AC points us to this article about the space elevator concept, once solely the realm of science fiction but now coming a bit closer to reality. The main problem seems to be the lack of some material with the ludicrous tensile strength required. Oh, and an asteroid to anchor it. And the willpower to actually build it. Check out the slashdot discussion of an earlier spacescience.com article on this idea as well.

byronbussey writes: "After the Mars Lander fiasco and the metric conversion problems the gremlins are not going away for NASA. The Cassini probe which has been taking some awesome pictures of Jupiter, has run into some steering problems."

byronbussey writes: "After the Mars Lander fiasco and the metric conversion problems the gremlins are not going away for NASA. The Cassini probe which has been taking some awesome pictures of Jupiter, has run into some steering problems."

deglr6328 writes: "As a follow up to the /. story posted on Nov.30, NASA has successfully contacted its 35-year-old Pioneer 6 spacecraft. The probe downlink (at 16bps) was tracked by the 70 Meter Goldstone Deep Space Network dish, while transmitting with total of 8 watts RF power at distance of 83 million miles (133 million Kilometers). Amazingly cool if you ask me."

paulproteus writes: "Space.com has a new article up called 'Fog Collector.' It describes a $450 polypropylene net that is used to gather fog, and convert it into drinkable water. 'Fans of science fiction will recognize this idea from Dune.' The nets 'have replaced and surpassed the thready life vein of truckloads of water that once sustained a village near the Atacama Desert in northern Chile.' The article also describes the second International Conference on Fog and Fog Collection."

Julius X writes: "Early Wednesday morning, the first Iridium satellite to reenter the atmposphere broke up over the Arctic Ocean at 9:44 GMT. The satellite had failed just two months after its launch in September 1998, and had been tumbling out of control ever since. The report here on Space.com provides more detail, and says that another satellite is due to come down in the next three weeks or so."

BugBBQ writes: "This is very "Space:1999 UltraProbe" kinda-kool... NASA will attempt to contact its oldest spacecraft, Pioneer-6, launched in 1965! (yikes! that's the year I was born for crying out loud! which I'm sure I did at the time)). p.s.: Anyone who gets the Space:1999 ref is welcome to e-mail me" This bird has been spinning through space for a long time.

VCP writes: "NASA has decided that the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) astronomical observatory is to be deactivated and de-orbited even though it is still working flawlessly and gathering valuable information. Why? Because NASA can't come up with $1M per year to support it. Shuttle launches cost what, $20-50M. It shouldn't be that hard to come up with $1M per year."

hubie writes "The NEAR spacecraft flew by the asteroid Eros at a closest approach of only 3 miles! Despite what the story says, that is much less than the altitude of a commuter aircraft. Stay tuned for some expected cool closeup shots."

BradeRunna writes: "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..." A sidebar to the article is a cute comparison between Earth's weather and Titan's.

BradeRunna writes: "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..." A sidebar to the article is a cute comparison between Earth's weather and Titan's.

BradeRunna writes: "Space.com has a very interesting article describing earth-like weather (even rain) on Saturn's moon, Titan. Especially of note as the surface temperatures hover around minus 288 degrees Fahrenheit. Guess we'll have to wait until the Cassini spacecraft makes it out there in Summer 2004 to get the full skinny ..." A sidebar to the article is a cute comparison between Earth's weather and Titan's.

owillis writes "Space.com is reporting that Titan (moon of Saturn)" (and also the setting of a classic sf trilogy) "has mountains, a sea, and rain showers." Details apparently in the latest issue of Science. Cassini will parachute a probe into its atmosphere in 2004, but unfortunately may not be able to retrieve all its data. Let's hope they figure out a fix in the next four years; Titan's on the short-list of plausible environments in our solar system that could harbor life.

owillis writes "Space.com is reporting that Titan (moon of Saturn)" (and also the setting of a classic sf trilogy) "has mountains, a sea, and rain showers." Details apparently in the latest issue of Science. Cassini will parachute a probe into its atmosphere in 2004, but unfortunately may not be able to retrieve all its data. Let's hope they figure out a fix in the next four years; Titan's on the short-list of plausible environments in our solar system that could harbor life.

An unnamed correspondent writes: "Since I figure most people on this board are space buffs, just thought I'd send this link about the first space walk at the space station.
2 dollars a day, hehe." They weren't just walking around, though -- they attached antennas and other vital bits. The station isn't yet complete, but it's already getting quite large.

Alkini writes "Articles from BBC News and Space.com"

Smitty825 writes: "The LA Times is reporting that scientists have discovered planets that have no sustaining stars. They are still pretty big (like 5-15 times Jupiter's size), but they are still too small to be considered Brown Dwarfs! Read the full story here." There's also a story in space.com.

ManicDeity writes "'Forget the Matrix. It's time for the Grid-' From the good people at CERN who brought us the WWW comes a new network designed for scientific use named GriPhyN (Grid Physics Network). Loosely described 'as a Napster for scientist' it is being developed to handle the massive amounts of information created from the highest energy experiment to date. The article can be found at Space.com. " It was my understanding that this was part of what I2 was supposed to do - but this looks cool as well.

Decibel writes "Scientists at the University of British Columbia have built a 6 meter telescope that uses a plate filled with mercury for its primary mirror. At a cost of $1 million, this technology makes it possible for many research teams to have continuous access to a telescope, rather than sharing with many other researchers. On a somewhat related note, the top 10 images taken by the only company that provides commercial satellite images at 1 meter resolution have been released to the public. Included are pics of the Olympic Park in Sydney, the Hollywood sign, Hoover Dam, and the Great Pyramids of Egypt. I don't know how they determined that these were the top 10, but they're certainly worth a look."

Personal addendum by jamie .

Summer 1983: I was at a cool kids' summer camp learning about astronomy. I was 12. A friend and I came up with the idea of spinning mercury into mirrors. We didn't know much about optics or physics and had no idea if it would work, but we presented the idea to the Very Smart guest speaker the next day.

He thought about it for a second, and shot us down: he didn't think it would focus properly because the surface would be a catenary, not parabolic.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say: in your face, dude.

Mercury mirrors do not, however, make good replacements for general-purpose telescopes. They only point straight up; they'll never do long exposures or see anything outside their latitude. I'm a little surprised the article doesn't emphasize this.

(On the off-chance my "co-inventor" Bill Hall, from Kalamazoo, Michigan is reading this: drop me a line, Bill.)

HarmlessScenery writes "A space.com story gives details about a commercial company that is planning its own moon mission. The idea is to send two robots to collect moon rock for sale here on Earth. The company hopes to make a profit from the rock, and selling access to live Web-cams and from toys / merchandising based on the robots.
Mark W. Tilden at Los Alamos National Lab, is lined up to design the robots. His personal objective is to get a whole robotic ecosystem up there, to prepare the way for human colonisation. The first batch will clear dust from a large area (after completing their rock gathering) - which might hamper future missions. Subsequent robotic generations could build solar farms and lay cable networks to provide a usable power grid."

Alien54 writes "Recent analysis of several new Martian meteorites is confounding planetary scientists. To put it simply, an awful lot of the Martian meteorites are way too young. According to this thi s story found at Space.com, standard theories predict that most meteorites from Mars should be billions of years old. However, almost half of the known rocks from mars are under 200 million years old. These results open up a Pandora's box of questions. The discussions should be interesting."

Alien54 writes "Recent analysis of several new Martian meteorites is confounding planetary scientists. To put it simply, an awful lot of the Martian meteorites are way too young. According to this thi s story found at Space.com, standard theories predict that most meteorites from Mars should be billions of years old. However, almost half of the known rocks from mars are under 200 million years old. These results open up a Pandora's box of questions. The discussions should be interesting."

kuni ito writes: "'According to the astronomers who detected the object with Japan's Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA), the black hole seems to be acting like a supermassive black hole, despite its size. It's sucking up matter at roughly the same rate as its much larger (and seemingly less hungry) relatives, they said.'" This black hole (assuming that black holes exist) seems to be eating a lot more than would otherwise be predicted.

A reader wrote "SPACE.com published a pretty comprehensive feature called Intelligence in the Cosmos: Flesh or Machine? It explores the likely nature of extraterrestrial intelligence, asking whether it's artificial or biological. Featured experts range from SETI and UCLA astronomers to NASA AI specialists and physicists Michio Kaku (string field theory), and Frank Tipler (anthropic principle). Other interesting characters appear, including a statement from Arthur C. Clarke. Lots of fun thoughts to play with."

This is old news, but quite cool. AntiPasto writes "According to this article at techreview.com ... the Eastlund Scientific Enterprises Corporation has a way to stop a tornado from happening by simply microwaving it. Which brings up the question whether to have it on defrost or not, or more importantly how do you get it in there?" The technical paper is available here and space.com had an article a while back, here.

Spudley writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA are likely to scrap a number of planned missions, due to increasing mission costs. The cost rise is attributed to more failsafes being used, after the recent failures of a number of 'cheap' missions."

Spudley writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA are likely to scrap a number of planned missions, due to increasing mission costs. The cost rise is attributed to more failsafes being used, after the recent failures of a number of 'cheap' missions."

O.F. Fascist writes: "Story over at Space.com about how the first NASA mission to Pluto might get cancelled for a variety of reasons." Sounds like the reasons at play here are good, though -- "reliable transport required" applies to multi-year interplanetary journeys, too. (And what are we looking for on Pluto again?)

one2boo writes: "I guess watching countless hours of Star Trek has paid off for Mounir Laroussi, an electrical and computer engineer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. Space.com writes: 'Laroussi has literally put plasma on the table: devising an apparatus that creates a mini-plasma inside a Plexiglas cube by passing an electric current through helium gas via specially calibrated electrodes.' This advance in 'Plasma Shields' will allow the shielding and cloaking of satellites and spacecraft. Low-temperature plasmas could one day also make possible an entire new generation of miniature lasers and ultra-low-energy fluorescent light tubes. You can read more on this story here." And for some reason, the relatively low power requirements remind of me of the guts of the Improbability Drive.

one2boo writes: "I guess watching countless hours of Star Trek has paid off for Mounir Laroussi, an electrical and computer engineer at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. Space.com writes: 'Laroussi has literally put plasma on the table: devising an apparatus that creates a mini-plasma inside a Plexiglas cube by passing an electric current through helium gas via specially calibrated electrodes.' This advance in 'Plasma Shields' will allow the shielding and cloaking of satellites and spacecraft. Low-temperature plasmas could one day also make possible an entire new generation of miniature lasers and ultra-low-energy fluorescent light tubes. You can read more on this story here." And for some reason, the relatively low power requirements remind of me of the guts of the Improbability Drive.

jedibfa writes: "Zvezda and Zaraya docked successfully tonight around 8:45 EDT. Check out the report at space.com. This sets the stage for a crew later this year! I for one have been holding my breath since 1998. Upward and onward. Bring on NASA's missions." Now all we need is a couple of rolls of duct tape to get a good seal, and we're all set.

This submission just came in:

flufffy writes: "Another module, the Russian Zvezda ("Star"), has just joined the two existing ISS modules up in orbit. The station is now plenty big enough to be seen from the Earth's surface. But where exactly should you look? NASA's SkyWatch, available here, shows you. After you've download the small 300k app., it asks you for your Lat/Long and the satellite you're interested in (including shuttle re-entries), before calculating when and where you can see it next. You can print out the data as a sky chart, with constellations marked! As the ISS seems to be around the equator at the moment, it's low in the southern sky for U.S. skywatchers. Still, the program showed me where to look to the south of Sagitarrius, at about 1 a.m. on the morning of July 26th. This is really cool, and will only get more fun as the ISS gets larger and more visible."

Gatton writes: "Cool article at [Space.com which says that Helium-3 is] found on the moon in great abundance. Combined with fusion, it could be a clean alternate fuel source. Quote from article: "Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt." The article is a bit breathless and mumbly on details (So how do we fill up our tanks with H-3, exactly?), but tantalizing. And "combined with fusion," wouldn't a whole lot of things be interesting? Still, if the energy is feasibly recoverable, expect a different kind of corporate-sponsored moonshots.

Gatton writes: "Cool article at [Space.com which says that Helium-3 is] found on the moon in great abundance. Combined with fusion, it could be a clean alternate fuel source. Quote from article: "Scientists estimate there are about 1 million tons of helium 3 on the moon, enough to power the world for thousands of years. The equivalent of a single space shuttle load or roughly 25 tons could supply the entire United States' energy needs for a year, according to Apollo17 astronaut and FTI researcher Harrison Schmitt." The article is a bit breathless and mumbly on details (So how do we fill up our tanks with H-3, exactly?), but tantalizing. And "combined with fusion," wouldn't a whole lot of things be interesting? Still, if the energy is feasibly recoverable, expect a different kind of corporate-sponsored moonshots.

orpheus writes: "After the cops come and confiscate -er- 'your kids' illegal fireworks (yeah, that's the ticket), consider popping over to Space.Com for a special retrospective of clips and pictures of real fireworks in the 4th of July special section, "Triumphs and Tragedies Behind Launch 'Fireworks' featuring videos of when rockets go bad, and when rockets go right. It'll make you feel better about your own backyard suborbital ventures, as you brace yourself to rebuild your neighbor's doghouse." Thankfully, they don't have the Challenger. And keep in mind that most (all?) of those detonations were intentional, if a launch deviates from the flight-path it is destroyed so that it doesn't land on Tampa or Disneyworld.

orpheus writes: "After the cops come and confiscate -er- 'your kids' illegal fireworks (yeah, that's the ticket), consider popping over to Space.Com for a special retrospective of clips and pictures of real fireworks in the 4th of July special section, "Triumphs and Tragedies Behind Launch 'Fireworks' featuring videos of when rockets go bad, and when rockets go right. It'll make you feel better about your own backyard suborbital ventures, as you brace yourself to rebuild your neighbor's doghouse." Thankfully, they don't have the Challenger. And keep in mind that most (all?) of those detonations were intentional, if a launch deviates from the flight-path it is destroyed so that it doesn't land on Tampa or Disneyworld.

mondrian writes: "Space.com is reporting that NASA will announce next week it has found evidence of water on the Red Planet." And an Anonymous Coward writes: "The BBC is reporting that NASA has found unconfirmed evidence of water springs in the Valles Marineris, the deepest feature of the Martian landscape. Apparently this is liquid water, not the frozen water that most were expecting to be found at the poles. If confirmed, the search for Martian life will take a big change in direction because of this."

mondrian writes: "Space.com is reporting that NASA will announce next week it has found evidence of water on the Red Planet." And an Anonymous Coward writes: "The BBC is reporting that NASA has found unconfirmed evidence of water springs in the Valles Marineris, the deepest feature of the Martian landscape. Apparently this is liquid water, not the frozen water that most were expecting to be found at the poles. If confirmed, the search for Martian life will take a big change in direction because of this."

faqBastard writes: "NASA's been working on some pretty cool snake-bots for exploring outer space. All kinds of neat features and capabilities ... " Robotic snakes certainly seem to be slithering into our future. OK, they look practical and intriguing -- but they give me the willies.

In an attempt to amplify, revisit, correct or update some recent Slashdot stories, the following tidbits have been hand-trimmed for your reading pleasure. I hope you like them. (Read more.)

Library of Congress will have online items o'plenty. franimal wrote in reaction to the report that the Library of Congress does not plan to digitize its collection. "Even though reading online may be 'mindless,' 'isolating,' 'lonely' and 'arrogant' the Library of Congress plans to have 5 million 'items' posted by the end of the year."

Twice as close to the middle of nowhere. HerringFlavoredFowl pointed out that "Ikonos 1 has just raised the bar on Area 51 images. As we all remember, terraserver just released a set of two meter images taken in 1998. Space Imaging snapped this set on April 4th, 2000. The Federation of American Scientists [has posted] a wonderful side by side interpretation of these images. Thank you John Pike for clueing me in on the FAS update. Space.com also has some color images and an the steps Mr. Pike went through to obtain these images. "

One lump or two? Or three? Scott Marks and hordes of fellow travelers let us know that "The US DOJ U.S. v. Microsoft web site has all the gory legal details on the Proposed Final Judgment as well as a number of other interesting tidbits. Not the least is the ability to comment on the trial directly: 'If you would like to send the Antitrust Division your comments on this case, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov .'"

What kind of power is that? After the latest brouhaha both on Slashdot and in the rest of the world about the link between violence and video games, Jer Davis wrote: "The Tech Report has an article up written by Andy Brown dissecting some of the psychological studies that have been released recently regarding correlations between real-life violence and violent video games. ... This is a very important issue, and Andy does an excellent job at dissecting the very suspect results these studies have claimed."

And speaking of violence ... Deadli contributed the news that the secretary of education opposes mechanical profiling programs according to this Washington Post article. Perhaps he's been reading the reaction to Jon Katz' article on WAVE.

Once in a while, some good news slips through. In this case, it's from TheGreek, who wrote, "Jason Haas is out of the hospital and well on his way to recovering." Congratulations, Jason.

In an attempt to amplify, revisit, correct or update some recent Slashdot stories, the following tidbits have been hand-trimmed for your reading pleasure. I hope you like them. (Read more.)

Library of Congress will have online items o'plenty. franimal wrote in reaction to the report that the Library of Congress does not plan to digitize its collection. "Even though reading online may be 'mindless,' 'isolating,' 'lonely' and 'arrogant' the Library of Congress plans to have 5 million 'items' posted by the end of the year."

Twice as close to the middle of nowhere. HerringFlavoredFowl pointed out that "Ikonos 1 has just raised the bar on Area 51 images. As we all remember, terraserver just released a set of two meter images taken in 1998. Space Imaging snapped this set on April 4th, 2000. The Federation of American Scientists [has posted] a wonderful side by side interpretation of these images. Thank you John Pike for clueing me in on the FAS update. Space.com also has some color images and an the steps Mr. Pike went through to obtain these images. "

One lump or two? Or three? Scott Marks and hordes of fellow travelers let us know that "The US DOJ U.S. v. Microsoft web site has all the gory legal details on the Proposed Final Judgment as well as a number of other interesting tidbits. Not the least is the ability to comment on the trial directly: 'If you would like to send the Antitrust Division your comments on this case, please direct your correspondence to Microsoft.atr@usdoj.gov .'"

What kind of power is that? After the latest brouhaha both on Slashdot and in the rest of the world about the link between violence and video games, Jer Davis wrote: "The Tech Report has an article up written by Andy Brown dissecting some of the psychological studies that have been released recently regarding correlations between real-life violence and violent video games. ... This is a very important issue, and Andy does an excellent job at dissecting the very suspect results these studies have claimed."

And speaking of violence ... Deadli contributed the news that the secretary of education opposes mechanical profiling programs according to this Washington Post article. Perhaps he's been reading the reaction to Jon Katz' article on WAVE.

Once in a while, some good news slips through. In this case, it's from TheGreek, who wrote, "Jason Haas is out of the hospital and well on his way to recovering." Congratulations, Jason.

Let's start this off with jsewell's truly amazing story about the rocket car urban legend from the man who claims to have invented it. Did you do your homework last week? Remember that Slashdot was nominated for a Webby in Community so go do their little login dance and vote for us if you think that our First Posts, Oog, Trolls and 'God Slashdot Really Sucks These Days' messages are cool. Maybe we'll even fly CowboyNeal out to give an acceptance speech if we win ;) Glowing Spleen sent us an optical illusion that really bugs me. I had to check if it wasn't an animated GIF. A few for the do it yourselfers: Slash T.M.F.D.W. sent us a real mech and Ryan J. Evans sent in the worlds largest playable tetris. If you don't actually want to build something, but want to play anyway, try SodaPlay and you can mess with these crazy animated 2D springy models. Its surprisingly addictive. After all that building, you might need Jeremy's Microbatch Ice Cream (thanks alangmead) and its "Wired" flavor, a caffinated vanilla ice cream. Between that and the Triple Espresso flavor. Wonder what happens if you keep it in this Bio-Plastic Wrap that detects contaminated food (sent in by Accipiter) You can't use plastic wrap to preserve human heads, but ChunkyGoodness noted that Chet Fleming has US Patent number 4666425 for keeping them alive. Dugh Daren sent us a hilarious essay from Space.com on Star War's most annoying characters that I found extremely funny. brunning pointed us to perhaps the most pressing bug in all of Microsoft's software. kwsNI pointed us to an extremely disturbing article about Pandas on Viagra in China. Blake sent in a filter based on "Being John Malkovitch." Read Slashdot in Malkovitch Mode. And finally, we need a stupid lawsuit: east_bay_pete told us about a commercial that featured a cockroach scampering over the screen ... people are suing because they keep breaking TVs trying to kill the CGI Roach!

Let's start this off with jsewell's truly amazing story about the rocket car urban legend from the man who claims to have invented it. Did you do your homework last week? Remember that Slashdot was nominated for a Webby in Community so go do their little login dance and vote for us if you think that our First Posts, Oog, Trolls and 'God Slashdot Really Sucks These Days' messages are cool. Maybe we'll even fly CowboyNeal out to give an acceptance speech if we win ;) Glowing Spleen sent us an optical illusion that really bugs me. I had to check if it wasn't an animated GIF. A few for the do it yourselfers: Slash T.M.F.D.W. sent us a real mech and Ryan J. Evans sent in the worlds largest playable tetris. If you don't actually want to build something, but want to play anyway, try SodaPlay and you can mess with these crazy animated 2D springy models. Its surprisingly addictive. After all that building, you might need Jeremy's Microbatch Ice Cream (thanks alangmead) and its "Wired" flavor, a caffinated vanilla ice cream. Between that and the Triple Espresso flavor. Wonder what happens if you keep it in this Bio-Plastic Wrap that detects contaminated food (sent in by Accipiter) You can't use plastic wrap to preserve human heads, but ChunkyGoodness noted that Chet Fleming has US Patent number 4666425 for keeping them alive. Dugh Daren sent us a hilarious essay from Space.com on Star War's most annoying characters that I found extremely funny. brunning pointed us to perhaps the most pressing bug in all of Microsoft's software. kwsNI pointed us to an extremely disturbing article about Pandas on Viagra in China. Blake sent in a filter based on "Being John Malkovitch." Read Slashdot in Malkovitch Mode. And finally, we need a stupid lawsuit: east_bay_pete told us about a commercial that featured a cockroach scampering over the screen ... people are suing because they keep breaking TVs trying to kill the CGI Roach!