Space | flakes of nuisance

GO USA

The biggest rocket ever to launch from the US West Coast has lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

The 72m-high Delta IV Heavy was carrying a classified satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

The Delta IV Heavy features three core boosters strapped side by side. Each has a Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne-built RS-68 engine.

These motors burn a tonne of propellant every second and produce 2,900 kiloNewtons (650,000lbs) of thrust at lift-off.

#Inception: runner-up graphic of the movie plotlines – winner to follow

Still trending on Twitter and now (for a while) number 3 in IMDb list of films!. Last Sunday, the deadline ran out on our Inception Infographic Contest, wherein we tasked you guys with designing an infographic that illustrated the film’s complex twists, and its plots within plots. We got some tremendous entries. Among the best were Luis Buenaventura’s epic attempt to represent exactly how much time passed in each layer of the movie–by creating a chart where each pixel represented one week of time; and Daniel Wang’s flowchart illustrating everything that happens to each individual character.

But the contest ultimately [

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'Inception' explained

from Pleated Jeans via I love charts

‘Inception’ explained – chart.

Stainless Steel Rat is collected as graphic novel

2000 AD’s Stainless Steel Rat adaptation finally collected!

It’s been a long, long wait, but at last the complete 2000 AD adaptation of The Stainless Steel Rat is soon to be available in a single volume. It includes the adaptations by Kelvin Gosnell and Carlos Ezquerra of The Stainless Steel Rat, The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World and The Stainless Steel Rat for President, along with creator bios and a gallery.

Up to now, the only way to read the 2000 AD adaptation was to collect the original issues or the six-part 1980s Eagle Comic reprint series (which, while [

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Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

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nothing new under the sun

Ink Calendar. time passes slowly down here by the river

By Spanish designer Oscar Diaz who writes, “Ink Calendar makes use of the timed pace of the ink spreading on the paper to indicate time.

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The Universe as Subway Map

We’ve brought you the interstate highways as a subway map, and now here is the galaxy. In case you were confused how to get from here to, say Cygnus, this will help you out. Just take the red line to the blue line and hop on the express. For all the jokes, we know those stars are out there, but have no idea how they relate to each other spatially, and this goes a long way toward making the universe a little more understandable.

Via Neatorama.

(CLICK HERE FOR MORE -> GOOD Main The Universe as Subway Map: [

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Asteroid blast reveals holes in Earth's defences

AN ASTEROID exploded over Indonesia with the force of three Hiroshima nuclear bombs – and no one on Earth knew it was coming.

The New Scientist website reports the dramatic explosion over South Sulawesi, Indonesia, on October 8 underscores how blind humanity is to the danger of giant space rocks.

NASA estimated the explosion was the equivalent to 50,000 tons of TNT, making it one of the largest asteroid explosions ever observed.

However, this time we were lucky – the blast caused no damage on the ground because it occurred at high altitude, 15 to 20km above Earth’s surface.

via [

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The speech Safire wrote for Nixon if Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon.

Columnist and conservative speechwriter William Safire died yesterday at age 79. Here is the speech he drafted for president Nixon to read in the event that Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong found themselves stranded to die on the moon. I am happy to note that Messrs. Aldrin and Armstrong are all still alive (as is Michael Collins, who orbited the moon while his colleagues walked on her surface). William Safire’s Finest Speech. (Gawker, via Scott Beale)

via The speech Safire wrote for Nixon if Apollo 11 astronauts were stranded on the moon. – Boing Boing .

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