The geek in me says this would be extremely cool (from the technology point of view). Picture this. The Google phone service analyzes your conversation (no data is permanently stored... must do no evil remember). When certain key words are found, Google flags your phone to download certain advertisements to say, your background image. Each time you open your phone to use it, you see a new advertisement targeted to you based on your previous conversation. Add to this a browser, and you could quickly and easily purchase what your are being advertised using your phone. On a related note, I think it'd be incredibly cool if Google had something which could automatically run a speech recognition algorithm on your voicemail. I could imagine them offering something similar to the iPhone's visual voicemail, with the additional feature that it'd show a rough text summary of each voicemail in your inbox.
Maybe they could even do something similar to what their recently acquisition GrandCentral does, and save recordings of conversations (notifying both parties). Apply speech-to-text on that, and one's phone conversations and voicemail could be part of the "Chats" item in Gmail, and could be included in text searches.
> How bad would it be if Google had some voice recognition built-in, which LISTENED to your conversations, gathered keywords, and served you ads based on what you talk about?
Google already reads my email conversations, gathers keywords, and serves me ads based on what I talk about. Some people care about that, but I actually don't mind.
Considering that the 2.4GHz band is already free and open, it would be pretty weird to buy another band for billions when all the project is trying to achieve is in the realms of complicated logistics.
I would assume that they would want the 700mhz spectrum because of the increased range and permeability. With 2.4GHz, it's pretty much impossible not to have gaps in the network. With 700mhz though, it's possible (with either a centralized or decentralized network) to have the sort of ubiquity which Google seems to crave.
> However there is no way - evar - that I would want to hear anyone I know butchering the lyrics to great songs in my livingroom.
The number of people who do karaoke is probably at least an order of magnitude larger than the combined number of people who play Guitar Hero, DDR, DrumMania, etc.
> It's never just about having money to buy stuff. You also need to make extra investments and assets to buy this kind of infrastructure. And they cost a lot of money.
Good point. Even though Google might technically be able to win the bid, they don't have the same sort of traditional telecom assets as the other companies.
One off-the-cuff idea though: What if they're planning on doing something very non-traditional? For example, I could envision them trying to do something similar to FON, selling 700mhz Wifi routers to people with some kind of profit-sharing scheme.
Here's the "Cash and Short Term Investments" figures for Google, AT&T, and Verizon:
Google: $11,935,920
AT&T: $2,364,000
Verizon: $3,450,000 Oh, whoops, in case it wasn't readily apparent in my original post, all of those figures are in thousands of $US. In other words, that's around $11.9 billion for google, $2.3 billion for AT&T,and $3.4 billion for Verizon.
Also, on Google's Public Policy blog they flat-out say they haven't decided yet if they'll bid or not:
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/07/sig ns-of-real-progress-at-fcc.html
Just two months ago, the notion that the FCC would take such a big step forward to give consumers meaningful choice through this auction seemed unlikely at best. Today -- thanks in no small part to broad public support for greater competition -- the FCC has embraced important principles of openness, and endorsed the unfettered workings of the free market for software applications and communications devices. Moreover, over the last few weeks several leading wireless carriers have reversed course and for the first time acknowledged our call for more open platforms in wireless networks. By any measure, that's real progress.
By the same token, it would have a more complete victory for consumers had the FCC adopted all four of the license conditions that we advocated, in order to pave the way for the real "third pipe" broadband competition that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has been touting. For our part, we will need time to carefully study the actual text of the FCC's rules, due out in a few weeks, before we can make any definitive decisions about our possible participation in the auction.
They don't have the political connections or the ENORMOUS resources that AT&T/Cingular has.
I could be wrong, but I think Google might actually be able to outbid AT&T and the other telcos. I'm not certain, but I think the relevant financial statistic for an auction is "Cash and Short Term Investments," which is what they could make readily available to use for bidding. Here's the "Cash and Short Term Investments" figures for Google, AT&T, and Verizon:
Not necessarily. An employee can search his place of work without it being trespass.
Sure, because they've already been permission to be on the premises.
But you have drifted away from my central point - if a human can do it, then it is not unreasonable on its own. If a human requires a machine to do it, then questions of 'reasonableness' arise. It's not private-citizen versus public-official, it's reasonable versus unreasonable given the context in which the 4th amendment was authored.
I guess this is where we disagree. I contend that if a machine is used to do something that doesn't automatically make it unreasonable. The Supreme Court seems to agree, as they've permitted the use of data from satellites and helicopters, albeit with some caveats. My personal stance is that the police should be able to use any technology which is available to the average consumer.
It might mean that it is illegal to crawl flikr and compile a database of faces and locations though.
Part of my point is that it should never be illegal to run an algorithm on publically accessible data.
I don't get it, technology makes it easier to set up 24/7 surveillance, it doesn't affect at all what I notice walking down the street. How is that making the dividing line thin? If anything, it is getting further apart as surveillance technologies become more and more blatant.
How so? We're getting to the point where within a few years we're probably going to have the majority of the populace carrying around cell phones with cameras in their pockets, and have the capability to stream photos/videos to the interweb at a whim. Cameras will be accessible to the average consumer that will be easily concealed, and the younger generations (including my own) already take it for granted that their friends will be taking constant photos of them.
>>> I know a lot of people think it's a funny idea, but prison sodomy is actually not very funny at all. It can lead to the transmission of AIDS, HIV, or other diseases. It can lead to a destroyed psyche. There is, of course, the brutal physical damage it causes. So it's really not humorous at all.
> Jeez, what do you want in Prison, Club Med?
What do you think the reaction would be if a large percentage of the prisoners captured in Iraq were ass-raped?
> Even if you were allowed yo set up the camera in the first place, in Europe personal information is owned by that person, irrespective of who collects it. You would need the permission of everyone passing by to collect and store the information, and you would also need to provide a mechanism for people to find out what information you are storing on them and a mechanism for them to correct errors in the database.
Does this mean that it's illegal to have a webcam in a public place in parts of Europe, or to upload photos taken in public places to Flickr?
> There is a difference between noticing things pass by on a public street, and setting up an automatic system for pervasive surveillance. For some reason, it seems that many slashdotters don't recognize a difference?!?!
Because technology is making the dividing line between the two increasingly thin.
Although actually, now that I think about it, I hope that those wouldn't be Sony exclusives, as both of those games would be awesome with a Wii control scheme. A Wii Remote would be great for controlling the Lemmings cursor, or twisting around to perform Uniracer stunts.
For example, private citizens do not need a warrant to search for court admissible evidence, but if they do it at the request of the police, they do need a warrant.
Unless I'm mistaken, isn't that generally called trespassing when private citizens do that?
In any case, if private citizens put together a website which contained the data from license-plate tracking, do you think the police should be allowed to visit the website and use information from it?
> The point is that technology is being used to augment what a normal person is capable of. The issue isn't whether it is possible today, it is whether it is reasonable given the conditions under which the 4th Amendment was written.
I believe that it should be technologically possible and legal for a group of citizens to setup a network of license plate scanning webcams. If a group of private citizens can do it, then the police should be able to do it to, or at least look at the website where they post their information.
If it is not reasonable to expect a person or an affordable group of people to achieve the same results, then it should be considered an unreasonable search.
How is it not reasonable? It seems like it'd be quite straightforward for a group of volunteers with webcams sticking out of their windows to achieve something similar independent of the government. I actually think it'd be quite interesting to have something like that for tracking the whereabouts of the vehicles of politicians and lobbyists.
I've posted a relevant portion of the proposed regulations below, regarding what will and won't need a permit:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/news/080107_prop osed_permit_rules.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/downloads/pdf/moftb_p ermit_regs.pdf
Section 9-01. Permits for Scouting, Rigging and Production Activities. (a) Introduction. The Mayor's Office of Film Theatre and Broadcasting ("MOFTB") shall issue permits in connection with filming, including but not limited to the taking of motion pictures; the taking of photographs; the use and operation of television cameras, transmitting television equipment, or radio remotes in or about city property; load-ins or load-outs supporting 1 indoor performances; or such activities in or about any street, park, marginal street, pier, wharf, dock, bridge or tunnel within the jurisdiction of any City department or agency, or involving the use of any City owned or maintained facilities or equipment. As defined herein, MOFTB will issue permits for scouting, rigging and shooting activities. Obtaining such a permit does not obviate the need to obtain approval for an activity that may also be subject to other laws, rules or case law. (b) Permits. (1) The following activities require that a permit be obtained pursuant to this chapter: (i) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, that uses vehicles or equipment, except as described in subparagraphs (2)(i) and (ii) of this subdivision; (ii) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving an interaction among two or more people at a single site for thirty or more minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities; or (iii) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving an interaction among five or more people at a single site and the use of a single tripod for ten or more minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities. (2) The following activities do not require that a permit be obtained pursuant to this chapter: (i) Filming or photography occurring on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving the use of a hand-held device as defined in paragraph three of subdivision (a) of 9-02, provided that such activity does not involve an interaction among two or more people at a single site for thirty or more minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities. (ii) Filming or photography occurring on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving the use of a single tripod, provided that such activity does not involve an interaction among five or more people at a single site and the use of a single tripod for ten or more minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities. (iii) Filming or photography of a parade, rally, protest, or demonstration except when using vehicles or equipment other than a handheld device or single tripod. I'm rather curious about how they're defining a "tripod." For example, what if somebody has a Gorillapod or a string tripod?
Its still legal to make satire, and ridicule politician. You just can't use footage taken from inside the Beehive (The New Zealand parliament)
I'm really curious about what would happen if someone tried to do this internationally. For example, if the Daily Show in the US put together a satire of the New Zealand parliament, and then one of the writers, producers, or actors ended up travelling to New Zealand. It would be a very interesting international incident if they were arrested.
Preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper
Dmitriy A. Dikin1, Sasha Stankovich1, Eric J. Zimney1, Richard D. Piner1, Geoffrey H. B. Dommett1, Guennadi Evmenenko2, SonBinh T. Nguyen3 & Rodney S. Ruoff1
Free-standing paper-like or foil-like materials are an integral part of our technological society. Their uses include protective layers, chemical filters, components of electrical batteries or supercapacitors, adhesive layers, electronic or optoelectronic components, and molecular storage1. Inorganic 'paper-like' materials based on nanoscale components such as exfoliated vermiculite or mica platelets have been intensively studied2, 3 and commercialized as protective coatings, high-temperature binders, dielectric barriers and gas-impermeable membranes4,5. Carbon-based flexible graphite foils5, 6, 7 composed of stacked platelets of expanded graphite have long been used8, 9 in packing and gasketing applications because of their chemical resistivity against most media, superior sealability over a wide temperature range, and impermeability to fluids. The discovery of carbon nanotubes brought about bucky paper10, which displays excellent mechanical and electrical properties that make it potentially suitable for fuel cell and structural composite applications11, 12, 13, 14. Here we report the preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper, a free-standing carbon-based membrane material made by flow-directed assembly of individual graphene oxide sheets. This new material outperforms many other paper-like materials in stiffness and strength. Its combination of macroscopic flexibility and stiffness is a result of a unique interlocking-tile arrangement of the nanoscale graphene oxide sheets.
Keep in mind that astronauts do most of their "flying" in T-38's (two seaters that are often likened to "astronaut taxis"). It's quite possible that the specific incidents revolve around T-38 use.
I haven't said anything about the "drunk astronauts" story, but I do think that it epitomizes the atrocious state of reporting on space (and any technical subject), in which it becomes sensationalized and drained of reality. Everyone assumes that the two incidents referred to were Shuttle launches, when the word I get is that it was a T-38 and a Soyuz flight. And of course it has become inflated from two (anecdotal) incidents to everyone doing shooters before each Shuttle flight. The real story, as Jim Oberg points out in this interview with a terminally clueless BBC reporter, is the special treatment of astronauts, and the (lack of sufficient) power of the flight surgeons (at least in their minds) to ground them. Of course, this is a tough problem, as we saw in the Nowak case.
There is a natural antipathy between the astronauts and the flight surgeons. From an astronaut's point of view, an encounter with the latter can't have a good outcome. At best, it can be a neutral one. The default is that one's flight readiness is go. A flight surgeon can't improve that--they can only change it for the worse. If one is sick enough to need to get permission to go, it's unlikely to happen, since there are many trained backups, even for a given mission, who are fine. Recall Apollo XIII, when Ken Mattingly had to be replaced by Jack Swigert because he had merely been exposed to German measles, due to concern that he might come down with it during the mission. He ended up not getting them, and while the decision made sense, he had to feel frustrated (though obviously not as much as he would have had the mission been successful).
It's not a new problem, and it's not one likely to go away, but it would help if the media would treat it seriously. Not to mention soberly.
Please don't mod the parent post down -- I asked him to post his content here so we could take a look at it and better evaluate his claims. I actually disagree with his claims and his viewpoint, but he shouldn't be penalized for what I asked him to do.
Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.
Could you post the relevant content here, so we could look at it ourselves? Given the OP, I don't think it would be off-topic.
According to local media reports, there has been a fatal explosion at a rocket test stand at Mojave Airport, home to a number of entrepreneurial space companies. Two people were killed and four people were injured. The company involved hasn't been identified; according to an amalgam of the sketchy reports available so far, it involved a nitrous oxide "flash explosion" on a test stand.... According to KBAK-TV, the explosion took place at a Scaled Composites facility at the airport, but the TV station said they didn't know yet if any Scaled employees were among the casualties.
The programming section of the library was right next to the UFO section of the library, so I got quite a bit of exposure to the [k]ook section, as well.
Hah, the same thing happened to me when I was in elementary school. The Dewey Decimal System always placed the programming bookshelf right next to the paranormal bookshelf, so when I read through the programming books I'd inevitably end up reading through plenty of books on UFOs/Bigfoot/Nessie/etc., and believing pretty much everything in them.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they could even do something similar to what their recently acquisition GrandCentral does, and save recordings of conversations (notifying both parties). Apply speech-to-text on that, and one's phone conversations and voicemail could be part of the "Chats" item in Gmail, and could be included in text searches.
> How bad would it be if Google had some voice recognition built-in, which LISTENED to your conversations, gathered keywords, and served you ads based on what you talk about?
Google already reads my email conversations, gathers keywords, and serves me ads based on what I talk about. Some people care about that, but I actually don't mind.
Considering that the 2.4GHz band is already free and open, it would be pretty weird to buy another band for billions when all the project is trying to achieve is in the realms of complicated logistics.
I would assume that they would want the 700mhz spectrum because of the increased range and permeability. With 2.4GHz, it's pretty much impossible not to have gaps in the network. With 700mhz though, it's possible (with either a centralized or decentralized network) to have the sort of ubiquity which Google seems to crave.
> However there is no way - evar - that I would want to hear anyone I know butchering the lyrics to great songs in my livingroom.
The number of people who do karaoke is probably at least an order of magnitude larger than the combined number of people who play Guitar Hero, DDR, DrumMania, etc.
> It's never just about having money to buy stuff. You also need to make extra investments and assets to buy this kind of infrastructure. And they cost a lot of money.
Good point. Even though Google might technically be able to win the bid, they don't have the same sort of traditional telecom assets as the other companies.
One off-the-cuff idea though: What if they're planning on doing something very non-traditional? For example, I could envision them trying to do something similar to FON, selling 700mhz Wifi routers to people with some kind of profit-sharing scheme.
Google: $11,935,920
AT&T: $2,364,000
Verizon: $3,450,000 Oh, whoops, in case it wasn't readily apparent in my original post, all of those figures are in thousands of $US. In other words, that's around $11.9 billion for google, $2.3 billion for AT&T
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2007/07/si
By the same token, it would have a more complete victory for consumers had the FCC adopted all four of the license conditions that we advocated, in order to pave the way for the real "third pipe" broadband competition that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has been touting. For our part, we will need time to carefully study the actual text of the FCC's rules, due out in a few weeks, before we can make any definitive decisions about our possible participation in the auction.
They don't have the political connections or the ENORMOUS resources that AT&T/Cingular has.
I could be wrong, but I think Google might actually be able to outbid AT&T and the other telcos. I'm not certain, but I think the relevant financial statistic for an auction is "Cash and Short Term Investments," which is what they could make readily available to use for bidding. Here's the "Cash and Short Term Investments" figures for Google, AT&T, and Verizon:
Google: $11,935,920
AT&T: $2,364,000
Verizon: $3,450,000
Not necessarily. An employee can search his place of work without it being trespass.
Sure, because they've already been permission to be on the premises.
But you have drifted away from my central point - if a human can do it, then it is not unreasonable on its own. If a human requires a machine to do it, then questions of 'reasonableness' arise. It's not private-citizen versus public-official, it's reasonable versus unreasonable given the context in which the 4th amendment was authored.
I guess this is where we disagree. I contend that if a machine is used to do something that doesn't automatically make it unreasonable. The Supreme Court seems to agree, as they've permitted the use of data from satellites and helicopters, albeit with some caveats. My personal stance is that the police should be able to use any technology which is available to the average consumer.
It might mean that it is illegal to crawl flikr and compile a database of faces and locations though.
Part of my point is that it should never be illegal to run an algorithm on publically accessible data.
I don't get it, technology makes it easier to set up 24/7 surveillance, it doesn't affect at all what I notice walking down the street. How is that making the dividing line thin? If anything, it is getting further apart as surveillance technologies become more and more blatant.
How so? We're getting to the point where within a few years we're probably going to have the majority of the populace carrying around cell phones with cameras in their pockets, and have the capability to stream photos/videos to the interweb at a whim. Cameras will be accessible to the average consumer that will be easily concealed, and the younger generations (including my own) already take it for granted that their friends will be taking constant photos of them.
>>> I know a lot of people think it's a funny idea, but prison sodomy is actually not very funny at all. It can lead to the transmission of AIDS, HIV, or other diseases. It can lead to a destroyed psyche. There is, of course, the brutal physical damage it causes. So it's really not humorous at all.
> Jeez, what do you want in Prison, Club Med?
What do you think the reaction would be if a large percentage of the prisoners captured in Iraq were ass-raped?
> Even if you were allowed yo set up the camera in the first place, in Europe personal information is owned by that person, irrespective of who collects it. You would need the permission of everyone passing by to collect and store the information, and you would also need to provide a mechanism for people to find out what information you are storing on them and a mechanism for them to correct errors in the database.
Does this mean that it's illegal to have a webcam in a public place in parts of Europe, or to upload photos taken in public places to Flickr?
> There is a difference between noticing things pass by on a public street, and setting up an automatic system for pervasive surveillance. For some reason, it seems that many slashdotters don't recognize a difference?!?!
Because technology is making the dividing line between the two increasingly thin.
Hey, maybe Rockstar will go back to its DMA Design roots and bring back Lemmings or Uniracers.
Although actually, now that I think about it, I hope that those wouldn't be Sony exclusives, as both of those games would be awesome with a Wii control scheme. A Wii Remote would be great for controlling the Lemmings cursor, or twisting around to perform Uniracer stunts.
For example, private citizens do not need a warrant to search for court admissible evidence, but if they do it at the request of the police, they do need a warrant.
Unless I'm mistaken, isn't that generally called trespassing when private citizens do that?
In any case, if private citizens put together a website which contained the data from license-plate tracking, do you think the police should be allowed to visit the website and use information from it?
> The point is that technology is being used to augment what a normal person is capable of. The issue isn't whether it is possible today, it is whether it is reasonable given the conditions under which the 4th Amendment was written.
I believe that it should be technologically possible and legal for a group of citizens to setup a network of license plate scanning webcams. If a group of private citizens can do it, then the police should be able to do it to, or at least look at the website where they post their information.
If it is not reasonable to expect a person or an affordable group of people to achieve the same results, then it should be considered an unreasonable search.
How is it not reasonable? It seems like it'd be quite straightforward for a group of volunteers with webcams sticking out of their windows to achieve something similar independent of the government. I actually think it'd be quite interesting to have something like that for tracking the whereabouts of the vehicles of politicians and lobbyists.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/html/news/080107_pro
http://www.nyc.gov/html/film/downloads/pdf/moftb_
(a) Introduction. The Mayor's Office of Film Theatre and Broadcasting ("MOFTB")
shall issue permits in connection with filming, including but not limited to the taking of motion
pictures; the taking of photographs; the use and operation of television cameras, transmitting
television equipment, or radio remotes in or about city property; load-ins or load-outs supporting
1
indoor performances; or such activities in or about any street, park, marginal street, pier, wharf,
dock, bridge or tunnel within the jurisdiction of any City department or agency, or involving the
use of any City owned or maintained facilities or equipment. As defined herein, MOFTB will
issue permits for scouting, rigging and shooting activities. Obtaining such a permit does not
obviate the need to obtain approval for an activity that may also be subject to other laws, rules or
case law.
(b) Permits.
(1) The following activities require that a permit be obtained pursuant to this chapter:
(i) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring
on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, that uses vehicles or
equipment, except as described in subparagraphs (2)(i) and (ii) of this subdivision;
(ii) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring
on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving an interaction
among two or more people at a single site for thirty or more minutes, including all set-up
and breakdown time in connection with such activities; or
(iii) Filming, photography, production, television or radio remotes occurring
on City property, as described in subdivision (a) of this section, involving an interaction
among five or more people at a single site and the use of a single tripod for ten or more
minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities.
(2) The following activities do not require that a permit be obtained pursuant to this
chapter:
(i) Filming or photography occurring on City property, as described in
subdivision (a) of this section, involving the use of a hand-held device as defined in
paragraph three of subdivision (a) of 9-02, provided that such activity does not involve
an interaction among two or more people at a single site for thirty or more minutes,
including all set-up and breakdown time in connection with such activities.
(ii) Filming or photography occurring on City property, as described in
subdivision (a) of this section, involving the use of a single tripod, provided that such
activity does not involve an interaction among five or more people at a single site and the
use of a single tripod for ten or more minutes, including all set-up and breakdown time in
connection with such activities.
(iii) Filming or photography of a parade, rally, protest, or demonstration except
when using vehicles or equipment other than a handheld device or single tripod. I'm rather curious about how they're defining a "tripod." For example, what if somebody has a Gorillapod or a string tripod?
Its still legal to make satire, and ridicule politician. You just can't use footage taken from inside the Beehive (The New Zealand parliament)
I'm really curious about what would happen if someone tried to do this internationally. For example, if the Daily Show in the US put together a satire of the New Zealand parliament, and then one of the writers, producers, or actors ended up travelling to New Zealand. It would be a very interesting international incident if they were arrested.
For those interested, here's the news@nature article, as well as the original research paper. Here's a paste of the abstract:
Preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper
Dmitriy A. Dikin1, Sasha Stankovich1, Eric J. Zimney1, Richard D. Piner1, Geoffrey H. B. Dommett1, Guennadi Evmenenko2, SonBinh T. Nguyen3 & Rodney S. Ruoff1
Free-standing paper-like or foil-like materials are an integral part of our technological society. Their uses include protective layers, chemical filters, components of electrical batteries or supercapacitors, adhesive layers, electronic or optoelectronic components, and molecular storage1. Inorganic 'paper-like' materials based on nanoscale components such as exfoliated vermiculite or mica platelets have been intensively studied2, 3 and commercialized as protective coatings, high-temperature binders, dielectric barriers and gas-impermeable membranes4,5. Carbon-based flexible graphite foils5, 6, 7 composed of stacked platelets of expanded graphite have long been used8, 9 in packing and gasketing applications because of their chemical resistivity against most media, superior sealability over a wide temperature range, and impermeability to fluids. The discovery of carbon nanotubes brought about bucky paper10, which displays excellent mechanical and electrical properties that make it potentially suitable for fuel cell and structural composite applications11, 12, 13, 14. Here we report the preparation and characterization of graphene oxide paper, a free-standing carbon-based membrane material made by flow-directed assembly of individual graphene oxide sheets. This new material outperforms many other paper-like materials in stiffness and strength. Its combination of macroscopic flexibility and stiffness is a result of a unique interlocking-tile arrangement of the nanoscale graphene oxide sheets.
Keep in mind that astronauts do most of their "flying" in T-38's (two seaters that are often likened to "astronaut taxis"). It's quite possible that the specific incidents revolve around T-38 use.
Some commentary from aerospace engineer Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings seems to partially confirm this:
I haven't said anything about the "drunk astronauts" story, but I do think that it epitomizes the atrocious state of reporting on space (and any technical subject), in which it becomes sensationalized and drained of reality. Everyone assumes that the two incidents referred to were Shuttle launches, when the word I get is that it was a T-38 and a Soyuz flight. And of course it has become inflated from two (anecdotal) incidents to everyone doing shooters before each Shuttle flight. The real story, as Jim Oberg points out in this interview with a terminally clueless BBC reporter, is the special treatment of astronauts, and the (lack of sufficient) power of the flight surgeons (at least in their minds) to ground them. Of course, this is a tough problem, as we saw in the Nowak case.
There is a natural antipathy between the astronauts and the flight surgeons. From an astronaut's point of view, an encounter with the latter can't have a good outcome. At best, it can be a neutral one. The default is that one's flight readiness is go. A flight surgeon can't improve that--they can only change it for the worse. If one is sick enough to need to get permission to go, it's unlikely to happen, since there are many trained backups, even for a given mission, who are fine. Recall Apollo XIII, when Ken Mattingly had to be replaced by Jack Swigert because he had merely been exposed to German measles, due to concern that he might come down with it during the mission. He ended up not getting them, and while the decision made sense, he had to feel frustrated (though obviously not as much as he would have had the mission been successful).
It's not a new problem, and it's not one likely to go away, but it would help if the media would treat it seriously. Not to mention soberly.
> Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog
Could you elaborate on what you mean by Google "truncating links"?
Please don't mod the parent post down -- I asked him to post his content here so we could take a look at it and better evaluate his claims. I actually disagree with his claims and his viewpoint, but he shouldn't be penalized for what I asked him to do.
Technorati simply banned my site. Google first truncated links from other sites leading to pages on my blog, and when that wasn't enough, they simply had Blogger delete the blog.
Could you post the relevant content here, so we could look at it ourselves? Given the OP, I don't think it would be off-topic.
Between the sabotage news, the drunk astronaut news, and the following, this is looking like a pretty bad day for spaceflight:
x plosion&btnG=Search+News
... According to KBAK-TV, the explosion took place at a Scaled Composites facility at the airport, but the TV station said they didn't know yet if any Scaled employees were among the casualties.
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=&q=mojave+e
http://www.personalspaceflight.info/2007/07/26/
According to local media reports, there has been a fatal explosion at a rocket test stand at Mojave Airport, home to a number of entrepreneurial space companies. Two people were killed and four people were injured. The company involved hasn't been identified; according to an amalgam of the sketchy reports available so far, it involved a nitrous oxide "flash explosion" on a test stand.
The programming section of the library was right next to the UFO section of the library, so I got quite a bit of exposure to the [k]ook section, as well.
Hah, the same thing happened to me when I was in elementary school. The Dewey Decimal System always placed the programming bookshelf right next to the paranormal bookshelf, so when I read through the programming books I'd inevitably end up reading through plenty of books on UFOs/Bigfoot/Nessie/etc., and believing pretty much everything in them.