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To the ISS and Beyond!

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For those who love the cosmos and have a yearning to explore it, a landmark event occurred this morning. There is now a new way that man can achieve the escape velocity needed to break free from Earth’s gravitational pull.
SpaceX, which is a private company and not a government agency like NASA or the NSA, successfully launched this morning their “Dragon” commercial module via their Falcon9 rocket. The module’s destination is the International Space Station (ISS). This is historic because until this launch, only three countries had ever pushed a capsule into space: the United States, Russia and China. SpaceX just joined this small club.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, the man who founded X.com, which became Paypal.
When Paypal was sold, he became a very wealthy man and with part of his wealth he founded Telsa Motors, which made the first production electric car, where he makes $1 for salary. A year and a half ago Wired wrote a good article titled “Supercharged” about this company.
He also used part of this wealth to found SpaceX, which upon completing this cargo mission will enable it collect on a $396 million contract to develop a cargo ship, and enter into a $1.6 billion contract with NASA for a dozen future cargo flights.
Not too shabby for a private company breaking into an area that has only been served by the government thus far.
“We’re really at the dawn of a new era of space exploration,” Musk says. “I think there’s perhaps some parallels to the Internet in the mid-’90s, when the Internet was created as a government endeavor, but then, the introduction of commercial companies really accelerated growth of the Internet, and made it accessible to the mainstream.”
When “CBS Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley visited the SpaceX factory in March for “60 Minutes,” he found that Musk’s goal is grander than cargo.

“You know,” Pelly remarked, “what I noticed about your cargo ship is that it has windows.”
“Yeah,” Musk responded. “The windows are there in case there is an astronaut who wants to look up.”
“But,” Pelley said, “people don’t put windows in cargo ships.”
“That’s right. Exactly,” Musk replied.
“What that tells me,” Pelley said, “is that this was never intended to be only a cargo ship.”
“No,” Musk confirmed. “Dragon was always designed to carry astronauts.”

Also, the SpaceX’s factory was used as a shooting location for Iron Man 2, and Musk has a cameo in the movie.
Simply put, he rules.
What has Marc Zuckerburg ever done besides start a little social network?
Via info obtained from CBS News and Wired.

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Geeky Love

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In honor of Valentine’s Day, when hundred’s of thousands of geeks feel lonely and unloved, I suggest that you cut and paste the following equation into a Google search box:

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.

If that didn’t make you smile, then what about a guy dressed as Bender proposing in binary code? Not good enough? Then how about a custom made proposal Pokemon card that another Geek used to pop the question to his girlfriend? Still not good enough, then look around my new favorite site Geekologie.
UPDATE: I had already posted but an infographic propopsal is something not to be missed. Any graphic that says among other things, “Wait a minute, that equals 0.48 total women on earth as perfect as you” screams romance to me.

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5BX

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A little while back I read about an 11 minute exercise routine that both Prince Charles and William engage in each morning that is or was mandated by the military at some point and now they just do it to get in tip-top shape, or something like that.
In case you didn’t know, I have had a on-going fitness regimen parade, chock full of of starts and stops, marching for years now. My baton is now directing the parade to this time saving / good enough for royalty routine because among other reasons, for someone who lives and dies by the clock, where one minute really matters (i.e. being one minute late for a train might stick me in Hoboken for 90 minutes), it is especially attractive. So, I decided to find out what they were doing and do it. And it really didn’t take too much effort.
I learned they are using the 5BX (Five Basic Exercises) Plan, which is an exercise program developed for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) by Bill Orban in the late 1950s, first published in 1961. That explains the dated but awesome artwork, font and tone and voice in the original pamphlet that I saw.
I read it three times to get familiar with the exercises and then used a scan of the original 5BX Booklet to work out tonight for the first time, and am happy to say that I got C’s, B’s and an A on Chart 1 which means there is only room for improvement (one can go from chart 1 to 5). I just need to buckle down and exert will power over my bad self. Easier sad than done, but I’m optimistic.
For instance, I will easily run the slowest 5k of my life this coming Saturday but I’m going to start and finish the damn race because its Valentines Day and giving myself a better physical shape is a good present. Plus, the race is my town’s installment of the Cupid’s Chase, which is a pretty cool charity race. Not only is it a race that raises money for charity (in this case one that develops homes and employment for people with developmental disabilities) but its held simultaneously in 25 different cities in 10 different states. The home page features a video of the race last year in the Rock, and that because a Real Housewife of NJ actor ran it. Yay Jerz!

music

Enter the Wugazi

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Before I start to focus my posts solely on the long term negative ramifications of the current duopoly that is running this country, I want to at least acknowledge one of the things that makes happy – namely good music.
As William Congreve wrote in “The Mourning Bride,” music has charms to soothe the savage beast. One of the types of music I love is the mashup genre, though only when a mashup is done right. The Judgment Night soundtrack. The Chef Aid album. The Grey Album. Girl Talk’s Night Ripper Feed the Animals (the latest I didn’t love his latest one so much). All of these I would consider great mashups.
Now, I want to add the rap-collective Doomtree’s “Wugazi” project to the mix. They have put out a single called “Sleep Rules Everything Around me” which is a mashup of the Wu-Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M.” and Fugazi’s “I’m So Tired.” It was released online yesterday and it already has had almost 24,000 plays. On July 13, Wugazi’s album “13 Chambers” is expected to drop – the title itself is a mashup of the Wu’s seminal “Enter the 36 Chambers” and Fugazi’s “13 Songs” album titles. Based on the way that “Sleep Rules Everything Around Me” sounds, I believe it will be as Johan van der Smut, aka Goldmember put it, “tight like a tiger!”
Check out the song below (if it doesn’t play, don’t blame me, blame Steve Jobs because you are probably on some sort of Apple machine):
Sleep Rules Everything Around Me by WUGAZI
Via Christopher

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Best Einstein Quote of the Week? Year?

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Einstein had lots of great quotes, such as the famous “I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice” which is commonly paraphrased as “God doesn’t play dice.” I received one today though that might be favorite yet:

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life thinking it’s stupid.

Wee!
Wee!

The quote then made me think of something that my Yoga instructor said when I took Yoga for undergraduate gym credits. Her statement, which I’ve taken with me through life since the that time, can summed up in the following manner:

“Picture someone reading a book on the beach. Picture a fish in the water swimming near the shore. The fish has no ability to read, or even know what a book is. That being said, it doesn’t mean that the book doesn’t exist or that Shakespeare isn’t wonderful.”

I often invoke that phrase when trying to explain something that is outside my realm of comprehension, like parallel universes, God, etc. I use it to sum up the idea that “just because we can’t understand or even comprehend something doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.” The Einstein quote is sort of the same but reversed. It’s tremendous!
Via Anthony

ramblings

What If Every PSA Was Like This One?

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I’m not sure the country that this drunk driving awareness public service announcement is from, though I’m pretty sure it’s Sweden, not in the least because the username of the person who put this video up on YouTube is “SwedishFuck.” What I am sure about is that the ad flat out rocks. Enjoy!

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Anticipation

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I read a fantastic short story by Steven Millhauser called “Getting Closer” in the January 3, 2011 edition of the New Yorker today that really hit me hard. I wasn’t expecting this story to affect me at all, especially not with the way the first few paragraphs flowed, which is one of the reasons I’m writing about it. The other reason is because the protagonist of the story, a 9 year old boy, tells dictates a short, simple and devastatingly powerful idea that really resonated with me because I often feel the same way that this kid does in the story. Basically, the story is about how his family has decided to go to a river for a day’s worth of fun and while he is oh so excited to lay in a tube and float around, he can’t seem to get into the river because to get into the river and the tube would mean that the day is now ending, it is no longer beginning, and he wants the joy of the anticipation of getting in the tube to linger as long as possible.

Everything has led up to this moment. No, wrong, he isn’t there yet. The moment’s just ahead of him. This is the time before the waiting stops and he crosses over into what he’s been waiting for.

I really don’t want to ruin this story – as I said, its short – only 3,000 words, but the idea it raises is one that I’ve struggled with most of my life. I often do not like to do things that I really, really want to do, or am really looking forward to doing, because once I’ve done them they are over and I am living in the past and no longer looking forward to the future. For instance, I will keep a book that I really want to read on my shelf for a year because once I read it, I no longer have the wonderful anticipatory joy of waiting to read it. This idea of stretching waiting time out is exactly what this kid echos – he doesn’t want to jump in the river because when he does, the countdown starts towards when he needs to get out of the river.
I’ve felt this way about all sorts of experiences, whether its trips (where the second I get on the airplane to go somewhere I’m already thinking about coming back), concerts (where the second I hear the first song I wonder how many songs will they play before this show ends), books (where the second I read the first page I wonder how it will end), movies, you name it. Basically anything I like I delay, because the anticipation of the event to me is almost if not as good as the event itself. Weird but true. That is what this story is about and I love it because I’ve never had these emotions that I feel put into words the way that Mr. Millhauser did. Well done sir.

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Good Finds to Share

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I work with an amazingly interesting and intelligently creative bunch of individuals who from time to time, and that means virtually every single day, manages to send out a link to something new, different, fascinating, funny, odd, media related, data orientated or “other” and I never get to share them. So, in the spirit of sharing, I promise to do a better job at forwarding these nuggets along, especially since I don’t seem to have the energy to voice my own opinions as much as I used to.
For instance, check out In Bb 2.0 – a collaborative music / spoken word project that uses the simple beauty of code and YouTube videos to present something awfully compelling. The creators saw that YouTube doesn’t stop the user from running more than one video at a time and were curious to see if there was a musical way to explore that concept. There is, and its pretty cool: http://www.inbflat.net.

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Thoughts on Recent Life

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Two months ago I moved from NYC to the burbs…and have been tired ever since.
I sleep three times a day now: at night, on my way into NYC and my way home from NYC. The dream, no pun intended, of reading a book on the way in and watching a DVD on the way home has been retired for now because I’m just too tired to even try to do accomplish it. Having two kids under three years of age will do that to you I guess and if you add a stressful job into the mix, you definitely have a great recipe for a lack of posting, which is exactly what has happened over the past few weeks / months.
I’m not happy about this development. It makes me sad. That being said, I’ve been able to be reunited with all of my writings now from the past and seeing the shear volume of that discourse makes me feel guilty about now posting more.
On the one hand, I want to stay relevant and out there. So maybe I should post 140 characters or less with a link to something else a la Twitter on this blog. On the other hand, that isn’t what this blog is about and I refuse to do that. When I migrated it from Movable Type to WordPress, I had to reformat a lot of posts and realized how many of my posts were simply “Go look at this cool thing!” posts which didn’t hold up over time – the links are gone from YouTube and without context, even I, the one who wrote the post, didn’t know what was truly going on which was so very discouraging. That is because my intention for this site is that one day, I want for someone to be able to look at this blog as something of substance, an ironic gesture considering that it only exists as zeros and ones powered by power.
Anyway, I have a whole folder just full of things to post. In both my personal and work email accounts I’ve created a folder called “Blog Worthy” and there are tons of posts just waiting for me to address. I promise to you Hopefully Constant Reader that you’ll get a smorgasbord of them soon!