tingilinde

a costly service downgrade for sandy victims

from Verizon...  and AT&T is doing some interesting things

There is no real competition in most of the US.

 

(hat tip to Alan)

 

a clever mudguard for bikes

A clever kickstarter project- the Plume retractable mudguard

progress

Robert Reich writes an optimistic note to new college gradutes noting American progress in the 45 years since he graduated.

 

the daily show's cronkite moment?

Jon Stewart lashes into the Obama Administration

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

towards better conditions in sweatshops

or not ...  (via The NY Times)

What's a thousand deaths if the jeans are really cute...

 

throwing darts at a glacier

possibly inspired by a game in a pub, a group of UK scientists have devised a novel method for instrumenting hard to reach areas in the Antarctic.

snip

...

The slender javelins are very similar to "sonobuoys" - the floating instruments that are dropped from aeroplanes to study the oceans.

Like sonobuoys, the new BAS projectiles are released down a tube and exit from the belly of an aircraft.

They fall rapidly towards the ice, using a 20cm-wide parachute to stabilise their descent.

When javelins hit the surface, they are travelling at about 50m per second (120mph) and have had to be engineered to withstand the highg-forces associated with a very rapid deceleration.

Small fins, or ice brakes, fitted to the sides of the spears prevent them from driving too deep.

This ensures the tail of the javelin containing its satellite communications antenna sticks upright above the snow and is able to relay the GPS data back to BAS.

"The javelins need to go to a certain depth so that they don't get blown over by the wind. On the other hand, the mast must be sufficiently tall that it doesn't get buried by snow," explained Dr David Jones, who leads the technical development on Project Javelin.

...

(hat tip to Bjarne)

how a uncommon environmentalist sees the world

Mike notes the two part transcript (part 1,  part 2) of a Jeremy Grantham  interview that appeared in The Guardian a few weeks ago.  I'm not as enthusiastic as he is on China...

 

 

the first few decades of commercial aviation

A glamorous image was painted - and flying was extremely expensive and not terribly comfortable.  But there certainly was service.

 

time to short canada's long term prospects?

Very troubling - Canada is becoming something of a red state...   You can't work out where the benefits in basic  research may be.  This could lead to a serious brain drain.

Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value," John McDougall, president of the NRC, said in announcing the shift in the NRC's research focus away from discovery science solely to research the government deems "commercially viable".

backwards in so many ways ..

Of course there are pressures in the US to follow a similar path.

 

 

for a certain community

Time to get your credit cards ready for Bjarne's C++11 book.  I haven't seen it, but I can guarantee there has been a massive amount of very careful work in this one.