A pretty nifty short CGI film that shows 2001: A Space Odyssey's Discovery. As the film progresses, you see the EVA pods, the flight deck and other interior details.

In other news...will Russian and the ESA be the first to explore Europa's surface?

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Did you know that there is a standard for making tea? Making tea, for all love! more...

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Following up on these postings, it appears that the odds of us seeing a "splash down" on Mars at the end of January have decreased to the point of no return. Oh well!

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"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."

(G.K. Chesterton)

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"What did you do to the cat? It looks half-dead."

(Schrödinger's Wife)

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Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

(Robert E. Howard)

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This parody of the style of Dr. Seuss has been revived and is hitting various mailing lists (again). For your amusement...

IF a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report! more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Red sky at night, sailor's delight.
Red sky at morning, sailor's take warning.

Half clearing, half cloudy. And as the sun was coming up, it started pouring rain. So the light outside was very red and very wet.

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A sea port made out of...Legos!

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Way back at the dawn of time (1977), Spider and Jeanne Robinson co-wrote (first) a award-winning novella and (then) a series of novels about life in space. The tales centered around a ballet dancer.

We've gotten a little bit closer to making that a reality!

Main site here. Samples of the books here.

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Amateur astronomer Sean Walker has produced an animated globe built up of images he has taken during the current close approach of the planet Mars. It is amazing what "amateur" astronomers are producing these days. This could rival shots from Hubble!

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Wil McCarthy has a "wiki" where you can contribute to one of three collaborative tales. Will this be a bold new writing frontier? Or a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth?

Boundary Condition

Plant

Release Notes

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Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is a montage of pictures taken during the recent encounter between Jupiter and the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft. Are we seeing a 2001 moment or what?

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Via the recently-launched io9 site, tips for organizing your living space...in space!

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Late again! Hope to be better in the coming year.

Here's what I've read since my last report:

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is one of those three people I would invite to dinner, although I think I would lock up the liquor ahead of time. His style is engaging and entertaining, but I think this polemic sometimes preaches a bit too much to the atheist choir. I don't think it would really change the minds of the religious (and to be fair, I don't think that is the goal here). Recommended whether you're faithful, faithless, or somewhere in between.

The current issues of Architectural Digest, Dwell, National Geographic, and one month of Analog magazine.

In progress:

Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett.

Still on deck:

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World, Carl Zimmer.

Still about five months' worth of Analog magazine.

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Issue 246 is up! more...

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Mike Brotherton has released his book, Star Dragon, online (multiple formats, free, no DRM).

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Via Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools, a 1,500 (!) free (!) textbook on physics.

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Warren Ellis has a humorous revision and restatement of the famous three laws of robotics.

Via Gravity Lens.

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Want the truth behind The Lord of the Rings?

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