Where Your CPU Came From:

Click here to find out.

Unscientific Post of the Day:

That, my friends, is how you sell a shotgun.

How UTD Helped Take Us to the Moon:

The University of Texas at Dallas helped put man on the Moon. Find out how here.

To the Moon with Walter Cronkite: Part 3

To the Moon with Walter Cronkite: Part 2

Part 3 to come...

To the Moon with Walter Cronkite:

Walter Cronkite Dead at 92:

Read about his passing here.

More here from CBS.

NASA=FAIL

What's that you say? The original moon landing tapes were erased and reused to save money? Oh, wait, Phil says it's perfectly understandable to erase tapes of the most amazing event in the history of all space and time. That's right. Well, at least we have the broadcast footage....

Project Tuva:

Apparently Bill Gates loves Richard Feynman, too. Over at Project Tuva (intended to bring science to the people!), a series of Feynman lectures is hosted for your viewing pleasure. Looks like there's much more to come, as well, so you might want to bookmark the site.

What is Project Tuva?

We Choose the Moon:

Launching in 23 and 3/4 hours (at the time of this writing) forty years ago, Apollo 11 became the most awesomest thing in the history of the entire bloody universe. Forty years later, it still is, and you can follow the entire thing at this amazing website: We Choose the Moon. I'll be all over this for the next few days, and so should you.

wechoosethemoon.org

Surgeon General:

Dr. Regina Benjamin has been nominated by the President to serve as Surgeon General. Read a short background article on her here via UAB, where she received her M.D.

Ghostbusters 3: My Ears Hear Harold Ramis Say "It's a Go!"

Goodbye, Internet Explorer:

I timed it: it took 90 seconds after opening IE for my homepage to come up; it was another 84 seconds to open a new tab. I swear, it gets longer every time I use it, and, as I noted from day one of this test of Microsoft's Windows 7, Internet Explorer has some serious lag problems. I don't know why, and I don't care. Why? Because Firefox works fine and so did Google Chrome. Granted, there is clearly a problem with IE (I might even entertain the possibility of a user malfunction); it's just not clear to me why I would want to fix it in any way other than simply not using IE. So, uninstall happens. Oh wait, I can't uninstall it... I can only "turn Windows features on or off" (shakes head in disgust).

I should note that IE (64-bit) works comparably to Firefox. I am on a 64-bit machine, but most plug-ins don't support 64-bit internet browsers, so the 32-bit IE is the one that gets used.

So, strike one, Windows 7. When there are plenty of internet browsers that just work out-of-the-box, there simply isn't any motivation to investigate very deeply. Most people will just not use your product.

I have other issues. Stay tooned.

The 'Dump Recommends: Moon

The cake is a lie.

Charles Bolden:

This is from an old Navy/Marine Corps News program from February 1995. What else is great about Bolden?

Graduate of Annapolis
Marine Test pilot
100+ missions over Vietnam
680+ hours in space
4 Shuttle missions
General USMC (ret.)
And a nice guy, to boot...

From this article:

"Bolden says NASA needs to inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers who will help replace an aging workforce and develop the technologies for a human mission to Mars, which he wants, but which he says is two decades away. He acknowledged noticing a different attitude towards space among schoolchildren. "If I go to a classroom today, it's different than when I went when I was an astronaut in 1980," he said. "I could ask, 'How many of you want to be an astronaut?' -- and every hand went up. When I go today and ask that question, I may see three hands. All of them want to go into business.""

Damn kids (shakes fist)....

Read Bolden's statement to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation here.

District 9:

Train vs. Tornado:

Whoa. Thanks Awesomer.

Pickens' Plan Setback:

Read about it here. Wait, what is Pickens' Plan, anyway?

Hitler Finds Out Michael Jackson Has Died:

Thanks 3quarksdaily.

Google Chrome OS:

Targeted (initially) at netbooks, Google Chrome is moving beyond mere web browsing and into the world of open-source operating systems. The code is supposed to be available later this year, with netbooks available to consumers in 2010, but it's unclear to me from this announcement from Google what stage development is in. They do note that this is not merely an extension of Android, but an entirely new project. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

Read the announcement

Update: More here.

LucasArts on Steam:

Valve's Steam platform will be carrying old LucasArts games for download (starts tomorrow). Ah, I fondly remember the days of playing Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. And now I can go back and play The Dig, too. But you know what I'm really waiting for? Sam and Max, motherfucker.

Thanks for the heads-up, Awesomer.

Robert S. McNamara (1916-2009):

I heard on NPR this afternoon that Robert S. McNamara, a man whom I greatly admired, passed away today. He is perhaps best known as the first President of the Ford Motor Company not from the Ford family, and as Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy. If you've never seen The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary that tells of the lessons learned by McNamara in his life, you've missed out. Take a couple of hours, and watch the video below:



Now, I don't know why this hasn't been front page on CNN, but thanks to NPR for reporting on this event. It's a sad day. I'd like to see some flags at half-mast, but I doubt I will.

Breaking News: Jackson Dies, But His Brain Escapes...

If you've ever read Possessing Genius or Driving Mr. Albert, you've heard the story of Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who "made off" with the brain of Albert Einstein in 1955. (If you haven't read either of them, you should; Half Price Books (aka heaven) usually has three or more copies of Possessing Genius and at least one Driving Mr. Albert for five bucks or so.) Now, the brain of Michael Jackson has escaped his burial so pathologists can look inside for all those pills that were in his stomach. With the brain out, and the body to be buried, will we have a Possessing Pop or Driving Mr. Michael in the decades to come? You bet your ass. According to this article, keeping tissues for pathology is common, and they are usually incinerated after the reports are complete. But, that ain't gonna happen. That thing will be floating around for decades to come. Above average temporal lobes like good ol' Al? Higher density of glial cells maybe? What, indeed, is the secret to Pop music? Only time will tell...

(Note: the above image is a chimpanzee brain, and was chosen simply because it looks cool, is in a jar, and has the word "pop" in it. So don't send me any stupid-ass emails.)

Michael Crichton's Future:

Filmed in 1999.

Fixing the Audio in Windows 7:

I reported yesterday a bug in the release candidate of Windows 7 whereby the system suddenly began to have problems with audio output. On watching a flash video, playing a game, or listening to music, the sound would lag to the point of distortion, and after a second or two of this go on like normal for perhaps another dozen to thirty seconds before recurring. Given that it seemed to occur independently of any particular application, the logical conclusion was that it was a driver or codec problem. Why it started suddenly is a mystery.

Before I did much, I checked to make sure that it was independent of headphones vs. speakers, optical drive vs. hard drive, and unrelated to specific applications or rogue computer processes (via the task manager). It was, and so I set to find a solution. Fortunately, tucked away inside the Windows Update were a number of "optional" low level updates that actually included an IDT High Definition audio codec. A quick install and reboot and... no sound. Damn.

But it turned out that there was sound output to the headphone jack. I checked, and everything seemed to be working (audio with no lags or distortions), as long as I had the headphones in. No sound, however, for the on-board Altec speakers on my laptop. Undaunted, a simple investigation of the audio device setup inside the control panel revealed that for some damned reason, the codec installation had made the headphones become default for the system. One click on the speaker/headphone icon and "set default" and I'm sitting pretty. Problem solved.

I think this one is a score for Windows 7. Given that it's a release candidate, things like audio codecs and other little details like that are expected to be an ongoing process. A great thing about Windows has always been its ability to go out and do the hunting for things like codecs, driver updates, and the like. It's almost like having a system administrator to take care of all the little details for you, which is nice compared to some of the more time-intensive operating systems that require constant meddling to get them to work right with your hardware.

So, I still don't know why the issue started suddenly, but a fix is a fix. The jazz is playing loud and smooth as I type. Nevertheless, all is not candy and angel twats in the land of Windows 7. Stay tooned for a searing indictment of Internet Explorer, likely to become the first casualty of our little Windows experiment.

Questions for Neil deGrasse Tyson:

What the Aliens Are Watching:

Looks like Fomalhaut is the place to be for the greatest show ever made: The Cosby Show. Yeah, that's right. Click for a more readable size.

First Bug: Windows 7

There seems to be an audio issue (confirmed from several forum posts) of as-yet unknown origin where the sound for things like flash and games slows down and becomes garbled (that's not an additional symptom, but rather the extent to which the slowdown occurs). I've noticed the problem on YouTube and the Windows games (the pre-installed set with Minesweeper, Solitaire, Chess, etc.). After having run the OS for about a week now, I hadn't noticed it before, so it seems to have started for unknown reasons. That's consistent with other reports.

I briefly checked the Task Manager to make sure there isn't some obvious resource hog that's bogging down the system, perhaps some indexing or a background system scan. I found nothing except (Oh, no!) System Idle Process was hogging all my processor power! Actually, that's normal and just means the CPU(s) aren't working very hard. I did notice that Firefox jumps from a few percent of processing resources to 40+% while playing a YouTube video, but I can't claim that to be abnormal. As I said, the audio problem also happens when playing Chess in absence of all else.

I'll continue to check out this issue and post any solutions I come across.

The Difference Between Democrats and Republicans:

This has nothing to do with anything. Thanks to Drudge, who just happened to put these two images on his page at the same time.