AdamSmith

Fascinating, Captain. http://www.popsci.com/have-we-found-alien-life?dom=fb&src=SOC

It was more than clear that 2 of the top execs wanted to, quite badly. But being VPs instead of CEO, they dared not.

So Costa Rican and other sources speculate one motivation of many may be Ortega's interests in deflecting attention from economic etc problems under his regime. Wikipedia says, among much else: HKND does not have any civil engineering expertise and has been accused of being a front for the Chinese government, which they deny. HKND seems not to have secured the capital needed for the project and is now asking for the land to be given to them on a 50 year credit or lease. Many things to make you go Hmm. As you said, MsGuy.

An extraordinarily apt image for any Windows-based PC!

Ah! Thank you. Oddest bit of the article that I linked was, right at the end, it started to ask just who and what is this entity from China that has the contract to build the Nicaragua canal. And then abruptly the article ended. Just like a Chinese Internet session going dead! (Which I had happen to me more than once during that trip in Shanghai that I mentioned elsewhere.) I will consult the Googles as you advise.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/21/travel/world-top-hotels-tripadvisor/index.html No. 1, and 2 others, are in the Maldives. Those butler-serviced huts over clear blue water look awful nice. Found one I've actually stayed at -- the Mandarin Oriental Pudong in Shanghai. http://m.mandarinoriental.com/shanghai/hotel/ At a business conference on the client's nickel, of course. It merits being on the list, I'd say. E.g., instead of a brothel right off the lobby as is the custom in some (upscale!) Chinese hotels, the hookers (all short little southeast Asian women, in deliberate contrast to the tall Chinese women who staff the hotel itself) congregate discreetly but very availably in one section of the hotel's basement bar. Being ever surrounded by a pack of business associates, I never found leisure to engage one of the little vixens.

You don't think? What's the back story? I know nothing about it. And this article clearly had a lot of gaps.

Engrossing in-depth look at this megaproject. Land of opportunity – and fear – along route of Nicaragua’s giant new canal In an era of breathtaking engineering feats, there is unease about what this mega project will mean for people and their homes, wildlife and ecosystems. Will it bring wealth and growth or confusion and destruction? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/20/-sp-nicaragua-canal-land-opportunity-fear-route

Starship Modeler: The Hardware of "2001: A Space Odyssey" By Rob Caswell, with the generous help of Phil Sterett. Additional thanks to Scott Alexander (aka "Captain Cardboard"), Scott Lowther (Part Time Models) , Pat Sklenar, and Denis Troussard. Kubrick's vision for the year 2001 holds up reasonably well, considering its 1960's perspective. This is due, in no small part, to the dedication and passion that hardware designers Fred Ordway and Harry Lange brought to the film. These craft remain some of the most plausible created for sci-fi cinema. The craftsmanship of the models was also ground breaking. They were some of the first movie models to use small parts from plastic kits to detail and texture - a practice that's since become a standard. The study of 2001's studio models is just that: a study. Kubrick had a penchant for destroying his props after production. His goal was to make sure that things like spacecraft were not later reused in low budget sci-fi flicks, thus cheapening his original work. He even destroyed the plans used to create the vehicles and sets. While an artistically admirable goal, it left us with the barest scattering of 2001 movie artifacts. In the absence of real models, careful research is required in order to piece together the details of these landmark movie spacecraft. The most obvious and readily available source for reference is the film, itself. However there are some other images out there - out takes, promo shots, etc. Our goal with this page is to try to assemble as many of those resources as possible. We've gone back to periodicals released in the 60's, pictures from original program books, and more. We also share our information and observations on the various craft in the sections below. Probably the best printed source of 2001 reference is the book Filming the Future, by Piers Bizony. We have avoided including pictures that are redundant to that volume, unless we had a significantly superior reproduction of an image. Do you have any other unique 2001 photos or information? If so and you're willing to have them posted here, please contact Rob. Our goal is to make this the Web's most complete 2001 resource for sci-fi modelers. To do that we could use your help. Satellites | Orion III | Space Station 5 | Aries IB | Moonbus | Discovery | Pods | Spacesuits Starship Modeler 2001 Modeling Page | Starship Modeler Home http://www.starshipmodeler.com/2001/2001ref.htm

'Cavradyne' -- fascinating! Had completely forgotten this detail. Discovery One In the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Discovery One is described as being about 460 feet (140 m) long (the 2010 movie mentions 250 feet) and powered by "Cavradyne" gaseous core nuclear reactor engines. Cavradyne Engines According to the book, the ship's propulsion controls would be designed with the assistance of General Electric's Valley Forge Space Technology Center and the UK Atomic Energy Authority. These controls were located in the command module. A Honeywell nuclear reactor control panel displayed information on such parameters as turbine, compressor, heat exchanger, secondary circulatory, and radiator liquid helium storage, generator and recuperator performance, and pressures and temperatures at various stations. Precise readings could be obtained instantaneously on the control screen, if desired, as well as past performance and predicted future performance. The fictional Cavradyne engines were based on research into gaseous core nuclear reactors and high-temperature ionized gases. The theory was presumed to have shown that gaseous uranium-235 could be made critical in a cavity reactor only several feet or meters in diameter if the uranium atomic density were kept high, and if temperatures were maintained at a minimum of 20,000 °F (11,400 K). At first, progress was slow because of such early unsolved problems as how to reduce vortex turbulence in order to achieve high separation ratios, and how to achieve adequate wall cooling in the face of the thermal radiation from the high-temperature plasma. In the Cavradyne system, the temperature of the reactor was not directly limited by the capabilities of solid materials, since the central cavity was surrounded by a thick graphite wall that moderates the neutrons, reflecting most of them back into the cavity. Wall cooling would be ensured by circulating the hydrogen propellant prior to its being heated. Fissionable fuel energy was said to be transferred to the propellant by radiation through a specially designed rigid—and coolable—container, similar to the way in which fission energy was transferred to hydrogen propellant in the NERVA design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_One Gas core reactor rocket Gas core reactor rockets are a conceptual type of rocket that is propelled by the exhausted coolant of a gaseous fission reactor. The nuclear fission reactor core may be either a gas or plasma. They may be capable of creating specific impulses of 3,000–5,000 s (30 to 50 kN·s/kg, effective exhaust velocities 30 to 50 km/s) and thrust which is enough for relatively fast interplanetary travel. Heat transfer to the working fluid (propellant) is by thermal radiation, mostly in the ultraviolet, given off by the fission gas at a working temperature of around 25,000 °C. Theory of operation Nuclear gas-core-reactor rockets can provide much higher specific impulse than solid core nuclear rockets because their temperature limitations are in the nozzle and core wall structural temperatures, which are distanced from the hottest regions of the gas core. Consequently, nuclear gas core reactors can provide much higher temperatures to the propellant. Solid core nuclear thermal rockets can develop higher specific impulse than conventional chemical rockets due to the extreme power density of the reactor core, but their operating temperatures are limited by the maximum temperature of the solid core because the reactor's temperatures cannot rise above its components' lowest melting temperature. Due to the much higher temperatures achievable by the gaseous core design, it can deliver higher specific impulse and thrust than most other conventional nuclear designs. This translates into shorter mission transit times for future astronauts or larger payload fractions. It may also be possible to use partially ionized plasma from the gas core to generate electricity magnetohydrodynamically, subsequently negating the need for an additional power supply. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_core_reactor_rocket

Many more here: http://xkcd.com/730/ A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.

A year after marijuana legalisation in Colorado, 'everything's fine' confirm police independent.co.uk It's been a year since Colorado became the first state in the US to legalise marijuana, and its impact on health, crime, employment and other factors can now be more empirically measured. So, did it bring about an apocalypse leaving the streets strewn with out-of-work addicts as some Republicans feared? "We found there hasn't been much of a change of anything," a Denver police officer told CBC this week. "Basically, officers aren't seeing much of a change in how they do police work." Not only has the legalisation of cannabis not come with a rise in crime, it has also created thousands of jobs, as tourists flock to the city's 60+ marijuana outlets. A local newspaper even appointed its first cannabis critic in April. "So the sky isn't falling?" a CBC reporter asked the officer. "The sky isn't falling," he replied. Impaired driving, property crime and violent crime were all dropping in Denver prior to legalisation, and the trend has only continued. Even drug use among young people is down, the report claims. The state has collected $60 million in tax revenue from sales of the drug meanwhile, $4 million of which has been plugged back into the city through new programmes brought in by its mayor (who remains anti-legalisation). Colorado's unprecedented move led to Washington, Alaska and Oregon voting for legalisation, and this week a bill was filed to legalise it in New York. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/a-year-after-marijuana-legalisation-in-colorado-everythings-fine-confirm-police-9989723.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow

Gratified to realize I've never seen any of his flicks except Throw Mama from the Train and Spinal Tap.

So there! N.S.A. Breached North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/world/asia/nsa-tapped-into-north-korean-networks-before-sony-attack-officials-say.html?referrer=

Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html?referrer= http://m.sciencemag.org/content/347/6219/1255641

Same here in NC. Although regrettably few look like these...

Tangentially but interestingly, to me anyway, at the Detroit Auto Show this past week the inimitable Sergio Marchionne made somewhat comparable remarks about the car biz. For most of his career, Sergio Marchionne has been treating established business practices with blithe disregard. And with remarkable success. Whether it involves taking control of Chrysler in 2009 without laying out a penny, or something as simple as wearing a dark sweater and gingham shirt everywhere in place of a suit and tie, Marchionne goes his own way. He doesn’t make a fetish out of it (though you suspect he’s amused by the reactions he gets), he just does it. The latest demonstration of Marchionne the iconoclast was on display at the Detroit auto show on Monday. In remarkable display of candor, the FCA CEO gave what amounted to a graduate seminar in automotive economics— using numbers from Fiat Chrysler’s business plan that are usually considered confidential. It was the kind of information that is confided in private conversation and on off-the-record terms, not in a public forum like a motor show. The revelations came about 40 minutes into what had, up until that point, been a duller-than-usual news conference dominated by parochial questions about Chrysler assembly plants in Toledo and Windsor, Ontario. Then a reporter asked Marchionne about the possibility of industry consolidation, a subject on which he has spoken many times. Perhaps bored by the familiar subject matter, Marchionne moved on. He usually complains about manufacturers who are forced to maintain production capacity for which they have few customers because of government opposition. This time, he raised the discussion to a new level. Marchionne started what became an eight-minute monologue. “The problem with the car business has never structurally been that it is an unrestrained production farm that keeps on spewing off cars for a demand that doesn’t exist,” he told the assembled journalists, thereby skewering one piece of received wisdom. Instead, he continued, the problem was the inability of the industry to earn its cost of capital. This wouldn’t be surprising coming from a securities analyst, but was a breathtaking admission coming from a CEO. “I don’t know how many car companies can say with a straight face we are earning our cost of capital,” he went on, “even in the benign interest environment in which we are living.” In other words, automakers would be better off investing in something other than the auto business. The reason is, Marchionne said, that the cost for each manufacturer to develop its own unique cars and trucks had become prohibitive. Case in point: Chrysler’s new Town & Country minivan, coming in 2016. Actual numbers are hard to come by, but in past years the cost of developing a new vehicle for a single plant was often put at $1 billion. Marchionne said the new minivan was costing twice that—$2 billion! He even broke the number down: $700 million to $800 million to engineer the new vehicle and its powertrain, the rest for improvements and additions to the Canadian plant where it will be built, along with the paint shop. That’s a huge number for a vehicle that is usually considered to be moderately, though not hugely profitable. That’s also a lot of fixed costs to amortize on every unit. Multiply the cost for one model line across an entire company, and you come up with a big number. Marchionne told his audience that capital spending by Fiat Chrysler will amount to $75 billion to $80 billion by 2018. “That’s a lot of money,” he added unnecessarily. The problem, as Marchionne sees it, is that while manufacturers are able to cooperate on small cost-sharing ventures, they aren’t willing to do so on large ones. Marchionne referenced Fiat’s own joint venture with Mazda to develop a new roadster. “Have we saved money? Yes. Had we done it with a mass-market vehicle, the answer is no. “ Competition and brand-building means that every manufacturer wants to make its own core components, like, say, four cylinder engines, leading to ruinous overlap in Marchionne’s estimation. “You are talking about hundreds of millions of duplicative and redundant investments that do not bear any benefit for the consumer.” He sees no reason why similar engines can’t be made with 85 percent common parts, with 15 percent reserved for individualization. Marchionne singled out Toyota and Volkswagen as two companies that successfully and economically reuse components among product lines. But he argues that other makers won’t be bailed out by expanded markets and higher sales. While many have looked to demand in China as a solution to higher costs, Marchionne doesn’t see it that way. “We have created some pretty formidable players over there as joint venture partners who are going to be looking for [market] space that will have to be created and the only way you can respond to the competitive pressure is to have the least-cost solution.” Marchionne calls it a medium or long-term issue, not a short-term one. “It is not a problem for 2015 or 2016, but it will be in 2020.” The news conference was winding down. Marchione was asked if family owners like the Fords, VW’s Piechs, or Fiat Agnellis were blocking sensible collaboration among manufacturers. “I know them all,” Marchionne said. “The real problem is not them. The real problem is the ego of executives. I don’t ever remember a turkey inviting himself to a Thanksgiving dinner. Redundancy in cases like this exists in the executive ranks That’s where it needs to be addressed.” Too many executives! Marchionne seemed to be enjoying his lecture, but at that point, a public relations operative declared that no more questions would be accepted and the microphones were turned off. The Marchionne seminar on automotive economics was concluded. Until next time. http://fortune.com/2015/01/13/sergio-marchionne-detroit-auto-show/

Have to earn my keep somehow, when I'm not busy emptying the slop jars.

http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/01/11/19-mormon-missionary-positions-you-should-try