A moving song about people drifting apart, Jann Arden & Jackson Browne, Unloved. Lyrics at the bottom of the page on the youtube video, here
What it feels to ride a rocket [Video]
Elon Musk (yeah, the fellow who created PayPal, & now dabbles in ideas to get to Mars) shared this incredible video of a controlled rocket launch & relanding. SpaceX’s Grasshopper takes a 12-story leap towards full and rapid rocket reusability in a test flight conducted December 17, 2012 at SpaceX’s rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas. Grasshopper, a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTVL), rose 131 feet (40 meters), hovered and landed safely on the pad using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. The total test duration was 29 seconds. Grasshopper stands 10 stories tall and consists of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage, Merlin 1D engine, four steel landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure.
The story behind This note’s for you [Video]
In July of 1988, almost immediately after their world première of Neil Young’s “This Note’s for You” — a song and video in which various high profile musicians are mocked for endorsing brands such as Pepsi and Michelob — MTV placed a station-wide ban on the video due to “problems with trademark infringement.” In response, Young offered to re-shoot the video; however, MTV claimed the lyrics were just as problematic. Furious, he wrote the following open letter to the station’s executives.
6th July, 1988
MTV, you spineless twerps. You refuse to play “This Note’s For You” because you’re afraid to offend your sponsors. What does the “M” in MTV stand for: music or money? Long live rock and roll.
Neil Young
The stand-off was big news, and MTV eventually reversed the ban. “This Note’s for You” went on to win Video of The Year at the MTV Video Music Awards. source: Letters of Note
The fast way to allergies [article]
In another article from the Guardian, health editor Sarah Boseley sheds light on research that is showing strong links between fast food consumption & asthma & allergies, especially in young children & teenagers.
The economic road to destruction [Article]
George Monibot, writing in the Guardian, explains why the free market theory seems a fraud to him. According to its proponents, a dynamic, low-tax economy and a very flexible job market is good for everyone, creating employment, opportunities and prosperity. The reality however is starkly different.
A kilogram is not a kilogram [Article]
Are you old enough to remember when everything was different, maybe even better? You are right, even what you thought was 1 kilogram has changed, leaving physicists perplexed, as this article from the Economist explains.
eBooks & Tracking [Article]
eBook readers give its users so much convenience, as many would readily agree. But as is the norm, nothing in the world is free – so what is the cost of this convenience? asks this article/
Creative Resumes [..find out..]
Now this is what a resume should really look like!
Phone Operating Systems [Article]
If you have a smartphone, the chances are about 8 in 10 that it is either running Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android. You may have a BlackberryOS or Nokia/Microsoft. But as the MIT Tech Review points out, there are at least three others lurking in the background as alternatives that both carriers & hardware manufacturers are quite interested in – expect Tizen, Firefox OS & Ubuntu to become viable alternatives, if not all too common in the near future.
Nature inspires much, & often [Article]
The MIT Technology Review has this article about how researchers have taken inspiration from the abdomens of fireflies to boost the brightness of LED lamps.