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The Most Accurate Navigation In History
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No comments on The Most Accurate Navigation In HistoryHow to hit a bullseye on Mars – an article about the lengths the navigators for the current NASA Mars missions had to go to land the Spirit Rover right on target, entering the Martian atmosphere within 200m of the desired point (via MetaFilter).
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A Faster Future
I’ve been shopping around for a TV on the Internet for a while now. After thinking about it and looking at the trends in prices, I’ve decided to buy one of the cheapest TVs possible without completely sacrificing on quality. Normally I subscribe to the belief that if you’re buying a high value, high use…
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A New Year
It doesn’t feel like 2004. It doesn’t even feel like 2003, but I suppose we’ll all just have to cope. It’s going well so far; what could be better than watching seven episodes of Friends (season one, no less) in bed and having someone else cook breakfast for you? I’m writing this sitting on an…
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The Price of Ideals
“Are those what I think they are?” I asked incredulously, while walking down to the station with a friend. My friend affirmed that yes, the government had built a rather large wind farm off the shore of my home town. This was a bit of a shock. I had absolutely no warning that they were…
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The Road to Mars is Paved with Money
I haven’t been following the Beagle 2 Mars Mission anywhere near as much as I ‘ought’ to be, but I loved this quote from the lead scientist of the project, Colin Pillinger. Interviewer: What happens if you find life on Mars? Prof. Colin Pillinger: I’ll find it a lot easier to get funding for the…
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A Cure
I was out in Liverpool doing some shopping and sherpa-duty for a friend when I saw a wonderfully stupid sign for a herbalist in a shopping mall. I lamented to my friend that I didn’t have a camera with me, and then did a double-take and realised that I did – I’ve just bought a…
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A Bright Picture
It’s not often that I see a piece of science writing that concisely explains a difficult concept in an accessible way, but this article at Wired on a pill that could prevent hearing loss had some well-written passages. The reporter, Noah Shachtman, used a nice turn of phrase to describe how a buildup of free…
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Inappropriate Award
And the award for the most inappropriate music in a movie trailer goes to Peter Pan which used an instrumental version of ‘Clocks’ by Coldplay. What were they thinking? Other than the fact that Coldplay are popular these days, I can think of no reason why they used them as backing music. Don’t get me…
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Applause
I have long wanted to see a movie – any movie – in which the audience applauds at the end. I’ve always thought I’d have to go to America to do this since they are certainly more unrestrained than the English, but at the end of watching Return of the King in London on the…
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Static
After you’ve lived in Cambridge and Oxford for three years, you begin to appreciate two things. One, they’re really, really small. Two, nothing ever changes in those cities, and doubly so for anything related to the university. There’s a ‘joke’ that goes: Q: How many college fellows does it take to change a lightbulb? A:…
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