Posted 7/26/2011 10:13:00 PM by Douglas

I've stayed away from the gnashing of teeth on the end of NASA's manned spaceflight program, almost as much as I've stayed from Lileks in the past seven years. But he nails this one.

So what’s the attachment, really? Childhood attachment to Star Trek fantasies, geeky fascination with spaceships, adolescent marination in sci-fi visions of rockets and moon bases and PanAm shuttles engaged in a sun-bathed ballet with a space station revolving to the strains of Strauss, phasers and warp six and technobabble and the love of great serene machinery knifing through clouds of glowing dust? Probably. It’s not over, I know – but it’s like watching the last of Columbus’ ships return, and learning they’re cutting up the mast for firewood, and no one’s planning to go back any time soon. At first you look at the ocean and imagine what’s out there, because that’s what you’ve been doing all your life – and then you lean to stop wondering, because it reminds you of the day you saw the last ship leave.

Let's go, or let's not. It's a matter of public opinion. But when it's over, man, is it gonna be over.

Posted 7/25/2011 05:29:00 PM by Douglas

Much with peak oil, no one really knows when "peak water" is going to hit and the Ogallala Aquifer dries up. But there's no reason to think that water is finding its way back into the ground nearly as fast as it's being pumped out. But no one will ever forget the day it dries up.

Happy's problem is that it has run out of water for its farms. Its population, dropping 10 per cent a year, is down to 595. The name, which brings a smile for miles around and plays in faded paint on the fronts of every shuttered business – Happy Grain Inc, Happy Game Room – has become irony tinged with bitterness. It goes back to the cowboy days of the 19th century. A cattle drive north through the Texas Panhandle to the rail heads beyond had been running out of water, steers dying on the hoof, when its cowboys stumbled on a watering hole. They named the spot Happy Draw, for the water. Now Happy is the harbinger of a potential Dust Bowl unseen in America since the Great Depression.

And it kinda drones on for 3,000 more words to get at relatively simple point: There's too many damn people drinkin' out of the well. So what's to be done? What can be done? No one drawing out of it today would be able to say they can stop and sustain the population and agriculture that exists currently, so that ain't going to happen. But mother nature is keeping score, and when that day comes that another acre foot can't be pumped out of it, plan to be somewhere else.

Posted 7/25/2011 05:10:00 PM by Douglas

NASA = RIP:

The Daily Show - Final Countdown

Posted 7/14/2011 11:51:00 PM by Douglas

What an adorable bookend to the end of an era in American space travel, and national pride:

Thirty years ago, the first space shuttle launched into the stratosphere. Chris Bray and his father Kenneth watched -- and took a picture. Then last Friday, the shuttle Atlantis took its final trip. Again, the Bray men were there. And again, the two snapped a photo to capture the moment.

The side-by-side photos, which are up on Chris Bray's Flickr photostream, immediately went viral on the Web.

Well that's just pretty durn cool. And at the same time, kinda sad.

Posted 7/14/2011 11:47:00 PM by Douglas

If only we could use his powers for the forces of good.

A Minnesota hacker prosecutors described as a “depraved criminal” was handed an 18-year prison term Tuesday for unleashing a vendetta of cyberterror that turned his neighbor’s lives into a living nightmare.

What did he do?

He then e-mailed the same child porn to one of the husband’s coworkers, and sent flirtatious e-mail to women in Mr. Kostolnik’s office. “You are such a fox,” read one of the e-mails. He sent the message’s through the husband’s genuine e-mail account.

After the husband explained to his law office superiors that he had no idea what was happening, his bosses hired a law firm that examined his network and discovered that an “unknown” device had access to it. With Kostolnik’s permission, they installed a packet sniffer on his network to try and get to the bottom of the incidents.

Then, in May 2009, the Secret Service showed up at Kostolnik’s office to ask about several threatening e-mails sent from his Yahoo account, and traced to his IP address, that were addressed to Biden and other politicians. The subject line of one e-mail read: “This is a terrorist threat! Take this seriously.”

Too far, dude, way too far.

Posted 7/14/2011 11:40:00 PM by Douglas

Randall Adams, the unintended star of The Thin Blue Line has died in the anonymity Errol Morris brought to him.

Randall Dale Adams, who spent 12 years in prison before his conviction in the murder of a Dallas police officer was thrown out largely on the basis of evidence uncovered by a filmmaker, died in obscurity in October in Washington Court House, Ohio. He was 61.

Mr. Adams had chosen to live a quiet life divorced from his past, and when he died on Oct. 30, 2010, of a brain tumor, the death was reported only locally, said his lawyer, Randy Schaffer. The death was first widely reported on Friday.

I can't imagine he wanted to live "divorced from his past" after spending a dozen years in the clink because the DPD are a bunch of bumbling idiots.

Posted 7/14/2011 11:35:00 PM by Douglas

Drowning does not look like drowning.

The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

It's a terrifying situation to be in, and you're there before you know what happened, much less before you know what to do.