Physics; Not Just A Good Idea

Nope, they're laws for a reason.

If you've ever played Escape Velocity, watched Firefly, Star Trek, Star Wars, or any number of other space based shows or countless movies and books you should check out the rather long piece up on Gizmodo going over what actual space combat might look like.

Hint; entertainment doesn't really get it right...

First, pending a major development in propulsion technology, combat spacecraft would likely get around the same way the Apollo spacecraft went to the Moon and back: with orbit changes effected by discrete main-engine burns.

(via kottke)

Mr. Walken's Neighborhood

This afternoon I fell down the rabbit hole that is Christopher Walken videos on YouTube. Don't ask how it happened, as usual it's a long story.

Never fear though, I brought this back for you...



Nice sweater too!

Not The Best List Ever

The Onion has it's contribution to the yearly top ten list extravaganza up, The Top Ten Stories of the Last 4.5 Billion Years.

The list itself is pretty disappointing by Onion standards, item number five however is genius...

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World:

...According to the cuneiform tablets, Sumerians found God's most puzzling act to be the creation from dust of the first two human beings. "These two people made in his image do not know how to communicate, lack skills in both mathematics and farming, and have the intellectual capacity of an infant," one Sumerian philosopher wrote. "They must be the creation of a complete idiot."

(via kottke)

Put This In Your Top Ten List Pipe And Smoke It

Being the end of a decade (somewhere along the way we decided to call it the aughts? really?) this December is seeing an awful lot of top ten lists.

This may not be the only one I point you to but it is the one that you're most likely to have missed otherwise and the least likely to be duplicated.

So head over to Bad Astronomy and check out the Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2009.

(via GeekDad)

Not Sure What This Kid Has Left To Ask For At X-Mas...

Wow, once again the internets are here to prove that some people have too much time on their hands...



And apparently money to pay that electricity bill, I bet they'll say it was worth every penny.

(via kottke)

The Google Phone Lives

Shots of it are appearing in the wild, and if you're tech inclined at all you already know all of this. Google apparently gave it out to a ton of employees for 'dog-food testing' or 'dog-fooding' (no I haven't made those terms up, neither have I heard them before).

The initial reports are promising, and if I wasn't a broke grad student refusng to pay for a data plan I'd be feeling fairly excited...

Wired has the rundown.

Have A Look

Or a whole bunch of looks actually, at this photo project of 100 images in 100 days taken earlier this year in Glacier National Park as part of the celebration of the Park's centennial.

Here is my favorite from the first 50...

The photos were taken by Glacier Park Magazine editor Chris Peterson using a variety of camera platforms that would have been used throughout the Park's history. Be sure to visit the project's site; Peterson's mini-stories behind each image are delightful and revealing. Scroll all the way to the bottom if you'd like to see them in order from day 1.

(via TBP)

It's A Bird, It's A Plane...

It's a cloud?

The photo is up on The Telegraph's site, apparently that's a lenticular cloud.

(via MR)

That's Ms. Julia Child...

Luckily Julia brought her flame thrower along...



If you watched any of Food Networks next star chef or whatever they called that show compare the contestants reactions to on air failures and ribbing to just how smooth the master is.

(via EMD who informs us that the clip is from 1987)