Across the Sea of Suns. Furious Gulf.

These two books in the Gregory Benford Galactic Center series, especially Furious Gulf, feel to me like masterpieces in fiction.  Benford writes “hard” science fiction that is heavy in physics and science, some of which is a little fantastic and hard to believe, but it makes for great stories.  His idea that the galaxy would be dominated by mechanical life forms intolerant of biological life has a convincing feel to it.   These books are a wild ride that stretch the imagination as to what is possible.  I especially enjoyed listening to them on Audible, because the performance of the readers gives the stories extra flavor.

 

Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Italian: Nicolò Copernico; Polish: About this sound Mikołaj Kopernik (help·info); 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a comprehensive heliocentric model which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center of the universe.[1]

 

The publication of Copernicus' epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, is considered a major event in the history of science. It began the Copernican Revolution and contributed importantly to the rise of the ensuing Scientific Revolution. Copernicus' heliocentric theory placed the Sun at the center of the solar system and described that system's mechanics in mathematical rather than Aristotelian terms.

 

One of the great polymaths of the Renaissance, Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist with a doctorate in law, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classics scholar, translator, artist,[2] Catholic priest, governor, diplomat and economist.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

10 Coldest Temperatures in U.S. History

http://www.weather.com/news/weather-winter/top-10-coldest-us-states-20121002?pageno=2

Re: Yes, they actually can!

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 10:13 AM, al grotz wrote:

The other day when I sent the 2 girls with a guitar I said they couldn't "get any more beautiful than this."
Actually they can :-).
My friend, Geoffrey, lives here in Asia and still doesn't know who "Girl's Generation" is.
And after watching Beyonce's ugly performance in the Super Bowl,
I thought it was time to update you guys on the girls I sent you about quite a while back.
It's not that these girls have gotten any more beautiful,
they are still pretty much the same girls as before,
but they have gotten more beautiful in the  production of their performances.
The following youtube link now has over 68 million views. I've never seen a you tube with that many views before.
Click here to see why:
 
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pA_Tou-DPI
 
Enjoy!
 
Al
 
SILENT NATURE
www.silentnature.com
 
 
 

Is this multilingual?   At first I couldn't understand the language and assumed that it was Asian.  If so, why mix two languages?   

I thought that the beginning was going to resemble science fiction, i.e. Superman's fortress of solitude.  

The rest is highly repetitious.  As pretty as the girls are, the song is a bore.  I am glad that these performers are doing well.

--
Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Stabyourself.net - Ortho Robot

http://stabyourself.net/orthorobot/

Not Pacman. Trippy.

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/bJWJt_lgd4g

SF book that I loved

Actually I listened to it on Audible…

 

Across the Sea of Suns

by Gregory Benford.

 

Gregory Benford

Benford's law of controversy[11][12] is an adage from the 1980 novel Timescape,[13] stating:

 

    Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.[11][12]

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Benford

Misconceptions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCzXZfNIu3A&feature=relmfu

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYzfKiIWN4g&feature=relmfu

I was saying this 30 years ago .... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UT04p5f7U&feature=relmfu

Climate in the United States

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climatemapusa2.PNG

I looked online for the source of the Ohio River. Two rivers merge in Pittsburgh to form the Ohio.

10 People You'll Only See in New York City

http://mashable.com/2012/10/08/people-new-york/#92025Naked-Cowboy

NYC Sounds: LIVE Saw Lady: Canon Eos 7D, 1080/24p on Vimeo

http://vimeo.com/8249248/

Utah weather

We have very quickly gone from weather in the 90’s, to the 80’s, and now the 70’s.

 

 

Fwd: Chunking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chunking_%28psychology%29

 

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/meyer769/section16&17/2011/10/grouping-and-chunking.html

Advisory

ASICS - STOP AT NEVER

http://www.stopatnever.com/#!/intro

Acetone and Styrofoam

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9Jx8NRkWTo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

The hot weather is over.

DC Comics Confirms Green Lantern Comic Book Character Is Gay - UsMagazine.com

I think that I would have been more subtle about it by dropping subtle
hints over a long period of time so that people get used to the idea.
(And the speculation would have been good publicity. ) Instead it
feels like they are trying to force an agenda. It seems completely
unnecessary and I don't like the lack of continuity with the decades
of character history.

Not that what happens in a comic book is that important, but I like
the movie version of Green Lantern that is clearly heterosexual.

I don't think that the comic book pages are the place to promote
unresolved controversial social agendas.

http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/dc-comics-confirms-green-lantern-comic-book-character-is-gay-201216?stop_mobi=yes

Imagine driving into this

Imagine driving into this

Using vinegar in the dishwasher.

https://www.google.com/search?q=is+it+a+good+idea+to+put+vinegar+in+the+dishwasher%3F&rls=com.microsoft:en-us&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&safe=images

RE: quotes

"never-never-never-never give up" -- Winston Churchill

 

 

quotes

              The Devil is in the details, but so is salvation.

             

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover

 

 

Misattributed

 

    Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

        Though Rickover quoted this, he did not claim to be the author of the statement. Using it in "The World of the Uneducated" in The Saturday Evening Post (28 November 1959), he prefaces it with "As the unknown sage puts it..." — It has sometimes been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but without definite citation.

 

    You have to learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

        Variations of this quote have been attributed to a number of people, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Samuel Levenson, and Lao Tzu; there is no solid support for any such attribution.

Peninsula

In Latin, peninsula means "almost island". In some languages it is
called "half island."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peninsula

The Force

Force (Star Wars)

The Force is a binding, metaphysical, and ubiquitous power in the fictional universe of the Star Wars galaxy created by George Lucas. Mentioned in the first film in the series, it is integral to all subsequent incarnations of Star Wars, including the expanded universe of comic books, novels, and video games. Within the franchise, it is the object of the Jedi and Sith monastic orders.

 

Lucas has attributed the origins of "The Force" to a 1963 abstract film by Arthur Lipsett, which sampled from many sources.

 

One of the audio sources Lipsett sampled for 21-87 was a conversation between artificial intelligence pioneer Warren S. McCulloch and Roman Kroitor, a cinematographer who went on to develop IMAX. In the face of McCulloch's arguments that living beings are nothing but highly complex machines, Kroitor insists that there is something more: "Many people feel that in the contemplation of nature and in communication with other living things, they become aware of some kind of force, or something, behind this apparent mask which we see in front of us, and they call it God." When asked if this was the source of "the Force," Lucas confirms that his use of the term in Star Wars was "an echo of that phrase in 21-87." The idea behind it, however, was universal: "Similar phrases have been used extensively by many different people for the last 13,000 years to describe the 'life force,'" he says.

The Rise of 3D Printers

Printing a bicycle with a 3D printer

First flight of 3D printed plane

420 (cannabis culture) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=420_(cannabis_culture)&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop

See anything interesting in this picture? (I didn't notice at first.)

This is interesting... Most Awesome POV (Persistence of Vision) Display

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&NR=1&v=2hASOre63Nk