We built these in highschool electronics class, the fun wore thin after a while. Maybe it was the teacher threating us with harm if we didn’t turn it off ASAP. Who knew back then that it could have been a money making opportunity.
Wiggler
I enjoy taking stereo photographs from time to time but many people have a problem viewing them. People either can’t cross their eyes or they can’t do the ‘far look’ thing and fuse the images together. Viewers are great – but they don’t do all that well over the Internet and most people don’t have setups to view them on their computer screens anyway.
So this could be a handy tool. What the Wiggler does is take two photos (or one side by side photo) and adds a sense of the third dimention by alternating them back and forth. Its pretty cool. I have a link at the bottom to an image that I made from two screens from the Google Earth program.
Lower Manhattan has been Wiggled!
Leave Brain at Door Please
Things like this make my brain hurt. What kind of parent would take their children to a place like this?
…Bolted to the wall in both the boys and girls rooms are chains with tracts by the cartoonist/evangelist Jack Chick hanging from them. The pages are laminated and set on rings for ease of reading while using the toilet.
Well at least they are in the right location. But this isn’t about the Chick Tracks, its about the ploy that the regious nuts are using to push their point.
Lets look at something for a moment. A theory is defined as “a model or idea that has undergone testing or validation from careful observations and can be used to make a variety of predictions of what will happen under different circumstances”. Evolution meets that pretty well.
Hovind’s dino land distorts the scientific observations of evolution so badly that it passes the point of absurdity and becomes somthing that is just sad. This write up sheds quite a bit of light on Dino Adventure Land and the man behind the scenes of it all. And before you call it a baseless personal attack on Hovind look at the information put forward by the authors investigation. County and IRS records should speak volumes about the guy.
This can be found in a display case next to a sandpit in the childrens ‘fossil dig’ area:
One dramatizes a scene from the Old English epic poem Beowulf (an inexpensive Dover Books edition of the poem is for sale in the bookstore.) The plaque explains that this is one of many examples of dinosaurs living contemporaneously with humans; apparently, Beowulf is a historical documentary and not just a legend.
Your kidding right? This is wrong on sooo many levels.
You have got to read this article and see just how crazy this place is.
Here is the ‘parks’ web page if you want to see this for yourself. I can not in good conscience reccoment that you go there except to see what kind of dreck people are exposed to there.
If you go remember to shut your mouth, nod your head a lot, and don’t even think of mentioning critical thinking!
Windows Utility Bonanza!
Wow. If you need a utility for Windows you should be able to find it here. Passwords, weather, networks, command line tools, its here.
Freeware Tools and Utilities for Windows
Trebuchet Reloaded
Today I received a comment about the Paper Trebuchet I blogged a while ago:
>Hi, John.
>Im about to build a cardboard trebuchet 4 my assignment but the site is currently unavailiable.
>can u please send me the plan if u still have it,thx.
>geniusjeff2002@xxxx.xxx
Well heck, I checked the site I mentioned in my original post and discovered that sure enough the plans are no longer there. The site looks pretty broken to me.
So I sent this to Geniusjeff2002 in hopes that I can still be of some help.
I just sent him an e-mail asking if there is another location to download it from, if I get a message from him I’ll post it here. I can’t find the one I downloaded from his site anymore, its lost on my hard drive. 🙁
In the mean time here is a more complex plan, it looks very cool. Ripcords Tennis Ball Trebuchet
If that is too complex then go with the Popsicle Stick Trebuchet (main page). This would be amazingly strong for its size and still be quite easy to build.
If you have any LEGOs about the house, I bet you could use them in place of the Popsicle sticks.
I hope this helps a bit and best of luck on the assignment.
Both the plans I found are quite good. The Popsicle one looks easy enough you could build them in a class room (if your insane enough to do somthing like that). So if anyone is looking for the paper trebuchet plans and can’t find them either give this one a try.
****UPDATE****
I submitted this to the MAKE blog and it was accecpted. Some less forgetfull reader than I noted that the Wayback Machine had an archive of the original Paper Trebuchet page! Very cool!
Build a paper trebuchet
Shuttle Flight Scrubbed
Todays flight of STS-114 has be postponed due to one of the four low level fuel cut-off sensors in the main tank giving a faulty reading. These sensors monitor the level of hydrogen in the tanks so the motors will not run dry and be damaged if the burn is longer than expected. The crew is being unloaded and taken via the crew van to astronauts crew quarters and the ground crews are beginning the de-tanking process of the onboard cryogenics. The flight ops team will be assessing the problem and resetting the schedule accordingly. They will be having a press conference at apx. 4pm EST to discuss the events of the day. The chance for a flight tomorrow is very low as weather is going to be a major issue, todays launch had a 60% chance of being scrubbed due to low visibility due to clouds. Maximum visibility is needed to ensure that all 107 ground and air born cameras can get a good view of the vehicle during the assent to verify that the tiles have not sustained any damage during launch. The launch window for docking with the ISS to preform the scheduled re-supply mission is approximately two weeks.
UPDATE: The launch has been pushed back until Saturday, July 16 at 2:40 p.m. EDT
Watch NASA TV live
NASA Return to Flight main page
CNN coverage of the STS-114 launch
SPACE.com coverage of the Return to Space