THE BIG CITY When Tables Turn, Knives Come Out By JOHN TIERNEY
Michael Moore made a name for himself pointing cameras at cruel corporate executives and other enemies of the people. He stalked the chairman of General Motors, sent people in Puritan costumes to Ken Starr's home and set up a Web site with a camera trained on a window of Lucianne Goldberg's apartment.
But Mr. Moore does not appreciate being bothered himself, as Alan Edelstein discovered. After he was fired by Mr. Moore, Mr. Edelstein tried borrowing the technique Mr. Moore had applied to G.M.'s Roger Smith in the film "Roger & Me": showing up uninvited with a camera and trying to get an answer from a boss who has decided to downsize.
Mr. Moore responded by filing a complaint with the New York police accusing Mr. Edelstein of aggravated harassment, menacing and criminal trespassing. As a result, Mr. Edelstein was arrested in March and spent nine hours in a cell at the Midtown North police station.
The district attorney's office later dropped the case. Now Mr. Edelstein is suing Mr. Moore, alleging malicious prosecution.
Mr. Edelstein, who is 39 and lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, was hired in 1998 as a producer on "The Awful Truth," Mr. Moore's show on the Bravo network. He was fired by a subordinate of Mr. Moore's after seven weeks.
"I was told that there was a budget crunch," he said, "but I don't think that was true. I later learned there were questions about my competence, which no one had ever raised when I was there. So I was angry at the way I was dealt with."
He had another reason for pursuing Mr. Moore with a camera. Mr. Edelstein, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1985 for a documentary about a musician, was making a documentary incorporating scenes from his own life. "I thought footage with Michael explaining why I'd been fired would be useful for my own documentary," he said.
During a speech by Mr. Moore at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mr. Edelstein stood up with a camera and a bullhorn, a tool used by Mr. Moore outside the offices of executives. Mr. Edelstein demanded to know why he had been fired but didn't get an answer.
Mr. Edelstein twice showed up with his camera at the office of Mr. Moore's production company on West 57th Street near 11th Avenue. He filmed some employees but didn't manage to reach Mr. Moore. Later, he took his camera for a few more unsuccessful attempts to engage Mr. Moore at public events outside the office.
Mr. Moore says he complained to the police because he thought Mr. Edelstein had become a stalker who was a threat to Mr. Moore's family as well as his employees.
"If all he was doing was making his little film about me, I wouldn't have cared," Mr. Moore said. "But other people were at risk. This is a disgruntled employee who is a bit off his rocker. Everyone in the office felt there was considerable risk. The women in the office felt frightened for their own safety. Ask them. They'll tell you."
I asked several women, including one recommended by Mr. Moore, and none sounded scared. They said they found Mr. Edelstein a bit obsessive but otherwise mild-mannered and harmless.
"No one was remotely in fear of Alan in any shape or form," said Kyra Vogt, who was the office manager at the time Mr. Edelstein showed up with the camera. "Most of us thought the situation was comical. The only person who was paranoid was Mi
The only thing that would save this show would be to cancel the show and have a final episode where an Ensign Daniels walked out of a holodeck on Enterprise-D, to be railed on about historical inconsistencies by Data.
Dr. Sam Beckett travels through time (perhaps rescuing Kirk from the Nexus before Picard gets to him?), corrects all the inconsistencies in the Star Trek canon, and then quantum leaps out of Captain Archer's body.
Dr. Fegg has only ever written one national anthem. Here it is, reproduced for the first time. Dr. Fegg would like to remind all his readers that he has not yet been paid for it.
-The Gambian National Anthem-
Gambia, Oh Gambia, Though only small and thin, When it comes to being called Gambia, You are the one to win.
Your capital is Bathurst A name that means so much To you who live in Gambia, Though less so to the Dutch.
Gambia, where men are men And trees fit in the ground. The one six-lettered nation Where Gambians abound!
Gambians! O Gambians! Though your country is so thin And most of it a river It's the place that you live in.
From mountains down to flat bits, Ring out your anthem great, Though now you're part of Senegal The words are out of date.
-Bertram Wesley Fegg DD
WARNING: Humming of this anthem, even to oneself, renders the reader liable for royalty payments. These should be sent to Dr. Fegg personally and *not*, repeat *not* to the chisellers at the Gambian embassy.::Note:: Many people ask: What is Dr. Fegg a doctor *of*? Well, without going into specifics Dr. Fegg has tried his hand at many things in his time.
His is the sort of mind that can encompass deck chair repairing, sweeping, billposting and the buying and selling of cars with one previous owner. So it is perhaps unfair and irrelevant to confine his extraordinary talents to the mundane world of labels and categories.
Dr. Fegg *has* delivered babies, but only during the busy pre-Christmas period when the Post Office can't cope. And Dr. Fegg has done brain surgery-- though *never*, repeat *never* in the Bournemouth area.
How much of the public will be mislead into thinking thats how it really happens?
Maybe that's the purpose of the movie?
The first couple of paragraphs in the following column are political commentary, so feel free to skip them and get straight to the scientific criticism of the movie.
Apocalypse Soon?
No, But This Movie (and Democrats) Hope You'll Think So
By Patrick J. Michaels
Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page B01 Washington Post
On March 13, the Guardian newspaper of London, beating the American networks by nearly eight months, called the U.S. presidential election -- for Sen. John F. Kerry. The Democrat would win, the paper declared, not because of his plan for Iraq, or his proposals for the economy, but because of . . . a movie.
Specifically, a movie about global warming. It's called "The Day After Tomorrow." And if it doesn't actually unseat George Bush, it won't be for lack of trying. It opens on May 28, but this movie is already being vocally touted by none other than former vice president Al Gore, on behalf of MoveOn.org, a liberal Internet advocacy group backed in part by billionaire George Soros that appears to be dedicated to defeating Bush.
At least that's the take-home message from the MoveOn Web site, which ominously calls "The Day After Tomorrow" "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see" -- because it will supposedly ignite a backlash against Bush's global warming policies, which favor slow technological evolution over immediate (and expensive) reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. As a climatologist, I'm concerned that this putative backlash could be caused by scientific nonsense.
Let's not forget that the planet is warmer than it was when the Little Ice Age ended in the 19th century, and that people have had something (not everything) to do with that. But what Gore and the movie do is to exaggerate this largely benign truth into a fictional apocalypse.
Gore last sounded the alarm on global warming at a rally hosted by MoveOn.org in New York on Jan. 15, which happened to be the coldest day of the past decade in the Northeast. That was fitting, because the thesis of "The Day After Tomorrow" is that global warming causes a new ice age. And not just any old glaciation, either, but one that builds up in only three days.
Here's the plot. In the middle of a Northern Hemisphere summer, the temperature of the high-latitude Atlantic and Pacific suddenly drops 15 degrees. This is caused by the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe from being the icebox it should be at its northerly latitude.
Since the Gulf Stream is no longer transporting warm water to Europe, the tropics get hotter and hotter, and the poles colder and colder. In a series of massive thunderstorms, the atmosphere flips over, and increasingly cold stratospheric air is drawn down to the earth's surface, creating a low-pressure system that produces hundreds of feet of snow. Temperatures in Canada drop 100 degrees in an hour. Just about everyone north of Washington, D.C., dies. The following summer, the ice melts and a continental flood ensues.
Hurricanes hit Belfast. San Francisco Bay freezes. Hailstones the size of canned hams bomb Tokyo. According to the movie's Web page, Madras, India, becomes the "New Venice of the South."
The movie makers maintain that much of this has already started. Disaster is heading our way pronto. The picture's Web site reminds us, for instance, that just last May, we had a record number of tornados for one month, and that more than half of the deaths that occur in hurricanes now are due to
Case Against Scientifically Honest Bjorn Lomborg Dismissed
The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty abetted a vicious ideological environmentalist smear campaign against Bjorn Lomborg by declaring two years ago that his excellent book The Skeptical Environmentalist, was "objectively dishonest." Naturally this accusation hit the headlines. However, in December, 2003, the Danish Ministry of Science and Technology overturned the DCSD kangaroo court's decision and sent it back to them. On futher reflection the DCSD members have now decided that perhaps they'd been a bit hasty and have completely dropped the matter (see press release below).
Press Release
March 12, 2004
Scientific Dishonesty Committee Withdraws Lomborg Case
The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) today announced it would not reopen the case concerning Bjørn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist".
In December 2003 The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation completely rejected the DCSD finding that "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was "objectively dishonest" or "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice".
The Ministry, which is responsible for the DCSD, found that the committee's judgment was not backed up by documentation and was "completely void of argumentation" for the claims of dishonesty and lack of good scientific practice.
The Ministry invalidated the original finding and sent the case back to DCSD, where it was up to the committee to decide whether to reopen the case for a new trial.
"The committee decision is as one would expect," Environmental Assessment Institute director Bjørn Lomborg said today. "More than two years have passed since the case against my book was started. In that time every possible stone has been turned over, yet DCSD has been unable to find a single point of criticism that withstands further investigation."
"DCSD have reached the only logical conclusion. The committee has acknowledged that the former verdict of my book was invalid. I am happy that this will spell an end to what has been a very distasteful course of events," Bjørn Lomborg said.
The DCSD translated their first judgment into English. Today's announcement is only available in Danish.
No word of an apology nor headlines declaring Lomborg vindicated.
Apparently cell phone signals are too weak to ignite gasoline vapors, but the human body can generate enough static electiricy (60,000 volts) from simply sliding out of your car seat to do just that.
References to cel phones and electricity generated by the human body, and there still isn't a single Matrix joke?
Obligatory Credit Card Fraud Quote
on
RFID MasterCard
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· Score: 3, Funny
"Now I've got enough money to build my robot. My girl robot. This is going to be the best prom ever."
Rambus believes that RDRAM was not the success it should have been because chip makers did not want to pay their royalties.
I can't imagine why any manufacturer would have done a thing like that.
Calling people traitors: As readers of this blog know, I've been quite critical of people calling others "traitors" simply because they disagree with them about the war or about foreign policy. There should be plenty of room in civil debate for good-faith disagreement about what's good for the country. Moreover, decent Americans can still sometimes consider the legitimate interests beyond the American national interest -- for instance, they might oppose an attack on some country because of a concern about the country's innocent citizens, whether or not the attack is in the interests of America's citizens. It's neither fair nor productive to reduce legitimate policy disagreements to accusations of lack of patriotism, or, worse still, treason?
But if this is true, then what's with all this that we've been hearing about "Benedict Arnold CEOs"? There are lots of hard and interesting questions about how American businessmen should deal with international competition. Some think that outsourcing is on balance bad for America, others think it's good. Some think that businessmen should focus first and foremost on the interests of America generally, others that businessmen should primarily serve the interests of their shareholders (within, of course, the boundaries of the law) -- or that outsourcing helps both shareholders and, ultimately, America generally, since without it we'd lose our competitive edge and thus have to lay off even more people. Reasonable minds can differ on this. But there's no justification for waging this battle through slurs and insults, and allusions (even if clearly hyperbolic) to a man whose name has become a snonym for "traitor."
But if I'm mistaken, and "Benedict Arnold" is permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose economic policies you think undermine the American national interest, then why isn't "traitor" permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose foreign policy you think undermines the American national interest?
The ACLU takes care of all the ammendments that the NRA doesn't take care of. It would be a waste of time any money for the ACLU to duplicate the efforts of the NRA.
Perhaps while the ACLU is in court that could pick up a copy of the Bill of Rights, not their edited 9 adm one, one that has all the adms in it.
I don't know why this is "-1 Troll." The parent post has a valid point about the hypocrisy of the ACLU.
Wired reported in another story about a lawsuit against the government for it's failure to destroy certain database records (emphasis added):
Gun Groups Take Aim at Database
04:45 PM Dec. 01, 1998 PT
.....
The [National Rifle Association] claims that federal law requires the agency to destroy all records immediately after checking a prospective gun buyer's name against its list of people not permitted to purchase weapons.
If the NRA wins in court, the Justice Department will no longer keep personal records, but the FBI's computer will continue to process names before permitting gun purchases -- a system that has other gun-rights groups crying foul.
.....
The Justice Department first proposed storing information on gun purchases for 18 months for audit purposes but recently shortened that to six months following a public outcry.
"The department determined that the general retention period for records of allowed transfers in the NICS Audit Log" should be six months, the agency said in a 30 October statement. It also said that "such information may be retained for a longer period if necessary."
Keeping personal information on file is absolutely necessary, said Nancy Hwa, spokeswoman for the advocacy group Handgun Control.
"We've always favored having a system of licensing and registration in the first place. We should treat guns like cars. If people want to buy [a gun] they should be trained in its use."
Privacy advocates should wake up to the threat of databases of gun owners, said Lisa Dean, vice president of the conservative Free Congress Foundation.
"Privacy groups should take a stand. It's critical that privacy groups look beyond the gun-control issue and start looking at exactly what this is going to mean to them in the future," Dean said. "This is numbering and tracking citizens."
Liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have not opposed the FBI's plan to record personal information about gun buyers. EPIC director Marc Rotenberg likened the plan to driver licensing, adding that privacy safeguards should be in place.
our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty.
Never mind. I know exactly why it was modded "-1 Troll."
I should also have added that the "Net" in the title is not only a business term, but (I believe) a reference to the Internet. The "Assets" are space enthusiasts. Much of the design work for the spaceship in the novel is "open source" in order to keep costs down. The Launcher Company solicited help on its web site, where the merits were openly debated on the forums. The comany's engineers would read the forums, looking for good ideas. Anyone whose idea was used was paid some type of fee.
Which let him mesh well with Hank. "Pay no attention to the
man behind the curtain," he orated. "Neville's got the idea that this
started on the 'Net, and oughta stay there. Wants us to.... opensource
everything we do, put it on the Internet for continuous peer
review, as it were. Idea's that with millions of people all over the
world looking over our shoulders and making suggestions, we're
bound to pick up sporadic good ideas. And it's bound to be
cheaper than putting several hundred more engineers and techs on
the payroll," he finished cynically.
A fictional novel of a privately built launch vehicle, and what the government does to stop it.
Available for free at http://netassetsbook.com/. I'd suggest the PDF version (1 MB), since some of the formatting in the HTML version is screwed up, and makes reading some parts difficult (mainly forgetting/I tags).
"Once upon a time, there was an agency of the American government called the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA was tasked with the exploration and development of space. Being a government agency, it was very bad at the job. But also, being a government agency, NASA made damned sure that no one else would do a better job.
Now we just need to combine the watch/PDA with this:
The Ultimate Defense Band: Turn Your Wristwatch into a Defensive Weapon
Posted on Friday, March 19 @ 13:59:58 PST
by David Crane
It's pretty much common knowledge that we're primarily gun guys here at DefRev. However, this one's a nifty little item. It was just brought to our attention by Chuck Habermehl. Chuck runs Close Quarters Battle (CQB), Inc. (the name is self explanatory), and he is an expert in both armed and unarmed (hand-to-hand/hand-to-weapon) combat.
"The Ultimate Defense Band", made by Attitude Athletic Apparel, "is based on the (now ubiquitous) Sleeve Choke", a popular Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu submission technique. According to the company, the Ultimate Defense Band "will allow you to secure your attacker in no time without using excessive or lethal force".
By the way, Mr. Habermehl pretty much raved about this item. He believes that every street cop, SWAT operator, and military Special Operator should have one of these on their wrist, once they are trained in the appropriate submission choking techniques.
Price on The Ultimate Defense Band is $19.95 US + shipping.
If you're interested in acquiring The Ultimate Defense Band, you can order one by calling 866-667-6923 (toll free) or 310-325-6333. You can also reach Attitude Athletic Apparel via email at sales@attitudeapparel.com.
And white people just don't blend in everywhere. During the Cold War black intelligence agents sometimes felt that their career growth was stunted because the best assignments were in the USSR and black people just didn't fit in there.
We need to go to war against Canada or England so we can make better use of our human capital.
Science Fiction author Larry Niven needs no introduction. In his stories and collaborations, he has created some of the most imaginative and advanced spacecraft concepts ever conceived. Aldo Spadoni is an aerospace engineer and conceptual designer, specializing in the realistic design and visualization of future technology. Larry and Aldo have been collaborating to visually bring to life these wonderful spacecraft and other advanced technological concepts, as described in Larry's stories. The detailed designs are being developed by Aldo using aerospace industry systems engineering principles
MICHAEL is an example of this endeavor. FOOTFALL by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle is a classic story of alien invasion. The invading Fithp force the human race into a condition of servile surrender. In secrecy, humanity builds a battleship named MICHAEL, a nuclear powered mountain of steel to rise up into space and do battle with the aliens on their own turf. MICHAEL is based on the nuclear pulse propulsion concept developed under Project ORION (1958 - 1965).
Aldo Spadoni is President of Aerospace Imagineering , a consulting firm specializing in advanced technology conceptual design and visualization for the aerospace, publishing, television, and motion picture industries. For more information about the Niven Project, please contact us at aldo@alum.mit.edu.
All imagery is copyrighted (C) 2001 by Aerospace Imagineering and Aldo Spadoni. All rights reserved.
Re:Special 'Delivery' Instructions
on
Space Burial
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· Score: 1
PS: Please aim at the section of space that in the 23rd century will be off limits to all spacefarers, in which resides the Genesis planet. Please make sure to also provide good embalming and a capsule capable of shielding body from cosmic rays.
Screw the Genesis Planet. I want to go to Talos IVbefore I die.
We've had the technology to build a sleeper ship for the past five years, now.
Just Drop Into the Sun from Sail Ship
on
Space Burial
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Actually, flying straight the sun is very difficult.
If you are pushed a hair off course, your remains will go into orbit around the sun, or be blown outward by the solar winds.
Even if you aim precisely at the sun, the ever increasing pressure of the solar discharge will tend to push you off course and away.
So don't push the body into the sun from orbit.
Do it from a solar sail craft that is hovering over the sun (from a point where light pressure is balanced between gravitational pull), and just drop the body in.
As far as I know, the idea belongs to Bob L. Forward. That's how one of the characters is "buried" at the end of his novel Flight of the Dragonfly (which was later re-published in bloated form as Rocheworld; get the original).
Since the light sail craft was not in orbit, there was no forward component of motion. Thus, when released from the craft, the body was not in orbit either. The only force acting on the body was the gravitational pull of the star.
The videotape shows a dark-haired man approach Carlie, grab her arm and speak to her briefly before leading her away Sunday.
The footage does not clearly show the man's face, but he appears to be wearing a uniform and has tattoos on his arms. Smith also has tattoos on his arms, authorities said.
Smith was arrested Tuesday after tips from members of the community, authorities said. A woman who said she lives with Smith told CNN she turned him in after seeing the surveillance video on television.
The sheriff called the owners of the car wash "heroes" for providing the videotape and said he wanted the public to know that Smith never worked there.
Slashdot Mirror
A few years ago, Moore had an ex-employee arrested, when said employee tried to get an interview with him.
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/regio nal/061700ny-col-tierney.html
Dr. Sam Beckett travels through time (perhaps rescuing Kirk from the Nexus before Picard gets to him?), corrects all the inconsistencies in the Star Trek canon, and then quantum leaps out of Captain Archer's body.
Like Battlestar Galactica , somebody will eventually re-make Star Wars a few decades from now.
In the new version, Luke Skywalker will be a woman...
from Dr. Fegg's Encyclopedia of All World Knowledge
::Note::
Dr. Fegg has only ever written one national anthem. Here it is, reproduced for the first time. Dr. Fegg would like to remind all his readers that he has not yet been paid for it.
-The Gambian National Anthem-
Gambia, Oh Gambia,
Though only small and thin,
When it comes to being called Gambia,
You are the one to win.
Your capital is Bathurst
A name that means so much
To you who live in Gambia,
Though less so to the Dutch.
Gambia, where men are men
And trees fit in the ground.
The one six-lettered nation
Where Gambians abound!
Gambians! O Gambians!
Though your country is so thin
And most of it a river
It's the place that you live in.
From mountains down to flat bits,
Ring out your anthem great,
Though now you're part of Senegal
The words are out of date.
-Bertram Wesley Fegg DD
WARNING: Humming of this anthem, even to oneself, renders the reader liable for royalty payments. These should be sent to Dr. Fegg personally and *not*, repeat *not* to the chisellers at the Gambian embassy.
Many people ask: What is Dr. Fegg a doctor *of*? Well, without going into specifics Dr. Fegg has tried his hand at many things in his time.
His is the sort of mind that can encompass deck chair repairing, sweeping, billposting and the buying and selling of cars with one previous owner. So it is perhaps unfair and irrelevant to confine his extraordinary talents to the mundane world of labels and categories.
Dr. Fegg *has* delivered babies, but only during the busy pre-Christmas period when the Post Office can't cope. And Dr. Fegg has done brain surgery-- though *never*, repeat *never* in the Bournemouth area.
Maybe that's the purpose of the movie?
The first couple of paragraphs in the following column are political commentary, so feel free to skip them and get straight to the scientific criticism of the movie.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28338-20 04May14?language=printer
Actually, it turns out many of his critics aren't very good scientists.
from http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/004625.shtml
No word of an apology nor headlines declaring Lomborg vindicated.
Posted by Ronald Bailey at March 12, 2004 03:27 PMReferences to cel phones and electricity generated by the human body, and there still isn't a single Matrix joke?
"Now I've got enough money to build my robot. My girl robot. This is going to be the best prom ever."
due to arrive in 2005
Shouldn't that be Pentium MMV?
Maybe the just forgot.
Janus was also the Russian mafia crime boss in the James Bond movie Goldeneye who **** SPOIILER ALERT *** turned out to be 006.
http://volokh.com/2004_03_14_volokh_archive.html#1 07922202284050918
[Eugene Volokh, 3/15/2004 07:53:35 AM]
Calling people traitors: As readers of this blog know, I've been quite critical of people calling others "traitors" simply because they disagree with them about the war or about foreign policy. There should be plenty of room in civil debate for good-faith disagreement about what's good for the country. Moreover, decent Americans can still sometimes consider the legitimate interests beyond the American national interest -- for instance, they might oppose an attack on some country because of a concern about the country's innocent citizens, whether or not the attack is in the interests of America's citizens. It's neither fair nor productive to reduce legitimate policy disagreements to accusations of lack of patriotism, or, worse still, treason?
But if this is true, then what's with all this that we've been hearing about "Benedict Arnold CEOs"? There are lots of hard and interesting questions about how American businessmen should deal with international competition. Some think that outsourcing is on balance bad for America, others think it's good. Some think that businessmen should focus first and foremost on the interests of America generally, others that businessmen should primarily serve the interests of their shareholders (within, of course, the boundaries of the law) -- or that outsourcing helps both shareholders and, ultimately, America generally, since without it we'd lose our competitive edge and thus have to lay off even more people. Reasonable minds can differ on this. But there's no justification for waging this battle through slurs and insults, and allusions (even if clearly hyperbolic) to a man whose name has become a snonym for "traitor."
But if I'm mistaken, and "Benedict Arnold" is permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose economic policies you think undermine the American national interest, then why isn't "traitor" permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose foreign policy you think undermines the American national interest?
The ACLU has not problem duplicating the efforts of Planned Parenthood and NARAL. They seem quite zealous about devoting a dispraportionate amount of effort to reproductive rights.
I don't know why this is "-1 Troll." The parent post has a valid point about the hypocrisy of the ACLU.
Wired reported in another story about a lawsuit against the government for it's failure to destroy certain database records (emphasis added):
Yet Slashdotters bitch and complain when the state of Florida wants to retain driving records for 3 months.
Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU, has stated that
Never mind. I know exactly why it was modded "-1 Troll."
Alaska and Hawaii weren't states during World War II, so "continental US" is redundant. They were both admitted into the union in 1959.
I should also have added that the "Net" in the title is not only a business term, but (I believe) a reference to the Internet. The "Assets" are space enthusiasts. Much of the design work for the spaceship in the novel is "open source" in order to keep costs down. The Launcher Company solicited help on its web site, where the merits were openly debated on the forums. The comany's engineers would read the forums, looking for good ideas. Anyone whose idea was used was paid some type of fee.
Available for free at http://netassetsbook.com/. I'd suggest the PDF version (1 MB), since some of the formatting in the HTML version is screwed up, and makes reading some parts difficult (mainly forgetting
re: About 6 years behind the time.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Luddite.com, which has been around for at least 6 years.
They even have wooden cases for Macs.
When is Meow TV (the complete series) coming out on DVD?
Only 2% of Canada's population and 4% of Britain's population are black, compared to 13% of the U.S. population.
Screw the Genesis Planet. I want to go to Talos IV before I die.
We've had the technology to build a sleeper ship for the past five years, now.
So don't push the body into the sun from orbit.
Do it from a solar sail craft that is hovering over the sun (from a point where light pressure is balanced between gravitational pull), and just drop the body in.
As far as I know, the idea belongs to Bob L. Forward. That's how one of the characters is "buried" at the end of his novel Flight of the Dragonfly (which was later re-published in bloated form as Rocheworld; get the original).
Since the light sail craft was not in orbit, there was no forward component of motion. Thus, when released from the craft, the body was not in orbit either. The only force acting on the body was the gravitational pull of the star.