The Cult of Personality

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Wed, 22 May 2013 00:40:35 -0700

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Wed, 22 May 2013 00:20:35 -0700

ikenbot: Boldly Go? Can Humanity Afford ‘Star Trek’-Like Space...

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:02:18 -0700

Boldly Go? Can Humanity Afford ‘Star Trek’-Like Space Exploration?

The public has no shortage of enthusiasm for fictional spacefarers, as this weekend’s box-office win by the newest “Star Trek” film proves. Yet the real-life U.S. space agency finds itself strapped for cash these days. With federal budgets tightening and NASA feeling the pinch, some space advocates are asking, “Can humans afford to reach the stars?”

Believe it or not, experts are looking into the finances of not just relatively short-term missions to Mars and the moon, but also long-term prospects of ‘Trek’-ian proportions. It may be possible to find the money, they say, but it would likely take some policy changes — and those changes could start today.

Captain, we don’t have the funding!

“Star Trek: Into Darkness” brought in about $84 million in its opening weekend — just a month after NASA cut $200 million from its planetary-sciences budget. (In an odd move, NASA’s newest budget explicitly states that it will notfund any missions to Europa, the ice-moon of Jupiter that stands as one of the solar system’s best candidates for supporting life, noted Casey Dreier, an advocacy and outreach strategist at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to planetary exploration.)

Those cuts come as NASA and the rest of the federal government negotiate sequestration cuts, which could trim $7 billion from NASA’s ledgers next year if the reductions are maintained.

But even without the sequester, NASA hasn’t commanded the kind of money needed for real, ambitious space travel in decades, said Marc Millis, a former NASA propulsion physicist and founder of the Tau Zero Foundation, which is dedicated to interstellar travel.

After hitting an apex with the Apollo moon program, NASA’s purse shrunk considerably and has stayed stagnant since, Millis said. NASA’s funds reached about 4.5 percent of the total federal budget during the Apollo era, Millis calculated. By 2009, NASA’s share had fallen to about 0.5 percent. “The amount that’s devoted to NASA now is enough to keep it going,” he said. “But to do really cool space travel is not possible now.”

Essentially, the agency has floated along on autopilot, clutching at relatively low-hanging fruit, like the space-shuttle missions, said Paul Gilster, who researches and writes about interstellar technologies for Tau Zero. “We should have something else than just going ‘round and ‘round the Earth,” he said.

cjwho: Bluff House |Inarc Architects | Photography: Peter...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:49:52 -0700

cjwho:

Bluff House |Inarc Architects | Photography: Peter Clarke

Shattered Glass Animals by Marta Klonowska Using carefully...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:33:54 -0700

Shattered Glass Animals by Marta Klonowska

Using carefully broken shards of colored glass, Polish artist Marta Klonowska assembles translucent animals in life-like proportion and size. Almost all of her sculptures are based on animals found in baroque and romantic paintings by such artists as Peter Paul Rubens or Francisco de Goya next to which they are often displayed. Her work appeared most recently at European Glass Context 2012,

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Tue, 21 May 2013 17:14:59 -0700

supamuthafuckinvillain: ogmubdone: xbox one Everything seems...

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:08:32 -0700

supamuthafuckinvillain:

ogmubdone:

xbox one

Everything seems dope, jus the name. It’s hella lame. :/

everything about this system has failure written all over it.

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Tue, 21 May 2013 16:59:45 -0700

justthedesign: Ricki Fucking Hall In A T-Shirt

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:58:33 -0700

justthedesign:

Ricki Fucking Hall In A T-Shirt

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Tue, 21 May 2013 16:56:39 -0700

lifestyleoftheunemployed: Lifestyle of the Unemployed

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:22:10 -0700

lifestyleoftheunemployed:

Lifestyle of the Unemployed

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Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:59 -0700

supamuthafuckinvillain: For y’all that love PAWGS Pretty Ass...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:39 -0700

supamuthafuckinvillain:

For y’all that love PAWGS

Pretty Ass White GirlS.

museumuesum: Charles Atlas Joints 4tet for Ensemble, 1971 -...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:20:17 -0700

museumuesum:

Charles Atlas

Joints 4tet for Ensemble, 1971 - 2010

Super 8mm film transferred to video, 4 channel video, colour. 4 channel sound using material recorded by John Cage, 10 Sony monitors, 4 studio monitors, metal stands, programmed projection lights and 4 flash players

duration, 13:12 mins

Joints 4tet for Ensemble (1971-2010), an installation of Super-8 colour films of the dancer Merce Cunningham shot by Atlas in 1971. One afternoon, after rehearsal in Irvine, California, Merce Cunningham and Charles Atlas went out of the back door of the dance studio to a raised concrete dock and started to film. As Cunningham articulated his joints in a minimal dance Atlas filmed in a variety of ways with his new Super-8 camera, shooting close-ups of Cunningham’s wrist, elbow, ankle, and knee. The films capture Cunningham’s unique style of movement. Atlas experimented with different frame rates and levels of blur, but mainly focused on following Cunningham’s moving joints as if carefully observing a strange animal. Atlas cannot entirely recall all the circumstances surrounding the filming, only that it was purely experimental. The artists made nine short films in total, most of which were extended continuous hand-held shots.

For the installation Joints 4tet for Ensemble, Atlas brings the resulting films together for the first time, editing the material into four channels of synchronized video and showing them across a choreographed arrangement of ten different sized monitors; some placed on mono-stands, some on rolling carts, and others grouped in pairs. With this configuration of monitors Atlas harks back to ideas first used in 1978 in the creation of Fractions I and Fractions II; a video/dance collaboration he made with Cunningham. Each monitor is orchestrated to broadcast the observation of an autonomous trail within the overall choreography of the group; reflecting Atlas’ ongoing interest in tracking the movement of dancers in and around a studio. The visual elements of Joints 4tet for Ensemble are accompanied by four channels of collaged sound. These are reworkings of ambient sound recordings made by John Cage in the 1980s whilst on his travels to cities around the world with his long-term partner Merce Cuningham. As the sound plays out across the monitors, projection lamps cast multiple and shifting shadows over the surrounding walls of the installation.

void-dance: Erik Jones No, no, no, no, no. Of course not.

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:18:54 -0700

void-dance:

Erik Jones

No, no, no, no, no. Of course not.

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Tue, 21 May 2013 16:14:44 -0700

tastefullyoffensive: Therapist Frog is listeningvia

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:04:58 -0700

tastefullyoffensive:

Therapist Frog is listening
via

the-science-llama: If Earth Had Rings First off, they would be...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:04:37 -0700

Guatamala

Washington, DC

Quito, Ecuador

Polynesia The Earth's Shadow appears on the Rings at night

Arctic Circle The Rings are barely visible

the-science-llama:

If Earth Had Rings

First off, they would be really pretty to look at. They would also dominate the sky in both night and day at exactly the same place as they would never rise nor set. And at night you would see the Earth’s shadow swing across the rings, like in the 4th photo here.

However, life would be very different on Earth if this were the case. Nocturnal animals would have a hard time being nocturnal, as the light reflecting from the rings would illuminate the night.

Because we are closer to the Sun than Saturn is, the rings would be more rocky than ice, making them less bright but still pretty bright. In fact, you would see far less stars at night (living anywhere other than the equator or the arctic circle) because of the light pollution and not to mention ruin most meteor showers because of that.

During the day the rings would block sunlight in certain regions of the planet creating wild weather cycles and effecting plant life as well. So basically, they would be definitely pretty to look at but they would also make a whole lot of things screwy.

Illustrations by Ron Miller // io9
— Click the photos for captions

thespacegoat: Courses:CourseraEDXUdacityUniversity of...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:04:13 -0700

thespacegoat:

Courses:
Coursera
EDX
Udacity
University of Reddit

Books:
Bartleby
Gutenberg
Librivox
Poem Hunter

Videos:
Academic Earth
C. G. P. Grey
Crash Course
Khan Academy
Minute Physics
The New Boston Tutorials
TED
Unplug the TV

Documentaries:
Documentary Heaven
Top Documentary Films

Languages:
BBC Languages
Busuu
Dou Lingo
Live Mocha
MemRise
Verbling

Music:
How to Play Piano
Justin Guitar
Music Theory
Play Bass Now
Teoria

Programming:
Code Academy
Coding Bat
HTML Dog
Learn Code the Hard Way
Ruby Monk
Trypython

DIY/How-To:
Howcast
How Stuff Works
Instructables
The Daily Miscellany
Wiki How
Wonder How-To

Math:
Math Run
Project Euler
Wolfram Alpha

Cooking:
Cooking for Engineers
Cooklet
How2Heroes
Reluctant Gormet

foggypebble: somehideitbetter: fuckyeahsexyatheists: velma-dea...

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:03:57 -0700

foggypebble:

somehideitbetter:

fuckyeahsexyatheists:

velma-dear:

iconicmonsters:

I’m not satanic but these are some damn good rules.

satan does not support rape, animal cruelty, or child abuse

when walking in open territory, bother no one. if someone bothers you, ask them to stop. if they do not stop, destroy them.

*Today on I Didn’t Know I was a Satanist*

I agree with all of these rules…I’m really uncomfortable now

4 and 7 confuse me. why don’t you just say “You’re annoying me and I want you to go away now”?

(4) the point is, if someone’s being an idiot, you act like a complete fucking prick until they realize how stupid they’re acting.

(7) If someone steps to you; you fucking annihilate them.

Even as an Atheist who doesn’t believe in the Devil, these are pretty damn good rules (except to the crap about magic.)