Fukushima haz a mascot.
Author: m1k3y
Read moreFor engineering reasons, the quantum processor can never be installed in Glass, but together with Google’s conventional server centers, it can point the way to a better blink-detecting algorithm. That would allow the Glass processor to detect blinks with better accuracy and using significantly less power. If successful, it could be an important breakthrough for wink-triggered apps, which have struggled with the task so far.
U-Boat’s five models equipped with bubble-shaped acrylic windows can hold between two and five people and sink to between 100 meters and 1,000 meters underwater. Rival Triton, which is based at Vero Beach in Florida, is pushing the depth limit to 1,650 meters for similar battery-powered technology.
Storing an 18,000-pound submarine elegantly on a designer yacht can be a challenge.
Makers urge owners to have bespoke boats conceived with subs in mind or, alternatively, invest in a “shadow” vessel to transport these types of toys and tenders, smaller speedboats that accompany super-sized yachts.
Private submersibles are “a way of exploring for things that no human has ever seen,” Marc Deppe, Triton vice-president of sales and marketing, said in an interview. “For that you need depth.”
Sharks, hydrothermal vents and sea mounts are among the wonders the more jaded wealthy could admire from an air conditioned capsule complete with panoramic views and a sound system, according to Deppe.
There are also man-made attractions. U-Boat in July took Russian President Vladimir Putin 60 meters underwater in the Gulf of Finland to see The Oleg, a 19th-century shipwreck.
One of Triton’s subs was used in an oceanographic research campaign to film the elusive giant squid. The company is using the feat to develop relationships between rich submarine owners and research institutes too poor to acquire the hardware.
“A lot of guys who are billionaires have profound financial accomplishments and are now concerned about their legacy,” said Deppe.
* just in case you were wondering why the private space industry is ramping up now.
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Created by cartographer Joan Blaeu, the chart is based partly on an exploratory voyage by the Dutch East India Company and also on Abel Tasman’s sightings in 1642.
Believed to have been mostly used as a wall decoration in a grand home or palace, the map was found in a storage unit in Sweden in 2010 and offered for sale in Stockholm for about $10,000.
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A Matthew Barney extravaganza on the Greek Isle of Hydra, a renowned, car-free artsy fartsy hideout where everyone who is anyone goes everywhere by foot or burro. Hosted by collector/industrialist/Koons yacht owner Dakis Joannou, the performance/party/shark roast combined various events into one hyperreal Mediterranean spectacle.
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A Buddhist monk wears a Geiger counter as he leads a small funeral ceremony for Yotsuno Kanno, who died as an evacuee at a cemetery in the evacuated town of Minamitsushima inside the exclusion zone in Fukushima prefecture, Sept. 21. Kanno, who was evacuated after the disaster at Daiichi plant in 2011 with rest of people from Minamitsushima, died in temporary accommodation in May, two weeks short of her 100th birthday.
Read moreI’m Not Really Here: 3liza: one of the weirdest things about star trek is why…
one of the weirdest things about star trek is why replicator/teleporter technology (they are the same) havent completely destroyed the concept of senescence within the societies that can afford to use the technology. in this episode of ds9, for example, chief o’brian comes down with…
having recently completed an Into Darkness inspired tour through the Trek’verse I have concluded that the Eugenics War is a deliberate construct put into their future history (but back and to the left of ours) to justify their anti-transhumanist/human purist agenda.
Also what Cory Doctorow said somewhere ages ago that you can store the whole damn, near infinite if you like, crew in a tin can and just beam them ‘out’ when needs be.
But then I’d be taking the Trek verse way too seriously huh…
I’m Not Really Here: 3liza: one of the weirdest things about star trek is why…
Read more "I’m Not Really Here: 3liza: one of the weirdest things about star trek is why…"
Read morePlan of Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Dome above Midtown, New York City (via hyperrealcartography, archimaps)
Read moreProfessor Parker said that in order to guarantee that it kept getting money from Congress, NASA worked very hard to from the 1960s onwards to develop the story of its importance for the future.
“The cards at the National Space Centre are very poignant. Lots of people will be able to say exactly where they were when they saw Neil Armstrong land on the Moon. It became part of the narrative of your life.
“But the notions of progress which were common in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s are now no longer as universally accepted. I don’t think anyone believes that things only move forward for the better anymore.”
Dr Lewis Goodings said: “This research highlights the intersections between our personal experiences of the event and the particular version of the past that is given to us through the media and other sources.
Read moreBack in the early-90s day, I wrote and drew a comics miniseries—Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels—that I decided should take place inside a cylindrical space habitat as famously envisioned by Gerard K. O’Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space.* However, I was unable to dig up a copy of the book at the time, and thus, in those benighted days long before the term “Google image search” existed, had no easy access to direct reference material.
So, I ended up basing my version of an O’Neill habitat on several very impressive and quite beautiful images drawn by wildly talented artist Ikuto Yamashita** for a Gundam piece in the short-lived Japanese magazine Machine Head. The funny part: I had no idea that Yamashita had in turn based his interpretation on paintings from The High Frontier, as he had managed to dig up better reference than yours truly. Many years later, I was startled to see the original paintings by Don Davis and others online (as seen above)… “Holy crap, that’s the source of that one double-page spread! Sweet!”
*More info on The High Frontier here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space
**At the time, best known for his manga Dark Whisper; nowadays, better known as a Gainax mecha designer on Evangelion and many other projects.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 