There are some things you need to know about Oregon for this article to make total sense. I used to live there, and if any of this has changed in the past 5 years, would an Oregonian please correct me?
Oregon does not have sales tax. Which means that the state doesn't have much money. Therefore, Oregon has some of the worst roads I have ever been on. North of the Rio Grande, that is. Now people in Oregon are unlikely to want to give up their right to not pay sales tax, because Oregon is mainly populated by both types of the Libertarian genus (Hippie and Mountain Man). The only way that Oregon could get people to pay for the roads is by direct tax, and this GPS system seems lerss enviromentally intrusive than setting up toll booth all over the state (another important Oregon consideration).
water-proof books make good sellers
on
Waterproof Books
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I know the title is gramatically painful, but bear with me.
I work in a bookstore, and the Aqua Erotica books mentioned in the article have sold very well for us. When the books first arrived this summer, we at the store thought the whole concept of having a water-proof book was interesting and decided to test it out. We took a small round fishbowl and filled it with water, submerging the book inside. This was left on the counter right in front of the register, and resulted in many impulse buys. The buyers tended to be owners of pools, hottubs, or the kind of people who spend a lot of time in the tub. Now we have another series of waterproof books on display, and these are scaled and shaped like a bar of soap, so they fit right into the soap dish in your tub.
I think that the waterproof book idea has the potential to really take off. I wouldn't be suprised to see that populist paperback fare known as "beach books" being offered in waterproof form in a few years. Not the entire printing, but waterproof books might fill a niche with a size and scope comperable to that of large-print books.
Which orbital space plane? The space shuttle replacement that Congress just refused to pay for, or the escape glider that Congress cut off the budget a few years back? Or maybe you're refering to the secret super-shuttles that they used in Armageddon?
I agree with you that the ISS seems nothing more to the state department than a bargaining chip with the Russians. As such, the station has been screwed from day 1.
I think this is just a PR move on NASA's part to try to get some money from the Russians. This whole station has been a fiasco because of American Congressional insistance that Russia be involved, and now NASA is tired of dragging them along. Not only does this look like a turf fight between NASA and Russia, it all smells of a turf fight between NASA and congress. I've been following this for a while, and this is some of the background you need to know.
1) What's wrong with mothballing ISS for a year or two? Well, if it's anything like Mir, and by which I mean it has people on board, it will, if not properly maintained, fill up with fun things like fungus and mold. Mir had problems where a computer would short out, and they'd open up panel to fix it and find that all of the circuit boards were covered in a sticky, stinky blue-green mold. Or they couldn't see out of the windows because of the layer of film growing on them. Not fun. No wonder the crew spends so much time cleaning.
2) Wonder why only 3 people are on board a station designed for at least 7? How abour the fact that congress ccut the budget for a new 7-man escape module, so all they've got is an old 3-man Soyuz capsule lashed to the side of the station to get them out of trouble. And unlike the proposed and now cancelled escape craft, which would have been automated, the Soyuz needs a cosmonaut to bring it down, so the station must have a Russian pilot on board at all times doing housework, as opposed to someone useful like an ESA scientist would would have been on board anyways if they had a big enough escape pod.
3) Ever wonder why a station build and finance almost entirely by America has two Russians on board compared to one American. Is it because of their years of experience fighting mold and electrical fires on Mir, or is it because the State Department ordered NASA to through the Russians a bone. You be the judge!
4) Speaking of throwing the Russians a bone, the entire history of this station has been littered with decisions made solely to appease the Russians. Remember, the station is years behind schedule because some of the corecomponent modules had been assigned to the Russians. And the Russians were taking their sweet time putting said modules up. they kept claiming that money was a factor, but the fact of the matter is all of the Russian modules were paid for almost entirely with American funds. Sometimes a module would be on the pad ready to be launched and the Russians would hold on putting them up until they got even more money. the worst part is this was a State Department decision, not a NASA one. In fact, NASA at the time had a duplicate of every Russian module built and ready to go up 2-3 years before the Russians actually put them up, but were ordered by the American government to not use those modules and instead had to wait on the Russians.
5) What about money from space tourists being used to help save the station? Well, that might work if NASA allowed space tourists on their end, but they don't. It might also work if any of the money from spce tourism actually made it to the Russian space agency, but that doesn't happen either. I don't know the breakdown on where the money went from the two space tourists Russia has already sent up, but I do know that when the Russians put a giant Pizza Hut ad on the side of one of their rockets, the fee for the placement agency was 90%, and most of the rest of the money went staight into the pockets of the space agency heads. (BTW, a standard placement fee for advertising like that is around 10%).
The moral of this story: modern day Russian is full of corruption and graft, and is nowhere close to the technological creativity they displayed in the 1950's. They do still have, however, many nuclear weapons, so the United States gives them a reach around at every opportunity. I wish the Americans would evict the Russians from the station and replace them with the Europeans and the Japanese. Then we might actually see the station be good for something other than video clips on the news. Or news stories buried on page A72 of the paper describing how two male cosmonauts spent 6 months sexually harrasing a female American astronaut, and how NASA told her to shut up about the whole matter. YEAH RUSSIA! Make rocket go now!
Batman would win now, but what about OG Superman?
on
Superhero Smackdown
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· Score: 1
Sure Batman won in DKR with a Kryptonite ring, and even was able to pull off a nice Judo throw on the big S when they first met on the cartoon. But how do you think Batman would be able to handle the old-school, Silver Age Superman? The guy once accidentally bumped into a planet while flying through space AND KNOCKED IT OUT OF ORBIT! Could a physics geek please calculate the force need to do that. And Silver Age Superman was also the smartest person or Earth as well. I think one issue centred around him not being able to be every where at once so he cloned himself (this is where the Superman Red-Superman Blue story idea originated back in the 50's). Silver Age Superman was unstoppable, and that's one of the biggest reasons his readership dropped in the 60's and 70's. The stories were so wacky to put this god into a threatening situation that people lost interest.
And don't forget the power of the Superman from the movie. He was able to defeat phyics itself. When Lois dies in Superman I, Superman flies around the world, reversing its spin. But instead of only making the sun rise in the West and messing with the tides a bit, this make time go backwards. Do you really think Batman, esp. movie Batman, would have a chance against him? After the first Batman movie, I think Bats even lost his martial arts skills. This one would be no contest.
And finally, what about the Superman from the latest leaked script out of WB. You know the one that makes Kypton be still around and Luthor is super too and WB told the writer to steal all the kung fu and mesianic subtext from the Matrix? That Superman would destroy Batman. At least with Superman being a brawler Batman would be able to turn every haymaker into a Judo throw and wear Supes down to the point where a knee to the groin might mean something. But if Superman ever bothered to learn some martial arts, Batman might as well retire.
I concur with the B-2 equals UFO sightings idea. I was at Niagra Falls on Labour Day about 7 years ago. That weekend also features a big airshow in Toronto. We were walking away from the falls, facing north, and noticed a long black shape in the sky, looking very much like seeing a saucer shape from head on. There was a big crowd at the falls, and everyone was pointing and I heard exclamations in what seemed to be a dozen different languages. And since it was still a ways off, we couldn't hear a thing from the engines.
When the place finally banked so that we could see its shape, the crowd was even more shocked. It seems that the people were much more comfortable with the idea of a flying saucer that with a giant black bat-like warplane flying over head. The pilot probably just wanted to check out the falls on his way back to the States. I assume that wherever B-2's fly they get that kind of reaction, but how often do you think one cruises over a major tourist destination?
At the University of Toronto, which I just left, they allow no access to P2P programs during weekdays excpet for a midnight to 6 a.m. window, but downloading is fine on weekends (as long as you don't cap out). My college was the last on campus to limit usage (because, I suspect, we were the last to get added to the hi-speed backbone and somebody felt they owed us) and it was great fun to see familiar i.p.'s on the monthly top usage list. Number 1, the library; number 2, my buddy Frank down the hall; Number 3, my buddy Josh down the other way; Number 4, me!
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"...and after the show, the nVidia staff went out for pints of beer filled with beer. <P>Is this the kind of writing we get when buzz-words collide?
Slashdot Mirror
Oregon does not have sales tax. Which means that the state doesn't have much money. Therefore, Oregon has some of the worst roads I have ever been on. North of the Rio Grande, that is. Now people in Oregon are unlikely to want to give up their right to not pay sales tax, because Oregon is mainly populated by both types of the Libertarian genus (Hippie and Mountain Man). The only way that Oregon could get people to pay for the roads is by direct tax, and this GPS system seems lerss enviromentally intrusive than setting up toll booth all over the state (another important Oregon consideration).
I work in a bookstore, and the Aqua Erotica books mentioned in the article have sold very well for us. When the books first arrived this summer, we at the store thought the whole concept of having a water-proof book was interesting and decided to test it out. We took a small round fishbowl and filled it with water, submerging the book inside. This was left on the counter right in front of the register, and resulted in many impulse buys. The buyers tended to be owners of pools, hottubs, or the kind of people who spend a lot of time in the tub. Now we have another series of waterproof books on display, and these are scaled and shaped like a bar of soap, so they fit right into the soap dish in your tub.
I think that the waterproof book idea has the potential to really take off. I wouldn't be suprised to see that populist paperback fare known as "beach books" being offered in waterproof form in a few years. Not the entire printing, but waterproof books might fill a niche with a size and scope comperable to that of large-print books.
Which orbital space plane? The space shuttle replacement that Congress just refused to pay for, or the escape glider that Congress cut off the budget a few years back? Or maybe you're refering to the secret super-shuttles that they used in Armageddon? I agree with you that the ISS seems nothing more to the state department than a bargaining chip with the Russians. As such, the station has been screwed from day 1.
1) What's wrong with mothballing ISS for a year or two? Well, if it's anything like Mir, and by which I mean it has people on board, it will, if not properly maintained, fill up with fun things like fungus and mold. Mir had problems where a computer would short out, and they'd open up panel to fix it and find that all of the circuit boards were covered in a sticky, stinky blue-green mold. Or they couldn't see out of the windows because of the layer of film growing on them. Not fun. No wonder the crew spends so much time cleaning.
2) Wonder why only 3 people are on board a station designed for at least 7? How abour the fact that congress ccut the budget for a new 7-man escape module, so all they've got is an old 3-man Soyuz capsule lashed to the side of the station to get them out of trouble. And unlike the proposed and now cancelled escape craft, which would have been automated, the Soyuz needs a cosmonaut to bring it down, so the station must have a Russian pilot on board at all times doing housework, as opposed to someone useful like an ESA scientist would would have been on board anyways if they had a big enough escape pod.
3) Ever wonder why a station build and finance almost entirely by America has two Russians on board compared to one American. Is it because of their years of experience fighting mold and electrical fires on Mir, or is it because the State Department ordered NASA to through the Russians a bone. You be the judge!
4) Speaking of throwing the Russians a bone, the entire history of this station has been littered with decisions made solely to appease the Russians. Remember, the station is years behind schedule because some of the corecomponent modules had been assigned to the Russians. And the Russians were taking their sweet time putting said modules up. they kept claiming that money was a factor, but the fact of the matter is all of the Russian modules were paid for almost entirely with American funds. Sometimes a module would be on the pad ready to be launched and the Russians would hold on putting them up until they got even more money. the worst part is this was a State Department decision, not a NASA one. In fact, NASA at the time had a duplicate of every Russian module built and ready to go up 2-3 years before the Russians actually put them up, but were ordered by the American government to not use those modules and instead had to wait on the Russians.
5) What about money from space tourists being used to help save the station? Well, that might work if NASA allowed space tourists on their end, but they don't. It might also work if any of the money from spce tourism actually made it to the Russian space agency, but that doesn't happen either. I don't know the breakdown on where the money went from the two space tourists Russia has already sent up, but I do know that when the Russians put a giant Pizza Hut ad on the side of one of their rockets, the fee for the placement agency was 90%, and most of the rest of the money went staight into the pockets of the space agency heads. (BTW, a standard placement fee for advertising like that is around 10%).
The moral of this story: modern day Russian is full of corruption and graft, and is nowhere close to the technological creativity they displayed in the 1950's. They do still have, however, many nuclear weapons, so the United States gives them a reach around at every opportunity. I wish the Americans would evict the Russians from the station and replace them with the Europeans and the Japanese. Then we might actually see the station be good for something other than video clips on the news. Or news stories buried on page A72 of the paper describing how two male cosmonauts spent 6 months sexually harrasing a female American astronaut, and how NASA told her to shut up about the whole matter. YEAH RUSSIA! Make rocket go now!
And don't forget the power of the Superman from the movie. He was able to defeat phyics itself. When Lois dies in Superman I, Superman flies around the world, reversing its spin. But instead of only making the sun rise in the West and messing with the tides a bit, this make time go backwards. Do you really think Batman, esp. movie Batman, would have a chance against him? After the first Batman movie, I think Bats even lost his martial arts skills. This one would be no contest.
And finally, what about the Superman from the latest leaked script out of WB. You know the one that makes Kypton be still around and Luthor is super too and WB told the writer to steal all the kung fu and mesianic subtext from the Matrix? That Superman would destroy Batman. At least with Superman being a brawler Batman would be able to turn every haymaker into a Judo throw and wear Supes down to the point where a knee to the groin might mean something. But if Superman ever bothered to learn some martial arts, Batman might as well retire.
And what aboutthe floppy drive? Those things are rarely used these days, but can be terribly noisy.
When the place finally banked so that we could see its shape, the crowd was even more shocked. It seems that the people were much more comfortable with the idea of a flying saucer that with a giant black bat-like warplane flying over head. The pilot probably just wanted to check out the falls on his way back to the States. I assume that wherever B-2's fly they get that kind of reaction, but how often do you think one cruises over a major tourist destination?
At the University of Toronto, which I just left, they allow no access to P2P programs during weekdays excpet for a midnight to 6 a.m. window, but downloading is fine on weekends (as long as you don't cap out). My college was the last on campus to limit usage (because, I suspect, we were the last to get added to the hi-speed backbone and somebody felt they owed us) and it was great fun to see familiar i.p.'s on the monthly top usage list. Number 1, the library; number 2, my buddy Frank down the hall; Number 3, my buddy Josh down the other way; Number 4, me!
"This is intended to allow real-time cinematic effects in real-time"...and after the show, the nVidia staff went out for pints of beer filled with beer.
<P>Is this the kind of writing we get when buzz-words collide?