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Comment Re:who needs flying cars? (Score 1) 937

by CozmicCharlie (#37076218) Attached to: 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars
Think about it! If "it's not fission or fusion", then what the hell is it!? Magic or snake-oil? At best this is a cool science-fiction energy source. If you want to see really cool, *real* possibilities, check out the Focus Fusion Society [http://http://focusfusion.org/] and learn about Dense Plasma Focus and p+B fuel! This is something that has potential and could fit in a garage. Maybe.

Comment Freedom of Choice still exists (Score 1) 521

by CozmicCharlie (#36854274) Attached to: Massachusetts Plans To Keep Track of Where Your Car Has Been
I do have a problem with this. I do not have a problem with refusing to travel to or through Mass.. I also do not have a problem with not living in Mass., not doing business in Mass., etc. I encourage anyone who feels the same to do the same. If the people who currently live in Mass. don't like this, then they can cast their votes against it in many ways, either at their polling place on election day or by picking-up and moving to a different state. New Hampshire is not that far away... Check out the Free State Project [http://http://freestateproject.org/] to learn more really cool reasons to move to New Hampshire. We always have alternatives.
NASA

The Sun Unleashes Coronal Mass Ejection At Earth 220

Posted by Soulskill from the return-fire dept.
astroengine writes "Yesterday morning, at 08:55 UT, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory detected a C3-class flare erupt inside a sunspot cluster. 100,000 kilometers away, deep within the solar atmosphere (the corona), an extended magnetic field filled with cool plasma forming a dark ribbon across the face of the sun (a feature known as a 'filament') erupted at the exact same time. It seems very likely that both eruptions were connected after a powerful shock wave produced by the flare destabilized the filament, causing the eruption. A second solar observatory, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, then spotted a huge coronal mass ejection blast into space, straight in the direction of Earth. Solar physicists have calculated that this magnetic bubble filled with energetic particles should hit Earth on August 3, so look out for some intense aurorae — a solar storm is coming."
Image

Playboy Launches Safe For Work Website 98

Posted by samzenpus from the porn-now-without-nudity dept.
If you're one of the three people in the world who actually reads Playboy for the articles, today is your lucky day. Every young boy's favorite magazine to find in their uncle's closet has launched a "safe for work" website. From the article: "TheSmokingJacket.com will contain none of the nudity that makes Playboy.com NSFW — not suitable for work. Instead, it'll rely on humor to reach Playboy's target audience, men 25 to 34 years old, when they are most likely to be in front of a computer screen."
Science

The Fruit Fly Drosophila Gets a New Name 136

Posted by timothy from the hope-you-used-pencil dept.
G3ckoG33k writes "The name of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster will change to Sophophora melangaster. The reason is that scientists have by now discovered some 2,000 species of the genus and it is becoming unmanageably large. Unfortunately, the 'type species' (the reference point of the genus), Drosophila funebris, is rather unrelated to the D. melanogaster, and ends up in a distant part of the relationship tree. However, geneticists have, according to Google Scholar, more than 300,000 scientific articles describing innumerable aspects of the species, and will have to learn the new name as well as remember the old. As expected, the name change has created an emotional (and practical) stir all over media. While name changes are frequent in science, as they describe new knowledge about relationships between species, these changes rarely hit economically relevant species, and when they do, people get upset."

Microsoft Demos Three Platforms Running the Same Game 196

Posted by Soulskill from the pick-up-and-play dept.
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Engadget: "Microsoft's Eric Rudder, speaking at TechEd Middle East, showed off a game developed in Visual Studio as a singular project (with 90% shared code) that plays on Windows with a keyboard, a Windows Phone 7 Series prototype device with accelerometer and touch controls, and the Xbox 360 with the Xbox gamepad. Interestingly, not only is the development cross-platform friendly, but the game itself (a simple Indiana Jones platformer was demoed) saves its place and lets you resume from that spot on whichever platform you happen to pick up."
Image

Own Your Own Fighter Jet 222

Posted by samzenpus from the only-one-on-the-block dept.
gimmebeer writes "The Russian Sukhoi SU-27 has a top speed of Mach 1.8 (more than 1,300 mph) and has a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 to 1. That means it can accelerate while climbing straight up. It was designed to fight against the best the US had to offer, and now it can be yours for the price of a mediocre used business jet."
Science

Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205

Posted by timothy from the concealed-carry-in-australian-waters dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

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