Comment Everything leaks (Score 4, Funny) 39
This is an excellent example of why people who think the US government has been hiding aliens in Area 51 for 70+ years are clearly very very wrong.
Comment Re:Get back to us on that... (Score 1) 275
SETI versus CETI. I believe the article proposes that gravitational or neutrino signals would be ways for us to detect advanced civilizations as byproducts of their existence, but just detection... not communication. The implication is that it would have a much longer lifespan as a viable detection methodology when compared to radio.
Flash From the Past: Why an Apparent Israeli Nuclear Test In 1979 Matters Today 441
Lasrick writes: Stanford's Leonard Weiss writes about growing evidence that Israel and South Africa cooperated on nuclear weapons testing in the 1970s, and in fact conducted a test: "On September 22, 1979, a US satellite code-named Vela 6911, which was designed to look for clandestine atmospheric nuclear tests and had been in operation for more than 10 years, recorded a double flash in an area where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, off the coast of South Africa. The detection immediately triggered a series of steps in which analysts at national labs in the United States informed their superiors that the recorded signal had all the earmarks of a nuclear test... The event has been a subject of controversy ever since, but is now recognized by most analysts as the detection of an Israeli nuclear test with South African logistical cooperation." Weiss goes through the history of the investigation and new evidence that has come to light, and relates it to the rhetoric surrounding Iran's nuclear energy program and the recent agreement Iran struck with the P5+1, as well as to efforts for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. Terrific cloak-and-dagger read with plenty of technical details.
Comment Re:Hidden land-based bigoty (Score 1) 745
David Brin mentioned this idea (that Earth may be weirdly dry compared to most life-bearing worlds) briefly in "The Great Silence", published Sep 1983 in the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. If true, maybe many intelligent species never develop much tool use, or even conceive of radio or interstellar travel.
Comment Re:I used to work at the Franklin Institute (Score 1) 435
Absolutely agree.
Comment I used to work at the Franklin Institute (Score 1) 435
I used to work at the Franklin Institute, so my recommendations are based on that.
I'd like to say that while I love the American Museum of Natural History in New York, it doesn't have the same kind of interactivity.
The Exploratorium in San Francisco does, although I don't remember it being as large at the Franklin Institute. It did have some very cool unique exhibits I hadn't seen elsewhere.
I quite liked the Boston Museum of Science - very similar to the Franklin Institute in many ways, so your husband may like it a lot.
The Liberty Science Center in New Jersey was opened by ex-Franklin Instituters, I believe, but the last time I went (admittedly, something like nine years ago), many of the exhibits were in terrible disrepair.
Comment The earliest example of a posted Cease and Desist (Score 3, Interesting) 235
I believe the following is the earliest example of a popular (at the time) site that received a Cease-and-Desist letter and responded by posting it for everyone to see:
http://www.ibiblio.org/elvis/manatt.html
Also see the following articles which mention it:
http://home.earthlink.net/~barefootjim/writing/websight/websight1.html
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/hit06.html
Of course, posting such letters has been the standard response ever since. Interesting that it took this long for someone to try copyrighting their letter to try to prevent this...
http://www.ibiblio.org/elvis/manatt.html
Also see the following articles which mention it:
http://home.earthlink.net/~barefootjim/writing/websight/websight1.html
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/web.whatnext/hit.miss/hit06.html
Of course, posting such letters has been the standard response ever since. Interesting that it took this long for someone to try copyrighting their letter to try to prevent this...
