Space Shuttle Launch: Viewed From an Airplane

Epanalepsis -- or Reasoning with a 4-Year-Old.

THE BOY: I want to be a grownup because grownups can do whatever they want.

ME: You're right—I could go buy ten Snickers bars and eat them all right now. Or go watch the same movie seven times in a row. But I don't want to. The thing about being a grownup is that you don't want to do all the crazy stuff you used to daydream about when you were a kid.

THE BOY: Yeah but grownups can do whatever they want.

From Your Monkey Called

Apple's Three Laws of Developers

A developer may not injure Apple or, through inaction, allow Apple to come to harm.
A developer must obey any orders given to it by Apple, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A developer must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

— I. Developer

The Day the Movies Died

via GQ. Thanks, Ted, for the link.

Feynman Applies to Work at Microsoft

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericlippert/archive/2011/02/14/what-would-feynman-do.aspx

Buxton Index

From On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides by E.W. Dijkstra. (Photo of Dijkstra from Wikipedia article)


 A very useful measure is —called after its inventor— the "Buxton Index". John N. Buxton discovered that the most important one-dimensional scale along which persons are institutions to be compared, can be placed is the length of the period of time in the future for which a person or institution plans. This period, measured in years, gives the Buxton Index. For the little shopkeeper around the corner the Buxton Index is three-quarter, for a true Christian it is infinite, we marry with one near fifty, most larger companies have one of about five, most scientist have one between two and ten. (For a scientist it is hard to have a larger one: the future then becomes so hazy, that effective planning becomes an illusion.)

3-D Printing becoming much more sophisticated

http://www.economist.com/node/18114221?story_id=18114221&CFID=162367227&CFTOKEN=74435751

Jon Stewart's New Theory: Sarah Palin is a Russian Spy?

From The Daily Show.

Burning Platform Memo from Nokia CEO

There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

via Engadget

AT&T Don't Text While Driving Documentary

NEW E*TRADE Baby -- Solitary

Just a man and his thoughts . . . .

Atlantic Article on the Military Industrial Complex

The article starts with a wonderful quote on the importance of education from James Madison:

"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."


Unfortunately, the rest is very depressing.

It is official -- this is a big storm

From NASA.

This feels like a picture out of The Day After Tomorrow.

The Skin Gun -- A new treatment for burn injuries

I hope this is as wonderful as the video would suggest. I know almost nothing about burn injuries, but what I do know is awful.

Philip Pullman goes to bat for libraries

A wonderful open letter in support of libraries in the face of budget cuts.

Reinhold Niebuhr quote

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

From David Brooks NYTimes editorial

Response to the Chinese Mother post

[A]s Erma Bombeck said, no mother is arrogant because she knows that, regardless of her other accomplishments in life, at any moment she may get a call from the school principal saying that her child rode a motorcycle through the auditorium.

From Why American Mothers are Superior

Essay from "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother"

Things a Chinese Mother will not let her children do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.


excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Online.

Akin's Laws of Spacecraft design

31. (Mo's Law of Evolutionary Development) You can't get to the moon by climbing successively taller trees.

via a University of Maryland Engineering Professor

Janelle Monáe - Tightrope

Tried to embed the video, but it was blocked. It's worth going to her site to watch it.