Meet Valkyrie, NASA’s new “superhero” robot. Okay fine, it was designed to be able to access disaster areas and help rescue survivors. Let’s all hope for very slow disaster scenarios and that the bots can play Wagner.
China’s “Jade Rabbit” lunar rover is on it’s way! Packed with a ground-piercing radar, cameras, spectrometers and plutonium-powered heaters, the rover lifted off at 1730 GMT (12:30 p.m. EST) Sunday.
In 1818, almost 200 years ago yesterday, eccentric would-be explorer John Cleves Symmes, Jr. addressed this circular to the city of Wilmington, Del., seeking a fellowship of 100 like-minded “brave souls” to come with him on a polar journey to discover the center of the Earth, which he declared was “hollow, and habitable within.” Symmes circular makes reference to “Doctor Darwin’s Golden Secret”, apparently a reference to Dr. Erasmus Darwin; more on that can be found here.
Aeon Magazine has a wonderful piece on humanity’s fascination with stories of submerged civilizations, and the surprising ‘modern’ discovery that ancient peoples did once walk the plains beneath our seas.
“…But there is no doubt that the classical tradition is: the curse of boils, bats, frogs, the curse of blood, the curse of rats, hail, of beasts, the locusts, of course, the death of the first-born, and then, finally, of darkness”.
The peacock’s tail gave Darwin fits. How could evolution possibly favor such cumbersome and conspicuous accoutrement? What really matters, of course, is what the peahen he’s trying to impress makes of it. In a new study, scientists mounted tiny eye-tracking cameras on the heads of peahens to try to get inside their minds as they watched males’ courtship displays.
Aeon Magazine has a wonderful piece on humanity’s fascination with stories of submerged civilizations, and the surprising ‘modern’ discovery that ancient peoples did once walk the plains beneath our seas.
“Vulnerable Sam: Inflatable Child Substitute” (1972): This educational product went on the market in late 1972 and was targeted at prospective parents, nursery school teachers and church staff. It afforded them the opportunity to practice their corporal punishment techniques before inflicting them on an actual child.
“Switched at birth?”, wherein a certain Mrs. Kent claimed she was Queen Victoria’s daughter.
Want a squishy toy fetus with your corn dog? If you’re visiting the North Dakota State Fair, you’re in luck! Last weekend, Minot Right to Life slipped soft fetal models into kids’ candy bags. “The Precious One” fetal models are manufactured by Heritage House, a “pro-life supply store,” for $1.50 a pop — cheaper if you buy in bulk. “It was really disturbing watching children run around with them,” one parent recalled.
Danger Room reports: “As the U.S. prepares to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, the government watchdog charged with overseeing nearly $100 billion in contracts to reconstruct the country has found almost $2 billion in potential waste, fraud and abuse in the last three months alone”.
On a much happier note, the U.S. Air Force has a contingent of “bronies”. The recent “BronyCon Summer 2012” in New Jersey even had a special lunch for service members that got a visit from Tara Strong, who voices the magical pony “Twilight Sparkle”. The cognitive dissonance between this reality and entrenched military machismo has prompted some hostile commentary, usually along these lines-
“Daddy Dearest”: a look inside the mind of Syrian president tyrant Bashir al-Assad. We’d all hoped the western-educated doctor would bring reforms, but he was trapped in the authoritarian government built by his father. Or so it says.
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