A leaked
report claims that NASA
knew
the Mars Polar Lander mission would fail, but figured this
out only three days before the craft reached Mars, which was
too late to do anything about it except keep quiet and hope.
Worse, the report claims that the cause of the failure was that the
thrusters couldn't operate properly at Martian temperatures--
and that the test results were altered to conceal this.
Never mind looking under the sofa cushions, here's some of
what people have found
inside
working PCs.
Give them an inch....
If the states have the right to say "we know you're married
in Vermont, but that doesn't make you married here," they
won't
stop at same-sex marriages: we could be back in
the days when a mixed-sex pair of New Yorkers couldn't
get married closer than Detroit, because they were also of
different races, only this time New York wouldn't have to
recognize that marriage.
[via Medley.]
Suddenly,
Mayor Giuliani is talking about the
public's
right to know--specifically, to know about the minor criminal
record of a man shot dead by a police officer. In the interest of
that right, The New York Times presents
the officer's record. [registration required]
Ten
gigabytes of data on a roll of
adhesive
tape. The researchers are working on finicky details like
data stability, but this looks like a cheap write-once storage
medium. Just don't let anyone grab the roll of tape to wrap a present.
Making good use of Java:
Still
Water is one of a collection of nature images in which
the water looks real and alive.
We're all
living in the
past--at least our visual perception is. What you realize
consciously that you're seeing
runs about 80 milliseconds behind the light that reaches your eyes.
Ray Troll draws
wonderful, almost surreal--but very realistic--pictures of fish,
ammonites, and other lifeforms. When I saw an exhibit of his work
several years ago, I wanted the "Trilobite Safari" on a t-shirt.
I still do, but it looks like I'm still the only person who does.
Maybe I'll settle for "Night of the Ammonites" or "Out of the
Ooze." I wouldn't mind a print of
Fish Ladder
to the Stars, either.
This is
either cool or irritating, but either way, it's completely
unnecessary:
electric shoelaces.
An
alphabetical list of
FBI files released under
the Freedom of Information Act.
(It's just been mentioned on
Slashdot, so
may be hard to reach for a bit.)
Fungus and
other diseases may be a key cause of
diversity
in forests: most pathogens are specialized to a species of tree,
so seedlings don't grow well next to their parents, but seedlings of
other species do fine there. The more pathogens, the more varied the
forest is likely to be.
If they can be made to work,
optical
black holes would give physicists a chance to test some quantum
theories in the lab. Rather than collect lots of matter,
Ulf Leonhardt proposes working with very slow light: in special
circumstances, the speed of light in rubidium gas is as low as 8
meters per second.
A few thoughts on America's
favorite
recreational drug, from a regular user who just wants
to remind people that it is in fact a drug, and wonders if it's
as good for productivity as all the employers who supply it
free assume.
Marylaine
Block is tired of
certainty
from politicians, and would like to hear a candidate say "I don't
know." Or, as one of my favorite buttons puts it, "Don't just do
something--stand there."
The most dubious
patent
of the year--at least I hope nothing worse comes along:
it claims faster-than-light communication. Does the
US Patent and Trademark Office even read these things before it issues
patents? [via Memepool]
Selah!
Happy
Day of the
Obscure!
The
National Dull Men's Club
contains gently supportive material for self-identified dull men;
distinguishes between "dull" and "boring"; and is pleased with
the US
presidential
race.
In the ongoing
dispute about Amazon.com and software patents,
RMS
is appealing for a no-first-use policy on software patents. In
his analysis, Amazon is particularly at fault because they are among
the few software patent holders to bring a lawsuit alleging
infringement. [via Slashdot]
A bit
of lunar dust is evidence for an
increase
in meteorite impacts starting about 400 million years
ago. What happened on the Moon almost certainly happened here
on Earth, and may have been involved in the rapid diversification
of life-forms known as the Cambrian Explosion.
"Extinct
is forever" or "it quacks like a duck"?: the
Quagga
Project is trying to re-create the extinct quagga by
breeding carefully selected zebras. The project rests on the
idea that the quagga was not a species, but a subspecies of
zebra distinguished only by the appearance of its coat.
The evidence for this claim is some combination of
mitochondrial DNA evidence and a handwaving assertion that
there's no way we could tell, now, if there were behavioral
differences, so there's no point in worrying about them.
Air
pollution can prevent rain, by causing water to form smaller
droplets that never coalesce and reach the ground. One implication
of this is that the smoke from forest fires might prevent the rain
that could put out the fires.
Modern
birds start flying by
jumping,
and their ancestors may have done the same.
This is simpler than the running start theory, and answers the
question of what the first birds could have done with
inefficient wings:
all you need is a really good pair of legs.
I'm adding
this log to a new Weblog webring; we'll see what (if anything)
happens.
Noamazon.com doesn't
just tell you why not to shop at Amazon: it includes a long
list of other book retailers, as well as sources for everything
else Amazon sells: take your pick, from
Powell's for books
to Egghead Software.
[via Pigs
and Fishes]
The
Albuquerque Journal presents a list of terms
used by
Navajo
code talkers. Many are straightforward translations,
and some feel poetic--a frequency, translated and retranslated,
becomes a big singer--but some were clearly
created for the occasion, and consist
of the Navajo names for English letters attached to Navajo
words: the literal translation of "be-thin-ya-ni-che," the
term they used for "district," is given as "deer ice strict."
For added security, most of the letters have two or more
Navajo forms: O can be "a-kha," "tlo-chin," or "ne-ahs-jah."
Is
"quality of life" really improved by
arresting
and jailing 50 innocent people a day? The Giuliani
administration seems to think so.
I'm back from ten days in the Pacific Northwest, where Spring starts sooner than it does here in New York: I've seen lots of good people, and lots of flowers, and eaten lots of salmon, and not even checked my email. I recommend it.
An
odd fantasy vignette (originally for radio) about
trees,
by Nalo Hopkinson.
[via More
Like This]
Can stress be good for you?
Chronic stress is known to be unhealthy, but a new study
found that
short
periods of stress enhanced the immune systems of mice.
(An interesting question, assuming the work applies to humans, is
how this affects people with autoimmune disorders.)
The
Acronym
Interaction, Expansion, and Extrapolation Engine will tell you what
any two-to-six-letter acronym stands for: even if you just made it up.
My name comes out as "Verified Integrated Converter Knowledge Interpreter."
Copyright 1999, 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
If you like this, you might also like my home page.