AdamSmith

Extremely cool! MicroObservatory Robotic Telescope Network NASA's space science researchers control some of the world's most sophisticated space probes and orbiting telescopes to get amazing images of objects in space. Now YOU can join them by operating your OWN ground-based "MicroObservatories" - real robotic telescopes that you command through this website! http://mo-www.cfa.harvard.edu/OWN/index.html

This recipe looks like a slight pain in the nuts but worth the trouble. I would love to see a thread with this same title in the Porn forum.

Some nice threads here on Colombia from a little while back... http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/9823-return-to-colombia/ http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12123-fall-in-medellin-colombia/ http://www.boytoy.com/forums/index.php?/topic/15976-take-a-look-at-gay-bogota/

Hm. Another not-joke.

This one? (They really did send this out one year.) P.S. "Nyarlathotep." The consequences of pronunciation and nomenclature errors in Lovecraft's cosmos can be dire!

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C90uhvXW1KM&feature=youtube_gdata_player&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DC90uhvXW1KM%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player

I still recall the vivid crackling noise that came through the TV transmission at launch. And that Cronkite said what TY said. To bone up MsGuy with hardcore tech speak herewith a bit of the launch journal linked above... PAO: This is Apollo Saturn Launch Control. We've passed the 6 minute mark in our countdown for Apollo 11. Now 5 minutes, 52 seconds and counting. We're on time at the present time for our planned lift-off of 32 minutes past the hour. Spacecraft Test Conductor, Skip Chauvin, now has completed the status check of his personnel in the control room. All report they are Go for the mission, and this has been reported to the Test Supervisor, Bill Schick. The test supervisor now going through some status checks. Launch Operations Manager Paul Donnelly reports Go for launch. Launch Director Rocco Petrone now gives a Go. We're 5 minutes, 20 seconds and counting. Coming up shortly, that swing arm up at the spacecraft level will come back to its fully retracted position. This should occur at the 5-minute mark in the count. In the meantime the Lunar Module telemetry has been powered down. We took a good look at Eagle, and it looks good. The Spacecraft Test Conductor for the Lunar Module reported that Eagle was Go. The swing arm now coming back to its fully retracted position as our countdown continues. T minus 4 minutes, 50 seconds and counting. Skip Chauvin informing the astronauts that the swing arm now coming back. The astronauts will have a few more reports coming up in the countdown. The last business report will be from Neil Armstrong at the 45-second mark in the count when he gives the status on the final alignment of the Stabilization and Control System. We're now passing the 4 minute, 30 second mark in the countdown - still Go at this time. [ MP3 audio file. 2,539 kB. ] PAO: Four minutes, 15 seconds - the Test Supervisor now has informed Launch Vehicle Test Conductor Norm Carlson, you are Go for launch. From this time down, Carlson handles the countdown as the launch vehicle begins to build up. We're now hitting the 4-minute mark. Four minutes and counting. We are Go for Apollo 11. We'll go on an automatic sequence as standing at 3 minutes and 7 seconds. PAO: Three minutes, 45 seconds and counting. In the final abort checks between several key members of the crew here in the control center and the astronauts, Launch Operations Manager Paul Donnelly wished the crew, on the launch teams' behalf, "Good luck and Godspeed." PAO: Three minutes, 25 seconds and counting; we're still Go at this time. We'll be coming up on the automatic sequence about 10 or 15 seconds from this time. All still Go at this time. Neil Armstrong reported back when he received the good wishes: "Thank you very much. We know it will be a good flight." Firing command coming in now. We are on the automatic sequence. We're approaching the 3 minute mark in the count. T minus 3 minutes and counting. T minus 3 - we are Go with all elements of the mission at this time. We're on an automatic sequence as the master computer supervises hundreds of events occurring over these last few minutes. PAO: T minus 2 minutes, 45 seconds and counting. The members of the launch team here in the control center monitoring a number of what we call red-line values. These are tolerances we don't want to go above and below in temperatures and pressures. They're standing by to call out any deviations from our plans. Two minutes, 30 seconds and counting; we're still Go on Apollo 11 at this time. The vehicle starting to pressurize as far as the propellant tanks are concerned, and all is still Go as we monitor our status board. Two minutes, 10 seconds and counting. The target for the Apollo 11 astronauts, the Moon, at lift-off, will be at a distance of 218,096 miles away. We just passed the 2-minute mark in the countdown. T minus 1 minute, 54 seconds and counting. Our status board indicates that the oxidizer tanks in the second and third stages now have pressurized. We continue to build up pressure in all three stages here at the last minute to prepare it for lift-off. [ MP3 audio file. 1,861 kB. ] PAO: T minus 1 minute, 35 seconds on the Apollo mission, the flight to land the first men on the Moon. All indications coming in to the control center at this time indicate we are Go. One minute, 25 seconds and counting. Our status board indicates the third stage completely pressurized. Eighty-second mark has now been passed. We'll go on full internal power at the 50-second mark in the countdown. Guidance system goes on internal at 17 seconds leading up to the ignition sequence at 8.9 seconds. We're approaching the 60-second mark on the Apollo 11 mission. PAO: T minus 60 seconds and counting. We have passed T minus 60. 55 seconds and counting. Neil Armstrong just reported back: "It's been a real smooth countdown". We've passed the 50-second mark. Power transfer is complete - we're on internal power with the launch vehicle at this time. 40 seconds away from the Apollo 11 lift-off. All the second stage tanks now pressurized. 35 seconds and counting. We are still Go with Apollo 11. 30 seconds and counting. Astronauts report, "It feels good". T minus 25 seconds. PAO: Twenty seconds and counting. T minus 15 seconds, guidance is internal. Twelve, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts... [The F-1 engine has a complex ignition sequence which will be described here. First, a description of the engine.] [ A large combustion chamber and bell have an injector plate at the top, through which RP-1 fuel and LOX are injected at high pressure. Above the injector is the LOX dome which also transmits the force of the thrust from the engine to the rocket's structure. A single-shaft turbopump is mounted beside the combustion chamber. The turbine is at the bottom and is driven by the exhaust gas from burning RP-1 and LOX in a fuel-rich mixture in a gas generator. After powering the turbine, the exhaust gases pass through a heat exchanger, then to a wrap-around exhaust manifold which feeds it into the periphery of the engine bell. The final task for these hot gases is to cool and protect the nozzle extension from the far hotter exhaust of the main engine itself. Above the turbine, on the same shaft, is the fuel pump with two inlets from the fuel tank and two outlets going, via shut-off valves, to the injector plate. A line from one of these 'feeds' supplies the gas generator with fuel. Fuel is also used within the engine as a lubricant and as a hydraulic working fluid, though before launch, RJ-1 ramjet fuel is supplied from the ground for this purpose. At the top of the turbopump shaft is the LOX pump with a single, large inlet in-line with the turboshaft axis. This pump also has two outlet lines, with valves, to feed the injector plate. One line also supplies LOX to the gas generator. The interior lining of the combustion chamber and engine bell consists of a myriad of pipework through which a large portion of the fuel supply is fed. This cools the chamber and bell structure while also pre-warming the fuel. Lastly, an igniter, containing a cartridge of hypergolic fluid with burst diaphragms at either end, is in the high pressure fuel circuit and has its own inject point in the combustion chamber. This fluid is triethylboron with 10-15% triethylaluminium.] [ At T minus 8.9 seconds, a signal from the automatic sequencer fires four pyrotechnic devices. Two of them cause the fuel-rich turbine exhaust gas to ignite when it enters the engine bell. Another begins combustion within the gas generator while the fourth ignites the exhaust from the turbine. Links are burned away by these igniters to generate an electrical signal to move the start solenoid. The start solenoid directs hydraulic pressure from the ground supply to open the main LOX valves. LOX begins to flow through the LOX pump, starting it to rotate, then into the combustion chamber. The opening of both LOX valves also causes a valve to allow fuel and LOX into the gas generator, where they ignite and accelerate the turbine. Fuel and LOX pressures rise as the turbine gains speed. The fuel-rich exhaust from the gas generator ignites in the engine bell to prevent backfiring and burping of the engine. The increasing pressure in the fuel lines opens a valve, the igniter fuel valve, letting fuel pressure reach the hypergol cartridge which promptly ruptures. Hypergolic fluid, followed by fuel, enters the chamber through its port where it spontaneously ignites on contact with the LOX already in the chamber.] PAO: ...6, 5, 4... [Rising combustion-induced pressure on the injector plate actuates the ignition monitor valve, directing hydraulic fluid to open the main fuel valves. These are the valves in the fuel lines between the turbopump and the injector plate. The fuel flushes out ethylene glycol which had been preloaded into the cooling pipework around the combustion chamber and nozzle. The heavy load of ethylene glycol mixed with the first injection of fuel slows the build-up of thrust, giving a gentler start. Fluid pressure through calibrated orifices completes the opening of the fuel valves and fuel enters the combustion chamber where it burns in the already flaming gases. The exact time that the main fuel valves open is sequenced across the five engines to spread the rise in applied force that the structure of the rocket must withstand.] PAO: ...3... [This diagram shows how the thrust rose during the start-up of each engine. It takes two seconds for full performance to be attained on all engines once the first has begun increasing. The engines are started in a staggered 1-2-2 sequence so that the rocket's structure would be spared a single large load increase, with the centre engine being the first to start. The outboard engines exhibit a hiccup in their build-up due to the ingestion of helium from the pogo suppression system installed in each one. The centre engine does not have this installed.] [As the flow of fuel and LOX rises to maximum, the chamber pressure, and therefore thrust, is monitored to confirm that the required force has been achieved. With the turbopump at full speed, fuel pressure exceeds hydraulic pressure supplied from ground equipment. Check valves switch the engine's hydraulic supply to be fed from the rocket's fuel instead of from the ground.] PAO: ...2, 1, zero, all engine running, LIFT-OFF! [Public Affairs Officer Jack King, whose coolness is legendary, finally succumbs to the tension and is clearly heard to say "all engine running" instead of "all engines running".] PAO: We have a lift-off, 32 minutes past the hour. Lift-off on Apollo 11. [ MP3 audio file. 2,899 kB. ] [ MP3 audio file (11,435 kB) of the entire air/ground audio during ascent to orbit, but without the PAO's commentary.] 000:00:04 Armstrong: Roger. Clock. PAO: Tower cleared. [As planned, control of the flight now passes from the Launch Control Center at Cape Kennedy, Florida to the Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas. There, communication with the crew is handled by an astronaut sitting at the CapCom console; in this case, Bruce McCandless. The PAO also switches, and Jack King relinquishes the commentary to the Houston PAO, whose voice is heard from now on.] 000:00:13 Armstrong: Roger. We got a roll program. 000:00:15 McCandless: Roger. Roll. [Long pause.] PAO: Neil Armstrong reporting their roll and pitch program which puts Apollo 11 on a proper heading. Plus 30 seconds. [When it sat on the launch pad, the space vehicle's coordinate system matched the cardinal points of Earth's geograpic system. Its X-axis pointed straight up and its Y-axis pointed to true north. The third component of this system, the Z-axis, therefore was pointed directly west. Before it begins to tilt over, the vehicle needs to roll 18° so that the minus X-axis, previously facing east, faces along the planned heading, in this case 72° east of north. Then the tilt motion will be a simple pitch motion around the Y-axis.] [Prior to the roll maneuver, the vehicle executed a small yaw maneuver to deliberately lean away from the launch tower during its first few seconds of ascent.] [20.6 seconds after launch, the Saturn's guidance system aims the four outboard engines slightly away from the centreline of the vehicle. This is in case an outboard engine fails whereupon the resultant off-centre thrust vector would be nearer to acting through the centre-of-mass of the rocket.] 000:00:34 Armstrong: Roll's complete and the pitch is programming. [Pause.] 000:00:44 Armstrong: One Bravo. [Long pause.]

From 2008 but someone just pointed me to it now. James Lovelock: 'enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan' The climate science maverick believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do? Decca Aitkenhead The Guardian, Friday 29 February 2008 James Lovelock. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe In 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and "all sorts of fanciful technological stuff". When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. "It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said. "And of course," Lovelock says, with a smile 43 years later, "that's almost exactly what's happened." Lovelock has been dispensing predictions from his one-man laboratory in an old mill in Cornwall since the mid-1960s, the consistent accuracy of which have earned him a reputation as one of Britain's most respected - if maverick - independent scientists. Working alone since the age of 40, he invented a device that detected CFCs, which helped detect the growing hole in the ozone layer, and introduced the Gaia hypothesis, a revolutionary theory that the Earth is a self-regulating super-organism. Initially ridiculed by many scientists as new age nonsense, today that theory forms the basis of almost all climate science. For decades, his advocacy of nuclear power appalled fellow environmentalists - but recently increasing numbers of them have come around to his way of thinking. His latest book, The Revenge of Gaia, predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report deploys less dramatic language - but its calculations aren't a million miles away from his. As with most people, my panic about climate change is equalled only by my confusion over what I ought to do about it. A meeting with Lovelock therefore feels a little like an audience with a prophet. Buried down a winding track through wild woodland, in an office full of books and papers and contraptions involving dials and wires, the 88-year-old presents his thoughts with a quiet, unshakable conviction that can be unnerving. More alarming even than his apocalyptic climate predictions is his utter certainty that almost everything we're trying to do about it is wrong. On the day we meet, the Daily Mail has launched a campaign to rid Britain of plastic shopping bags. The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet. This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won't make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable. "It's just too late for it," he says. "Perhaps if we'd gone along routes like that in 1967, it might have helped. But we don't have time. All these standard green things, like sustainable development, I think these are just words that mean nothing. I get an awful lot of people coming to me saying you can't say that, because it gives us nothing to do. I say on the contrary, it gives us an immense amount to do. Just not the kinds of things you want to do." He dismisses eco ideas briskly, one by one. "Carbon offsetting? I wouldn't dream of it. It's just a joke. To pay money to plant trees, to think you're offsetting the carbon? You're probably making matters worse. You're far better off giving to the charity Cool Earth, which gives the money to the native peoples to not take down their forests." Do he and his wife try to limit the number of flights they take? "No we don't. Because we can't." And recycling, he adds, is "almost certainly a waste of time and energy", while having a "green lifestyle" amounts to little more than "ostentatious grand gestures". He distrusts the notion of ethical consumption. "Because always, in the end, it turns out to be a scam ... or if it wasn't one in the beginning, it becomes one." Somewhat unexpectedly, Lovelock concedes that the Mail's plastic bag campaign seems, "on the face of it, a good thing". But it transpires that this is largely a tactical response; he regards it as merely more rearrangement of Titanic deckchairs, "but I've learnt there's no point in causing a quarrel over everything". He saves his thunder for what he considers the emptiest false promise of all - renewable energy. "You're never going to get enough energy from wind to run a society such as ours," he says. "Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time." This is all delivered with an air of benign wonder at the intractable stupidity of people. "I see it with everybody. People just want to go on doing what they're doing. They want business as usual. They say, 'Oh yes, there's going to be a problem up ahead,' but they don't want to change anything." Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics. Britain is going to become a lifeboat for refugees from mainland Europe, so instead of wasting our time on wind turbines we need to start planning how to survive. To Lovelock, the logic is clear. The sustainability brigade are insane to think we can save ourselves by going back to nature; our only chance of survival will come not from less technology, but more. Nuclear power, he argues, can solve our energy problem - the bigger challenge will be food. "Maybe they'll synthesise food. I don't know. Synthesising food is not some mad visionary idea; you can buy it in Tesco's, in the form of Quorn. It's not that good, but people buy it. You can live on it." But he fears we won't invent the necessary technologies in time, and expects "about 80%" of the world's population to be wiped out by 2100. Prophets have been foretelling Armageddon since time began, he says. "But this is the real thing." Faced with two versions of the future - Kyoto's preventative action and Lovelock's apocalypse - who are we to believe? Some critics have suggested Lovelock's readiness to concede the fight against climate change owes more to old age than science: "People who say that about me haven't reached my age," he says laughing. But when I ask if he attributes the conflicting predictions to differences in scientific understanding or personality, he says: "Personality." There's more than a hint of the controversialist in his work, and it seems an unlikely coincidence that Lovelock became convinced of the irreversibility of climate change in 2004, at the very point when the international consensus was coming round to the need for urgent action. Aren't his theories at least partly driven by a fondness for heresy? "Not a bit! Not a bit! All I want is a quiet life! But I can't help noticing when things happen, when you go out and find something. People don't like it because it upsets their ideas." But the suspicion seems confirmed when I ask if he's found it rewarding to see many of his climate change warnings endorsed by the IPCC. "Oh no! In fact, I'm writing another book now, I'm about a third of the way into it, to try and take the next steps ahead." Interviewers often remark upon the discrepancy between Lovelock's predictions of doom, and his good humour. "Well I'm cheerful!" he says, smiling. "I'm an optimist. It's going to happen." Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when "we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn't know what to do about it". But once the second world war was under way, "everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want." At moments I wonder about Lovelock's credentials as a prophet. Sometimes he seems less clear-eyed with scientific vision than disposed to see the version of the future his prejudices are looking for. A socialist as a young man, he now favours market forces, and it's not clear whether his politics are the child or the father of his science. His hostility to renewable energy, for example, gets expressed in strikingly Eurosceptic terms of irritation with subsidies and bureaucrats. But then, when he talks about the Earth - or Gaia - it is in the purest scientific terms all. "There have been seven disasters since humans came on the earth, very similar to the one that's just about to happen. I think these events keep separating the wheat from the chaff. And eventually we'll have a human on the planet that really does understand it and can live with it properly. That's the source of my optimism." What would Lovelock do now, I ask, if he were me? He smiles and says: "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years before it hits the fan." http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

Careful it doesn't get stuck that way!

LIkewise. Think I've posted this before but again: http://history.nasa.gov/ap11fj/ ...NASA's transcript of the broadcast/recorded words of the Public Affairs Officers and mission participants from start to finish of the Apollo 11 mission. Similar is available for other Apollo missions including 13: http://history.nasa.gov/afj/

http://www.breeselittle.com/future-for-all-mankind/4582082187 http://issuu.com/breeselittle/docs/for_all_mankind_-_e.catalogue_-_bre?e=8048082/6396357

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/15/us-law-firm-nsa-surveillance-indonesia-australia

Michael Sam receives ovation February 16, 2014 ESPN.com news services COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Michael Sam received a standing ovation when he appeared on the arena video boards during Missouri's basketball game against Tennessee on Saturday. The All-America defensive end, who could become the first openly gay player in the NFL, later blew a kiss to the student section and shook hands with fans. Sam and the football team were honored at halftime for their AT&T Cotton Bowl over Oklahoma State. Wearing a shirt declaring "We Are All CoMo Sexuals," 51-year-old Michelle Carmichael joined more than a thousand others in forming a line of support for Sam. She didn't hesitate to answer why. "Because Michael Sam stood up for Mizzou his entire career and we need to stand up for him," she said. The shirt plays off the nickname of Columbia, Mo., where Sam announced to his teammates in August that he is gay. The NFL hopeful shared his sexuality in interviews with ESPN's "Outside The Lines" and The New York Times last Sunday. A Facebook event created this week called for the community to stand together for Sam outside Mizzou Arena on Saturday. Nearly 5,000 people said they would attend, though not as many turned out in the 30-degree chill. The gathering was done in part to drown out the Westboro Baptist Church, which had said earlier in the week that it planned to go to Columbia to protest Sam. According to the Columbia Daily Tribune, 15 Westboro members showed up Saturday, holding up signs with "derogatory slogans about Sam and homosexuality." Mason Schara, the student body president who posted Monday on Twitter that he is gay, said the university always will treat Sam as one of its own. "The majority of us knew and we just didn't think anything of it because that's just who we are here," Schara said. "The fact that there's been such a positive reaction across the nation is what sparked us to be here today." The fervor surrounding Sam's announcement quickly died down on campus after coach Gary Pinkel and athletic director Mike Alden said Monday that they supported the 6-foot-2, 255-pound player. Sam also had not been seen publicly this week before joining teammates and Pinkel at the basketball game. Supporters weren't concerned that Sam's draft status might drop because of his sexuality, saying he should be judged by his numbers on the field. Others expressed hope that Sam will inspire more athletes to feel comfortable in coming out, because there will always be people who support them. "I am hopeful that the NFL won't care about something like this," Schara said. "It doesn't matter about his sexual orientation. He's a great player and everyone would be lucky to have him." The Associated Press contributed to this report. http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/michael-sam-receives-ovation/story?id=22537249

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/us/eavesdropping-ensnared-american-law-firm.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560323/NSA-spied-American-lawyers-got-governments-work-them.html

Uh, huh.