Oh man, I am so looking forward to this movie.

Gawd Bless America is a road trip featuring the young, sceptical director and a 69 year old tinfoil hat wearing (literally) true believer, taking in places such as Roswell and other havens of woowoo. Watch the promo, the bit where the crop circle believing "expert" gets a flyover of the "definitely ( Read more... )

Found via GeekDad, this is the work of a Dutch artist who wants to create "new forms of life". While they are beautiful and amazingly clever, I worry that he may succeed a little too well.

Keep in mind that there is no CGI, this is just plastic tubing and wind at work. You can find other examples on his website

You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com

The best xmas pressie we got the family this year was a 2 by 1.5m inflatable pool and a gazebo to go over it, which we've set up immediately outside our back door. After an absolute pig of an uncomfortable day I' m reclining in it sipping a beer and blogging on my phone. Life isn't all bad.

I've been trawling the most excellent Trove site at the National Archives, looking at old copies of the West Australian and Western Mail (remember that?) from the 1930s and 40s, particularly searching for any mentions of family members etc ( Read more... )

Latest installment in "What the fuck has Talbot done to himself now".

Played paintball with decrypt_era and assorted other parties a couple of weeks ago, and two games into the day ended up stacking it full tilt into a pile of 44 gallon drums. Damage bill: pulled muscle in my back that led to a lost week on opioids and antiinflammatories, skinned knee that ( Read more... )

I'm not much of a milspec tech junkie, but this one, even in spite of its intended use, is damn cool and very science fictiony.

The US Navy has been working on high powered rail guns for deployment in the 2020-2025 timeframe. They're currently about halfway there in terms of power. The end product, if deliverable, will launch a projectile at mach ( Read more... )

The time rolls around once again for the December birthday cluster (I want to call us the Decemberists, anything but "Saggies", but I think that's a battle lost) to host the Hyde Park picnic ( Read more... )

In much better space news than yesterday, SpaceX successfully launched, orbited and recovered its Dragon space capsule in an unpiloted test flight. This is a first for a private company, only the 4th crew-capable launch by any agency and the 7th for a reentry vehicle of any sort ( Read more... )

If I was a Japanese planetary scientist I'd be about ready to go nuts with a chainsaw down in the engineering department.

Japan had a space probe due to go into orbit around Venus last night. Except it didn't - they messed up the orbital insertion burn in some way and overshot. They're not calling it a failure yet, they reckon they might wait ( Read more... )

Courtesy of the latest Something Positive, responsible for much inappropriate hysterical ex-Catholic laughter at work today:

"Sweet shit, I thought you Christians loved Jesus!"
"We decorate our places of worship with the thing he died on and pictures of him bleeding. We love his suffering. But it's his fault. He forgot the safe word."