Inspiration for Innovation and the New Race for Space

I am very glad to see Fora TV post this video in the open, and not behind a paywall, so that we can see it in its entirety.

From the video description:

Aerospace entrepreneur, Virgin Galactic spacecraft designer, and founder of aerospace research firm Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan is a bold visionary with a passion for the advancement of technology. Named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc. magazine and one of "The World's 100 Most Influential People" by TIME, Rutan designed the legendary Voyager aircraft -- the first to circle the world nonstop without refueling. He is also responsible for the design of SpaceShipOne, the world's first privately funded spacecraft which, in 2004, became the first private rocket plane ever to put a man into space. Rutan has been profiled by 60 Minutes and featured on the covers of both LIFE and TIME.

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Black Marble added to Google Maps

Google Earth has added the recently released Earth at Night 2012 to Google Maps and you can explore the imagery to see how your area looks at night.

The above photo is of the area where I live, with my residence marked with a red marker. The photo below is an annotated version of that with the major cities labelled.

Check it out for yourself at Google Maps.

Source: Google Maps

**update** 
More info, including the KML File, is available at the Earth Observatory.

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Peter Robinson Interviews George W Bush

Here is an interview Peter Robinson recently conducted with President George W. Bush on life after the White House.

Source: Uncommon Knowledge

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A Hiker Passes Through Macon County: Jonathan Welch's Account

Jonathan Welch on Wayah Bald


A former staff photographer with the Mountain Xpress is attempting a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail and is keeping an interesting blog of his experiences. [AT Blog]


He recently came through Macon County and made a stop over here, riding in the shuttle driven by Ron Haven.


You can see the two blog entries as he passed through our county by clicking the two links below:


Farewell GA, nice to meet again NC


"It's all about the smiles, not the miles!"


He is keeping an interesting record, photographic and written, of his journey and I hope that he keeps it up for the duration of his attempt. I will be checking on his progress from time to time and I hope that some of you will as well.


Hat Tip to the Mountain Xpress for posting a recent story on Welch's journey that alerted me to this endeavor.


Check out galleries of Jonathan's photographic work on his website.

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The Untold Story of Planned Obsolescence

The Lightbulb Conspiracy: The Untold Story of Planned Obsolescence is a documentary about how our economic system based on consumerism is really breaking our planet down.


It uses investigative research and rare archive footage to trace the untold story of Planned Obsolescence, from its beginnings in the 1920s with a secret cartel, set up expressly to limit the life span of light bulbs, to present-day stories involving cutting edge electronics (such as the iPod) and the growing spirit of resistance among ordinary consumers.


Planned Obsolescence is the deliberate shortening of product life spans to guarantee consumer demand. As a magazine for advertisers succinctly puts it: “The article that refuses to wear out is a tragedy of business “ – and a tragedy for the modern growth society which relies on an ever-accelerating cycle of production, consumption and throwing away.


Despite the annoying subtitles, this is a must-watch documentary.




Hat Tip to Ralph Roberts on G+ who linked to the story of the Centennial Bulb this morning.

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The John Batchelor Show for February 3, 2011 Monitoring and Commenting Upon World Events

The John Batchelor Show is an essential tool for understanding the new order in the 21st Century. The world is now facing a dangerous and fanatical enemy determined to destroy Western civilization on both political and military fronts. In this, the first great ideological battle of the new millennium, it is imperative to know the major players and the theaters in which they operate.

Last night's show is posted below, and the topic schedule is here.


Hour One Feb 3, 2011 Download MP3

Hour Two Feb 3, 2011 Download MP3

Hour Three Feb 3, 2011 Download MP3

Hour Four Feb 3, 2011 Download MP3




For more information on The John Batchelor Show, please visit the following websites:


Listen Live on WABC Radio from 9pm to 1am 7 nights a week


The John Batchelor Show website


The WABC Radio Podcast webpage (you can download the show yourself, as I do every morning)


Wikipedia Article on John Batchelor


Facebook Page (for fans)

Twitter Account


My previous articles on the show

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The John Batchelor Show for January 27, 2011 Monitoring and Commenting Upon World Events

The John Batchelor Show is an essential tool for understanding the new order in the 21st Century. The world is now facing a dangerous and fanatical enemy determined to destroy Western civilization on both political and military fronts. In this, the first great ideological battle of the new millennium, it is imperative to know the major players and the theaters in which they operate.


The John Batchelor Show features a multitude of distinctive elements. John's themes cover every detail - from military battles, presidential campaigns, planetary exploration, and Hollywood politicos to his own international travel. John has broadcast from many corners of the world and in his program he calls out to all points, including New York, Jerusalem, Des Moines, Kazakhstan, Orlando, Manchester, Morocco, Boston, Taipei, Washington, and Baghdad.


Needless to say, The John Batchelor Show is my favorite Radio Show, and a useful tool for gaining insight on world events via the discussions and interviews conducted by John Batchelor. Below you will find the audio of last night's show for your edification...





Hour One



Hour Two



Hour Three



Hour Four




For more information on The John Batchelor Show, please visit the following websites:


Listen Live on WABC Radio from 9pm to 1am 7 nights a week


The John Batchelor Show website


The WABC Radio Podcast webpage (you can download the show yourself, as I do every morning)


Wikipedia Article on John Batchelor


Facebook Page (for fans)

Twitter Account


My previous articles on the show

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Humans vs Zombies

I don't know how I never heard of this game before...


 From Wikipedia...

Humans vs. Zombies (also called Zombies vs. Humans, The Zombie Game, or HvZ for short) is a live-action game predominately played at college campuses where players begin as Humans and try to survive in a story where Zombies have begun to rise from the dead. The game was created in the fall of 2005 at Goucher College by students Brad Sappington and Chris Weed. Weed and fellow players have since created an official website with rules and information for other universities to create and customize their own HvZ game. Since the game's creation, Humans vs. Zombies has been played at various colleges across the United States, at ANU in Canberra, and CSU in Wagga Wagga, both in Australia. Attempts have been made to bring the game to the United Kingdom, with the first being in Northampton, and the most recent being at the University of Sussex and the University of Kent which boasted over 350 student participating.

The ultimate goal of the game is for either all Humans to be turned into Zombies, or for the humans to survive a set amount of time. Humans defend themselves using socks or dart guns, stunning the Zombie players; Zombies are unarmed and must tag the Humans to gain a kill and avoid "starvation", forcing them out of the game. Safe zones are established so that players can eat and sleep in safety.

Here is even a documentary about the game, which is how I first discovered it...








I wish this had been around twenty plus years ago when I was the age of these kids. it would have been a blast!!!


Visit the official website for the game.

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Judgement Day is Coming, Will You be Ready?

I haven't heard this song in at least a year...thanks to Bill Randall for reminding me of it this morning.


Check out Carman's website for more information on his minstry and visit Bill Randall for Congress to find out how you can support this bold man during his runoff election.

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The History of Information

David Siegel, author of 4 books about the web, presents his new 8-minute video on the history and future of information. Using a fast pace and fun graphics, Siegel introduces us to the next wave of innovation with two key concepts he claims will affect $10 trillion of commerce worldwide: pull and the semantic web. This concise introduction to the wider concepts of his new book on the topic, Pull, will guide you in making the shift from push to pull. Caution: this video will make you think about potential changes you might want to make to your business model and the way you do business. To learn more, visit his web site:ThePowerOfPull.com.




The History of Information, by David Siegel from dsiegel on Vimeo.



Hat Tip: ZenPundit, who has oodles of stuff that is very interesting.

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Rube Goldberg Machine Featured in OK Go Music Video

My favorite part of the video is that you can see the detritus of previous dry runs, as illustrated in this photo. 

OK Go requested a Rube Goldberg machine as the centerpiece of a video. To borrow from wikipedia, a "Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The name is drawn from American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg." Think of the classic board game Mousetrap or your favorite chain reactions from Tom & Jerry cartoons.

More than 40 engineers, techies, artists, and circus types spent several months designing, building, rebuilding, and re-setting a machine that took up two floors of a Los Angeles warehouse. The volunteers gave up many nights, weekends, and even some vacation days to build a stunning machine that has drawn more than 13 million views on YouTube.

Source: What on Earth (a NASA blog)
Related: Brent Bushnell (I swiped the photo from him)

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KPRC News Documentary

This is a documentary filmed in 1966 and is a fascinating look at how a news station in Houston went about gathering the news in the 60s.


Many of the jobs that once took several people now take only one or two people to accomplish. I got a kick out of seeing the old-style film editors at work.


It makes me consider the routines and methods I employ when gathering information for a blog post or when I prepare to cover a live event, or when I have the rare opportunity to webcast a live event.


One thing that is apparent to me is that most news organizations seem to still operate with the view that their conventional channel is the main target of their news gathering operations. That is to say, that TV Stations seem overly focused on items for broadcast, Radio Stations and Newspapers seems focused on their conventional distribution channel. Many of them have websites that are either afterthoughts or are very poorly designed advertisement platforms. WWNC-AM is one obvious example that comes to mind, especially after looking at the source code. Nearly every Clear Channel radio station website looks the same and isn't designed with standard SEO practices in mind that would help in making their material searchable on the web. 


They have neglected to change with the times and to take advantage of the new opportunities presented by the Internet and the multiple channels of distribution that have become available to them.


One of the few examples I can think of that don't fall into this mold is the Mountain Xpress in Asheville. It is a weekly paper that is mostly filled with entertainment news and some news stories of local interest. Their website is a much better source of information because they have used crowd sourcing techniques that allow people in the community to participate in the news gathering process.


This is something that the Asheville Citizen-Times has tried to do over the years and has failed miserably with each attempt, usually through no fault of their reporters. I place the blame with a very poor management style that seems to take a top-down approach to news gathering that reminds me of the old Soviet Politburo method of Command and Control and centralized decision making.


WLOS-TV is more of the same in regard to web design and news distribution, although it is a step above the Citizen-Times.  One glaring omission from the website is the ability to watch the newscast live or on demand. They have individual stories, but not the whole product.

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The Infamous Amityville House Is Up For Sale

Josh Allem is a gifted communicator and I really enjoy his website, Founding Word and Radio Show of the same name. He is currently undertaking a synchronized study of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

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Plasma Rain Falling on the Sun

Continuing the trend of science-like articles today, I'm posting this video and a link to the Science at NASA website for a fascinating look at the sun as revealed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which has been billed as a Hubble for the Sun. So far, that has been upheld as the orbiting observatory has been showing us new things about the sun every week since it became operational. The discovery this week: Plasma Rain.

The movie, recorded on April 19th, spans four hours of actual time and more than 100,000 km of linear space. "It's huge," says Schrijver. Indeed, the entire planet Earth could fit between the plasma streamers with room to spare. 

Astronomers have seen eruptions like this before, but rarely so large and never in such fluid detail. As science team member Alan Title of Lockheed Martin pointed out at last week's press conference, "no other telescope comes close to the combined spatial, temporal and spectral resolution of SDO." 

Schrijver says his favorite part of the movie is the coronal rain. "Blobs of plasma are falling back to the surface of the sun, making bright splashes where they hit," he explains. "This is a phenomenon I've been studying for years." 

Coronal rain has long been a mystery. It's not surprising that plasma should fall back to the sun. After all, the sun's gravity is powerful. The puzzle of coronal rain is how slowly it seems to fall. "The sun's gravity should be pulling the material down much faster than it actually moves. What's slowing the descent?" he wonders.
For the first time, SDO provides an answer. 

"The rain appears to be buoyed by a 'cushion' of hot gas," says Schrijver. "Previous observatories couldn't see it, but it is there." 

One of SDO's game-changing capabilities is temperature sensing. Using an array of ultraviolet telescopes called the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), the observatory can remotely measure the temperature of gas in the sun's atmosphere. Coronal rain turns out to be relatively cool—"only" 60,000 K. When the rains falls, it is supported, in part, by an underlying cushion of much hotter material, between 1,000,000 and 2,200,000 K.

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The Collector

View on ExposureRoom

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Fall Colors As Seen From Space

As you can see above, fall colors are visible even from space!


You can download the original 7 MB photo, taken one year ago today, from NASA's Earth Observatory.

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Economic Update - Asheville Metro Area April 2009

Here is a video from the Asheville Chamber of Commerce I found, but haven't been able to find a pdf of the report online so far. I expect a link to it to eventually show up on the Chamber's Economic Development page.

You'd think they'd put a link to the report in the video description.

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The North Carolina DOT Truck Incident

Your tax dollars at work!

From the video description:

While I was at work a NC DOT Truck went 150 feet up my driveway and drove into my yard and got stuck.

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Landslide Mitigation, Japanese Style

The Japanese apparently do nothing by halves, and that appears to extend into Landslide Territory:

Japan is probably the only country in the world where the government invests quite a bit into landslide mitigation work. As a result, advanced techniques have been developed and improved there over the past few decades. According to "Landslides in Japan (1996)", there are two major approaches to landslide mitigation: "control works", and "restraint works".

Source: Landslides under Microscope (there are some cool photos over there)

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Roofs

This is an interesting video made by Marco Antonio that is a study of roofs in Gijón, Spain. I particularly like the music that accompanies it:




Eeek! I broke the template!!!
Click here to see the video at Exposure Room

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