All posts by Chris

spurious assertion of the month award

Space

To take my mind of the latest “depressing Shuttle news”:http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/12424377.htm, I followed a Google Ad to the “Moon Landing Hoax”:http://www.moonmovie.com/ page. Since “they faked the moon landing” is a running joke at “the office”:http://evdb.com, I figured it would be worth a chuckle. Unfortunately, the assertions were so rhetorical and so easily debunked that it was unsatisfying. (And the really compelling evidence? “Buy my movie and I’ll show you.” Feh.)

If you decide to watch the intro, here’s a hint: think about speed and mass instead of distance. The Shuttle flies at 17,000 mph and carries tons more payload than Apollo did. Now spot the fallacy.

Kidsbeer

Oddly Enough

I can’t even make up something as ludicrous as “Kidsbeer”:http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nb20050806a1.htm. Of course, I was a big fan of bubble gum cigarettes as a kid, so I probably shouldn’t throw stones.

where in the world was ISS?

World

My current desktop background is a large, beautiful “photo of the ISS soaring over the Earth”:http://www.nasa.gov/returntoflight/multimedia/fd12_gallery.html, taken by the crew of Discovery. I love the photo, but one aspect of it bugs me: where is it? There are definitely enough landmarks to figure that out (a river, a bay, an atoll off the coast), but the lack of any scale or orientation has made it a real toughie.

Does anyone have an idea where it is? Backing up your claim with a Google Maps URL would be ideal.

stop that baby!

Oddly Enough

Meanwhile, back in the police state…

Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the U.S. because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government’s “no-fly list.”

I don’t have to make this stuff up, folks.

Justice, Cole Valley Style

Crime

So, what do _you_ do when you witness a hit-and-run? Leave a note? Curse under your breath? “Snap a photo and print posters for the whole neighborhood”:http://www.powazek.com/2005/07/000534.html? A little luck and a little technology helped Derek Powazek go straight for the posters, and I personally hope this is a prelude to a “transparent society”:http://www.davidbrin.com/tschp1.html.