blacksundae

New Scientist:

Elementary physics tells us that we actually can move the planets. Launching a rocket into space pushes the Earth a bit in the opposite direction, like the recoil from a gun.

Science-fiction author and trained physicist Stanley Schmidt exploited this fact in his novel The Sins of the Fathers, in which aliens built giant rocket engines at the South Pole to move the Earth. (Read about other sci-fi novels and films that have tackled the problem of moving worlds.)

In real life, however, the Earth is so massive that a rocket would have little effect on its motion. Launching a billion 10-tonne rockets in exactly the same direction would change the Earth’s velocity by just 20 nanometres per second – peanuts compared to the planet’s current speed of 30 kilometres per second.

A few astronomers have tackled the problem of moving planets, but not for dealing with emergencies on human time scales. They’re actually devising thought experiments to understand the dynamics of planetary systems, says Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz. So processes that occur on geologic time scales work perfectly well.

Link! Via MonkeyFilter

BBC:

Sesena was designed as a major urbanisation for Spanish professionals who could not afford city prices, with more than 13,500 flats built on scrubland.

Fewer than 3,000 have been sold. Hugh Pym takes a look at this modern ghost town.

Link! Via Ballardian

Alan Kay presenting Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad, one of most influencial programs in the history of graphical user interfaces. Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963.

Via Reddit.

This AskMe question, and the resulting thread, make me feel so much better about myself:

As far as I am aware, I am a mentally healthy, well-adjusted, and sane person with no disorders. But I have a strange, fairly innocuous quirk which seems beyond my control and I’m curious about it…

When I think of / remember something embarrassing from my life, I compulsively make some kind of noise. It seems to happen unconsciously, before my censor can catch it and stop myself (it even happens when I am in a quiet or inappropriate place).

It’s not especially loud, in fact it’s often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. If I remember an embarrassing conversation, I tend to blurt out a random word of the conversation (as in, I’m replaying the dialogue in my head but then all the sudden one of the words pops out of my mouth). If it happens while I’m reading, I tend to blurt out one or two of the words that happen to be under my eyes at the moment.

It usually only happens when I’m remembering something palpably embarrassing or humiliating from my life — not for mild everyday kind of stuff. (Again, I had a fairly happy childhood and have nothing particularly traumatic in my past — I don’t think my embarrassing memories are any worse than the average joe’s)

So what is this, do I have some kind of low-grade tourette’s syndrome? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Does it happen to others or is it unique to me?

I do this all the time, and I’m very self-conscious about it. Based on the responses in the thread, I’m not alone at all! Read it!

Polybius (game):

Polybius is a supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress and horrific nightmares. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. No evidence for the existence of such a game has ever been discovered.

[...]

According to the story, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981, something of a rarity at the time. The game, Polybius, proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and lines formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide in some versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist. The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg, and the company named in the urban legend is Sinneslöschen (German for sense-delete), often named as either a secret government organization or a codename for Atari. The gameplay is said to be similar to Tempest, a shoot ‘em up game utilizing vector graphics.

Read on.

Sue Jones-Davies, the actress who played Judith Iscariot in Monty Python’s Life of Bryan, is now mayor of the Welsh town of Aberystwyth* and is trying to lift the town’s ban on… The Life of Brian!

Some religious groups picketed cinemas which screened the film, and it was banned from being shown in some towns and cities, including Aberystwyth.

Nearly 30 years on, Mr Bell, vicar of the town’s St Michael’s Church, said the restriction should remain in place.

“There’s been no change in attitude or response to the film amongst the Christians who have spoken to me in Aberystwyth,” he explained.

“The film at its root is poking fun at Christ and we don’t want that to happen. I don’t think that the film should be shown. Why should the ban be removed?”

Asked if he had ever seen the film, Mr Bell said he had “seen a small clip, that’s all”.

Surprise, surprise. Read the whole thing.

*Gesundheit!

Science Daily:

One of the most interesting finds from a site on Vine Street was a ‘curse’ tablet — a sheet of lead inscribed in the second or third century AD and intended to invoke the assistance of a chosen god. It has been translated by a specialist at Oxford University, and reads:

‘To the god Maglus, I give the wrongdoer who stole the cloak of Servandus. Silvester, Riomandus (etc.) … that he destroy him before the ninth day, the person who stole the cloak of Servandus…’ Then follows a list of the names of 18 or 19 suspects. What happened to them is not recorded.

Read on.

Rice field art in the country of the rising sun. Each year these guys make new images on their field by planting rice in different patterns making various images. They use different sorts of rice for color. The result is amazing as you can see. It’s a pity they only last as long as it’s time to harvest the rice.

See more pictures. Via this equally cool MeFi post.

As if Louisiana didn’t have enough to worry about.

As we noted last month, a number of states have been considering laws that, under the guise of “academic freedom,” single out evolution for special criticism. Most of them haven’t made it out of the state legislatures, and one that did was promptly vetoed. But the last of these bills under consideration, the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), was enacted by the signature of Governor Bobby Jindal yesterday. The bill would allow local school boards to approve supplemental classroom materials specifically for the critique of scientific theories, allowing poorly-informed board members to stick their communities with Dover-sized legal fees.

Read on.