Where do YOU store your potatoes?

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A blog I check out from time to time is Sorry I Missed Your Party, the proprietor of which (Party Pooper) skims through Flickr photo threads and posts some very interesting images of people having fun at parties. On Thanksgiving 2009, Party Pooper posted this picture:



According to the information on the Flickr thread, that's a picture from an Oscar-night party in New York in 2005. OK, it's a party, so here's this woman in an sheer top holding a mostly-empty bottle of vodka and not looking like she really cares who won the Oscar for Best Scoring for a Video Game Turned Into a Movie. What's so odd about that?

Nothing. Until you look behind the woman.

And then you will see ----- what the hell is that little cubby-hole cut into the wall right at floor level? And what's inside? Potatoes!?!

My God, who does that to their house and thinks it's actually a smart way to store your root vegetables? Or who moves into a house with that feature and decides to continue using it rather than immediately covering it over with a patch and some new paint? I mean, jeez, at least put a little door on that thing so your guests (and everyone else checking out this Flickr thread) don't have to watch your forgotten vegetables start taking root.

Believe me, people at parties notice these kinds of things.
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The future is here

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Shields up!

Smart armor being developed by scientists and engineers at U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center in Michigan can not only predict its own failure, but also identify the size of bullets shot at it and even generate electrical power upon impact.

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Intelligent armor is based on piezoelectrics, or materials that generate a small voltage when bent. The reverse is also true: Apply a small voltage, and a piezoelectric material will bend.

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Each plate of armor, whether its [sic] wrapped around a soldier's body or vehicle's chassis, has two piezeoelectric sensors attached to it.

An electric current flows into one sensor and turns it into mechanical energy in the form of a tiny vibration that ripples through the armor plate. The other piezoelectric device takes that mechanical vibration and turns it back into electrical energy.

Anywhere from five to 15 volts of electricity is pumped into, and out of, an intact plate of armor. If the armor has been damaged by bullets, shrapnel or anything else, some of the current released into the armor won't be picked up on the other end.

By measuring just how much energy is lost, the TARDEC scientists can determine how damaged the armor is.

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Saturn's auroras

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Space weather. Cool stuff.

As on Earth, electrical fields above Saturn interact with atmospheric chemicals to produce shimmering lights above the polar regions.

Now NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured video of Saturn's aurora.

Saturn's flicking polar lights dance higher above the planet – 750 miles (1,200 km) – than any known aurora in the solar system. They ripple like tall curtains, changing every few minutes, according to a statement today from the space agency.

"The auroras have put on a dazzling show, shape-shifting rapidly and exposing curtains that we suspected were there, but hadn't seen on Saturn before," said Andrew Ingersoll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Seeing these things on another planet helps us understand them a little better when we see them on Earth."

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Going to the asteroids

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Ooh, this sounds exciting!

BOULDER, Colo. - Call it Operation: Plymouth Rock. A plan to send a crew of astronauts to an asteroid is gaining momentum, both within NASA and industry circles.

Not only would the deep space sojourn shake out hardware, it would also build confidence in long-duration stints at the moon and Mars. At the same time, the trek would sharpen skills to deal with a future space rock found on a collision course with Earth.

In Lockheed Martin briefing charts, the mission has been dubbed "Plymouth Rock — An Early Human Asteroid Mission Using Orion." Lockheed is the builder of NASA's Orion spacecraft, the capsule-based replacement for the space shuttle.

Send astronauts, by all means. But leave the miners at home. They're more trouble than they're worth.
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Water on the moon

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A lot of it, apparently.

It's official: There's water ice on the moon, and lots of it. When melted, the water could potentially be used to drink or to extract hydrogen for rocket fuel.

NASA's LCROSS probe discovered beds of water ice at the lunar south pole when it impacted the moon last month, mission scientists announced today. The findings confirm suspicions announced previously, and in a big way.

"Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn't find just a little bit, we found a significant amount," Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

Lot's for us to drink when we get there, let's hope!
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Wrong word choice for a headline

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"Toyota looking for workers at SA plant"

What, did they all go on break at the same time?
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"This is not junk mail."

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Liars.



I didn't ask for it. You sent it. It's trying to sell me something. It's junk mail.
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What I did today

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And here's what I used to make those holes.





The circle in the upper right of the target were shots fired right-handed, using both the Beretta and the Smith & Wesson. The circle in the upper left were shots fired left-handed. In both cases, I used careful aim with the target first at about 10-12 yards and then at about 7 yards.

All the holes in the middle were center mass firing with both weapons. Sometimes one shot, sometimes two, sometimes with a holster draw.

I had a great time. It's been a while since I've had the chance to squeeze off some rounds and not have to worry about being anywhere afterward, so it was quite relaxing.

And the most amazing part about this morning's exercise? I seem to be better at shooting left-handed, even though it feels absolutely strange to shoot that way.

Go figure.
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Space and God

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Specifically the possibility of extraterrestrial life in that space.

Compatible?

The Catholic Church seems to think so.

[J]ust as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible’s teachings.

Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory ..., said: "As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God.

"This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God."

The occasion for the comments is a conference on astrobiology being held by the Vatican. Interesting stuff, plus some pretty funny photo art at the link.
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Foggy sun morning

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Nothing but our dear old sun doing its best to peek through the fog on a dreary morning.

Seasons on Mercury?

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Will wonders never cease? Now it seems that our solar system's most sun-drenched planet may actually have seasons! Just like on Earth.

OK, maybe not exactly like Earth.

Mercury's atmosphere is what scientists call an "exosphere," and is made up of atoms kicked up from the surface. It is very tenuous and has a very low density, meaning atoms in the atmosphere rarely run into each other. It also has a tail that streams away from the planet in the opposite direction of the sun.

MESSENGER looked at differences in three atoms in the exosphere — sodium, calcium and magnesium — between the probe's three flybys. They detected much less sodium during the third flyby than they had during the second.

"While this is dramatic, it isn't totally unexpected," [mission scientist Ronald Vervack, Jr., of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory] said. This is because radiation pressures from the sun change as Mercury moves through its orbit, which changes the amount of sodium liberated from the surface.

In essence, Mercury's atmosphere experiences seasonal effects during the planet's orbit.

(from Space.com)

Not quite like the changing leaves and cold fronts we are used to, but pretty interesting nonetheless.
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Tile afternoon

Nothing but a bit of historic tile accented by modern wood in a corner of San Antonio.
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"... and Robin pncuhed her ..."

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An awesome dramatic reading of badly written and badly spelled fan fiction by some guy named Peter Chimaera. Performance is by Phil.



Yeessss!

Oh, and always proof your work.
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Sex in space

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Do you think it could be possible? Guess what?

Apparently it's already happened! And NASA videotaped the whole thing!

"The issue of sex in space is a serious one," [French writer Pierre Kohler] says. "The experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without gravity."

He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

If Kohler is to be believed, then astronauts have been sexing it up in space for some time now and have been taping it for research purposes. And, given the tight confines of spacecraft and the need for at least one other person to be present to tape the encounter, it seems that any such mission would turn out to be nothing more than a porno movie shoot under very difficult circumstances.

I just hope they picked the lead actors very well.

(Story from The Guardian; hat tip: Blogonomicon)

Trying out new rocket fuel

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This sounds promising.

Rocket propellant has barely changed in the more than 50 years since the launch of the first artificial satellite Sputnik. But a new mixture of nano-aluminum powder and frozen water could make rocket launches more environmentally friendly, and even allow spacecraft to refuel at distant locations such as the moon or Mars.

The aluminum-ice propellant known as ALICE gets its kick from a chemical reaction between water and aluminum. Researchers hope that the hydrogen products of that reaction might go beyond launching rockets, and also feed hydrogen fuel cells for long duration space missions.

"In the bigger picture, we're looking at technology that can store hydrogen long term," said Steven Son, a professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "Water is a nice, stable way to store hydrogen."

Both NASA and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research have shown enough interest in the concept to fund initial rocket firing tests. The research teams at Purdue and Penn State University used ALICE to successfully launch a rocket to 1,300 feet during an August flight test.

Such technology may not see action for some years to come, or at least until NASA sorts out its space exploration plans. But the recent confirmation of water sources on the moon and Mars may hint at a future where ALICE and similar rocket propellants become highly practical.

Water and metal, reacting together to power rockets. If this technology pans out, then human interplanetary -- and perhaps even interstellar -- space travel will be within reality's grasp. The trip may not be quick, but there could be plenty of refueling stations along the way.
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What I just finished reading yesterday

This is the third book of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy: That Hideous Strength

Overall impression: Not a bad read at all. Not great, but enjoyable.

The tone of the book is vastly different from that of its predecessors, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. Where the events of the first two books take place on Mars and Venus, respectively, everything that happens here happens on Earth. It's a classic battle between good and evil, but the evil is disguised as a vast new government entity (called the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments, or N.I.C.E. -- get it?) that threatens to take over post-WWII England with political manipulations and engineered revolutions. (On second thought, maybe a vast government entity is not such a good disguise at all.) The diabolical plots fail, of course, when Ransom and his cohorts get a little help from a revived Merlin who takes away the language from the evil ones, and England survives their machinations while the main character, Mark, discovers the love for his wife he had never before realized.

In any case, I think the writing here is much better than in the previous two books, and if you were to decide to choose just one title from the Space Trilogy to read, forsaking the others, I would suggest this one. It's a bit outlandish in parts, and overall it's fairly predictable (I don't know how much that would be true in the mid-1940s, though), but not bad if you are a Lewis fan.

Relying on the Russians

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This is not an encouraging development in the field of manned space exploration.

Almost six years ago, the nation embarked on a new space policy of retiring the Space Shuttle in 2010 (next year, after the International Space Station is complete) and replacing it with a new (and presumably safer) means of getting crew to and from orbit. This vehicle’s primary mission was to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond, but most people assumed that it would also be capable of replacing the Shuttle for that purpose. It wasn’t planned to be ready until 2014 and in the half decade since, the schedule has slipped years beyond that, while its budget has ballooned. So now the original “gap” during which the U.S. would be incapable of launching its own crews into orbit to change out astronauts at the space station has grown from three years to five or more.

What does this have to do with the Iranian nukes problem and the Russians?

It has always been assumed that “the gap” would be filled by Russian Soyuz flights, as it was during the previous “gap” created when the Shuttle was shut down for almost three years after the loss of Columbia. But there was always a bug in that ointment, called the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA). It is a U.S. law that prohibits purchases from countries that aid those countries for which it is named in their efforts to develop missiles and nuclear weapons. By the letter of the law, Russia has always been in violation of it, realistically, but it has always maintained sufficient plausible deniability to allow Congress to grant it waivers so that NASA could continue to get Russian support for ISS, which has been difficult to maintain without it, even with the Shuttle operating. Once the Shuttle retires, it will be almost unthinkable: Russia will have the only system capable of delivering humans to orbit.

Yikes. Perhaps we shouldn't retire the shuttle right now. Or perhaps we, as a nation, need to be encouraging private investment in space travel more than we are currently doing. I think a little more competition might lead to some faster developments, and it might let us get more ships up into space sooner.

(from Rand Simberg; hat tip, Instapundit)