Interesting Drug

“[The Internet] is not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.” - U.S. Senator Ted Stevens

Ah, the Internet: you use it every day for school, work
or fun. In such a short period of time, the Net has grown into an essential
every day thing that it’s hard to imagine life without it.

The 100 Most Oldest Websites in Intenet:

Have you ever wondered about the beginning of internet? The sites that early users of internet used to read?

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10 Facts About Wrigley Field:

10 Quick Facts about Wrigley Field

There’s no denying that there’s a whole lot of history at Wrigley. Here are 10 facts everyone (non-Cubs fans included!) ought to know about Chicago’s favorite ball field.

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Battlestar Galactica Ends With Bullets, Secrets:

The one mysterious ingredient in the 2nd half of the final season of Battlestar Galactica?Ass-kicking.In the trailer for the final 10 episodes of the show shown at the start of Saturday’s BSG panel at Comic-Con,what stood out most was the artillery displayed by a surprising number of cast members as the show hurtles towards a destructive conclusion

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Lubricant for Rubik’s Cube:

Jeff Simmermon posted this 1980s ad for a substance called Cube Lube, “an incredible lubricant specially formulated for the cube and other mind-boggling puzzles that move.”

Cube Lube (And I Am Not Lying)

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25 Internet Startups That Bombed Miserably:

If the Internet could speak with one voice, it would probably groan “oh, not again!” That’s because every raving success story about Internet startups is tempered by dozens more that crashed and burned in a sea of wasted money, bad ideas, or unfulfilled hype. As venture capitalist Paul Graham writes, most of these failures are never written about.

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11 Things we just learned about Prince:

11 Things You Ought to Know about Prince

From lawsuits to spiritual epiphanies, Erica Marie Palan has 11 quick things everyone should know about the artist currently known as Prince.

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ZombieHarmony: A Dating Site for the Undead:

Tired of chasing and feeding on the living alone?  Need someone to share the apocalypse with?  Sign up for a free account with ZombieHarmony.

Link via Double Plus Undead

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Gallery: NASA’s Most Embarrassing Goofs:

: Image courtesy NASA

From equipment installed backwards to problems with the metric system, NASA’s failures can be as fascinating as its successes. Of course, more cynical critics might suggest that NASA’s failures overshadow its successes — but let’s see you send a ship to the moon.

That aside, NASA’s in a difficult position: Charged with meeting America’s spacefaring dreams on a shrinking budget, and perpetually judged against the magic of the moon landing, the agency is an easy target. And a few mistakes are inevitable: After all, Murphy’s law was coined by an actual rocket scientist.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of NASA’s most conspicuous, embarrassing (and non-fatal) gaffes.

Mars Observer

Left: The $1 billion Mars Observer, launched in 1992 with the aim of studying the red planet’s terrain and climate, was supposed to be the first in a series of Observer missions. Instead it became the first in a series of Mars failures: Three days before its scheduled orbital entry, communications inexplicably and permanently ceased. It may now be orbiting Mars, though some wonder if it didn’t blow past the planet and end up circling the Sun.

: Image courtesy NASA

Six years after the Mars Observer disappeared, the Mars Climate Orbiter followed suit. This time, however, NASA knew what went wrong: Subcontracted engineers at Lockheed Martin used English units of measurement rather than the agency’s favored metric system. The ensuing navigational mix-up sent the vehicle into a low-altitude orbit, where it was torn apart by atmospheric stresses.

: Image courtesy NASA

Finally: no mysterious silence, no goofball measurements! Nothing but 142 million miles of smooth sailing all the way from Earth to 40 meters above the red planet’s surface. That’s when the lander’s computers misinterpreted a routine vibration as evidence of touchdown, cut the descent engines and sent the craft plummeting to destruction. Says NASA historian Steven Dick, “An unconfirmed theory is that the Martian air defenses are pretty good!”

: Image courtesy NASA

In September of 2004, NASA’s Genesis capsule returned to Earth with samples of solar wind — a stream of electrons and protons from which scientists hoped to tease the secrets of the sun and our solar system. It was supposed to parachute gently back to Earth, where a helicopter would snag it mid-air before any jarring impact could dislodge the precious solar particles. But the Genesis’ parachute failed to open, sending the craft and its ethereal cargo slamming straight into the Utah desert. Agency investigators later found that its deceleration sensors were installed backwards.

: Image courtesy NASA

Not long after the Genesis face-plant, parachutes on this Jupiter probe also failed to deploy when a cross-wired pair of accelerometers fed each other the wrong data. Just in the nick of time, however, the chutes opened. Whew!

: Image courtesy DART

The DART — or Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology — was supposed to show off NASA’s navigational precision. It wouldn’t just hook up with another planet, but would dock with an orbiting communications satellite. This delicate dance turned destructive on its October 2004 test run, when DART collided with the satellite. NASA delayed its report for a year, then unleashed a scathing indictment citing a “lack of training and experience,” schedule pressure, bad software coding and breakdowns in responsibility.

: Image courtesy NASA

Though human error and institutional incompetence underlie many NASA failures, nature hasn’t always been kind, either. In 1987, an Atlas-Centaur rocket was hit by lightning within moments of launch. It spun out of control and had to be destroyed.

This image shows lighting striking the space shuttle Challenger, not an Atlas-Centaur.

: Photo: Associated Press

Not all of NASA’s mistakes are vehicular, or even involve rocket science: A launch-site banner celebrating the July 2007 takeoff of the space shuttle Endeavour, christened in honor of explorer James Cook’s famous vessel, misspelled its name as “Endeavor.”

: Image courtesy NASA

The Hubble Space Telescope — the most technologically advanced eye ever turned toward the heavens — was launched in 1990 after nearly two decades of planning, research and delays. Only then did scientists realize that its mirror was incorrectly ground. There is, however, a happy ending to the story: A dramatic 1993 in-space repair mission restored the Hubble’s vision, and its subsequent insights into our universe have been boundless. The image shown here is of the Carina nebula, taken by the Hubble.

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Gallery: The Space Suit Makes the NASA Astronaut:

: Photo: NASA

“Form follows function.” Nowhere is that dictum more inflexible than in the hostile reaches of outer space. So nothing hews to that dictum more closely than the space suit. Even as it has evolved over NASA’s 50 years to adapt to increasingly sophisticated missions and changing spacecraft technology, the space suit’s central purpose — to maintain a human environment where none exists — remains constant.

From the Mercury suit worn by John Glenn during his historic three-orbit flight in 1962 to today’s shuttle and space station rigs, the basic requirements for the space suit have not changed, but the designs have. Here’s a look back at the last piece of technology standing between NASA’s astronauts and oblivion.

One Size Fits All

An astronaut is fitted into his space suit. Because suits are recycled among astronauts, they need to be constantly resized to maintain adequate pressure. This is accomplished using a sizing device developed for NASA by Hubert C. Vykukal.

: Photo: NASA

Enos the chimp, restrained by wrist tethers and still wearing his space suit, after returning from orbit aboard Mercury Atlas 5 in November 1961. He beat John Glenn into space by two months.

: Photo: NASA

John Glenn in his Project Mercury pressure suit, which he wore when he became the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn is also the only astronaut to go into space wearing both Mercury and space shuttle suits.

: Photo: NASA

Neil Armstrong, pictured here, would be the first human being to set foot on the moon. But not in this suit. Here, he models a Project Gemini G-2C training suit, designed to be flexible when pressurized.

: Photo: NASA

On June 3, 1965, astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space. He’s wearing a modified Gemini space suit and is tethered by a lifeline to his Gemini IV capsule.

: Photo: NASA

Engineer Bill Peterson fits test pilot Bob Smyth into an Apollo space suit with a lunar excursion module restraint harness during testing in 1968. Project Apollo put astronauts on the moon, so the suit had to be designed for both lunar conditions and maximum flexibility.

: Photo: NASA

America’s first man into space, Alan Shepard, walked on the moon a decade later as commander of Apollo 14. This was the suit he wore, minus helmet and gloves, when he played his famous round of lunar golf.

: Photo: NASA

The iconic shot: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is photographed by Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong in the Sea of Tranquility. Armstrong is just visible in Aldrin’s face shield.

: Photo: NASA

When the first shuttle flight, STS-1, lifted off on April 12, 1981, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen wore the ejection escape suit shown here. It’s a modified version of the Air Force’s high-altitude pressure suit.

: Photo: NASA

This is the familiar orange launch and entry suit worn by current shuttle crews, nicknamed, appropriately enough, the “pumpkin suit.” This is an all-purpose suit designed to cover most contingencies: It includes a helmet with built-in communications gear, a parachute pack and harness, a life raft and life-preserver unit, an oxygen manifold and valves, and survival gear.

: Photo: NASA

In February 1984, shuttle astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first astronaut to float in space completely untethered to his spacecraft. A jetpack known as the manned maneuvering unit kept McCandless within hailing distance. NASA has since ditched the MMU and are once again secured to the spacecraft, although they do wear a similar device in case of an emergency.

: Photo: NASA

An artist’s conception of the future launch and entry suit, left, and a spacewalk suit. Although NASA plans to retire the shuttle in 2010, there are plans to replace it with another vehicle, Orion, by mid-decade, and to return to the moon by 2020.

: Photo: Ingrid Barrentine/Wired.com

Adrian Emry, 7, of Moses Lake, Washington, gives a thumbs-up to NASA engineer Bill Welch, who wears a lunar spacesuit concept for use in Project Constellation, the planned U.S. return to the moon.

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101 Dumbest Moments in Business: Top tech flops:

Exploding toilets and a startup that actually called itself VaporTech. When 400 surfers are dumb enough to click on an ad offering to infect their PCs, what’s left for us to do?

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Top 50 science fiction television shows of all time:

Based on years of sci fi viewing experience and through a variety of online sources, we’ve come up with our picks for the Top 50 science fiction shows of all time.

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Earthquake Survival Kit (PIC):

I can’t think of anything else that you would really need.

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577757648_bc67221ffe.jpg 439×459 pixels:

via http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1181/577757648_bc67221ffe.jpg?v=0

Originally posted by hello1980 from FFFFOUND! / EVERYONE, ReBlogged by Jamie Allen on Jul 22, 2008 at 04:07 AM

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Opinion: How to make the Kindle a mainstream success:

Although the Kindle is the fastest-selling e-book reader to date, Amazon needs to get to work on its glaring issues and ensure that the mistakes it made the first time around aren’t made again in October.

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Magic Slate Bag:

Our pal Mario Marsicano at Jellio told us about some cool new items he’s just gotten: like this magic slate bag (remember magic slates? They were the dime store toys you could write on, then erase by peeling back the plastic).

The magic slate bag looks like an old 50’s TV set - with a "screen" are on the flap that you can write on: Link - Thanks Mario!

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GCG Op-Ed: Writing Off Game Writers:

GameCareerGuide.com has just posted an op-ed that declares the game industry undervalues writers. It’s written by Lee Sheldon, a writer and designer of commercial video games and assistant professor at Indiana University. Writing off game writers, he says, is good for no one. It’s not just the industry at fault, he says. Game development schools take the same limited view, which is effectively suppressing a talent pool that is in dire need of creative nourishment, …

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Battlestar, South Park, Webisodes Scoop Emmy Nods:

A staggering windfall of nominations for geek television for the 2008 Emmy awards is helping bring mainstream legitimacy to the sci-fi genre. Space opera Battlestar Galactica racked up a total of six Emmy nominations.

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If 8-Bit’s Enough for You:

Older woman: My first computer was a Commodore 64!
Younger woman: A what? That sounds like a sex toy.

Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, Michigan

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Dr.Horrible - Musical Comedy with Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and directed by Joss Whedon:

[link] [comments]

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Jaw-Dropping & Breathtaking View of Our Own Milky Way Galaxy:

“The region pictured here is immense, with a horizontal span of 890 light-years and a vertical span of 640 light-years. Earth is located 26,000 light-years away…Though most of the objects seen in this image are located at the galactic center, the features above and below the galactic plane tend to lie closer to Earth.” Someday we’ll travel there.

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Saturday Timewaster: Pandemic 2 [Timewasters]:

Ever wanted to decimate the world’s population or see if you could develop a super-bug that would leave the globe in utter pandemonium? If the answer is yes, browser-based Pandemic 2 is your game; even if the answer is ‘uh, no,’ it’s an interesting way to while away some time. Watch as your customized disease of choice is let loose on the world, then use your ‘evolution points’ to mutate the perfect delivery method for a global pandemic — the goal is to have a trail of devastation (and bodies) left in your wake. There are two different modes, ‘realistic’ and ‘relaxed,’ so if you’re not sure you’re ready for a realistic onslaught, you can try your hand with the easier mode.

Pandemic 2 [CrazyMonkeyGames via IndieGames]

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10 Greatest Major-Impact Craters on Earth!:

A look at the biggest craters on earth … in images! There are some great ones here I wasn’t aware of previously. Some of these are huge!

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26 Important Comic Books:

26 Important Comic Books

Regretting that you didn’t spend more of your allowance on comic books? Well, take a deep breath. This primer from Christa Wagner should have you up to speed in no time.

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